NationalismAuthor(s): Ernest GellnerSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 10, No. 6 (Nov., 1981), pp. 753-776Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657332Accessed: 02/02/2009 13:33

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NATIONALISM

ERNEST GELLNER

There is almost an inverse relationship between the importance of nationalism in the modern world and the amount of scholarly attention it has received. Was it, one wonders, some pudeur in the face of a sometimes so unwelcome and, on the whole, unanticipated intrusion, one unforseen both by the liberal and the marxist accounts of industrial society, which has led to this failure to attend to it adequately? In fact, nationalism does seem to me explicable - at

any rate ex post - as the inevitable, or at least the natural, corollary of cer- tain salient and conspicuous traits of modern or modernizing societies. Let me list these traits:

1. Modern society is politically centralized. There is within it little or no room for private vengeance, for self-help in the maintenance of order. Why is this so, and to what extent is it so? In itself, there is nothing inherent, univer- sal or necessary about the monopolization of legitimate violence by some

political center. On the contrary, in many, perhaps in most social forms, sub- communities of a given society are also the units of defense and of the main- tenance of order. It is of the essence of a feudal domain that it exercises force in defense of itself and in internal enforcement of discipline. The former is also true of a tribal segment. The central authority is often neither able nor willing to take on the onerous task of policing everything. The delegation of at least some of this to local institutions and communities, which also have other functions, is a natural and very common means of passing some of this excessive buck. But the modern state is seldom inclined or obliged to do the same. Why so?

One can think of various reasons. The most obvious are the preconditions of modern economic life. Modern production is a very impressive affair, and it has exceedingly high standards. It is a full-time business. It is difficult for those who take part in it, also, to do anything else to a high standard. They cannot be soldiers as well. It takes them all their time to be adequate machine

London School of Economics and Political Science

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tool operators, clerical workers, whatnot. This is quite different from those paradigmatic soldiers, pastoralists, or for overseers of peasants. Those activi- ties - riding around flocks, or riding around fields collecting rents - seem to leave time for military training; indeed they are a kind of training in assertion and the exercise of authority; but this is not so for modern tasks, even (or perhaps especially) at senior and supervisory levels. Even peasants can raise a militia, though generally not one as good as that of pastoralists; but, revolu- tionary romanticism apart, urban industrial work and life do not seem good social bases for it. Neither the daily tasks themselves, nor the nature of the preliminary training for them, seem to point that way. Apart from the inclina- tion and free time available to the individual, there are obvious organizational features which militate against it. The mobility of labor, the separation of workplace and home, of work and social loyalties, all militate against the use of the work-community as a defensive and law-enforcing one. A clan may work and fight as a unit, but in the modern world, the kibbutz, which sig- nificantly doubles as a productive and as a defense unit, is well known to be untypical.

One can point to apparent exceptions to this generalization. Nazi Germany, and to a lesser extent other Fascist states, was an industrial society with a military ethos - but precisely, the ethos operated for the total society and for its individuals, but not at the level of its productive or regional units. In fact, the British military establishment, with its territorial and even institu- tional regiments, goes much further in seeming to use communities or associa- tions for military ends. An Englishman can go to war not merely in his county regiment, but also sometimes in his guild regiment - e.g., Inns of Court Regt. But as that disreputable character in Evelyn Waugh's novels, Basil Seal, observes, these regional associations are largely bogus. In Put Out More Flags, this remark cost Basil Seal a commission in a good regiment. Or again, one can point to marginal areas where law enforcement is weak and self-help or spon- taneous ad hoc organization has to take over. The American Wild West must have struck some deep and seemingly near-universal cord of individualism cum anarchism to have conquered, as a myth, so much of the world. But, unlike the tribal or frondeur dissidences which have in the past haunted the marginal areas of states of the Old World, the Wild West did not last very long.

A more significant piece of evidence against the claim that the modern indus- trial state cannot and does not tolerate private violence is its recent failure to control some urban areas, and the accompanying rise of private security agen- cies. Though the trend is significant, it is not, as far as I can see, remotely large enough to lead to a situation in which predation replaces production. It is a compliment to the industrial ethos or its organizational sanctions that

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gangsters turn to legitimate business more often than the other way around. An additional point should be made here. Modern nationalism is a phenomenon connected with the emergence of industrial society. Industrial society is always centralized. It replaces, most often, though not always, agrarian socie- ties. Agrarian societies are usually but not always politically centralized. It should not be assumed that they are always such, nor that it is always an advantage for them to be such. Some uncentralized agrarian societies were more populous and prosperous than their centralized neighbors, and just as advanced technologically. But the centralization of industrial society is not optional, and it is far more complete and pervasive, qualitatively and territori- ally.

2. Modem society is economically specialized to a very high degree. Above we insisted on the pervasiveness of the specialization as between producers and order-maintainers. Order-maintenance is left to one or few agencies, and is not carried on alongside daily work by everyone or by a large majority of individuals or sub-communities. This in itself is not unusual. Many societies have a specialized warrior class. But the class of productive activities now has an extraordinarily high degree of specialization. So close to the bicentennial celebrations of Adam Smith, it is hardly apposite to talk at any great length of at least the economic reasons for this specialization; nor is it in doubt empirically. In itself, all this is not so unusual. It does not exactly make mod- ern society unique.

