8 responses to “Ukraine Burning, is the Future Now Yet?”

1. The majority of them? The old nation-states were mostly impositions: institutional systems set up to function for the benefit of power as opposed to effective governance: intrusive bureaucracies of patronage and control to syphon wealth to upper classes (now with corporations) and military (now military-industrial) elites. Hopefully fragmentation of irrational states leads to new localized social organization more sensitive to ethnic dynamics and natural resource catchments.. Bioregionalism anyone?

   • as in it would take the majority to tear themselves apart to have a trend or the trend is that they are all going down? Don’t see how fragmentation leads to anything but more, and more brutal, strife in the longish term but if we haven’t taken the biosphere down with us by than (already?) maybe the survivors will be so scattered that they can start more or less from scratch.

2. The trend is they will all fragment. Most nation-states are completely untenable (much like Yugoslavia was) with regards to ecological and ethnic diversity. They were useful for a time (especially for those who most benefitted: kings, nobles, merchants) but have long since lost their utility value. The best case scenario after collapse will be relativity workable neo-feudal regions sewn together by a patchwork of local militias and deserting national troops. Some of these neo-feudal ‘states’ will be brutal dictatorships (the new kings of scarcity) but hopefully some will harness their anarchic powers to form innovative bioregional assemblies. There will surely be suffering and conflict in the sorting out of resources and control but deterritorialization always leads to reterritorialization. Possibilities…

   • gotcha, that’s my take too, the reach of technologies have so changed our environs (and all the feedback-loops entailed) that nation-states are doomed and I think parasite-capitalists go down with them, as to how different we might be as critters hard to say but I think that there may be some real (if not absolute) limits to our abilities to adapt, worth trying to experiment with I think, first we have to figure out how to keep something of our dignity/caring/etc alive thru the ruinations.

3. As appealing as bioregionalism is to me, the overcoming of the nation-states through fragmentation doesn’t seem likely in my humble, future imaginations. Fragmentation could lead to an easier subjegation of peoples by militaries. The limits to capitalist growth seem insurmountable, yet this thing/logic just keeps reinventing itself. I could still see a nationalism taking hold without capitalist growth in a steady-state scenario, which, I have to say, would be much better if it could stop this machine running far away from the planet’s capacities.

   Ideally, this post-capitalist future would welcome the nomadization of large masses of people and herds in order to restore the migratory patterns that have been cut off by territorial lines (fences, borders, etc.). The only true bioregionalism would also (paradoxically?) be borderless. It will be up to national militaries with all of their high-tech weaponry lying around (hopefully) unused to decide on whether their nomadic war machine will demonize the nomadic peoples healing the earth. But that’s just a projection.

   More to the point, our broken cultural imagination has turned the Ukrainian revolution into a spectacle of disintegration. This isn’t an apocalyptic war zone (as the reporter once mentions): this is a territorial battle for control of a public square. It has been so successful that it drove a corrupt leader out and thrown the entire government into jeapordy. The only thing that keeps the leftists/anarchists from getting behind this is the nationalist-fascist presence within the Maiden – a serious worry. I was told that there is not a serious left tradition in Ukraine like Western Europe, and the radicals who refuse both Russian and EU dominance tend to turn more towards hyper-nationalism. A bad list of choices indeed.

   But these occupations tend to take a life on of their own. A non-totalitarian Ukraine independent of both destructive EU debt-policies and Russian autocracy could emerge. Maybe without the Crimea now, which goes against international law but laws… The racist, purist threat of fascism may rear its ugly head, but a nationalism might rear its less ugly head as well. This sharp journalist is optimistic about Ukraine’s diversity and unity: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/

   One way or another (in the case of its independence being already assured), the occupation of squares and popular uprisings we’ve been seeing seem the best way to overthrow capitalism and heal a dying Earth. As more nations go this way, we should be prepared to recognize stabilized nations in their independence from oligarchs, autocrats, and neoliberal trade organizations. Fragmented turf battles will ensue no doubt, and I know where I will stand (it’s Not with the hyper-nationalists). But the greater chance for reducing bloodshed and healing the Earth lies without a globe dotted with Civil Wars (with lots of intervention for sure).

4. brt, the fragmentation just seems like the days news to me, the old tribalisms married to new resources/insurgencies as the relatively recently forced together modern states fail under the competing interests/pressures of our times and the festering underlying tensions surface. Your nomadic vision sounds lovely and I would read the novelized version but afraid it would be in the fantasy/sci-fi section, I hope to be wrong and that either yours and or m.’s visions are more prophetic.

5. Bioregional assemblies would have to overcome the immense difficulty of the power vacuum created by the obsolescence of the nation-state. I don’t see how their fragmentation and their loss of their utility will make them wither away, considering they hold the war machine firmly in their grips. Nations appear stronger than ever to me today, with the militarization of police forces, advancing-by-the-day technology and their willingness to attack their own people on their leader’s whim. Their propaganda machines are well-greased as well, able to access the attention of nearly every person instantly (even an old jurist-priest would be humbled by that).

   The battles ahead must target neoliberalism and the privatization of public life under capitalist market forces before the state cracks. At the moment, Capital has organized our life so thoroughly that even our fragmentaion is done under their design. I’ve grown more willing to think about transition away from the nation more slowly and without battles after the oligarchs are removed. A more nationalistic revolution against capitalism and the free market ideologues in positions of power (such as, perhaps, a massive debt refusal with demands?) might not immediately weaken or lead to the nations break-up, but it would make a transition away from the state, urstat, empire ‘apparatus of capture’ into Bioregional assemblies more viable.

   • hey bill when you say ” Nations appear stronger than ever to me today, with the militarization of police forces, advancing-by-the-day technology and their willingness to attack their own people on their leader’s whim. Their propaganda machines are well-greased as well, able to access the attention of nearly every person instantly (even an old jurist-priest would be humbled by that)” that doesn’t at all match up with what i see happening (except maybe in like N.Korea)
     what is the power of say Obama to get things done at home or abroad or for the Party in China to keep order, manage-markets, and so on? They are gearing up the firepower at home because the people and the media are more diverse and even more antagonistic than ever, hell what is the market-share for anything that the Prez of the US tries to say (not counting all the ways that people/organizations spin it to their own interests/uses)? The only way the oligarchs in the US go is when the feds get too weak/splintered to support and enable them and that may already be happening with the dwindling demand for work (and so taxes) and all: http://darkecologies.com/2014/03/13/daily-quote-mirowski-on-foucault/