NATIONALISM: DISTILLING THE CULTURAL AND THE POLITICAL

This essay examines the core feature of nationalism which sits at the center of all its manifestations and phases. The literature is overwhelmingly engaged with the ‘faces,’ ‘types’ or taxonomies of the ‘elusive’ concept of nationalism. I endeavor to single out the genuine ‘face’: nationalism as realpolitik is distilled from the needs and rights and even deviancies of ethnic masses. The context of the debate, therefore, concerns itself with the working of national politics instead of its wording.

Acknowledgments

Notes

1. D. McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 9.

2. Nutuk [The Speech] is the only book by M. Kemal Atatürk and is edited from his six-day address to the Great National Assembly in 1927.

3. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780; Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 54.

4. Ernest Renan says the following about the place of language in the formation processes of nations: ‘The political importance we attach to languages stems from our regarding them as signs of race. Nothing is more false.’ Renan in S. Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 55.

5. A. Vali, ‘Nationalism and Kurdish Historical Writing,’ New Perspectives on Turkey, No. 14 (Spring 1996), p. 23.

6. Ibid.

7. T. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain; Crisis and Neo-nationalism, 2nd edn. (London: Verso, 1981), p. 339.

8. The logic of development of the forces of production that bears a constant reproduction/reconstruction ‘faculty’ based on the interrelation and/or interdependency between the elements of a ‘three-ring circus’—man's will to live better, man's labour productivity, and the means of production.

9. Renan in Woolf, p. 59.

10. K.W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, Mass: 1962), pp. 34, 35.

11. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), p. 17.

12. Miroslav Hroch, in his richly exemplified comparative study, explores how this is effected, and analyzes this process by dividing it into three phases. M. Hroch, Social Precondition of the National Revival in Europe (Cambridge: 1985), pp. 22–30.

13. C. Hah and J. Martin, ‘Towards a Synthesis of Conflict and Integration Theories of Nationalism,’ World Politics, Vol. 27, No. 3 (April 1975), pp. 361–86.

14. A.D. Smith asserts convincingly in his influential work, Theories of Nationalism, that the intelligentsia ‘do, indeed, play a definitive part in the rise of nationalist movements—everywhere.’ A.D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2nd edn. (London: 1983), p. 109. Also, Tom Nairn presents a brief and scholarly analysis of ‘The Role of Intellectuals,’ and points towards its place ‘behind and beneath the more visible “rise of the bourgeoisie.” T. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain; Crisis and Neo-nationalism, 2nd edn. (London: Verso, 1981), pp. 99–103.

15. H. Seton-Watson, Nations and States (London: Methuen, 1977), p. 424.

16. A. Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), p. 31.

17. Stalin's personality was occasionally described by Lenin as being ‘too rude’ towards party and ‘too tempting’ to Great Russian Nationalism.

18. The organization which was founded by a group of military medical doctors at the close of the 19th century for Turkish emancipation from the dissolving Ottoman Empire.

19. E.E. Ramsaur, The Young Turks; Prelude to the Revolution of 1908 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957), pp. 17, 18, 21.

20. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

21. Smith talks of the role of the intelligentsia as ‘a necessary condition of all nationalist movements’ in the approach of the ‘third group of sociological theories of nationalism’ which he considers as ‘a more historical theory.’ A.D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2nd edn. (London: 1983), pp. 86, 87.

22. Ibid., p. xi.

23. Smith reduces it to a more general separation: ‘the civic-territorial and the ethnic-genealogical, and the two routes of the formation of nations, that of bureaucratic incorporation and that of vernacular mobilization’ (Smith, 1991, p. 123, 59–68) according to which he, however, does not tend to approve of ‘genuinely different types of nationalism’ including ‘religious nationalism.’ A.D. Smith, National Identity (London: University of Nevada Press, 1991), p. 49.

24. Nairn, 1981, p. 339.

25. Hah and Martin, 1975, pp. 361–86.

26. H. Seton-Watson, Nationalism−Old and New (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1965), p. 15.

27. I understand this as the assimilation and integration of subordinate ethnic entities to be shaped as a corollary to the would-be nation that is qualitatively differentiated from its former constituents. Seton-Watson is here precisely consistent with a non-cultural or non-ethnic conception of nation, that is, with a political one.

28. Ibid.

29. Smith, 1983, p. xiii.

30. Nairn, 1981, p. 339.

31. Smith, 1991, p. 102.

32. Nairn, 1981, p. 347.

33. Davis takes this on board as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalism in referring to the prominent British Labour Party politician of the 1930s, Harold Laski, in the very sense that Nairn discusses. He begins by saying, ‘Nationalism may be considered on balance good; or on balance bad; or neither good nor bad; or both good and bad at the same time.’ H.B. Davis, Towards a Marxist Theory of Nationalism (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1978), p. 46.

34. E. Nimni, Marxism and National Question (London: Pluto Press, 1991).

35. The ‘nationalism’ in that sense, which has dominated historical development since early in the 19th century, was in essence the forced reaction of one area after another to the spread of capitalism (Nairn 1981, p. 127).

36. This seems to be an heir to the volatile temptation of the leftwing tradition towards rendering nationalism as the struggle of ‘oppressed nations’; the ‘progressive’ nationalism whose success was believed to be restricting the exploitation of territories of imperialist expansion. The temptation needs to be traced back to infantile Marxism's dizziness on the ‘national question,’ and in particular to Lenin's historical mistake—being the principal proponent of the ‘right of nations for self-determination’ in opposition to Rosa Luxemburg.

