Nationalisms E-Book

Montserrat Guibernau

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 349

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This is a comprehensive and accessible account of the nature of nationalism, which has re-emerged as one of the fundamental forces shaping world society today.

Leseprobe

Nationalisms

The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century

MONTSERRAT GUIBERNAU

Polity Press

Copyright © Montserrat Guibernau 1996

The right of Montserrat Guibernau to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 1996 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1996, 2005, 2007

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ISBN: 978-0-7456-1401-4

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guibernau i Berdún, M. Montserrat (Maria Montserrat)

Nationalisms : the nation-state and nationalism in the twentieth century / Montserrat Guibernau.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–7456–1401–9 (acid-free paper). — ISBN 0–7456–1402–7 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

1. Nationalism. 2. National state. I. Title.

JC311.G78 1996

320.5'4—dc20

95–37329

CIP

Typeset in Palatino on 10/12ptby Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong KongPrinted and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxford

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1  Nationalism in Classical Social Theory

Heinrich von Treitschke

Karl Marx

Emile Durkheim

Max Weber

Conclusion

2  The Political Character of Nationalism: Nationalism and the nation-state

Definitions

The origin of nations

Citizenship and popular sovereignty

The cultural nation

The nation-state and power

‘Legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ states

Nationalism as ideology

3  National Identity

Education, literacy and national consciousness

National identity and culture

The symbolic content of nationalism

4  Nationalism, Racism and Fascism

Race

Racism

Racism and gender

Racism and nationalism

Fascism

Fascism and race

Fascism and ritual

Fascism and gender

Fascism and nationalism

5  Nations without a State

Processes of ‘national awareness’

Political solutions to the nationalism of minorities

The future of nations without a state in the European Union

6  States without a Nation

The state in Third World countries

Nationalism and the struggle for independence

Nationalism after independence

7  Globalization, Modernity and National Identity

Globalization and culture

Globalization and national identity

Conclusion

The future of nationalism

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank those who have supported me while writing and thinking about this book. I owe a great debt to Anthony Giddens, who supervised the Ph.D. thesis on which this book is based; his advice, support, criticism and encouragement have proved invaluable. Ernest Gellner, Salvador Giner, Joan Manuel Guinda, Jonathan Fletcher, Josep Llobera, Francesc Xavier Puig Rovira, Carles Salazar and María del Mar Serrano read parts of previous drafts and offered their comments and criticism.

The thesis which inspired this book could not have been written without the financial assistance provided by King’s College (Cambridge), and the CIRIT (Generalitat de Catalunya). A scholarship from the British Council-La Caixa allowed me to come to Cambridge in the first instance to do a master’s degree that turned into a first step towards the writing of my Ph.D.

Introduction

Nationalism is revealing itself in many parts of the world as an unexpected and powerful phenomenon. The re-emergence of nationalism in Eastern Europe is sparking off nationalist feelings in several other countries. Yet within Western Europe nationalism is also currently of particular significance. The integrating force of the European Union contrasts sharply with the nationalist feelings of minorities included within European nation-states. The role of the European Union in relation to the political and cultural aspirations of ethnic minorities raises the question of whether these minorities would be able to develop and strengthen their identities within a new Europe. It also raises the issue of whether, on the contrary, the genesis of a European identity would erode particularism and difference.

I shall distinguish three major explanatory approaches to nationalism. The first focuses on the immutable character of the nation and I shall refer to it as essentialism. The second and the third are more abstract, theoretical approaches which involve going beneath the surface of nationalism to discover an underlying reality which is responsible for it. The demand for modernization, the development of new patterns of communication and the emphasis upon economic factors are among the elements the second approach draws upon. The third develops psychological theories associated with the need of individuals to be involved in a collectivity with which they can identify.

The essentialist conception is not really a theory of nationalism, but an interpretation often incorporated within nationalist symbols themselves. It stems from authors such as Herder, and from Romanticism. It considers the nation to be a natural, quasi-eternal entity created by God. A particular language and culture embody the role each nation has to perform in history. Emphasis is placed on emotional and ideational aspects of the community rather than economic, social and political dimensions.

