Yes of course. But there are many ways for the elites to repress the other clases, and this includes atacking class conciousnes. They can send people to die for god, gold and the local lord. And this has been the norm through history. The nation state is 500 years old or so. And most of that time it was limited to a small periferal area of the world.

At an ideological level, we know the main actors of history are classes. While facists and some libs think its the state.

My question is wether the nationalism in lib ideology is an accident of history. That the nation state arose do to geografical conditions that were only tangentially related to the rise of capitalism.

The alternative is that bourgeoise capitalism and the modern nation state in particular are linked in a more fundamental way.

Good post. Thank you for yoir toughtful response. It is very clear the state in general arose as a tool for the ruling class. I like the idea that ideological justifications such as divine rigths of kings gain importance as a funcion of class conflict. Im thinking of primitive temple states in sumeria that requiered the regular kidnaping of statless people to mantain a labor force. Or other teocratic goverments.

As for the nation state as a geografic accident. Thats what i ment if it is an acvident of history. Western europeans wer unable to form large states mostly because of their periferal position in eurasia. And since liberalism and developed in europe they just happen to develop together.

But this new state differs from previous states. There has been a trend in increasing organisation, tax base and scope of the state during the early modern era. The ancient regime be it the roman empire or grat han or more feudalistic polities rarely got a tax base of over 5%.

One exame may be tbe rise of europen trade in the indian ocean in the modern era. At that time the europeans still lacked a technological advantage. But their merchant companies were backed by the power of nation states allowing them to take more risks and corner certain markets. While the local traders originally more numerous were private concerns that did not have the cohesion of a single company.

It would also appear that certain aspects of liberalism arose once the industry of violence became separate from economic production. In a fedal system a landlord controls production because he holds the land by force of arms. It is not so for the bourgoise. That is why a strong state with a tigther mo opoly on violence becomes a concern.

Maybe this is not posible if your polity is over a certain geografical size. Maybe its not so coincidental.

As for modern libs. I was thinking that eventually a strong staye would become its own economic interest affecting the interests of capital. And we sort of see them calling for deregulation and international arbitrage tribunals and so on. Specially in the clinton years. But i guess they never trurly became internationalized.

But wat you said makes sense. Capital still has a lot of its interests tied to the political structure of empire. They become more nasionalistic now that there are international contenders.