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.