The second approach considers nationalism in terms of modernization. Gellner offers the most sophisticated account of nationalism within this framework. In his view, the economies of industrialized states depend upon a homogenizing high culture, mass literacy and an educational system controlled by the state. ‘Industrial man’, writes Gellner, ‘can be compared with an artificially produced or bred species which can no longer breathe effectively in the nature-given atmosphere, but can only function effectively and survive in a new, specially blended and artificially sustained air or medium … It requires a specialized plant. The name for this plant is a national educational and communications system. Its only effective keeper and protector is the state.’1

Deutsch focuses on the development of internal communications within states as leading to the creation of a common sense of moral and political identity. He argues: ‘in the political and social struggles of the modern age, nationality means an alignment of large numbers of individuals from the middle and lower classes linked to regional centres and leading social groups by channels of social communication and economic intercourse, both indirectly from link to link and directly with the centre.’2

Kedourie refers to nationalism as a doctrine involving a complex of interrelated ideas about the individual, society and politics, and he highlights the role of Western intellectuals in creating it. In his opinion, ‘the inventors of the doctrine tried to prove that nations are obvious and natural divisions of the human race, by appealing to history, anthropology, and linguistics. But the attempt breaks down since, whatever ethnological or philological doctrine may be fashionable for the moment, there is no convincing reason why the fact that people speak the same language or belong to the same race should, by itself, entitle them to enjoy a government exclusively their own.’3

The economistic explanation is a theory developed within, but not restricted to, Marxist accounts of the national question. The most illuminating account of nationalism from a Marxist point of view produced in recent times is that put forward by Nairn. He understands nationalism as a product of the uneven development of regions within the world capitalist economy. Nairn refers to nationalism as an effect of the expansion of capitalism: ‘As capitalism spread, and smashed the ancient social formations surrounding it, they always tended to fall apart along the fault-lines contained inside them. It is a matter of elementary truth that these lines were nearly always ones of nationality (although in certain well-known cases deeply established religious divisions could perform the same function).’4

The third approach is exemplified by Smith and Anderson who provide the most far-reaching theories about the significance of national identity and the emergence of national consciousness. Smith highlights the importance of national identity as the most potent and durable influence of current collective cultural identities. He argues that ‘the need for collective immortality and dignity, the power of ethno-history, the role of new class structures and the domination of inter-state systems in the modern world, assure the continuity of national identity to command humanity’s allegiances for a long time to come, even when other larger-scale but looser forms of collective identity emerge alongside national ones.’5

Anderson defines the nation as an ‘imagined community’, limited, sovereign and worthy of sacrifices. He writes: ‘nationalism has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which – as well as against which – it came into being.’ Anderson points to the importance of the development of the printed word as the basis for the emergence of national consciousnesses.6

It is my contention that, although these accounts have made significant contributions to a fuller understanding of nationalism, each theory is deficient in certain crucial respects to explain the saliency of such a powerful contemporary phenomenon. I consider nationalism to be an ideology closely related to the rise of the nation-state and bound up with ideas about popular sovereignty and democracy brought about by the French and American Revolutions. The fragmentary nature of current approaches to nationalism originates from their inability to merge its two fundamental attributes: the political character of nationalism as an ideology defending the notion that state and nation should be congruent; and its capacity to be a provider of identity for individuals conscious of forming a group based upon a common culture, past, project for the future and attachment to a concrete territory. The power of nationalism emanates from its ability to engender sentiments of belonging to a particular community. Symbols and rituals play a major role in the cultivation of a sense of solidarity among the members of the group.

Central questions and structure

In the light of these observations, this book has three primary tasks. First, to analyse the implications of the absence of a systematic consideration of issues of nationalism in classical social theory. There are various reasons for this neglect: the methodological difficulties of defining, classifying and explaining nationalism, and the theoretical concerns generated by the European origins of sociology and its Eurocentric outlook.7 Sociology, as Smith argues, arose in countries with a fairly firmly entrenched sense of nationality which was both clear-cut and dominant within the state apparatus and polity.

