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.