Advanced Introduction to Nationalism 9781785362545

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Advanced Introduction to Nationalism
 9781785362545

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Boxes
Preface
1 Introduction: nationalism and modernity
2 What is nationalism? Where did it come from?
3 Institutionalization of nationalism in politics and ideology
4 Nationalism and modern economy
5 Nationalism and modern passions
6 Conclusion: globalization of nationalism
Selected bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Chandler Rosenberger, Brandeis University, USA ‘There is no more consistently brilliant thinker on nationalism than Liah Greenfeld. This book will undoubtedly be a “must read” for both scholars and students of the subject.’ Jonathan Eastwood, Washington and Lee University, USA

Advanced Introduction to

NATIONALISM

‘Why does science thrive? Why do economies grow? Why, in an age of globalization, does nationalism still have a powerful grip on populations worldwide? Liah Greenfeld’s Advanced Introduction to Nationalism offers a dazzling account of our age: to wit, that a startling range of phenomena have their roots in the adoption of nationalism as the basis of modern social order. A must for sociologists, political scientists, and anyone who wants to understand the passions of modern times.’

ELGAR ADVAN CED I NTRO D U CTI O NS

Advanced Introduction to

Arguably the leading scholar of nationalism in the world today, Liah Greenfeld is the author, among numerous other publications, of the trilogy on nationalism and modernity, including Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth, and Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience (Harvard University Press, 1992, 2001, and 2013, respectively). She teaches at Boston University, holding there the position of University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology. Between 2010 and 2016 she served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Social Sciences at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

EAI

Key features include:

NATIONALISM

This original Introduction presents nationalism as the most important social force shaping the ways modern people live their lives. It explains the formative influence of nationalism in the public spheres of politics and the economy, as well as the most private ones of emotional wellbeing and mental illness. Along the way, it illuminates widely used but rarely clarified concepts, such as social institution, revolution, ideology, and totalitarianism, and introduces new ones, like dignity capital, and nationalism as the double-helix of modern politics. Basing its conclusions on over 25 years of original comparative historical research, this book bears the characteristic Liah Greenfeld imprint: fact-based discussion, logical rigor, unexpected connections, and an exceptionally wide range of issues woven together to explain the way we live now.

Liah Greenfeld

ISBN 978-1-78536-256-9

The Lypiatts, 15 Lansdown Road, Cheltenham, Glos GL50 2JA, UK Tel: + 44 (0) 1242 226934 Fax: + 44 (0) 1242 262111 Email: [email protected] William Pratt House, 9 Dewey Court, Northampton, MA 01060, USA Tel: +1 413 584 5551 Fax: +1 413 584 9933 Email: [email protected]

9 781785 362569

Elgar

www.e-elgar.com www.elgaronline.com

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars.

Liah Greenfeld

• discusses nationalism as an empirical phenomenon, not an object of speculation • distils findings of over 25 years of original comparative historical research • introduces original concepts of dignity capital and nationalism as the double-helix of modern politics.

Advanced Introduction to Nationalism

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. The aims of the series are two-fold: to pinpoint essential principles of a particular field, and to offer insights that stimulate critical thinking. By ­ ­distilling the vast and often technical corpus of information on the subject into a concise and meaningful form, the books serve as accessible introductions for undergraduate and graduate students coming to the subject for the first time. Importantly, they also develop well-informed, nuanced critiques of the field that will challenge and extend the understanding of advanced students, scholars and policy-makers. For a full list of titles in the series please see the back of the book. Recent titles in the series include: Post Keynesian Economics J.E. King International Intellectual Property Susy Frankel and Daniel J. Gervais Public Management and Administration Christopher Pollitt Organised Crime Leslie Holmes Nationalism Liah Greenfeld

The Law of International Organizations Jan Klabbers International Environmental Law Ellen Hey International Sales Law Clayton P. Gillette Corporate Venturing Robert D. Hisrich

Advanced Introduction to

Nationalism LIAH GREENFELD University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Anthropology, Boston University, USA

Elgar Advanced Introductions

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Liah Greenfeld 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942173

ISBN 978 1 78536 254 5 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78536 256 9 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 78536 255 2 (eBook) Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

To all those, especially students and others in Hong Kong during the years I taught at Lingnan University, 2011–2016, who opened my eyes to China, with gratitude.

Contents

List of boxesviii Prefaceix 1  Introduction: nationalism and modernity

1

2 What is nationalism? Where did it come from? A necessary digression: culture, psychology, politics Types of nationalism

11 15 25

3 Institutionalization of nationalism in politics and ideology Basic vocabulary: nation, empire, state Science and the Enlightenment Totalitarianism Marxism

37 39 49 55 69

4 Nationalism and modern economy “The Great Exception”—the Netherlands Russia and socialism versus capitalism Globalization and the case of Japan Capitalism as the instrument of the spread of nationalism: Germany and China

80 92 97 98 103

5

112 112 118 121

Nationalism and modern passions Nationalism and emotional repertoire Functional mental illness Nationalism as the double-­helix of modern politics

6 Conclusion: globalization of nationalism

128

Selected bibliography138 Index139

Boxes

2.1 Dignity 16 2.2 Identity 24 3.1 Patriotism 42 3.2 Power of language; particularistic national consciousness 47 3.3 Nationalism and violence 66 4.1 “Natural evolution” theories of nationalism and economic growth85 4.2 Individualistic nationalism and economic individualism 90

Preface

This book is an advanced introduction to the study of nationalism as an empirical phenomenon. Its purpose is to highlight the most important aspects, functions, and connections of nationalism, which the reader then will be able to explore in detail on one’s own. This, above all, includes relating nationalism to modernity: such central elements of modern politics, society, and economy, as democracy, class structure, the state and civil society, capitalism, the institution of science, the processes of secularization and globalization, and the distinctively modern passions, sense of reality and of self. The book is organized as a continuous exposition, punctuated by extended comments on related points (such as identity in general, ­patriotism, and so on) the inclusion of which in the main text would interrupt its flow. They may be read either as footnotes to specific ­passages, or on their own. The discussion throughout is based on comparative historical research, drawing on experiences of numerous societies and delving into a wide array of issues. These include pivotal events in the past (for example, the French Revolution, the Cold War), as well as topics dominating the current news (political Islam, “lone-­wolf terrorism,” the rise of China, and so on). Placing these issues in a common framework, the book attempts to draw the attention of the reader to fruitful directions of future empirical study. To aid in this, along the way, it clarifies certain widely used concepts, such as social institution and ­institutionalization, revolution, ideology, and introduces original ones: nationalism as the double-­helix of modern politics, globalization of nationalism, and dignity capital or quotient, which may be particularly useful in comparative analysis of nationalism. A short bibliography at the end lists secondary works cited throughout the text. Extensive bibliographies, including primary sources, on every

x 

ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO NATIONALISM

topic addressed can be found in my trilogy Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth, and Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience (Harvard University Press, 1992, 2001, 2013).

1

Introduction: nationalism and modernity

Nationalism is the most important social and political phenomenon of our time. It is the cultural framework of modernity and, as such, it defines all of the specifically modern experience, be it social, political, economic, personal, that is, it defines the ways we, modern men and women, live our lives.

What distinguishes modern experience from human experience that is not modern? In other words, what makes modernity not just a synonym of contemporaneity (the sense in which everything that happens today is, by definition, modern, while everything that happened some years ago is, by the same definition, no longer modern), but a specific type of culture, society, politics? To start with the most salient of such characteristics, we’ll put at the head of our list the values of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty in political culture. These values are reflected in the core social institutions, including the ­central one—the system of social stratification—which regulates social relations across all spheres of our lives. An egalitarian society does not mean an unstratified society, or a society in which there are no ­inequalities: all societies are stratified, among other things because, as a matter of fact, all men (and women) are not created equal. But our empirically unwarranted belief that they are creates a stratification system that is dramatically different from other stratification systems, a fluid and open system, in contrast to ones that are rigid and closed, a system characterized by social mobility. In distinction to closed systems of social stratification, the bearer of status in the modern system of ­stratification—called class system—is the individual, rather than the family, and the foundations of status—wealth and education in the modern case—are themselves achievement-­based, and therefore transferable, in distinction to birth or blood-­relations, on which status is based in rigid stratification systems, which are ascriptive and thus cannot be transferred between unrelated families. These characteristic political values and features of the modern system of stratification are directly linked to, and as we shall see later, logically derive from nationalism.

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Related to values of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty, and similarly logically connected to nationalism, are also the two major modern political institutions: the state and the civil society. Today we tend to use the words “state” and “government” as synonyms. But the word “state” came to refer to government only after the emergence of nationalism (we shall see later why) and, as a new addition to the political vocabulary, designated a new form of government. In distinction to kingship, for instance, which is a personal government, state government is impersonal. It is always government by officials, representing the sovereignty of the people, and so, essentially, a representative government. Already at this early stage in the discussion, we can reach an important interim conclusion: combining the fundamental egalitarianism embodied in the modern system of stratification with the principle of popular sovereignty embodied in the state form of government, we can conclude that modernity implies democracy, that is, that all modern societies are democratic societies. We are so used to equating ­democracy (government of the people, for the people, and by the people) with liberal democracy, that—in liberal democracies, where this book is most likely to be read—this statement is bound to provoke surprise and disbelief. Nonetheless, liberal democracy is only one form democracy takes, and there are in the vocabulary of political discourse, for this reason, also such expressions as “social democracy,” “socialist d ­ emocracy,” and “popular democracy.” Liberal democracy, specifically, is a democracy implemented in institutions safeguarding individual rights. However, democracy—a government of the people, for the people, and by the people—can be implemented through institutions emphasizing the rights of a people defined as a collective individual. A collectivistic democracy is not less of a democracy than the individualistic, or ­liberal, democracy, but it is surely in many respects a very different, as a rule authoritarian, form of democracy. The distinction between these two forms does not always remain clear for the participants and often, in traditionally liberal democracies, the sight is lost of the fact that authoritarian democracies are democracies too, that authoritarianism, as such, is opposed not to democracy, but to liberalism in its ­classical, individualistic sense of authority dispersed among individuals in the community, and that shifting the emphasis from individual rights to the rights of the collective inevitably leads to further blurring of distinctions and may very well result in an emergence of authoritarian institutions in place of the liberal ones. Judging by the evolution of political discourse in some traditionally liberal democracies in Europe

INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY 3

and North America after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which kept the individualistic foundations of liberalism in sharp focus among its Cold War adversaries, this may be in fact happening there. A corollary of the above statement is that the warring ideologies of the Cold War, liberalism and communism, were on both sides democratic modern ideologies. In the political discourse of the time, communism was often referred to as totalitarianism, a modern form of authoritarianism particularly virulent in its suppression of individual freedom. Soviet communism differed from Socialism only in that it proclaimed itself international, and indeed National Socialism in Germany was the paradigmatic case of totalitarian ideology and political practice for every leading commentator on totalitarianism, which in the 50 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union was a very widely discussed issue. That National Socialism reflected a form of nationalism goes without saying. This in turn implies that all the modern ­political ­(democratic) ideologies are linked to and reflect nationalism. A major difference between liberal and authoritarian democracies, ­recognized by the term authoritarianism, lies in the possibilities for political activism outside the state, or the extent of civil society, in them. The values of equality and popular sovereignty, in stark contrast from those underlying rigid social stratification and personal ­government, necessarily involve the population in the political process. In every modern society, whether liberal or authoritarian, people of all social strata participate in elections (however these may be ­organized) and referenda, and may ascend to the political leadership. These forms of participation are connected and feed in to the state. Liberal ­ democracies, however, in addition, encourage widespread political activity independent from the state and often organized vis-­ à-­vis it, which may be confrontational as well as cooperative. Direct democracy of New England towns belongs to such activities of civil society, as do, among others, the civil rights movement in the United States of the 1960s, feminist and LGBT movements across Western societies today, and independence movements in Catalonia, Quebec, and Scotland, for example. Authoritarian democracies offer significantly fewer such outlets for the political energies of their populations, which, as d ­ emocracies, they necessarily encourage. The possibility to spend these energies results in generally lower levels of collective violence in liberal ­democracies. In ­authoritarian democracies, pent up by ­comparison, they periodically erupt in violent group conflicts, and, rarely but ­spectacularly, in revolutions.

4 

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Revolutions differ significantly from spontaneous popular rebellions as well as from more or less limited elite revolts (such as various coups d’état or the Fronde, for instance), which are possible in modern societies and common throughout history. They are not direct expressions of material deprivations or emotional grievances (although they may express the latter indirectly) and they do not pursue specific interests of their participants and leaders, or advocate specific changes. Instead, they are organized conscious attempts at the transformation of the entire social and political order, beginning with the destruction of the existing one, deemed illegitimate. Revolutions are informed by articulate ideologies justifying their destructive intentions and outlining the new, legitimate, order to be created, while leaving the specifics to the post-­revolutionary period. With revolutions, ideology assumes the center stage in politics writ large, with the core values always being equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty. As will be explained later, revolutions in this sense (which is the sense in which the word is understood today) are only possible within the cultural framework of nationalism; the first such revolution was the Great French Revolution of 1789. Revolutions are the last political phenomenon we’ll include in this introductory list of distinctive characteristics of modernity, brought about by nationalism. Although nationalism is believed to be particularly important in ­politics, politics is in fact only the arena where it is most clearly ­visible. Nationalism underlies all areas of modern reality. The section in this book, following the one focused on politics, will be devoted to ­economics, for without nationalism, we would not have modern economy. The distinguishing characteristic of modern economy, for reasons of historical accident usually called “capitalism,” is its orientation to growth, rather than to subsistence, which is the orientation of all traditional economies, including those that still exist today. Subsistence-­ oriented economies are subject to cyclical dynamics, captured in the concept of Malthusian Scissors. In such economies periods of growth alternate with periods of (absolute) decline, corresponding to the opposite demographic trends. Prosperity naturally (that is, in accordance with a fundamental principle suggesting that, all else being equal, rational beings will seek to increase pleasure and diminish pain) leads to decreased production and increased spending, mainly resulting in larger numbers of children surviving to maturity. The larger population places the economy under stress, consuming the accumulated resources and also contracts. Hardship, in its turn, both frees these resources and encourages productivity.

INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY 5

Participants in subsistence-­ oriented economies behave rationally: they work to live. Accumulation of wealth is a means to this end. This is what makes the emergence of modern economy, oriented to growth, so difficult to explain: in blatant contradiction to the rationality principle, on the face of it, accumulation of wealth becomes an end in itself, and people live to work, rather than the other way round. For a century after its publication in 1905, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as everyone in the social sciences knows, remained the most valiant attempt to do so. It was precisely the irrationality of capitalism’s orientation to profit and ever renewed profit, which Weber stressed, that made him choose it as the problem in modern cultural history. His classical thesis, which credited Protestant theologians with inspiring capitalism, however, was contradicted by his very sources, not to speak of the crucial case of the Dutch Republic, which we shall discuss in due time. What does explain the emergence of the new economic orientation, providing a rationale for modern economy (or an end to which the accumulation of wealth, again, like in subsistence-­oriented economies, serves only as a means), is the competition, above all international, for status or prestige, inherent in the essential competitiveness of nationalism. Competitiveness indeed becomes the operative word, the lash that spurs us on to ever greater feats of productivity and innovation, lest we lose our place in the race to someone more “competitive” than us. What makes nationalism competitive will, hopefully, become clear as we go on. Sustained economic growth of modern societies is often related to ever-­developing science, which is yet another distinguishing characteristic of modernity. Though roots of science date back to the so-­called “transition from mythos to logos” in Asia Minor of the sixth  century BCE, it is agreed that these roots took an exceedingly long time to sprout. Modern science, which is, like modern economy, capable of sustained growth, emerged only in the seventeenth century CE. Physics, the first science to develop, indeed, made possible endless technological ­innovation, the necessary condition, if not the sole basis, of the crucially important economic process of industrialization. In the case of science, sustained growth means progress in the sense of continuous deepening of our understanding of, and ability to control, empirical reality. Like the economy, science has been a major area of international competition for prestige, but the emergence of the institution of science can be only partly attributed to the inherent competitiveness of nationalism. Instead, it is due to another of its central

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features: its essential secularism. This connects science indirectly to secularization, also commonly included in the list of modernity’s distinguishing characteristics. Secularization is usually interpreted as rejection of religion, or, at least, its expulsion from the public sphere and separation from politics. This is not entirely the case anywhere and in numerous instances is altogether not what happens. Moreover, when religion is identified as the sphere of the sacred (which it almost always is), this view completely misrepresents the nature of modernity. Nationalism is secular in the sense that it is focused on this world of our experience, endowing it with meaning in its own right, completely independent from any transcendental force, whether or not such forces are believed to exist. This necessarily demotes such forces (in monotheistic societies, God) from the dominant position they held within societies for which religion provided the cultural framework, such as societies of classical antiquity, feudal societies in Europe and elsewhere, and so on, and makes them largely irrelevant. This demotion of transcendental forces is directly related to the value of popular sovereignty: bestowing the supreme authority to regulate its life on the community automatically withdraws this authority from other agencies. Secularization in this sense, however, does not at all mean desacralization (or disenchantment, as the phenomenon is commonly called) of the social and political world; on the contrary, it implies this world’s sacralization. With nationalism, in other words, the secular itself, and politics in particular, becomes the sphere of the sacred. In addition, more often than not, religion, though no longer the sole, or even the main, representative of the sacred sphere, is appropriated as a national characteristic, that is, an element of political identity, and actively used in the investment of the social world with sacred qualities. Rather than rejecting religion or expelling it from politics, secularization thus reverses the relations between the two, subordinating religion to politics and putting it to a new use. The secular focus of nationalism similarly sacralizes the natural world, for the first time in history making empirical reality the central topic of intellectual interest. It is this shift of interest from the transcendental to the empirical which brings the social institution of science into being, thus making possible the sustained growth, or progress, of scientific knowledge. As a social institution, the pursuit of scientific knowledge becomes a continuous patterned activity. Its pattern is created in the first place by its goal: the understanding of empirical reality, which, with nationalism, from the goal of a few individuals, historically

INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY 7

and geographically dispersed, becomes a social value. Modern society entrusts science with the task of discovering the inherent meaning of the world, including that of human life; in effect, it becomes our ­theology. The importance we attribute to science and our trust in it is at all times far greater than its actual achievements justify (though, clearly, they justify a lot); we give it moral authority over us and equate modern culture with scientific culture. The list of features above includes all the characteristics generally believed to distinguish modern societies. Such consensus does not extend to the ones listed below. And yet, they are arguably at least as important. They all pertain to the private and even inner spheres of experience, rather than to the public ones, visible from the outside, to the spheres of emotions and passions, of fulfillment and suffering, and even of mental health and illness. These are seen as universal attributes of humanity, shared throughout history and likely to be met at the same frequency in any society, irrespective of its values and beliefs, social structure, political institutions, and economic organization. To most of us it seems incredible that the human mind would work differently in different societies, and that people would not only think differently, depending on the surrounding culture, but feel differently, finding contentment in and suffering from different things. Nevertheless, the evidence that this is so is undeniable. Nationalism has dramatically changed our existential experience. Modern emotional repertoire is indeed different from that of other types of societies, as are modern passions, what makes us tick, the reasons for our excitement and ­distress, and the very nature of diseases that affect our minds. The values of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty, as well as the secular focus of nationalism, for instance, change the status of the individual vis-­à-­vis the universe and greatly increase the value and significance of the individual life. The existential experience of a person in this cultural framework must be completely unlike that of a person who keeps one’s eye on life after death and is at all times conscious of one’s utter insignificance in relation to the Deity controlling one’s prospects in it. The consciousness of one’s membership in a self-­governing community, of being equal to any other member in it, and of being free to decide what kind of life to lead must make one value oneself as significant and worthy of full realization. Indeed, the concept of self is entirely redefined with this attribution to it of agency by society, and of a potentially powerful agency, and its experience (that is, the experience of being human), as well as actions change correspondingly.

8 

ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO NATIONALISM

Scores of emotions that before could only be vaguely and fleetingly sensed by a few widely dispersed individuals are added to this experience as what one may expect and even demand in life, as distinctively human emotions. (Indeed, it is our regarding them as such that makes us incredulous that they could have ever been absent from the human emotional ­repertoire.) They include, above all, perhaps, love as we understand it today, love as the marriage of two minds (and naturally resulting in marriage, which, in turn, becomes legitimate only if based on such love), a reciprocal, exclusive, unique, and eternal relationship (which is not “true,” if any of these attributes is missing), admirable in all its expressions, sexual and not sexual, none of which can be denied it by any outside authority, because its authority in fact surpasses all others. Love becomes the main path to self-­realization. Distinctively modern emotions also include the desire for self-­realization, the emotion of ­aspiration, most explicitly pursued through ambition. They also include—­astonishingly—happiness, which, upon ­examination, is none other than consciousness of self-­realization achieved. But all good things come at a cost. The possibility of love implies the possibility of disappointment in love and its loss; ambition implies competition with the strife (ferocity and hurt) accompanying it, it also implies the possibility of frustration and envy (which in fact emerges as a dominant modern passion). And the possibility of self-­realization and happiness implies the possibility of failure to realize oneself and of unhappiness. A distinctively modern form of suffering comes into being: it is the sense of social maladjustment, of not having a proper— or any—place in society, of not fitting in. Huge numbers of modern men and women experience it, many live under its constant shadow. In a large and growing minority of cases, this experience of dis-­ease reaches the clinical pathological level of mental illness actually affecting the body. Today we call this specifically modern mental disease schizophrenia and depressive disorders. To end this Introduction to the Advanced Introduction to Nationalism on a lighter note (and to recall the eminently positive features of modernity with which it started), I would like to mention another extremely important social institution—also a distinctive characteristic of modernity—directly related to the increased value of human life: art. Art, too, is believed to be a universal human endowment. It is not. It did not exist in Ancient Greece, for instance, which is considered its very cradle. Neither did it exist throughout the histories of China, India, or in Western history until, at the very earliest, the High Renaissance.

INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY 9

We tend to believe that art has existed in every human culture, among other things, because the word is very old. But, until the sixteenth century this word, remarkably, meant precisely what we usually contrast art to, and from which we try to distinguish it: it is, after all, the Latin equivalent of the Greek techne—the root of t­echnology—craft. The Renaissance, especially in painting and ­sculpture, clearly considered only crafts in Antiquity, despite the great skill of some artisans, in Italy, contributed to the transformation of these crafts into art, with the corresponding change in the concept of the visual artist, which came to connote an original creator, rather than a skilled artisan, an extraordinary, unique human being, akin to God to a greater extent than ordinary men, and as such endowed with a special authority. However, the main impetus to the emergence of art, extending the concept to literature and music, in particular, which came to represent art in its purest form, came from the reevaluation of ordinary men, the dramatically increased value of human life in this world, stressed above. The value modernity attached to the temporary earthly existence presupposed the positive reevaluation of the body. From a vessel of sin and the cause of mortality, keeping one on the threshold of the real, eternal life of the soul and the sooner discarded the better, the body, now the only vessel of the only life, was transformed into a most precious gift and possession, to be cherished, kept as long as possible in the best possible order, pampered and humored in every which way. This positive reevaluation naturally extended to sex and to the five bodily senses, which it was from then on legitimate to cultivate. Art offered the most systematic way of such cultivation. Artistic activity (the activity of artists, seen and seeing themselves as original creators) in painting and sculpture, music, and literature, from the sixteenth century through at least the nineteenth, was oriented to sensual arousal, the excitation—and cultivation—of the senses of hearing and vision, in particular. Art, as Russian Formalists put it, is a device for making form (that is, organization of audial or visual stimuli) palpable. Modern society backed this very unusual, aesthetic, ­orientation, and this social approbation made art (similarly to what was happening at about the same time to science) into an institution. (In the twentieth century, the institution of art in all of its three areas may have exhausted itself due to the specific structural dynamic, with visual arts, music, and literature losing their ability to continuously excite our senses. But this is a topic for a different discussion.) Unlike music, neither visual art nor literature could ever assume the character of pure art in the sense of device for excitation of the senses by means of form.

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Literature, in particular, from the moment of its emergence as art in the sixteenth century, took on an extremely important i­ntellectual function—of which in the early twentieth century it was robbed by social science—of making sense of modern existential experience and interpreting modern society. From the beginning it focused on the challenges of the open system of stratification, the values of liberty and equality, substitution of Divine order by natural one, love, ambition, competition for status, envy, and madness (the original term for the modern mental diseases of schizophrenia and depressive disorders). The task of this Introduction has been to list the distinguishing characteristics of modernity—to introduce nationalism through its function as the cultural framework of modern reality, by stressing its explanatory scope and stating what exactly is explained by it. Now we turn to examining how nationalism explains these distinguishing characteristics and what gives it this defining function in our lives.

2

What is nationalism? Where did it come from?

The original meaning of the Latin word natio—the source of our concept “nation”—was a litter, something physically born. In Rome, it was applied to humans only contemptuously: one used it in reference to foreigners who lived in Rome and were not citizens, barbarians whom Romans compared to animals. These inauspicious beginnings were forgotten when Latin became the language of learning in the Middle Ages, and natio was remembered only as the term for foreign status. In this sense it was first applied to communities of students in centers of theological study across Europe, few of whom were likely to be born, and thus were foreign, in the city where their particular university was located. The students were assigned quarters together with the professors who supervised their studies and in accordance with the routes by which they came; the university community was divided into “nations” named after these routes. Living and learning together, these “nations” developed into—and natio came to refer to—communities of opinion. In this new sense the word was then applied to representatives of various parties at the church councils, which debated the limits to papal authority and other weighty matters pertaining to the governance of the respublica Christiana. Envoys of secular and religious potentates, if not princes themselves, these conciliar “nations” were very exclusive and small groups of exceptionally high-­positioned individuals. As a result of this use, natio acquired the meaning of the bearer of supreme authority, the cultural and political elite. Our concept of “nation” as a people, an inclusive, sovereign community with membership unaffected by divisions of class and status, thus equal, and a natural object of the members’ loyalty and commitment, emerged sometime in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century in England, when natio in its conciliar sense became the synonym of the word “people.” This last permutation in the meaning of natio was even more surprising than the centuries-­long evolution of an animal litter into the group of humans bearing supreme authority, because at the time when it happened the word “people” in all the European

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languages specifically referred to the lower, common classes of society, having no authority at all: it was a synonym of “rabble” or “plebs.” Equating “people” with “nation,” instead, symbolically elevated these classes, previously regarded as rabble, to the dignity of the elite and endowed them with the elite’s authority, uniting upper and lower classes in a sovereign community of equals and making all of its members fundamentally interchangeable. The representation of social reality in its entirety was transformed. This was the birth of nationalism—a new view of reality, a new form of consciousness at the core of which lies the idea of the nation. Nationalism is clearly reflected already in the earliest English dictionary of the sixteenth century—the first “Renaissance” dictionary in England—published by Thomas Elyot in 1538. The new consciousness is also visible in parliamentary documents, which it permeates by the end of the century, and even in translations of the Bible, from Tyndale’s through the authorized King James version. For at least the next two centuries, nothing similar to this is to be found anywhere outside England. Knowing where and when nationalism emerged allows us to identify the historical circumstances of its emergence and explain the rapid institutionalization of what at the moment of its appearance necessarily struck some observers as a most radical, in fact ­unconscionable, social current. Like all pivotal historical phenomena, nothing could have predicted the birth of national consciousness, it was a product of historical contingency, of an accident, and no attempt to present it as the expression of whatever retrospectively postulated law or necessity can advance our understanding. Fortunately, we can be certain what was the accident that brought it about. Nationalism was fathered (perhaps without the collective brutality which the metaphor suggests) by the Wars of the Roses. This protracted conflict between the York and the Lancaster lines of the Plantagenet family succeeded in killing off virtually the entire upper, blue-­blooded, echelon of the English society of orders, creating on the top of the social hierarchy a vacancy that it was politically necessary to fill. The new insecure Tudor dynasty, in whose hands the English crown landed, when Richard III lost it together with his life in the battle of Bosworth Field, needed an aristocracy and needed money. The commons had to be wooed, and its members encouraged and practically invited to be upwardly mobile. Particularly intelligent and educated commoners answered the call early on, forming the new, Henrician, aristocracy. Innocently profiting from the troubles Henry

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 13

VIII had in trying to produce a male heir, as he separated his realm from Rome and put church lands on sale, setting a precedent for the sale of land in general, they pulled up after them whole social strata. A century of mass mobility, obviously unprecedented, since mobility was unimaginable before, ensued, the like of which was rarely seen again as, despite some salient examples which could create an impression to the contrary, it was almost entirely one-­directional. This was a heady experience, which might have well led to a revision of one’s views on the nature of society, were such views indeed based on empirical observations. As they are not, the reason it actually resulted in the transformation of consciousness and the emergence of nationalism was that it took place in a society of orders, where it made no sense whatsoever. European feudal society existed within the (religious) cultural framework which presupposed untraversable divisions between constituent parts of the social system, equally necessary for its maintenance and each performing a vital function without which the system could not exist. These parts were called orders or estates. Individuals were placed in a particular order by Providence and could not change it: the order to which they were born defined their nature; they were, in effect, human beings of a certain kind. In feudal society orders were imagined to differ more or less the way we imagine species of life differ. Despite evidence to the contrary, it was believed that they could not mix. The idea that people in different orders had different kinds of blood (just as we think do animals of different species, say lions and tigers)—red blood flowing in the veins of laboratores, constituting the lower order, and blue blood in those of bellatores, constituting the upper one, reflected and reinforced this belief, and empirical evidence, again, did nothing to change it. It was no more possible to be born a laborer and to become a nobleman, than it is to be born a chicken and to graduate into a human being. The lower, common, and the upper, noble, orders (usually referred to as the third and the first, respectively) were hermetically closed to each other. The second order of the oratores or clergy did not procreate but recruited its members from the other two, the lower clergy from the commoners and the upper clergy from the nobility, and thus, though some minimal possibility existed within it for the mobility from the lower to the upper rungs, it did not connect between the top and the bottom of the social hierarchy, but replicated it. Within the cultural framework of their society, which means in their own mind, therefore, the experience of upwardly mobile ­commoners

14 

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within the new English aristocracy of the sixteenth century was (to use a term some clinicians use to describe schizophrenia) ­ununderstandable. In other words, these people were experiencing what they knew they could not experience, what could not be. This was a disorienting, anomic, situation, and one, in fact traditional, way to deal with, or to rationalize, it was to explain the experience away, to pretend that what happened in fact did not happen and to present it as an entirely different experience. The new aristocrats could, for instance, fabricate genealogies or claim that they were princes believed dead. They might have been believed, but the problem with this strategy was that they would not believe themselves, yet it was they, in the first place, who needed convincing that the positions they held were theirs by right. Their experience was eminently positive: their blood was red, but they in every respect lived the life of the blue-­blooded, which was a fuller and richer, and more exciting life, in which, above all, they enjoyed dignity, unknown to them before. They were, therefore, unwilling to discount this experience just because their beliefs made it impossible, instead, they were naturally inclined to discount these beliefs. And one fine day one of them, perhaps a member of a conciliar nation or a member of the staff of the conciliar nation’s member, had a eureka moment, it becoming clear to him that all English people were a nation. He shared this revelation with others, and people in England found it easy to believe, because it explained the positive but confusing experience of some, resolving their anomic problem and justifying this experience in both a logical and evaluative sense, and invited, made it possible, for everyone else to have similar experiences and to partake in the exhilarating sense of dignity this very possibility implied. The experience of dignity is not essential to human life. We know that because during most of recorded history most men and women lived without dignity. It is not status attainment, but rather status ­maintenance—which applies to low status as much as to high status— which is essential. During most of human history, only high status, that is, a very small minority of social positions, was associated with dignity. Yet, dignity is addictive: having known it, one can no longer be content without it. It is safe to assume that in modern society people will never agree to be deprived of their dignity which they acquired with national consciousness. In its framework, in cases of contested identity (such as Catalan versus Spanish, national versus European, Egyptian or Syrian versus Islamic, and so on), the one that offers more dignity to more people—has more dignity capital or a larger dignity quotient—is likely to carry the day (see Box 2.1).

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 15

Nationalism, ultimately, was a result of the need of the red-­blooded English aristocracy of the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries to justify their experience of upward mobility, which was inconceivable in the cultural framework of the society of orders, but was happening continuously and on a large scale owing to the contingencies of the political situation after the Wars of the Roses. The new belief spread—and institutionalized—very quickly, first and foremost because it implied a dignified identity for every English person, and the appeal of dignity proved irresistible. This was also the main reason for the eventual spread and persistence of nationalism around the world, after the spectacular rise of England as “the observed of all observers,” caused by the change in its motivations, made it a model for its neighbors, ushering in “the European Age in history.” In England itself, the institutionalization of nationalism in its first century was greatly facilitated by the Reformation, religion acting as a caring midwife at the birth of the essentially secular culture which would forever change its position in society. Until the middle of the seventeenth century England was the Protestant nation, the causes of nationalism and religion coinciding in every particular. After the political upheaval of the Puritan Rebellion, the church was explicitly nationalized (God was declared England already in the sixteenth century) and put in its place as a guardian of the nation’s spirit among such ­secular cultural institutions as literature and science.

A necessary digression: culture, psychology, politics As most of the readers of this book undoubtedly expect it to focus on political and social processes and the discussion so far may appear to them to be solely preoccupied with symbolic and psychological realities, this may be the place to clarify the relations between various aspects of human existence and to define certain core concepts. The reality for all of us sentient beings is what we experience; for this reason, the word “reality,” somewhat redundantly but with added emphasis, is so often used in conjunction with “empirical”: we talk of “empirical reality” and indeed “empirical” means “experiential.” What we know from experience are facts (again, the redundant phrase “empirical fact” underscores that facts are made by experience). Some of the facts of our reality are known to us through our bodily senses; these are physical and biological facts, pertaining to the reality of matter, systematically studied by physics, and the (organic) reality of life, studied by biology: we see other bodies, animate and inanimate, hear sounds they make, smell odors they emit, taste food made of them, feel their touch.

