767-781

Slavery and serfdom fell with the rise of nationalism because they were essentially aristocratic, feudal institutions. They couldn't match the potential of industrial labor and capitalism, and in both the United States and Russia they ended by state fiat. Reform voices, of course, came from the same vocal liberal bloc that opposed antiquated institutions like the Corn Laws. In keeping with the anti-liberal thinking of the time, however, these reforms were largely symbolic--in the U.S., for example, sharecropping replaced slave labor. However, the did signal the close of a previous era. Liberalism at the level of the state had become a negative rather than a positive force, an instrument for sweeping away old economic and social vestiges.

The advent of 'realpolitik' and the decline of romanticism also gave way to a new artistic and cultural sensibility of realism. Reporting on the Crimean War, for example, sought objectivity over style and flourish. As states became more calculating and centralized, perhaps, so did the populace create parallel institutions by which to monitor and scrutinize the state's activities. Realism, combined with a political agenda, was a far more pragmatic program than romanticism and sought to hit the target audience in the gut rather than the heart.

Clarification on Mazzini (Reply to Cas)

As I tried to articulate today, Mazzini is neither a top-down or a bottom-up nationalist. I define them respectively as the belief that the nation is created through a state-like entity and the belief that the nation is an 'emergent' being that arises spontaneously from the people themselves. These beliefs are means to the end, the end being a unified state governing a nation. Mazzini is not interested in means, however. "The Duties of Man" describes a vision wherein the nation exists as a beneficent force conscious of its place in the larger human family. It does not take a stance on whether a mass revolution will achieve this aim or a cadre of enlightened revolutionaries within the aristocracy or establishment. 

Mazzini argues that "the Divine design will infallibly be realized; natural divisions and the spontaneous, innate tendencies of the peoples will take the place of the arbitrary divisions, sanctioned by evil governments... The countries of the peoples, defined by the vote of free men, will arise upon the ruins of the countries of kinds and privileged castes, and between these countries harmony and fraternity will exist." The phrase "innate tendencies of the peoples" may signal a "bottom-up" mentality here. However, we can draw a useful analogy to Marx here. Both Mazzini and Marx argue that change will invariably happen. They do not say how. It is for that reason, for example, that Lenin could remain faithful to Marx in arguing that the proletarian revolution required a vanguard. Admittedly, it's less likely that members of the establishment would willingly give up their status in a top-down revolution following Mazzini's vision. However, my point is that Mazzini doesn't explicitly come down either way. 

Pigeonholing Mazzini as a raging populist is false, and it would be nice if we (i.e. Cas) could approach things with a little more subtlety. 

Summary Post 1/17-25

We've wrangled a bit over what nationalism means this week. I'm going to suggest, however, that we may have wrangled a little too much. Whether 'top-down' or 'bottom-up', nationalism is essentially a state-building process (the state being a compulsory territorial monopolist with ultimate decision-making power). Even cloaked in the façade of liberalism, nationalism wants to build up the instruments and reach of the state. As Robot Aliens (David) aptly noted, nationalism is about differentiating 'us' from 'them'--i.e., exclusion. This happens every day in the form of group identity. However, when it occurs coercively, it can be immensely destructive. I'm going to distinguish between a 'society' and a 'nation' here. A society is the collection of people usually governed as a nation. Societies do not need 'balances of power', states do. Societies do not engage in arms races, or seek territorial expansion, or steal from their citizens. States do.  

So in response to the apparent ambivalence about what kind of instrument nationalism is, it is clearly a statist one. We become confused because we see politics along a one-dimensional 'left right' axis while it is in reality a two-dimensional plane. Liberalism and conservatism both agree that a state is necessary, and as such can use nationalism to their advantage. Libertarianism and anarchism, on the other hand, cannot. 

Bismarck, OR: Reply to Charlie

Major Tom's original post here.

