New World Same Humans #43
What if the answer to our greatest shared challenges lies in the place we most fear to look?
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Back in NWSH #36, I wrote about the coming challenge posed to the Global North by climate migration. I published that essay with some trepidation, because it’s so dark. It turned out to be one of the most read instalments ever.
This week’s essay is a companion piece. It extends an idea articulated in the original, on how loyalty to nation might be used to motivate action against climate change.
This week’s essay goes further. It floats an idea that feels – to me at least – something verging on heretical. What if a new, enlightened nationalism is the key to unlocking movement on the entire progressive agenda, from regulation of Big Tech, to global inequality, to climate?
What if nationalism and the progressive cause go together?
It’s so strange, I’m still not sure I believe it. But below, I lay out the case. Don’t forget you can also listen to this essay as a podcast. And that the Fast Download, below, summarises the key ideas.
📥 Fast Download: Can There Be a Progressive Nationalism?
🤔 Is a progressive nationalism possible? In 2020, politics is increasingly seen through the lens of a single divide: globalist vs nationalist. Overwhelmingly, self-described progressives see themselves as aligned with the globalist cause. The idea of a ‘progressive nationalist’ seems, to us, almost a contradiction in terms. But what if a changing world demands new thinking when it comes to how globalism and nationalism relate to progressive ideas? What if a new, enlightened nationalism is actually the most powerful tool that progressives have available in the coming decade?
🌐 Many progressives believe their politics must transcend the nation state. Established thinking has it that 21st-century challenges are global, and as such require a global response. That idea has been reinforced by the pandemic, but it was in place well before. At the apex of all this is climate change: an existential risk, and the ultimate example of a problem that transcends national boundaries. Many progressives have concluded that they must embrace a global outlook. They believe the nation state is no longer able to accommodate or change 21st-century realities.
🦾 In our globalised world power flows to data and capital. How can progressives mount a successful response to the globalised challenges of the 21st-century? To answer, we must understand power. In a connected world, power has shifted away from the nation state and towards two intangible assets uniquely able to flow through the new pathways created by globalisation: data and capital. The winners are Big Tech, multinational corporations, and individual multi-billionaires, who are becoming global powers in their own right.
✊ Nations can be the platform via which people reassert themselves. A progressive future is one in which the human collective reasserts itself against the rising structural power of data and capital. In the Global North, that means persuading hundreds of millions of people to vote for progressive policies. What if the best way to achieve that is to frame the challenges we face as, at least in part, a battle for the survival and dignity of the nation state against the global forces that threaten those things? This is a form of nationalism that is about people before corporations, and the planet before profit.
🌍 Progressive nationalism can unlock better international cooperation. The primacy of nation states dates back only to the end of WWI. Woodrow Wilson’s vision was for an orderly ‘democracy of nations’ that verged on a form of global governance. In 2020, no nation alone can take on Big Tech, challenge overmighty corporations, or tackle climate change. But Wilson’s essential insight was that one path to better international cooperation lies through the nation state. This means a mindset shift for progressives. Finally, progressives should not leave national feeling to populists willing to tap into the dark forces of nativism. Instead, let them make the case for an enlightened nationalism that empowers ordinary people, and promotes rational global cooperation.
🤔 Is a progressive nationalism possible?
A now-familiar partition haunts world affairs in 2020.
On one side are the globalists; on the other nationalists. This year’s US Presidential election was seen – both by observers and the participants themselves – through the lens of this divide. In October, President Trump derided his opponent as ‘a servant of the radical globalists’. And now, Biden’s win is widely seen as a victory for globalism and a push back against the nationalist turn. On the face of it that makes good sense. President-elect Biden has made clear his intention to reinvigorate international cooperation; he says the US will rejoin both the Paris Agreement on climate and the World Health Organisation.
This politics of ‘globalists vs nationalists’ is relatively new; it surfaced into the popular consciousness in 2016, when Trump won the Presidency and the UK voted for Brexit. The fundamental political divide most of us are used to is not ‘globalist vs nationalist’ but ‘progressive vs conservative’, or ‘left vs right’. These terms, as with all such descriptors, are themselves not perfect. But we all have a loose understanding of the progressive agenda: a rebalancing of economic inequality, an end to structural racism and other forms of prejudice, and action on climate change are all key parts of the mix.