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BOX 2.1 DIGNITY The worth of the nation—the psychological gratification afforded by national identity and therefore its importance—is related to the experience of dignity by wide and ever widening sectors of humanity. The remarkable quality of national identity—and also its essential quality—is that it guarantees status with dignity to every member of whatever is defined as the national community. It is this quality that recommended nationalism to European (and later other) elites whose status was threatened or who were prevented from achieving the status they aspired to, that ensured the spread of nationalism throughout the world in the last two centuries, and that explains its staying power in the face of ­material interests that often pull in the other direction. In the early days of nationalism, different elite groups, exposed to nationalist ideas, reacted dissimilarly to them, in accordance with the relative ability of nationalism to aid them in their status-­ maintaining and status-­ aggrandizing pursuits. An example is furnished by the nobility in various German lands who as late as the 1800s remained indifferent to the appeal of nationalism, embracing it rather reluctantly during the Wars of Liberation. Throughout the eighteenth century, when French and Russian nobilities converted to nationalism en masse, and until the defeats by Napoleon, the German nobility enjoyed undisturbed social ascendancy. It was content, its status was as exclusive as ever, and there was no reason why it would welcome anyone else to partake in it. The nation had no worth for this nobility; nationalism could offer it nothing. In both France and Russia, in distinction, the status of the nobility was threatened, its exclusivity long gone, and its dignity devalued. In both countries nobles felt humiliated by the central power and deprived of any power of their own. It was thus worthwhile for them to discard their former estate identity, which bred expectations of dignity but no longer provided means to satisfy them and so condemned one to a life of frustration and fear that whatever remained of one’s status would be lost, and adopt a new—national—identity, which redefined the nobility’s relations with the central power and guaranteed both status and dignity. As far as the German nobility was concerned, nationalism was not able to transcend the worth of

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 17

the society of orders; but for the French and the Russian ­nobilities, it successfully transcended this worth. Among non-­noble intellectuals, the second of the two elite groups that were responsible for the initial establishment of nationalism in Europe, the idea of the nation also had to compete with other status-­bestowing frameworks. As long as other identities appeared to promise more dignity, the nation failed to captivate them and secure their commitments. French philosophes were above particularistic self-­content. Voltaire wrote that “a philosopher has no patrie and belongs to no faction,” and that “every man is born with a natural right to choose his patrie for himself.”1 Abbe Raynal believed that “the patrie of a great man is the universe.”2 Great men, explained Duclos, “men of merit, whatever the nation of their origin, form one nation among themselves. They are free from the puerile national vanity. They leave it to the vulgar, to those who, having no personal glory, have to content themselves with the glory of their countrymen.”3 So long as one could reasonably hope to become world famous (and French philosophes in the mid-­eighteenth century still had a reasonable chance of that), it was foolish to limit oneself to a small part of the world. And if one was confident in one’s superiority and felt assured of recognition, one had no need for shared dignity of a nation. In fact, one had no need for nation at all, a republic of letters was enough. Ironically, at the very time when French philosophes dismissed the nation as being too small for their grand designs and exhibited such confidence in their ability to win the hearts of audiences (and, therefore, prestige) everywhere, these audiences, at least in Europe, were closing their hearts to them, making such conquests very difficult and the nation the only place where one could reasonably hope to make them. Another reason why French eighteenth-­ century intellectuals were hesitant about nationalism was the fact that, as a result of the crisis and the ,,

12 3

1 Voltaire, “Réflexions sur l’histoire,” and “Annales de l’empire,” in Œuvres complétes (Paris: Garnier Fréres, 1870), vol. XXV, p. 170, vol. XIII, p. 513. 2 Raynal, A., Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Geneva: J.-­L. Pellet, 1780), vol. V, p. 10. 3 Duclos, C.P., “Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle,” in Œuvres diverses (Paris: N.L.M. Dessesartes, 1802), vol. I, p. 10.

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redefinition of the nobility, the nobility opened its doors to talent, and for low-­born luminaries, noble status was dignified enough. It was nobility’s giving up on itself that eventually persuaded many of them to give up their hope of joining the nobility and turn into national patriots instead. German nationalism was a later development than French nationalism, and German intellectuals remained faithful to their cosmopolitan ideals long after their French brethren had abandoned theirs. Nicolai considered German nationalism “a political monstrosity”;4 Schiller claimed to have given up his fatherland in exchange “for the great world” and wrote “as a citizen of the world.”5 Fichte was a principled cosmopolitan as late as 1799. When, accused of atheism, he lost his professorship at Jena, he hoped for a French victory in Germany (for nothing was more certain to him “than the fact that unless the French achieve the most tremendous superiority [in Germany], no German who is known for ever having expressed a free thought will in a few years find a secure place”)6 and asked to be employed by the French Republic. Nationalism did not appeal to German intellectuals prior to the Napoleonic campaign because they were the only group interested in the redistribution of prestige in society, and without the support of the nobility and the bureaucracy, they lacked the means to enforce it. To insist on such a redistribution (implied in the idea of the nation) in this situation would have only invited ridicule and damaged the chances of social advancement which some of them had. It was more satisfying to dream that one was an equal member of a community of intellectuals and hope for the recognition of that community, even though in the case of German intellectuals such a hope in the eighteenth century was not reasonable, for this at least would not be laughed at. Nationalism was irrelevant and nation worthless. The French invasion made it worthwhile. It created a community of interest between the intellectuals and the higher classes, ,,

456

4 Bruford, W., Germany in the Eighteenth Century (Lanham, MD: University Press, 1935), pp. 279‒286. 5 Schiller, quoted in ibid., pp. 2, 4. 6 Fichte, J.G., Addresses to the German Nation, trans. R.F. Jones and G.H. Turnbull (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, reprinted by Open Court Publishers, [1922]1979), pp. 134‒136.

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 19

who, so prohibitive and inaccessible before in their superiority, now allowed the intellectuals and in fact welcomed them to take part in their worries and sorrows. What the nobility and the intellectuals shared, and what made the nobles look favorably on the intellectuals, was that they were Germans. While cosmopolitanism and the idea of a world intellectual community offered German intellectuals a form of escape, a possibility to dream about social fulfillment and advancement, partnership in a nation offered real possibilities of such advancement.

Most of our experiences, however, are not experiences of physical or biological realities, but of the social reality. This reality is also constituted by our experiences, but we don’t experience it through our bodily senses, we experience it through, or in, our minds. Most of our empirical reality, in other words, is neither material nor organic, it is mental. Social facts, as stressed already by Emile Durkheim, considered as one of two or at most three founding fathers of sociology as the general social science (that is, as including all other social sciences as sociological disciplines in the same way in which biology includes numerous biological disciplines), are ways of thinking and acting. Just like material and organic facts, they act on us from the outside, even if they do so in our minds, and, as such, just as material and organic facts, they are independent from us and exert a coercive influence on us: we can no more disregard a convention requiring that we dress, speak, gesticulate in a fashion appropriate to the circumstances with impunity, than we can walk through a table standing in our way or jump into a river full of hungry crocodiles. In this sense, social facts are as objective as material or organic facts, even though their experience is necessarily subjective. In this sense also, though the great majority of them may be characterized as ideas, they differ from purely subjective ideas or imaginings, originating in the mind, which exert such coercive influence only in cases of severe mental impairment, when the ability of distinguishing between the inside and outside worlds is lost, as it is in schizophrenic delusions. The fact that social reality, the sphere of most of our experiences and therefore the largest part of our empirical reality, in general, is mental in the sense of being experienced and impacting us through the mind, should make it clear that all social processes, including political ones, are necessarily and at the same time psychological, that nothing

20 

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­ olitical can be understood or explained without taking into considerp ation subjective, mental processes, or the mind (though, obviously, not vice versa). But the mental character of social (thus political, economic, and so on) reality, while distinguishing it from material and organic realities, fails to adequately characterize it. We now know that social reality is experienced and affects us through the mind, but we still must specify what precisely is experienced, how these ways of thinking and acting are constituted, and what the mind itself is. Here the term “social reality” misleads us by placing the emphasis on society, that is, the cooperation or organization of individuals in groups. It is far better to speak of human reality, which is, indeed, what all the social sciences study. The study of any subject, not to say such a huge field as an entire dimension of empirical reality, must begin with its basic definition in the sense of distinction from neighboring subjects—in our case, the physical and, especially, organic reality, and it is, obviously, not society that distinguishes our subject from those of physics and biology. Society is a corollary of life among all species of higher animals, birds and mammals, of which we are one species. One can easily identify political, economic, family structures among wolves, lions, elephants, geese, and so on. With a focus on society, we social scientists should be considered biologists (in which case we all would be very bad biologists, lacking competence in the fundamentals of our discipline and extremely narrowly specialized). The starting point of the study of humanity should indeed be a comparison with other animals. It leads us directly to the distinctive feature of humanity, that which makes it a reality sui generis, of its own kind, autonomous, irreducible to the realities studied by physics and b ­ iology, and operating in accordance with causality all its own. While all other animal species, irrespective of the level of development and place on the evolutionary tree, essentially transmit their ways of life g­ enetically, we overwhelmingly transmit our ways of life through symbols. Human reality is symbolic reality; this makes human social (and political) processes, in contrast to the social processes among other animals, symbolic processes, explaining why a discussion of nationalism should focus on them. Symbols are arbitrary signs; what they signify, or their meaning, changes with the context, most of it necessarily symbolic itself, which makes symbolic processes time-­dependent or historical. Human reality, therefore, is a mental, symbolic, and historical reality. It is itself a process, rather than a substance or a thing, in the sense that all of its essential elements (elements without which it cannot exist)

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 21

are temporal, in contrast to material reality, all of whose essential elements are spatial, or organic reality, most of whose essential elements are also spatial, life being essentially an embodied process. Human reality is constantly in flux, never stationary, never the same as it was a moment ago: the concepts of social, political, economic structures, so often used in social science discussions, and of structural forces, derived from social structures by analogy to the derivation of physical force from spatial, material structures, are only metaphors and misleading metaphors at that. As it happens the human process leaves material and organic traces, such as buildings, cars, computers, tilled fields, species of domesticated animals, books, and so on. Since Cicero, such human additions to the physical environment were called culture, which today we extend to the process of leaving them. In themselves, all these traces are symbolically dead: they cannot procreate. The cultural process, which leaves them, occurs only by means of— and in—our individual minds. The individual, in this sense, is the only active element in culture (this privileges methodological individualism in the study of human society). But the minds, in which symbols perpetuate or change their meanings, in the overwhelming majority of cases (of the minds as well as symbols), operate with symbols created outside them by other minds, and in this sense, the mind is created by culture. The specifically human reality, which justifies the existence of a special kind of science, separate from both biology and physics, for its study, in its every aspect consists of a constant give-­and-­take between the inner workings of the mind and its symbolic environment, that is, between culture, as we can call the mental, symbolic, and historical process on the collective level, and the mind—the same process on the individual level. This may help us understand better the nature of social institutions—a concept central for all social science disciplines and inherited from Durkheim, who defines sociology, the general social science for him, as the science of institutions. The word “institution” may conjure an image of a structure, but it refers to a specific stage in the cultural process, a condition at which certain social facts, that is, ways of thinking and acting, sometime arrive. This condition is suggested by the morphology of the word “institution” (like constitution, ­destitution, ­prostitution, constructed by combining an affix and the suffix “-­tion” with the root stitu, from the Latin statuere, from which we also derive “statue”). “-­stitution,” therefore refers to a continuous action of making something stand: “constitution”—stand together, “­ destitution”—stand

22 

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­ ithout, “prostitution”—stand outwardly, for the public. “Institution,” w with its affix in—toward, means continuing action contributing to standing itself, approximation to permanence, establishment. Institutions, indeed, are systems of social facts which give the impression of permanence, established ways of thinking and acting. They deceive one into considering them as structures, but remain processes nevertheless, though ordered, patterned processes, varying within certain, in most cases implicit, but always clear limits. As such, ­institutions are contrasted to social currents, also organized systems of social facts— and in this respect different from erratic, disjointed, singular instances of individual or collective human behavior, thinking and acting that cannot be united in ways at all, but exist each on its own—but systems visibly fluctuating, which do not create an impression of permanence and do not invite comparisons with structures, that is, processes whose patterns are less regular and limits of variation are not as clear. The differences between institutions and currents are differences of degree only, though, as a rule, it is not difficult to see which is which. Much of the social science consists in analysing the formation of social currents and their disintegration or transformation into social institutions (institutionalization), that is, the combination and recombination of social facts. Every social order (and political order as a part of it) is a product of institutionalized ways of thinking and acting. Institutions differ in accordance with the sphere of human activity in which the thinking and acting happens: economic thinking and acting will necessarily be different from the thinking and acting that goes on in the family, but all the institutions within a social order reflect it and are related through it. Ways of thinking and acting constitutive of a social order represent its cultural framework. This brings us back to nationalism. Nationalism emerges as a result of the simultaneous reinterpretation—change of meaning—of two words: “people” and “nation”—in an individual mind. This symbolic and mental event is spontaneous, ultimately explained only by the unique qualities of the particular mind. But it is provoked by the novel experience, lived through or observed, of mass upward social mobility, which cannot be understood in the terms of the existing culture—ways of thinking and acting institutionalized in late fifteenth-­to early sixteenth-­century England, where this experience is lived through or observed. Because it must be interpreted, the idea of English people as a nation, originating in one mind quickly spreads; its introduction changes the symbolic context and leads to the reinterpretation of all related ideas, and this dramatically changes the prevalent ways of thinking and acting,

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 23

c­ reating a mighty social current which, opposed only erratically and supported by developments in spheres initially altogether unconnected to this experience (such as the Reformation) or only indirectly connected to it (such as the royal divorce), undergoes rapid institutionalization in all the important spheres of social life and, by the end of the sixteenth century ushers in a new social order. Nationalism, thus, in the first place, is a way of thinking, a form of consciousness (on the collective level—collective consciousness, or culture; on the individual level, a certain mentality, reflected, among other mental processes, in a specific form of identity—national identity), which is ­institutionalized, that is, embodied in institutions or patterned activities with definite orientations, norms, and social roles, in numerous spheres of life (see Box 2.2). As a result of this, national consciousness is constantly ­reinforced, its influence is manifoldly increased, and it penetrates ever-­ new spheres of experience. Emerging as a result of a new experience, to begin with, nationalism becomes its chief cause, also causing numerous previously unknown related experiences, literally transforming our empirical reality. It may be already obvious to the reader how the definition of the English people as a nation makes Englishmen think of themselves and then act as fundamentally equal members of their now inclusive community; among other things, this new thinking encourages—and represents as perfectly legitimate—social mobility. Therefore, it actually changes the system of stratification, and even before this change is explicitly acknowledged, for instance, in law, the society becomes in principle egalitarian. The experience and the legitimacy of social mobility lead Englishmen to believe that one’s position in society is ultimately a matter of one’s choice, creating the modern idea of freedom as the right of the individual to define oneself. Expectations change, bringing in tow redefinitions of justice and injustice. The idea of the nation also makes Englishmen think of England as their community (rather than, in the first place, land), of this community as sovereign, and of themselves as participants in popular sovereignty. This transforms their attitudes to monarchical government and to the relationship between the people and the land. The king may be first among equals and represent the sovereignty of the national community better than anyone else, but he certainly can no longer be seen as having the right of absolute rule or ownership over England. From the king’s patrimonial estate, England, the land of the nation, turns into a state. The word “state,” by the mid-­sixteenth century, becomes a near-­synonym of both “country” and “nation,” but quickly acquires the meaning of the

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BOX 2.2 IDENTITY A largely unquestioned assumption in the field of the studies of nationalism has been that nationalism is just an expression (though the fullest expression) “of the oldest and most primitive feelings of man” (Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, 1961: 4) and that national identity is but another name for (a fully developed) identity as such. This is a misconception. No human group of any duration, and no individual, unless severely handicapped or (as an infant) undeveloped mentally, can live without an identity. Having an identity is a psychological imperative and, therefore, a sociological constant. But there is nothing imperative in the development of any specific identity. None of the many identities human beings and groups can have and in the course of history have had is objectively necessary: they are all a matter of cultural construction. They all result from historical contingency. An identity defines the position of its individual or group bearer in a more or less extensive sphere of the social world that is relevant for this bearer, and serves as a map or blueprint for this sphere, with the help of which it is constantly reconstructed. The social importance of an identity increases with the importance and size of the group that shares it, but even more so with the extent of its applicability for this group. For example, the “national identities” of students in medieval universities, or of parties of the church councils provided guidelines for relatively narrow spheres of the actors’ lives (in addition to applying to very small groups of actors); they were at most as important as other partial—gender, family, local—identities of these actors, and certainly less important than their Christian identity. The modern national identity, in contrast, has been the most generally applicable identity for those who have acquired it from the moment of its acquisition—and today this is so for the majority of the world’s population. Whatever its kind, such generally applicable or “fundamental” identity, which is believed to define the bearer’s very essence— and does so, in fact—shapes behavior in a wide variety of contexts. It also reflects the image of the social order or the “social consciousness” of the given society. This makes nationalism, the

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 25

framework of the fundamental identity in the modern world, also the framework of the modern social consciousness, and implies nothing less than that in the modern world social consciousness takes the form of national consciousness. Nationalism is the cultural framework of modernity; it is the cultural foundation of social integration in, and therefore, of the construction of modern society. It is the order-­creating symbolic system which invests with meaning, and as a result shapes, our social reality, or the symbolic medium—the prism through which we see and experience this reality. The difference between nationalism and national identity, on the one hand, and other order-­creating cultural systems (for instance, religion) and identities reflecting them, on the other, is at least as great as the difference between modern society, which represents the implementation of the principles of nationalism, and other types of societies. Few principles are capable of immediate and unproblematic translation into reality. Nevertheless, we shall see later how very early and clearly nationalism was reflected in every institution characteristic of modern society.

national ­government. This government represents popular sovereignty and already under Elizabeth I Englishmen insist on their right to participate in it. The obstruction of this right under Elizabeth’s immediate successors provokes the Puritan Rebellion which first establishes a republic and then results in the constitutional monarchy, completely changing what kingship means and effectively depriving the crown of political power. Arguably, England becomes a democracy already during the first century of its nationhood. Institutionalization of nationalism in various areas will be discussed in greater detail later. At this point, it is important to note how the specific experience which led to its emergence in England resulted in the formation of a particular kind, or type, of nationalism.

Types of nationalism In the chain of development that led to the institutionalization of nationalism in the country of its birth, the first link was the ­individual

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experience of upward mobility. Because this experience, which demanded rationalization (in the Freudian sense of justifying interpretation), was individual, its rationalization had to be focused on the individual and was, as a result, individualistic. The nation was from the outset defined as an association of individuals, the words “nation” and “people” treated as plural nouns to which corresponded plural pronouns, “we” and “they,” and, because it was seen as an association of individuals, one logically thought of the qualities of the nation (to be eventually called “national character”) as reflecting the qualities of individuals composing it. The national community was egalitarian and sovereign because the individuals within it were free to regulate their own fate (that is, self-­governing) and equal in their capacity to do so, the Protestant maxim of “priesthood of all believers” mightily contributing to this conviction in its early days. The dignity of national identity, which made nationalism so irresistibly attractive, lay at the basis of the passionate commitment to the dignity of the nation, but it derived from the equality and freedom seen as individual qualities and was obviously reinforced by the ability to talk to God directly, also ascribed to the individual: it was the dignity of its members, therefore, on which the dignity of the nation depended. Every individual was thought of as an agent of history, an autonomous actor, responsible for one’s dignified status, because it was in one’s power to lose or increase it, and, together with others, responsible for the status of the nation. One’s national membership was, consequently, a matter of one’s own ­decision: it depended neither on blood, nor on the place of one’s birth. This led to the equation of national identity (nationality) with citizenship. The way of thinking of the nation as an association of individuals and of membership as essentially voluntary made for the individualistic and civic type of nationalism which, though the original type, on the basis of which all the others were formed, turned out to be very ­unusual: only nationalisms directly related to the English and spread by and with Englishmen in the so-­called Anglo-­world belong to it. In the case of importation of the national consciousness, the first link in the chain of development was the imported symbolic system, the national perspective itself, which then created new experiences, and the different sequence of events resulted in two types of collectivistic nationalisms. The importation of nationalism from England began in the eighteenth century, more or less simultaneously, though for different reasons, in France and Russia. These reasons, as well as the historical circumstances of the importation, also affected the national consciousness that evolved on the basis of imported ideas, and, as a

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 27

result, ­collectivistic and civic nationalism emerged in France and collectivistic and ethnic nationalism in Russia. The latter was by far the most widespread type until recently, when nationalism at last began penetrating China and India. The development of nationalism in England, which modified the ways of acting among Englishmen both inside and outside the ­country, making them fiercely competitive, while none of those who they competed against competed with them, resulted in a sudden rise of what was through the early sixteenth century a relatively unimportant polity to the position of, by the end of the seventeenth century, a central, and in the eighteenth century, indisputably the central European power. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, this made the English ways of thinking noticed and available, in particular in France, where they were studied, first with curiosity and then with increasing concern. The chief reason for the importation of national consciousness into France, however, was internal: the threatened position of the French aristocracy of birth under the monarchy, which in the seventeenth century became openly absolutist. Like the experience of the new English aristocrats in the sixteenth century, the experience of the French aristocrats of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was confusing: it contradicted the image of reality of the society of orders, within which they were assigned an exclusive dignified position at the top of the social hierarchy, unrivaled by any other stratum, with all the privileges, to which no other stratum had similar right. They were, therefore, also caught in an anomic situation. In contrast to the sixteenth century English aristocracy, this French experience was not positive: ancient noble families were forced to spend their wealth at court, while commoners who provided services for them there grew rich, and noble titles were sold to whoever could afford them, reducing their value (and the dignity associated with noble identity). It was in the interest of the French aristocracy to defend the existing cultural framework and adjust their experience back to it, rather than, as in the English case, to defend the experience and redefine the cultural framework. Throughout the seventeenth century, this is what the French aristocracy in fact attempted to do; but these attempts repeatedly failed, increasing its frustration. In the meantime, the new English aristocracy, which was growing old but remained by comparison to all other aristocracies open, clearly fared well. Observing this, some French aristocrats began to connect the wellbeing of the aristocracy to the status of the polity, pointing to the rise in the status of England and the corresponding fall in that of France and explicitly arguing that France, too, must become a nation.

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By the last quarter of the ­eighteenth century, the belief that it was one became general. The idea of the nation arrived in France in a distilled, already abstract form. French nationalists, the propagandists of this idea, imagined the nation as a sovereign people native to a territory, with its own, unique laws, language, and traditions. Its identity, which was inclusive and therefore implied fundamental equality of membership, was constituted by its territory and unique cultural characteristics and inconceivable without them. The individuals shared in the national territory and characteristics in different ways and to different degrees: their equality reflected this sharing, not any presumed individual abilities. The uniqueness of the people was the ultimate reason for the nation’s sovereignty; unlike in England, it was not a function of the individuals’ ability to regulate their own lives and, therefore, collective life; their freedom reflected the freedom of the nation, rather than vice versa. The dignity capital of French national identity was very high, because each of the nation’s unique qualities was of the highest possible quality, so it was (and still is) believed in France; this dignity also was the dignity of the nation, shared by all who belonged to it, but largely independent of them. Largely, because some individuals, an elite of reason and/or virtue (that is, a meritocracy), who actively contributed to the unique characteristics of France, whether as intellectuals, or political and military leaders, added to and sustained this dignity—the glory of France. They were a natural aristocracy, into which the aristocracy of birth in the eighteenth century transformed, and which later replaced that traditional upper stratum. Upon its arrival in France, the idea of the nation quickly got hold of the educated elites, whose anomic situation it appeared to resolve, as it was leading the nobility, blinded by this, straight to the guillotine. The Revolution was unquestionably the first collective experience this idea created, and it was dramatic. Because national consciousness preceded individual experiences, it did not, as in England, focus on the individual. The nation was imagined as a unitary, not a composite, entity, and was spoken of in the singular as a collective individual with its own will, needs, and interests, independent of its human members. This, as in every case in which the influence proceeded from culture to the mind and not in the opposite direction, led to the emergence of collectivistic nationalism. As all the qualities which made the French nation great reflected achievements of earlier generations and were maintained and developed through the achievements of the current generation of its

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 29

great men, achievement was stressed far above ascriptive characteristics for which the individual was in no way responsible. The unitary definition of the nation consequently combined with civic criteria of national membership: like in England, nationality was equated with citizenship, and France, from the beginning of its national history was an open society, placing little value on blood. Those who considered France great have been welcome to join, and the natural aristocracy has embraced those newcomers who contributed to this greatness. The betrayal of the national ideals, as the fate of the traditional aristocracy during the revolution demonstrated, in distinction, could easily turn descendants of purely French blood-­lines, native born and bred, into étrangers. The ambivalent, contradictory nature of the collectivistic and civic type of nationalism, created in France, is attested to by the remarkably turbulent history of the French nation, which, in little more than two centuries, went through two monarchies, two empires, and five republics, punctuated by periods of unrest, some of which, at least, bore close similarity to revolutions. In the framework of collectivistic and civic nationalism, the individual as an autonomous actor is at once rejected and recognized. The unitary vision of the nation denies the individual the social and political autonomy, considering one no more than a cell in a common body, while the civic criteria of membership, or national identity, which must presuppose the individual as free agent, assume that very autonomy. Which of these contradictory elements of French consciousness, equally central in it, gains the upper hand depends on historical circumstances; the one that gains the upper hand is institutionalized and shapes people’s experiences; then the circumstances change, perhaps deinstitutionalizing it and increasing the influence of the other. . . . And so it goes. While the reason for the importation of nationalism into France was the frustrating experience of the French aristocracy under absolutism, the importation of the new consciousness into Russia was the decision of the great autocrat who ruled over it during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Peter I. No Western absolutism came close to the Russian autocracy; in comparison with it, they were all relative, limited by fundamental law of the land, tradition, religion, and the very constitution of feudal society. The rule of the Russian tsars, in contrast, was truly absolute. Nothing limited it. The tsar was above the law since he was the law, he was above religion, as the Caesaro-­Papist organization of Orthodox Christianity, since the days of Byzantium,

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made the temporal ruler the supreme head of the church, and there was no feudalism in Russia. Besides, Peter the Great was no run-of-themill autocrat. An admiring observer of England from early on, Peter recognized the enormous role national consciousness played in propelling England to its position of the most powerful state of his time and decided to follow suit. His entire people consisted of his slaves (so-­called, indeed) and slaves of his slaves. His wish was their command. First weakening the hereditary stratum of appanage princes by separating them from their original estates (which were replaced by lands in other provinces) and therefore clientele base and connecting individual status of every able-­bodied male to service, he sent his choice servitors abroad to learn Western ways and insisted that they follow them. “Don’t subscribe your petitions to me ‘your slave,’ write ‘citizen’ instead,” he ordered his slaves (I paraphrase the instruction), “conduct yourselves as proud and free men.” Personally, he wrote new, appropriate to his aspirations, laws, inventing new words for them and explaining how he wanted these new words to be understood. He created a new, secular, Russian alphabet, where before there was only Church-­Slavonic (giving up on the original idea of making Dutch the national Russian language) and had the first books written in it, laying the foundations for a new language—it would become the Russian of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky—which the new discourse he wished to instill among his illiterate nobles necessitated. The first such book was the history of “The Great Northern War,” describing his victories over the Swedish Charles XII, considered one of the greatest military leaders of the late seventeenth century. By the time of Peter’s death, Russia was taken notice of in Western Europe and widely feared. This indeed made Russian nobility—“Peter’s tribe,” as they were called—proud. The nation’s military power made Russian national identity dignified, and this made members of the tribe invest in it; they became patriots. Encouraged by this early success on the path of national development, after the death of their sovereign, some turned to imitate Western ways on their own, converting to national consciousness in ever greater numbers and allowing it to penetrate ever deeper into their minds. Unfortunately, as they did so, they were coming to realize that military power was not the most important quality of a nation, that national prestige, or dignity, depended on different qualities, that these qualities, in the first place, included equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty (as the example of England so clearly demonstrated) and that it helped, in addition, to have a record of cultural achievements, such as, at the very least, a developed, versatile

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 31

language in which one could create sophisticated literature, admired by the surrounding nations (as clearly was the case in France). They realized that Russia had none of these essential qualities and their confidence waned. The pioneers of Russian nationalism understood that it was close to impossible for their nation to become like the models they chose for themselves, that Russia was inferior to these models in everything. The French Revolution contributed to the change of mood among them. For some 25 very important years in the second half of the eighteenth century, they were supported and even led in their efforts to cultivate Russian national consciousness and to secure for Russia a place on a par with those they regarded as “civilized societies” by the other exceptional autocrat—Catherine II, also a self-­appointed agent of nationality and also called the Great. An admirer of French philosophes, who admired her in return, she continued Peter’s educational efforts, strove to instill civic values among the reluctant nobility (outside the tribe), ridiculing their political apathy and die-­hard native habit to care for nothing but personal comforts in the press, non-­existent before her time, which she actively helped to develop. But the French Revolution showed her what the activist national spirit she carelessly encouraged might lead to. As a result of Catherine’s anti-­Enlightenment enlightenment, the all-­powerful Russian state turned into a bastion against equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty, ­ reinforcing the feeling among the patriots that, if being a nation implied implementation of these values, Russia was an inferior nation. This sense of inferiority was the main factor in the development of  Russian national consciousness, that is, of the cultural framework of Russian society for the days to come, as it was to be in every case of collectivistic and ethnic nationalism. The admiration for the models Russian nationalists volunteered to imitate gave way to ever-­festering sense of resentment against them, existential envy which made the superiority of these models (implicitly recognized in their choice as such) and very existence intolerable, or ressentiment. This psychological complex proved, as Nietzsche was first to understand, extremely creative, leading to the “transvaluation of values” of the chosen models, which were transformed into anti-­models, and the Russian nation was constructed in opposition, rather than in imitation of them. In the Russian case, the transvaluation of values was particularly important, since the society itself was practically new: Peter succeeded in destroying whatever institutions survived the enormous geopolitical expansion

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of his realm in the seventeenth century, to which his own conquests added, and there were no cultural traditions that, as in France, reflected collective achievements of which any influential group was sufficiently proud to make necessary their incorporation in the national consciousness and the reinterpretation of national ideas in their light. Like the Russian language, the national consciousness was created almost from scratch, though not through the appropriation of imported concepts and terms, but through their reversal and the internalization of their near opposites. The national values of equality, freedom, and popular sovereignty were embraced, but defined as precisely not the equality, freedom, and popular sovereignty of England, France, or any society to the West of Russia: popular sovereignty, specifically, was deemed perfectly consistent with autocracy, and freedom with serfdom, while equality retained its significance only vis-­ à-­ vis other nations, as a measure of respect with which Russia was treated. This respect—or, rather, Russians’ perception of it, and therefore of Russia’s equality to its chosen models, with which it was forever connected in a love–hate relationship—in turn became the measure of the nation’s dignity. The obsession with the opinion of its models, by definition seen as superior, even when transformed into anti-­models and hated, which reflected a profound sense of inferiority at the very core of Russian national consciousness, made Russian nationalists extremely sensitive to the perceived slights to Russia’s honor, extremely aggressive in demands for it under propitious circumstances, and perpetuated their ressentiment. Forever churning, this psychological mechanism eventually produced one of the world’s greatest literatures, a magnificent musical tradition, and a powerful science where, before the ­nineteenth century, none at all existed. But this was eventually. As Russian national consciousness was being formed, however, there was nothing to harken back to, not even language, yet, its educated members already firmly believed Russia was a nation. What did it share with “civilized societies” to which it was compared to be thought of as such? Like them, it had blood and soil. And so blood and soil became the defining characteristics of a nation. In a remarkable twist of history, the word “nation” came to mean a litter again, only now this was a huge human litter, which had to be served and worshipped by its whelps and was desirous of dignity. Because of the active participation of its two “Great” autocrats in the construction of Russian national consciousness, Russian was the first nationalism of the collectivistic and ethnic type; arguably, it was already

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 33

in place as the eighteenth century drew to a close. At the same time, however, a collectivistic and ethnic national consciousness was developing in Germany in the small circles of middle-­class ­intellectuals— the proto-­Romantics and early Romantics—who at the end of the eighteenth century still lacked the attention of the upper classes and governments in their societies, but gained it rapidly with the crashing victories of the French Revolutionary armies in various German lands. Originating as a philosophy, German national consciousness was far better articulated than the Russian, and it was with German philosophy that collectivistic and ethnic nationalism was carried around the world. Its triumphant spread, though, was not in the least the result of German thinkers’ cogitations. Instead, it was the type of nationalism making the most sense for societies, which, like Russia, had only blood and soil to be thought of as nations. In Germany, remarkably, the emphasis on race was both a function of defining the community in terms of the common language (not having a language at the moment of emergence of the national consciousness, as in Russia, was a singular situation) and a function, rather than a source, of the already existing existential envy, ressentiment. The reader is advised to trace the histories of the formation of specific nationalisms on one’s own. For the purpose of this Introduction, it will suffice to say that ethnic nationalism is invariably based on the perception that one’s national community is inferior to those one wishes to compare it to and, t­ herefore, on ­ressentiment. This makes ethnic nationalisms defensive, easy to offend, and very aggressive. The aggressive tendencies of this type of ­nationalism, combined with the tendency toward authoritarianism, inherent in any collectivistic nationalism, makes collectivistic-­ethnic nationalism the main inspiration behind violent politics, domestic and international, in the modern world. The three types of nationalism—the original, individualistic-­civic; the collectivistic-­civic; and the collectivistic-­ethnic—are ideal types in the Weberian sense of the term. They are deduced logically from the combination of the initial definition of the nation in them (whether it is seen as a composite entity, an association of individuals, or a unitary one, a collective individual) and the criteria of membership in it (civic, with nationality equated with citizenship and in principle voluntary, or ethnic, presumably natural, a matter of blood inheritance). In turn, these core features are logical implications of the process and the circumstances in which any particular nationalism is formed: the process starting with an individual experience, which calls forth the idea of the nation, results in individualistic (and by logical implication civic)

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nationalism; the process starting with the importation of the idea of the nation, conditioning individual experiences leads to collectivistic nationalism, which can be both civic and ethnic. The importation of nationalism into a rich and complex cultural environment, held in high regard by the importers/architects of nationalism, likely produces civic national consciousness; its importation into a barren cultural environment, comparing unfavorably with model cultures from which nationalism is imported and making the formative groups of nationalists embarrassed, suggests, and through the psychological mechanism of ressentiment fosters, ethnic nationalism. The institutionalization, or the embodiment in reality, of the inner logic of the cultural processes is mediated by additional circumstances which may intervene in any particular case but cannot be taken into account in the construction of the ideal types. Therefore, what one actually observes is rarely ideal and every specific nationalism, while generally fitting into a type, would contain elements of other types. The U.S.A. furnishes a striking example: possibly the purest case of individualistic-­civic nationalism, it is nevertheless a culture in which concepts of ethnicity and race (i.e., ethnicity with its biological assumptions made explicit) occupy a very prominent place. The group rights discourse in politics (affirmative action, and so on), the pursuit of diversity defined in terms of manifest inherited differences—in behavior, dress, but above all skin color—in universities, down to the stubborn refusal of the psychiatric establishment to accept the evidence systematically contradicting the association of epidemiological trends in mental health with race—testify to their salience, rendered more glaring by the constant reaffirmation that all men are created equal. Remarkably, the reasons for this inconsistency within the American national consciousness include not only the historical fact of African slavery in the Southern States (a blot on the national conscience and the source of collective guilt which descendants of twentieth-­century European immigrants indeed inherit with—and because of—their “white” skin), but, and mainly, the centrality in this national consciousness of science, equating what is real with the material and rejecting the very possibility that anything can exist without roots in physical or organic matter. At the same time, just a bit below on the map, in Latin America, ethnicity and especially race play far less of a role than one would expect, given the initial conditions in which Latin American nationalisms developed. These nationalisms are collectivistic, they exhibit a strong authoritarian tendency, a slight regard for individual rights, and quite consistent resentment of their large n ­ eighbor to the

WHAT IS NATIONALISM? 35

North. Yet, they are civic: the large native population made it impossible for the Spanish, Portuguese, and criollo architects of national identities and consciousness across the continent to emphasize race. Argentina, Brazil, and the rest of South American nations might not have a history of characteristic achievement to rally under, when nationalisms began to form there in the late eighteenth and early ­nineteenth centuries (because as yet they did not have any history), but they did not have the option of relying on blood and soil either and so had to focus on their civic character, creating it as they went. The discussion in passing of language in the context of the formation of nationalism in England, France, Russia, and Germany—the four societies which were the first to develop nationalism and be defined as nations in Europe, and were to have the greatest influence on the development of nationalism elsewhere—should have made the reader suspicious regarding the role generally ascribed to language in this context as a source of, or an objective condition for, national identity, national consciousness, national sentiment. If one speaks, let’s say, English or Russian, one is likely to identify as English or Russian, to be devoted to England or Russia, respectively—so holds the accepted wisdom. The facts, however, (in every language) speak against it. Language does not have such identity generative power, and it is far more likely for national identity and sentiment to influence language (in some cases bringing it into being) than the other way round. This should be expanded to other ethnic, that is ascriptive characteristics— independent of the individual volition—as well: none of them gives rise to identity or consciousness. Every group, even a family, is diverse in its ascriptive characteristics (ethnically diverse, when the term is properly defined): one’s brother is male, one’s sister is female—they have different ascriptive characteristics; one’s mother has blue eyes, one’s father brown—same conclusion. Conversely, populations homogeneous as to any particular such characteristic do not necessarily share the same identity and consciousness: medieval peasants and lords in Europe, though all Christians, did not share an identity—peasants identifying as peasants and lords identifying as lords—and, beyond all doubt, thought differently. To return to language, they did not speak the same language: the language of the people was in pronunciation, vocabulary, and so on, at least as different from that of the lords as Catalan and Spanish, not to mention Serbian and Croatian, differ today, even if the lords, as in Russia as late as the nineteenth century, did not speak a foreign language altogether. It would be absurd to speak of their—both peasants’ and lords’—ethnic identity. French Swiss do not

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share the ethnic identity of Francophones across the border, but share the identity of other Swiss, irrespective of the ethnic characteristics of language and religion. English does not turn British, Americans, and Australians into the same ethnic group, it does not even contribute to the common identity of the Scots and the English. It is the significance a culture attaches to some of the numerous always existing ascriptive characteristics that associates them with an identity. Remarkably, no ascriptive characteristic was made a basis of an inclusive identity of any stratified population inhabiting a stretch of territory before the emergence of nationalism. As stressed above, identities were estate-­ based. Religious identity, of course, was very important, but religion was not considered an ascriptive characteristic; one actually had to choose to have faith, and faith, moreover, did not result in a shared identity of different orders. Thus, there were no ethnic identities before ­nationalism. It was only nationalism, specifically ethnic nationalism, which attached cultural significance to ascriptive characteristics, shared or presumed to be shared by populations across the system of stratification, be they related to blood and soil, such as physical type or “race”, or to cultural traditions, such as religion and language. In other words, far from nationalism developing out of previously existing ethnic identities, ethnic identities—and ethnicities—emerge within the cultural framework of nationalism. Far from being a primordial reality, ethnicity is yet another distinctive characteristic of modernity, like all the others, brought about by nationalism. But the relationship between language and national consciousness, any consciousness for that matter, is complicated.

