"... indeed, he wrote, any community larger than a village in which people know one another face to face is to an extent imagined. The 'deep horizontal comradeship' that characterizes a nation is socially constructed, he wrote, but also heartfelt and genuine; it explains why people die and kill for their countries."
From the NYT obituary for Benedict Anderson, author of “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” who had observed that “Unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes or Webers,” and who, it seems, filled the gap.
December 14, 2015
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Well (snaps fingers), that's for you Jefferson and Madison!
Dr. Anderson believed that liberal and Marxist theorists had neglected to appreciate the power of nationalism. “Unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes or Webers,” he wrote.
Strangely enough, the political thinker who agreed that both liberalism & Marxism misunderstood the power of nationalism was Mussolini, who, after the first world war, when he saw the proletariat of the various European nations patriotically volunteer to kill each other on behalf of international finance capital, decided that the nation state was the engine of history & not class struggle.
I think that Hobbes & Rousseau are much more "nationalists" than Anderson gives them credit for. I also think that there are authors in the broader ambit of National Socialism & Italian Fascism, such as Carl Schmitt & Giovanni Gentile who were articulate & learned voices for modern nationalism.
Needless to say, if you got caught reading these guys at the New Left Review, they'd probably show you the door in a hurry.
I suspect that the liberal disdain for nationalism is related to their disdain for professional sports.
> “Unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes or Webers,” he wrote.<
ted roosevelt wrote a few books:
> “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.”
“This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”
“But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.”
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”
“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. <
link to unresearched website quoting ted:
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2010/05/teddy-roosevelt-no-room-in-this-country.html
I agree that nationalism is simply a artificial construct that is largely imaginary. That's why the existence of Israel is so puzzling.
I judged people by their accent. Some accents are acceptable......others not so much.
Human brains are wired to live in social hierarchies. This is the tribal impulse at the heart of all sectarian thinking. If you ever live as member of a minority group in a society, the phenomenon is very familiar. As a gay person, if I meet a gay person of a different nationality or ethnicity, there is still a shared common identity that provides a certain degree of familiarity in an otherwise novel encounter. I lived in southeast Asia for a few years in my 20's. I would have this reaction anytime I ran into other "white" people (Europeans, Americans, Australia, etc.). The feeling was more intense if the person was from the USA. And it was more intense still on the few occasions I ran into someone from my hometown (Tampa, FL).
Bismarck more or less created the state of Germany out of dozens of independent principalities. The Germans lost two catastrophic wars and yet they remain committed to being a nation state. Great Britain has been a nation for hundreds of years. They've won pretty much all their wars, and yet there are now strong centrifugal pressures pushing them apart.......I used to think that winning a war was a good thing, because it inspired social cohesiveness and patriotism and that losing a war was a bad thing for just the opposite reasons. See how fast the Russian Empire unravelled at the end of WWI and the Cold War.......However, given the examples of Great Britain and Germany I don't know how accurate that observation is. Nationalism is a strong almost primal force but there's much about it that we don't understand.
As I recall, Weber was a pretty nationalist thinker . . . So there's one.
Validity of his statement depends on what you mean by "grand thinker." Nationalism advanced intellectually through the work of the great nineteenth-century historians, in many countries. Michelet, Ranke etc. Pretty darn grand.
Going back a bit, Hume's history of England may qualify as well--a sort of nationalism, as constructed by a Scot anyway, and a definite grand thinker. Then Herder of course -- perhaps not grand enough for Anderson's taste.
In the U.S., besides TR, I'd nominate . . . Lincoln. Very grand-thinking nationalist in my book.
Hegel?
Samuel Huntington was a great thinker on nationalism, although perhaps not up there with Hobbes --- or at least, not yet.
Blogger YoungHegelian said...
Strangely enough, the political thinker who agreed that both liberalism & Marxism misunderstood the power of nationalism was Mussolini, who, after the first world war, when he saw the proletariat of the various European nations patriotically volunteer to kill each other on behalf of international finance capital, decided that the nation state was the engine of history & not class struggle.
The story I read was that Mussolini's breakthrough came about as a result of his labor organizing. He found that workers' national loyalties were greater than their loyalties to other workers. The basis of fascism being national identity has led to some confusion on the Left. National identity means a unique, shared history among a group of people. Historians often define fascism in such a way that a political movement that places any importance on national identity fits the template of fascism.
So those on the Left often see an act as simple as flying a national flag or celebrating a national holiday as 'proto-fascism.'
Something that is imaginary is something that exists only within the human mind. Love is imaginary. So is literature. So is history. So is law. The idea that nations are imaginary is itself imaginary.
