Nationalism Today

Abstract

In the two decades following World War II, the nation-state was globally established as the normal form of the modern state. This normative idea was acknowledged in the right of self-determination of nations. The enemies of national liberation were colonialism and racism. The anticolonial nationalism of Asia and Africa also shared with the Marxism of the Third International a distinction betwen the “bad nationalism” of the Western capitalist countries and the “good nationalism” of the anticolonial movements. It is now being claimed that the world order based on equally sovereign nation-states has fundamentally changed. This essay examines these arguments. It concludes that there is no “empire” based on deterritorialized authority. On the other hand, the normalization of nation-states implies the gradation and ranking of nations with some claiming the power to declare others exceptions to the rule of sovereign equality. Further, within nation-states, the populist politics of ethnic identity can undermine as well as bolster the ideology of nationalism. Neither imperialism nor nationalism has come to an end.

Keywords:

• Nation
• Nationalism
• Marxism
• Empire
• Colonialism
• Imperial Prerogative

Acknowledgements

This essay is based on a keynote lecture delivered at the Rethinking Marxism conference held in Amherst, Massachusetts, in November 2009.

Notes

¹Perhaps the most celebrated statement of this position was by Fukuyama (1992), who pronounced that history as the conflict between classes and nations had now come to an end.

²I have discussed the conceptual apparatus of modern empire at greater length in Chatterjee (forthcoming).

³One of the most useful surveys of this tradition is by Mommsen (1980).

⁴Perhaps the earliest statement of a Marxist theory of neocolonialism was by Nkrumah (1965).

⁵For a useful historical survey of this process, see Brown (1970).

⁶Interestingly, scholars belonging to the old dependency school have made the strongest predictions along these lines. See Frank (1998) and Arrighi (2008).