Civilizational-States: Self-Determination of The Peoples?

by Zoltanous

Introduction

Many modern day nationalists who claim to oppose liberalism fail to understand that many of their very own views and beliefs are not only rooted in liberalism, but do not deliver the aspirations that they knowingly or unknowingly desire. Some misunderstand the full meaning of the term “Globalism” by simply assuming that it is a synonym for “world government” and naively believe that their liberal notion of “nationalism” is the only way to fight globalism. It is important to understand that the term “Globalism” is more accurately understood and defined as “A secular liberal world order under the hegemony of the Atlanticist West”. This is to say that the entire world is made economically and socially servile to the domination of the liberal democratic states but especially the current regime of the American Empire which rules from Washington D.C.

The term “Nationalism” is also quite often used without proper understanding. Nationalism was an ideology that arose in the 18th century and was first used by Jacobin revolutionaries to overthrow the traditional orders of Medieval Europe. It is heavily tied to the Bourgeois “Nation-State” concept that was popularized after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 at the conclusion of the German 30 years war. While “Nationalism” was also later used by genuine anti-liberals for their respective political causes, it is important to understand that the original usage of this political ideology was for the cause of propagating liberalism and secular humanist values and principles. Nationalism, therefore, as originally championed by the Jacobins, was a movement that promoted secularism, democracy, egalitarianism among the “enlightened”, liberal science, universal suffrage, capitalism, and individual human rights. What this means is that the original nationalism of the Jacobins was actually nothing more than the original springboard for Globalism. If one claims to oppose Globalism today, one can not fight Globalism as an orthodox nationalist. One must be willing to revise one's own presuppositions and views regarding the nation and produce instead a revised nationalism free of the liberal dogmas of “unconditional national sovereignty” and “unconditional right of self-determination”. Indeed, such static concepts are only espoused by liberals who seek to undermine an enemy power by encouraging this type of nationalism among outgroups or by naive simpletons who champion liberal values towards their own ingroups while believing they are “fighting Globalism”.

Out of the recognition of these important nuances, in conjunction with the general development of humanity and technology from the 20th century and into the 21st century, one can only come to the conclusion that the best way to fight today does not come in attempting to maintain the Bourgeois Nation-State model and any form of Nationalism that is rooted in Jacobin orthodoxy, but rather through the Aristocratic Civilization-State model which by now has quickly revealed a need to absorb the Proletariat into itself thereby creating a type of “Aristo-Proletarianism”. It is this Aristo-Proletarian spirit that must guide all forms of genuinely anti-liberal nationalisms and internationalisms for the cause of a balanced multipolarity governed by various Civilization-States that integrate, defend and empower all nations that struggle to resist Globalism today. 

The Civilizational Model and Its Consequences

“Russia is a prison of peoples”

— Vladimir Lenin, Lenin Collected Works

Vladimir Lenin once said this describing the situation in Russia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Emerging and expanding far beyond its traditional homeland, from the 17th through the 19th century, Russian civilization had united numerous peoples of diverse ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds through martial conquest, eventually becoming one of the largest empires in human history. None of these peoples possessed any sovereignty or political rights as such within Russia at the dawn of the 20th century. Lenin writing in his 1915 pamphlet The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination said:

“The Russian proletariat cannot march at the head of the people towards a victorious democratic revolution (which is its immediate task), or fight alongside its brothers, the proletarians of Europe, for a socialist revolution, without immediately demanding, fully and rückhaltlos (without reservation), for all nations oppressed by tsarism, the freedom to secede from Russia.”

—  Vladimir Lenin, Lenin Collected Works

He backed his ideas up with action. On November 15th, 1917 the new Russian-Soviet government issued The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia built around the following points:

• Equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.

• Right of the peoples of Russia for a free self-determination, including secession and formation of a separate state.

• Abolition of all national and religious privileges and restrictions.

• The free development of national minorities and ethnographical groups populating the territories of Russia.

• Total integration and assimilation of all peoples of Russia into the Soviet System

Many countries such as Latvia and Ukraine chose to secede and form non-Soviet republics, only to have their new independence challenged from outside and within by factions aligned with the new Soviet government. Some may view these invasions by Lenin’s government as pure hypocrisy, however, his actions are easily explainable by reading ahead in the same 1915 pamphlet:

“This we demand, not independently of our revolutionary struggle for socialism, but because this struggle will remain a hollow phrase if it is not linked up with a revolutionary approach to all questions of democracy, including the national question. We demand freedom of self-determination, i.e., independence, i.e., freedom of secession for the oppressed nations, not because we have dreamt of splitting up the country economically, or of the ideal of small states, but, on the contrary, because we want large states and the closer unity and even fusion of nations, only on a truly democratic, truly internationalist basis, which is inconceivable without the freedom to secede.”  

— Vladimir Lenin, Lenin Collected Works

He closes his argument with Marx’s position on Ireland in 1869, calling for partition, but with the caveat that reunion on a free and equal basis ought to occur at some point in the future. Lenin truly believed, through the framework of Marxism, that the various peoples of the former Russian Empire had the right to self-determination. But he recognized in practice that small independent states, isolated from Russia and one another, would fail to realize any sort of meaningful self-determination. In such a condition, these states would quickly be transformed by the capitalist powers into a kind of colony at the mercy of Western financial and industrial interests and later used as launch pads for counter-revolutionaries trying to overthrow the Soviet government.