Second, to establish a distinction between ‘state nationalism’ and nationalism in ‘nations without a state’ and investigate how differences in access to power and resources impinge upon the unfolding of nationalism in both cases. In discussing this, I focus upon commonly neglected aspects of nationalism and argue that the distinction between classical nationalism and that of nations without a state is crucial to an understanding of the problems of legitimacy that stem from ideas of popular sovereignty and democracy in the contemporary world.

Third, to explore what I shall refer to as the ‘dark side’ of nationalism. The extreme complexity of nationalism springs from the radically different interpretations to which it can be subject. In certain cases nationalism is employed in association with xenophobia, racism, fascism and all sorts of violent behaviour against ‘the others’. On other occasions, it refers to the legitimate aspiration of peoples willing to sustain and develop their culture and vindicate their right to self-determination.

In the opening chapter, the theory of nationalism and the nation-state is related to its origins in classical social theory, paying particular attention to the work of Treitschke, Marx, Durkheim and Weber. I seek to explain why the latter three failed to predict the importance that nationalism would achieve in the twentieth century. Despite the fact that Weber and Treitschke were nationalists, why did they not construct a theory of nationalism? I am justified, I believe, in selecting these authors from a diversity of others who could have been chosen from the early period of the development of social thought, because they – particularly Marx, Durkheim and Weber, of course – so heavily influenced the subsequent evolution of social theory. Thus I have concentrated upon their work in some detail, rather than trying to cover a larger number of thinkers more superficially. I shall not be interested only in the question of why none of them worked at a systematic interpretation of nationalism. All of these thinkers, including Treitschke, made significant contributions to the analysis of the modern state; and a view of the state is necessary to an understanding of the character of the nation-state as a specific organizational form. From this aspect, it is possible to draw upon their work in a more direct way. Indeed most current accounts of the modern state are indebted to ideas first elaborated by these authors.

The second and third chapters seek to redress social theory’s neglect of nationalism and provide answers to two key questions: what is the relation between nationalism and the nation-state?; and, what are the links between nationalism, culture and identity? In so doing I analyse the political character of nationalism and its relation to the concepts of legitimacy, citizenship and ideology. I then look at the creation and development of national identity and its relation to culture. Here it is argued that the current unfolding of nationalism not only derives from a gulf between political and cultural processes, but also gains strength as other criteria of group membership (such as class) weaken or recede. My thesis is that national solidarity responds to a need for identity of an eminently symbolic nature, in so far as it provides roots based on culture and a common past, as well as offering a project for the future.

Chapter four studies the association of a certain type of nationalism with racism and concentrates upon the use of nationalism in the fascist discourse. In these cases the relation between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ is characterized by a rejection and hostility that, on many occasions, leads to violence. The supremacy of one group above others, the prominence of leadership, the role of gender and the enormous capacity to mobilize large populations are some of the aspects of fascism analysed in this section.

In chapter five I emphasize once more the distinctiveness of the nationalism of nations without a state in comparison with that of the nation-state. I offer a detailed examination of the different political scenarios in which nations without a state are placed and study the processes leading to the emergence of ‘national awareness’. This chapter then goes on to investigate the strategies used by national minorities in surviving repression and resisting the homogenizing policies frequently employed by the state. It also explores the options faced by national minorities confronted with a choice between fighting for independence – and so facilitating a possible reshaping of the nation-state system – or remaining within large states in which they can expect mutual coexistence.

The sixth chapter considers the emergence of nationalism in Third World countries and focuses upon the African case. This section involves a study of the role played by nationalism as a liberation movement fighting for independence in the colonial era, and it also advances an analysis of the new uses and content of nationalism once independence was achieved. The final chapter explores the impact of modernity and globalization upon contemporary nationalism. Here, discussion of the possibilities for the emergence of a ‘global identity’ leads to a consideration of nationalism as a ‘local’ reaction to globalization. A further element taken into account is the recent expansion of Islamic Fundamentalism as a movement that is hostile to the Western view of modernity and sustains a dialectic relation with globalization.