3. Industrial society is also occupationally mobile. This point must not be confused with the preceding one. Their most important consequences are those which they produce jointly. In the West, they are often confused or conflated. Nonetheless, they are very distinct, and it is most important to separate them. It is perfectly possible to conceive, and indeed to indicate, societies which possess a complex division of labor, but which are not very mobile. A caste or millet society would serve as an example. In such societies, the cultural or ethnic or religious images, characterization prohibitions, all in fact visibly inhibit mobility. In Michael Hechter's terms, ethnicity is seg- mental in such societies.

These cultural inhibitions are of course not the only reason, nor even the main reason perhaps, for a low degree of mobility. What mobility occurs, moreover, does lead to the bypassing of the cultural stereotypes and require- ments rather than to their destruction. A given occupation may be prescribed for a given social and "ethnic" category, but if the economic realities do not allow all the members of the category to be gainfully employed in the recom- mended manner, some will find other outlets. There is often a lack of congru-

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ence between social ideal and economic fact in these matters. The real reason for a low degree of occupational mobility is not the set of prohibitions, but a stable technology and stable expectations. Assuming some degree of demo-

graphic equilibrium, and no violent extra-social cataclysms, such conditions allow people to go on doing, roughly, what they or their fathers had been

doing previously. Heredity becomes a viable principle of allocation to social role. Training can be carried out by the various communities. By contrast, a

society with an inherently unstable technology, and one habituated to con- tinuous economic improvement (and one which treats it as a right and as a cultural norm), is doomed to the continuous emergence of new specialisms.

4. In various ways, a good proportion of these specialisms require a high tech- nical level and prolonged genuine training. Contrast this with a traditional

society: perhaps it is arrogant and/or unimaginative on my part, but I suspect that any fool could get by as a medieval lord or bishop. If this is so, there could be no serious objection to the hereditary principle. The seigneury could

go to the Seigneur's son, the bishopric to the bishop's nephew, or "nephew". The result of such selection for high office, where the tasks imposed are not

intellectually complex, were no worse than those of any more meritocratic

procedure. (These posts might call for "character," but as it is not known how to select candidates for this property, the point still holds.) By contrast, quite a high proportion of jobs in our kind of society are what might be called

talent-specific. You simply cannot, for instance, select a random sample of the population (by accident of birth, say) and turn them, after training, into

physics professors. (Professors in the social sciences are another matter.) Only some people can do it, and they have to be selected by a genuine procedure which really selects for that particular aptitude. (The same is not true, for

instance, of circus acrobats. In Morocco, there is an acrobat-exporting lineage, which credits its aptitude to its founding saint and selects new entrants at least partly by birth.)

To say all this is not to presuppose that these special aptitudes are necessarily genetic. They may be accidently produced by early events in the development of the individual. Our argument only requires that these talents be, as far as the educational system is concerned, given, and not reproducible at will. They can be nurtured but they must be located first. That a certain proportion of roles are talent-specific is an important, though perhaps not the most impor- tant factor making for mobility. Over and above this elite sub-class, there is a much larger class of posts or roles which do not presuppose such rare talents or great innate ability (though they may presuppose a certain level), but which do require fairly genuine and prolonged training. Prolonged training is not unknown in traditional societies with low occupational mobility, but it

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is often suspect: the length of the initiation may at least sometimes be a manner of controlling and/or discouraging entry, rather than a veritable con- sequence of the nature of the skills imparted. When the training is genuine, it tends to be specific. It is not embedded in an all-around generic training, which could be switched in any one of many directions, as is the case with modern education.

All these fairly obvious properties of the modern economy and division of labor are reflected in the size and nature of the educational machinery. Train- ing does not now run in family lines, nor in one of those craftsmanly master- apprentice lineages. Both the selection for specialization, and the training itself, are in the hands of far larger, more complex, internally specialized insti- tutions, which make up the educational system. Nationalism is essentially the transfer of the focus of man's identity to a culture which is mediated by literacy and an extensive, formal educational system. It is not the mother tongue that matters, but the language of the ecole maternele. It is precisely when kinship and paternity come to matter less as sources of one's identity, that the idiom of nationalism misleadingly comes to make a fuss of them. It is a mistake to take the rhetoric of nationalism too seriously, as some are inclined to do. Language seems to them almost a biological inheritance, and its association with ethnic paternity strikes them as frequently powerful. They think it is "acquired with the mother's milk". In our contemporary life, it is in fact not even acquired with the bottle-fed milk. The language which counts comes later, with school textbooks. Julius Rezler's account best illustrates how folk culture becomes an object of mystique and of vicarious identification precisely at the point when it ceases to be a reality.

5. Industrial society is not merely mobile between generations, but also within individual life-spans and careers. Moreover, while specialization is great, so is inter-specialist cooperation, and hence the need to be able to communicate. Such interaction is extensive, complex, and unpredictable. These two features have a joint consequence for the educational system: a large part of it is unspecialized. There are of course "vocational" schools: but these come rela- tively late in the course of an educational career. An amazingly large part of the educational system of the most specialist-ridden economy ever is itself highly unspecialized! This is not a paradox, but inherent in the kind of spe- cialization with which we are dealing. We are not an assemblage of occupa- tional castes or task-specialized millets: we are a mass of mobile individuals, cooperating in diversified ways while engaged in our specialized roles. Conse- quence: a large part of our quite essential training consists of acquiring a kind of shared base, which enables us to retrain quickly when changing jobs, and also to communicate with each other when engaged in our work. Perhaps

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one should stress that "the social consequences of literacy" are quite distinct, according to whether the literacy is a specialized or a universal accomplish- ment. Literacy as the attainment of some carries the social potential of greater centralization, bureaucratization, orderliness both in economy and in faith, scripturalism, protestantism (the confrontation of practice with a written authoritative model which can then overrule human or institutional authority). Universal literacy on the other hand carries the potential of nationalism. The connection between industrialization and nationalism has of course been stressed before.l But the problem is to clarify the nexus between these two

things. Why has intra-polity diversity, especially when coupled with visible

inequality, connected systematically with "ethnic" groups, become so intoler-

able, when in the past mankind lived with it with comparative equanimity?