3

Institutionalization of nationalism in politics and ideology

Language, above everything else, is the medium of thinking, thinking representing the explicitly symbolic component of our consciousness, the explicitly symbolic mental process. This is not always clear. The dominant response to the question “what is the function of language?” is, rather, likely to be: communication. But a second of consideration proves this response wrong: animals, even insects (think of bees and ants), obviously communicate, communicate well, and need no language for this (unless language becomes a metaphor for any system of communication). Moreover, judged as a system of communication, which it, of course, also is, language is a very inefficient system, almost as often leading to misunderstanding as to understanding, and the more complex a language is, the more inefficient as a system of communication it becomes. For this reason, in life-­or-­death situations, requiring accurate and immediate understanding, language is always drastically simplified and as much as possible reduced from a system of symbols (with their by-­definition-­uncertain meanings) to a system of signs. Indeed, traffic lights well may be the most efficient system of communication among humans. For the same reason, political ideologies (tools of indoctrination, which emerge where conditions for indoctrination are favorable) tend to the simplification of language, its reduction to a set of slogans delivering only the essential ideological message of condemnation or approbation, as in “four legs good, two legs bad” of Animal Farm,1 and protecting the mind from wandering. Thus ideologies favor acronyms and phonetically-­catchy word modifications and combinations, affecting the mind, like signs do, as bullets with an emotional charge, while practically eliminating their meaning from view. (How many users of the word “Nazism” are aware that they speak of a form of Socialism?) Orwell’s Newspeak in 19842 is, of course, a fictional language, and it is a fiction that a widely used language can be intentionally recreated and effectively replaced by another,   1 Orwell, G., Animal Farm (New York: Penguin, 1996), p. 29.   2 Orwell, G., 1984 (New York: Penguin, 1950).

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but thanks to this patently artificial, make-­believe setting, Orwell is able to analyse the relationship between language and ­thinking, show how language enables thought, and stress that the destruction of language—reducing the inherently multi-­valent symbols into necessarily precise signs—destroys our very ability to think (while, incidentally, improving communication). As a result, while one, like any animal, can be fully conscious of physical and organic realities—feel the pain when burning one’s hand on the stove, and the pleasure of a warm blanket on a cold day, hunger and satiation, sexual desire, and so on—one cannot be fully conscious, or have full experience, of symbolic (or human) reality without language. It is indeed possible to experience something for which there are no words, but this experience would be a vague sensation, which one would not be able to share and, quite likely, not even to recall at will, that is, relive in memory; it will be fleeting. To capture symbolic experiences ­(experiences produced by the specifically human, cultural environment) language is necessary; only it can incorporate them into reality. A stable sphere of new experiences presupposes the annexation to human existence of a new sphere of meaning which only language can create, the emergence of a new semantic space. Therefore, while one can imagine a social current without the participation of language, institutionalization without language is impossible. Any social order starts with the creation of a new vocabulary, and this is demonstrated by every case of nationalism, the imported ones as well as the original English, around the world. In the institutionalization of nationalism, the role of English, however, has necessarily been far greater than that of any other language. The experience of massive social mobility which contradicted the image of reality implied in the existing cultural framework and led to the emergence of the national consciousness preceded any possibility of its conceptualization, and called into being virtually a new language. The response of culture (that is, many mutually reinforcing and unintentionally cooperating minds) to this need of ever-­growing numbers of people was “modernization” of English. The sixteenth century in England was a period of astonishing linguistic creativity—this can be seen clearly in the Oxford English Dictionary in the colossal number of sixteenth century additions to the vocabulary: neologisms, new concepts, grammatical constructions, word combinations, and idiomatic expressions. These additions gave public expression to the unfamiliar vague individual sensations produced by the dramatically

INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF NATIONALISM IN POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY 39

changed circumstances in England in every sphere of life; the objectification of these experiences by language turned them into social facts (as discussed in the previous chapter), with the coercive power of any fact. Outside England, these experiences (these social facts) were first encountered under their English names, in English. And it was in translation from English that the new, national, consciousness and the new reality constructed by it, modernity, traveled to other countries.

Basic vocabulary: nation, empire, state The changed circumstances of social stratification affected the experience of every sphere of social life, since stratification expresses itself through and organizes other institutions, and cannot be abstracted from the rest of the social order. But, because nationalism is generally identified with the sphere of politics and most clearly visible in it, we may as well start our examination of its institutionalization with changes in political vocabulary. Simultaneously with the change of meaning of the words “people” and “nation,” which created our idea of the nation, inaugurating the great transformation we are discussing, several other cognate concepts appeared, also resulting from the redefinition of previously used words. The word “country,” for instance, the original meaning of which was the same as “county,” that is an administrative unit and the locality in which one resided, became synonymous with “nation” and acquired the ennobling connotations of patria (the object of classical civic commitment). Already in Thomas Elyot’s Latin-­English Dictionary of 1538, patria is translated as “a countraye.”3 Jon Rider’s 1589 analytical dictionary Bibliotheca Scholastica4 offers examples of the word’s usage: “a countrey”—region, natio, orbis; “our countrey, or native soyle”—patria; “a lover of his owne countrie”— Philopolites; “countrie man, or one of the same country”—patriot, compatriot (see Box 3.1). Among early additions that still figure prominently in political discourse, shaping our ways of thinking and acting in international relations was also the word “empire.” Entering the vocabulary in the 1530s, it specifically connoted the right of political self-­ determination, a community’s right to be free from the authority of any outside agent, including God, Pope, or Divinely Appointed King, thus representative   3 Elyot, T., Dictionary (Menston, U.K.: The Scholar Press, [1538] reprinted in 1970).   4 Rider, J., Bibliotheca Scholastica (Menston, U.K.: The Scholar Press, [1589] reprinted in 1969).

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government. Remarkably, the instrument of this novel conceptualization was the 1533 Act of Appeals, which justified Henry VIII’s disobeying the Papal authority in the matter of the royal divorce. In medieval political thought, the Latin word imperium, which the Act for the first time anglicized, was an attribute of kingship—supreme authority in temporal matters (being an Imperator in the original Roman sense of holding the chief executive office). The Act of Appeals5 extended the meaning to include sovereignty in spiritual matters too, the preamble declaring: “this realme of Englond is an Impire, and so hath been accepted in the worlde, governed by oon supreme heede and King.” The uncertainty of the orthography, which underscored the novelty of the idea, only added to the certainty of the assertion. (If one is surprised by the strange and unsystematic spelling of the compilers of the early dictionaries and legislators, who were without doubt among the most educated Englishmen of their time, one should remember that they were creating a language, rather than using one that existed already.) In 1533, this was a justification of the rearrangement of relations between the powers in Europe based on an entirely new principle. Extending its “empire” in the centuries that followed, England and then Britain extended the sphere of popular sovereignty, necessarily spreading the liberating and empowering principles of nationalism, together with its many other implications. The British Empire was at the root of national liberation movements in more ways than one: without it, there would be no nations to liberate. Concepts central to the discourse we identify with nationalism, such as “nation” itself, “country,” and “empire,” to which one should also add “commonwealth,” appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century. Heretofore rarely employed (if used in English at all) and carrying separate meanings in different ways expressive of the feudal view of social reality, these words became understood as synonyms and came to mean “the sovereign people of England.” Somewhat later, toward the end of the century, the word “state” changed its meaning too. (As already mentioned, it used to mean either “status” or “property,” the latter of which remained one of the senses of its original form, “estate.”) The term “state” enters parliamentary discourse during the Elizabethan period. In most cases it is still but a form of “estate.” The   5 “Act of Appeals,” Statutes of the Realm, printed by command of His Majesty King George III in pursuance of an address of the House of Commons of Great Britain (London: Dawsons of Pall-­ Mall, [1810‒1821] reprinted in 1963), vol. III, 24 Henri VIII, cap. XII, p. 427. (Statutes of the Realm hereafter cited as SR.)

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1559 Act of Supremacy,6 for example, speaks of “restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual.” In the 1571 Treasons Act, the phrase “comfort of the whole state and subjects of the realm” appears, while in the 1585 Act for the Surety of the Queen’s Person, the same cliché has the word “estate”: “the good felicity and comfort of the whole estate of this realm.” In the Lay Subsidy Act of 1601,7 however, the meaning of the term is different. It occurs here in the preamble: “we your majesty’s humble, faithful, and loving ­subjects. . .assembled. . .to consult. . .and provide for all such means as are or may be necessary to preserve both you and us from those apparent dangers wherein the State may fall. . ..” Here the term is used to make a stand and is intentionally substituted for “kingdom” and “realm,” which represent the polity as the personal property of the monarch. “State” here is the synonym of the “commonwealth”; it denotes a depersonalized polity in which her majesty’s humble, faithful, and loving subjects have as much share as she and, therefore, the same right of political decision. The Act in general was a reflection of the parliament’s growing power and self-­confidence; the use of the term “State” in its context was to show that Englishmen realized what their rights were and were going to stand by them. During the reign of King James, the parliament was asserting its right to an equal share in the government of the country with remarkable constancy, and this assertion expressed itself in its insistence on the representative character of its position and in the changed perception of the referent of its service. Even the king’s speeches in parliament reflected these changes. In the 1621 Letter to the House of Commons, where James expressed his discontent with the House, he wrote, certainly believing that ruling England was the exclusive prerogative of kings: “none therein [House of Commons] shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our government or deep matters of the State.” In using this new and depersonalized concept of the polity, James could not have wanted to emphasize that this was indeed a shared enterprise in which many parties had stakes, but the view that a country was simply the Crown’s property was already inconceivable.

  6 SR., vol. IV, 1 Eliz., cap. I, p. 350.   7 SR, vol. IV, 13 Eliz., cap. I, pp. 526–527; 27 Eliz., cap. I, p. 704; 43 Eliz., cap. XVIII, p. 991.

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BOX 3.1 PATRIOTISM The failure to realize the specificity of nationalism not only forces one to lose sight of its historical context—namely, the empirical context in which it must, and apart from which it cannot, be understood—and leads to vague and futile theorizing. In addition, it diverts attention from the issues central to nationalism and focuses it on marginally related phenomena and side effects, contributing to further conceptual confusion. This confusion is most widespread in regard to the relations between nationalism and ethnicity, which we already discussed, and nationalism and patriotism. Patriotism is often seen as a reflection of underlying national consciousness, and sometimes as the positive side or expression of nationalism which can also have negative expressions— “good nationalism” so to speak. In fact, however, patriotism is not necessarily connected to nationalism; the concept denotes “love of country,” patria—the land of one’s fathers—and is a natural sentiment that is likely to exist whether or not one’s community is defined as a nation. The civic sentiment of classical antiquity—attachment and dedication to the city—is the paradigmatic example of patriotism, but the image of the social order it reflected was very different from the one contained in nationalism, and the institutional, structural reality constructed on the basis of this image was different too. Different from both—the classical, and the modern national, patriotism— was the idea of patriotism prevalent during the Middle Ages in Europe: Christian patriotism. The Heavenly Kingdom—la patrie céleste—was the true patria of a Christian, and it was there, rather than in any earthly domain, that his supreme loyalty was due. Patriots were those who, like the Crusaders, loved and fought for God above all. National patriotism, in distinction to the classical attachment to the city and Christian commitment to the patrie céleste, is the love and loyalty to the nation. Of course, it may take the form of love of a particular plot of land, as in classical patriotism. But this is not always so; more important, it is not such love of land which is definitive of national patriotism. National patriotism,

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in fact, is more akin to the Christian patriotism, for it is, too, primarily a dedication to an ideal. It is the love of principles of social organization and a way of life—first and foremost, the two constitutive principles of fundamental equality of membership and popular sovereignty, and also additional principles selected by a particular nation as its characteristics. American patriotism, perhaps, reveals this idealistic nature of modern, national patriotism most clearly. “Give the American his institutions, and he cares little where you place him,” wrote Charles Mackay in 1837.8 But patriotisms associated with other nationalisms, even those of different types, share this idealistic character. As the American example demonstrates, the identification of nationalism with territorial particularism is misleading. Possession of a particular territory was the clinching element in Stalin’s classic definition of the nation, still very much in use among students of nationalism. But there is no reason to defer to Stalin’s opinions in this area of study: they are as unwarranted as in linguistics, medicine, or any other academic discipline in which the great dictator dabbled in his spare time. Most nationalisms indeed become attached to a certain territory, if not from the moment they emerge, then eventually. But territory does not breed nationalism. In the American case, as a matter of fact, it was nationalism that bred territory. In general, nationalism is not a particular case of territorialism; it belongs to a different class of phenomena. It is a cultural system—with order-­shaping sociopolitical implications, among others. It can be equally well applied to the entire world as to any territorial unit within it. A world polity with a sovereign populace in which all the members would be considered fundamentally equal and interchangeable would be a perfect nation within the framework of nationalism. Patriotism always reflects some identity; in many cases it had reflected the development of a unique identity whose geopolitical framework and/or name were at a later point inherited by the nation that was constructed in the place of the earlier social 8

 8 Mackay, C., Life and Liberty in America, quoted in Curti, M. The Roots of American Loyalty (London: Atheneum, 1968), p. 31.

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order. However, such a unique identity, the consciousness of being French or Chinese, for example, can no more than territory serve as a proxy for national identity and evidence of nationalism. Both uniquely French and Chinese identities existed for centuries before the development of the French and Chinese national identities. The French national identity, indeed, was the third in line of unique French identities. The first one of these, which existed between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, was a religious one, with France defined as a church and Frenchness as a partisan kind of Christianity. The second was a political identity whose constitutive element was the authority of the French kings—France was the king’s domain, and Frenchness was coterminous with the status of a subject. This identity existed between the sixteenth and the later eighteenth centuries. Though the name of France and, by and large, its borders remained the same, each time the nature of the French identity changed, the society that existed under this name and within these borders transformed. France was imagined differently and thus no longer was the same France. (Later, we shall have the opportunity to discuss changes within Chinese identity as well.) The documents of the Interregnum period in a way sealed the transformation of the past century and a half. The important Act Establishing the Commonwealth declared that the people of England, and of all dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed, to be a Commonwealth and Free State, and shall from henceforth be governed as a Commonwealth and Free State by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament.9

While “commonwealth” here subtly changed its meaning and denoted a political republic, it—and the “state”—were still equated with the sovereign people of England. A people was certainly not a form of government, and the terms could be equated only because they all implied a new form of polity—the nation.

 9 Gardiner, S.R., “The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660,” Act Establishing the Commonwealth, March 19, 1649, p. 388.

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The emergence of the state thus was a reflection of the growing nationalism. In its original modern meaning in English, the word “state” was a synonym of the “nation’” of the “people as an elite,” of the “sovereign people.” To be governed as a state meant to be self-­governed, or, as an approximation to this condition, to be governed by representatives of people’s sovereignty. A state form of government, by definition, was impersonal, based on popular mandate rather than on the authority of individuals. “State” became yet another synonym of “nation” and “sovereign people,” though less emotionally charged than either and with additional connotation of the government of a national polity. “Empire,” perhaps, was closest as a concept to it. All of these came into general use in the period between 1500 and 1650, in particular affecting political thought and the language of parliamentary documents. They became the cognitive cornerstones of the new collective imagination. The concept of “state,” however, acquired a far greater significance as it helped shape other nationalisms, especially in France and Germany, and specifically because both French and German at the time when nationalism began developing where they were spoken (approximately 1700–1850) already had and widely used very similar words, état and Staat, which it was natural to employ in translating the new English concept. These words naturally carried a semantic baggage: only slightly different in spelling and pronunciation and perceived as equivalent to the English “state,” they attached to completely different meanings from it, were different concepts. With the importation of nationalism, these concepts were obviously modified, the words now referring to a national, representative government. But they did not entirely lose their earlier connotations and these connotations, in turn, modified the imported English concept of “state.” As a result, the French and the German states, and other states, influenced by them, were never the same as the English one. To begin with, by association with absolute monarchy and post-­Westphalian principle of cuius regio,  eius religio, the French and German governments enjoyed far greater independence from and exerted far greater influence on their respective nations. This was reinforced by the idea of the nation itself as a unitary entity in both cases. As a collective individual, the nation had its own will and interests, independent from the wills and interests of any—and any number—of its members. Unlike in England or in the United States (where national consciousness existed since the arrival of its first English settlers in the early seventeenth century, long before the people carrying it decided to establish a nation of

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their own), national will was not, therefore, reflected in the will of the majority, but had to be divined by somebody specially qualified to do so. It was quite natural to attribute this qualification to the state, or, rather, to define the state as the agent (an individual leader or a small elite) so qualified. In this way the state became not simply the chief representative, but the embodiment of popular s­ overeignty: instead of ­representing the people composing the nation, it would represent the nation to them, was raised above the national ­community. (See Box 3.2.) In France, this raising of the state above the community, its appointment as the spokesman of the national will, was to a significant extent countered by the civic criteria of nationality, which, among other things, reflected the pre-­national libertine tradition with its emphasis on the freedom of the individual in the personal sphere, which was incorporated into the national consciousness as part of the cultural trousseau. It was also moderated by the traditionally influential “fourth estate”—the intellectual class, in the eighteenth century emerging from the aristocracy and considered an alternative aristocracy, which, as an elite of virtue and intelligence, claimed to be at least as well qualified in divination. In contrast, nothing offset the supremacy of the state in Germany. From the time (early in the nineteenth century) the government bureaucracy in Prussia converted to nationalism, the State (capitalized mentally as well as in writing or print) in Germany was seen as the will of the nation, it could not be abstracted from the nation and considered as only one of its many agencies, it became impossible to imagine a nation without a state. The mold of the German national consciousness was prepared by the intellectuals, or, as they were rather derisively referred to, Bildungsbürger—educated commoners, in the late eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century. It was then articulated in the numerous universities, scattered among the principalities of which Germany then consisted. German professors, in their homeland a servile, rather neglected group of government employees, later in the nineteenth century acquired an enormous influence abroad, especially after the American gentry, who were to establish social sciences (among them political science and, specifically, political theory) in American universities, soon the model for the rest of the world, chose Germany as their go to destination for higher education. The German idea of the State became the idea of the state taught in the universities. In this manner, the concept of nation-­state, meaningless in most contexts, came into being.

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BOX 3.2 POWER OF LANGUAGE; PARTICULARISTIC NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS The power of existing vocabulary over new ideas is demonstrated strikingly in the case of the Netherlands, where an indigenous concept of nation, evolving in the late Middle Ages to capture certain local circumstances, prevented the English idea of the nation, and the rest of the national consciousness that it implied, to take root in the United Provinces. The word “nation” was commonly used there to refer to the incorporated colonies of foreign traders: the great commercial entrepots of Northern Europe, Antwerp, Bruges, and Amsterdam, like medieval universities, had appropriated an early concept of nation as a community of foreigners, but modified it in their own way. For this reason, the new English idea of the nation as the inclusive community of population within political borders did not resonate and did not register with the Dutch: for them, the idea of a Dutch nation contradicted the obvious and made no sense. The English considered their Low Countries neighbors a nation, of course (treating them as a counterpart to England and either identifying them as “Holland” or calling them “the Dutch Republic,” and not as independent city-­states, or the Allies, as the Dutch preferred to refer to themselves), but they did not become one, not in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and not, arguably, even later, when nationalism became widespread. At the root of their reluctance lay the fact that they could not accept the language for the new consciousness. This leads us to another important issue: not all contemporary societies, even in Western Europe, where nationalism rules for the last two and a half centuries at the very least, are nations with a specific national consciousness, some failing because of the local circumstances to develop such consciousness, even when their pre-­national ways of thinking place no obvious obstacles to the importation of the idea of the nation or any of the principles of nationalism, and even when they develop a general national consciousness (a secular view of the world, in its social constitution representing a community of fundamentally equal members, capable of collective self-­rule) and contain among its members passionate and influential nationalists. Examples of such Western European societies, which failed to particularize

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national consciousness to a specific community, both concentrating it within and stretching it throughout such presupposed membership, are Italy and Spain. Both Italy and Spain are independent states; that is, they adopt the impersonal and in principle representative form of government implied by national consciousness (specifically by the central political principle of nationalism—the idea of popular sovereignty). It is rather common, in the age of nationalism (namely, the modern age which has made nationalism the canon of political organization), for elites to adopt the state form of government in societies which are not nations in the sense of being constructed or organized on the basis of national collective imagination. For reasons of their own—sometimes d ­ ynastic, sometimes having to do with purely personal ­ambition, and indeed sometimes because of exposure and conversion to n ­ ationalism—elites may do so even in the absence of broad structural conditions which would render nationalism appealing to wider social groups. In such cases, the government becomes the major propagandist of nationalism. Its efforts may be very s­ uccessful, as was the case in Russia, chiefly owing to its traditional autocracy, which made the man in power the absolute lord of his subjects’ lives and minds. The attention of the Russian elite, as already discussed, was fixed on the idea of the nation by its most capable autocrat—the Tzar Peter the Great—and this elite, which became fiercely n ­ ationalistic, fashioned Russian society on the principles of national consciousness, even though the society (as well as the elite) was composed of diverse ethnic and linguistic strands and could by no means be called a cultural unity. The experience of Italy and Spain, both of which also united diverse (in this case Latin, rather than Slavic) populations under one government, was not successful. In both countries, members of the respective intellectual elites had become aware of and interested in nationalism in the course of the nineteenth century. (Some of the most prominent nineteenth-­century nationalist ideologues, such as Mazzini, were, in fact, Italian.) It was not, however, until the twentieth century that nationalism began to gain ascendancy as a political ideology and not until the establishment of the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Franco, respectively, that it was embraced by the two governments as the state

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ideology. The concerted efforts of both regimes to weld the heterogeneous provinces into nations drawing their respective collective identities from a perceived community of destiny failed. So did, too, their efforts to cultivate national consciousness among the citizenry. But if they did not succeed in making the idea of the nation take root uniformly in the entire area of their state jurisdictions, they succeeded only too well in implanting it in some of the provinces. The new nationalisms now developing among the Basques and the Catalans, and to a lesser extent felt in Italian Lombardy, are a direct result of this partial success of the defunct nationalist regimes. If it is a victory of some sort, it is, of course, a Pyrrhic one. The new nationalisms do not contribute to the creation of unified and stronger nations of Spain and Italy, but to their destruction. They emerge, as did older nationalisms in Western Europe and as do nationalisms anywhere, because of the specific conditions in the localities in question, which make their elites interested in redefining their communities and their general populations receptive to their message. Nationalism appeals to them, as elsewhere, because it implies a dignified identity, and the specific nationalism (that is, Catalan or Basque, rather than Spanish) because its dignity capital is greater than that of the community from which they wish to distinguish themselves or to separate.

Science and the Enlightenment Every national state (that is, government of a nation, not to be confused with or referred to as nation-­state) always draws on its particular nationalism, the contents of its specific national consciousness, for legitimacy. This means that every modern political ideology is a reflection of nationalism in its different types and particular forms, containing in a nutshell (for, as mentioned, ideologies tend to the simplification of language and restriction of thinking) the core ideas of political reality in the particular nationalism, which in most cases refers above all to ideas about the state. Governments of individualistic-­civic nations legitimate themselves with reference to the ideals of individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and civic society. This complex of ideas is known as classical liberalism, underpinning liberal democratic regimes. Classical (individualistic)

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l­iberalism also in some rare cases of nationalism steeped in long historical traditions of respect for the individual as an autonomous actor and/or in societies with traditional strongholds of authority outside the central government is the basis of political legitimacy in collectivistic and civic nations (that is, as in France and Israel, but not in Latin America). These legitimating ideas, however, are by their very nature anti-­ideological—they encourage the individual to think for oneself and interfere with indoctrination. The primacy of the individual experience in the development of individualistic nationalisms, to begin with, creates unfavorable conditions for persuasion and indoctrination, and, while ideologies (reflecting other permutations of national consciousness) may flourish within certain enclaves within individualistic nations, in general they don’t fare well in them. For all these reasons, as an ideology classical ­liberalism has been most ineffective, spreading, instead, in a form of the p ­ hilosophy of Enlightenment, and, more generally, as scientific ethos. In the image of modern society and in the modern consciousness science occupies a place of honor and authority unrivaled by any other form of intellectual endeavor. Its salience distinguishes modernity from other periods in history, and it is to it we owe the generally optimistic tenor of our way of life, our confidence in the future, and the pervasive idea of progress, fundamental to modern experience. This centrality, which makes science a natural object of respect, also makes it a target of criticism and attack: science is the symbol of the modern worldview, credited for all the benefits of modernity, and is at the core of the rejection of modernity, blamed for many of its faults. This position of science in the crossfires of the modern ideological, political, conflict is a function of the role it played, from very early on, in the original English nationalism. From the beginning science was tied to the dignity of the English nation. The new national, and competitive, consciousness almost immediately revealed itself in the changed orientation of various activities, in all of which the English, in words and deeds, claimed for their nation superiority over any presumed competitor. The English religion was the purest and the best because—this was, perhaps, the most astonishing of such claims—“God was English.” English artillery was the most effective. English, the language (as noted above, then in the process of formation), was the most expressive and the sweetest of all tongues, whether dead or living, its literature second to none. “The undoubted due” of English poets, thought Dryden in the

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seventeenth century, was to be recognized for “excelling Aeschyllus, Euripides, and Sophocles”; Purcell’s music, according to him, was “equal to any foreign composer.” In Annus Mirabilis, Dryden tied Britain’s greatness to science: But what so long in vain, and yet unknown, By poor man-­kind’s benighted wit is sought, Shall in this Age to Britain first be shown, And hence be to Admiring Nations taught.10

Competition follows the same basic rules everywhere, product differentiation being one. England was a latecomer to the world of letters; in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Erasmus counted five or six learned men in London, where Leland found one “slender” library. Even the heroic achievement of the Elizabethans could not put this culture on a par with those of France or Italy, the heirs of classical antiquity and the standard-­bearers of literary excellence of the day. So, in the battle of the ancients and the moderns, the English took the side of the moderns: science, they declared, not letters, would be the repository of the national genius. One can spend hours citing seventeenth-­century paeans to English science and science in general—vis-­à-­vis such “trifles” as literature or classical learning. Thomas Sprat’s 1666 History of the Royal Society11 in its entirety was such a paean. One has to keep in mind, however, that the activity so apostrophized, in England as elsewhere, at that time showed only the feeblest signs of life and that this adulation preceded each and every one of the great achievements that were to substantiate Bacon’s fervent belief that sciencia was potencia. The early English scientism, that is, the way of thinking that elevated science to the position of an important social value, which ensured its institutionalization and development, was based not on the record of science, but on the conviction in its potential contribution to the international prestige of England. Apart from the fact that in science England in the seventeenth century faced no serious competition and thus found a niche which 10 Dryden, J., The Works of John Dryden, in W. Scott (ed.), revised by G. Saintsbury (London: W. Paterson, 1882‒1893), vol. XV, pp. 273‒377; vol. XII, pp. 59‒60; Annus Mirabilis, vol. IX, p. 150. 11 Sprat, T., The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural History (1666). Retrieved on June 13, 2016 from https://archive.org/details/historyroyalsoc00martgoog.

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offered it a chance to achieve real and visible superiority, there were other features which recommended this activity to the particular attentions of English and soon British nationalists. There existed a deep affinity between the natural and, upon its ­institutionalization, the normative orientation of science—suspicion of authority, reliance on direct experience, what we now call “organized ­skepticism,” above all, the value of individual reason—and the principles of the original English individualistic national consciousness. As a result, not only did England—and, a fact of tremendous importance for the understanding of the position of science in the modern world, later America, which inherited and developed the original English nationalism—define science as a foremost area of national effort and therefore international competition, but it also came to view science as the  central expression and embodiment of the national  spirit,  thus  incorporating it as an element of the nation’s very identity. By the time of the Restoration (in 1660), it was a matter of c­ onsensus, at home as well as abroad, that England was “the land of experimental knowledge.” The emergence of England as the greatest world power, and the model of political, as well as cultural, modernity, helped to impose its sense of priorities on other societies which, however ­reluctantly, came to recognize the importance of science and were drawn into the competition for scientific supremacy. The national origins of science were never forgotten and never forgiven. The attack on science more often than not would camouflage an attack on the entire complex of social values characteristic of the individualistic civic nationalism which became identified with the values of the West and the principles of liberal democracy. But no nation could entirely give up on science. Not only has it become in our world the medium of revelation, acquiring binding, religious significance, because national consciousness as such, quite apart from any particular nationalism, as was already mentioned, is fundamentally secular and invests the mundane (that is, this world of empirical reality, accessible to our senses) with ultimate meaning, which necessarily and dramatically elevates the importance of empirical knowledge and confounds the empirical with the moral, “truth” in the sense of approximate correspondence to facts with ultimate “Truth.” And not only is it in fact in our time a tremendous, unrivaled power for both good and evil. What is most significant for the society in which both collective and individual identities are defined by the inclusive membership of and in communities of equals, with everyone’s dignity depending on the nature of one’s community,

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science serves as the objective measure of national ­intelligence, it stands for the nation’s IQ. In the eighteenth century, the general admiration for science was articulated as the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In fact, there were several Enlightenments, of which three are widely known: the British, specifically Scottish; the French; and the German. The British and the French Enlightenments were expressions of the British and the French national consciousness and differed as the two nationalisms differed. To a great extent, the British Enlightenment was in effect a philosophy of science, but the motivation behind it was to extend science, which at that time existed only as physics—the science of matter, to human affairs. The representative thinkers of the British Enlightenment, such as David Hume or Adam Smith, called themselves moral philosophers, because they regarded humanity as moral reality: “moral” for them meant what “social,” if we think about this, means for us—namely, that which is distinctively human. They attempted to analyse humanity, using the logical and empirical method of science (what was later called the method of “conjectures and refutations”), that is, create an empirical social science. Their ontological presuppositions reflected the original English nationalism: they were ontological individualists and universalists, believing that the individual (created by God in His own image, that is, as a rational being) was, as a matter of fact, prior to society, and that societies were organized in accordance with the universal human nature, specifically the nature of human reason or mind. The orientation of the French philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau, the Encyclopédistes, the Physiocrats or the Économistes), in accordance with the collectivistic character of the French national consciousness and its inherent tendency toward authoritarianism, was very different. They also stressed reason as fundamental to social organization (and were in this sense emphatically rationalist), but this reason was not the mental faculties of Man in general, not the empirical, observable possession of everyman, and not an object of study and analysis. Instead, it was the superior ratiocinative capacity of the privileged few, the elite of intelligence (and therefore of virtue) who could divine the general will. In distinction to the British moral philosophers, who were in the first place students of social reality, the French philosophes were above all teachers of the French people; their philosophy was moral in the sense of normative. This moral philosophy had a tremendous influence on its audience, eventually inspiring the French Revolution. A sophisticated, philosophical reflection of the French national consciousness, in

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a ­simplified form it for the first time in history produced n ­ ationalism as an ideology and this ideology—a teaching of political ideas, an intentional attempt at political persuasion or indoctrination—was the beginning of ideological politics and ushered into the world the new political process—the revolution.12 Before the French Revolution, the word “revolution” meant what is today its opposite: the return to the original position, in effect a restoration. This was its meaning, for instance, in what in France in 1789 could be seen as an example of a political process worthy of imitation—the English Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was, clearly, in reference to the Glorious Revolution and in this sense that François-­ Alexandre-­Frédéric, duc de La Rochefoucauld-­Liancourt, a supporter of constitutional monarchy, used the word in answer to the comment Louis XVI made on July 12, 1789, as the latter listened to his report on the mood of Paris, “So, this is a revolt!” in that famous phrase: “No, sire, it is a revolution.” But what was happening in France was nothing like a revolution in this sense, and the application of the word to what was happening in France completely changed the word’s meaning. The French Revolution was a conscious, intentional attempt to transform the social order. Such an attempt was inconceivable when social order was believed to reflect the Providential plan. It could make sense only in the framework of a secular consciousness, focused on this world and attributing to humanity the right and the capacity to direct its life (that is, assuming popular sovereignty). It could make sense, in other words, only in the framework of national consciousness. In France, specifically, in the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a widespread feeling in aristocratic and intellectual circles that the social order (the ancien régime) did not reflect the national character of the community, that France, while a nation, was ruled as if it were not a nation, and that its political organization had to be aligned with its actual nature. Intentional remaking of a society presupposes an understanding that, as the society exists, it is not what it should be. Indeed, the ancien régime was deemed unnatural, it had to be destroyed to reveal the natural, national, society. An ideology—a simplified political philosophy, easily understood and unlikely to be misinterpreted, was 12 As a political phenomenon ideology emerged before the concept and even before the word, coined by Destut de Tracy to refer to the “study of ideas,” pursued by the section of the Institut de France devoted to the sciences morales et politiques, formed in 1795. The word “ideology” acquired its political meaning after Napoleon contemptuously referred to the academicians who opposed him as “ideologues.” The history of the concept confirms the recency and the French origin of the phenomenon.

