is this eurocentric, this rejection of identity?
well, whatever i think of identity, i'm hardly going to define myself in terms of somebody else's. if i were to have an identity, it would be european. in that sense, i couldn't be anything but eurocentric, and i'm happy to embrace the concept.
i think it's at least worthwhile to dissect identity from a european perspective to understand how socialism arose in opposition to it.
while feudalism was not unique to europe - tibetan feudalism was particularly vicious, and longlasting in the form of the aristocracy around the dalai lama - the way that feudalism gave rise to the concept of the modern nation-state is somewhat unique to europe, and follows european models when it's applied to the areas affected by colonialism. and, this is important because identity, as we understand, or at least as white people understand it, was irrevocably shaped by the development and dissolution of feudalism.
all of it - language, religion, race...
so, consider the feudal-era struggles between catholicism and protestantism in the united kingdom, specifically. the divisions between english, welsh, scottish, norse, danish and irish were not the same in the year 1300 as they are today. what you had, at the time, was something more like british on one side - which included the celtic nations - and german on the other, which included the angles, saxons, jutes, danes, norse, etc. and, these two broad nations would fight both within and against each other. by the year 1300, the aristocracy, at least, had mostly been catholicized, even if wide swaths of the peasantry had resisted christianization, to the point of continuing the old ways in secret. so, this is what we really had at the dawn of the reformation in england - a broadly christian aristocracy with a broadly pagan peasantry that saw itself as either british (celtic) or english (german). while the french get a lot of credit in christian-centric histories for the reason that the norman invasion is seen as a resurgence of roman civilization in britan, the fact is that the by then long no-longer-french-speaking aristocracy was norse/german in background, and just happened to speak french for a few decades upon landing. they were only french & christian in terms of fealty; the norse had already been in control of england by that time since the fall of wessex, and the norman invasion should really be seen more in terms of the constant infighting between scandinavian warlords. this "william the conqueror was conquering for rome" thing has always been a stretch.
and, dominant billy was openly bi, btw, too.
anyways, what happens after the year 1300 is that the aristocracy begins to bicker with itself, and it's only from this aristocratic infighting that you start to see these identities begin to develop. first, the scots remained loyal to the papacy, when henry viii told the pope to fuck off; it is only from this point forwards that wales (then under english control, since the plantagenet conquest) and scotland begin to develop separate identities as more than non-english, indigenous british tribes (the scots actually being migrants from ireland....), as a consequence of religious decisions made by aristocracies on the behalf of working people. eventually, there is a reformation and a counter-reformation in scotland, with tyrannical stuarts enforcing catholicism at knife point. this is thankfully ended by elizabeth, who was then famously invaded by the catholic spaniards. it was from these decisions by queens and kings that the british, scottish, welsh and irish derive their religious and ethnic identities from today, not from grassroots movements on the ground.
so, what is membership in the church of england or church of scotland, then? it's a stamp of ownership upon you by the ruling class. it's a way for the feudal lords to identify their property.
and, yet they continue to fight over this, to this day.
with language, you could look at the situation in france. we're taught that french is a romance language that descended from latin and became widespread amongst the celtic peasants of gaul, but that is arguably so wrong as to be a blatant lie. in fact, french as we understand it today is an administrative language that was initially spoken only by the parisian elite. the mass of french people spoke languages such as gascon, breton, occitan, alanian (an iranian dialect) and west german. it wasn't until, again, about the thirteenth century (when philip II defeated the angevins) that the capetians and eventually their junior branch the bourbons began conquering the areas around paris, and enforcing it's own dialect amongst the people. this is a process that continued for centuries, all the way to world war one. this happened with all kinds of violence and oppression, including a crusade, the inquisition and the kind of cultural destruction we usually associate with residential schools in canada, south africa and australia. yes, the same kind of assimilation was directed at white romance and celtic speakers in fucking france.
what is "french" then? the french people - perhaps no more so than in quebec - insist it is the definition of who they are, as a nation. but, the history of the language suggests otherwise - that it was the dialect of latin spoken strictly by the elite, and that it was enforced on everybody else through extreme violence and oppression. once again, what it is is really a mark of ownership - to speak french is to broadcast that you are the property of the capetian/bourbon feudal landholding class, and little more.
and, what is a country, in europe? the treaty of westphalia notwithstanding, all a "country" ever was from the time of the dissolution of the empire (and, there were no countries when there was an empire. the emperor ruled the entire world. by definition. that was a good thing, at least in the sense that it abolished identity, as we were all romans. or, at least, all of us who were not barbarians were.) to the time of that important treaty was land held in the ownership of some family. all england ever was was the land held by the english king; all france ever was was the land held by the french king. these borders were, themselves, based loosely on roman provincial boundaries, but much more so on the area that whatever warlord was able to conquer at whatever time. so, france is really the land that clovis managed to conquer, and little else - before clovis conquered it, it was a part of the empire, not france. and, it is from this concept of feudal land ownership that different realms developed - the bourbon, the hapsburg, the hohenzollern, the romanov - that determined what a country is, and what a country is not. italy, for example, was not a country, because it was never the sum total of a feudal landowner's possessions; austria, on the other hand, became a country solely because it was the sum total of a feudal landowner's possessions.
and, so what does it mean to have a nationality? it simply means that you exist in the realm owned by this landowner, that has this religion and speaks this language.
so, it should be no surprise that the rise of socialism in europe sought to do away with all of this as a means of control, or that a strictly by-the-book leftist such as myself would have no patience for it.