6. Modern societies can range along the whole gamut from mild to extreme socialism. Economic liberalism simply is not an available option. Laissez faire is of course alive and well, as folklore, both among its admirers and its detrac- tors. Moreover, there are periodic political moods and movements for restoring it, like the pristine purity of the early church. These movements also from time to time score political successes and attain power. When they do, they invariably find themselves compelled to execute a U-turn. It is now not only the Revolution which is invariably betrayed: the same fate now regularly befalls economic conservatism, or rather, attempts at the restoration of economic liberalism. Unless one attributes these betrayals to original sin, one must assume there are deep structural reasons for all this. What are they?

The modern ship of state is equipped with a steering mechanism. Once the mechanism is there (it is not perfect of course, but it conspicuously and

inescapably exists) it cannot but be used. Even to take one's hand off the tiller and let it wobble free is a decision of a kind. In practice, it is not a deci-

sion, however, which can really be taken. In turbulent water and in proximity of rocks, one's hand goes to the tiller willy nilly. It is the visible hand that one can no longer do without. (And even if a laissez faire puritan of iron will and resolve, one endowed with a secure political power base, succeeded in

restraining his own hand, that would still be a decision, an endorsement of the past course and its effects.) Over and above this crucial logical compulsion, there are also powerful political constraints. Neither laissez faire puritans, nor

anyone else, generally speaking, possesses an impregnable political power base. In other words, rulers cannot generally indulge their puritan or other

principles of fantasies, but have to act in a manner such that they remain in power. (Those non-laissez faire ones who monopolize means of coercion, and of communication and association, do of course have more elbow room in this respect.) They must attempt to please or placate those interests within society whose discontent might otherwise unseat them.

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7. It follows, from the various considerations adduced under the preceding heading, that neither tribalism nor quietism-on-principle are available options in modem society. By tribalism is meant here the organization of local groups which are simultaneously productive and defense units, which feud with each other and thereby maintain both internal and external order, to the extent to which order is kept at all. This solution simply is not available, for the simple and cogent reason, stressed at the start, that such local instability, and the

absorption of time and resources in defense, is not compatible with the eco- nomic standard to which we have to become accustomed, or, in the case of the "developed" world, to which we wish to become accustomed. By quietism, a kind of Hobbesian attitude to government is meant here. It is based on the

(questionable) conviction that any government is better than none, better than anarchy or tribalism, and the further conviction that the sovereign must indeed be sovereign, that a bound and limited authority would be contradictory or ineffective or both. An attitude of this kind seems for instance to have been widespread in Muslim traditional society after the decline of the Caliphate. If government could not be the shadow of God on earth, if a morally lumi- nous theocracy was not available, then any effective government was legitimate simply by virtue of being effective, provided it did not actively go against the

precepts of the Faith.

In practice, this spirit desires an authority which effectively keeps the peace, and which for the rest, is not too arbitrary, too extortionate, or religiously scandalous. This spirit is still positively expressed and commended in the crucial terminal passage of an important book on Nationalism: "The only criterion capable of public defense is whether the new rulers are less corrupt and grasping, or more just and merciful."2 In fact, this value or set of values is not open to men in modern conditions. When government had neither the means nor the will to interfere much in the economy, other than maximizing its own rake-off, this attitude makes some sense. When, on the other hand, one is dealing with an intricate modern industrial system which inevitably possesses a central steering mechanism (however imperfectly wielded), those whose economic rates of growth depend on how the steering is handled can- not content themselves with simply wishing that the ruler be merciful and not too grasping. Formally or informally - according to whether the overall regime allows it or not - they cannot but try to influence those whose hand is on the tiller, so that it be deployed to their advantage, or at least not blatantly against it. In other words, they must be political men in the modern sense, and organize, formally or otherwise, with a view, not to local autonomy, but to influencing the centrally made economic decisions.

Thus the striving for participations, for Mitbestimmung, is inherent in the

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general conditions of modern economic and political life. It is not inherent in some universal moral truth of human nature. On the contrary, quietism seems to me a perfectly sensible, rational attitude, when it is feasible. It makes sense when the general order within which the individual operates is static and given, and government is concerned with matters of relative detail -

who, how much, and so on. A traditional government may replace one governor or vizier by another, vary the taxes a bit, persecute, expropriate or execute a

few, or sometimes more than a few; but it lacks the power, even the concepts, to interfere much with the overall social structure. This being so, the majority, hoping that they may remain unknown to government, and not fall within the unhappy minority who are the objects of governmental attention, may well embrace a Hobbesian quietistic political philosophy. The contrary view can also be found: "moral systems may be judged by the extent to which

they permit or encourage . . . self-direction."3 But, in the abstract, there seems to me little merit in this. There is a certain lifestyle, exemplified for instance by some sects of left-wing activities, which does consist of a virtually uninterrupted participation in meetings and committees and discussion groups. But to generalize this as an ideal for everyone seems to me as absurd as Marx's

extrapolation, in The German Ideology, of Bohemian unpunctuality and way- ward mood-switching into the recipe for the Good Life:

... in communist society... nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity... thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner...4

In brief, non-participatory quietism which prefers and accepts a fairly stable social environment, and keeps clear of government as much as it can, seems to me in itself a perfectly reasonable ideal: "Blessed the man who does not know government as is not known to it." But it simply is not an option open to members of a very complex, sensitively interdependent machine known as a modern economy, possessed of a steering mechanism known as modern

government. Such men must if allowed combine, openly or covertly to ensure that the steering is not used against them.

