Nationalism

A Critical Introduction

Philip Spencer, Howard Wollman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781446236956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

`Spencer and Wollman remain succinct and clear in their critical introduction to the most influential nationalism theories. The book is well structured, the arguments clearly presented. Its format makes it a great textbook for all seeking a deeper understanding of nationalism and national identity, while those already familiar with the subject will no doubt enjoy this erudite volume as well? - Sociology

`This book is a valuable source for the interested reader who needs a concise and critical introduction into theories and theorists of nationalism. The extensve bibliography and a good index make it a work which should be on the bookshelf of anyone teaching nationalism?

- Journal of Contemporary European Studies

Nationalism provides an indispensable review of the study of nationalism that both introduces and critically positions all the main issues, theories and contemporary debates. Drawing upon and introducing a wide range of literatures from across politics, sociology, history, social anthropology and cultural studies, the authors seek to further challenge fixed notions of national identity, ethnicity and culture to more fully explore and understand the contemporary complexities of citizenship and the genuine potential for a cosmopolitan democracy. The text surveys both classical and contemporary approaches including those from within feminism, postmodernism, postcolonialism and globabalization studies. It will be essential reading for all students and academics seeking a deeper understanding of nationalism and national identity today.

1

Ambivalent Legacies: Nationalism, Political Ideology and Social Theory

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Introduction

Liberalism and the idea of self-determination

Marx and Marxism: a contradictory legacy?

Rosa Luxemburg and internationalism

Otto Bauer and the significance of national ‘culture’

Lenin and the right of (oppressed) nations to self-determination

Conservatives and nationalism

Classical social theory and nationalism

Durkheim

Weber

Conclusion

Further reading

Notes

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INTRODUCTION

If we want to think critically about nationalism, we cannot do so in a vacuum. For better or for worse, our thinking has been shaped to a greater or lesser extent by the major political ideologies and social theories of the modern era, all of which have had something to say about nationalism, whether explicitly or implicitly. In this chapter, we look in particular at the way in which liberals, Marxists and conservatives wrestled with the problems posed by nationalism, before going on to consider the complex and at times contradictory views of Durkheim and Weber. In each case we can identify how they both opened the way to the possibility of thinking critically about nationalism, but also how they also accommodated to it in certain respects, thus bequeathing a somewhat ambivalent legacy to subsequent theorists.

Liberalism and the idea of self-determination

Many writers begin their discussion of nationalism by identifying a particular period in which liberalism and nationalism were closely entwined (Hobsbawm, 1992; Kohn, 1965; Woolf, 1996). This is usually held to be from the time of either the English or French Revolutions up until 1848, at which point their paths are seen to diverge. Why were liberals so enthusiastic initially about nationalism and what impact has this had on the way we can think about nationalism?

Before we begin to answer this question, it may be worth noting that early liberal enthusiasm for nationalism, perhaps like most enthusiasms, was not always clearly articulated or argued. Rather there was, as Hobsbawm (1992) has remarked, ‘a surprising degree of intellectual vagueness . . . due not so much to a failure to think the problem of the nation through, as to the assumption that it did not require to be spelled out, since it was already obvious’ (p. 24). This is, on the face of it, somewhat surprising. If the core liberal value is the freedom of the individual, then it might seem problematic for liberals to wax enthusiastic about a doctrine which prioritizes a collectivity. Yet this apparent contradiction may be swiftly dispelled when we realize that for many liberals the same principle could be applied to both. This is the principle of self-determination. In order to understand how this came to be, we need briefly to consider the work and legacy of Kant.

Although Kant himself was not a nationalist, and is often seen to be a quintessentially cosmopolitan Enlightenment thinker (Kohn, 1965, p. 35), he did in a crucial way lay the foundations for the rapprochement of liberalism and nationalism. As a liberal he was committed, as Berlin put it, to ‘the timeless, unchanging rights of the individual, whoever he may be, whatever his time, whatever his place, his society, his personal attributes, provided he is a man [sic], the possessor of reason’ (1996, p. 233). Yet there is a crucial sense in which, as both Berlin and Kedourie (1993) have suggested, Kant’s insistence on autonomy and will opened the way in social and political theory for a central perspective on nationalism, the idea that nations should have the right to self-determination. In arguing that morality required the exercise of free will, that one could not be truly human without determining one’s own goals and future for oneself, Kant opened the way for others to think about nations along the same lines. For Kant’s successors, although not all of them were liberals, it was but a short step to endow nations with the same qualities and potential as individuals, to assert that nations too had wills, had to become self-conscious and aware of their potential and pursue the project of self-realization. As Fichte for instance put it, ‘nations are individualities with particular talents and the possibilities of exploiting those talents’ (in Calhoun, 1997, p. 45).¹ There was then a profound imperative, an implicit challenge laid down to each putative nation, to rouse itself, to emancipate itself from whatever shackles, internal or external, were deemed or felt to be holding it back. This link with individualism, via the notion of self-determination, gave nationalism then, as Kedourie (1993) argues, a great source of vitality and dynamism (p. 23).

