There is a fundamental mis-match between the increasingly globalised nature of the economy and the national basis of politics. Nationalist ideology, like most ideology, blinds us to those aspects of reality that do not fit with the ideology. Core to nationalist ideology is the idea of sovereignty. The legal and military foundation of sovereignty gives the nation the appearance of solidity. However, meaningful political sovereignty depends on the resources any government can devote to that sovereignty. Meaningful political sovereignty depends on the resources any government can devote to that sovereignty. What does the ‘sovereignty’ of a person with no money mean in practice if they have to sell their bodies to eat? Similarly the sovereignty of a nation with no means exists more in theory and law than in practice. Though the presence or absence of sovereignty may be clear legally, think of any very poor country and any very rich country to observe how in practice sovereignty is a matter of degree, conditioned by whether a country has the finance to exercise that sovereignty. Think of Greek sovereignty in hock to the EU, or bankrupt post-war UK in hock to the USA. Compare that to the capacity of the USA to exercise its sovereignty in practice.
Legal national sovereignty runs into the limits reality imposes. The ‘national’ economy any government has to tax is only national as far as tax is concerned. Bar North Korea ‘national’ economies are integrated parts of a global economy. Money moves fluidly around the globe only residing temporarily in any particular nation. Nation states own significant portions of global capital concentrations, especially in land, property and mineral resources. But the majority of global capital is not owned by states. Individuals, private pension funds, the private sector, multi-national corporations and international banks own most of the global wealth. Even labour is increasingly trans-national. The nationalist desire for sovereignty obscures this simple reality. Sovereignty is dependent on an economy over which the nation is not sovereign.