They must combine and organize. But how - along what lines? It is time at this stage perhaps to recapitulate the argument. We have invoked nothing but obvious and hardly contentious features of modern society: we have acquired an almost irresistible sweet tooth for affluence and growth of affluence; we

pay for this by, among other things, an elaborate division of labor of a special kind, one which is combined with occupational mobility between and within

generations, the capacity of rapid switching of jobs and communication between occupants of diverse roles, and a high technical standard (including literacy as a minimal precondition); hence a universal or near-universal and

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thorough education system, turning everyone into a cleric; there is no private or communal warfare or law enforcement, and indeed there is the marked weakening or erosion of most intermediate communities, so that society con- sists, to exaggerate a little, of the total society plus a mass of mobile individu- als; at the same time, the size of productive units, the power of the technology, and the centrality of decisions about credit, etc., inevitably imposes a large measure of central direction on the whole society; the size and cost of the educational and other infrastructure of the whole system notoriously leads to an ever-increasing and enormous proportion of the total national income becoming part of the state budget; hence, the importance of central decisions, which in time compel sub-segments of the community to endeavor to protect their interests, which in free societies they do by overt political organization. In a sense, the traditional state, however despotic, was pretty feeble. It could only kill or expropriate its subjects, it could do little to change the overall social structure, though it could, as Hulegu is said to have done, kill the golden-egg-laying goose and destroy the economic infrastructure. By contrast, even the liberal Rechsstaat, hemmed in though it may be by the rule of law and pluralist representative government, is far more fundamentally powerful. Even, or especially, in the exercise of its day to day tasks, it will from time to time take irreversible and far-reaching decisions which will change the entire form of life of subsequent generations.

This then is the overall sketch of the sociopolitical system to which we have signed away our souls by our collective greed for the fruits of industrialism. Why is this world also inevitably a nationalist one? If the above argument is correct, this world is inevitably one of strong centralized states, carrying our expensive functions in the maintenance not merely of order, but also and above all of a complex infrastructure, including an elaborate educational sys- tem, and with considerable occupational and hence geographical mobility. It follows from all this that these units are fairly homogeneous internally in a cultural sense. This follows from a number of considerations. Education is central, prolonged and universal, or very nearly so. It must be carried on in some linguistic and cultural medium. This cultural and linguistic medium thereby acquires an enormous importance, greater perhaps than it ever had before. Or perhaps one should say that it acquires a new and different kind of importance. This importance is underscored by mobility, occupational and other, which makes genuine communication essential. Communication is quite a different process in a stable and a mobile society.

In a stable society, communication can be, and generally is, called contextual. The work of Basil Bernstein has familiarized us with the distinction between what he calls restricted and elaborated codes of speech. (Strictly speaking

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these are not "codes" but styles or sets of conventions.) It is useful to apply this distinction here. In a stable social environment, the significance of a mes- sage hinges only in small part on what is said: how it is said, by whom to whom, when and in what circumstances, all enter into the "meaning". Not so on mobile, rapidly changing, so to speak single-shot circumstances. As the girl on the beach in a New Yorker cartoon observed wistfully while looking at all the men in swimming trunks: the trouble with a beach is, you simply can- not tell who anyone is. A mobile anonymous and homogeneous society is rather like such a beach. Like nudity, it is a great leveller. The context cannot bear the burden of conveying meaning, for the context is unknown, unstable, and accidental. So you must actually say just what you want to say. The medium is not the message, the message is the message. But just because the message itself is the thing, effective mastery of the medium, whether as receiver or transmitter, becomes very important. So, to recapitulate, we end with well centralized states, with mobile anonymous populations (i.e., membership is by individuals, now that there are no block memberships, so to speak), and with a homogeneous culture, instilled or transmitted by a major industry, education, which has two jobs: to instill that culture, and to ensure an adequate standard of literacy and technical competence, adequate for employability and rapid redeployment of personnel. In brief, we have the modern national state.

It should be noted, and stressed, that this conclusion was reached by working out the implications of fairly obvious organizational traits of modern societies, and without invoking at any stage alleged human attributes such as patriotism, xenophobia, call of the blood, territoriality, or any other alleged atavism, or the life-giving warmth of folk culture or of the vernacular, dislike of foreign rule, etc., etc. That they have not been invoked does not mean none of these

things exist. But it does show that one can put forward a theory of the emer-

gence of the national state as the typical and compelling form of political organization, and as the natural-seeming recipient of human loyalties, without necessarily needing to invoke those factors which have been so prominent, either inside nationalist ideologies themselves, or in the explanations offered by some of the enemies or critics of nationalism.