For liberals, it was this connection which made it possible to see nationalism in so positive a light. In the minds of thinkers such as Mazzini, in many ways the archetypal liberal nationalist of the first half of the nineteenth century, the connection between individual and national freedom was more or less self-evident. The struggle for national self-determination was a struggle against oppression, against domination, against a social and political system which prevented both nations and individuals from being free, from being able to fulfil their potential. As Alter (1989) explains, Mazzini and his fellow thinkers were committed to ‘the right of every nation, and with it the right of each and every member of a nation, to autonomous development, for in their minds, individual freedom and national independence [were] closely connected’ (p. 29; emphasis in the original).

Assumptions of this sort may have helped to push liberals into seeing nationalism in a positive light in relation to democracy too, at least once liberals had made up their mind to support it. In his ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, John Stuart Mill extended the idea of self-determination by arguing that

where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the same nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart . . . This is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed. (1996, p. 41)

Indeed, Mill went further, claiming that ‘free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities’ (p. 41).

Not all liberals, however, agreed. Lord Acton famously challenged this liberal enthusiasm, seeing nationality as ‘a confutation of democracy’. For Acton (1996), ‘the combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society’ (p. 37; p. 31). Acton was seriously concerned that without such diversity, there would be no effective barriers against centralized and potentially absolutist state power and looked to the presence of different nationalities within the same state to defend freedoms. At the same time, however, it is noticeable that even Acton accepted that national identifications were of primary significance, that the diversity he sought was (multi) national in character. Like Mill, moreover, he made certain assumptions which, as we shall see later, tend to vitiate efforts to develop a ‘good’ version of nationalism (see Chapter 4). For both men, it turned out that not all nationalities were of equal value. For Mill, it was clearly preferable to belong to some nations rather than others.

Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton or a Basque . . . to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilised and cultivated people – to be a member of the French nationality . . . than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage relic of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the world. (1996, p. 44)

Some of Acton’s formulations are even more problematic. He defended his proposal for multi-national states for instance partly on the grounds that ‘inferior races are raised by living in political union with races intellectually superior’ (Acton, 1996, p. 31).

It is unlikely that contemporary liberals would express such opinions but the appeal of nationalism not just to supporters such as Mill but to critics such as Acton tells us something of the pressure it exerted from the outset on liberal thought. It was only gradually and perhaps with some reluctance that liberals came to see dangers in nationalism. The impact of the First World War did much to shift opinion here, as many liberals were horrified at the way states deployed nationalism to mobilize the masses for war. Liberals then came to play a prominent role in international campaigns between the wars for peace and disarmament (Heater, 1996). Nationalism came to be seen by many liberals (such as Popper and Hayek) as a collectivist ideology threatening the freedoms, rights and security of the individual (Vincent, 1997).

In more recent years, however, there has been a distinct resurgence of liberal interest in and optimism about nationalism. A number of writers have sought to reassert the essential compatibility of liberalism with nationalism (MacCormick, 1982; Tamir, 1993). Although we deal in more detail with these arguments later in this book (see Chapter 4), it is worth noting here that there is a recurring tendency to assume the necessity of nations.² To the extent that this has been the case, it may help to account for what, at the risk of considerable simplification, we could summarize as the overall ambivalence that liberalism has exhibited towards nationalism. Whilst some liberals have seen nationalism as a threat to individual freedoms, rights and security, this has been balanced if not outweighed by others with an initial enthusiasm and a later and more optimistic acceptance of its benefits.

Marx and Marxism: a contradictory legacy?

Is the same true of Marxism? At the very moment indeed when liberalism and nationalism were most closely linked, in 1848 (see Chapter 5), a very different and markedly more critical attitude to nationalism was being promulgated. In the Communist Manifesto and elsewhere, Marx and Engels laid down what seemed to be an unambiguously critical approach to the national question. They began from the premise that the central division in society was not horizontal but vertical, not between nations but between classes (Connor, 1984). Nationality was an irrelevance or an illusion: ‘The working men have no country’ (Marx and Engels, 1976, p. 502).

The nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free slavery, self-huckstering. His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air. The land belonging to him is neither French, nor English, nor German, it lies a few feet below the ground. (Marx, 1975, p. 280)

Workers had no reason to identify themselves in national terms, with their fellow-nationals as such. Rather their interests were universal, cutting across increasingly irrelevant national boundaries.

