ABSTRACT
The first experiences of political modernity start with the medieval communes, especially those of northern Italy, where all later republican institutions were invented, including those regarding the relations between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. This proto-modernity is also that of the onset of a Western-hegemonised World-System. Common Marxism has not been able to recognise this primordial revolution in theoretical terms. And it tends to unilaterally translate into class terms that which is essentially the fact of nations. The conquistadors planted national banners – symbols of the deepest cultural coloniality.
After the turn of the 1970s–1980s, with the “development of the productive forces”, including digital, the world begins to take a new mode of connection that I term “the ultimodernity”: an articulation of the world-unequal-system with a world-class-state. I open the debate about the priority to be given to the “systemic” centre and the hegemon (Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin) or to the “structural” globality which gives rise to a body of supranational economic and political institutions (William Robinson).
At the time of ultimodernity, the world common people are seeking their way towards a World-Nation. Symptoms of this are both the emergence of ecological parties and the growing importance of “the common” issue, providing evidence of a world-national spirit.