At this stage, it may be apposite to add to our numbered list of premises and

propositions: 8. Modem society has an inherent tendency towards a fair measure of equality in style of life. The lack of equality of ownership is well documented and is not disputed. A certain kind of inequality of power is also both obvious and follows, I believe, from certain obvious traits of the society as a whole. A very complex and interdependent machine cannot but have key points or levers, and only one hand can, on the whole, be placed on

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any one lever at any one time. This is a complicated matter, in as far as quite different levers are crucial at different times, and the personnel strategically located in control of the said levers may well rotate. The question "who wields power" is, in such a situation, far more complicated than it would be in the kind of society in which levers are few and obvious, and the stationing of personnel fairly stable. But to return to the contention that the Tocquevillian prediction of the equalization of conditions applies at least to lifestyles: let us begin with an impressionistic appraisal of visible evidence. This does seem a point at which the old Convergence Thesis applies. Wage differentials in the Soviet Union, for instance, have a smaller effect on actual behavior and appearance of people than otherwise they might, simply because there is a good deal of pressure of public opinion against ostentation. To have more than one servant verges on social provocation. Similarly, in Britain, the in- equalities of wealth which do indeed survive are not translated, as they were in Edwardian days, into highly conspicuous differences in lifestyle: Wealth is now discreet. Gentlemen have always said that ostentation was vulgar, but nowadays they actually live up to this in some measure. The rich show off to each other perhaps, somewhat surreptitiously even, but not to others, not to the public at large. The wife of a knighted industrialist who a few years ago made a habit of showing herself off in cars or dresses with a fair amount of gold in them became a byword for vulgarity; my impression is that during the bel epoque, she would have encountered a great deal of competition, whereas these days she had the field virtually to herself. The only people who seem to be allowed a free run in this kind of display are celebrities of a certain kind such as pop stars, who combine it with having such ordinary or pedestrian backgrounds and personalities that their role, like that of pools winners, seems to be precisely to underwrite the general egalitarianism. Their message seems to be: it could equally well happen to any of you. It is consequently quite inoffensive.

What are the ultimate roots of this egalitarianism? The key seems to me to lie in the same factors as those which also underlie cultural homogeneity. In fact, cultural and lifestyle homogeneity may merely be aspects of the same process. Deep inequalities of rank, conceived as unbridgeable differentiation between kinds of humanity, are not in themselves unacceptable to the human heart. I have seen a grown man kissing the feet of. a minor chieftain, and an untouchable picking up warm steaming human excrement: such things repel us, but humanity has in the past been able to live with them. But they become difficult to sustain in mobile circumstances, where countless new encounters occur in the course of economic life, invoking cooperation between men. In such circumstances, it is in effect impossible to make all the various rival conceptions of the status hierarchy congruent. Situations are bound to

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occur when two putatively high status persons meet, with mutually contra- dictory expectations of deference. This would happen frequently and lead to constant friction or worse. There is but one solution: let us say that we are all equal. No one kisses anyone's feet, no one picks up other people's excrement. A kind of prima facie equality becomes the norm. If this be granted, we can return to our main argument. It is established, at least to my own satisfaction, that modern society is centralized, homogeneous, and has a certain kind of equality at least. But this argument is also compatible with some universalist, pan-human state, or at least an aspiration towards it. No such aspiration is conspicuously in evidence. The modern world has strong states with a tendency towards internal homogeneity, but it is also fragmented in a "national" way. Why so?

A number of further steps are now required in the argument. A state as de- scribed - centralized, with an inescapable central economic steering mecha- nism - is doomed to conflict, though not necessarily violent conflict. The

point is simple: the steering mechanism can be directed one way or another. But the way it points will affect the fortunes of sub-groups in the community. Hence they must struggle for control or influence over it. Note that mankind in general is not necessarily doomed in all circumstances to conflict. For

instance, if land is plentiful, as was the case in much of pre-modern Africa, neighboring agricultural communities are not impelled towards conflict by any very conspicuous real economic interest. Only the desire to acquire slaves, women, or sheer pugnacity, will impel them towards it. But two obvious features of our situation - complex interdependence, and the manipulable, non-given nature of the overall social direction - puts us inescapably into a situation in which our interests must be in conflict.

Two important questions now arise: what are the lines of division to be in this conflict? And, must the conflict escalate, first to the point of violence, and second, to the point of either total violence (victory for one side, destruc- tion for the other), or of fission of the community? One sociological theory, marxism, has a basically clear answer to the first question. The real conflict is along "class" lines, where classes are defined in terms of the relationship to the means of production (n.b. not the means of coercion). Other conflicts, the existence of which can scarcely be denied, must then be superficial, epiphenomenal, or somehow camouflaged or distorted versions of the "real" conflict. Just as the existence of other conflicts, at least at the level of appear- ance, cannot be denied, so it is also hard to deny - bitter though it also is to admit - the occasional, or from the marxist viewpoint all-too-regrettably frequent, absence of class conflict, at least at the phenomenal level of mere

appearance. But there is a conceptual way around this: consciousness. The

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conflict of interest, the real conflict, is there, really, but the participants are not (yet) conscious of it. Consciousness in marxism plays a role similar to Grace in Christianity. It accounts for discrepancies between the fact as super- ficially experienced and what the theory asserts. It also at the same time provides a bridge between the explanatory/descriptive aspect of the theory and its normative authority. Class conflict is not merely the key explanatory notion in history but is also, as is well known, a moral imperative. It is such because those who act in accordance with it act in terms of things as they truly are (including their own interests as they truly are), whereas those who act in other terms are, ex hypothesi, under the sway of an illusion. Thus (in either case) the theory itself contains an internal mechanism which accounts both for counter-examples and for failure of people to perceive the truth of the theory.