The proletarians of all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy, and one and the same struggle. The great mass of the proletarians are, by their nature, free from national prejudice and their whole disposition and movement is essentially humanitarian, antinationalist. (Engels, 1976, p. 6)

As capitalism spread out across the world, revolutionizing production, sweeping away traditions, prejudices and hitherto fixed social relations, it undermined the salience of national divisions, both material and intellectual. ‘National one-sidedness and narrow mindedness [has] become more and more impossible . . . national differences are daily more and more vanishing’ (Marx and Engels, 1976, p. 503). Although Marx and Engels generally eschewed utopian thinking, it is possible to see the outlines here of a genuinely cosmopolitan vision of a future world city, a universal gemeinschaft in which there is no room for separate and divisive nation-states (Löwy, 1998).

These arguments have been the target of much criticism down the years, taken as evidence that Marx and Engels had no understanding of the significance of nationalism, and wilfully underestimated its appeal. Even many later Marxists have seen nationalism as Marxism’s ‘great historical failure’ (Nairn, 1977, p. 329), accepting that ‘essentially, Marxism has no theory of nationalism’ (Munck, 1986, p. 2), whilst for non-Marxists such as Giddens, Marxism is held to have little to contribute to our understanding in this area (Giddens, 1985). There is though something rather odd about these criticisms. After all, Marx and Engels were writing at precisely the time when nationalism was, if not at its height, certainly becoming increasingly influential (Connor, 1984, p. 6; James, 1996, p. 52). In fact, neither Marx nor Engels was immune to the political pressures surrounding them, and at various times they were led to soften or modify this position.³ They did so in two main ways. One was to adopt a somewhat determinist position, in which there was a distinction between two different kinds of nation – one so-called ‘historic’ and the other supposedly ‘non-historic’. The other was more pragmatic, an attempt to integrate or graft nationalist struggles on to the communist project. Both of these adaptations or modifications were to have considerable impact on subsequent thinking about nationalism, both Marxist and non-Marxist.

The distinction between historic and non-historic nations was taken directly from Hegel. The latter category referred to ‘these relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says’ (Engels, 1977, p. 234; emphasis added). Thus what they called ‘large and well-defined historical nations’ could be contrasted with ‘the ruins of peoples which are still found here and there and which are no longer capable of a national existence, are absorbed by the larger nations and either become part of them or maintain themselves as ethnographic monuments without political significance’ (Engels, 1980, p. 254). In one sense this was part of their more general materialist inversion of Hegelian thought. Insofar as they were part of the overall development of capitalism, certain nation-states had played a progressive historical role, unifying people and territory and helping to break down more local barriers and divisions. One could therefore distinguish between nationalisms which promoted these objectives (in the case of ‘historic’ nations) and those which sought to hold back progress so conceived (the ‘non-historic’ cases). It has not been difficult for critics to seize upon the particular examples Marx and Engels adduced here as evidence of racism and/or Eurocentrism (Blaut, 1987; Munck, 1986; Nimni, 1991; Rosdolsky, 1986). Yet there is a sense in which this kind of criticism is to some extent beside the point not just because, as Breuilly (1996) has pointed out, ‘the distinction between “historic” and “non-historic” nations was part of the political “common sense” of 19th century Europe’ (p. 172). The terms in which they identified the historic character of such nations were more than purely economic, encompassing, building on and (crucially) also assuming a given and unproblematized cultural identity. The ‘nation’, historic or otherwise, was in some sense taken as a given. In making this kind of distinction, neither Marx nor Engels questioned the very category of the nation itself.

In later years, this particular distinction was, as it happens, largely jettisoned by both men. In its place came a different kind of adaptation to nationalism, motivated by more pragmatic considerations. In particular it was the causes of Polish and Irish independence that led them to modify their opposition to nationalism. In the first case, Marx believed that Polish independence would weaken Tsarist Russia, the reactionary gendarme of Europe. In the second, similarly, he came to believe that Irish independence would weaken the position of Britain, the world’s most advanced capitalist power. In the process, particularly in coining in relation to English rule in Ireland the dictum that ‘any nation that oppresses another forges its own chains’ (cited in Munck, 1986, p. 15), Marx opened the way, as we shall see, to a powerful line of argument ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ambivalent Legacies: Nationalism, Political Ideology and Social Theory
• 2 Contemporary Approaches to Nationalism
• 3 Nationalism, Culture and the Politics of the Imagined
• 4 Good and Bad Nationalisms
• 5 Nationalism and Democracy
• 6 Nationalism in a Global World
• 7 Beyond Nationalism?
• Bibliography
• Index