ABSTRACT
I define the political confrontation in modern society as a “triangular duel”: it is a two-class affair, which implies a confrontation between three social forces. The popular class cannot access to hegemony, in Gramsci’s sense, without allying with some fractions of the competent “elite”. Consequently, as the “right” is based on capitalist property, both the competent and the common people have their place on the “left”. The strategic question is how to build their unity, under the latter’s hegemony.
Now, from class to nation, such a class structure can only exist under the aegis of a territorially circumscribed state, on a portion of the planet that a national community appropriates. This Nation-State defines, in one combined process, those within the fraternal embrace (compatriots) and those outside it (potential intruders or enemies). This process plays out in an unequal and thus colonial World-System. Common Marxism understands the class appropriation of the means of production, but it has, at its disposal, no adequate concept for the appropriation of a territory by a community.
The ambition of a “unitary theory” is also to integrate the third term of the triptych: gender.