The single major consideration which has in recent decades dissuaded people from a faith in marxism is probably this: a given conflict can only be said, at least by normal common sense criteria, to be in the real interest of one party or one category of people, if, after eventual victory, they recognize them- selves to be better off than they would have been, had the conflict either not arisen at all, or had not been fought out to its conclusion, or had not been won. The actual condition of the victorious proletariat in societies in which its victory is said to have been achieved, would not seem to justify zealous emulation by proletarians not yet blessed with the triumph of their cause. But that is by the way. In connection with nationalism, what concerns us are the lines of fission, whether "class" or other, along which the conflict takes place.5 The more or less horizontal fission lines required by marxist theory do of course appear. Various strata, defined more or less horizontally, do mobilize to ensure that the central steering mechanism is not used against them, and sometimes so as to transform the social structure as a whole. One factor inhibiting total escalation of that kind of conflict is of course, as stated, the Abschreckungsbeispiel of societies which abolish free political competition, in the name of its alleged redundancy, given the alleged dis- appearance of "antagonistic classes". But what about those vertical lines of fission, cultural/territorial, which are so characteristic of nationalist politics?

Let us recapitulate: a modern society requires people who can communicate in a shared medium at a fairly high level including literacy and a modicum of technical competence. This excludes two categories from full citizenship: 1) those not using that particular medium, and 2) those not using it at that high level. If they are nevertheless incorporated, they are consequently incorporated, at least informally, as second-class citizens. At the same time, the mobile and interdependent nature of modern society has, as stressed, a certain allergy to inequality. Those who are "less equal," in Orwell's phrase, are now far, far

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less willing to accept this status, than seems to have been the case in the past, when stability somehow softened the fate of those held socially inferior, or made it seem inherent in the nature of things. But I suspect that the allergy is even shared by those who benefit from it: a feudal lord did not seem to mind being served, even intimately, by a filthy peasant, and, for instance, having his banqueting hall warmed up by a horde of peasants prior to the arrival of the real guests, just as a Tudor monarch did not object to his bed being warmed by a page, prior to his own turning in. Members of modern

privileged classes might consider such practices somewhat unhygienic.

So? The characteristic lines of fission, in the circumstances sketched out, follow a) boundaries of communication media, or, more simply, of language and culture, and b) boundaries between fully enfranchised fluent users of a medium at the required high level, and those not so fortunate. An observa- tion: conflict between horizontal strata, "classes," if it escalates and is not arrested, can terminate either in chaos and disintegration, or in a dictatorship. (A characteristic sequence is of course the succession of these two conditions, the former provoking the latter.) But a conflict between such strata can hardly, other than by some accident, end in the redrawing of political frontiers. This, ex hypothesi, does not resolve an inter-stratum conflict. A seccesio plebis, with a threat of the physical emigration of a given stratum, may have been feasible in early ancient Rome, but is hardly realistic nowadays. ("Brain drains" or the expulsion of an important proportion of a given class may perhaps seem to constitute an exception to it, but do not really affect the

argument.) By contrast, an escalating conflict along a vertical frontier, which can of course also and in any of the ways open to the other kind of conflict, can be resolved by the establishment of a new boundary. Moreover, such a solution may in the end seem the least painful, and the only permanent way of terminating conflict. It may be accepted as such even by those who do not, like participants in the nationalist vision, positively desire it as the only legitimate solution.

Let us once again recapitulate the argument. As a consequence of its tech-

nological, productive base, modern society is homogeneous, literate, tech- nically skillful, and occupationally mobile. The mobility, skill, and literacy are all part or precondition of its high level of consumption and its expecta- tion of continuous improvement. (It is meliorism, not revolution, which is permanent.) The homogeneity is in turn a consequence of these traits. People must be ready to occupy new slots: to communicate effectively with people whom they had not encountered before; and to subject themselves to "uni- versalistic" or "objective" tests, examination, with respect to roles or posi- tions they wish to occupy. The homogeneity presupposes a shared medium

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of communication and literacy. These pools of homogeneous liquid, so to

speak, within which fish of the same kind can move without cultural net or hinderance, are of course precisely what the ideal of nationalism requires. That this ideal has come to be implemented is not a consequence of some inherent or universal appeal of the ideal; it is a consequence of the basic organizational principles of modern society. The ideal itself is but a confused and distorted echo of those requirements, the manner in which it is translated into senti-

mental, self-justifying, and morally injunctive language.

It isn't even true to say, as often is said, that "nationalism is strong". Of all the available potential nationalisms, most are ineffectual, and of the ineffectual ones, the majority go down without even a squeak or protest. For every effective nationalism, there are n feeble or dormant ones, where n is quite a

large multiple of the sum total of actually operative nationalisms. Those that

go down, or those that never raise their head even, are "objectively" just as

legitimate as the effective ones, by criteria of territoriality, cultural identifi- ability, shared roots, or what have you. A historical or an ethnographic atlas will give you, in any part of the globe, umpteen possible nationalities and nationalisms; but only a few are chosen. They then do indeed generally become very strong. That some nationalisms should become strong, that the world should come to consist of culturally homogeneous pools, is a sociological necessity; but just which pools emerge into existence is a matter of historic accident. The pre-industrial world was very rich in cultural, religious, ethnic differences; any of them could serve as criteria of cultural-political belonging; but the industrial world has room only for a limited number of national states. Let us say that the pre-industrial world contained n ethnic groups, and that the industrial world has room for m national states. (The count will be in some measure arbitrary, for it is often not at all obvious where one ethnic group ends and another begins, or what one should count as an intra-ethnic distinction rather than an inter-ethnic one; but this indeterminacy hardly affects our conclusion.) N will be a far, far larger number than m, irrespective of just how we choose to do the counting. So in a sense Kedourie is putting things upside-down when he observes:

To an imperial government the groups in a mixed area are all equally entitled to some consideration, to a national government they are a foreign body in the state to be either assimilated or rejected. The national state claims to treat all citizens as equal members of the nation, but this fair-sounding principle only serves to disguise the tyranny of one group over another. The nation must be, all its citizens must be, animated by the same spirit. Differences are divisive and therefore treasonable.6

It isn't so much that nationalism insists on homogeneity. It is an objective need for homogeneity which for better or for worse manifests itself as nation-

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alism. The culture which, more or less contingently, is chosen as the medium of that homogeneity, comes to define the political "pool" in question, and thus becomes the object and symbol of loyalty, rhetoric, and devotion. Mod- ern egalitarianism and nationalism are complementary. Modern society is of course not necessarily egalitarian in its distribution of wealth and power. But it is egalitarian in that it requires all its citizens to be the same kind of species, without deep, overtly symbolized caste or estate distinctions. The main factor

making for this is the complex and mobile nature of the productive process. It is in this sense that we have spoken of homogeneity. Thus citizens become

inherently equal. It is precisely when this equality fails that there is trouble. It is when this friction can seize on some reasonably permanent differentiating mark that the trouble becomes persistent. If it cannot seize on anything much, it evaporates. Note how different from traditional society! It thrived on visible differences. If the rulers were different from the ruled, well that

helped identification and habituation, and all was well. If these differences ran out, they could be invented. In early nineteenth century Tunisia, when the supply of Turkish rulers began to run out, Turks were invented on the

spot. The ruler,

Whenever he saw a young man strong of body from the common people of the country, he would say to him 'Your father was a Turk and died without having inscribed your name on the register. Why don't you come.. . and sign your name.. .'7

Note that these pools must be politically managed, they must be centralized and effectively governed. The easy flow of fish within it has to be assured. The cost of the educational/cultural infrastructure alone is already enormous; and there must also be technological, administrative, and communication infrastructures. All this is both presupposed by homogeneity and in turn reinforces it. The management of these various services must be carried on in

some one language and script. This further reinforces the value and importance of mastering that language and script, and ratifies the profound personal iden-

tification with it, the irrevocable commitment to it, the investment of one's

long term plans and self-images in its terms and notions. One could put all this

in terms of philosophic anthropology. To be a human being used to be some-

thing people could learn on the job. (Some conservative political philosophies, in their glorification of instinctive, traditional wisdom as against abstract

book learning, in effect echo this situation.) But it is no longer so. On the job,

you can only learn that job, at most. A ball-boy can become a tennis player, but a lab attendant cannot become a scientist. Nowadays, you can only become a full human being, a citizen in full possession of his civic rights, with

full cultural incorporation, if you pass through complex, formal, and unspeci- alized training, and learn its language.

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Where the homogeneity is imperfect, where free flow is impaired and hindered, there is trouble. There are basically two possibilities: either the friction, the inhibition of free flow, is overcome, or it is not. If it is not, a new "national"

boundary is born. (One or more nations may be born at that point.) The crucial issue is whether this line of fission can seize upon some deep, inerad- icable or at least hard-to-eradicate diacritical signs, which confirm, exacerbate and ultimately confirm and engrain that boundary. In early industrialism, the inhibition of movement is of course between the active entrepreneurial class and the newly alienated, passive and culturally disenfranchised proletariat. But this "class struggle" is in effect eroded when, later on, movement across this boundary becomes easy once again. The boundary only becomes firm if it correlates with something like an "ethnic" one. Differential access to

power may aggravate differences in access to the modern economy (the case of East European peasant nations), or it may be inversely related (diaspora nationalism of economically effective but politically undominant groups). This gives us a diversity of types of nationalism, but does not contradict the

principle.8 So marxism needs to be stood on its head. National struggle is not class struggle which has failed to reach consciousness of itself. Class

struggle is merely a potential national irredentism which fails to take off for lack of good diacritical marks.

It is time to schematize the theory. It operates in terms of the interrelation of three kinds of boundary. 1) Educated-uneducated. These words are both shortened and value-loaded. What is meant here is the boundary between those culturally enfranchised for industrial life. Such enfranchisment can

generally only be conferred by a modern educational system or something fairly close to it. 2) Boundaries between "cultures". This is difficult to define in a way which is neither nebulous nor circular, if only because of the great variety of ways in which "cultures" differentiate themselves. At issue is that people of different "cultures" recognize each other as being somehow of a different "kind," while recognizing fellow-members of the same kind as being similar. The impossibility of giving a neutral, universally usable definition of this is aggravated by the fact that the notion of what is a "kind" or species of a human being, is, precisely, internal to various cultures, and varies from one to another. One may say that the traits which matter here are those which aid or inhibit easy communication. Most commonly, this is language, in the literal sense. But sometimes it is more important that people refer to the same things, even if they do it in phonetically different words: this is the sense in which fellow Hindus are "of the same culture," even if one speaks Hindi and the other, say, Bengali. Genetic differences, even if inherently irrelevant to culture, can of course - notoriously - become distinguishing marks: if most members of culture A are pigmentationally blue, while those of culture B are

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green, then a person of green skin color will not be admitted as a "true A," however impeccably he internalizes all the aspects of culture A, phonetic, conceptual, or behavioral. The problem of definition is further bedevilled by the fact that differences held to be profound between "kinds" of human

beings can exist inside one culture (castes, estates).

