The
Interactive Investor
The
Facets of Nationalism
This picture was voted the British public’s favorite in 2005. “The
Fighting Temeraire (1838)” by J.M.W.Turner depicts a hero warship that fought
by Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar (during the Napoleonic wars), being towed up
the Thames to be scrapped by a coal-fired tugboat - the latter signifying the dawn of a new
industrial age in Britain. But as the likely highly empirical lecturer at
London’s National Gallery notes, “Turner (is) playing a bit fast and loose with
the facts…Turner is not here trying to tell us about exactly what
happened…Turner is trying to tell us how to feel…he is playing with our
emotions…It’s a product of his imagination, and that is OK…” The picture is
idealized, not totally accurate, containing “alternative facts.”
1)
The masts of the Temeraire are at full height; in fact, they
would be chopped down for this transport.
2)
The ship would have its rigging removed, and taken into inventory.
3)
Most crucially, the setting sun is to the east of the Thames
estuary, rather than to the west.
The above is not mere Socratic quibbling. The making of detailed
distinctions also results in the many facets of nationalism, which increasingly
divide the world and societies. Some of the consequences of these are
problematic.
In “Democracy or Autocracy,” we explored in some detail what the primarily
economic globalized world order primarily assumes. First, it assumes the
availability of actual supply, allocated efficiently by the market. Second, it
assumes the irrelevance of national boundaries. To wit, Europe’s energy
supplies from Russia were deemed as reliable as supplies from the United States
or Canada. However, business alone does not have the resources to enable one to
lead a meaningful life. To persist, a social system has to successfully
address: economic efficiency, moral appropriateness and national security. It
is to moral appropriateness that we now turn.
Describing nationalism, journalist William Pfaff (1993) wrote, “…nationalism…does not need
complicated explanations. Its links to the primordial human attachments to
family, clan, and community seem obvious.” 1 Nationalism, as an
organizing principle, replaced the easy (or uneasy) sway of empires on
communities after W.W. I.
History can also be partly viewed as a chain of actions and reactions. In
its first phase, the Enlightenment of the 18th century assumed the
rationality of everything. In reaction, the Romanticism and Nationalisms of the
19th century assumed the primacy of the individual or collective
will.
Isaiah Berlin wrote, “…we are still
members of some kind of unified tradition, but the field within which we now
oscillate freely is far greater than it has ever been before,” 2 weighing
consequence against motive. However, to
be clear, the role of government is to produce “justice for all”; this means
that the consequential policies of economic growth, climate change and equality
(and their compromises) have to substantially fit together because they need to
result from agreement. This is what one would mean about “efficient”
government, to implement a substantial agreement among political parties about
the common destiny.
Given the above, one would expect the nationalisms of specific peoples to
be as varied as their histories; and that is indeed the case. Consider the
differences between first cousins, British and American democracies. Both
British and American democracies have been known for their freedoms. There is,
of course, the common heritage. But due to different subsequent historical
experience, there are different emphases.
British Democracy
British democracy has not been codified in any single document. Beginning
with the Magna Carta of 1215, it exists in a number of acts and documents that,
according to the Supreme Court, recognize the constitutional principles of
parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, and upholding
international law. According to the Wikipedia, “…the constitution (can be)
easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.” What serves as a
major source of political stability is tradition, embodied in the above, and in
the monarchy, which reflects the agreements of the general society.
What the tradition values most is individuality. In “The Idea of
Nationalism (1961),” Professor Hans Kohn wrote, “In England, the theory that raison d’etat
(reason of state) justifies state action in political and international
relations, never took firm hold; all representative thinkers knew government as
an ethical activity and the principles of politics as those of morality
enlarged….Burke and Bentham regarded the ‘happiness and unhappiness of actual
individuals as the final criterium of government.’…Government was a trust,
whether based for the conservative thinker upon Christianity –‘a religion which
so much hates oppression’…or for the radical thinker on rational benevolence…” 3
This respect making possible the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society that
exists today.
Now consider the most important act in a democracy, the peaceful transfer
of power. Due to holding illegal staff parties during the pandemic and caught
lying about what the prime minister had known about a staffer’s record of abuse
and assault, over 50 ministers and aides subsequently tendered their
resignations, thus resulting in the “defenestration” (dumping) of Boris
Johnson. Here is how he, somewhat gracefully, left office. In his farewell
address he said, “Well, this is it, folks.…In only a couple of hours I will be
in Balmoral to see Her Majesty the Queen and the torch will finally be passed
to a new Conservative leader. The baton will be handed over in what has
unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race - they changed the rules halfway
though, but never mind that now.” 4 Trying desperately to
hang on to power to the detriment of government as trusteeship, “Just isn’t
done.”