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needed to justify this destruction to the uncommitted and to mobilize support. This ideology was essentially a precis of collectivistic civic nationalism and of the teachings of Enlightenment thinkers in France. German Enlightenment, in distinction from those in Britain and France, was not a reflection of German national consciousness, whose formation it preceded by at least half a century. It was simply a fashionable importation, mostly from France, favored by a number of absolutist German monarchs, titillated by the iconoclastic nationalist ideas, like Catherine the Great was in Russia, so long as they were absolutely irrelevant to the reality of their domains. Frederick the Great of Prussia proved to be the most important of these. Kant, in fact, characterized German Enlightenment as “the century of Frederick,” summarizing its cardinal principle as “think what you will but obey.” Prussia was a superpower in relation to most of the German principalities and what was good for Frederick was good enough by definition for the lesser princes. Thus they allowed, even welcomed the dangerous doctrine that placed (educated) reason above Sacred Scripture in their universities (though these universities mostly taught theology), cultivating among the young men preparing for positions of the clergy pride in their superior intellectual capacities and encouraging them to think— within appropriate limits and discretely—what they willed of religion. Education, it was believed, placed one above the common lot, with it one acquired dignity.

Totalitarianism In all the cases of collectivistic and ethnic nationalism the ideology used in political legitimation is based on the cogitations of German Romantic nationalists. The sway of German ideology, which deeply affects intellectuals everywhere in the world, is exceptionally broad, which makes German nationalism a central case in any discussion of modern politics. Unlike English or French nationalism, German nationalism owed its creation to middle class intellectuals, rather than the aristocracy. The aristocracy, for several reasons (some of which are discussed in Box 2.1), was generally satisfied with its situation in the many German states, and it was the middle class intellectuals who experienced anomie, leading them to clamor for a redefinition of their social situation and a new identity. The middle class intellectuals, or Bildungsbürger

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(the “educated bourgeoisie”), were a creation of German universities. Many of them were recruited from the lower classes, but, as a whole, the group was supposed to enjoy higher status than the members of the bourgeoisie who were not educated. Education was virtually the only avenue of upward mobility in a static society which even in the eighteenth century, when this was long since normal in England and very common in France, did not recognize social mobility. This rendered the Bildungsbürger marginal: they did not belong to any of the accepted social categories. The situation worsened in the late eighteenth century. The Enlightenment, which reflected national consciousness in Britain and France and was the dominant philosophical movement in many prominent German states (most notably Prussia), placed the intellect at the top of the value hierarchy, boosted the self-­esteem of intellectuals, and encouraged their aspirations for an exalted place in society. This led to the overproduction of intellectuals and the consequent decline of employment opportunities for them. Caught in the state of trained unemployability, often very poor and always unhappy, some of the Bildungsbürger turned not against the unaccepting social arrangements, but against the Enlightenment itself, which had promised them much, and delivered very little. The result of this change of heart was Romanticism. Romanticism, eventually, prepared the conceptual mold of German national consciousness, which to a significant extent explains the latter’s general ethnic and collectivistic character, as well as many of its particular features. What is of special importance in the present context is that an aspect of the romantic mentality was its anti-­ Western (specifically anti-­French, but also anti-­English) stance. The German Enlightenment accepted the European ideal and saw France and England as models. Even its representatives, though, were already resentful of their French counterparts, because French men of letters stole the attentions of what was rightfully the audience of the German authors. Romanticism turned this understandable jealousy into a matter of lofty principle. It redefined France and England as anti-­models and rejected the Western ideal as evil. For a long time, the romantics focused their attention on the private sphere, leaving the political implications of their philosophy unarticulated. Even though it would have been in their interest that the German states (or any one of them) be redefined as a nation—for this

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would make intellectuals equal to the most exalted aristocracy and secure the dignity they were denied in the society of orders—they did not demand such a redefinition. This would be futile: nationalism was completely out of tune with the mood of the ruling elite and such influential groups as the nobility and the bureaucracies, and so romantic intellectuals were not nationalist. It was the French invasion and, specifically, the defeat of Prussia that changed their attitude. The initial effect of the news of the Revolution in France was to reinvigorate cosmopolitan sentiments in Germany. At first, most of the German romantic intellectuals admired the French, and rejoiced at  the promise of the Revolution to topple social hierarchies everywhere. The attempts of the French to fulfill their promises, however, did not bring the Bildungsbürger the benefits that they desired and, in some important cases (such as Fichte), represented a threat to their personal interests. At the same time, the French invasion offered the intellectuals an extraordinary opportunity to identify with the ruling elite (and thus at least symbolically elevate their status), and made the elite sympathetic to such efforts of fraternization. lt was the ruling elite that the French attacked. The romantics presented the cause of the ruling elite as the “German cause,” and virtually overnight turned into German nationalists. (Fichte’s was perhaps the prototypical case of a rapid conversion from principled cosmopolitanism and sympathy for the Revolution to intense German nationalism.) The rulers, especially in Prussia, welcomed the efforts of native intellectuals, whom they previously did not deign to notice, and used nationalism as a tool to ward off the French menace. Since the Enlightenment and its representatives in Germany (the chief competitors of the romantics for the attention of the German-speaking public) were discredited by the association with the French Revolution—the child of the Enlightenment—the romantics were left in charge of shaping German national consciousness and were able to define it in the terms of romantic philosophy. Romanticism combined certain elements of Enlightenment p ­ hilosophy, such as a firm belief in the natural superiority of men of letters and contempt for religious dogma, with the elements of a potent religious movement of the period, also opposed to dogma: Pietism. Many of the original creators of Romanticism came from Pietist homes, studied in Pietist schools, or were exposed to Pietism otherwise; the turn to it, therefore, was in a way natural for them. Pietism was a form of ­mysticism. Its central characteristic was emotionalism; it was “a

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r­eligion of the heart” suspicious of reason, which, it held, impaired man’s ability to enter into a direct mystical union with the Savior. Romanticism secularized the Pietist tradition and was able to perpetuate it in an environment which was less and less attuned to religion. The romantic rejection of the Enlightenment, first and foremost, was the rejection of the individual as the bearer of reason. The emphasis on reason and individual autonomy, believed romantics, crippled men, separated them from their true, social nature, and rendered them marginal, unattached, and unhappy. An autonomous individual was thus necessarily alienated from himself and denied what romantics considered true individuality which they equated, paradoxically, with the totality of human nature. It followed that the only true individuals were communities, and only through self-­loss in them could men recover their alienated selves and become “whole.” Because the sphere of their activity as intellectuals was essentially defined by language, the romantics insisted that communities of language were true moral individuals and fundamental units of humanity. But language, they held, had a material basis and was determined by blood ties, or, as these ties were later to be called, race. When, under the impact of the French Revolution and invasion, romantic philosophy was “nationalized,” the idea of the “nation” was reinterpreted as such a natural community, created by race and language. Thus, in the framework of German nationalism, the nation was defined not only as a collective individual, as was also the case in France, but, in addition, as an ethnic community, the membership of which was believed to be naturally determined and could be neither acquired, if one was not born with it, nor lost, if one was. All the basic propositions of Romanticism can be interpreted (and could be used) as defense mechanisms against the fear—or pain of experience—of failure in a society based on the rational principles of the Enlightenment. The constitutive ideas of the ground layer of this way of thought, such as cultural relativism, totality, individuality, and the exaltation of emotion, provided psychological insurance and amortization of sorts. Denying the superiority of reason and posing equally legitimate alternatives to it, or denying reason legitimacy altogether, Romantics reduced the pain of the actual or possible failure to demonstrate such superiority and protected their self-­respect from the actual or potential injury. Already Herder argued that it was impossible to consider reason the universal principle or standard of achievement, and to judge one culture by the standards adopted from

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another. Comparison was irrelevant; what mattered was how “whole” the culture was, how true to its own nature, how harmonious with its “individuality.” Thus the “totality” of a culture was its “individuality.” The degree to which the culture expressed this individuality and fulfilled itself was the only criterion by which it could be judged, as it was also its mission and purpose. Whatever its nature, the more fully it was acted out, the better was the culture. Wholesomeness became synonymous with moral soundness; onesidedness (and marginality), with unsoundness, corruption. The same principle applied to art, language, any part of culture, and—most important—to the individual. “Everyone’s actions should arise utterly from the self, according to its innermost character,” wrote Herder.13 Simultaneously, a criterion other than the degree of fulfillment of inner capabilities was applied to all cultures, as well as parts of culture and individuals. Cultures differed in the ways in which they provided possibilities of expression for the various faculties of man: his “undivided soul,” the harmonious coexistence of feelings and senses alongside reason. In this context “totality,” in some disregard of “individuality,” acquired the meaning of such an undivided soul, “the whole man”—which was to become one of the central ideals (or at any rate slogans) of Romanticism and to reappear in rather unexpected contexts throughout the nineteenth century. Friedrich Schlegel declared: “Individuality is precisely what is original and eternal in man; personality does not matter much.” “Individuals mean less to me than of old,” confessed Hölderlin in 1793. “My love is the human race—not, of course, the corrupt, servile, idle race that we too often meet. . . I love the race of the centuries to come.”14 Romantics, in redefining “totality” and “individuality,” seemed to dispense with the actually existing—and naturally imperfect—individuals. A bias, any bias apparently, was unnatural, for it injured totality. But to combine perfect rationality with equally perfect emotionalism was tricky. And indeed the impartiality of the Romantics was short-­lived. Starting from the proposition that reason was but one natural endowment of humanity, a part of nature and a component of totality, they 13 Herder, J.G., “Letter to Caroline Flachsland, January 9, 1773,” in Herders Briefwechsel mit Caroline Flachsland (Weimer: Verlag der Goethe-­Gesellschaft, 1926‒1928), vol. II, p. 325. 14 Schlegel, F., “Ideas,” in Lucinde and the Fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), no. 60, p. 247. Hölderlin, F., in Gooch, G.P., Germany and the French Revolution (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920), p. 240, who quotes from Litzmann, C.C.T, Friedrich Hölderlins Leben: In Briefen Von Und an Hölderlin (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1890), p. 169.

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swiftly proceeded to viewing it as unnatural and an impediment to totality, the means of dissecting, compartmentalizing the “whole man.” It was, we might say, the weapon of alienation. Societies and cultures which were based on or highly valued reason institutionalized and ­promoted such crippling dissection. Cultural relativism was replaced by the new absolute standards of judgment. The absolute devaluation of reason and exaltation of its opposite, the irrational, unthinking feeling, was the most characteristic and direct expression of Romantic rejection of the society that failed middle-­class intellectuals. This was the establishment of a new orthodoxy; advocacy of the cause of totality and the “whole” man resulted—via defining these ideals in a certain way—in excluding a substantial chunk, in fact in a “decapitation,” of human nature. Society and politics were not at the center of the Romantics’ attention: they saw these as too mundane. Yet they laid the groundwork of a most portentous social philosophy. Like everything else in the Romantic worldview, this social philosophy reflected the Bildungsbürger’s intense dislike of the society in which they were living and in which they felt neglected, and represented an embodiment of the principles of totality and individuality. Its basic tenets were first articulated by Herder. The individuality of each society, he argued, arose out of its material conditions. By placing a society in a specific environment, God provided a particular principle around which the society was organized. The material conditions were not chosen; they were given, and the moral perfection of a society, like that of an individual, consisted in abandoning itself to its nature determined by these given ­circumstances. “The concept of existence and perfection is one and the same,” said Goethe.15 The Romantics concurred in this adulation of necessity. But, curiously, this principle did not apply to modern, that is, “enlightened,” society—at the time represented by France, England, and Prussia. The fact that this society put a premium on reason was not interpreted as a reflection of its material conditions; the reality of the modern society was not viewed as a sign of its peculiar perfection. Instead, modern society was considered an exception among human societies, an aberration. In contrast to past societies, which did not value reason, but were “organic,” little affected by the division of labor, and in which community was cohesive and man “whole,” the unholy effect of reason was 15 Quoted in Pascal, R., The German Sturm und Drang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967), p. 212.

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to divide the community and to split man, making him a part, a sickly shadow of himself. Reason weakened emotions, separated the heart from the head, the rulers from the people, and mental from physical labor. Community was replaced by fear and greed, and chimerical freedoms, such as in England, concealed real slavery. While in early societies, Herder wrote, men could be ­“everything, poets, philosophers, ­surveyors, ­legislators, musicians, warriors,” in modern society the division of labor created “half-­thinkers and half-­feelers; moralists who are not doers, epic poets who are not heroes, orators who are not administrators, artistic legislators who are not artists.”16 The Romantics’ indictment of the “enlightened” society was a generalization of their personal experience in it. The unfulfilled promise of Enlightenment to them led them to think that reason separated man from community. A society that venerated reason forced men into painful isolation, and was unnatural and unhappy. To this unnatural society they opposed their image of an ideal natural community, which would put an end to isolation and exclusion, leave no one and nothing out, but gather all within its iron embrace. In short, they envisioned a totalitarian society. As they were committed to fight rationalism on all fronts, they could not but scorn the methods of rational discourse. Clear definitions, the very notion of a concept, were anathema to them, and they welcomed confusion. Indeed, a double confusion supported the notion that totalitarianism was a natural state of man. In the first place, they failed to distinguish between a concrete society and social reality in general, and, second, they identified society, social reality, and the state. In the early nineteenth century this view was given an authoritative formulation by the political philosopher of Romanticism par excellence, Adam Mueller. Using the word “state” synonymously with “society,” “social life,” “civil life,” “civil existence,” and the like, the state, Mueller pronounced, was “the total of the civil life itself.”17 Man was a social being; to live within society was natural for man; human existence was impossible, had never been possible outside of society. Naturally, there had never been 16 Herder, J.G., “Übers Erkennen und Empfinden in der Menschlichen Seele,” in Sämtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), vol. VIII, p. 261. 17 Mueller, A., “Elements of Politics,” Lecture no. 2, in H.S. Reiss (ed.), The Political Thought of the German Romantics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955), p. 144.

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an age in which the state did not exist. The state, in fact, was human nature itself: The state is entirely autonomous; independent of human caprice and invention, it arises directly and immediately from where man himself comes from—from Nature—from God, the ancients said. . .. Man cannot be thought of outside the state. . . the state is the embodiment of all the needs of the heart, the spirit and the body. . . [man] is not conceivable other than in the state. . . there is nothing human outside the state.18

If “the state” meant “social reality,” this impassioned prose was but a tedious repetition of an innocuous sociological truism. But it was quickly transformed into a justification for a moral and political imperative. To be true to one’s nature, or individuality and totality, was declared the purpose of human existence, thus a matter of ethical conduct; a man who did not feel one with society was not an individual and was not “whole.” And since “the state,” or “society,” meant at the same time a particular state, or society—the fatherland—nothing but a complete fusion with the existence of a particular state answered the requirements of true humanity. Man’s individuality was impossible without fusion with the state; one’s personality drowned in the individuality of the state. For states, too, were individuals. They were living, willing organisms. “The state is a person like the individual,” said Novalis. “What man is to himself the state is to men.”19 “It is the intimate association of all physical and spiritual needs, of the whole physical and spiritual wealth, of the total internal and external life of a nation into a great, energetic, infinitely active and living whole,” insisted Mueller. The purpose of the state was to preserve its individuality. If one understood the organic, living nature of the state, one could not conceivably desire to change any particular state. “If one regards the state as a great individual encompassing all the small individuals,” believed Mueller, “then one understands that human society cannot be conceived except as an august and complete personality—and one will never wish to subject the inward and outward peculiarities of the state, the form of its constitution to arbitrary speculation.”20 Moved by its exalted purpose, the state, clearly, could not tolerate independence, indifference, or insufficient enthusiasm on the part of the smaller 18 Ibid., pp 154, 155, 146. 19 Quoted in Hans Kohn, “Romanticism and German Nationalism,” Review of Politics, 12 (1950), p. 448. 20 Mueller, “Elements,” p. 150; Kohn “Romanticism,” p. 466.

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individuals who composed it. On these grounds Mueller defended the medieval state, justly intolerant of “anything which was exempted from its authority,” and wondered: How is it . . . possible . . . to tolerate . . . a domestic virtue which is entirely opposed to civil virtue. . . an inclination of the heart which is completely antagonistic to external obligations, a science whose work is contrary to all nationality, a religion of indolence, of cowardice and of isolated interest, which completely destroy the energetic spirit of political life? This is worse than the state within the state.21

There was to be no distinction between the private and public spheres, no corner where an individual could rest from the intensity of his civic life. The dreamy Romantic literati were not the only worshippers at the altar of “the increasing majesty of the state.” Their nebulous effusions on the subject had an exact (in the sense of both very similar and rigorously argued) parallel within the bastions of scholarly learning. Venerable professors of philosophy (and not only Fichte and Schelling, personally involved with the Romantic coterie) who never openly renounced reason, but only redefined it out of existence, backed the collectivistic totalitarian view of the state with their formidable authority and fortified it with the iron, though somewhat idiosyncratic, logic that was the just foundation of their fame. While Kant’s position on this matter was ambivalent, no ambivalence characterized Hegel’s theory. For him the state was an organism, an “ethical totality,” and the only vehicle through which the true individuality of any particular human being, that is, one’s humanity, could be expressed. It was “the achievement of all, the absolutely accomplished fact, wherein individuals find their essential nature expressed and where their particular existence is simply and solely a consciousness of their own universality.”22 Like the Romantics proper, the Romantic Hegel advocated total integration of the interests of the individual with those of the collectivity: in a society or an age which allowed the existence of particular interests of any sort, the individual was split, he was alienated from his true (social) nature and thus from his own self.

21 Mueller, “Elements,” p. 148. 22 Regarding Kant, see Krieger, Leonard, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 86‒125. Hegel quoted in ibid., p. 160.

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Like people, states vied with each other and were moved by “a powerful striving for the possession of importance and splendor.” This was natural. Natural, too, was the chief means they chose to satisfy this desire—war. Wars were “great institutions for the refinement of the idea” and reflected the “inner destiny of the human race.”23 In war the individuality of the state was revealed most forcefully, it showed itself as a totality, while peace fostered discord and undermined its unity. (See Box 3.3). German Romanticism was far more than a school of thought: it was a form of consciousness, an existential orientation, a vision of reality which could hardly be described as Marx would have it, namely, a conscious awareness of what is. Provoked by the experiences of its creators, the Romantic vision helped them to cope with these experiences, transforming reality in the process. In the late eighteenth century Romantic mentality with the totalitarian aspiration at its core was contained within a narrow intellectual circle, but Romanticism happened to be the mold of German nationalism, and when, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, this emerged, totalitarianism became a political force. It was Italian nationalism as imagined by Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini that was responsible for its transformation into a political ideology. The inventor of the term “totalitarianism,” Giovanni Amendola, educated as a philosopher, recognized the German roots of Mussolini’s position, of which he was critical, and called it so (in 1923) to stress the anti-­liberal implications of the Fascist agenda. But the neologism was eagerly embraced by Fascist ideologues. They used it to characterize both their spirit and the ideal Fascist state, and proudly admitted that their aspiration was for “total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals.”24 When Mussolini, expressing his aspiration to leave no sphere of life outside the state, insisted on harnessing every human activity to its political needs and earnestly declared: “We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula ‘chess for the sake of chess’, like the formula ‘art for art’s sake’. We must organize shock-­brigades of chess-­players, and begin immediate realization of a

23 Mueller, “Elements,” pp. 160, 159, 158. 24 Payne, S.G.,  Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), p. 73.

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Five-­Year Plan for chess,”25 it is likely that he had in mind the leader of the Russian Revolution, Lenin, whom he greatly admired. But his ideas (just like Lenin’s ideas, for that matter) were taken straight out of the rhapsodic cogitations of Adam Mueller, quoted above. Originally articulated as the desire for the absolute identity of individuality and totality in the work of German Romantics and idealist philosophers, totalitarianism, as a philosophy, ideology or sentiment, is, at its root, a psychological reaction to the nationalism, modernity, and democracy which emphasize individual freedom. It is the radical and, in its psychological nature, “reactionary” form of modern collectivism. Modern collectivism can also be historical: an expression of cultural traditions, rather than a psychological reaction. Collectivist traditions may reinforce totalitarian reaction and likely contribute to its ­institutionalization. Some collectivistic nationalisms, and “social” or ­“popular” democracies which they commonly foster, are clearly grounded in both. However, even institutionalization of totalitarianism is possible in the absence of collectivistic traditions, while structurally uncrystallized totalitarianism is an important social current within every individualistic society and liberal democracy. In its essence, the totalitarian reaction is a reaction, within the conditions of a secular egalitarian society, against the idea of the individual as an autonomous actor. This implies the denial of the ideal of liberty (as unnatural and anti-­social): the rejection of individual freedom and insistence on the subjugation of the individual to the collective as a matter of principle not only in overt behavior but also and especially in thought and feeling. Remarkably, theories of totalitarianism do not take account of this. Totalitarianism became an object of academic discussion rather late—about three decades after the invention of the moniker in 1923, for social scientists and political theorists showed no interest in the phenomenon until the Cold War. When this at last happened, they took Mussolini at his word, accepting his aspiration for fait accompli and treating totalitarianism as a description of an actual political community. (It should be noted that they were not solely responsible for this mistake: they followed the lead of Winston Churchill, who used “totalitarianism” in his 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech to describe the Soviet regime, though in his case this was done with a clearly ideological purpose in mind.) Among social scientists, political theorists, 25 Quoted in Conquest, R., The Great Terror: A Reassessment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 249.

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BOX 3.3  NATIONALISM AND VIOLENCE Among other differences which can be attributed to the type of nationalism are the differential propensities of different nations to engage in aggressive warfare, and the likelihood of brutality in the treatment of adversary populations (in particular, noncombatants) while engaging in war. These propensities can be outlined in two sets of propositions. First, collectivistic nationalisms are more likely to engage in aggressive warfare than individualistic nationalisms for several reasons. Individualistic nationalisms are not, in principle, particularistic, for they are based on the universalistic principle of the moral primacy of the individual. This applies to any individual, whether or not he or she belongs to the national community, and, as a result, the borderline between “us” and “them” is frequently blurred. One’s nation is not perceived as an animate being which can be offended and nurture grievances, and neither are other nations regarded as collective individuals harboring malicious intentions and capable of inflicting insults. The culprits and the victims in every conflict are specified, and sympathies and antipathies change with the issues and points of view. Moreover, individualistic nationalisms are by definition pluralisms, which implies that at any point in time there exists a plurality of opinions in regard to what constitutes the good of the nation. For this reason, it is relatively difficult, in individualistic nations, to achieve a consensus necessary for mobilization of the population for war; it is especially difficult in the case of aggressive war, when no direct threat from the prospective enemy is perceived by the national population. Collectivistic nationalisms, by contrast, are forms of particularism, whether perceived in geopolitical, cultural (in the sense of acquired culture), or presumably inherent, ethnic terms. The borderline between “us” and “them” is relatively clear, and the nation is essentially a consensual, rather than conflictual, pluralistic society. Both these qualities facilitate mobilization, and both are related to a characteristic of the process of the emergence of collectivistic nationalisms. In distinction to individualistic nationalisms which are articulated by upwardly mobile, successful, and confident groups (as happened in England and later in the

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United States), often with a broad social base, collectivistic nationalisms are articulated by small elite groups. These either seek to protect their threatened status (as did the  nobilities in France and Russia in the eighteenth century, the lesser nobility in Romania in the nineteenth century, or the Sunni Arab elite in Iraq in the 1920s) or are frustrated in their efforts to improve it (as was the small educated middle class in late eighteenth-­century Germany). Such status-­anxious elites define their community—the sphere of their potential influence and membership/leadership, which may be political, linguistic, religious, racial, or what not—as a nation, and tend to present their grievances as the grievances of the nation, and themselves as the representatives of the nation. To achieve the solidarity of this larger population, made of diverse strands, they tend (though not invariably) to blame their misfortunes not on agencies within the nation, whom they would as a result alienate, but on those outside it. If they do blame internal elements, they define these as agents acting on behalf of or in collusion with hostile foreigners. Thus, from their perspective, the nation is from the start united in common hatred. The second set of propositions addresses conduct while in conflict. During war, ethnic nationalism is more conducive to brutality in relation to the enemy population than civic nationalism. This is so because civic nationalism, even when particularistic, still treats humanity as one, fundamentally homogeneous entity. Foreigners are not fellow nationals, but they are still fellow men, and with some effort on their part, it is assumed, they may even become fellow nationals. In ethnic nationalisms, by contrast, the borderline between “us” and “them” is in principle impermeable. Nationality is defined as an inherent trait, and nations are seen in effect as separate species. Foreigners are no longer fellow men in the same sense, and there is no moral imperative to treat them as one would one’s fellow nationals (in the same way as there are no imperatives to treat other animal species as fellow men). The very definitions of ethnic nations presuppose a double standard of moral (humane, decent, and so on) conduct. The tendency to “demonize” the enemy population, which appears to underlie “crimes against humanity,” is a built-­in part of ethnic nationalism, for within the framework of such nationalism enemy populations are not necessarily defined as humanity to begin with.

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This tendency of “demonization” is related to the prominence of ressentiment in the formation of ethnic nationalisms; the latter often inspires and always reinforces the former. The object of ressentiment, at the outset invariably perceived as superior (were it not, there would be no reason to insist on equality with it), and therefore seen as a model, comes to be defined as the anti-­ model once the degree of the actual inequality between it and the given ethnic nation is realized. In the minds of the spokesmen and architects of that nation, this object then becomes the incarnation of evil, which is incorrigible because it also is defined in terms of inherent traits, and therefore represents an eternal enemy. According to the characteristic psychologic of ethnic nationalisms, the evil other (whoever that may be) is always harboring malicious intentions, ready to strike against the innocent nation at an opportune moment. For this reason, ressentiment-­ based nations tend to feel threatened and to become a­ ggressive— both to preempt perceived threats of aggression against them and because the evil nature of the adversary justifies aggression (even if no immediate threats are perceived) at the same time as it justifies brutality in relation to the enemy population. These propositions, it should be stressed, are statements of probabilities. Whether or not nations which are likely to become aggressive or brutal actually become so depends on international circumstances and opportunities. (For more, see Greenfeld and Chirot, “Nationalism and Aggression,” Theory and Society, 23:1.)

and those whom they advised thereafter totalitarianism was commonly associated with the intrusive, centralized state, controlling every aspect of its citizens’ lives, its paradigmatic examples in history being the Nazi regime in Germany (very often referred to as “fascism”) and the Soviet one in Russia. Naturally, this discussion focused on the means by which the centralized state achieved such total control, emphasizing instruments of state terror that distinguished the “totalitarian” political apparatus most sharply from the liberal democratic one, concentration and death camps in Nazi Germany and labor camps in the Soviet Union. It was assumed that total control (that is, of action and thought in all spheres of life) of the entire population was the intention behind these camps, and that they were indeed successful in achieving this goal, assuring not simply compliance but whole-­hearted, willing participation of the masses of the people in the totalitarian project.

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By the time expert theories of totalitarianism were developed, Nazi Germany was defeated and the Soviet Union entering the period of Khruschev’s “thaw,” which put an end to the terror of Stalin’s time, and swiftly moving into Brezhnev’s “stagnation.” The evidence coming from both Germany and the Soviet Union strongly suggested that the vast majority of both populations, unaffected by the camps, was not terrorized by their existence but believed that they existed for the greater good, cooperated with the regime only when this was in one’s personal interest, found numerous ways of going around its dictates when it was not, and, in general, was politically unengaged—namely, that the paradigmatic totalitarian states, however centralized and terrorist, were not totalitarian (or at least extremely unsuccessful in their totalitarian aspiration). This led to a widespread confusion, inspiring the social theorist Daniel Bell to quip that “totalitarianism” was a concept in search of reality.26 Still, Wikipedia opens its entry on totalitarianism with a definition: “Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total control over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.”27 All too often our tendency to reify the metaphor of “social structure” interferes with our ability to understand deep-­rooted ways of thinking and acting among us and hides from us their implications.

Marxism It is a revealing fact that Benito Mussolini, whose nationalist credentials and exertions need no discussion, began as a zealous Socialist, more ardently devoted to the idea of the proletarian revolution (so it was believed in socialist circles) than Rosa Luxemburg or Lenin, a comparison which should speak for itself. His revolutionary ardor was not the only score on which, in the eyes of the like-­minded, Mussolini compared well with Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. The future Duce could be considered “the first Communist in Europe in that he forced the reformists [those who believed that the nation was the proper framework for socialist activity and insisted on the need to recognize and defer to national sentiment] out of the party.”28 Not only does 26 Quoted in Baehr, Peter, p. 2345 in “Totalitarianism,” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, pp. 2342–2348. 27 Retrieved on June 13, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism. 28 Talmon, J., Myth of the Nation and Vision of Revolution (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1991), p. 457.

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this confirm the politically-­indifferent nature of socialism, its equal consistency with movements on the left of the political spectrum, as well as on the right, also revealed by the striking similarities between the two paradigmatic cases of totalitarianism, National Socialism in Germany and ostensibly internationalist communism of the Russian Soviet Empire, which was, according to Lenin, socialism at a more advanced stage of economic development.29 In addition, however, the aforementioned fact reveals the very close connection between socialism and nationalism. This text has already pointed to this connection in passing. Socialism is the modern form of collectivism, an inclusive collectivism, made possible by nationalism. The transformation of nationalism into the most familiar form of socialism around the world, Marxism, demonstrates this and offers us another opportunity to stress the creative contribution of ressentiment and German collectivistic and ethnic nationalism, specifically, to modern political ideologies. The deep ressentiment of the Romantics toward the Enlightenment in its “nationalized” form first focused on France, and later on England and the West as a whole. Owing to the circumstances of its ­development, German nationalism from its earliest days in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century also had strong racist and specifically anti-­Semitic connotations. Thus, from the very ­beginning, the Jews—defined as a separate race, rather than a part of the German nation—whose emancipation was attempted by the French and who were therefore seen as the beneficiaries of German humiliation, came to personify Western liberalism, individualism, and capitalism. Their allegedly vile nature, in accordance with the principles of romantic philosophy, was seen as a reflection of their blood (or biological ­constitution), not religion, and thus there was no hope that they would ever change for the better. To stress the racial, rather than religious, nature of German anti-Jewish sentiment, a new German word was invented—Antisemitismus. Marxism, to begin with, was a metamorphosed German nationalism. The inspiration for it, at least in part, was the uncomfortable, the untenable situation of the young Karl Marx, who was a German 29 Communism in the USSR was an aspiration, not a reality: the Soviet Union was in the process of building communism. It would become a reality, when the transitional socialist principle of “from everyone, according to one’s abilities, to everyone according to one’s labor” would be replaced by the earthly paradise, demanding “from everyone, according to one’s abilities, [while giving] to everyone according to one’s needs.”