We all know, too, that when it comes to these two frameworks there is a great deal of alignment. Overwhelmingly, self-described progressives see themselves as aligned with the globalist cause, while those who would call themselves ‘nationalists’ are from the conservative side. You encounter very few – I have encountered none– who call themselves ‘progressive nationalists’. The very phrase seems, to us, a contradiction in terms.
But what if the truth is not so simple? What if a changing world demands new thinking when it comes to how globalism and nationalism relate to progressive ideas?
What if a new, enlightened nationalism is actually the most powerful tool that progressives have available to them in the coming decade?
That sounds heretical. Progressives are suspicious of national feeling for obvious and extremely good historical reasons. Meanwhile, today they associate nationalism with the regressive agenda of populists such as Trump and Bolsonaro. That association is all too real. But is it necessary? Is another form of nationalism possible?
Can we reconfigure nationalism as a progressive force? That would overturn so much we think we know, in 2020, about the great challenges ahead. About how we meet them. And what it all means for our shared future.
🌐 Many progressives believe their politics must transcend the nation state
When it comes to the great challenges we face in the 21st-century, established thinking is clear. It tells us that the challenges are global, and that our response must be global, too.
It’s hard to imagine a crisis that reinforces these ideas more perfectly than the pandemic. Coronavirus is a global challenge, fuelled by a globalised world. Pathogens respect no national borders. And it’s clear that energetic international cooperation is needed if we are to suppress the virus, roll out the new vaccine, and, crucially, prevent further viral pandemics in future.
But the fundamentals of these ideas were in place well before coronavirus. A host of 21st-century challenges – from national security, to digital disinformation, to unregulated Big Tech – are global in nature. And at the apex of all of them is climate change: an existential risk, and the ultimate example of a problem that transcends national boundaries.
Progressives of all stripes have drawn a powerful lesson. Humanity is increasingly a single, global system, which faces a set of shared, planetary challenges. Progressive politics, they infer, must be global in outlook.
Many feel, then, that the old-fashioned nation state is no longer able to accommodate or change 21st-century realities. Under this view, nation states are becoming an encumbrance. One that needs to be jettisoned and replaced by frameworks that are broader, more open, more global.
Many progressives feel instinctively that in the decades ahead their mission necessarily involves transcending the nation state. Meanwhile, they expect populists to cling to the nation state precisely because it is outdated, and as such the perfect vehicle for their regressive agenda.
🦾 In our globalised world power flows to data and capital
What underlies this new, globalised reality in which we find ourselves? And, more important, what is the truth about how progressives can mount a successful response to the globalised challenges of the 21st-century?
The answer lies in a phenomenon that is often missing from progressive analyses of the world: power.
In short: as new technologies have made the world smaller and more connected, power has moved away from the nation state and towards supranational organisations. In particular, it has shifted inexorably towards two intangible assets uniquely able to flow through the new pathways created by globalisation. Those assets are data and capital.
In a globalised world, it’s increasingly those who control data and capital who have the power. What does this mean in practice?
No one controls data like Big Tech. And few doubt we live in a world in which Facebook and Google now speak to most national governments on an equal, if not superior, footing.
Meanwhile, a host of other big corporations also transcend the control of any national government. Globalised capitalism is even turning individual people into global powers in their own right. Last year Oxfam reported that the world’s richest 26 people controlled as much of the Earth’s wealth as the 3.8 billion poorest. The year before that, you had to count the top 43 people before you hit the same milestone. In October, Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by $13 billion in a single day; according to the World Bank 77 countries have a GDP less than $13 billion.
Even the good billionaires are a reminder of this power shift. In 2018 the Brookings Institute reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the 17th largest funder of the United Nations, ahead of Spain, Russia and Ireland.
