A Critique of Independence Movements
by Benjamin Studebaker
Lately I’ve been thinking about national independence movements, like those in Catalonia, Scotland, Kurdistan, and other such places. I’ve also been hearing about separatist movements in some US states—in these cases, subsets of individual US state populations are petitioning the government for the right to carve out smaller states out of the currently existent bigger ones, in order to move their state governments’ policies to the right. These US state petitions will go nowhere, however, because federal law requires that separatist states get approval from the states they are seeking to leave in order to become independent. This got me thinking.
What’s the difference between a portion of a US state, like say, rural Michigan, attempting to declare independence from Michigan and a portion of a country, like say, Catalonia, attempting to declare independence from its national state (in that case, Spain)? Should not the same political principles apply in the American case as apply in the Catalonian case? I think they should. So either it is wrong for the United States to deny subsets of its population self-determination by requiring that state governments approve their own breakups, or it is wrong for the Catalans to gain independence over the objection of the wider Spanish population. Which is it? I argue the latter.
Why? Consider the argument for the right of these subsets to secede—it rests on the principle of self-determination. Self-determination is easily reducible to a series of absurdities, because it requires that we only take into account the opinions of the subgroups. Under self-determination, it is the exclusive right of the Catalans to decide whether or not they wish to remain part of Spain. The opinions of the non-Catalonian Spaniards are deemed irrelevant. Why is this so? It’s certainly not because Catalonian statehood is exclusively a matter that affects the Catalans—Catalonia is one of the wealthiest regions of Spain, and its loss would be devastating to the wider Spanish economy. Non-Catalonian Spaniards would indeed be adversely affected were Catalonia to become an independent state. No, the prioritization of the interests of the subgroup over the interests of the wider group rests on there being something special and important about being Catalonian rather than non-Catalonian Spanish. It requires that the interests of Catalans be thought of as more important or more valuable than the interests of non-Catalans.
Is there any basis for arguing that Catalans are more important than non-Catalonian Spaniards that isn’t monstrously racist? Yes, but only from the point of view of Catalonia’s regional government. The Catalonian government is funded exclusively by Catalans and exists to serve their needs, not the needs of the Spanish people as a whole. However, the decision as to whether or not Catalonia ought to become independent does not rest with the Catalonian regional government—it rests with Spain’s national government. The national government has no special duties to Catalans; it must take seriously the equality of the interests of all Spanish citizens, Catalonian or not. Even if all Catalonian citizens desire independence from Spain without exception, the Spanish population is still, on the whole, better off with Catalonia as a part of Spain. Since the national government’s duty is to the Spanish people as a whole, it has a duty not to permit Catalonia to secede. The popularity of secession within Catalonia is irrelevant.
By the same token, the Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi governments are acting in accordance with the interests of their people when they oppose Kurdish independence, and the British government has a duty to keep Scotland part of the United Kingdom. When the British government decided to allow Scotland to hold a referendum on independence that non-Scottish British citizens were excluded from participating in, it violated the interests of the people it exists to serve—the British people as a whole, not merely the Scottish people.
To argue otherwise has absurd consequences. If minorities are allowed to self-determine their status, any and all minorities, no matter how small, would be within their rights to demand independence, and national governments would be required to oblige them, regardless of the affect this has on the majority of the population. What’s to stop individual cities and towns from demanding independence? Many smaller political units are quite different culturally from their surrounding territories and are far wealthier than their mother countries are on average. Take New York City—New York is culturally and politically very different from upstate New York, or from Utah or Alabama. It also has a much higher economic output per unit of population than these other regions. New York is also ethnically and racially different from America on the average, and there were times historically when New York was even more different in those areas than it presently is. Might the citizens of New York make the same claims that the citizens of Catalonia make? They could just as easily claim that they don’t fit in with the rest of the country and tired of sharing their wealth with poorer regions.
Within New York City, there are yet smaller minorities that could make the very same argument. Manhattan is culturally very different from the other boroughs of New York and it has much higher economic output per unit of population than the other boroughs. It could make the very same argument in relation to the wider city that the city could make in relation to the state or the country. If we follow this thread all the way down the rabbit hole, individual super-rich citizens could claim on the basis of self-determination that they have the right to declare their residential properties independent from their governments. Imagine say, Bill Gates (who has a net worth larger than the size of some countries’ economies) buying up a lot of land and then declaring that territory independent and consequently tax exempt. Gates could move “immigrants” onto this land who would then gain tax exempt status (or perhaps they would pay taxes to Gates). If the United States were morally prohibited from stopping Gates from exercising his right of self-determination, all Gates would need to do to be analogous to Catalonia would be to be much wealthier than most surrounding people and to somehow be culturally distinct from them. He’s already got the first down, and he could finish off the second merely by creating some kind of strange religious cult.
This is all manifestly madcap. I do not get to decide that all the territory I own is no longer part of the United States merely because I think I’m different from other people and don’t want to share my economic output. The Scots, Catalans, and Kurds are merely large clubs of people thinking along these lines, hoping that, by strength of numbers and appeal to poor quality argument, they can guilt their national governments into cutting them loose. The national governments should listen to none of it, and remain prepared to put down secessionists by force if necessary. Imagine if Abraham Lincoln had thought as these minority groups demand their national governments do, by holding a vote on confederate independence that only Southerners were permitted to vote in. Being culturally eccentric and/or rich does not endow any person or group of people with the right to break-up the state apparatuses that benefit so many of their fellow citizens. The appeal for independence on the basis of self-determination is deeply defective.