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nationalist, in the sense that his thinking was shaped by (his consciousness was) German Romantic nationalism, and a Jew at the same time. He clearly internalized the sense (core to German national consciousness) of inferiority vis-­à-­vis, and resentment against, the West—in his ­phrasing, the “modern” or “advanced” nations of France and England. And, like other Germans of his generation, he accepted the paradox that the Jews, though an “Asiatic folk,” alien to Europe, were the personification of the West and all the evil with which the latter was associated. A baptized Jew himself, he nevertheless also excluded Jews from the national communities in which they resided and ascribed to them their own separate nationality quite independent of their religious affiliation, for, in the framework of German nationalism, neither baptism nor atheism affected it. Racist anti-­Semitism made being German patriots and sharing in the values of German nationalism psychologically very problematic for Jews. Marx’s theory of history— the philosophy underlying Marxist socialist ideology—while keeping intact the underlying ideas of German nationalism (specifically its Manichaean vision and its ideas of good and evil with their respective carriers), represented it in the form which solved—or rather eliminated—the Jewish problem. Nations were replaced by classes. National rivalry was economized and represented as the class struggle between the proletariat and Capital. But the incarnation of Capital— the evil in the Marxist scheme—remained the West, and it was the West (with all its riches, power, and especially pretended liberties that made it feel superior to the rest of the world) that was doomed, while the bright future belonged to the proletariat, which whatever else it was, was the anti-­West. In the century and a half that followed the birth of German nationalism, nothing had affected so many people so deeply as did two German traditions, one of the left and one of the right: Marxism and the Volkish tradition which culminated in National Socialism. The supposition that an internationalist doctrine, conceived by a Jew and carried on by scores and scores of other Jews, which called on proletarians of all countries to unite, may have something in common with that most horrible variety of militant and xenophobic nationalism, for which anti-­Semitism was the driving passion, seems utterly preposterous. Yet the two are close kin: they come from the same parentage and are products of the same upbringing. National Socialism descended from the Romantic nationalism of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century in a direct line. It

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added little to the already existing body of thought, but sharpened, articulated, brought into focus, and strengthened several central ­ tendencies in it. It tended to represent modern Western reality in essentially economic, rather than political and cultural, terms (aspects of politics and culture being seen as reflections of the unnatural economic structure), and chose capitalism as the specific target of its attack on Western society. It represented the conflict between values (those of the West it opposed and the ones it opposed to them) which were embodied in two antagonistic economies, Western capitalism and German socialism, as a reflection of a still deeper racial antagonism. It made the Jews its paramount enemy, anti-­Semitism its principal motive, and liberation of the world from the Jews its ultimate goal. And, finally, it evoked the authority of science and brought science to bear upon and support the view of social reality it presented, as well as the moral message it derived from this presentation. Racism and specifically anti-­Semitism were defined as disinterested, objective positions—imposed on one by stubborn, material reality—and anyone subscribing to these positions was absolved of all personal responsibility. Otherwise National Socialism preserved the Romantic matrix intact. In Marxism, too, capitalism became the essential aspect of the evil modern reality. Its conclusions, too, were presented as scientific. It, too, retained the perspective and remained faithful to the aspirations of Romantic nationalism. And though it was neither racist nor explicitly anti-­Semitic, racist anti-­Semitism was the central source of inspiration for it. The idea that Jews, like the Western world as a whole, were revoltingly materialistic, worshipping and representing the power of money, was popular among German intellectuals since the early nineteenth century. Long a cultural trope and going back to the anti-­Jewish polemic of fathers of the Church, it acquired in modern Germany a particular respectability. A philosopher, Professor Fries of Heidelberg, for example, in 1816 published a best-­selling treatise “On the Menace of the Jews to the Welfare and Character of the German,” in which, among other things, he claimed: “Jews are a social pest which owes its rapid spread to money and is accompanied by misery, tyranny, and taxes.” The composer Richard Wagner, piqued by the successes of Felix Mendelssohn, repeated in 1850: “The Jew in truth is already more than emancipated: he rules, and will rule, as long as Money remains the

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power before which all our doings and our dealings lose their force.”30 The unguarded reference to Jewish emancipation indicated that Jews in Germany were still subject to medieval legal restrictions (that is, comprehensive discrimination on religious grounds), which, in the light of the egalitarianism, the sine qua non of the national consciousness, reflected badly on Germany’s nationalist credentials. German nationalists’ response to this was: but when they convert, these legal restrictions are lifted and look: Jews rise in every sphere of life, ergo— they, not German laws, are the problem. The first essay Karl Marx wrote was the young man’s contribution to this debate. It was an exemplary expression of German anti-­Semitic stereotype, identifying Jews with the soulless and inhuman form of society, the generalized money principle—capitalism, and attributing the presumed Jewish reverence for money to their inner nature, race, rather than religion. The symbolic substitution of the Jews for the West is transparently clear in the “Essay on the Jewish Question.” Marx’s opinion of the Jewish religion—“contempt for theory, for art, for history, and for man as an end in himself”—which he considered to be the “real, conscious standpoint and the virtue of the man of money,” is exactly the way Romantic nationalists pictured what for them represented “the West.” Seeking the secret of Judaism “in the real Jew,” materialistic Romantic that he was, Marx discerned in Jews “a universal antisocial element of the present time.” “What is the profane basis of Judaism?” he asked and answered: “Practical need, self-­interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money.”31 Marx could not repeat this often enough: “Money is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist. . .The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew.” Thus, the emancipation of the Jews was actually the emancipation of the world from Jews, and in fact, claimed Marx, “the Jew has already emancipated himself in the Jewish manner,” for thanks to their financial power, Jews decided “the destiny of Europe.”32 Having demonstrated that he was as principled an anti-­Semite as the next German nationalist and, to his own satisfaction, at least, 30 Fries quoted in Lowenthal, M., The Jews of Germany (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1939), pp. 231‒232; Wagner in Snyder, L., German Nationalism (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1952), p. 162. 31 Tucker, R.C. (ed.), The Marx–Engels Reader, 2nd edition (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 26‒52. 32 Ibid.

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­ issociated himself from Jews and Judaism, Marx proceeded to write d his second essay, “Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” This essay is one of the finest examples of the archetypal Romantic nationalist argument. It starts with what was indeed the starting point of Romantic nationalism: comparison of Germany with the West and the realization that it is unfavorable: If one were to begin with the status quo itself in Germany, even in the most appropriate way, i.e., negatively, the result would still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our political present is already a dusty past in the historical lumber room of modern nations. If I negate the German situation of 1843 I have, according to French chronology, hardly reached the year 1789, and still less the vital center of the present day.33

Marx declares war upon the state of affairs in Germany, because “this state of affairs is beneath the level of history.” In order to give the nation courage to revolt against and change this state of affairs, he wants to make it terrified of itself and deny it an instant of illusion and resignation. Germany, says Marx, will not change only for itself: “Even for the modern nations, this struggle against the limited character of the German status quo does not lack interest. . . for the German status quo is the open consummation of the ancien régime, and the ancien régime is the hidden defect of the modern state.” Germany would be in effect curing the defect of other, modern nations, at the vital center of the present day—France and England. German inferiority, it turns out, is actually an advantage. Especially if compared to some others, Germany is not so bad, and its present backwardness contains the guarantee of its future greatness. This turn of thought also was an element of the archetypal Romantic nationalist argument, present already in Pietism (which, compelled to seek salvation in misery, glorified misery as a necessary path to salvation). Marx’s argument in this Pietist vein also reflected, alien to Pietism, but characteristic of Romantic nationalism, pride in the intellect and the tendency to see in German letters the essence of the nation. Marx wrote: If the whole of German development were at the level of German political development, a German could have no greater part in contemporary prob33 All the quotations below from the essay are from the text in Tucker, The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 53‒65.

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lems than can a Russian. . .. Fortunately, we Germans are not Scythians. Just as the nations of the ancient world lived their prehistory in the imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have lived our post-­history in thought, in philosophy. We are the philosophical contemporaries of the present day without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history. . .. The German philosophy of right and of the state is the only German history which is al pari with the official modern times.

German speculative philosophy of right, says Marx, was raised to the level of science. Its criticism, also science, would be both an extremely significant development in philosophy and a critical analysis of the modern (not German) state and the reality connected with it. Why should one criticize this modern reality? Because it is fundamentally evil, much more so than the present German reality. The modern state, says Marx, which for Germany remains in the beyond, “leaves out of account the real man, or only satisfies the whole man in an illusory way.” Germany compares unfavorably with France and England, but the question for it, Marx writes, is not whether it can catch up with these modern nations. These nations are corrupt, they disregard the real man, and their social flesh is degenerate. The question for Germany is: “Can Germany attain a practical activity a la hauteur des principes; that is to say, a revolution which will raise it not only to the official level of the modern nations, but to the human level which will be the immediate future of these nations?” Marx’s answer to this question is: Yes, it can. As it did in the Reformation, so it will lead the world again on its road to the revolutionary transformation of society. It has what other nations lack—philosophy developed into science. For a revolution to take place, however, there must exist a mass to carry through the prescriptions of this philosophy. “A class must be formed,” says Marx, which will fight not for the partial interests and benefits, as did revolutionary classes in advanced nations, but for the complete emancipation of man. This class is the proletariat. It is only beginning to form itself in Germany, but since partially revolutionary classes cannot exist in Germany anyway, it will surely be formed in the nearest future. And “once the lightning of thought [German philosophy] has penetrated deeply into this virgin soil of the people [German proletariat], the Germans will emancipate themselves and become men. . . In Germany no type of enslavement can be abolished unless all enslavement is destroyed. The emancipation of Germany will

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be an e­ mancipation of man.” Germany, seemingly inferior to France and England, will prove the truly superior nation. At the time of Marx’s early adulthood nationalism had already acquired the character of a deeply embedded cognitive blueprint, providing the basis for ideas in most diverse areas. Marx internalized this blueprint—shared in it fully. He accepted it unreflectively, without a shade of the skeptical “suspension of commitment.” No element in this perspective was for him as much as questionable; this was the very prism through which he to the end of his life saw and related to the world. In their spirit Marx’s early writings are identical to expressions of German nationalism of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century, informed by Romanticism and ressentiment against the West. The differences that exist between these writings and those of the Romantics proper amount to no more than differences of terminology. The ideal society may be called “communism” and “socialism” by Marx and “Kingdom of God on Earth” by Schlegel, but both refer to the totalitarian condition of wholeness, in which the individual is dissolved in the community, at last transcending “human self-­alienation.” Beginning with the 1844 Manuscripts, the draft of Marx’s third (unrealized) attempt to appear in print, on which he worked in ­ Paris, these terminological idiosyncrasies were developed to eventually become major propositions of the Marxist theory, which on the face of it had little in common with Romanticism and the explicitly nationalistic (or Volkish) varieties of German political thought. In the “Essay on the Jewish Question,” Marx tried to take care of the problem the racist and emphatically anti-­Semitic character of mainstream German nationalism created for a German patriot of Jewish descent. For a short while he seemed to be satisfied with the result, in his very next essay saying, with a sense of liberation, “We Germans.” But his passionate rhetoric appeared convincing to hardly anyone but ­himself: it was not enough to renounce one’s Jewishness to be accepted as a German. Marx’s experience in the expatriate community in Paris demonstrated this clearly; he had to realize that the intellectual feat he performed in the Essay could not be entirely effective, and that he never would become a real German in the eyes of those he considered to be real Germans. Thus anti-­Semitism made it impossible for Marx to remain faithful to the letter of Romantic nationalism. But through an ingenious turn of

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thought he succeeded in remaining faithful to its spirit, and retained the rest of its fundamental beliefs and aspirations without having to subscribe publicly to the position which—at least in the eyes of the others—would define him as an alien, inferior being, excluded from participation in the victorious march of the superior race destined for glory. He ensured his own participation and escaped racism. This was achieved by the substitution of “class” for “nation.” In Marxism classes took on all the characteristics of the Romantic nations. It is classes for Marx that are the actors of history; classes, not men, are the real individualities. Men are subsumed under classes; they are nothing but class members in the biological, rather than sociological, sense of the word. The characters, abilities, behavior, and views of men are but reflections of the dispositions of classes, as they are of nations in the thought of German patriots of the period. Like nations (for instance, in Fichte), classes in Marxist theory are divided into partial and pan-­human. The view of the proletariat as the universal class, in distinction from all other classes, reflects the idea of Germany as the pan-­human nation in distinction from all other nations. Most other elements of the Romantic nationalist Weltanschauung were retained in Marxism as well. Though it was Capital now, and not particular societies, which was evil personified, its characteristics were unmistakably the characteristics ascribed to the advanced, Western nations, and one therefore was justified in resenting these nations, for they were the embodiment or expression of Capital (in much the same way, one must note, in which Jews were its racial embodiment and expression within National Socialism). The West was still seen as the doomed embodiment of evil; the role of the savior of mankind was to be played by the anti-­West. As a result of the metamorphosis of nation into class, this vision, inherent in German nationalism, gained a source of universal appeal. While in its absence each nation vexed by the superiority of the West would have to express its ressentiment in its own terms, with the role of the anti-­model specified and that of the savior of humanity performed for Germans by Germany, for Russians by Russia, for Arabs by (an or pan-­) Arab nation and so on, and while the battles fought by each nation and the enemies against which it fought were different in every case, the new Marxist version of German nationalism was acceptable to all nationalities struggling with the realization of their inferiority; in this sense it was indeed international.

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In addition, Marxism had the form of an economic theory. Like the racism of the late nineteenth century, it ostensibly represented a scientific, objective, and therefore non-­ethical position. To subscribe to it was no longer a question of moral choice, or of choice in general. Those who were willing to subscribe to it were absolved from moral responsibility. Their sympathies and antipathies were now justified by science. They were doing what they wanted to do, but now they knew that they had to do this. In a way, they simply followed orders. Here they stood and they could do no other. They were free—of doubts and pangs of consciousness—for this was a state of recognized necessity. Of course, in the conditions of nineteenth-­century Germany, there was a choice to be made; it was a choice between two conflicting ­“scientific” doctrines. Since, whatever differences there were between them, their way of doing science and the notions as to what constituted it were pretty similar—in accordance with the Romantic redefinition of scientific pursuit, both had little regard for facts and concentrated on the exploration of reality beyond the apparent—this was a particularly difficult choice to make. It is hardly a wonder that in the end it was the circumstances of one’s material existence (it should be granted, more often racial than economic) that determined one’s consciousness, and not the scientific qualifications of either of the two theories. In Germany, as elsewhere, Jews, throughout the nineteenth century humiliated and discriminated against legally or illegally everywhere in traditionally Christian societies, even those transforming or already transformed into civic nations (for prejudices die hard), tended disproportionally in the direction of Marxism. It prophesied the disappearance of nations and promised to deliver them from a humiliating and oppressive identity (the dignity capital of which was very low). In Russia, Trotsky, when asked whether he would define himself as a Russian or a Jew, is reported to have replied, revealingly: “Neither. I am a Socialist.” Jews were likely to be firm and sincere internationalists and to see the transformation of the world, rather than of any particular nation, as the ultimate and truly significant goal of their activity. But on many central issues an admirable agreement existed between German Marxists and representatives of Volkish ideology who were direct ancestors of National Socialism. Since German nationalism was inherently socialist, the number of socialist nationalists was from the start significant and included some of the leaders of the German anti-­

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Semitic movement. Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the Antisemitenliga and the inventor of the term “anti-­Semitism,” declared that “anti-­ Semitism is a Socialist movement, only in nobler and purer form than Social Democracy.” (Indeed, in the light of Marx’s pronouncements in the essay “On the Jewish Question,” such an assertion did sound rather plausible.) Marxists doubted the intellectual quality of their alleged kin, but recognized the kinship. Anti-­Semitism, they admitted, was indeed socialism, but “of the dumb” (der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls). German socialists agreed that insofar as anti-­Semitism was anti-­ capitalist, which it emphatically was, it represented a “step forward in historico-­political development” and compared well with liberalism, which was not anti-­capitalist.

4

Nationalism and modern economy

The source of our concept “capitalism” was one of the earliest direct taxes on wealth, introduced in Holland in 1585, to finance the Revolt of the United Provinces of the Netherlands against Spain. Capital meant “wealth” in Dutch and the tax, which was in fact a forced loan affecting the affluent, was named capitale impositie. In 1621 special registers, drawn up for the purpose of levying extraordinary property taxes, created a category of those whose taxable property amounted to more than two thousand guilders; they were referred to as ­“capitalists”—­capitalisten. Four years later another tax category was added, “semi-­capitalists,” or halve capitalisten, whose worth was from one thousand to two ­thousand guilders. Those who had less were exempt from taxes of these kinds; in the vocabulary of the time and place, they were not capitalists at all. “Capitalists” thus meant “wealthy,” “rich,” while “poor,” by ­inversion, meant “not capitalists.” In other countries, too, the word “capitalist” was for a while used in this neutral descriptive sense of an affluent person, but after the French Revolution it acquired a highly charged derogatory meaning. In France of the ancien régime, wealth that was earned, rather than inherited with a noble title of long derivation, was treated with contempt. As a result, from the time that it became possible to buy titles, successful merchants tended to exchange their wealth for them as soon as they had enough money. Since the seventeenth century, sale of titles became a lively commerce: Louis XIV in particular using it as a reliable source of state finance, because the demand was virtually inexhaustible. These titles served as “soap for scum,” supposed to eliminate the offensive odors of common birth. They rarely succeeded to do so, instead undermining the exclusivity of the titled nobility. Aristocrats were miffed and their contempt for new (earned) money turned into hatred. The brunt of this sentiment before the Revolution was born by tax-­farmers, whose office has been long resented among the people. Elite intellectuals articulated and fueled this popular hostility. Tax-­ farmers were commonly labeled “those public bloodsuckers” and by

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definition considered enemies of the people, from whom they were “stealing.” Louis-­Sebastien Mercier, in Tableau de Paris, extended this stereotype to the entire business stratum, calling them all “capitalists.” In 1804, a dictionary, L’improvisateur Français, credited Mercier with the invention of the word and relied on his text for a definition. “Capitalisme,” it stated, is a word: known only in Paris, and it describes a monster of wealth who has none but monetary affections [des affections métalliques]. When people talk about land taxation the capitalist jeers at them: he has not an inch of land, so how can he be taxed? Like the Arabs of the desert who, having robbed a passing caravan, would bury their loot, out of fear of being robbed in their turn by other brigands, so our capitalists hide away our money.1

The idea of a capitalist as one—not a landowner—exclusively moved by love of money, a robber, hiding away money that does not belong to him, who refuses to pay his fair share of public expense, received additional encouragement from the Anglophobia of the revolutionary period, which suggested that England was a capitalist nation, that capitalism (the spirit of greedy robbers) ruled across the channel. It fell to Marx to popularize this essentially political notion around the world. In Britain, in the meantime, and in the United States, “capitalist” stood for a person with money to invest, and “capitalism” for an economic system that encouraged investment. In this sense, the economic principle of capitalism was indeed, in the words of Max Weber, “profit, and forever renewed profit,” that is, a constant orientation to the accumulation of wealth, or growth, which qualitatively distinguished it from all other economic systems. The capitalist economy, in other words, was a completely new, modern, economy.2 Any reorientation of the activity organizing the lives of millions would pique the curiosity of an empirical social scientist. But the capitalist economic system, dramatically different from all the others, in a­ ddition,  1 L’improvisateur Français (Paris: chez Goujon Fils, an XII, 1804), vol. III‒IV, pp. 45‒46.   2 The formulation by Karl Marx, in Capital, “Money > Commodity > More Money,” was consistent both with the factual description of modern economic orientation and the moral (political) condemnation of the practice. Capitalism was a political problem for Marx, but it was not an intellectual puzzle. The capitalist economy, for him, was an expected stage of the natural evolution of human history, set in motion by the division of labor in the sexual act, it required no explanation. For Weber, in contrast, the problem was intellectual.

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seemed to represent an institutionalization of irrationality. The orientation of the activity of millions of men and women to wealth and ever increasing wealth as an end stands on its head the central principle of rational behavior: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber stressed the fundamental irrationality of the capitalist economy. “The summum bonum of [capitalism],” he wrote: the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, . . . is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. . .. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitively a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence.3

Moreover, in the West, where capitalist economies first developed, this absolutely irrational orientation became the foundation of what Weber called “rationalization,” namely, the cognitive ordering of society and the articulation of its perceived first principles, capitalist economy becoming the hallmark and the base layer of rational, ­“scientific,” modern society, its political structures, specifically, reflecting it. Economic behavior came to be the prime example of rational action, economic actors, rational actors by definition; pursuit of happiness was identified with the ceaseless pursuit of wealth. This was in fact unnatural. How could this happen? How this view gained ascendancy and how the economic sphere came to occupy such a central place in our thinking and experience are questions very rarely raised. Economists and economic historians discuss endlessly the reasons for the relative prosperity of nations, for their success or failure in the industrial race, but they do not ask why such a race exists at all and why nations should want to enter it. This they regard as self-­evident. But there is nothing self-­evident about it. In most historical societies, economic activities held the place occupied by classes which participated in them—the bottom of the social ladder and value hierarchy. They did not connote status and therefore did not attract talent. Prosperity was better than destitution, to be sure, but  3 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), p. 53.

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it rarely stood alone as a goal in life, and was far from being equated with happiness. In fact, it was often seen as an obstacle: Saint Matthew suggested that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” In our time this has obviously changed. Not to notice this colossal change, one must be boxed in this view—a linear and deterministic, “natural evolution” view of history, assuming a succession of stages and uniform systemic needs corresponding to them, and oblivious to the empirical differences between cultures and the contingent nature of the historical process. The economistic view emerged when the historically exceptional inclination for ever-­increasing gain, characteristic of certain individuals in societies which regarded it at best with suspicion, became defined, on the level of the individual, as rational self-­interest, constitutive of man’s very nature and, on the level of society, as common good and paramount collective interest. There occurred a shift of societal attitudes in regard to the acquisitive drive—traditionally despised as “greed”—which, renamed as “industriousness,” “business acumen,” or, in our day, “competitiveness,” was transformed from a sin to be avoided at all costs, for it could cost one salvation, into a virtue to be admired and cultivated. It is this shift that Weber attempted to explain in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and to which the phrase “the spirit of capitalism” referred. In contrast to the institutionalization of rational or even a-­rational (indifferent as to rationality, but not systematically irrational) ways of thinking and acting, which one could relate to some natural individual interest, the institutionalization of capitalism could only be accounted for by the emergence of a new system of values that would elevate the accumulation of wealth into a good in its own right (not a means for the achievement of another good, such as life, which in this case could not be done, since life was subordinated to the pursuit of wealth) and/or attach it directly to some new supreme (self-­standing) good. Weber’s thesis that this new supreme good was the certitude of ­salvation—of which the Protestant (Calvinist) dogma of predestination deprived its believers, making the search after it a psychological imperative—was until recently the only explanation offered for the historic reorientation of economic action from subsistence to growth and thus the emergence of capitalism. What breathed the capitalist spirit into economic activity, reorienting it to growth, Weber claimed, was Protestantism which brought with it a new system of ethical standards.

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A new ethical system (new ways of thinking) was, obviously, necessary to change the motivations of a vast number of people and as a result their ways of acting. In this regard, Weber’s argument remains correct. But, while his general reasoning (that such a momentous change in motivations could only be explained by a new system of social values) could not be refuted, Weber’s thesis soon after its publication was confronted with contradictory evidence. His claim that this ethical system was Calvinist Protestantism, among other difficulties, could not account for the singularity of the English case, the persistence of subsistence orientation in the Calvinist Netherlands, and the rapid development of economies of sustained growth later in several Catholic and Lutheran countries, and therefore was wrong. Weber’s error was to credit Protestantism with creating the spirit of capitalism: it has been proven that Protestant theologians were at least as opposed to the pursuit of profit as their Catholic predecessors and opponents on the other side of the religious divide. Instead, the source of “the spirit of capitalism” was the new secular form of collective ­consciousness: nationalism. Nationalism was responsible for the reorientation of ­ modern economic action and thus caused (within the appropriate ­conditions, to be sure) the modern economy. (See Box 4.1.) Quite aside from its ubiquitous presence in the age of economic growth, several factors recommend nationalism to the attention of a student of modern economy. To start, it has the merit of fitting in perfectly in terms of the chronology of “the industrial revolution” broadly defined, and, in particular, allows one to account for the dazzling and perplexing case of Britain. It is agreed that the first “take-­off into self-­ sustained growth” (to use the term coined by W.W. Rostow) happened there, but this does not make sense in the framework of the “­ natural evolution” theory in economics and economic history, which, in agreement with historical materialism, presupposes that such take-­off is implicit in the historical process itself, just like blooming of flowers in spring is implicit in the yearly life-­cycle of a particular habitat. For it is also agreed that Britain was not at all the habitat for leading the way. On the threshold of its economic supremacy, Britain (or, at the time, rather, England) was not the most advanced economy in Europe. From the point of view of objective capacity (the buildup of preconditions for take-­off), as late as the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch Republic, France, Germany, Spain, or Italy might have been better positioned to assume the role that fell to Britain. The fact that relatively backward England, and not the equally Calvinist Dutch Republic, was to accomplish the breakthrough and achieve lasting dominance in

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BOX 4.1  “NATURAL EVOLUTION” THEORIES OF NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC GROWTH Most theories of nationalism explain it as a function of the capitalist economy. The innate need of the economy to grow, goes the main argument, necessitates free labor (that is, labor able to move from sector to sector depending on the requirements of the market), and so calls into being the unifying nation-­state, whose nationalist ideology and policies obediently create such labor. The economic processes, such as industrialization, commercialization, the growth of capitalism, are seen as fundamental and everything else—social relations, political institutions, and culture, that is, ways of thinking, as secondary, reflective, or at the least dependent on these fundamental processes. On the principle that all secondary things are created equal but some are nevertheless more secondary than others, culture, as a rule, is believed to be farthest removed from the material objectivity of economics, and therefore the least important. As an epiphenomenon, culture represents a projection of economic development in the mind, something like a shadow cast by an architectural structure—with definite forms of culture corresponding to each stage of economic progress, or, alternatively, called forth as functional requirements of such stages by the systemic needs of each economic system to facilitate the realization of their economic potential. Nationalism, being essentially a matter of culture, and corresponding chronologically to the development of capitalism and industrialization, is therefore seen as either a reflection or a functional prerequisite of economic modernization. Put crudely, it is believed to be caused by capitalism and industrialization (see Gellner, 1983; Anderson, 1983). This argument is grounded in economic determinism or historical materialism, that is, in Marxist sociology, which, ironically, as we saw above, is itself a psychologically-­driven permutation of unselfconscious, unreflective German nationalism. This, of course, is not the only example of the tremendous influence of German nationalism and Marxism, in particular, on contemporary thought, but one could hardly find one more revealing of the tautological nature of the original doctrine and its absolute independence from empirical reality.

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In economics, specifically, economic determinism/historical materialism makes very little sense. Economic determinism is indeed inconsistent with the existence of the discipline of economics, if the goal of this discipline is to explain trends within economic development. Historical materialism implies that history is a material process, that historical configurations, such as societies, are physical, chemical, and/or biological (these categories exhaust the meaning of “material”) configurations generated out of previously existing material configurations by material means and in turn generating by material means new material configurations. The locus classicus of Marx’s sociology, “The German Ideology,” in fact, suggests that Marx regarded history as a direct continuation of the biological evolutionary process (though conceived in Lamarckian, rather than Darwinian, terms, and therefore implying the inheritance of acquired characteristics). Economic determinism further implies that history connects to the biological evolution through the economy—in “German Ideology,” among other things, Marx postulates that the division of labor in society and resulting class divisions, the main motor of the economic processes, originates as the division of biological labor in procreation. This makes economic processes fundamental in history, which means that only biologists can venture beyond them and that insofar as humanity is concerned we can only use economic processes as independent variables, explaining something else with their help, but that these processes themselves are not dependent on anything distinctively human and cannot be explained by any discipline independent of biology. The “natural evolution” theory of capitalism is particularly problematic, because it is based on the assumption that man is, by nature, a rational agent, while capitalist economic behavior is fundamentally irrational. Still, the paradigm remains dominant—among other reasons, because it corresponds so well to the preeminence of the economic sphere in the lives of modern Western societies, particularly the United States. Generally speaking, Americans and, to an extent, other Westerners do regard prosperity as the cause of happiness, and economic development as the foundation of all other social processes—an unmitigated good, the necessary condition of a just, democratic, society. We came to believe that

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if only a certain satisfactory level of economic development were achieved, all else—and especially liberal democracy—would follow automatically, thereby making economic development the focus of our care and concern. This view shapes our private lives as much as it does foreign policy. When Marx first postulated it not that long ago in the middle of the nineteenth century this was a revolutionary view. Curiously, this is both a Marxist and the dominant Anglo-­ American view of the world. The two differ in regard to the nature of economic processes and forces (whereas Marxism stresses “forces of production,” Anglo-­American economism may put an emphasis on the interplay between supply and demand); but in terms of their ontological and anthropological p ­ resuppositions— namely, ideas about the constitution of social reality and human nature—there is very little ­ disagreement. Moreover, though Marx was among the first to postulate the principle of the centrality of economics in social life and though, insofar as doctrinal thinking is concerned, his influence has been without a doubt the greatest, the idea did not originate with him. The immediate reason he turned his attention to economics was the publication in 1841 of The National System of Political Economy by his contemporary Friedrich List, also considered today, in some circles, to be a major economic theorist. In turn, List was inspired by the reading (or, rather, the common misreading) of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which was a central point of reference for Marx as well. Therefore, “in the final analysis,” as Marx would say, the springs of the economistic view of society are to be sought in Britain—not coincidentally, the birthplace of nationalism as well.

the modern economic system is a major anomaly for the “Protestant ethic” thesis as well. Bringing nationalism into the argument, however, resolves these anomalies. Nationalism first appeared in England, becoming the preponderant vision of society there and effectively transforming social consciousness by 1600. More than a century had to pass before signs of similar transformations were felt elsewhere. In the Netherlands, in particular, perhaps because the society was so advanced—economically as well as politically—the development of national identity was delayed still

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further and cannot be discerned until well into the nineteenth century. England, therefore, was the first to acquire a new spirit, which it was the only one to possess for some two centuries, and this spirit, this motive force, added to its relatively unimpressive resources an element that reoriented, transformed, and magnified them, inspiring it to undertake a journey for which other societies (which lacked this motivation) might have been better equipped and thus giving it a competitive edge over them. Unlike Protestantism, nationalism necessarily promotes the type of social structure which the modern economy needs to develop. Being inherently egalitarian, nationalism has as one of its central cultural consequences an open—or class—system of stratification, which allows for social mobility, makes labor free (that is, able to shift between s­ ectors), and dramatically expands the sphere of operation of market forces. Since it redefines the nature of social hierarchy, in the absence of countervening factors, it elevates the prestige of traditionally disparaged occupations, specifically those oriented to the pursuit of profit, and makes them a magnet for talent—the function Weber attributed to the Calvinist dogma of predestination and the idea of calling. What is much more important, because of the members’ investment in the dignity of the nation—that is, its prestige—which is necessarily assessed in relation to the status of other nations, nationalism implies international competition. This makes competitiveness a measure of success in every sphere which a nation defines as significant for its self-­image, and commits societies which define themselves as nations to a race with a relative and therefore forever receding finish line. When the economy is included among the areas of competition, this presupposes a commitment to constant growth. In other words, the sustained growth characteristic of modern economy is not self-­sustained; it is stimulated and sustained by nationalism. While it is conducive to the development of a social structure of the type modern economy requires to exist, and while it stimulates international competition, creating a favorable environment for economic growth, nationalism actively promotes economic growth within this environment only when economic achievement, competitiveness, and prosperity are defined as positive and important national values. This in turn depends on the type and specific character of particular nationalisms. As a rule, individualistic-­civic nationalisms, which define nations as associations of individuals, will value economic achievement simply because of its significance, and the importance of economic activity in

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general, for large numbers of individuals. Therefore, they are likely to include economic growth among national interests. In the framework of collectivistic nationalisms (either civic or ethnic), national interests are defined independently from the interests of individuals and may not include economic interests at all, or consider them to be of secondary importance. In ethnic nationalisms where economic activity is not particularly valued, it is often the minorities who become prominent economic actors, and this may stigmatize both the minorities and the economic activity. For that reason, it is likely that economic activity, and growth, in ethnic nations will be more valued in ethnically homogeneous societies. The initial predisposition of the individualistic-­civic English nationalism to value economic activity and achievement was reinforced by certain idiosyncratic features which led it to select the economy (significantly, along with science) as a particular area of national superiority. English nationalism thus directly and actively promoted economic growth. The spectacular economic success of Britain, and its rise to superpower status in general, were major stimulants of economic competitiveness, ensuring that many an imported nationalism also focused on the economy, elevating it above other spheres of social life and greatly contributing to the formation of the modern “economic civilization.” The ability of English nationalism to contribute to the British, and then worldwide, “economic miracle” is thus explained, in the first place, by the fact that the British (as later American) sense of identity evolved from the conceptual framework, and on the basis of principles, provided by the original English individualistic nationalism, and, second, by the contagious nature of the British example (see Box 4.2). Capitalism was born in England in the middle of the sixteenth century, signaled when the Company of Merchants Adventurers was renamed the Merchants Adventurers of England in 1564. A generation or two happened to be the time lag between the emergence of nationalism and the “take-­off into self-­sustained growth” in other nations that opted for economic competition too, the first four of which, in the order of their take-offs, were France, Germany, the United States, and Japan. Because of its early identification with England and the identification of England with liberal politics, capitalism, since the late eighteenth century and especially after it was so defined by Marx, became identified with political and economic liberalism. Economic liberalism—free trade and free competition—the theory went, was necessary for the development of capitalism, and political liberalism was a condition

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BOX 4.2  INDIVIDUALISTIC NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALISM Nationalism is a form of social consciousness, a way of cognitive and moral organization of reality. As such it represents the foundation of the moral order of modern society, the source of its values, the framework of its characteristic—national—identity, and the basis of social integration in it. The fact that the original, English, nationalism, to which we owe the forward aspiration of modern economy and its insatiable yearning for ever greater material power, was (and to a large extent is at the place of its birth, as well as where it was transplanted, for instance, in the United States or Australia) a form of philosophical and moral individualism in no respect contradicts and should not obscure that. As a principle of social solidarity, individualistic nationalism has proved to be very effective, perhaps more effective than nationalism of collectivistic types, if the political stability of individualistic nations, underneath the constant ripple of conflict, and the unusually low rate of emigration from them despite the lack of legal impediments, are an indication. This is not surprising if individualism is understood, as in this case it must be, as a moral ideal, which directs and controls natural appetites, rather than as moral laxity allowing them free rein. The definition of the individual as the highest social value and the fundamental moral unit of society—that is, as an independent moral actor— adds dignity to the national identity and, taking much farther the commitment to egalitarianism which every nationalism preaches, makes its practice in individualistic nationalisms much more consistent than in nationalisms of other types, thereby increasing national commitment. Individualism (as a moral and philosophical position) and nationalism (as a form of social consciousness and collective solidarity) may be perceived as contradictory only if the moral primacy of the individual is believed to be a reflection of the empirical and natural primacy—a notion, curiously, which is met only in individualistic societies—that is, if the original, or natural, individual is believed to be pre-­social. While consistent with the anthropological and sociological presuppositions of contemporary economic theory (also mostly flourishing in individualistic nations), this belief runs counter to all we know of the life of other sociable

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species. A natural individual organism is not an individual in the sense we ascribe to the term, of an independent moral agent. Such individuality is a product of culture, not of nature; it is necessarily an aspiration, a projection of an ideal image, which nature can only approximate, and thus of an image of society—of social consciousness. In sociology, already Durkheim recognized the individual as a social construction, specifically a product of organic, modern, solidarity. He thought individualism was the way modern society “represented” itself in the minds of its members and made them worship itself and obey its commands. It was for him the central element of the moral and cognitive complex he called “conscience collective,” the core of a directing, compelling ethic of the kind Weber thought to have found in Protestantism. This individualist ethic is the core and distinguishing characteristic of that communal identity, that type of nationalism, which provided the original inspiration for the economics of sustained growth. But while modern economic theory assumed the principles of this individualistic type of nationalism, and would be inconceivable if it were not individualistic, modern economic practice drew inspiration from nationalism as such. England developed economic nationalism because its national consciousness was individualistic, but, as demonstrated among other things by the protracted debate around the idea of economic freedom (of which free foreign trade was only one prominent aspect) and the time it took to associate, as a matter of course, private with public interest, early economic nationalism in England was focused exclusively on the common good of the nation, to which the good of its individual members was, as it would be for the opponents of economic liberalism several centuries later, held to be subservient.

for economic liberalism. But the identification of the economies of growth with political liberalism is contradicted by the fact that three out of the four cases of economies entering the race after England (France, Germany, and Japan), and even the economic regimes of the two politically liberal nations (England and the United States) could not be characterized as liberal, in England until the later half of the nineteenth century, and in the United States until after World War II.