Supranational concentrations of data and capital; in the 21st-century they are the new empires. Where is all this heading? Foreign policy expert Sean McFate has floated the idea that in the decades ahead we’ll see a new global Middle Ages, in which billionaire overlords and multinational corporations run their own private armies, wage wars, and compete with enfeebled nations for power and influence.
✊ Nations can be the platform via which people reassert themselves
There are many competing visions of a more progressive future. But what they are all share is this: they are about a reassertion of people, the human collective, against the rising structural power of data and capital.
A progressive future is one in which ordinary people are more able to extricate themselves from the surveillance capitalism practised by Big Tech. One in which global corporations cannot extract value from national infrastructures while hiding profits offshore. One in which a handful of stupendously rich men do not wield huge unaccountable influence over the entire human project.
So how do we get there?
The typical progressive answer has it that these are global challenges, and our response must be to look to global institutions.
There is much truth in that. But a good answer must also be grounded in the world as it is, and political realities as they are. Many people, if asked, would say they’d welcome the kind of world outlined above. But since the crisis of 2008 progressives have hardly enjoyed wild success when it comes to persuading people to take action on that vision. To enact their agenda, progressives must mobilise a vast amount of political will. In the Global North, that means persuading hundreds of millions of people to vote for progressive policies.
What if the best way to achieve that is to frame the challenges we face as, at least in part, a battle for the survival and dignity of the nation state against the global forces that threaten those things? Seen this way, nation states become not a force for regressive inwardness and nativism, but instead the best framework we have on which to hang collective action that empowers ordinary people over corporations, data, and capital.
This is about telling people that their country ought to count for more than Facebook, Exxon, or Jeff Bezos. That the global world order shouldn’t depend on the generosity of two private individuals. And that their country, via its institutions, provides the framework via which they can come together and assert themselves against new forms of globalised power.
This is a form of nationalism that is about people before corporations, and the planet before profit. One that asks millions of ordinary people to reclaim their power and take control of their destiny, rather than be shunted towards a strange, neo-medieval future.
For billions around the world, the nation state is the primary political collective. One that commands affection, loyalty, and respect. If progressives ally themselves to those feelings, then they anchor their project in something that makes sense to most people. But if they reject entirely the realities of national feeling and respect, their projects is, for most people, untethered and hard to grasp.
🌍 Progressive nationalism can unlock better international cooperation
The primary of nation states is, in 2020, under threat. That primary is not old. It dates back only to the end of the first world war, when US President Woodrow Wilson and others imagined a new world of ‘national self-determination’, and established the League of Nations to preside over that order.
What Wilson imagined, though, was far from the nation vs nation free-for-all encouraged by the populists of 2020. Rather, Wilson’s vision was for a world of tight international cooperation made possible by nation states; an orderly ‘democracy of nations’ that verged on a form of global governance.
Today, even more than in Wilson’s time, the challenges we face demand global cooperation. We should be absolutely clear: no nation alone can take on Big Tech, challenge overmighty corporations, or tackle on climate change.
I only mean to suggest then, that we return to something akin to Wilson’s original vision. That is, we understand that the path to a better international cooperation lies through the nation state, and a reassertion of the primacy of nations.
This means a change in mindset for progressives. They must acknowledge that the nation state is not their enemy, nor always an outdated impediment to progress. Rather, globalised data and capital that are the primary structural forces that progressives must reckon with in the 21st-century. Nation states provide a powerful framework via which they can prosecute that mission.
Finally, we are all aware of the dark mutations to which national feeling is prone. We should never forget the lessons of the previous century.
But if progressives abandon the nation state, then they leave national feeling to be exploited by unhinged populists who are all too ready to tap into nativism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. Instead, progressives should make the case for an enlightened nationalism that wholeheartedly rejects those dark forces. One that empowers ordinary people, and promotes rational global cooperation.
In 2020 – with a new President in the White House and a pandemic still to beat – there is a chance for progressives to embrace a new orientation to the nation state. They should seize this moment. They have a world to win.
The Same Humans Nation
Thanks for reading this week.
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David.
Do we really need Nations to counterweigh the power of Data & Capital? After all, it's our data and our money. We can choose how we give it to.