Nationalism
민족주의
Nationalism is an outlook and a political movement that seeks the identification and solidarity of all members of a nation and aims to unite that nation in a sovereign state; scholars also define it as the principle that nation and state should be congruent. Nationalist ideas first had major political effects with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, spread through nineteenth-century European nation-building and twentieth-century anti-colonial movements, and became a globally hegemonic ideology once self-determination entered international law. Forms are distinguished as civic or ethnic, inclusive or exclusive, and nationalisms have combined with monarchist, postcolonial, socialist and fascist systems. The Marxist movement argued long over the national question, from Austro-Marxist cultural autonomy to Lenin's right of nations to self-determination.
In depth
Definition and origin of the word
The German encyclopedia defines nationalism as an outlook or political movement that seeks the identification and solidarity of all members of a nation and aims to unite them in a sovereign state; English-language scholarship commonly defines it as the political principle that nation and state should be congruent. In 1971 the British sociologist Anthony D. Smith set out four beliefs shared by nationalists: humanity is naturally divided into peoples, each with its own national character; people must identify with their nation, a loyalty above all others; nations can develop fully only in their own states and so have an inalienable right to self-determination; and the nation is the source of all legitimate political power. The English word nationalism dates to around 1798 and took on increasingly negative connotations after 1914. In everyday political language it can mean national intolerance and aggressiveness, but research uses it for all movements that treat the nation as the value that guides action. The Russian encyclopedia adds that nationalism seeks to unite the different strata of society regardless of opposed class interests, and proved able to mobilise populations for common political goals during the transition to a capitalist economy.
Formation and spread
Nationalism is regarded as a modern phenomenon. According to the German encyclopedia, nationalist ideas first had major political effects in the late eighteenth century with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, whose idea of popular sovereignty had both a democratic and a national side. Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Germany and Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy are named as pioneers of national myth-making; Herder's 1772 Treatise on the Origin of Language stressed the role of a common language. In the revolutions of 1848–1849 national and democratic movements stood against the forces of the Restoration. At the end of the nineteenth century the French writer Charles Maurras coined "integral nationalism", which raised the nation to the individual's exclusive value, and nationalism so understood served to legitimise imperialism over other peoples. Outside Europe, Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905 awakened interest in nationalism in China, Turkey and Persia, and in the same year Sun Yat-sen set out the three principles of nationalism, democracy and the people's livelihood in his preface to Minbao. After the Second World War, colonised peoples seeking independence drew on the principles of nationalism to delegitimise colonialism. Since national self-determination was established in international law in the twentieth century, the German encyclopedia concludes, nationalisms have been a hegemonic ideology at the global level.
Varieties and theories
Hans Kohn and John Plamenatz distinguished civic from ethnic nationalism: the first defines the nation primarily in political terms, with the territory's borders as the only criterion of exclusion; the second bases it on descent, birth and ethnicity and sees it as a community of fate. Inclusive nationalisms seek to integrate all groups in a society; exclusive nationalism, or chauvinism, aims at aggressive separation from other nations and at its extreme has led to the expulsion or destruction of minorities. The historian of fascism Roger Griffin defined fascism as a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism. On the origins of nations there are three schools: primordialism, which holds that nations have always existed and has few remaining adherents; modernism, which ties nations to industrialisation, urbanisation and mass education; and Anthony Smith's ethnosymbolism, which stresses myths, symbols and traditions. Benedict Anderson described nations as imagined communities and linked their rise to print capitalism and vernacular printed media. Michael Billig's "banal nationalism" names the routine, barely noticed nationalism carried by flags, product labels and news divided into home and abroad. Anti-colonial and left-wing nationalism are also classed as distinct types.
Marxism and the national question
In the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx and Engels wrote that the working men have no country, yet also that the proletariat must first win political supremacy in its own country and "constitute itself the nation". In the multinational Habsburg monarchy, the Social Democrat Otto Bauer published The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (1907), proposing cultural autonomy as a solution. Rosa Luxemburg, opposing the independence programme of the Polish Socialist Party, called an independent Poland an illusory "Fata Morgana" that would divert Polish workers from the international class struggle. Stalin's Marxism and the National Question (1913) refuted the Austro-Marxist "national-cultural autonomy" and defined a nation as a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up. In "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (1914) Lenin distinguished oppressor from oppressed nations and upheld the right of secession. The Soviet party charge of "bourgeois nationalism", levelled at the defence of non-Russian cultures, has its own entry; this one covers nationalism in general. Studies of extremism call ultranationalism combined with Marxism–Leninism national communism and cite Ceaușescu's Romania and North Korea.
Twentieth-century varieties
Very different currents have gone by the name of nationalism. Poland's National Democracy, led by Roman Dmowski, put at its centre the "Piast Concept" developed by Jan Popławski in the 1890s, a Polish nation-state without rule over minorities, whereas Józef Piłsudski, a socialist, is named alongside Lenin as sympathetic to national self-determination. In Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles, nationalism took the form of the Five Races Under One Union, setting aside Han supremacy in favour of coexistence with Manchus, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans.