TRANSEUROPA WHAT’S AFTER THE NATION STATE? Thoughts for a future below and beyond the nation on Saturday 28 from 16:00 to 21:00 in Madrid. Joan Pedro-Carañana. All rights reserved.Activists from around Europe met at Transeuropa festival in Madrid, 25 – 29 October to discuss projects of pan-European solidarity. What can be expected from the strategy for social, cultural, political and economic change it promotes? What can be done with the nation-state? What can convergence achieve? What about the working class?
Multiple crises
The forces on the left around Europe have been in deep crisis since neoliberal globalisation took off in the 1980s. Progressive and radical forces have been unable to respond effectively to the transformations in the structure of capitalism and the elite control of ideological institutions.
The result has been an intense concentration of the “international oligarchy” and the development of more unequal power relations. The consolidation of new sources of power in the financial and technological systems has promoted further consent on the part of a large section of the middle and working classes to the established system. As the left(s) and the working class moved further away from each other, neoliberalism and nation-states provided what Raymond Williams called “structures of feelings”, the lived experience of the shared culture of global, monopoly capitalism mediated by national, often jingoistic cultures.