37. Nairn, 1981, p. 347.

38. Ibid., p. 94.

39. Renan in Woolf, 1996, p. 59.

40. Nairn, 1981, pp. 347, 348.

41. Smith, 1991, p. 72.

42. Ibid., p. 73.

43. Ibid., p. 71.

44. Seton-Watson, 1965, p. 15.

45. Smith 1991, p. 74 (italics in the original).

46. E. Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 168.

47. What contributes some confusion to Smith's argument is that he does not clearly distinguish between ethnic identity and the identity of nationhood by employing the term ‘national identity’ for both. The terms ‘national’ and ‘nationality’ already bear problems in their English usage. Using the terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ escapes possible confusion. And in the case of identities, the usage of the ‘identity of nationhood’ for, say, Swissness in Switzerland or Britishness in the U.K. and of the ‘identity of ethnicity’ for Frenchness, Germanness and Italianness in Switzerland, or Englishness, Scottishness, Irishness and Welshness in Great Britain.

48. Gellner, 1964, p. 157.

49. E. Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson of London, 1966), p. 73.

50. Hobsbawm, 1990, p. 11 (italics added).

51. Seton-Watson, 1965, p. 15.

52. In the conclusion of his Nations and Nationalism, under ‘What is not being said,’ Gellner talks of nationalism as ‘a very distinctive species of patriotism’ in terms of its ‘higher’ manifestation but ‘only under certain social conditions.’ But nevertheless, he does not want to be involved with distinctions between the history-making insatiable desire of the emerging class of the ‘modern world’—that is, the adolescent bourgeoisie—and the masses'; expectations of freedom. This, of course, is merely a consistent extension of Gellner's vindication of nationalism, which he evaluates as ‘the consequence of a new form of social organization, based on deeply internalized, education-dependent high cultures.’ E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 48. Whereas, the ‘insatiable desire’ of the modern world's rising bourgeoisie in its ‘teens,’ which has had the last word on the course of history, has nothing to do with the ‘patriotic’ desires of the ‘herd’ masses.

53. Woolf, 1996, p. 29.

54. Nairn, 1981, p. 333.

55. Hah and Martin, 1975.

56. Seton-Watson, 1965, p. 5.

57. McCrone, 1998, p. 149.

58. Nairn, 1981, p. 351.

59. R. Luxemburg, The National Question; Selected Writings. H.B Davis (ed.) (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 159.

60. Gellner, 1964, pp. 148, 149. This very elision in Gellner is Hobsbawm's ‘major criticism of Gellner's work’ which he expresses as lack of ‘attention to the view from below’ (Hobsbawm, 1990, pp. 10, 11). However, his understanding of nation and nationalism does not differ from Gellner's in terms of handling them as ‘dual phenomena.’ Although he, in a sense, distinguishes the ‘national sentiments’ of ‘below’ from the ‘market sentiments’ of ‘above,’ for him the ‘assumptions, hopes, needs, longings, and interests of ordinary people’ are ‘not necessarily national and still less nationalist.’ This (the concerns of those below) is precisely what I strive to separate from nationalism and nationalist politics as an ‘ideological movement.’

61. In a video-recorded interview held by myself with a Kurdish woman in her late 50s in Qamişlo (Syria), whose four children lost their lives in the clashes with the Turkish army, she calmly says, in response to a question, ‘Thank god, I have four martyrs.’

62. Kedourie, 1966, p. 73.

63. Hürriyet, 26 Feb. 2002.

64. ‘National Forces’ is a translation of ‘Kuvai Milliye’ which was an unofficial movement composed of civil and military elements in the Anatolian struggle against the Allies' attempts to dismantle the Ottoman State in the late 1910s following her defeat. The prompt emergent unity of left–right reaction had defined their ‘spirit’ in terms of Kuvai Milliye's spirit. Coşkun refers to the conditions of Turkey at the time in which this movement emerged, and makes humorous comparisons due to amusingly inappropriate circumstances.

65. B. Coşkun, ‘Kuvai Milliye, Hürriyet', 6 March 2002.

66. J. Lester, ‘Overdosing on Nationalism,’ New Left Review, No. 221 (1977), pp. 37–40.

67. Anderson, 1983, p. 13.

68. Nairn, 1981, p. 329.

69. Nimni, 1991, pp. 17–43.

70. Davis in Luxemburg, 1976, p. 12.

71. Gramsci, 1977, pp. 29, 30 (italics added).

72. McCrone, 1998, p. 149.

73. Gramsci, 1977, p. 30.

74. Ibid.

75. Frank Füredi's work, The Soviet Union Demystified, is a distinguished study of this sort supported by extensive quantitative information. Further, the study was accomplished some years prior to the ‘1989 revolutions’ and, following the illustration of how the ‘adolescent’ bourgeoisie of Soviet-Russia took over and over-developed the works of belated Russian capitalism by an absolute control of labor-value allocation in the whole of its society, Füredi heralds that ‘bureaucracy is more than a caste, but not yet a class’ and ‘bureaucrats would like to become a class.’ F. Füredi, The Soviet Union Demystified (London: Junius, 1986), p. 179.

76. Nairn, 1981, p. 104.

77. Hroch, 1985.

78. Hah and Martin, 1975, p. 369.

79. Gellner, 1964, p. 166.

80. Deutsch, 1962, p. 169–74.