I disagree with Charlie's assessment of Bismarck's nationalism. While it's true that his popular rhetoric framed nationalism as a popular, emergent phenomenon, his actual conception of the nation-state was far more artificial. His ambition was clearly to increase not only his own standing, but also the institution of the Prussian state that he would bequeath to the future. Had Bismarck been a populist statist, he might not have exercised the remarkable restraint that he did. "Bismarck belongs in the company of one of the rare leaders of mighty states who chose to limit his ambitions" (Kagan, On the Origins of War  101). Perhaps because Bismarck saw himself as so personally connected to the state he led, even though still a "caretaker" figure, he considered the state's long term welfare in his actions. For example, playing the populace against the opposition in his wars with Denmark and Austria diminished the credibility of his opposition. Bismarck recognized that the state's long-term health required at its core, despite all other asymmetries, a basic concord between ruler and ruled. In addition, he resisted the impulse to punish France severely in the Franco-Prussian war. While it engendered lingering animosity among the French, Bismarck's territorial reach or indemnity could have been far greater. It was to his credit that he chose to restrain himself there.

However, it was ultimately Prussia's military culture and economic prowess that allowed for Bismarck's success. All of a leaders cunning and guile come to naught if not backed by a powerful military and economic machine. Prussia's military tradition within the junkers produced a professional and well-disciplined army more than a match for any other European power, giving Bismarck the muscle he needed to secure a unified German empire. 

pp. 754-762

One of Hegel's dialectics best explains the phenomenon of the nation-state in the second half of the 19th century. Napoelon III's reforms compromised the liberal desires of the middle class and (to a lesser extent) the working poor with the centralization conservatives desired. Essentially, a new status quo emerged whereby the 'thesis' of liberal, progressive revolution and the 'anti-thesis' of Restoration-era conservatism could coexist synthetically. Conservatism did not triumph outright through top-down nationalism (its survival required some concessions like legalizing trade unions and the like), but rather emerged a very different beast through the process of state-building. Gone was the nostalgic, Burkean attachment to royal houses and medieval traditions, replaced with the firm hand of the state as a newly created bulwark of the elite. 

The case of Italian unification is, for lack of a better term, a less revealing story. There are some interesting tidbits to be gleamed from the text, however. For one, Napoleon III's decision to withdraw from France's war with Austria-Hungary is striking for two reasons: first, he seemed unwilling to escalate the conflict for fear of its cost, and second, he feared the domestic consequences of the war. The former underpins the legacy of the Concert of Europe and the desire for international stability, while the latter emphasizes the compromise that lay beneath the new nation state (i.e. the emperor can't simply do as he pleases, for there are interest groups who check his power). No longer can a ruler claim that he is the state; rather, the state is now a discrete institution from the people it governs. The text quotes an anonymous Italian statesman observing, " 'We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.' " The division between the state and its people tellingly manifests the novelty of the nation-state as a political body. 

Is The Revolution Inevitable?

OR: Reply to Charlie

Marx would argue that liberal democracy is nothing but another opiate of the masses, not an actual tool for their own welfare. However, I agree with Charlie that this is a mistake, though for slightly different reasons. Marx's proletarian revolution has not occurred in the West because capitalism's image has remained good enough for people of all social classes to "buy into". Hence the farthest left the West has gone is only democratic socialism--working within a democratic market economy to promote an egalitarian social theory. Marx also underestimated the flexibility of democracy to incorporate populist movements that would promote the "general welfare", universal happiness, a pony for every poor child, etc. So rather than an explosive proletarian revolution, the state has instead slowly expanded to incorporate much of Marx's ambitions within the scheme of a democratic society. 

Another angle, perhaps, is the enduring legacy of the Enlightenment in Europe and America. Thomas mentioned this in his comment, and I agree. Because we're so Lockean and steeped in ideas of equal access to liberty and opportunity, American politics tends not to revolve around differences of economic class. On both sides of the Atlantic people on the whole put their lot in with the democratic process as the best way to resolve issues of "social justice". 

Not that this is a good thing. In fact, it makes it all the more insidious because socialism is no longer the monstrous, oppressive, and coercive beast that it is but merely a cog in the state's machinery. 

Reply to "The Mean Nurse Returns" (and comment)

Original post and comment here

I agree with Leigh's point that the basic idea of Romanticism was to shift the focus of art and thought toward the passionate, emotive side of individuals. However, I don't see it as an individualistic movement. The whole Romatic ideal of the "creative genius" only existed insofar as individuals tapped (sometimes in dramatic fashion) into a common reservoir of human emotion. Beethoven did not create something "new" through his Eroica Symphony, for example, but tapped into something that was already there. In fact, no one could really appreciate his work if there were not some commonality with his audience in it. Even though Romantics celebrated individual experience, they did not see it the individual as the end-all of human existence. 