The things that make us human are mostly imaginary. Saying that something is imaginary does not mean that is not real, or that it is capable of being modified or deleted at will.
rcocean said...
I agree that nationalism is simply a artificial construct that is largely imaginary. That's why the existence of Israel is so puzzling.
12/14/15, 8:28 PM "
The effort to create Palestine is even more puzzling.
I seem to recall Immanuel Kant having quite a bit to say about the national character.
"I suspect that the liberal disdain for nationalism is related to their disdain for professional sports."
What makes you think liberals, as a group, disdain professional sports? And, if they do, why shouldn't they disdain professional sports? What does that indicate about their character or point of view?
For that matter, why shouldn't nationalism be disdained?
Most of the things human beings live and die and kill for are imaginary.
Something that is innate in human nature does not require a "great thinker" to construct it. The problem with "great thinkers" is that it is humanly impossible to think of everything. Why didn't Marx foresee, for example, that communism would so frequently be derailed into totalitarian dictatorships where the wealth and power was concentrated in a small group at the very top?
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Benedict Anderson was a learned man, so he must have had a good reason for saying national consciousness began in the late 18th century.
"Most of the things human beings live and die and kill for are imaginary."
Wise words, Robert Cook.
One of the things that people live and die and kill for that are not imaginary are other people.
"Why didn't Marx foresee, for example, that communism would so frequently be derailed into totalitarian dictatorships where the wealth and power was concentrated in a small group at the very top?"
Why don't proponents of "free market" capitalism--unfettered by regulation and oversight--recognize that this always results in wealth and power concentrated in a small group at the very top?
Any system devised to organize the economy of a society can and will be used by opportunists to aggrandize their own wealth and power at the expense of everyone else, if not tightly reined in by the leash of regulation and oversight and the club of criminal prosecution.
"unfettered by regulation and oversight"
Ooh, that's a good one. Except there is no such thing. Go ahead, give me an example of capitalism that is "unfettered by regulation and oversight", robert Cook. I'll wait.
"Except there is no such thing. Go ahead, give me an example of capitalism that is 'unfettered by regulation and oversight,' robert Cook. I'll wait."
That's the ideal proposed by "free market" advocates...let the market determine outcomes...enlightened self-interest and all that malarkey will insure the best decisions are made by all, insuring mutual benefit, yada, yada, yada. When they say they want a "free market," they mean, in fact, a market free of government oversight and regulation, (just as any stick-up man with a gun would wish to be free of the sanctions of arrest, prosecution, and arrest for his theft of much smaller quantities of money).
We don't have that ideal desired by the capitalists, but we're closer to it now than we have been since before the Great Depression of 1928...through the determined, decades-long, well-funded efforts of Wall Street and the financial elites to weaken or repeal the regulations put in place after the depression to prevent such catastrophes in future...efforts which have borne plump fruit. Even though we don't have a system that is entirely unfettered by regulation and oversight, it is effectively so. The crimes of the big banks and Wall Street were rewarded, not punished, but ordinary working Americans suffer as a consequence of those crimes. In the end, we have, indeed, wealth and power concentrated in a small elite at the very top.
There are passages in Snorre Sturlason's Royal Sagas that indicate Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians considered themselves separate peoples or "nations" though closely related, even back in "Viking" times. The borders were not as today, and southern Sweden and all the Baltic islands were Danish, and Jemtland, Herjedalen, and Bohuslen in what is today Sweden was Norwegian. As late as in the 1809-14 war, folks in these districts thought the Norwegian army was coming to free them from the Swedish "occupation," when the war broke out.
So you are basically complaining about something that does not exist and never has existed, Robert Blake.
Outside of North Korea, all anyone is talking about is degrees of regulation.
I'm curious, Robert Cook, Have you ever heard the term 'regulatory capture'?
Just who is Warren's CFPB responsible to? It's certainly not the taxpayers.
Nations are administrative districts at minimum and religious/moral partitions at best.
It is odd since the Old Norse invasion of Norway occurred in two streams; one coming up from Denmark and settling along the west coast, and one coming up through Sweden (Jemtland and Herjedalen) and settling the interior valleys, but different as the two streams were in mindsets and dialects they somehow did meld and agree they were both Norwegian and in no way Danish and certainly not Swedish.
One interesting word in this passage is "horizontal." A longer version of the Anderson quote more clearly shows what he was getting at: ". . . regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship." So, he not only put a finger on the appeal of nationalism; he also postulated that, in a world of imagined communities, people are inclined to overlook inequalities within communities.
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