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England was the mother of mercantilism; it was against this economic policy that Adam Smith inveighed in The Wealth of Nations, and he was opposed to it for pragmatic reasons, not in principle. Only long after Britain had become the workshop of the world and its share in the world’s industrial market was beyond anyone’s foreseeable capacity did free trade and competition become the hallmarks of the British economy. Before then it favored protectionism in foreign trade and monopoly in domestic business. The first steps in the direction of capitalism in France were made in the leading strings of Colbertism, and it by centuries survived Jean-­Baptiste Colbert. Germany and Japan at the time of their take-offs and emergence as leading capitalist economies, as well as for a long time after that, were authoritarian, collectivistic societies with little tolerance for free competition at home and none abroad, and with interventionist governments that fostered their fledgling capitalisms and protected them with all the powers of legislation, education, and fiscal policy at the disposal of the state. And in the politically liberal United States, the widely hailed “American system” stood not for economic liberalism and free trade, but for protectionism and caps on free competition. Only after World War II, as Europe (and Japan) lay in ruins and the United States found itself in the position of the world’s supreme economic power, did “the American system” change its meaning to refer to “free enterprise and limited government” and acquire its contemporary connotation of economic l­iberalism—never completely justified by the nation’s economic policies. Free trade found its first defender in the Dutch Republic, “the great seventeenth-­century exception” in the story of the birth of the modern economy, which probes, and proves, the essential role nationalism played in this process, and for this reason deserves to be discussed in some detail.

“The Great Exception”—the Netherlands The case of the Netherlands (called by the English the Dutch Republic and seen by them as a nation like England) is particularly interesting and revealing in this context. For, while it is generally agreed that the transformation of the British economy was the first of its kind, breaking through the cycles of growth and decline, characteristic of the premodern economic reality, and making growth “the new normal,” and that Britain, specifically England, was the site of the world’s take-off, this priority is not entirely unchallenged. A few economic historians

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point to the fact that the Netherlands were the first to develop all the conditions in which growth could occur and was in fact the first world economic hegemon. Both assertions are certainly true. The name “Netherlands” originally (in the later half of the sixteenth century, when it entered political discourse) referred to the seventeen provinces that swore allegiance to Philip II on his accession to the Spanish crown in 1555 and then participated in the rebellion against the king. Even before being united under one name, despite differences of language and religion, these Spanish possessions in northern Europe, assembled piecemeal, were treated as a unit for fiscal and administrative purposes. At the cut-­off date of 1500, when “the European age in history” is said to have dawned and, with Europe as its center, the world began uniting into one economic system, the center of economic activity in Europe moved north from the Mediterranean, and the Netherlands, specifically the southern provinces of Flanders and Brabant (which by the end of the sixteenth century were to separate and were never part of “the United Provinces of the Netherlands” or the Dutch Republic) were the area to succeed Italy as the economic powerhouse. Antwerp, in particular, became the hub of this global system and the first general entrepot. The increased volume of trade, as elsewhere earlier, led to greater financial sophistication. Historians tell us the merchant community “used negotiable checks as well as discounted and endorsed bills of exchange. For the first time, credit replaced cash as the principal medium of exchange and interest rates in the city fell from 25% around 1500 to 9% in the 1550s.” While Antwerp reigned, the northern provinces were establishing themselves as economic powers in their own right. It was Hollanders and Zeelanders who owned most of the Dutch ships in the merchant fleet doing the business of Antwerp, Holland already in the fifteenth century establishing itself as “the leading ‘carrying’ nation of Europe.”4 The prosperity of the provinces encouraged their Spanish rulers to tax them, and as the war with France increased Spain’s financial needs, taxation of the Netherlands grew heavier. Spanish absolutism infringed on traditional corporate privileges of the nobility and the towns, and   4 Kindleberger, Charles P., World Economic Primacy, 1500 to 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 89; de Vries, Jan and van der Woude, Ad, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy: 1500–1815 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 92.

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the offence was exacerbated by the fact that, unlike his father, the Ghent-­born emperor Charles V who first assembled the provinces, Philip II, when he presented himself in the Netherlands in 1555, “could not even speak French, let alone Dutch.” The local elites, insulted, refused to cooperate. The beginnings of economic globalization under the aegis of Western Europe coincided with the Reformation and, consequently, the fragmentation of the Respublica Christiana and by the mid-­sixteenth century the Netherlands had a long indigenous tradition of religious dissent. Many of those who subscribed to the mildly dissident, Erasmian, form of Christianity there became Protestants, the majority of whom after 1550 were Calvinists. In the dominions of “the most Catholic” Spanish kings, their treatment was particularly harsh, alienating even Catholics among the nobility. Bent on compromise at the start, the Netherlands were soon pushed by the intransigence of the Spanish government on the question of religion to an all-­out war against Spanish rule. This war was to last 80 years and it was in its course that the first economic system to achieve world primacy was ushered onto the stage of history. Seventeen provinces rose against Spain, and seven of them formed the Dutch Republic. Yet, this dramatic diminution in size, and the exclusion from the Habsburg intercontinental commercial network, led not to the contraction in size of the Dutch economy, including the size of its domestic and foreign markets, but to its phenomenal expansion. Moreover, rather than being weakened by the war, the Republic grew stronger with every year it lasted, emerging in 1647, when the hostilities finally ceased, as a major European political power and the global economic “hegemon.” The sudden rise of the Dutch economy was, it appears, the first of the events to which economic historians refer as “economic miracles.” The English regarded it as such. In 1668 Sir Josiah Child wrote: “The prodigious increase of the Netherlanders, in their domestick and forreign Trade, Riches and multitude of Shipping is the envy of the present and may be the wonder of all future generations.”5 The period roughly between 1580 and 1670, called the Dutch “Golden Age,” was one of continuous and astonishing growth, affecting all the sectors of the economy. “The evidence for it is found,” say historians de Vries and van der Woude, “(1) in the agricultural sector, where. . . rough estimates suggest a near doubling of labor productivity between 1510 and 1650; (2) in the substantial augmentation of physical capital and energy sources in industry; (3) in the reduced manning rates per   5 Quoted in Kindelberger, World Economic Primacy, p. 93.

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ton of ocean shipping volume; and (4) reflecting these productivity gains, in the increased real wages.”6 In addition, the Dutch Republic undoubtedly was the first political entity to experience “financial revolution”—England’s, for which the term was coined, occurring in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The concept connotes, in particular, government finance by means of direct and indirect taxation and public debt, expedients practiced in the Netherlands on the municipal level as far back as the fourteenth century. This obviously presupposed the existence of sophisticated instruments and techniques, the result of an evolution in private finance as well. The establishment in 1609 of the Bank of Amsterdam, whose credit was guaranteed by the city, and which provided the merchants with both a most efficient means to settle large accounts and with security unmatched by any other institution through the next century, made Amsterdam the financial nerve center of the world, a position reinforced by the regular flow of information available only there. The development of the institutional infrastructure coincided with the rapid accumulation of prodigious stocks of capital, much of it owing to the explosive growth of Dutch foreign trade. But in the latter part of the Golden Age, the changes in government finance appear at least as important, in particular, measures taken to finance the Revolt. In the last three decades of war, the annual budget of the Republic’s military expenses stood at about 24 million guilders. The “financial revolution,” which would, paradoxically, make the Netherlands “embarrassingly” rich, consisted in shifting this burden onto the Dutch public. This shift was accomplished with the help of two innovative strategies: imposition of direct and indirect taxes, and the creation of public debt. The immediate result of the Dutch fiscal policy was the accumulation of spectacular amounts of capital in the hands of the Republic’s bondholders. After the end of the war in 1647, they received some 9 million guilders a year in interest, with total accumulation of 33 to 99 million in the period 1646‒1689. Amsterdam emerged as an international capital market of unprecedented proportions. Dutch merchant bankers had a long tradition of lending to foreign governments. In 1688, however, an entirely new page in foreign lending was turned, as Dutch private investors began participating in the English public debt and acquiring stock of English joint stock companies. The ratio of foreign investment to the economy of the Dutch Republic has never been exceeded. Finance became the major part of   6 de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, p. 710.

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its economy, but it was the business of choice in the Netherlands much earlier. Yet, at the peak of the Golden Age, the Dutch economy began to decline and this decline was absolute. The trends of population growth, urbanization, investment in industry and agriculture were reversed. The owners of government debt, who also invested heavily in foreign loans, continued to reap profits, but these profits did not contribute to growth, they were spent. A few decades after its prime, the most powerful economy in the world, the first one to achieve world economic primacy, was but a shadow of its former self. This was a result of economic rationality. The seven United Provinces had developed a new communal identity that reflected their emergence as a new geopolitical entity. But this new identity was religious—­ possibly because of the centrality of religion in the Revolt against Spain. And in the framework of this religious identity, the orientation of the Dutch economy, like that of all traditional economies, remained rational. Dutch identity was constituted by a special bond between God and the Dutch community which Calvinists in its midst, at least, believed was His Chosen People. The sign of their collective election was His unremitting attention, reflected both in the many ordeals through which the community was put and in its repeated ability to triumph over its formidable foes. God, obviously, had His own reasons for so distinguishing the Dutch among other of His “children below,” and they were far from the hubris of ascribing His choice to their native advantages over these latter or otherwise examining His actions. In 1668, when in England religion already by no stretch of the imagination could be considered a viable competitor to the vigorous secular spirit, confident of the earthly powers of the nation and willing to recognize no authority outside of it, a certain Jacobus Lydius thus accounted for the victories of the Dutch in the second Anglo-­ Dutch War: “When men ask how the Netherlands, with such little power, could. . . on so many occasions snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. . . we can only say that this could only have come about through the eternal covenant made between God and his Nederkinderen.”7 Defined as it was by its special relationship to God, the Dutch Republic was not economically (or otherwise) competitive. It was   7 Quoted in Schama, Simon, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 1987), p. 45.

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not ­competitive not in the sense that it lacked the capacity to do as well as, or better than, neighboring societies, but in the sense that the idea of these societies as competitors in the framework of the Dutch collective consciousness made no sense. It is this difference in ­perspective, in the nature of identity, that explains, among other things, why every one of the four Anglo-­Dutch trade wars was initiated by the English. There was no ethic that encouraged consistent orientation to growth, providing a rationale for it, as nationalism did in England, in the Netherlands. In the framework of their religious ethic, wealth was regarded as temptation, it placed them in danger of Divine punishment. They needed wealth to finance the war, and in the process became very rich; after the war was won, it was time to spend what they had accumulated. The Dutch Republic possessed all the conditions to develop into a “capitalist,” that is oriented to growth, modern economy: it was demographically, commercially, financially, and technologically capable of it. It even had the requisite social structure—open and fluid owing to the original weakness of feudalism in the Netherlands and consequences of the Revolt—and thus a “free” labor. But it lacked the reason to do so—the spirit of capitalism—to focus its many strengths on a collective goal and give it direction. And in the absence of this essential intan­ gible, the logic of economic rationality led it to spend these strengths and dissipate its economic energies.

Russia and socialism versus capitalism While nationalism and the competitive motivation it inspires in the state and in private citizens appears to be the only necessary condition for the rise of capitalism, nationalism does not always lead in this economic direction. Developing capitalism presupposes that the economic arena is seen as one of the nation’s strengths and is selected for international competition. If it is perceived that a nation is more competitive in other areas, it is likely to channel its resources elsewhere and disregard the economy. Such has been, notably, the choice of Russia. The world’s richest country in terms of natural resources, the largest in territory, and, in the last century, the one with the most educated labor force, Russia has never translated its nationalism (developed already in the eighteenth century, and therefore, one of the earliest in history) into economic nationalism. The rise of Russian national consciousness coincided with Russia’s emergence as a great military power, and

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this has remained the main arena in Russia’s competition for national prestige. Another area of competition has been high culture: Russia has produced one of the world’s greatest literatures and musical traditions, excelled in ballet and cinematography, and in many fields has been a world leader in science. These preoccupations have been considered authentically Russian; business, in contrast, and interest in wealth in general have been burdened with the odium of the preeminent “un-­Russian,” alien, activity. “True” Russians, so it is claimed, despise money. When they have it—which in a country fabulously rich in natural resources many do—they spend it on lavish lifestyles, as characteristic of the nineteenth-­century nobility as of today’s moguls. When they have none—and, despite the country’s natural riches, the great majority of the population has always been ­destitute—they get by and are praised by native intellectuals for not caring about ­prosperity. But the accumulation of wealth has always been left to the ethnic minorities, despised as much as money—most notably the Jews. It was a mistake to interpret the robber-­baron economic climate in Russia in the 1990s, when its strongmen—people with political connections and a taste for power—divided among themselves the ­country’s stupendous natural endowment left unattended after the demise of the Communist state, as the rise of the spirit of capitalism. Putin quickly put an end to this disorderly behavior. It is also a mistake to blame the 70 years of Socialist/Communist rule for the suppression of this spirit, which has never existed in Russia. In general, the view of socialism or communism as alternatives to capitalism, antithetical to it, is wrong. Socialism and communism are political categories denoting types of political motivations, ideologies, and regimes; capitalism, in distinction, is a type of economic process, and the motivation guiding it—the orientation to profit and forever renewed profit—coexists peacefully with various political orientations. The Nationalist Socialist Germany (from which, politically, the Soviet Union differed only in that it claimed its socialism to be internationalist) was a capitalist society. So was the Fascist Italy, though Benito Mussolini, before he became the Fascist leader, as already mentioned, enjoyed the reputation of “the first communist in Europe.”

Globalization and the case of Japan The understanding of capitalism is plagued by numerous misconceptions. Today the most fashionable one is that capitalism leads to

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globalization. “Globalization” is commonly understood as an increasing integration of the societies of the world into one global community. This integration may be interpreted narrowly, as economic integration—the extension of mutually beneficial economic interdependence and the inclusion of an ever-­widening circle of societies in one common economic system. However, since, reflecting another misconception, the economy is believed to be tightly connected to politics, and capitalist economy, specifically, is seen as the foundation of liberal democratic institutions and cultures, “globalization” is more often interpreted broadly, as connoting the increasing integration of the societies of the globe not only in the economic, but also in the political and cultural sense. In this more common broad sense, the claim of globalization is false. It is contradicted systematically by the politics of the post-­Cold War period. The relative stability of the bipolar world has been replaced by the chaotic and constant conflict within, and disintegration of, political frameworks, virtually torn asunder by rival nationalisms and religious and other cultural commitments. Even the European Union, which may be taken as an example of the growing economic integration on a regional scale, can hardly be interpreted as a case for globalization in the broader—­ political and cultural—sense.8 But even in the sense of growing economic integration the claim of globalization outside the E.U. is not supported by evidence. The concept presupposes a steady trend, a constantly increasing integration of previously independent economies into one common, ultimately global, framework, that is, ever-­freer flow of capital and labor between previously self-­sufficient parts, ever-­larger share of foreign trade in every previously inward-­oriented constituent. But there is no such steady trend. The peak of such interconnectedness of world economies was reached about a century ago, oscillating below the pre-­World War I level ever since. Moreover, whatever integration has occurred, it could not be characterized as mutually beneficial to the integrating economies. The United States is the world’s greatest champion of globalization. It is the nation where proportionally more people than anyplace else believe that it is happening and where, therefore, proportionally more people than anyplace else are oriented toward it, engaging in activities   8 The recent Brexit—which made news as the manuscript of this book was copy-­edited—offers an additional confirmation of this proposition.

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that can be described as “globalizing.” Most other nations perceive this attitude on the part of the United States not as globalization but as imperialism: an attempt at conquest and exploitation, rather than at promoting integration. From this these other nations are protecting themselves by all the means available to them. In doing so, they follow the American example and imitate American attitudes before World War II, when the British economy was still the dominant world economy and the United States resisted the British efforts at globalization, interpreting them as imperialism. In the conditions of ceaseless international competition—the essence of capitalism—each of the competitors aims to increase its advantages and weaken the others, meaning that the strongest economy which naturally interprets its own interest as the world’s, believes that the piece of its competitors’ markets which it has the power to grab belongs to it by right, while the weaker parties naturally wish to protect their competitive advantages and so believe no such thing. There is no better example in economic history as to how “globalization”—the forced integration of independent economies ­ into a common system—actually proceeds than that of the “opening to trade” of Japan. For 250 years that small and poor-­in-­resources country kept itself isolated from the rest of the world. Its government was as authoritarian as everywhere else with the exception of England in the beginning of the period (1590s), and as everywhere with a few exceptions at its end (1850s). But it did not intrude in anybody else’s affairs, molested or bent to its will no foreigners, simply not allowing them in and discouraging every interest in them at home, and the only thing it expected from the outside world was to have Japan’s indifference toward it repaid by similar indifference. The Japanese economy was subsistence oriented, like all other economies with the exception of England at the beginning of the period and like most other economies at its end. It was subject to cycles of growth and decline, did not progress, and nobody in Japan thought that it should. By the mid-­nineteenth century Japan’s isolationism became a problem for the American whaling industry: for it to continue growing it was essential that the fleet obtain a place to refuel in the Japanese part of the Pacific. President Millard Fillmore, therefore, instructed the emperor of Japan by a letter, which mentioned the “powerful ­squadron” of men-­of-­war he sent to deliver it, to open his ports to American whalers. The sally of the American “black ships” attracted the Russians and the British to Japan’s territorial waters, and with

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some pressure, which included the shelling of a coastal city, Japan, at the time lacking fi ­ rearms and able to defend itself only with swords, was opened to trade. The intruders, however, brought with them nationalism. The alacrity with which Japan adopted this new, secular, and competitive, view of reality is astonishing: it had its nationalist ideologists already by the late 1850s. As nationalism was presented to them in an economic ­packaging, their nationalism from the outset was focused on the ­economy—it was the spirit of capitalism. Within a generation the country regrouped itself on the new principles. Early in the twentieth century, already a formidable military power with a record of victories over China and Russia, it was pressing on the heels of the British, American, German, and French economies, and the four frontrunners complained of being “menaced” and “harassed” by “a powerful stream of Japanese manufactures.” Ironically, Japan’s reorientation to international competition and economic growth as a result of its forced opening was the first sign of globalization in a very different sense from the one the term usually carries: globalization in the sense of connecting in a competitive relationship vastly different civilizations. These civilizations do not become integrated into one system, retaining their separate, mutually incomprehensible modes of thinking and feeling, but they become relevant for each other and vie for world dominance. Up to the opening of Japan the civilization alternately referred to as “European,” “Western,” and “Judeo-­ Christian” (none of these terms perfectly delineate its boundaries) was enclosed within itself. It was defined by the cognitive framework of monotheism and, closely related to it, logic based on the principle of no contradiction, established 3 and 2.5 ­millennia ago, respectively. In the past 1500 years, it included, in addition to Christian, also Muslim societies. But it never communicated with, because it was not aware of, truly different civilizations that were not embedded in monotheism. (This is true even in regard to the centuries of Islamic rule over India: India allowed itself to be ruled without arguing its case and disclosing its essential otherness to its Muslim masters, while the latter lacked the incentive to pay much attention to it.) When, with the emergence of nationalism and competition between nations in this civilization, the modern West came in contact with India and, to a limited extent, China, it did not conceive of them as different civilizations, but (as in the case of Japan) as civilizations on a lower level of development. Similar was its attitude to Africa. But there

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its cognitive framework found itself unopposed, allowing monotheism in its Christian and Muslim forms to spread. India, China, and Japan, in distinction, did not allow such inroads: they had the absolute immunity of incomprehension and nothing of the invading “European” civilization took root there, with the exception of nationalism and its value-­free importations—capitalism and science. For this reason, these truly other nations are the only serious competition the “European” or “Western” world has faced. Until the twentieth century (and, with the striking but lonely exception of Japan, until the twenty-­first century) international competition, whether economic or other, was limited to a few European (or European-­derived) nations. The spread of nationalism to the peripheries of the civilization of which they formed the center did not entail the corresponding spread of competitiveness and consequently rarely resulted in successful capitalist economies. Rather, the importation of nationalism in the conditions of fundamental identity between the importer and the source of importation, placed the two on the different levels of a scale, the former below the latter, and often led to the development of a deeply internalized complex of inferiority on the importer’s part. The internalization of the sense of inferiority made competition appear futile from the beginning and, instead of spurring ambition, fanned existential envy or ressentiment. To rid oneself of the oppressive sense of inferiority one had to eliminate the spectacle of the other’s superiority: the way to do so became cultural, ideological, political, and actual (usually guerrilla) warfare, not capitalism. This has been specifically characteristic of the Arab Middle East. (We shall revisit this problem later.) What made Japan’s reaction to the Western intrusion so remarkable is that, despite the brutal unceremoniousness of its opening, it did not repay the West with envy and resentment. The Japanese perceived no identity between their country and the powers that tried to humiliate it and never developed a sense of inferiority to them. Surely, they recognized their comparative disadvantages which allowed Western powers to violate Japan’s sovereignty. The West—in 1853—had science, technology, and industrial wealth which Japan lacked. The obvious thing was to acquire all these. The motto of early nationalists was “Eastern ethics—Western learning.” They learned fast and proved that where there was a will, there was a way.

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Japan was small and poor in resources; the only thing it possessed in abundance was motivation. For about half a century, after being brought to its knees by atomic explosions in two of its cities, it was the second largest economy in the world, behind the vast and naturally rich United States. By the end of the twentieth century nationalism caught up with China and India. Together, these two colossi contain 2.5 billion people. They have never lacked anything but motivation, between the two of them, to dominate the world, both economically and militarily, if not politically. Competition is becoming global. The Economist predicts that (in purchasing power parity) China will be the largest economy in the world by 2020. After 500 years of competitive economic development—of capitalism—virtually without competitors, the West is, finally, meeting its match.

Capitalism as the instrument of the spread of nationalism: Germany and China While capitalism is a product of nationalism, which reorients economic activity from subsistence to growth, imbibing it with a new spirit and bestowing social approbation, specifically, on the drive for profit, the positive reevaluation of economic growth has proven to be instrumental in attracting previously uncommitted populations to nationalism. Such reversal of roles has been already observed in connection to the state, also a product of nationalism, which in many instances of collectivistic nationalism has been the major factor in spreading national consciousness developing among the elites to the masses of population within the respective geopolitical confines. In both cases, such feedback loops occur only in collectivistic nationalisms. The reason for this is that in them dignity which national identity implies is not immediately apparent to all the members of the nation and may be in fact obscured by the necessary presence of the elite divining the will of the nation seen as a collective individual. The commitment of this elite to the principles of equality and popular sovereignty expresses itself in authoritarian ways of acting which make it obvious that, while all members of the nation are equal, some are nonetheless more equal than the others. Conversion of the general population to collectivistic nationalism requires that its members become aware of the relevance of these principles to their own lives; national membership actually must confer dignity on them for them to become committed to the nation. Nationalist elites, organized in a state, commonly resort to special education and propaganda to inculcate rank and file with

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­ ationalism (which takes time and, as examples of Fascist Italy and n Spain demonstrate, is not always successful) and, paradoxically, very often, especially when nationalism is also ethnic, rely in this on religion. In individualistic nationalisms, as already explained, such stratagems are not necessary. In two extremely important cases, Germany and China, nationalist mobilization has been accomplished not only through the state propaganda and education, but in a large measure through the validation of growth-­ oriented economic ­ activity—in China by the state, and in Germany independently from the state, by the relentless efforts of one differently-­thinking nationalist. This one man was Friedrich List, the author of the first authoritative formulation of economic nationalism—The National System of Political Economy. For Germany, List caught the nationalist bug very early: born in 1789, he spent all of his adult life as a nationalist agitator, which in most of the 38 independent states united at that time in a loose German Confederation was considered subversive activity. List advocated the establishment of a German national parliament, army, and judiciary, as well as cultural institutions. He also agitated against the customs barriers separating German states, in 1819 becoming the president of the Association of German Merchants and Manufacturers founded in Frankfurt to abolish them and establish a “universal German system on the principle of retaliation against foreign states.” It was on behalf of the Association that he began a lifelong work of propaganda for German economic unification, eventually contributing to the formation of the Zollverein in 1834. From the politically correct point of view, in 1819 this was a serious transgression, and when List was elected representative from Reutlingen to the Wuerttemberg National Assembly (Reutlingen and Wuerttemberg being, respectively, his city and principality of birth), his election was vetoed from above. Elected again, he was expelled from the Diet and sentenced for “demagoguery” to ten months of imprisonment and hard labor. He fled to Strasbourg and then to Baden, was ordered to leave both, had to cross the German border altogether and went to Paris. There he met Lafayette, who invited the fugitive to the United States. At first, List declined, his “intense love of his native country” impelling him, instead, to return to Wuerttemberg and ask the king for pardon. The king, however, had him arrested and put in a fortress. He was freed only after several discouraging months and solely on the condition of immediate renunciation of his Wuerttemberg citizenship. List went to Strasbourg again, was again kicked out, and again returned to Paris. But this time, at the request of the vengeful Wuerttemberg sovereign,

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he was kicked out of France too. So, having no choice, he accepted Lafayette’s invitation. In the United States, Lafayette introduced List to several influential Americans, then up in arms against free trade arrangements, advocated by the economically superior Britain. These Americans urged him to express himself on the unfairness of British trade policies, which he did. List’s opinions first appeared in the German-­language newspaper that he published, but were later reissued as a collection of letters by the Pennsylvania Association for the Promotion of Manufacturing Industry. In these letters List attacked Adam Smith, advocated protectionist policies, and praised the so-­called American system. This defense of American economic interests against Great Britain earned List the gratitude of his American friends and they appointed him, first, in 1830, unsuccessfully, U.S. consul in Hamburg (still under the impression that he was a dangerous revolutionary, Hamburgers would not have him) and then, in 1834, successfully, in Leipzig. List used his position to promote railway construction in Germany and was able to negotiate an agreement on it between the duchies of Weimar, Gotha, and Meiningen, which improved his position in Germany generally. His influence on public opinion (in distinction to the effect of his ideas on the many officials whom he personally lobbied) was exercised mainly through publications to which he contributed in the last 16 years of his life (1830‒1846). By the time The National System of Political Economy was published (1841‒1844), he was a very influential figure and the book added thousands to the numbers of his admirers. He did not live to enjoy his influence, however; his spirit broken by years of frustration, in 1846 he committed suicide. In the late 1870s The National System of Political Economy became “the most popular handbook” in Germany. Bismarck owned a copy and shared many of the views in it. Though the protectionist movement would not regain strength until after the unification, many of List’s other ideas, less dependent on the support of the government, were being realized already in the 1850s and 1860s. Coordinated by the Union of German Railway Administrators, formed a year after his death, railroad construction proceeded apace, and all over Germany industrial enterprises were springing up. At the University of Berlin, Duehring proclaimed that List was the greatest genius of the century, whose views were “the first real advance” in economics since The Wealth of Nations.

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Like all Romantic nationalists, List thought that the world was naturally divided into nations, and that nations, rather than individual human beings, were the real (that is, significant) actors in history. Both individual human beings and humanity as a whole depended on nations and could find realization only through them. The nations were hierarchically ranked and could be divided into important and unimportant in accordance, fundamentally, with the level of their cultural development and potential, in turn determined by nature; in List’s opinion, they were ultimately defined by climate. Nations of the so-­called “temperate zone,” which corresponded to Europe and North America, he believed, were inherently superior to the nations of the areas he termed “torrid,” and, as a result, were justified in attempting to use the resources of the latter in the service of their own national self-­fulfillment. Individual members of the nation could also be legitimately used for this purpose: the interests of individuals did not necessarily combine into the interests of the nation and, under all circumstances, were subservient to these. The root interest of every nation was the interest in national self-­ realization. Self-­realization could be obstructed by the efforts or lack of cooperation of other nations, each set on its independent course by the same desire to realize itself. This presupposed a state of permanent international competition. For List, unlike other Romantic nationalists, this competition included an economic dimension. His ideas therefore provided an alternative outlet for nationalist energies, channeling them into economic pursuits. Like Marx, List believed that Germany compared unfavorably with some other European nations. The main reason for such unfavorable comparison, in his view, however, was the underdevelopment of its industry, and for that reason he saw as his nation’s chief rivals not only England and France but also Holland. Still, England was at the center of his attention: in fact, List thought that Germany’s economic inferiority could be in a large measure attributed to England’s imposition on its partners of the policy of free trade—which, under the conditions that then prevailed, served to maintain England in the position of unrivaled exporter of manufactured goods. Arguing for protection against foreign industrial imports, List at the same time insisted on the necessity of abolishing all tariffs within Germany, that is, customs barriers between various German states, and praised the benefits of internal free competition for the development of the economy. That such competition could prove deleterious to individuals and large groups (such as the industrial proletariat) within Germany, and that the ability to buy foreign goods cheaply meant greater comfort for large ­numbers

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of Germans, appeared to him irrelevant. Economic rationality and prosperity of his fellow men were not part of his ­considerations; he was single-­mindedly concerned with assuring a powerful and prestigious Germany, holding a place in the international community commensurate with its cultural achievement and potential. This was a cultural or, at most, political rather than economic ideal: the development of national economy was not an end in itself, but only a crucially important means toward its achievement. Vigorous industry, in List’s view, was “a tonic for the national spirit”; without it Germans would be unable “to soar to national greatness.” It implied superior conditions for political and cultural development and was indispensable as a condition for national prestige. Inattention to economic issues was ­perilous: to say nothing of their inferiority vis-­à-­vis England, it could leave Germans “far behind the French and North Americans, nay: far behind the Russians.”9 Because so much depended on it, the development of the national economy was too important a project to entrust it to the invisible hand operating through individual economic interests. The economic interests of merchants aroused List’s particular suspicion: he thought them inherently deficient in patriotic spirit, ready to pursue their selfish ends “at the expense of the nation’s productive powers, and indeed of its independence,” and for that very reason enamored, together with “robbers, cheats, and thieves,” of the laissez faire principle. Merchants, in his view, however, were less important to the national economy than “producers,” that is, entrepreneurs and managers engaged in the manufacturing industry, but also those who contributed to the nation’s “productive power” or its “power of producing wealth” through education, administration, and planning, as well as through generally raising its cultural and intellectual level. But in the case of “producers” too, List was convinced that “only where the interest of individuals has been subordinated to those of the nation. . . the nations have been brought to harmonious development of their productive powers.” This made the national economy the business of the state. An American historian, Louis Snyder, singled List out from thousands of thinkers and activists, alongside a handful of others, as one of “the great representatives of German national consciousness,” whose “unique contribution to German nationalism was the first expression  9 All quotations are from List, F., The National System of Political Economy, trans. S.S. Lloyd (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1922).

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of a systematic content of the national concept at the economic level.”10 What List did, went far beyond simply fixing the attention of his fellow Germanophones on the economy (which was no small achievement in itself, given that before him such matters had aroused very slight interest) to projecting and focusing nationalism on it. Thereby this one man added a powerful, and heretofore lacking, ethical dimension to economic activity and reoriented it toward international competition and growth. At the time List began his propagandist activity on behalf of the German economy—in early 1819—German nationalism had already become a formidable political force. But though it burned brightly in the hearts of Romantic intellectuals, students, and university-­educated bureaucrats, it had not yet reached deeply into the masses of the German people, whether in the cities or in the ­countryside, and become a significant motivation in their everyday lives. Economic activity, in particular, had not yet been affected in the least, which is to say, it was still ethically unmotivated, and the fact that the only motives that spurred it on (as opposed to containing it within traditional boundaries) were the motives of individual self-­interest, that it lacked the stimulus of social approbation, goes a long way in accounting for the general sluggishness of the German economy in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is clear that very few of even the most active merchants and manufacturers, otherwise richly endowed with entrepreneurial spirit, were moved by national sentiment in those early days and interpreted their business interests, or those of their class, in the light of the broader interest of the nation. They were obviously unaware of the enormous implications of such an interpretation for the advancement of business interests and for their own social standing. They did not see beyond the advantages or disadvantages of an immediate situation and used their business sense to navigate in the limited economic space created by various political and fiscal arrangements, trying to benefit from the former and avoid the latter. Through List the Romantic nationalist message reached the economically active middle class. The singular efficacy of List’s propaganda had to do with the fact that, owing to the economic orientation of his nationalism, he targeted an audience to whom the nationalist message had not been specifically addressed before: the uneducated bourgeoisie, whom lofty Romantic definitions of Germanity in fact slighted. List’s ennoblement of the 10 Snyder, Louis L., “Economics: The Role of Friedrich List in the Establishment of Zollverein,” in German Nationalism: The Tragedy of the People (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1952), ch. 4.

