The 20th century was a horrible nightmare, the consequence of political and economic nationalism run wild. Human beings in the tens of millions have been crushed on the altar of the nation-state. Wars and civil wars have brought in their wake mass destruction on a scale that is difficult to really comprehend, as nation-states have fought each other for land, resources, and power and as groups within nation-states have battled for control of the levers of political power within their own borders.

National governments have used their “right” of coercion to restrict trade, prohibit freedom of movement, control the use of capital and resources, and regulate and manipulate money, exchange rates, production, and prices. These same governments have used their monopoly power of force within geographical areas to brainwash the populations under their political jurisdiction through state education, regulated or restricted mass media, and general indoctrination and propaganda that make the multitudes love their paternalistic national Big Brother.

The essence of the nation-state as it has developed over the centuries is that it is the master over all men, all material things, and all the ideas and beliefs within its territorial domain. The state is sovereign.

But who is the state? As the classical-liberal Italian historian Guglielmo Ferrero argued, many of the conflicts within nation-states for the past 250 years have been over whether legitimate sovereignty resided in hereditary kings and princes who derived their power from ancient conquest that was then maintained by custom, tradition, and theological sanctification.

Or whether that political legitimacy arose from the will of the people and the consent of the governed, maintained and reinforced through regularly practiced democratic processes.

Or whether the right to rule the state and its subjects was determined by the seizure of power by a self-chosen elect claiming to know the destiny of a nation or a race or the laws of class relationships and inevitable historical development.

Regardless of whether it has been a monarch, democratically elected representatives, or bands of duces, führers, and people’s commissars, all interests have been made subordinate to the interest of the nation-state. Nothing has stood above the state; not individuals, not various groups, not humanity as a whole. All have been sacrificed to the sovereign nation.

It has been pointed out by historians of nationalism, such as Carleton Hayes and Walter Sulzbach, that the modern notion of the nation and nationality is relatively new, something that has emerged on the world stage only over the last three or four centuries. Before that, people’s allegiances, loyalties, and senses of identity and connection with others were based on religious faith or service to a nobleman, lord of the manor, or one’s family, trade guild, or region and community. The idea that a common language or ethnic heritage necessarily defined people as a “nation” or a “nationality” did not really exist in the sense that is today more or less taken for granted in most parts of the world.

Because of this, it is argued that regardless of their linguistic, ethnic, or religious background and upbringing, people must now transcend national identity, interest, and power. The concerns of all men, regardless of who they are or where they are, are now global. International organization, power, and political authority must replace the nation-state or, if they are not replaced, such national political entities must be subordinate to a higher world regime of institutions of legitimate control, regulation, and planning.
  

The new world order

The foundation stones for such a new world order were laid in the years after the Second World War with the establishment of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which has now become the World Trade Organization), and numerous others that form a spider’s web of international institutions having power and authority over billions of lives around our planet. And other, new organizations have been proposed, such as an International Environmental Agency, that would be responsible for regulating industry and population in the name of “saving the earth,” as well as enforce labor standards and work conditions in countries around the world to ensure that they are both “just” and consistent with a planet properly balanced between man and nature.