To begin with, I turn to the issue of the discussion of nationalism in classical social theory. The ideas of Treitschke provide an appropriate starting-point, given his influence upon both Durkheim and Weber – even though both, particularly Durkheim, were heavily critical of his views. Treitschke cannot be regarded as a leading sociological thinker, in spite of his enormous influence in the Germany of his day. His ideas sound archaic today – a sign of how things have moved on – but were of key significance as a foil for the development of ideas about the state, the nation and nationalism in classical social thought.

1

Nationalism in Classical Social Theory

Heinrich von Treitschke

The state

Treitschke defines the state as ‘the people legally united as an independent power’. By the people he understands ‘a plural number of families permanently living together’.1 In his view, the state is always above individuals and has the right to be omnipotent over them. The state is power. The power of the state is exerted in two major ways. First, the state is the ‘supreme moralizing and humanizing agency’. In Treitschke’s view, no moral law exists for the state. Rather, it is the state itself that establishes the law in its own domain and requires loyal obedience from individuals. The state has no commitments. There is no authority above it. He argues that every nation will have a special code of morality depending upon the particular needs of the state and the different features of its citizens. Hence the state is a moral community, one of several ideas which Treitschke derives from Aristotle.

Second, the state exerts its power through war. Treitschke defines the state as the only entity capable of maintaining a monopoly of violence when he writes, ‘the right of arms distinguishes the state from all other forms of corporate life.’2 The state is founded upon the possession of territory.3 As we shall see, territory and violence are two crucial elements later incorporated by Weber into his own definition of the state. Treitschke argues that international treaties may indeed become more frequent, but a decisive tribunal of nations is impossible. The appeal to arms will be valid until the end of history and therein lies the sacredness of war,4 which he regards as one of the normal activities of nations: ‘The grandeur of history lies in the perpetual conflict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the suppression of their rivalry.’5 Treitschke predicts that wars will become fewer and shorter, but, in his view, it would be a fallacy to infer from this that they could ever cease.6 He neither envisages nor wishes a peaceful future for humanity. Thus, for him:

War is political science par excellence. Over and over again has it been proved that it is only in war a people becomes in very deed a people. It is only in the common performance of heroic deeds for the sake of the fatherland that a nation becomes truly and spiritually united.7

‘War is a sharp medicine for national disunion and waning patriotism,’8 he adds; ‘it is political idealism that demands war.’9 War fulfils three major functions: it settles quarrels which ‘must’ arise between independent states; it is a remedy against national disunion; and it is a means to create new states. Treitschke emphasizes that if a state loses its independence, it ceases to be a state. Consequently, the chief tasks of the state which derive directly from its power involve the administration of justice, the creation of a moral law, and war. To be able to exert its power, the state must have sufficient material resources for self-defence and absolute sovereignty.

The relation between the individual and the state is determined by the superiority Treitschke confers on the latter. Following Aristotle, he argues that the interests of the community are above those of the individual:

The individual must forget his own ego and feel himself a member of the whole; he must recognise what a nothing his life is in comparison with the general welfare10… The individual must sacrifice himself for a higher community of which he is a member; but the state is itself the highest in the external community of men.11

Treitschke requires an absolute surrender of the individual to the state and does not contemplate the possibility of revolution or even disagreement: ‘the individual should feel himself a member of his state, and as such have courage to take its errors upon him.’12 He goes on to say that ‘states do not arise out of the people’s sovereignty, but they are created against the will of the people; the state is the power of the stronger race which establishes itself.’13 The dimension of the individual is not limited to his or her membership of the state; Treitschke recognizes an ‘immortal and individual soul in every man’ but he restricts human freedom to ‘the right to think freely concerning God and divine things’. However, he declares that it is impractical for the state to tolerate different religions because ‘the unity of the state is impossible when its subjects are divided between radically different religions.’14

