The Nation-state and Cuba’s Alternative State
Steve Martinot
San Francisco State University, U.S.A.
The Nation-state as a Structure
What we consider the nation-state today is a constitutional government characterized by representative democracy, with separated powers (executive, legislative, and judicial) acting in concert through a system of checks and balances. Nevertheless, it functions as a strong centralized mode of governance. Ideologically, it proclaims itself dedicated to the preservation of certain civil right, while practically its central focus is the maintenance of the rights of private property. In EuroAmerican society, it has provided the ground for a massive economic development of capitalism, the critical form of which, both at its 16th century inception and today, is the corporation.
The modern nation-state emerged in two stages. The first period (from 1500 to the mid-18th century) saw the consolidation of trans-oceanic governance opened by the conquest of the Americas. Certain European monarchies constructed strong central administrative apparatuses to insure the development of a nascent capitalism. The privatization of communal land in Europe and the arrival of metals from America permitted the monetization of local and trans-Atlantic markets. Its first labor force was enslaved indigenous and African peoples in the colonies, and indentured and enslaved European labor in Europe. The first stages of capitalism depended on a strong state to grant monopoly control over commerce and land, and to guarantee the existence and obedience of a labor force. These monarchies initiated the development national identities. Only later, with the further development and monetization of markets, was European labor transformed from indenture to wage labor. Both wage labor and capitalist competition, which depended on broad monetized markets, were luxuries that capitalism could not afford during the first centuries of its development.
The second stage was marked by the shift from monarchical sovereignty to civil governance through constitutional structures. Sovereignty was shifted to “the people,” generally accompanied by a form of elected representationism. The result was a racialized state based on a white franchise in both Europe and its colonies, and a messianic white supremacy imposed on the rest of the world through colonization. The nation-state’s rhetorical proclamation of a democratic ethos was betrayed at birth by reducing democracy to formal representation.
