The Modern Nation-State System

In the Video 1: Racial Capitalism and Colonialism (1:49) the narrator explains that “To truly understand capitalism, we need to understand its relationship to “race”. To do this, we need to go back, way back, to the beginning of colonialism.” The modern nation-state system is an important piece of this puzzle too.

The nation-states we all live in today, and the borders around them, are not as permanent as they sometimes seem to be. Most modern nation-states are very young, and many nation-states do not include whole populations of people, who rejected the formations of these states from the outset. For example, Figure 1.1 is a map of the world that identifies regional concentrations of Indigenous peoples. How often do you see a map like this?

The modern nation-state system we live in today started through a few processes that begin in Europe: colonialism (as we introduced in the video), the process of enclosing the commons, and a different kind of relationship to religion and the monarch.

So again, here’s where capitalism and colonialism intersect. States desired the creation of private property, which they controlled and profited from economically. They seized that property through military force and by stealing lands from people and nations. Those people were also key to the economic dominance of the nation-state because they worked for low wages, while land, property and business owners reaped enormous profits from their labour.

John Locke

John Locke (1632 – 1704) is an important European theorist that helps us understand the importance of the notion of property to the existence and function of capitalism. Locke is often regarded as an Enlightenment thinker, a key period in European history that created the intellectual foundations for systems of domination, such as colonialism and capitalism. We will return to ideas of the Enlightenment in Module 3. One of Locke’s essays, “Of Property”, explores the notion of property as a principle in the market, and of lands as private property rather than places we might all share. Locke explained property ownership as a fundamental natural right of humanity.

But who was the human to whom this law of nature was endowed? It’s important to ask this question, because up until the 20th century many took for granted who the human was. In order to steal lands from common peoples across Europe, those people had to be deemed inferior, their beliefs and traditions heretic. Christian tradition had long distinguished between notions of the supposedly “bestial” races and those who were human- those who were closer to animals, and those who were rational. This was used as an excuse by feudal lords to take lands from rural populations, who were then flung to the cities homeless, desperate and traumatized, all in the name of private property.

Keep this in mind while watching the video below. While the video does not include Locke’s specific contributions regarding property, it demonstrates his importance in the development of a Eurocentric worldview (often tied to the Enlightenment) that was then imposed on populations around the world through colonialism and imperialism.

Check Your Understanding

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