In the work of Treitschke, therefore, we find a generalized idea of the state as a supreme entity guided ‘not by emotions, but by calculating, clear experience of the world’.15 The state ‘protects and embraces the life of the people, regulating it externally in all directions’.16

On German unification

Treitschke’s position on German unification is mainly expounded in Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat (1864). In his view the German empire is based upon the existence of a dominant state, Prussia, and he envisages the creation of a ‘Greater Germany’ under Prussian leadership. In order to achieve this, Prussia should conquer the smaller states and incorporate them. Treitschke’s Machiavellianism is evident since both he and Machiavelli agree that the interest of the nation must be set above the ordinary obligations of law and morality. Yet there is a difference between them; while Machiavelli sees no hope in any established dynasty and looks for a Prince ‘who will begin at the beginning’ (Cesare Borgia), Treitschke sees in the Hohenzollerns a monarchy which may shortly become strong enough to guide the process of German unification. Treitschke writes: ‘I realize that for Germany there is only one hope of salvation, namely, a united and indivisible monarchy… Prussia, then, has no choice. She must triumph with the help of the German people.’17

Treitschke analyses three different possibilities for German unification: Staatenbund, Bundesstaat and Einheitsstaat. The first refers to the foundation of a Confederation of German States for mutual defence, one that lacks central institutions and which would leave the sovereignty of single states untouched. The Bundesstaat would imply the creation of an institution analogous to that of the United States of America, with a central executive, legislature and judiciary. The central government would be superior to that of the integrant states and have an unflexible constitution. This second option was rejected by him, but was finally adopted in the constitution of the German empire.

Treitschke presented the Einheitsstaat as ‘the only valid alternative’, involving the annihilation of the governments of smaller German states and the establishment of a unitary state in the form of an expanded Prussia. In 1864 he wrote:

Every Prussian must feel it to be quite right that the best political institutions should be extended to the rest of Germany; and every reasonable non-Prussian must find cause for rejoicing that Prussia has brought the name of Germany into honour once again. The conditions are such that the will of the Empire can in the last instance be nothing else than the will of the Prussian state.18

Treitschke’s relevance stems from the fact that he was one of the most influential figures of his time and profoundly affected the views of both Weber and Durkheim. The ideas he defended throughout his work, and expounded in his renowned, crowded lectures, influenced two generations of German academics: those who witnessed the unification of Germany and those who envisaged the formation of the Weimar Republic. We shall now move on to consider Treitschke’s views on nationalism, which he discusses primarily under the rubric of patriotism.

On nationalism

For Treitschke, ‘genuine patriotism is the consciousness of co-operating with the body-politic, of being rooted in ancestral achievements and of transmitting them to descendants.’19 He appeals to a common historical past as one of the constituent features of patriotism. Consciousness and co-operation are key words in grasping his conception. ‘To be conscious of’ means ‘to be aware of’ and in the context of patriotism this means that individuals ‘know’ that they are, and ‘are conscious of’ being, members of a given community. It is not simply a matter of ‘living in’ a particular state; individuals should be ‘conscious of belonging to’ a particular group. Furthermore, patriotism requires active participation. Treitschke writes about the consciousness ‘of co-operating’. This is a basic concept within his framework since it establishes that individuals are not merely members of a community, but are involved in a process. They are stewards of that other constituent feature of patriotism he appeals to, their common past. This relationship between the individual and the state provides the basis for the quasi-religious assertions he makes in discussing national honour:

Here the high moral ideal of national honour is a factor handed down from one generation to another, enshrining something positively sacred, and compelling the individual to sacrifice himself to it. This ideal is above all price and cannot be reduced to pounds, shilling and pence.20