Under the new prime minister, on 9/22 Britain faces a very difficult
situation of dramatically soaring energy costs and a weakening economy.
American Democracy
American democracy was born out of revolution, thus the structure of the
state and the rights of Americans are codified in a single document, the
Constitution. The primary motive was to avoid tyranny, of the majority and of
the executive. In Federalist No. 51, Madison 1787 wrote about the rational
design of government. “In framing a government which is to be administered by
men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the
government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to
controul itself….This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the
defect of better motives, might be trace through the whole system of human
affairs…” 5 The American solution to managing power was to split it
up, between the states and the Federal government, and then among the branches
of said government.
What the American tradition values the most is freedom, a freedom born out
of the Revolution of 1776 and the apparently limitless frontiers beckoning the
colonialists of the 13 original states. It used to be said that Americans
excelled at the art of government, a task requiring a social trust, resulting
from a natural social cooperation. The resource-rich industrial economic
system, in addition, provided new opportunities for many, enabling America to
grow mightily after the civil war and then to win two world wars.
So what happened? There is a saying ,“liberty is not license.” The basic problem
now with one of the U.S. political parties is license, a lack of restraint and
balance that makes productive politics, seeing the other side, impossible. This
blindness culminated in the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021 on Capitol
Hill to impede the electoral vote count. The riot, incited by Donald Trump, who
told his followers to “fight like hell”; cost at least seven deaths, 140 police
hurt, and some 800 insurrectionists facing charges. 6
Of the 179 countries surveyed by a international organization to track
democratization, the United States was one of 33, “to have moved substantially
toward autocratization.” 7
In the above, we have noted that there are different kinds of nationalisms,
ranging from procedural to the violent. The three major type, also defining
“moral appropriateness,” are:
Civic Nationalism
Is a form of inclusive nationalism based the liberal values of freedom,
equality and individual rights. This form of nationalism, which is what we hold
as well, expresses a pride in the United States as the foundation of the
liberal international order comprised of non-coerced independent nation-states.
Chauvinistic Nationalism
Based upon the idea of, “my country, right or wrong.” This exclusive form
of nationalism places the national collectivity as the greatest good to which
all other elements of society must be subordinate. Due to the inequalities
caused by globalization, climate change, the pandeourmic and inflation; the
democracies have hit a the very rough patch, for the above violate the broad
expectation that the future will be better than the past because of individual
initiative. The general purpose of this website is to discuss political
economics and markets, in particular how the political system affects the
markets and vice-versa. The crucial general point that the markets have
neglected the potentially most productive members of our society, we shall
delegate to an extended footnote. 7a This footnote can be expanded by others. But
we would just like to note this and to also note that expectations need to
somewhat change, but not to the opposite.
Ethnic nationalism also falls under this category. Since Europe started
out as a collection of tribes, again to be general: Celts, Franks, Vikings,
Catalans, Ligurians, and so on; race does not, in fact, form a stable category.
Totalitarian Nationalism
There is here a clash between a justifying ideology and the nation. The
justifying ideologies, whether they be broadly racial or broadly historic
“laws,” clash with the idea of the nation, an entity inherently limited;
unless…the nation is defined as an expanding empire.
The impulse towards empire is apparently alive and well on the land-locked
Eurasian continent, and most unfortunately, for all, in Ukraine. The present
war in Ukraine is not new.
As Hans Kohn (1961) writes, “The Russian
Empire (of the 18th century) conquered vast territories alien in
race and civilization and welded them into a centralized despotism mightier
than any other in history. The later Russian Empire differed fundamentally from
the liberal, tolerant (commercial) British Empire in its tendency to impose
uniformity upon its immense domains, to Russify or later to communize them
without any freedom of spontaneous development….(Peter the Great) wished to
borrow Europe’s practical efficiency and technical skill, but not her spiritual
ideals of liberty and human dignity; and his sole purposes was to strengthen
Russia….The reforms did not aim at a new morality, but at providing Russia with
the resources to occupy a dominating position in the international world.” 8
This
essay notes the difference between business and the national moral order on
which all rests. The moral order, itself, also depends on the unique histories
of a people, thus the new age “…with its innumerable shadings and transitions…”
9 Or as President Biden said on 9/11/22, “…the push and pull of all
that makes us human…”