This explains how pliable Romanticism became in the political sphere. Conservatives like Chateaubriand could emphasize the unity and solidarity that such experience brought to people. Liberals could portray the ideal of solidarity as the basis for a "non-repressive society" (to use Marcuse's term) where a free and tolerant social context allowed individuals to embrace their own romantic essence. Nationalism most clearly manifests this kind of romantic paradigm--defining a community in terms of its shared cultural values and qualities focuses on the basic, universal side of human nature, not the apogee of human nature that the Enlightenment revered. 

On page 730, however, the textbook asserts that it was Romaticism's individuality that associated it with nationalism. I beg to differ. Individuality divides the community as opposed to uniting it. If nations are unique entities, why are people within them not? This is an incoherent argument. Rather, Romanticism's interest in the "primitive" side of human nature could show how bonds of society brought people together into distinct cultures, forming the basis of nations. 

This brings me to Leigh and Nate's comments. Modernism and Romanticism have nothing to do with one another. Modernism is, as its name suggests, about "modern" things, sophisticated, pointy things with lots of sheet metal and minimalist design. It's about progress, building the new and sweeping away the cobwebbed vestiges of old outdated ideas like human emotion and irrationality. Compare a piece of art from the Bauhaus School to Delacroix. They have absolutely nothing in common. 

Modernism grows out of the same current Romanticism opposed, the application of the rational human mind to everything. Marx, Darwin, Bertrand Russell, even John Maynard Kenyes and the like are all trying to categorize and systematize and control the universe under their little analytical microscopes, whereas Romanticism just wants to run free in the woods. To conflate the two is a mistake. 

But that's just my opinion. 

Quibbles with Karl

Marx predicates his entire argument on the alienation of labor on an idea of exploitation. According to Marx, in other words, the capitalist must exploit the worker in order to accrue a profit. He uses the labor theory of value (i.e. the "just" price of something is directly proportionate to the amount of labor put into it) to justify this conclusion. If the marginal cost of a commodity, for example, is $100 per unit in Marx's scheme, the capitalist pays the worker only $90 per unit and pockets the extra $10. 

Marx is surely not arguing that the act of creation is a personally destructive process. Rather, he argues that labor is destructive to the worker when the value of his labor is worth more than the worker receives in return. Here's the rub though--the labor theory of value is false. Value is not absolute, it is subjective. There is no such thing as a "just price" for something. Rather, the price of a good is determined by its utility to the person buying it. To quote the Austrian economist Carl Menger (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Whether a diamond was found accidentally or was obtained from a diamond pit with the employment of a thousand days of labor is completely irrelevant for its value. In general, no one in practical life asks for the history of the origin of a good in estimating its value, but considers solely the services that the good will render him and which he would have to forgo if he did not have it at his command. (Principles of Economics).

Once we debunk his theory of value, Marx's entire exploitation scheme falls apart completely. Real wages and standards of living have risen, not fallen, over the last 150 years for the vast, vast majority of the worlds peoples, even during the Industrial Revolution that inspired Marx. His failure to grasp the subjectivity of value underscores his misunderstanding of capitalism.

Normative Name-Calling (Coffin 717-724, Proudhon, and other stuff)

The Early Romantic period is a textbook demonstration of Hegel's theory of history. The materialism/idealism debate aside, thanks to the French Revolution you have a new theory of social relations in liberalism countenanced by reactionary conservatism. However, material circumstances appeared to catalyze existing thought, not create it. The seeds of liberalism did not lie in factory conditions, they lay in Rousseau. Regardless, it leads to a basic reassessment of how society ought to be constructed. With regards to the Industrial Revolution, how do you distribute all this new wealth? If people can choose freely where they work and where they buy goods (economic freedom), does that imply a freedom to vote or self-governance (political freedom)? At this point, the synthesis is still elusive and won't emerge until long after the 1849-50 revolutions.

What feels most odd is the strange marriage of nationalism and liberalism. Nationalism is a highly illiberal idea--submerging the individual identity in the collective mass of a national identity. The only way to explain it is in terms of a common opposition to the illegitimate rule of monarchy and conservatism. This implies, though, that liberalism was not an atomistic, individualistic philosophy but again a new assertion of social relations--liberty can only be protected when each individuals has the power to protect their own liberty. The nation, a body of individuals, allows each to contribute to the political process, allegedly thereby securing liberty.