Treitschke points to two powerful forces working in history: the tendency of every state to amalgamate its population, in speech and manners, into one single unity, and the impulse of every vigorous nationality to construct a state of its own.21 If we add to this the fact that, for him, nation and state should coincide, it is easy to understand why he thought that Prussia should be the ‘unifying agent’ which all the other states should join in order to create a Greater Germany. He adds: ‘only brave nations have a secure existence, a future, a development; cowardly nations go to the wall, and rightly so.’22

Treitschke stresses that ‘the unity of the state should be based on nationality. The legal bond must at the same time be felt to be a natural bond of blood-relationship – either real or imaginary blood-relationship (for on this point nations labour under the most extraordinary delusions).’23 In his view, patriotism is the consciousness of being rooted in ancestral achievements. However, he recognizes that ‘nationality is not a settled and permanent thing’.24 When talking about nationalism and patriotism, he focuses primarily on sizeable, powerful nation-states. Treitschke argues that ‘the great state has the noble capacity … Only in great states can there be developed that genuine national pride which is the sign of the moral efficiency of a nation.’ Not only does he refer to the moral ‘grandeur’ of large states, he also attributes cultural supremacy to them: ‘All real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities’.25 We should bear in mind that for Treitschke ‘Staat ist Macht’, and a larger state means a more powerful one. He discounts the fact that a large state is by no means necessarily ‘nobler’ than and ‘culturally superior’ to a smaller one. That larger states have the power to impose their own way of thinking, present themselves as ‘superior states’, and promote their art and culture is taken for granted. However, as a historian, Treitschke was aware of the rise and fall of states through different periods, and this led him to leave open the possibility of success for small nationalities: ‘The nations themselves are something living and growing. No one can say with absolute certainty when the small nationalities will decay internally and shrivel up, or when, on the other hand, they will exhibit an unexpected vital energy.’26

The superiority of Western culture, in Treitschke’s view, derives from the fact that Western Europe ‘has larger compact ethnological masses, while the East is the classic soil for the fragments of nations’.27 He describes the nineteenth century as a period in which ‘a man thinks of himself in the first place as a German or a Frenchman, or whatever his nationality may be, and only in the second place as a member of the whole human race’.28 In Treitschke’s view, the explosion of nationalism during his lifetime was a ‘natural revulsion against the world-empire of Napoleon. The unhappy attempt to transform the multiplicity of European life into the arid uniformity of universal sovereignty has produced the exclusive sway of nationality as the dominant political idea. Cosmopolitanism has receded too far.’29 He writes:

The idea of a World-state is odious; the ideal of one state containing all mankind is no ideal at all … the whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single state … All peoples, just like individual men, are one-sided, but in the very fullness of this one-sidedness the richness of the human race is seen. Every people has therefore the right to believe that certain powers of the divine reason display themselves in it at their highest.30

To confirm this argument Treitschke notes that ‘every nation overestimates itself’, and more importantly that ‘without this feeling of itself, the nation would also lack the consciousness of being a community’.31 But what will be the future of nationalism in a world where, for the first time in history, it is possible to speak of a worldwide culture? A standard response to this sort of question is to seek to demonstrate that national particularities will disappear in favour of a more general and global culture. Treitschke approaches this issue in a different way, arguing that:

The notion that a universally-extended culture will finally displace national customs by customs for all mankind, and turn the world into a cosmopolitan primitive hash has become a common-place … If a nation has the power to preserve itself and its nationality through the merciless race-struggle of history, then every progress in civilisation will only develop more strikingly its deeper national peculiarities.32

Power is a recurrent theme in Treitschke’s thought. But in practical terms, what exactly does it mean for the nation ‘to have the power to preserve itself? To what extent is it possible for a nation to preserve itself in a world where globalization processes are becoming more and more compelling? Does the assertion that ‘only’ powerful nations will be able to preserve their ‘national peculiarities’ mean that only a very few nations will ‘preserve themselves’, while the rest will be fully absorbed or at least ‘culturally assimilated’ by their more powerful companions? For now I shall leave these questions open, but I shall return to them in a later discussion of the link between nationalism and globalization.

