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Political Theory in the Age of Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Abstract

In this essay Seth argues that it is not the case that international relations theory has suffered because domestic theory has prospered, but rather that both bear the marks of a signal failure to grasp the implications of, and to theorize adequately about, nationalism. She argues further that this failure is partly rooted in the phenomenon of nationalism itself, for it encapsulates many of the tensions and contradictions of modern thought. Finally, she suggests that the transformation of the international system from a system of states to a system of nation-states has had profound consequences for international relations, consequences not fully grasped in international relations theory.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1993

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References

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5 Ibid., 30. Or was François Robert not more in tune with the nationalism of the Revolution when he urged his countrymen to “forget the universe,” for Frenchmen had become free precisely in order to “love the motherland” (Quoted in Clive Emsley, “Nationalist Rhetoric and Nationalist sentiment in Revolutionary France,”ibid., 43).Google Scholar

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14 If space allowed, the same could be shown, I believe, for the Enlightenment. George D. O'Brien, for instance, concludes, “Given the view of a common, intuitable human nature, Enlightenment politics can give no satisfactory account for the plurality of states.” In the Enlightenment view the only explanation for such plurality was “irrationalism”—loyalty to dynasties, outmoded religions, foolish customs (George D. O'Brien, Hegel on Reason and History: A Contemporary Interpretation [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975], 113).Google Scholar

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19 Ibid., 392. The reason for this, Mill goes on to say, is that “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.”.Google Scholar

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33 Cited in Marx, Karl, The Revolutions of 1848, ed. Fernbach, David (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 78.Google Scholar Marx and Engels go on to say that “the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself as the nation,” although, they immediately add, “not in the bourgeois sense of the word” (p. 84).

34 Hobsbawm, Eric J., “Marx, Engels and Politics,” in Hobsbawm, Eric J., ed., The History of Marxism, Vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 249.Google Scholar For useful works on Marx and Engels's views on the national question, see Bloom, Solomon, A World of Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941Google Scholar); Cummins, Ian, Marx, Engels and National Movements (London: Croom Helm, 1980)Google Scholar; Davis, H.B., Nationalism and Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Rozdolsky, Roman, Engels and the ‘Nonhistoric’ People: The National Question in the Revolutions of 1848 (Glasgow: Critique, 1986Google Scholar).

35 For the theoretical reformulations undertaken by Lenin in this area and their political implications, see Seth, Sanjay, “Lenin's Reformulation of Marxism: The Colonial Question as a National Question,” History of Political Thought 13 (Spring 1992)Google Scholar.

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41 Luban views it as a conflict between universalism and particularism. He declares that what is “disturbing” about Walzer's argument “is its acceptance of the premises of nationalism”; in Luban's view, “Nationalism may have originated as ideology of liberation and tolerance; in our century it is drenched in blood. What Mazzini began, II Duce ended” (Ibid., 393).Google Scholar