The Soviet government launched invasions and participated in numerous civil wars in former territories of the Russian Empire throughout the early 1920s, collectively dubbed the Russian Civil War, ultimately losing many territories but remaining in control of others. The Soviet Union was formally created on Dec. 30th, 1922 at the close of the civil war; consisting of a two-tiered hierarchy of ‘Union Republics’ and ‘Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics’, the former having more powers devolved in them and possessing the theoretical right to secede.

Within each of these Soviet republics were many initiatives concerning the protection and promotion of culture and language, the development of the regional economy, and the institution of political freedoms. Each one had their own autonomous government and legal system; their own flag and national anthem and a seat on the All-Union Congress of Soviets. Russia had seemingly transformed, from a prison of peoples into a house of nations. Fast-forward to the year 1991. In the fallout of the collapse of the New Union Treaty, many of the Soviet Satellite Republics (SSRs), such as Ukraine, invoked the right to independence guaranteed by the Soviet constitution, while the Autonomous Soviet Satellite Republics (ASSRs) also contemplated asserting their own independence, resulting in the total collapse of the Soviet Union. The implosion of orthodox Marxist ideology in the latter half of the 20th century – increasingly faced with new problems emerging from the post-WW2 order and marred by internal contradictions and challenged by the post-Marxist New Left – lent much to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union. Yet the resulting geopolitical crises in the former Soviet Union have actually vindicated what appeared to be Lenin’s hypocrisy. Ukraine is the best example of this.

Beginning almost immediately, the former Ukrainian SSR began being pulled into the orbit of the West with the intention of transforming it into a neo-colony. The oligarchy, hastily fashioned from the carcass of Soviet wealth, was consumed by vulturous Western Liberal imperialism overnight. Ukraine has no real national bourgeoisie but, rather, a class of national traitors totally subservient to Western interests masquerading as patriots. Since their complete takeover in the American CIA orchestrated ‘Maidan’ coup of 2014, these pro-Western oligarchs ruined the economy by selling off Ukraine’s assets to Western corporations and have now finally managed to transform their country into a battlefield.

What’s left for the average Ukrainian workers, farmers, and small business owners, but a situation far worse than the situation they faced when Lenin declared Russia a “prison of peoples” in 1915? Far from the stability of the Russian Empire or relative national freedom and prosperity during the Soviet period, Ukraine has been reduced to a heap of rubble at the behest of a vicious anti-Russian oligarchy and Western Liberal imperialists, in a war against a people they lived in harmony and brotherly-union with less than fifty years ago, this is nonself-determination.

In practice, Lenin was right. In the 20th and 21st centuries, a Ukraine outside of the Soviet (Russian) orbit will be deprived of any meaningful self-determination. Isolated nation-states unable to achieve a form of semi-autarky and incapable of becoming imperial powers themselves will necessarily fall into the orbit of an empire or some other aggregate of states to varying degrees. Self-determination is only possible within the context of transnational geopolitical entities that ensure their security and autonomy. The only other option is potential nonself-determination within the bounds of another. But what about the peoples in the contemporary Russian Federation that aren’t Russians?

The Soviet system of republics was largely carried over into the framework of the Russian Federation, which today is divided into eighty-five federal subjects, twenty-two of which are republics, including: Dagestan, Chechnya, and Bashkortostan. Other countries like Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan are politically de facto states, but are incorporated into the Eurasian Customs Union. The Russian Federation, an aggregate of states with Russia proper at the helm, offers us a glimpse of the self-determination of peoples in practice freed from the ideological constraints of purely 20th century Marxism and Nationalism. For North American patriots who find themselves struggling for identity and self-determination in the wake of an increasingly globalized, anti-national (as opposed to international) system of emerging world government, the historical example of the Soviet Union and the contemporary Russian Federation and even modern China serve as an indispensable model in our own search for an alternative to liberal supremacism and secular racism.

A map of the Russian Federation’s Republics.

The term "Civilization-State" is most often applied to China; both ancient and modern China. As early as ancient times, the Chinese developed the theory of "Tianxia" (天下) or the "Celestial Empire". According to this theory, China is the center of the world and is the meeting place of the unified Heaven and the divided Earth. This "Celestial Empire" may be a single state, or it may be broken up into its components and then reassembled. In addition, Han China itself acts as a culture-forming element for neighboring nations that are not directly part of China, primarily Korea, Vietnam, the Indochina countries, and even Japan, which is quite independent. The nation-state is a product of the European Enlightenment Age and, in some cases, a post-colonial construct. The Civilization-State has ancient roots and organically shifting boundaries similar to the dynamic membrane of a cell. A Civilization-State sometimes pulsates, expanding and contracting, but always remaining a constant phenomenon. Contemporary China behaves strictly according to the principle of "Tianxia" in her international politics. The One Belt, One Road Initiative is a prime example of what this looks like in practice. China's Internet, which cuts off any networks and resources that might weaken the civilizational identity at the entrance to China, demonstrates how the defense mechanisms are built up. The Civilization-State may interact with the outside world, but it never becomes dependent on it and always maintains self-sufficiency, autonomy and autarchy. A Civilization-State is always more than just a state in both spatial and temporal (historical) terms as modern state theories propose. It is a living organism rooted in a sense of spacelessness and timelessness that adapts to its existential conditions without losing its ontological essence and integrity.