Karl Marx

Nationalism and the bourgeoisie

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx describes the history of human society in terms of class struggle: ‘Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another.’33 The struggle of ‘oppressors and oppressed’ ends either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society – where, prior to socialism, the ‘oppressed’ become ‘oppressors’ – or in the common ruin of the contending classes. Contemporary society is divided into two great classes, directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat. For Marx, social classes are the proper actors in the historical process. Local and national developments form only a part, and an admittedly insignificant one, unless a nation happens to find itself at the head of the progress of all humanity during a certain turning point in world history. This is a crucial issue in understanding why Marx pays so little attention to nationalism. For him, nations, states and cities need to be studied and evaluated within the context and from the perspective of their place in class relations and in the class struggle occurring on a global scale.

In Marx’s view, bluntly stated, nationalism is an expression of bourgeois interests. But as Bloom rightly points out, ‘the bourgeois “fatherland” did not refer to the country’s potentialities for progress or to the nation regarded democratically, but to the aggregate of institutions, customs, laws, and ideas which sanctified the right to property on a considerable scale.’34 Marx writes: ‘The bourgeoisie conveniently assumed that the “nation” consisted only of capitalists. The country was therefore “theirs”.’35 He considers the nationalistic claims aimed at creating a unified Germany out of the existing thirty-eight states as bourgeois. In his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he denounces the backwardness of Germany as a fundamental fact. For him, such backwardness revealed itself in the poverty of political aspirations and intellectual outlook of the German bourgeoisie. He considered France and Great Britain to be in a more advanced stage of development and, for that reason, he saw the abolition of the capitalist system in these two countries as something imminent. In contrast, he regarded Germany as a country in which a capitalist system was yet to be fully realized. However, German backwardness was not all-pervasive. Germany had developed the most up-to-date philosophical framework and should work to put its economy and policy at the same level. Marx advocated a revolution in Germany that would aim not only to elevate it to the same stage as the other most advanced nations of the West, but also to enable it to perform a task which even these nations had yet to accomplish: the liberation of individuals as human beings, rather than of Germans as Germans. But how could this liberation be possible if Germany did not have a class capable of acting as ‘a negative representative of society’, as the bourgeoisie did in France? Was there a real possibility for emancipation in Germany? In answer to this question, Marx comments:

In Germany no type of enslavement can be abolished unless all enslavement is destroyed. Germany, which likes to get to the bottom of things, can only make a resolution which upsets the whole order of things. The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of the human being. Philosophy is the head of this emancipation and the proletariat is its heart. Philosophy can only be realised by the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by the realisation of philosophy.

When all the inner conditions ripen, the day of German resurrection will be proclaimed by the crowing of the Gallic cock.36

However, Marx was aware that in Germany the proletariat was only beginning to emerge under the impact of industrial development. He was conscious of the relative youth and weakness of the German proletariat, but he was also optimistic about the role it might play:

When the proletariat announces the dissolution of the existing social order, it only declares the secret of its own existence, for it is the effective dissolution of this order … Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat; so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has penetrated deeply into this virgin soil of the people, the Germans will emancipate themselves and become men.37

Marx did not write in favour of an ‘emancipation of Germany’ that would realize German nationalist goals in the form of a single state. Instead he sought the abolition of the state. Marx’s draft of an article on F. List’s Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie provides a detailed elaboration of his position on the ‘German Question’ and complements the ideas expounded in his Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’. In his Critique of List, Marx views nationalism as a bourgeois ideology and List as its representative.38 He rejects List’s attempt to find a national road to capitalism and dismisses the possibility of communism in one country. Furthermore, Marx considers that both capitalism and communism are worldwide systems. List, unlike Marx, bases his entire argument on the recognition of nations as the basic units into which the human race is divided, and argues that nations develop by passing through clearly definable stages.