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economic sphere (through the broad definition of productive forces and the insistence on the centrality of the economic dimension in the totality of national self-­realization) drew the bourgeoisie into the purifying and ennobling charmed circle of the national community, revealing to the timid burghers the breathtaking implications of nationalism for their self-­image and social status. They learned that the success of a business could have a wider patriotic significance, that a commercial venture or, more so, an industrial undertaking, had an element of the heroic—that there was dignity, in other words, in the activities they pursued, for lack of choice, in order to make a living. Understanding the role the spirit of capitalism—the validation of the profit-­seeking economic activities—played in spreading nationalism to the previously spurned uneducated middle classes in Germany, may help us explain what has been happening in the recent decades in China. The hypothesis I am proposing, obviously, would need years of research to be refuted or supported, but given the enormity of the development it addresses, it is well worth considering. It is difficult to exaggerate the consequences of the forcible “opening” of Japan by Western powers (although these consequences are rarely considered as such in political science, when it focuses on them directly). Japanese nationalism and the historical record of Japan, including its economic record, since it was redefined as a nation were certainly the effects of Western powers’ disregard of the small Asian country’s sovereignty. It was, unquestionably, this infringement on Japan’s sovereignty, which led to its stupendous military adventures of the last century and thus to the fire-­bombing of Tokyo and nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1945 Japan was taught by the United States a lesson—for learning well the lessons the West taught it in 1853. The most important consequence of the fateful American naval incursion of that year, however—which was to completely change the political map of the world and the place of the West in it, ending the 500-­years-­old Western hegemony—waited until now to be revealed. It was the development of nationalism in China. Competitive national consciousness—the consciousness that one’s individual dignity is inseparably tied to the prestige of one’s “people”— worked its way into the minds of China’s best and brightest between 1895 and 1905. In 1895, China was defeated by Japan, a tiny aggressor whom the Chinese dismissively called wa (the dwarf). China was already accustomed to rapacious Western powers s­quabbling over

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its riches, but had remained self-­confident in the knowledge of these powers’ irrelevance. However, the assault from Japan, a speck of dust in its own backyard, shattered this self-­assurance and was experienced as a shocking and intolerable humiliation. Japan’s triumph in 1905 over “the Great White Power,” Russia, partly repaired the damage to China’s sense of dignity. From the Chinese point of view, Russia was a formidable European power, one feared by other Western powers. Its defeat, therefore, was seen as a successful Asian challenge to the West, in which China, its intellectuals felt, was represented by Japan. Japan thus became the focus of Chinese attention. Gentlemen-­scholars, who would reform and staff the Chinese army and civil service in the early decades of the twentieth century, went to study in Japan. The Revolution of 1911 was inspired by the example of Japan’s Meiji Restoration; and, because early-­twentieth-­century Japan was stridently nationalistic, the new China that emerged from its image was constructed on nationalist principles as well. With Japan as the significant “other” for China, the model that was imitated and the anti-­model that was resented, Chinese nationalism borrowed from Japan its concept of the nation, including the very word by which it was expressed (kuoming, from the Japanese kokumin). The Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Movement) was explicitly inspired by Japan and fueled by repeated Japanese aggression. Paradoxically, but not unexpectedly, Mao Zedong’s struggle against the  Kuomintang  was inspired by anti-­ Japanese nationalism as well. As was the case virtually everywhere else, communism in China  was  nationalism in internationalist clothing. Mao’s speech on the establishment of the People’s Republic plainly expressed the nationalist agenda behind it. Calling the nation “communist” assured the new People’s Republic of China of the Soviet Union’s support, which was viewed by Mao as more reliable than that of the United States. But neither the Russian nor the Chinese Communists were ever unclear about the nationalist nature of their respective projects. The upper echelons of the bureaucracy and intelligentsia in Russia and China were self-­consciously nationalist and, throughout Communist rule, shrewdly pursued the supreme nationalist goal: prestige or dignity of the nation. But in China national consciousness was limited to a narrow elite, leaving the masses basically untouched. Though education traditionally, for over a thousand years, provided a venue for upward mobility and, unlike in Europe, elite positions were allocated on the basis of examinations, rather than birth, there was no sense of

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equality between the upper strata of the educated and the common lot, and the high-­handed policies of the Communist government contributed little to its creation. Equality, in fact (and likely because status rested on education and mobility was both conceivable and legitimate), was assumed but not at all emphasized by Chinese nationalism: dignity vis-­à-­vis other nations was nationalists’ sole concern. The hundreds of millions of Chinese did not share in it as they did not share in the dignity of the educated, it had no relevance to them. This changed dramatically with the Chinese government’s turn to the capitalist economy. Deng Xiao Ping was the Chinese List. Much like in Germany in the 1840s, when the ethical elevation of private enterprise converted the entire middle class to nationalism, the explicit definition of economic power as the central pillar of China’s greatness awakened ordinary Chinese to nationalism’s appeal. After a century of slowly fomenting among Chinese intellectuals, national sentiment has captured and redefined the consciousness of vast masses of Chinese people during the last two decades of China’s economic boom. Having become direct contributors to the nation’s dignity, hundreds of millions of Chinese now have a stake in it, it has become their dignity and they are embracing national identity and converting to national c­ onsciousness. It is this mass conversion to nationalism that has launched the Chinese colossus into global competition for international prestige. Rapidly, visibly, and inevitably, it has risen. For thousands of years, the rulers of China—the Middle Kingdom— believed it to be the center of the world. At the end of the nineteenth century they realized that appearances were against them and kept the world unaware of its centrality. They smarted under this blow. But now their people joined them in the demand for recognition, insisting on an international status commensurate with the country’s vast population and with their conception of China’s rightful—that is, the central— place. Because of the globalization of nationalism, indeed, our era will likely be remembered as the time when a new global order, with China at the helm, was born.

5

Nationalism and modern passions

Nationalism transformed the world around us. It changed the nature of our social and political reality and of our economy. The tremendous effect of national consciousness on the public sphere is not sufficiently understood. But what is understood even less is that it transformed the world within us as well, the effect of national consciousness on the mind. “National consciousness,” as argued, connotes a vision of reality, a very special way of thinking which, institutionalized in various spheres of life, in turn continuously motivates and shapes ways of acting in them, thereby constructing reality. To insist that this way of thinking defines the way we think would be a tautology. In this sense, the effect of nationalism on the mind is obvious. But it is not obvious that this vision of reality at least equally affects the way we feel, and the claim that national consciousness changes human emotional repertoire, far from appearing true by definition, seems rather incredible. Yet, it follows from the understanding of what national consciousness (any functionally equivalent form of consciousness, for that matter) is as logically as the claim that the way of thinking defines the way of thinking. The way we feel is the way we experience reality. Our emotional repertoire, in other words, determines our existential experience. Modern existential experience is defined by nationalism.

Nationalism and emotional repertoire The best place to begin is the vocabulary. The modern English again leads the way. In the sixteenth century, English emotional vocabulary dramatically expands: numerous new terms appear (redefined concepts as well as neologisms) without equivalents in any other l­ anguage, which capture widely experienced emotions that had not been experienced before. On examination, they are all related to the three principles of nationalism: its secularism, fundamental ­egalitarianism, and popular sovereignty.

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All three of these features place the individual in control of his or her destiny, eliminating the expectation of putting things right in the afterlife, making one the ultimate authority in deciding on one’s priorities, encouraging one to strive for a higher social status (since one is presumed to be equal to everyone, but one wants to be equal only to those who are superior), and giving one the right to choose one’s social position (since the presumption of fundamental equality makes everyone ­interchangeable) and therefore identity. But this very liberty, implied in ­nationalism, both empowering and encouraging the individual to choose what to be—in contrast to all the religious pre-­national societies in which no one was asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” since one was whatever one was born—makes the formation of the individual identity problematic, and the more so the more choices for the definition of one’s identity a society offers and the more insistent it is on equality. A clear sense of identity is a condition sine qua non for adequate mental functioning, but national consciousness—modern culture—cannot help the individual to acquire such clear sense, it is inherently confusing. This cultural insufficiency, the inability of a culture to provide individuals within it with consistent guidance, is what Durkheim named anomie. Though realized in vastly different ways (depending on the type of nationalism developing in a particular society), the three principles of nationalism—secularism, egalitarianism, and popular sovereignty— affect the formation of the individual identity in nations necessarily. A member of a nation can no longer learn who or what she or he is from the environment, as would an individual growing up in an essentially religious and rigidly stratified, hierarchical order, where everyone’s position and behavior are defined by birth and divine providence. Beyond the very general category of nationality, a modern individual must decide what she or he is and should do, and thus construct one’s identity oneself. The new emotions emerge in England as soon as the construction of the individual identity becomes problematic, that is in the earliest days of nationalism. (As they migrate to other societies in translation from English, they may be encountered there before nationalism itself is imported and established, and, like in many cases the state, or, in some, capitalism, facilitate the formation of the national consciousness.) These emotions in one way or another represent reactions to this problematization and answer new mental needs that it creates. Ambition, aspiration, romantic love, and happiness undoubtedly belong to the most important among them. Each one of them appears with a corresponding form of suffering. Thus, the reasons for and the experience of suffering are also changed.

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With nationalism the individual became master of his (sometimes her) own life and was free to create oneself. It was impossible to lose one’s humanity and Englishness (therefore fundamental equality to all other Englishmen): this was one’s to keep. This meant one could only move up, add to this dignity. The possibilities were ­breathtaking, and indeed the word that was selected for thinking about them— to aspire—alluded to this sensation. The verb itself, in this sense of “upward desire,” was used already in the late-­ fifteenth century, although the OED finds only one instance of such an early use. All the derivatives of “aspire,” ­however, were products of the sixteenth, mostly late-­sixteenth, century, “aspiration” being first used by Shakespeare.1 The experience, it was discovered, was a pleasant one, and Elyot in his Dictionary added to its physically uplifting quality a morally elevating and even specifically intellectual dimension, translating aspire as, among other senses, “to  gyue all my studye and wytte to optayne a thynge.”2 Several other words were similarly reconceptualized, their semantic field broadened with new forms, to reflect the newly realized possibilities and scope of human creativity and, in particular, the individual’s ability to make oneself. The verb “to achieve” acquired a new meaning of gaining dignity or a symbol of dignity by effort. From this were derived ­“achievement,” “achiever,” and “achievance.” Like the neologism ­“betterance” and the noun “bettering,” referring to improvement by human action, the latter was not much used after the early seventeenth century, but “­ achievement” and “achiever,” like the verb “to better,” in the sense of ­“bettering oneself” or being “bettered” by someone, were permanent additions to the vocabulary. So was “success,” originally a neutral term meaning any outcome of an attempt and reconceptualized as equivalent to only “good success,” and its derivatives, ­“successful” and “successfully.” Because the semantic space was new, the position of ambition—its core concept—was equivocal. “Ambition” was an old word, derived from Latin and used in the Middle Ages for an eager desire, among other things, specifically of honor, and for ostentation and pomp. As such, ambition was included among vices. In the sixteenth century it was reconceptualized and, although retaining its old meaning (as it still does), came to refer to any ardent desire and, depending on what the desire was for, could be regarded as a virtue. Whether it was virtue or vice, as an emotion ambition was intense, and this intensity was 1 Troilus and Cressida, Act 4, scene 6, line 17. 2 Elyot, Dictionary (1538).

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its essential quality. It is in connection with ambition that the word ­“passion” began to acquire its current meaning of intense, overpowering emotion, a sovereign, authentic movement of the soul or the mind. This change reflected the growing recognition of the sovereignty of the mind as the constitutive element of the self, thus the sovereignty of the self—vis-­à-­vis God, in the first place, but also vis-­à-­vis society—which was the cardinal implication of the new English view of reality and defined the new English experience. Ambition was one of the two central examples of such sovereignty. It came from within oneself; it was an inner drive. The identification of ambition as a passion, however, arose from the earlier, widespread at the time, meaning of “passion”— suffering in the sense of being a passive and powerless object of an action of some external power. For ambition would brook no restraint not only from the outside; an overpowering emotion, it overpowered the self from whence it came. If one had it, one could not resist it. The passion of ambition—a super-­emotion, so to speak—gave a direction to life, which society refused to impose, and was a source of myriad other emotions: excitement, hope, sense of inspiration. Ambition was the inner compass one used in the ceaseless social travels in search of one’s own identity. From within it one drove to aspire and achieve, always aspire and achieve the same thing: an individual identity with even more dignity than was implied in one’s national identity and humanity, one’s proper social place. A realized ambition brought one feelings of gratification, self-­satisfaction, confidence, pride, intense joy. But, obviously, not all among the thousands of competing ambitions were realized, and frustrated ambition, as well as failure that followed in the wake of success, gave rise to passion in yet another earlier sense of the word, that of pain. Ambition was the main cause of the characteristic suffering in sixteenth-­century England. The defense against threats—or experience—of a thwarted ambition was love. “Love,” like “ambition,” was an old word which, unlike ­“ambition,” was commonly used before the sixteenth century. Its general meaning was similar to that of the original concept of eros in Hesiod—an ecstatic, self-­transcendent, desire (for which, ironically, sixteenth-­century English substituted “ambition” in its neutral sense). It is because of this general meaning that “love” could be used to express both the lofty sentiment of Christian love and even the divine love of God itself, and base, carnal, essentially sinful, sexual lust. The sixteenth-­century English concept of love—which is our ­concept—was dramatically different. While it implied the very o ­ pposite attitude to

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sex from the one that characterized Christian thinking, it retained clear sexual connotations (which grew in importance in the next several hundred years and in some of “love’s” peregrinations in translation). Thus the connection of love to lust seems obvious. But the other older usages of the word were completely eclipsed, becoming so foreign to us that learned dissertations are required to convince our contemporaries that they ever existed. The new, as it came to be known later “romantic,” love was the other central expression of the sovereignty of the self—the ultimate passion, in fact, in the sense of its authentic and free expression, the supreme movement of the sovereign human spirit. As such it, no less than ambition, reflected the new, national, image of reality and was a creation of nationalism. Shakespeare who, more than any other single individual, was responsible for encoding this new view of reality in the English language, making it the integral part of language itself (and therefore enabling anyone who spoke it to share in the new experience), according to the OED, was the first to define love as a passion. This was in 1588 in Titus Andronicus. Then, in Romeo and Juliet—the paradigmatic story of love as it has been understood in the modern age, he, in effect, constructed its ideal type. Like ambition, love made it possible for the free and therefore rootless modern individual, whom the society around would not define, to find one’s proper place and to define oneself. Functionally, both love and ambition were identity-­forming devices. This, above all else, explains the tremendous importance of this emotional complex in our lives. Moreover, in distinction to ambition, which led the searcher by a circuitous way, made an obstacle course by the myriads of simultaneous, crisscrossing and overlapping searches of others, which demanded unceasing effort on one’s part, and never guaranteed the result, love required no effort whatsoever—it happened to one, one fell into it. Thus it led to the discovery of one’s true identity directly. The supreme and truest expression of the sovereign self, it was, in effect, a miracle, for which one was in no way responsible. What made it an expression of the self nevertheless was the immediate recognition of the true love’s object, the One, that particular her or him who was one’s destiny and yet, paradoxically, was most freely chosen. One’s identity, one’s true self, was found in that other person and what he or she saw in one. This was the central theme of Romeo and Juliet.

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Of course, the capacity for love existed before the sixteenth century in England and elsewhere. So did the capacity for aspiration and ambition, because any mental experience characteristic of a particular culture—be it enjoying video games, developing an addiction to tobacco or coffee, aspiring, or falling in love—can be experienced only on condition that the capacity for such an experience exists within human nature itself. But the existence of a natural capacity, while it can explain exceptional cases of deviance (such as, for instance, the story of Abelard and Eloise), cannot account for a virtual universalization in a particular period and society of what was earlier a deviant experience. The fact is that in sixteenth-­century England, owing to nationalism, ambition and love became normative ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—they were institutionalized. In late-­sixteenth century England, love, as defined by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, was the governing passion because happiness was virtually impossible without it. Today we insist that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable human right, holding as a self-­evident truth that the desire for it is universal. But, like love, ambition, and success, happiness too is a product of the national—fundamentally secular and humanistic—image of reality. Neither the concept nor, therefore, the experience existed before. No language before modern English had a word for it (as a result, it could not be even desired), and there was no word for it, because happiness in a world ruled by transcendental forces of whatever variety was inconceivable. All the words that we today translate as “happiness”—from the eudemonia of the ancient Greeks to the bonheur, felicitá, Glück, and schastye of the contemporary modern vernaculars—were originally synonyms of “good luck” and connoted the benevolence of fate. To experience eudemonia or bonheur, therefore, meant to be subject to such benevolence, to be “blessed”; this was a statement of fact, not a description of a subjective state of being. (In the framework of the Greek understanding, eudemonia, in fact, could not be experienced at all, because easy and honorable death was among its most important ingredients, if not its definitive characteristic, and whether someone was or was not subject to the benevolence of fate, whether one was or was not favored by the gods, could only be established after one died.) Good luck can be wished for, but it cannot be pursued. Good or bad, it is wholly unpredictable and always unexpected. Nothing we do can influence it, it is up to forces we cannot control in any way whether to bestow it on us or not, and because it is so entirely out of our hands,

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we cannot blame ourselves for not being lucky. What was captured by the new, sixteenth-­century word “happiness” (indeed derived from “hap”—a rare synonym for “chance” or “luck”), in distinction, was a living experience of pleasure, according to the OED, “arising from satisfaction with one’s circumstances or condition.” As the circumstances and condition were one’s to change and better, happiness not only could, but had to be pursued. It was a matter of achievement, of success, of self-­realization. In other words, it corresponded to the construction of a firm and satisfactory identity.

Functional mental illness In an open secular society, created by national consciousness, one was supposed to choose and then build one’s life. One’s own maker, one became the architect of one’s happiness. The personal responsibility that came with this empowerment gave rise to a very specific, modern, kind of unhappiness and suffering, which, in its acute form, would express itself as functional mental disease. Thinking from the inside of the national consciousness, we tend, of course, to regard functional mental illness, since the end of the ­nineteenth century presumed to be rooted in two distinct genetic pathologies and divided into schizophrenia and affective disorders, as an historically ubiquitous expression of the universal human nature, just as we think of love, ambition, or desire for equality and freedom. Consequently, we project it onto, and find it in, the past and all human societies, even under what appears to be something entirely different from what we recognize as functional mental disease in modern Western (that is, embedded in monotheism) nations. Indeed, we explain these differences as differences in appearances only, with the invisible but presumed reality being covered by the veneer of the visible but unimportant “cultural artefacts.” However, since no genetic or any other organic origins of functional mental disease have ever been found, despite constant and constantly very well-­funded attempts to find them (in fact, schizophrenia and affective disorders are defined as diseases “of unknown organic origin” and this is precisely what the term “functional” emphasizes), our knowledge of it essentially consists of clinical observation, that is, observation of visible symptoms, and we are not in a position to disregard these as appearances: a difference in symptoms in this case very likely represents a difference in pathology.

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All the historical evidence, of which there is plenty, but which is not considered as relevant and consistently disregarded by “specialists,” points to the direct connection between national consciousness and functional mental illness. Of course, similarly to love or ambition, the capacity, that is, the possibility, for such pathological experience is given in the human nature, and individual cases of what we would call schizophrenia or affective disorder may have existed here and there before nationalism. But only with nationalism functional mental disease became a social problem and an issue in public health because it began occurring at regular and increasing rates. It was first noticed, and recognized as a new and unfamiliar pathology, in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century. It differed from all the many known mental illnesses in that it was not connected to any physical illness or stage in life (infection, fever, injury, female reproductive cycle, old age, were all known to produce erratic behavior, incoherent speech, ­delirium, what we would diagnose as psychosis), but, instead, was chronic or recurrent. None of the numerous terms of the existing medical vocabulary captured it, and so new vocabulary was invented to do so, with a new word—madness—at its center. As described by sixteenth-­century observers, madness combined the symptoms we associate with schizophrenia and manic depression: it was bipolar, oscillating between depression, often with suicidal ideation, and extreme excitement of mania; it dramatically impaired one’s will, leading close to paralysis, when one was depressed, and to out-­of-­ control behavior in a manic state which could deteriorate into what we would call “acute psychosis” and they referred to as “raving madness”; in both states it could be delusional, that is, causing the person to lose the ability to distinguish between one’s inner, mental world and the events outside, and therefore the implicit understanding of the symbolic nature of human reality, without which one cannot function. The disease centrally involved the sense of self: sinking to self-­loathing in depression, rising to delusions of grandeur which could lead to a complete loss of self during mania, and recombining into bizarre, fantastical ideas of the relations between the self and the world in other delusions. It represented, in effect, different states of the problematization and disintegration of identity. Madness spread with national consciousness and already in the ­seventeenth century was severely affecting Scotland, Ireland, and the English settlements in America. But until the French Revolution it was known elsewhere only as “the English malady.” Continental European

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societies, which were obviously familiar with numerous mental diseases, were not familiar with the functional mental disease and did not associate madness with any of the many terms for other mental pathologies in their languages. Immediately with the importation of nationalism the new identity-­ related pathology arrived in France; French physicians first became aware of it in the late 1780s. They never encountered it before in their country. Having encountered it, they assumed that it has always existed, forgetting that just a few years earlier it was considered a peculiar problem of their neighbors across the Channel. They believed that it was their attitude toward mental disease that changed, because they were much more enlightened now, not the phenomenon they were observing. (Historians of the French psychiatry still believe that, which makes the sudden emergence of this profession in France—and many French scholars believe that it was France at that time that gave birth to psychiatry as such—quite tricky to explain.) The assumption that one dealt with the age-­old problem of folie, the common form of mental retardation, obviously as familiar in France as anywhere else, obscured the nature of the problem and led to the confusion of functional mental disease, which is anything but, with weak-­mindedness. In Russia, where madness penetrated at about the same time as in France, it did not begin to spread until almost a century later, because, in distinction to France, where national consciousness was very (though not universally) widespread already in the early nineteenth century, in Russia it was limited to a very narrow elite circle until the liberation of the peasants in the 1860s created a large class of raznochinzy— literally, people of mixed ranks—which changed the character of the intelligentsia. In general, functional mental disease spread together with nationalism and, specifically, the exposure of broad sectors of the population to the values of equality and freedom, and social mobility they made possible. The broader the population embracing national consciousness and the more choices for self-­ definition the nation offers, in other words, the higher have been the rates of schizophrenia and affective disorders in it. Thus the most inclusive, ­egalitarian, and open societies—liberal democracies—have been characterized by the highest rates of functional mental disease. Great Britain led the way until the 1970s. A generation after it lost the Empire (and the number of choices open to the British people contracted), rates of mental disease in it stopped growing. Today the rates are highest in the United States of America, the leading liberal democracy in the world, and they are very high indeed: according to the latest epidemiological findings,

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which are consistent with the trend established in the course of several decades, the life prevalence of functional mental disorders among American adults stands now at 20 percent. The possibilities of choice for self-­definition in the U.S. are constantly growing, the last two decades expanding them tremendously, for instance, in the areas of sexual orientation and identity, and the rates of mental disease continue to increase.

Nationalism as the double-­helix of modern politics The political implications of this can hardly be exaggerated. Life prevalence of a chronic, recurrent mental disorder, severely affecting one’s ability to function, at 20 percent among American adults, means that one in five congressmen, generals, lawyers, physicians, soldiers, teachers, and so on, is—to say the least—at any point likely to be impaired and exercise poor judgment in the performance of one’s professional duties. And while the U.S., insofar as these rates are concerned, is “number one,” the other Western nations are not far behind it: not as dramatic, perhaps, their figures are of the same order of magnitude. But it is not through the levels of clinical mental disorder that the effects of nationalism on the mind make themselves felt in the political sphere most gravely. No disease caused by an outside agent—plague, tuberculosis, common flu, and so on—affects populations exposed to it uniformly: while some succumb, others don’t, and among those who succumb, some catch the severe form with a lethal outcome, and some get away with weaker, curable expressions of the disease and survive. This depends on the interactions of the agent with the environment, on the conditions in which it operates: predisposition of the patient, availability of therapies, and so on. The same applies to functional mental illness. Its agent—national consciousness itself—is always present in modern society; it makes anomie pervasive and the formation of individual identity one’s own responsibility, and therefore problematic. This general problematization of individual identity and specific problems with the formation of identity led to degrees (clinical and subclinical, permanent and temporary) of mental impairment, derangement, and dysfunction, today recognized as schizophrenia and manic-­depressive illness. The common symptoms of these conditions are social maladjustment (chronic discomfort in one’s environment) and chronic discomfort (dis-­ease) with one’s self, the sense of self oscillating between

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self-­loathing and delusions of grandeur, megalomania, most frequently (in cases of unipolar depression) fixing on self-­loathing, and in rare cases deteriorating into the terrifying sense of a complete loss of self (in the acute psychosis of full-­fledged schizophrenia). This mental disease reaches its clinical level in a minority of cases (even if it is a very large minority, as in the United States). But the pervasive anomie of modern national societies affects very large numbers of people— statistics claim, close to 50 percent of Americans today, for example, are occasionally mentally disturbed—and therefore, makes very large numbers of people socially maladjusted and deeply dissatisfied with themselves—that is, as the English were the first to recognize, “malcontent,” dis-­eased, uncomfortable in their existential experience. This discomfort provides a major impetus for political activity, making nationalism define modern politics in a double-­helix manner: directly through its principles of secularism, egalitarianism, and popular sovereignty, as was explained in Chapter 1, and indirectly, through this general discomfort. In itself, even before it leads to, and irrespective of, such general malaise among the carriers of the national consciousness, nationalism radically changes our social and political experience. Because of its secularism, egalitarianism, and insistence on popular sovereignty, it makes people activist. It follows logically from the explicit or implicit recognition that man has only one life, that social reality, at least, is a thing of his making, and that all men are equal—that nothing can justify this one life falling short of giving full satisfaction, that men are responsible for all its disappointments, and that everyone has the right to change reality that disappoints. It becomes relatively easy to mobilize national populations in causes of social reform and civil society comes into being. But it is very often mental dis-­ease that shapes the causes for which the population is mobilized, thus profoundly affecting the nature of political action in nations. Specifically, this mental discomfort, provoked by the modern problematization of individual identity makes for ideological activism on the individual level, and for ideological politics on the collective level, both of which, in effect, are delusionally inspired. An example of individual ideological activism is “lone-­wolf” Islamic terrorism: young Western-­born or Western-­educated people from generally secular, mostly Muslim but quite often Christian backgrounds, converting to Islam (as a rule without acquiring much knowledge about the tradition) and carrying out violent acts

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against targets which symbolize the West. In the overwhelming majority of cases of apprehension and post-­ act investigation the person is revealed as a consciously maladjusted, unhappy, confused ­individual—a misfit, frequently complaining of one’s loneliness and unhappiness on the Internet. Why do these mildly disturbed people, who clearly suffer from the modern malaise, rally to radical, particularly violent, version of Islam? They do this for precisely the same reason young people in their existential situation earlier rallied to Marxism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and especially after the attack of September 11, 2001 in the U.S., radical Islam replaced Marxism as the most available rationalization of this malaise. Serving also as the ideology of Arab or Persian (secular) nationalisms, it naturally appeals in the first place to the afflicted of Muslim background, but it answers the need of all the mildly disturbed, existentially uncomfortable people. It has been argued above that ideological politics is a specific form of politics brought about by nationalism. They are irrational in the sense of being motivated by a dedication (passionate, if not fanatic) to causes which in the large majority of cases lack the remotest connection to the personal experience—and therefore objective interests— of the participants, but characterized by their capacity to justify and explain the discomfort these participants feel with their self and social ­environment. At their core invariably lie visions that bear the most distinctive mark of a schizophrenic delusion: the loss of the understanding of the symbolic nature of human social reality and the confusion between symbols and their referents, when the symbols themselves become objective reality. All revolutions—a modern form of political action, in contrast to spontaneous rebellions and uprisings, which happen everywhere throughout history—are of this kind. It is significant that, in distinction to the majority of participants in rebellions and uprisings, who come from the lower classes, revolutionaries are mostly recruited from the privileged, and specifically from the educated, strata particularly affected by mental disease. The majority of them, especially in the leadership ranks, are activated not by specific, pragmatic interests, but by the desire to change the society radically on the basis of some vaguely defined ideal. The change is predicated on the destruction of what the ideal is to replace. Thus, while the ideal is vague, the destructive, violent impulse is clearly focused and, with symbols and their referents confused, actual people are killed because of what they represent, rather than what they do.

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The core ideal and the enemy which the revolutionary movement targets are very likely to emerge in the disordered minds of, and offered by, actual schizophrenics. However, the overwhelming majority of those who accept and carry on the message, that is, of the revolutionaries, participants in the revolution, must be of necessity recruited from among the mildly mentally ill, those suffering from the general anomic malaise caused by the national consciousness, from what we refer to today as spectrum disorders. In effect, they use the schizophrenic’s delusions as therapy for their minor ills (which are obviously extremely bothersome for them). Their presentation of these minor personal ills under the cover of a general cause serves to conceal their mental illness from themselves and from others. Their recognition of a schizophrenic’s delusion as a general cause conceals his/her major mental illness, presents him/her (and allows him/her to self-­represent) as a prophet, a genius, and so on, and may elevate him/her to the position of the revolutionary leader, if he (or she) is available for this. It is quite possible that this is the explanation of Hitler’s influence in the National Socialist revolution in Germany. Schizophrenics are singularly attuned to the surrounding culture. Schizophrenic delusions consist of familiar and suggestive tropes, which make their claims persuasive and even self-­evident. This explains the centrality of two themes in violent ideological politics of the last two centuries in the West (that is, in societies embedded in monotheism, including Islam): the evil rich—­capitalism— versus the good poor; and Jews—now Israel—against the world. Different types of nationalism favor different types of self-­medication through social/political activism. Thus individualistic nationalisms naturally encourage individual activism, which explains why lone-­wolf terrorism is particularly widespread in liberal democracies. Obversely, individualistic nationalisms discourage violent collective activism. Individualistic nations are no strangers to ideologically or delusionally inspired collective action. Such action in them, however, is usually nonviolent (though activists may approve of violence by others) and has a number of other characteristics which distinguish it from what is likely to happen in collectivistic nations. Even as participants in collective actions members of individualistic nations retain a strong sense of their individuality, separateness from the collective. They do not meld with it; the pervasive individualism of their national consciousness makes them believe that they act as individuals. When suffering from the modern malaise, each one of them turns against the society that makes them, each individually, uncomfortable: their own society, their own nation. Thus American political activism has been very often

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anti-­American, whatever specific problem happens to be at the core of the activist ideology in any particular case. Collectivistic nationalisms, in distinction, encourage violent collective action. Thus all the great revolutions—the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the German, that is, National Socialist, revolution—happened in collectivistic nations. In addition, in the ­ framework of collectivistic and especially ethnic nationalisms, delusional activism often takes the commonly recognizable form of nationalistic xenophobic politics—that is the form of hostility to “the other.” The sense of national inferiority—which is a common characteristic of ethnic nationalisms—while encouraging delusionally motivated violent xenophobic collective activism as therapy for the psychological, mental ravages of anomie, as already argued, contributes to mental disease on its own. It adds to the problems with one’s individual identity the dissatisfaction with one’s national identity, in which one tends to seek comfort from personal dissatisfactions. This is, most likely, what we are dealing with, among others, in the case of terrorist organizations waving the flag of militant Islam, such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Boko Haram, and so on. Like the Cold War, perceived in terms of the natural opposition between  universal ideological alternatives of liberal democracy and ­socialism/communism, which was in actual fact a competition for prestige between the nationalisms of two superpowers (one of which happened to be individualistic and civic and the other collectivistic and ethnic, thus indeed representing two fundamentally opposed worldviews), the unconventional but very real war between indisputably modern (in the parlance of an earlier era, “First World”), that is, technologically developed, fully industrialized, and generally p ­ rosperous, societies and these organizations, often, surreptitiously or not, supported by Islamic states, is a secular nationalist conflict. It is a conflict between those, who see themselves as members of ethnic national communities they themselves consider inferior (because technologically undeveloped and economically backward, because, in other words, they compare badly to nations to which these members would like them to be equal) and are therefore deeply humiliated by the very existence of developed and prosperous modern societies, and these societies. The stake in this conflict, again, is dignity and its psychological underpinning, as is that of ethnic nationalism as such, is ressentiment or existential envy of those believed to have it. The conflict is fundamentally secular: Islamic terrorist organizations are concerned exclusively with

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the mundane hierarchy of community status and relations between people. But religion—and, importantly, religious history—provides the basis for their demands for international, secular, respect (Islam is a great religion, in the eyes of its believers by definition morally superior to its alternatives, which, upon its emergence at the time of Christian Dark Ages, for several centuries was not only a major political power in the monotheistic world, drawing into it through conquest, among others, significant chunks of India, but arguably the cultural vanguard of the monotheistic—that is, Western—civilization). The dignity capital of Islam is very high. It is from their membership in its community, once powerful, respected, and, what is more, eminently respectable, that the great majority of the participants in the militant Islamic organizations derive their identity, not from the relationship between each one of them and God, and it is because this community has lost its former power and respect that they feel humiliated, assailed in their dignity. This identity, and their grievance, is secular, not religious. This does not mean that their religious proclamations are just rhetoric, that they are not sincere in declaring that they are doing God’s work, or that they do not really believe that they are going to be rewarded for their deeds by eternal life. The majority, probably, truly believe all that (and the few who don’t are either Machiavellian geniuses, willing to sacrifice everything for the glory of their nation, or sadists, using the beliefs of others to satisfy their desire to kill with impunity). But their religious faith is itself secularized, it is brought down to earth, it becomes a conduit for secular ideas and aspirations, rather than inspiring—and explaining—them. To understand militant Islam, in other words, we must address the national consciousness behind it. The ethnic nations these radical Islamic organizations represent are obviously not the makeshift political entities created by Western imperial powers in the course of pursuing their own rivalries and distributed among their client families of native aristocracy, which are today represented in the United Nations—Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and so on. Instead, these are the imagined Arab (mostly) and Persian nations, seen through the lens of national consciousness as emerging in the distant past and from the beginning distinguished by certain exemplary characteristics and propensities (the expression of which may be under some circumstances compromised). As these characteristics and propensities are collective and ethnic, that is—as they are characteristics of the collective individual—insofar as individual members of the nation are concerned, they are natural, independent of the individual volition, given, even in such evidently cultural cases as those of

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language and religion. Individual members can only compromise their expression, just like cancerous cells can compromise the expression of one’s genetic code, and, when they do, must be excoriated from the collective organism. Islam which, with its glorious history, contributes most to the dignity of the Arab and Persian nations, is seen as their distinguishing ethnic characteristic. This explains the multi-­front war of the dedicated Arab and Persian nationalists: they are engaged in a war with developed Western societies, such as the U.S., Britain, France, Israel, the very existence of which is intolerable and humiliating to them; with Christians and Jews more broadly; with the opposing interpretations of Islam; with governments of Muslim societies which do not share their agenda; and with all slacking Muslims, whom they consider traitors. Paradoxically, in general, the rates of severe (clinical) mental disturbance should be inversely proportional to the possibilities of engaging in ideologically motivated collective activism, that is, necessarily the highest in individualistic nations, and higher in collectivistic and civic nations, than in ethnic ones. Thus most aggressive and xenophobic nationalisms—the worst for the world around—would be, in fact, of all nationalisms, the best for the mental health of their individual members. Outside the monotheistic civilization, the effect of nationalism on the existential experience was different. Insofar as functional mental illness is concerned, East Asian societies pose “a persistent puzzle” to epidemiologists: their rates are very low by comparison to Western societies of comparable levels of development, and diseases they experience are different in symptoms, course, and outcome. This is most likely related to the radically different place of logic in monotheistic versus non-­monotheistic traditions. Except in special areas, such as science, Oriental cultures are far less sensitive to contradictions than Occidental ones, and therefore far less affected by anomie. As it is mainly through anomie that nationalism influences the mind, indirectly in the many ways touched upon above influencing politics, it is quite possible that in East Asia it does not have the double-­helix function it has in our civilization and that its political influence there is limited to the direct influence.

