The Limits of Gadflyism

Alexander Cockburn as an exhbit:

For their part the progressives howl about Perry’s gesture towards secession. “We’ve got a great union,” he famously said in response to a reporter’s question. “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” Big cheers from the crowd. I don’t see what’s wrong with Perry’s stand. I’m all for the right to self-determination, hence state secession. Aside from anything else, it’s how empires fall apart. Vermont, Alaska, Hawai’i, Texas – the empire crumbling just like the Towers. What’s wrong with that picture?

Secession means war. And border wars are probably the last area of potential large scale conflict because nuclear weapons are of little use. Regionalism is a luddite fantasy in a world as economically and technologically integrated as ours. The nation state is actually one of the dialetic contradictions of capitalism; global economic expansion requires greater political internationalization but capitalism is bound to the nation state structure from whence it came. Of course, this is where the working class comes in.

1'Rick Perry: One Lucky Son-of-a-Bitch' - Counterpunch