The German bourgeoisie appealed to ‘nationality’, but to Marx ‘nationality’ was a fraud. He argues that the bourgeoisie as a class has a common interest, and ‘this community of interest, which is directed against the proletariat inside the country, is directed against the bourgeois of other nations outside the country. This the bourgeois calls his nationality.’39 However, Marx does not specify how and why it should be possible for some bourgeois to agree on a common interest against other bourgeois; nor does he consider why the basis for union and separation should be German nationality.

Nationalism and the proletariat

In The German Ideology Marx refers to the proletariat as a class completely unlike any other, ‘the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc., within present society.’40 For Marx this is the result of modern industrial labour and modern subjection to capital in a world led by the bourgeoisie. In this world the proletariat has no property, becomes alienated and is a mere instrument in the hands of the bourgeois. The proletarian spends his or her life working, producing goods and benefits for the bourgeoisie. The more he or she works, the more impoverished he or she becomes. Marx denounced this situation and thought that the proletariat all over the world would be able to unite and fight. They would be the ‘motor of history’, and had nothing to lose in the struggle since they did not possess anything. In the Communist Manifesto he writes: ‘The working men have no country… National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing.’41 The present conditions of labour and subjection to capital which are ‘the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, have stripped the proletariat of every trace of national character’.42

The nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free slavery, self-huckstering. His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air. The land belonging to him is neither French, nor English, nor German, it lies a few feet below the ground.43

Engels, in a letter to ‘the working classes of Great Britain’, expresses the same viewpoint. He addresses the working classes as if they were not English. Instead he emphasizes the common qualities of being

members of the great and universal family of Mankind, who know their interest and that of all the human race to be the same. And as such, as members of this family of One and Indivisible Mankind, as Human Beings in the most emphatical meaning of the word, as such I, and many others on the Continent, hail your progress in every direction and wish you speedy success.44

The working class, as subject of history and social actor par excellence, should only think in international terms: ‘National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible.’45 Following this line of argument, in his Account of his speech on Mazzini’s attitude towards the International Engels stresses: ‘The International recognises no country; it desires to unite, not dissolve. It is opposed to the cry for Nationality, because it tends to separate people from people, and is used by tyrants to create prejudices and antagonism.’46 Marx argues that the distinctive feature of the communists when compared with other working-class parties is that, ‘in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, the communists point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independent of all nationality.’47

Nationalism and proletarian revolution

1848/49 seems to herald a major modification of Marx and Engels’ original stand on nationalism, in that they supported the national causes of the ‘historic’ or ‘great’ nations such as Hungary, Poland and Germany, all of which sought to establish large, stable national states. Nationalism appeared to be compatible with a proletarian revolution in as much as large states would make it easier for the proletariat to advance its class goals. Marx and Engels voiced their hostility towards the aspirations of ‘non-historic nationalities’ such as the smaller Slavic nations, particularly the Czechs. In an article published in 1852 in the New York Daily Tribune, Engels, under Marx’s name, referred to the high culture, the high development in science and industry of Germany, compared with that of the Slavs. He argued that the Slavs were living in a condition of backwardness and that their way of life was being dissolved ‘by contact with a superior German culture’.

In 1872 Engels recognized one nationality in particular: the Irish. When Great Britain tried to bring the Irish sections under the jurisdiction of the British Federal Council, he argued: ‘The Irish form, to all intents and purposes, a distinct nationality of their own, and the fact that they use the English language can not deprive them of the right, common to all, to have an independent national organisation within the International.’48 Engels makes clear that a nation should be free from its conquerors because only then can the workers think in international terms about a world working-class solidarity. Internationalism must not be used as an excuse to justify and perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror.

If members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific nationality and position, to ‘sink national differences’ and so forth, that was not Internationalism, it was nothing else but preaching to their submission to the yoke, and attempting to justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism.49

Accordingly, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinctly national organization:

The Irish, as well as other oppressed nationalities, could enter the Association only as equals with the members of the conquering nation, and under protest against the conquest … The Irish sections, therefore, not only were justified, but even under the necessity to state in the preamble to their rules that their first and most pressing duty, as Irishmen, was to establish their own national independence.50

In The Communist Manifesto