Hi Benjamin, I currently live in Barcelona but I’m not from here (plus I’m only part Spanish). I have very dear friends here that I love and are caught up in the independence enthusiasm, however I feel I am only an observer. One thing I’d like to add to your great post here is that even though independence wouldn’t benefit Spain, what most of the people that want independence don’t realise is that it won’t benefit Catalonia either. If Catalonia is one of the richest regions, its because its main market is still the rest of Spain. They try to export wordwide but are still in naive baby steps and don’t know how. If it becomes independant, Spain will do what it has done other times in the past when they have been fed up with Catalonia’s antics, and boycot any product from Catalonia. (Even if its a Maggi ketchup, just because the main offices in Spain are in Bcn). I can tell you the owners of Catalonian companies are NOT impressed by this movement at all…
Thank you for adding that–in cases in which independence does not even benefit the separatists themselves, it is thoroughly silly.
Intriguing argument though you strangely ignore the issue of ethnicity. Places like Scotland and Catalonia base their claims for independence on the basis that they are a separate people and land from the state which usually violently conquered them. The people of upstate New York or rural Texas are not an ethnic group with a specific culture and land, so it is not the same.
You focus too heavily on the individual level and as a result fail to realise that ethnicities are more than the sum of their parts. The Scots are not the same as a group of individuals going Galt so the comparison doesn’t hold.
Catalonia and Scotland would have a case for independence if the Spanish and British governments were oppressing or mistreating them on the basis of ethnicity. Because the national governments are not doing this, ethnicity is irrelevant–it does not change in any meaningful way the relationship between Catalans & Scots and their respective states.
Reblogged this on dliwcanis.
Thanks for sharing!
So what about the separatists in Quebec who want to separate from Canada? There was a referendum on the topic back in ’96 which ended up very close to 50% of the population of Quebec wanting to separate from Canada. Since then the Bloc Quebecois (a separatist political party) is been the official opposition to the federal government in parliament. The subject has never really been put to rest.
I know that many Canadians have just gotten fed up with their requirements for special treatment. Really, they already have completely different tax laws and language police making sure that french is more prominent than any other language throughout the province. Recently there was even a law in the province stating that to work in a government position dealing with he public you cannot wear any large symbols of any faith. That means that all the city works, health professionals, and public facing government offices have pretty much banned practicing female Muslims, male Sikhs, and even orthodox Jews form a huge sector of the job market. Not particularly Canadian to me. It’s different enough there that you can’t even win prizes that are on the packages of candy bars. Now when it comes to economics Quebec receives more money from the federal government than it contributes, not the other way around. A lot of the wealth in Quebec is in natural resources that are on native reserves in the north, which have their own self governing systems and would not want their lands to separate anyways. Sometimes I think that cutting off an insular portion of a country that can’t ever be satisfied is the best thing for everybody.
In theory, if it’s in the best interest of Canadian citizens as a whole for Quebec to be independent, then independence would be justified.
The trouble is that I’m not sure if Canada really is better off without Quebec. Quebec’s position is very similar to Scotland’s–the province benefits disproportionately from union compared with the other provinces, at least in terms of balance of payments. Yet Scotland is still valuable to the United Kingdom for natural resource reasons–there’s a great deal of North Sea oil in waters that are indisputably Scottish. In the Quebec case, there’s an awful lot of territory there that may have natural resource advantages, both known and unknown, that would give Canada pause when considering whether or not to let Quebec go. There’s also the issue of Quebec’s strategic value insofar as it controls the St. Lawrence Seaway, and, if it were independent, that could present a threat to Canada’s security in the long-run. Also, while the Scottish population is a very small portion of the UK’s total, Quebec accounts for almost 25% of Canada’s population, so a Canada without Quebec would be much less powerful and influential (and the same goes for a Quebec without the rest of Canada). It’s the international relations reasons that give me the biggest cause for pause.
I think you view the right of self-determination as fascist. Remember the first or second fascist premise you mentioned in previous article. I have no idea if you understand why borders are important and you’re basically saying self-determination is arbitrary as fuck. Which most of time it is. If a government is opressing a region, it would seem obvious to me that region being independent would not be beneficial for the centralized government. You reek of leftist biases. In your defense, at least you acknowledge them. And you are also right, philosophically there is no solution unless one side gives up. The alternative is war. But if the people of that region really prefer war than being part of the government you cannot deny they feel opressed. Don’t you think it is arbitrary as fuck for you decide which group can feel opressed and which can’t?
Also, I don’t think you understand what freedom and democracy are. It is not for you decide someone’s else future or welfare. That is why we have a vote. It is not for you to say, well Catalonia would be much worse if it would leave Spain ergo we need to stop them. You can’t get more authoritarian than that.Assume I think giving poor people welfare is detrimental to them. i don’t. but assume that. You disagree. The only non-war solution is that we form 2 parties and we let people decide. Imagine a government that bans sugar and tobacco and McDonalds. How would that make you feel? You think the government is almost always benevolent which it isn’t. Freedom and self-determination are the same thing. Why do you agree for freedom for individuals and not freedom for groups of people?