Nationalism and Marxism (List Vs Marx)

Karl Marx and Engles postulates a nation-less society based upon pan-human communalism. The various divisions in the society like politics, religion, ethnicity etc prevent man from realising his species being, wherein his true fulfillment lies. The real destiny of man is to be free of the constraints imposed by these divisions and also by any social roles and at the same time some ‘hidden hand’ will automatically incorporate him in a harmonious universal community.  However, they did not elaborated about this hidden hand. Class is the key to understand the mechanics of human alienation and human liberation.(Why? obvious reasons). So it is both noxious and historically relevant.

The other category which suffers from the double indignity of being both noxious and unimportant is proletariat and it will liberate mankind from the class endowed society altogether.

The single most crucial and disastrous error in Marxist system is the supposition that communist societies will not need any political organization but will in some unexplained way will be self adjusting.( Again Hidden hand). If power relations, as distinct from class relations, will disappear from society then there is no need for codification of laws. As in the Kingdom of God, there are no laws.

Why Marx choose class instead of nation? this is the question that Szporluk asks.

1. Proletariat as a class can liberate humanity as it is universal but how a nation can liberate other nations?
2. Interethnic and inter-polity conflict are present in the conventional historiography of mankind. Such a claim could not present any novelty in the Marxian theory so he presented theory of latent conflict.
3. After Industrial Revolution, conflicts were not exclusively ethnic or political and the transformation was in the structure of class and not in the ethnicity. Class relations and their changes were more plausible candidates for the dramatis personae of current history at least. Also Hegelian concept of ‘single key to history’ helped Maex to extrapolate class theory to show homogeneity in the causes for conflicts in all hitherto society.

List is credited by Szporluk with at least two distinct perceptions:-

1. Between each individual and entire humanity…. stands the nation i.e. nation is eternal and legitimate subdivision of mankind.   In contrast to Marxian class, List gave the category of nation.
2. the diffusion of the benefits of industrialism confers a special importance on ethnic groups.

and further he says that 1 is the necessary premise for the existence of 2 but Gellner finds Szporluk misguided as 1 is neither true in itself nor a valid premise for 2 as nationalism, for Gellner, is a modern phenomenon emerging from industrialism.

However, both Marx and List rejected the optimistic liberalism coming from Laissez faire doctrine stating unrestrained competition is beneficial to everyone. (Same marxian theory that every one is not starting from same level of economic freedom). Therefore, they went on to say that these contradictions are inherent in the development of Capitalism and there is a need to protect late developers and here List gave the importance to state for having the role of equalizer and List confronted with the marxian theory of revolution as the only means to achieve egalitarian society. List says that communist manifesto is also anti-nationalist manifesto. For Marx, List was only idealising the illusions propounded by early theories propounded in the defense of “Napoleonic Continental System”.

Szporluk finds that relation between nationalism and industrialization was formulated correctly by List. Marx says that the workers are neither french, german …..nor any other national and List’s theory was intended to develop its own ‘national road to capitalism’ for German bourgeoisie and it was common ground for both theories( role of capitalism for revolution). However, Marxian theories does not talk about revolutions in backward economies and also in 1840s Marxian theories excluded Russia from the world historical processes. So as Yuri Semenov argued that the historical processes of change is not related to individual nations rather it is related to global order but Gellner said that the historical changes are ingenious and may not be faithful to the spirit and intention of the Marxism of the founding fathers.

Therefore, List theory is different from Marxian theory in the sense that list was a nationalist but not a romantic and he was original in wishing neither to keep industrialism out nor to submit to it, but to take it on to by making it national i.e. national capitalism. so the idea is:-

1. the use of political institutions to protect and promote industrialisation,
2. the requirement that these political institutions be ethnic ones.

Without 1, political development is not possible in backward areas and ethnic political institutions are necessary for him as he has seen multi-ethnic and territorially discontinuous Ottoman empire’s decline due to non-cooperation between different groups.

For Marx, also the agents of diffusion are both political and ethnic but the ethnicity involved the educationally transmitted, literate shared culture of the modern industrial state and not the Gemeinschaft transmitted, pre-Gutenberg communism of old.

So, basically List rejects the notion of class in the Marx’s writings and instead of class he asserts ‘nation’ as a category for human liberation and human emancipation. Therefore, his goal is not communism  rather national capitalism as he foresees the development of capitalism and the role of state for the redistribution of effects of industrialism. He is also giving emphasis on ethnic identities which will dissolve any chance of conflicts in the political institutions.