For such a Civilization-State, time and space are trivialities and illusions that do not reflect the true spirit of how civilizations exist and find their being. At their core, Civilization-States emphasize the view that existence is a continuous moment of being with neither beginning nor end and that all perceived distinctions are merely illusory manifestations of temporalities. With this view, there is no place for static notions and dogmas of inalienable rights but rather only an organic need for personalism. There is no sense of “rule of law” or “progress” as there is in modern Nation-States. Instead, there is a greater emphasis on virtue ethics and perennialism. This sharp distinction reflects how the culture of a Civilization-State differs from that of a modern Nation-State and how the two are radically different in terms of their spiritual, psychological, sociological, economic, and ecological characteristics.

Although Soviet Russia was unable to last beyond the 20th century. Civilization-States provide important lessons to be learned in the 21st century; lessons that are especially valuable for the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China today. Russia and China today are the greatest examples of Civilization-States that reject both orthodox Nationalism as well as Globalism. One can even go as far as to say that it is only possible for these two great Civilization-States to challenge the Atlanticist West precisely because they do not make the mistakes of committing to any liberal dogmas that would only serve to entrap them into an exploitable vulnerability. Today’s liberal voices in the Atlanticist West are the first to speak of “decolonizing Russia” and promote various anti-Russian nationalistic movements that seek to affirm “the right of self-determination”. One can see this, for example, in how the forces and voices of Globalism are all in favor of “Ukrainian Nationalism” so long as it undermines the Russian Federation. Similar sectarian exploits are conducted against China through “Taiwanese Nationalism” and “defending the Human Rights of Hong Kongers”.

One could only imagine what kind of controversy would arise if Russia and China were to actively fund and promote “Southern Dixie secession movements” in the United States. It is doubtful then that any of the liberal voices who advocate for the “Ukrainian right to self-determination” or the “Taiwanese right to self-determination” would feel the same way about the “Southern Confederate right to self-determination”. What this ultimately reveals is that the 21st century has brought about new geo-political conditions that require their own meticulous investigations and considerations. If one truly seeks to oppose Globalism, one can not fight Globalism through any liberal forms of nationalism or internationalism. One must fight Globalism through genuinely anti-liberal nationalisms and internationalisms. Ultimately, there no longer is a dialectical paradigm between nationalism and internationalism anymore. The two have faded away to give rise to a new dialectic: Globalism vs Civilizationism. Embedded within this new dialectic one may find diverse formulations of both nationalism and internationalism, however, what distinguishes them is whether they are liberal or anti-liberal. Globalism incorporates both liberal nationalism and liberal internationalism while Civilizationism incorporates both anti-liberal nationalism and anti-liberal internationalism. This is the difference between the two and this is what shall drive geopolitics forward in the 21st century and, perhaps, even beyond.

Russia just like China is an extremely diverse country in of itself. Putin personally respects the natural diversity of Russia and respects the history of each ethnic group in Russia. Russian Extreme Nationalists divide Russia with their 'Russia for Russians' rhetoric as their intention is to divide Russia and destroy the stability Putin has established in Russia. China respects the ethnic groups in their country, and their respective cultures, customs, traditions, and religions. They will protect their interest, as long as they are loyal to China and to no other foreign elements. Russia and China have connections with each other for their diversity. We as Americans should listen to Vladimir Putin, when he said:

“Caveman nationalism, with the slogan ‘Russia is only for Russians,’ only harms Russians, only harms Russia, we shouldn't allow this to happen. Of course, we must make sure that the culture of every nation, its history, and roots of every nation is respected and honored in our country.”

— Vladimir Putin

For Americans who sincerely oppose Globalism, the key to their own liberation lies firmly within their own hands. It will not arrive, however, by clinging on to any prior presuppositions, assumptions or beliefs rooted in liberalism and secular humanism. It can only come out of a genuinely anti-liberal foundation and tradition. Once the time is right and the current regime has performed its final act in the theater of political power, sincerely anti-liberal Americans must be ready to establish a new order of their own; an order that is fundamentally and radically different from the current one.

The tasks that lie ahead on the shoulders of such Americans are tremendous and yet they also have the live demonstrations of Russia, India, and China today in addition to the invaluable lessons of Soviet Russia that they can learn from. Americans have at the moment everything at their disposal to bring about such a change. All they lack is the will as there are still too many who knowingly or unknowingly believe in the cult of reason that gave the world the original monster of nationalism, and today gives the world the far more terrifying monster of Globalism. Nevertheless, one should strive to think about the future of an American Civilization-State in North America that shall hopefully live in peace with other Civilization-States in a multipolar world order. While allowing its various multiracial population to live in harmony.