6

Conclusion: globalization of nationalism

To conclude this Advanced Introduction to Nationalism, let us examine nationalism’s relevance to the events of the last quarter-­century, roughly from 1989 to today. From the point of view of political scientists, the period was, to say the least, confusing. The Cold War that defined our understanding of politics during the previous 45 years was ostensibly won by the so-­called West, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the bipolar world disappeared. Politics writ large was no longer the ideological opposition between liberal democracy and communist totalitarianism, representing the social forces of good and evil. History itself, it was said, reached its end and what we understood of its course until then became of no use to us. The extremely important international discipline of Sovietology was no more and numerous Sovietologists had to change their qualifications or at least refocus. Since the writing on the wall was that all that was communism would morph into liberal democracy and East would become West, a significant percentage of them moved into a new field, called Transition Studies. The focus in it was on the process of democratization, primarily in Eastern Europe and formerly Soviet areas, but elsewhere as well—because now it was expected everywhere. In the meantime, what was seen as the emergence of capitalism as the victorious (nay, the only viable—it is hard to imagine, indeed, that this was only 25 years ago!) economic system gave a major boost to the theory and studies of globalization in political economy. While the end results of the two processes were assumed to be positive, the means chosen to achieve them in the overwhelming majority of cases were those of violent nationalist conflict. In fact, the resurgence, following the collapse of communism, in Europe and Central Asia of virulent ethnic nationalism of the kind not seen since World War II was a major surprise for political observers, second only to that collapse itself. Nationalism, generally disregarded before in the social sciences as a subject of mainly historical interest, therefore, also emerged as a fashionable specialization in both political science and political sociology.

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In general, developments in Western Europe appeared to be more in line with the globalization theory than the claim that nationalism—and national conflict—was returning as the major political force. While newly independent republics of the Soviet Union were rocked by nationalist passions, which seemed only to have waited for the lifting of imperial controls to erupt, and such long-­existing transnational entities as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were disintegrating, whether peacefully or violently, into ethnic national units, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, the UK, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Benelux established the European Union, dedicated to the principles of liberal democracy, with its own transnational citizenship and, within a decade, common currency; and with growing membership, eventually reaching a population of over half a billion. Countries willing to enter the E.U. have been asked to demonstrate their liberal-­democratic bona fide and, in case their national traditions were different, modify their practices. This had a taming effect on ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe, but did not transform it. In Western Europe, however, the Union encouraged break-­away nationalism among others in the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain, the Flemish in Belgium, and in Scotland. Several other international developments contributed to our ­confusion. The spectacular terrorist attack on the American soil on September 11, 2001, which was within hours interpreted as religiously motivated, virtually wiped out the Cold War and the Soviet Union from our collective memory, temporarily eclipsing the optimistic projections of democratization and globalization and diverting attention from the resurgent and ever-­present nationalism which rendered them problematic. Suddenly, the world seemed to be structured along another historical divide and rift by another fundamental ­conflict: the divide and conflict between modernity and resistant-­to-­it Islam. Presumably, democratization and globalization were elements of modernity, “radical” or “fundamentalist” Islam was, therefore, opposed to them. Since September 2001, international politics—and history—was, thus, in addition to democratization, globalization, and nationalism, framed by the confrontation of militant Islam and modernity, called “War on Terror” in the West. The very large numbers of immigrants from North African, Arab, and other Muslim societies in Western European and North American countries considered standard bearers of liberal democracy made this international conflict a central issue in domestic Western politics. Governments and publics would attempt to reconcile their humanitarian commitments with security considerations.

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In the meantime, Russia has reverted to its old authoritarian ways. The people no less than the “power structures” want the empire back and the government experiments: meddles in Moldova, dismembers Georgia, attempts, first, to freeze the Ukraine into submission, cutting off its gas supply, then annexes the Crimea, and so on. At least this particular post-­communist society has declared itself quite openly in favor of nationalism. It would not participate in the predicted globalization and democratization. It’s not that Russians are averse to democracy, they like equality and dignity that comes with it well enough. It is liberty that they have a problem with. After all, communism was, by definition, a democratic regime: it just was a social, rather than liberal, democracy. Liberty is not doing too well in the West either. At least in the United States, the demise of its Cold War antagonist paradoxically resulted in a loss of self-­confidence, a sense of identity even, as if, no longer seeing constantly what they are opposed to, Americans forgot what distinguishes them. American liberals, young and old, would have equality at the expense of liberty, and the democracy to which the great republic continues to profess allegiance is more and more often understood, if not named, as the Soviet-­type, that is, social (or socialist) democracy. Thus, after all, the West and the (European/post-­Soviet) East do meet and, as social scientists predicted in the 1960s, converge, but with the East standing its ground and the West, befuddled, drawing closer to it. Our victory of a quarter of a century ago turns out to be Pyrrhic. And if it is not Pyrrhic, it turns out to be irrelevant. In this quarter of a century we have been forced to discover China. Our notion of its existence before was purely theoretical. In the course of a few recent years it rose before our eyes, colossal, impassive, enigmatic, like a giant mountain range suddenly erupting out of the earth in place of rolling plains. This tectonic change in our political geography demands redrawing of every conceptual map by which we have ever been guided in our understanding. China’s population is four times larger than that of the United  States which has lost its direction, almost three times larger than the half-­a-­billion strong but wobbling European Union, ten times the size of the dwindling population of Russia. It is a monolith determined to play the role commensurate with its vast size on the world stage. It has entered our politics. This new presence presupposes the redefinition of both the West and the East. What unites the Cold War and the contradictory post-­ Cold-­ War trends of regional disintegration and integration? Struggles for national

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sovereignty and willing devolution of national sovereignties to transnational bodies; Eastern European transitions from social democracy in politics and socialism in the economy of the age of communism to liberal democracy in politics and capitalism in the economy, and the simultaneous drift in the opposite direction in traditionally liberal democratic and capitalist societies; secession and unification; increasing stress on particularistic identities and globalization; downplaying of religious affiliations in civic life; the emergence of militant religion as a major political force; and the tremendous, reality-­transforming expansion of our political world due to the ascendancy of South-­East Asia, especially China? Behind all these seemingly heterogeneous developments lies nationalism—they all result, specifically, from the globalization of national consciousness. To sum up, the major global political force of our time is the way of thinking, feeling, and acting which reflects a very specific image of ­reality. This image is secular—in the sense that it is focused on this world of our living experience to almost complete exclusion of the transcendental spheres, and, in its social core, it presumes that this world is naturally divided into sovereign communities of fundamentally equal members. Envisioning one’s community as fundamentally egalitarian and sovereign means that it is imagined as a democracy. The world of nations, by definition, is a world of ­democracies, whether these nations are individualistic and civic, collectivistic and civic, or collectivistic and ethnic. These different types of ­nationalisms, ­however, result in different kinds of democracy: individualistic ­nationalism, which is necessarily civic, and often collectivistic and civic nationalism produce liberal democracies, while ethnic nationalism, which is necessarily collectivistic, produces authoritarian democracies  (referred  to as popular or socialist). Classical liberalism and socialism/communism are, therefore, products and self-­representations of different kinds of nationalism, which means that the Cold War, no less than World War II, was a national conflict. Thus, the logic of (and driving forces behind) politics during and after the Cold War remain the same. The main reason for national conflicts—and for conflicts within nations—is wounded pride or threat to dignity. National identity, which derives from the membership in a sovereign community of equals, is a dignifying identity. This is what distinguishes it from most other identities—all other inclusive identities, cutting across status lines—what makes it so attractive (explaining the spread of n ­ ationalism

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over much of the Earth’s surface) and what makes national mentality so competitive. Nations are in constant pursuit of prestige, always on the look-­out for signs of superiority to others or at least equality to those whose superiority is recognized, whether in the military or economic power, in intellectual and cultural achievement or in sports, in quality of its products or beauty of its women—and invariably in its moral standing. Members’ personal identities necessarily reflect the prestige of the community from which their national identity, a central element in modern personal identities, derives. Thus, they are extremely protective of their nations’ dignity, especially in ethnic collectivistic nations, in which the dignity of individual identity is a direct function, reflection, of the dignity of the nation. Ethnic nationalists experience the indignity of their nation as personal inferiority, with a profound effect on their mental comfort. They are wounded in their national pride by, and likely to perceive threats to national dignity from, mere existence of nations they recognize as superior. What is primarily at stake in national conflicts between or involving ethnic nations is equality of respect due to one’s nation or unconditional national dignity. In collectivistic and civic nations, where the ties between national prestige and personal dignity are more convoluted, and especially in individualistic nations, in which the dignity of the nation is believed to also reflect the achievements of individuals who compose it, fluctuations in national prestige do not have such a direct effect on individual self-­ respect, but preoccupation with personal dignity is far more intense. This explains the brutally competitive nature of individualistic nations domestically and the rates of functional mental disease in them as well as the character of their internal politics. While the institutions in liberal democracies safeguard individual liberties, which, among other things, make possible for individuals to achieve distinction and contribute to the dignity of the nation, oppositional movements in them, as a rule, insist on ever greater group equality, superimposed on the equality of individuals before the law (equality of opportunity) and at the expense of individual rights. Dignity of personal identity in nations derives from membership in a sovereign (that is, self-­governing, free) community of equals—those who share in sovereignty or freedom, which, in individualistic nations implies the right to distinguish oneself. The goal of oppositional movements in individualistic nations is to assure the dignity implicit in this equality without exercising this right, thus escaping competition and personal responsibility for one’s possible failure in it.

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The success of transnational bodies’ initiatives to develop transnational identities and secure the allegiance of the constituent populations, too, ultimately depends on the ability of the proposed transnational identities to secure more dignity than membership in nations they propose to transcend implied. Transnational identity, in other words, must be worth more than a national one in the coin of dignity; whatever other benefits it offers, it must have more dignity capital, in the first place. It is, clearly, these calculations, however inexplicit and seemingly contradictory, that have been behind splits, unifications, tensions, and conflicts that have characterized the European political scene in the past quarter of a century in Eastern as well as Western parts of the continent. The European Union—the club in which half a billion Europeans are offered membership—promises certain material benefits, but it is not exclusive. Its dignity capital is low. Being formally recognized as European could boost the morale of the educated sectors in the Eastern Block countries immediately following the collapse of communism (and the denial of such recognition can still be experienced as a gratuitous offense in Turkey), but what could European identity ever add to the national identities of the French or Italians? Who are Europeans, if not they? Who, if not they, makes European identity dignified, to begin with? Across the Channel, they evidently decided that it was not worth their while and, despite the warnings of experts that this would be irrational, voted for Brexit. The very same—essentially secular—calculations lie behind the rise of militant and, more generally, political Islam. This too is an aspect of nationalism’s globalization, in this case, its expansion into the sphere of religion. Religion has been utilized as an important tool for the promotion of national and nationalist agendas almost by every ethnic nationalism, not only in the Islamic world. Suffice it to recall the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” motto of official nationalism in Tzarist Russia. The central cultural tradition uniting the populace with the ruling strata, religion naturally recommends itself as an ethnic characteristic. Thus it has been very often politicized, commonly becoming the preferred instrument of ideological mobilization in the hands of the state. In this sense, the Soviet Union offered ethnic nationalism a 70-­year-­long parenthesis, in which this ideological role was performed by Marxism, while religion lay dormant, practiced by the people where this was not explicitly discouraged, but generally unarticulated and largely irrelevant for political elites within the state as well as among anti-­establishment activists. Only Catholicism remained a political, secular, force in nations, such

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as Poland and Lithuania, resisting Russian d ­ omination, or Northern Ireland, whose conflict with the rest of Britain (the purpose of which was national affirmation) was defined in religious terms. National projects of both the states and opposition activists in countries of what was then called the “Third World,” whose dignity was offended by the existence of the “First” one, were served perfectly well by the irreligious rhetoric of historical materialism. Indeed, not a few Jihadist leaders were schooled as vanguard of the proletarian struggle first. The Soviet ill-­advised invasion of Afghanistan threw a wrench into the proletarian brotherhood and the collapse of the Soviet Union undermined the appeal of Marxism among Muslims, though well into the new century there have remained some die-­ hard socialists among heads of their states. The Cold War thus quite naturally morphed into the current confrontation, with some reshuffling of allies and adversaries but very little change in fundamental motivations. This continuity of international political processes behind their seeming heterogeneity has been due, among other factors, unquestionably to the little remarked upon fact that these processes have been contained within one, our, civilization—the civilization regularly misnamed Western and Judeo-­Christian, but embedded within the monotheistic tradition and properly called monotheistic. In this sense, both the opposition between Western and Eastern blocks earlier, and the conflict of the last decades, which pits Judeo-­Christian against Muslim societies, have been family feuds, quarrels between people (and ­peoples) whose separate cultures share the same first principles and who, therefore, fundamentally, think and feel alike. The monotheistic civilization, however, is only one among several, most likely three, currently existing civilizations, the other two being the Chinese and the Indian civilizations. Between them, the latter two probably contain about half the world’s population (with the countries of China and India alone containing 2.5 billion people). This makes the monotheistic civilization the most populous of the three. It is also the most widespread, with societies on all five continents, while the other two civilizations exist only in Asia. Peers in age—all three civilizations are between 5000 and 6000 years old—they followed different historical trajectories, among which ours seems to be the most eventful. For at least the first three thousand years of its existence it was so small that only the steady development through the millennia of its foundational traditions and the codification of their first principles justified calling it a civilization. Its spread, which began only 2000 years ago—when both

CONCLUSION: GLOBALIZATION OF NATIONALISM 135

the Chinese and Indian civilizations already reached their territorial limits—first, under the aegis of Christianity, then of both Christianity and Islam, however, was extremely rapid. Yet, it was only during the last 500 years that the monotheistic civilization expanded to the Western Hemisphere and most of Africa. It was the addition of South American and African populations that made this civilization the most populous of the three. The spread of the monotheistic civilization in the last two thousand years of its existence has been aggressive: none of the cultures it came into contact with outside the other two civilizations (which during these 2000 years remained almost entirely self-­contained) were able to resist its thrust. At the borders of the other civilizations, however, this thrust stopped. Existing side by side for two millennia, the Chinese and the monotheistic civilizations might be compared to similarly charged magnets that repel each other: they could as well be populating different planets. Until very recently we simply did not include China in our concept of “the world.” The space of the Indian c­ ivilization, by contrast, has been repeatedly invaded by Islam, and parts of it were for centuries under Muslim rule. In distinction to the Chinese ­civilization, which, were it not in fact, would still seem to be walled off from Western influences, the Indian one was able to recede before them like oil before metal, it was pliable, but it remained immutable. (It is significant that as a major factor in shaping individual and group identities in India, dividing Indians’ political commitments, and pitting Muslim Indians against the huge majority of others, Islam emerged only when absorbed in national consciousness.) While the drive behind the monotheistic civilization during the first millennium and a half of its aggressive spread was the spirit of religious proselytism, much of its expansion in the last 500 years was motivated by, and at the same time spread, national consciousness. Until the middle of the twentieth century, nationalism developed almost exclusively within the monotheistic civilization: the only nation outside it was Japan. Humiliated by the forcible opening of their country—self-­sufficient and completely uninterested in the rest of the world—to the West, Japan’s unusually large upper class of the samurai, to reassert their dignity, decided to reconstruct their society on the national model of the invading Westerners. This reconstruction was astonishingly rapid and successful. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the little Asian country without natural resources, which less than half a century earlier did not possess firearms and

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was satisfied with a subsistence economy, entered both military and economic competition with the major Western powers. Propelled by nothing but its national motivation, committed to the dignity of the nation above all else, it has been counted among these major powers ever since. Fully aware of Western military and economic superiority, architects of Japanese nationalism considered Western peoples barbarian and looked down on their religion and moral values. Their motto was “Western knowledge, Eastern values”; they wished to learn Western methods of doing things, not to pursue the same goals. The Japanese never measured themselves by Western standards, in other words, never wanted to be “like” the West. And conscious of being unlike, they did not envy us and did not develop ressentiment. The distance Japan kept between itself and the world which would force itself on it channeled its people’s energies and they acquired Western knowledge very quickly. War, they learned from the West among other things, was the surest way of making a nation respected. Thus, just forty years after American “black ships” sailed into Uraga Harbor, Japan invaded and defeated China. China’s defeat at the hands of its erstwhile “dwarf” vassal, far more humiliating for the Middle Kingdom than the irritations caused by contemptible yongueidz—foreign devils (the Japanese were devils too, but the Chinese did not consider them foreign), sowed the first seeds of Chinese nationalism. With the even more spectacular victory over Russia, “the Great White Power,” in 1905, hailed all over South-­East Asia, Japan opened the way to the spread of national consciousness throughout the two Eastern civilizations—or its true globalization. It took about a century for these seeds to germinate and bear fruit. But in the last quarter of a century they did bear fruit. And this fruit— the spread of nationalism to China and India, which made these two colossal and near monolithic cultures enter into the competition with nations composing our civilization for dignity—is without a doubt the most important political development of the last decades. It was owing to nationalism, a creation of a small Western European country, that first Western Europe and then also its outpost in North America, the United States, became the center of the world, whom no one around could disregard, leading an Indian historian to posit that in 1500 the European Age began in history. From this center national ­ consciousness—the vision of reality which emerged in ­sixteenth-­century England—slowly spread all over the planet, carrying

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Western ­influence with it. Never has this influence reached further than today, when nationalism became a truly global phenomenon. It is ironic that this reach, the penetration of national consciousness into the great Eastern civilizations, spells the end of the European Age and announces the beginning of a new, Asian, historical era.

Selected bibliography

Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, [1983]2006). de Vries, Jan and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500‒1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Durkheim, Emile, The Rules of the Sociological Method, trans. W.D. Halls, in Steven Lukes (ed.), The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method (New York: Free Press, 1983). Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Greenfeld, Liah, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Greenfeld, Liah, Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). (The above trilogy contains detailed references to all the sources that formed the basis for discussions in the present volume.) Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: MacMillan, 1961). Marx, Karl, “Essay on the Jewish Question”; “Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”; “The German Ideology” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx–Engels Reader, 2nd edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978). Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-­Communist Manifesto (1960; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Snyder, Louis L., German Nationalism: The Tragedy of a People (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1952). Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner’s, 1976).

Index

1984 37–8 absolute monarchy 45 absolutism 29–30, 55 activism 3, 122, 124–5, 127 affective disorders 118–19 see also depressive disorders affirmative action 34 Afghanistan 134 Al Qaeda 125 ambition 8, 114–17, 119 Amendola, G. 64 America see United States American system 92, 105 ancien régime 54, 74, 80 Anglophobia 81 Animal Farm (Orwell, George) 37 anti-Semitism 70–74, 76–9 Argentina 35 aristocracy 12, 14–15, 27–9, 46, 54–5, 57, 80, 126 see also elites; nobility art 8–10, 32, 59 atheism 18 Australia 90 authoritarianism 2–3, 33–4, 53, 92, 103, 130–31 autocracy 31–2, 48 Belgium 129 Bell, D. 69 Benelux 129 Bible 12 Bildungsbürger 46, 55–7, 60, 67 Bismarck, O. 105 Boko Haram 125 Brazil 35 Brexit 99 British Empire 40

Calvinism 83–4, 88, 94, 96 capitale impositie 80 capitalism 4–5, 70–73, 77, 80–85, 89, 92, 97–111, 113, 124, 128, 131 Catherine the Great 31–2, 55 Catholicism 84, 94, 133–4 Charles V 94 Charles XII 30 Child, J. 94 China 44, 101–11, 130–31, 135–6 Christianity 24, 29, 35, 42–4, 78, 84, 94, 101–2, 115–16, 122, 126–7, 134–5 see also Protestantism Churchill, W. 65 Cicero 21 citizenship 26, 29–30, 33, 104, 129 see also national identity civic nationalism 26–7, 33–5, 50, 52, 55, 67, 88–9, 127, 131–2 civil rights movement 3 class system 1, 12–14, 86, 88, 109 see also social stratification classical liberalism 49–50 Colbert, J.B. 92 Colbertism 92 Cold War 3, 65, 125, 128–31, 134 collective consciousness 23 guilt 34 nationalism 26–7, 29, 31–5, 50, 55–6, 66–7, 89, 92, 103, 125–7, 131–2 violence 3, 66–8, 125–6 collectivism 2, 65 communication 37–8 communism 3, 69–70, 76, 98, 110–11, 125, 128, 130–31 see also Marxism competitiveness 5, 27, 50, 83, 88–9, 96–8, 100–102, 109, 132

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coups d’état 4 crimes against humanity 67 Crusaders 42 cultural framework 1, 4, 6–7, 10, 13, 15, 22–3, 25, 27, 31, 36, 38 cultural relativism 58, 60 culture 21–2, 30, 34, 36, 51–2, 59–60, 85, 99, 104, 113, 126–7, 132 Czechoslovakia 129 deinstitutionalization 29 democracy 2–3, 25, 65, 86, 129–31 demonization 67–8 Deng Xiao Ping 111 depressive disorders 8, 119, 121–2 dictionaries 12, 38–9, 69, 81, 114, 116, 118 dignity 12, 14–17, 26–8, 30, 32, 50, 52, 55, 57, 88, 90, 103, 109–11, 114–15, 125–7, 130–36 capital 14, 28, 49, 78, 126, 133 diversity 34–5, 48 division of labor 60 Dostoyevsky, F. 30 Dryden, J. 50–51 Duclos, C.P. 17 Durkheim, E. 19, 21, 91, 113 Dutch Republic see Netherlands economic(s) 4–5, 81–4, 87–8, 96–7, 99–100, 104–5, 108, 111, 131–2 see also capitalism determinism 86 growth 5, 84–9, 101, 103 rationality 96–7, 107 education 1, 31, 46, 55–6, 92, 103–4, 107–8, 110–11, 133 egalitarianism 1–2, 23, 26, 65, 73, 88, 90, 112–13, 120, 122, 131 elections 3, 104 elites 4, 11–12, 16–17, 28, 44, 46, 48–9, 53, 57, 67, 80, 94, 103, 110, 120, 133 Elizabeth I 25 Elyot, T. 12, 39, 114 emigration 90 emotionalism 57–8 emotions 7–8, 58, 61, 112–18 empirical reality 15, 19–20, 52, 85

England 12–15, 22–3, 27–30, 35, 38–41, 44–5, 47, 50–52, 55, 60–61, 66, 70–71, 74–6, 81, 84, 87–92, 95–7, 100, 106, 113–17, 119, 136 see also Great Britain English language 36, 38–9, 45, 112–17 Enlightenment 31, 49–56, 58, 61, 70 envy 8, 31, 33, 102, 125 see also ressentiment equality 1–4, 7, 12, 23, 26, 31–2, 43, 52, 68, 113, 118, 120, 130 Erasmus, D. 51 ethnic nationalism 27, 31–4, 55–6, 67–8, 89, 104, 125–7, 129, 131–2 ethnicity 34–6, 42, 48, 66, 98 see also race European Union 99, 129–30, 133 existential experience 7, 10, 112, 122, 127 fascism 48–9, 64–5, 68, 98, 104 feminism 3 feudalism 13–14, 29–30, 40, 97 Fichte, J.G. 18, 57, 63, 77 Fillmore, M. 100 financial revolution 95–6 foreign trade 91–2, 106–7 fourth estate 46 see also intellectuals France 16–18, 26–9, 31–2, 35, 44–6, 50–51, 53–8, 60, 67, 71, 74–6, 80, 84, 89, 91–3, 101, 104–6, 120, 127, 129 Franco, F. 48–9 Frederick the Great 55 free competition 92 free trade 89, 92, 105–6 freedom 23, 26, 32, 61, 65, 91, 118, 120, 132 see also liberty French Revolution 4, 28–9, 31, 33, 53–4, 57–8, 80, 119, 125 Fronde 4 Georgia 130 Germany 3, 16–19, 33, 35, 45–6, 53, 55–8, 64–5, 67–71, 73–6, 78, 84–5, 89, 91–2, 98, 101, 103–9, 111, 124–5, 129 globalization 94, 98–103, 111, 129, 131, 133 Glorious Revolution 54, 95 Goethe, J.W. 60 government 2, 23, 25, 45, 48–50, 94–5, 100, 111, 129 see also politics

INDEX 141

Great Britain 41–2, 52–3, 55–6, 81, 84, 87, 92, 100–101, 105, 120, 127, 134 see also England; Scotland Hamas 125 happiness 8, 82, 113, 117–18 see also unhappiness Hegel, G.W.F. 63, 74 Henry VIII 12–13, 40 Herder, J.G. 58–61 Hezbollah 125 historical materialism 84–6, 134 Hitler, A. 124 see also Nazism Hölderlin, F. 59 human nature 118 human reality 20–21, 38, 119 human rights 117 Hume, D. 53 identity 24–5, 113, 116, 121, 126, 131–2 see also national identity imperialism 100 independence movements 3, 40, 129 India 101–3, 126, 135 individualism 2, 58–9, 62–5, 70, 77, 90–91, 108 individualistic nationalism(s) 26, 33–4, 50, 52, 66, 88–91, 104, 124, 127, 131–2 indoctrination 37, 50 industrial revolution 84 industrialization 84–5, 92, 96, 125 inferiority 31–3, 71, 74, 76–7, 102, 106–7, 125, 132 institutionalization 12, 15, 22–3, 25–6, 34, 38–9, 52, 60, 65, 83 intellectuals 17–19, 28, 31–3, 40, 53–7, 72, 80, 98, 108, 110, 120, 132 Iraq 67, 126 ISIS 125 Islam 101–2, 122–3, 125–7, 129, 133–5 isolationism 100 Israel 50, 124, 127 Italy 48–9, 51, 64, 84, 93, 98, 104, 129 James I/VI 41 Japan 89, 91–2, 98–103, 109–10, 135–6

Jordan 126 Judaism 70–74, 76–9, 98, 124, 127, 134 Kant, I. 55, 63 Khruschev, N. 69 kingship see monarchy Kohn, H. 24 Kuomintang 110 Lafayette 104–5 laissez faire principle 107 language 28, 30–33, 36–8, 45, 47–9, 58–9, 93–4, 112, 114, 117, 127 see also English language Latin America 34–5, 50 law 23, 28–30, 73, 92, 132 Leland, J. 51 Lenin, V. 65, 69 LGBT movements 3 liberal democracy 2–3, 52, 65, 87, 99, 120, 125, 128, 131 liberalism 3, 49–50, 70 liberation movements see independence movements liberty 1–2, 4, 7, 31, 130 see also freedom List, F. 87, 104–9, 111 literature 9–10, 30, 32, 98 Lithuania 134 Louis XIV 80 Louis XVI 54 love 8, 113, 115–17, 119 Luxemburg, R. 69 Lydius, J. 96 Mackay, C. 43 madness 119–20 Malthusian Scissors 4 Mao Zedong 110 Marr, W. 79 marriage 8 Marx, K. 64, 70–71, 73–7, 79, 81, 86–7, 89, 106 Marxism 69–79, 85–7, 123, 133–4 materialism 72–3, 84–6, 134 Mazzini, G. 48 Meiji Restoration 110 Mendelsohn, F. 72

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mental illness 8, 34, 118–21 Mercier, L.S. 81 meritocracy 28 military power 30, 97–8, 104, 132, 136 mobility see social mobility modernity 1–10, 36, 39, 48, 50, 52, 61, 65, 72, 81, 84, 88, 91, 97, 112–13, 123 Moldova 130 monarchy 2, 23, 25, 27, 29, 41, 44, 54–5, 93–4, 104 monotheism 6, 101–2, 118, 124, 126–7, 134–5 morality 7, 52, 58, 62–3, 66–7, 72, 78, 83–4, 90–91, 108, 126, 136 Mueller, A. 61–3, 65 music 9, 32, 98 Mussolini, B. 48–9, 64–5, 69, 98 Napoleon 16, 54 national character 26 conscience 34 consciousness 30–35, 38, 45, 47–50, 52–6, 71, 97–8, 107, 111–13, 118–19, 122, 124, 126 identity 16, 23–6, 28–30, 35, 44, 87, 90, 103, 111, 115, 125, 131–3 intelligence 53 Socialism 3, 70–72, 77–8, 98, 124–5 nationalism birth of 12 types of 25–36 nation-state 46, 85 “natural evolution” theories 85–7 Nazism 37, 68–9 Netherlands 5, 47, 80, 84, 87, 92–7, 106 Newspeak 37–8 see also 1984 Nicolai, O. 18 Nietzsche, F. 31 nobility 13, 16, 18–19, 28, 30–31, 57, 67, 80, 93–4, 98 see also aristocracy; elites Novalis 62 “On the Jewish Question” 73, 76, 79 organized skepticism 52 Orwell, G. 37–8

passions, modern 7, 115, 117 see also emotions patriotism 30–31, 42–4, 71, 76 Peter the Great 29–32, 48 Philip II 93–4 Pietism 57–8, 74 Poland 134 politics 3–4, 6, 15, 20, 34, 39, 41, 44, 48, 55, 85, 89, 121–8, 131 popular democracy 2, 65 sovereignty 1–4, 7, 12, 23, 25, 28, 30–32, 40, 43, 45, 48, 102, 109, 112–13, 115–16, 122, 131–2 population growth 96 proletariat 69, 71, 75, 77, 106, 134 propaganda 103, 108 prosperity 82–3 protectionism 92, 105 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The 5, 82–3, 87 Protestantism 83–4, 87–8, 91, 94 proto-Romantics 33 Prussia 46, 55, 57, 60 Purcell, H. 51 Puritan Rebellion 15, 25 Putin, V. 98 racism 33–6, 67, 71–2, 77–8 rationality principle 5 rationalization 14, 26, 53, 59, 61, 82–3, 123 Raynal, A. 17 reality 15, 19–20, 34, 36, 101, 112, 116, 123 reason 60–61 rebellions 4 referenda 3 Reformation 15, 23, 75, 94 religion 6, 13, 24, 26, 29–30, 36, 40, 44, 52–3, 55, 57–8, 67, 73, 83–4, 93–4, 96–7, 101, 113, 124, 126–7, 134, 136 see also anti-Semitism; secularization; individual religions Renaissance 9, 12 Respublica Christiana 11, 94 ressentiment 31–4, 68, 70, 76–7, 102, 125, 136 see also envy Restoration 52

INDEX 143

revolutions 3–4, 28–9, 54, 69, 75, 80, 96–7, 110, 123, 125 French 4, 28–9, 31, 33, 53–4, 57–8, 80, 119, 125 Glorious 54, 95 Russian 65, 125 Richard III 12 Rider, J. 39 Romanticism 33, 55–61, 63–5, 67, 70–74, 76–8, 106, 108 Rostow, W.W. 84 Rousseau, J.J. 53 Russia 16–17, 26, 29–32, 35, 48, 55, 67–8, 70, 77–8, 97–8, 101, 107, 110, 120, 130, 133, 136 see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution 65, 125

spectrum disorders 124 Sprat, T. 51 Stalin, J. 43, 69 state 2–3, 23, 25, 40–41, 44–6, 61–3, 103 subsistence-oriented economies 4–5 symbolism 20–21, 37–8, 50, 119 Syria 126

Schelling, F.W.J. 63 Schiller, F. 18 schizophrenia 8, 118–24 Schlegel, F. 59, 76 science 5–7, 32, 49–55, 72, 75, 102 Scotland 53, 119, 129 see also Great Britain secularization 6–7, 47, 52, 101, 112–13, 117–18, 122–3, 126, 131, 133 selfrealization 8, 106, 109, 118 rule 47, 132 September 11 attacks 123, 129 serfdom 32 Shakespeare, W. 114, 116–17 slavery 34, 61 Smith, A. 53, 87, 92, 105 Snyder, L. 107 social consciousness 25, 90 democracy 2, 65, 79, 131 mobility 1, 13–16, 22–3, 26, 38, 56, 66, 88, 110–11, 120 reality 19–20, 25, 40, 53, 72, 87 stratification 1–2, 23, 27, 39, 57, 88, 97, 109 socialism 3, 37, 69–72, 76, 78–9, 97–8, 125, 131 Soviet Union 3, 68–70, 98, 110, 128–9, 134 Spain 48–9, 80, 84, 93–4, 96, 104, 129

Ukraine 130 unhappiness 8, 123 see also happiness United Nations 126 United States 3, 34, 43, 45–6, 67, 81, 86–7, 89–92, 99–101, 103–5, 109, 119–25, 127, 129–30, 136 upward mobility see social mobility urbanization 96

taxation 80, 95 terrorism 123–6, 129 Tolstoy, L. 30 totalitarianism 55–64, 68–70, 76, 128 trade wars 97 traditions 28–9, 36 Trotsky, L. 78 Tudor dynasty 12–13, 25, 40

violence 3, 66–8, 122–3, 125, 127 see also collective violence; terrorism Volkish tradition 71, 76, 78 Voltaire 17, 53 Wagner, R. 72–3 war(s) 64, 66–8, 94, 97, 102, 109 see also individual wars of the Roses 12–13, 15 of Liberation 16 on Terror 129 wealth, accumulation of 5, 83 see also capitalism Wealth of Nations, The 87, 92, 105 Weber, M. 81–4, 88, 91 Wikipedia 69 xenophobia 71, 125, 127 Yugoslavia 129

Titles in the Elgar Advanced Introductions series include: International Political Economy Benjamin J. Cohen The Austrian School of Economics Randall G. Holcombe Cultural Economics Ruth Towse Law and Development Michael J. Trebilcock and Mariana Mota Prado

International Conflict and Security Law Nigel D. White Comparative Constitutional Law Mark Tushnet International Human Rights Law Dinah L. Shelton Entrepreneurship Robert D. Hisrich

International Humanitarian Law Robert Kolb

International Trade Law Michael J. Trebilcock

International Tax Law Reuven S. Avi-­Yonah

Public Policy B. Guy Peters

Post Keynesian Economics J.E. King

The Law of International Organizations Jan Klabbers

International Intellectual Property Susy Frankel and Daniel J. Gervais Public Management and Administration Christopher Pollitt Organised Crime Leslie Holmes Nationalism Liah Greenfeld

International Environmental Law Ellen Hey International Sales Law Clayton P. Gillette Corporate Venturing Robert D. Hisrich