These problems of definition cannot have a formal solution, if only for the reasons indicated - cultural differences are themselves internal to cultures and hence cannot be defined in an external and neutral manner. Nevertheless, this does not matter too much. For one thing, in practice it is not too difficult to tell, borderline cases notwithstanding, one culture from another: ethno-

graphic atlases do exist and are not too contentious (or, if contentious, are such mainly for political reasons). Second, the theory which I am articulating with the help of this ill-defined concept does not require, for its truth, that the concept should be applicable with elegance and without ambiguity. Part of the data which is to be explained, and which contributes to the situation in which nationalism emerges is, precisely, the ambiguity of the cultural material on which nationalism matters. The theory only requires that the con-

cept be quite often applicable without too much dissent, for people to identify cultures and their carriers. It must be stressed, at the risk of seeming to say the obvious, that the distinctions (1) and (2) are not the same. It is what

happens when they overlap which is crucial to the theory of nationalism. Distinction (1) only occurs in acute form in early industrial society. Late industrial society is virtually defined by the fact that it incorporates the

great majority of the population in one education-mediated, citizenship-con- ferring culture. Pre-industrial societies do of course often have a similar

boundary between those who are and are not educated, between the clerics and the laity, but in conditions of relative stability, in which not many people are impelled to try and cross it. In such conditions this boundary does not

generate tension. On the contrary, it helps to maintain stability. The more

clearly defined, the better.

3) The rough boundary between power-holders and the Rest. (The distinction between the political class in the narrower sense - office-holders - and in the broader sense - those eligible for office - does not matter much for the

present argument.) As stated, not all agrarian societies possess this boundary, though most of them do have it. It is in fact possible to run quite well-devel-

oped agriculture without a centralized state. All industrial and industrializing societies, on the other hand, do possess this boundary. Territorial boundaries between political units are implied by a strong, pervasive state. Here a similar observation applies. Not all agrarian societies possess centralized states; and those which do often have ill-defined, ambiguous territorial delimitation.

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Marchlands may be but nominally subject to the center. Outlying areas may be taxed only when a royal progress passes through. Administrative and legal functions may be delegated to local power holders or assemblies. Boundaries may be not only hazy, with a wide divergence between pays legal and pays reel, but also indescribably complex, tortuous, and hence ineffectual. Some maps of medieval Europe make an ordinary jigsaw puzzle look like a grid in comparison. There are of course good reasons for all this: when much of economic and social life is contained within local units, and the central state can only make a relatively feeble effort to monopolize legitimate violence, boundaries simply do not matter very much.

By contrast, the industrial state has very precise boundaries. When it fails to enforce them, as happens rarely (e.g., in Himalayan regions) this is exceptional and is deemed scandalous. When the Chinese built a road in a piece of territory claimed by India without the Indian government even noticing the fact, this was felt to be embarrassing and unflattering for India. Industrial states on the whole rather effectively control the territories which they claim. To administer them, they must communicate with their administrators, and they in turn, with the citizens. This administration generally operates in one linguistic medium. It does its best to ensure that it can communicate effectively with the population in its care by fostering effective and linguistically homogeneous education among it: the ideal of universal primary education, unlike other imperatives in the decalogue of the Enlightenment, is implemented with great seriousness. The population itself receives this particular attention with eagerness: after all, the acquisition of this education will fit it for places within that administrative bureaucracy. The essence of national sovereignty is not merely to have one's own rate of inflation, important though that is, but to have a national system of education diffusing a national medium of communication.

It is in terms of these three concepts or oppositions that the theory can best be articulated. Proposition 1: a growing, innovative economy requires occupa- tional mobility. (If it is a liberal society, this is of course enshrined in the idea of the "market," of the fluid allocation of resources and labor by demand and supply; but the point applies even in a centralized economy.) Moreover, the complexity of technical operations involves a massive number of single- shot, short-term encounters between people, in which significant information, instruction, etc. is passed on. That so many of these encounters are both brief and "once-only" prevents this communication from being achieved by tacit understanding, as when a grunt conveys a wealth of meaning between two family members. The technical level of the society at the same time often requires the messages to be quite complex. From this it follows that the

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medium of communication becomes important, as does the level of proficiency of its users. It follows further that there will be tension between any two

populations A and B which are unable to communicate easily because of a gap between their respective cultures. Proposition 2: early industrial society is marked by a severe gap in standards of living, and in moral participation in effective citizenship, between two classes: those fully incorporated in the new economy, and those recently sucked into it from an agrarian milieu. In a liberal society, which is what the first industrial society of course happened to be, the culturally incorporated and privileged ones will also be the "owners" of the means of production, whereas the latter will be poor. Marx of course

thought that this was the crucial differentia. On the present theory, on the

contrary, this is a relatively contingent feature. It is the cultural incorpora- tion which is really crucial, though of course prior wealth may be the cause of it.

At this point the theory becomes marxism-on-its-head. Class difference (in marxian sense) on its own does not lead to permanent conflict. Class differ-

ences, in this sense (defined in terms of cultural incorporation or its absence) if combined with a pre-existing cultural boundary, do lead to deep and often

permanent conflict. (Cultural boundaries on their own lead to nothing.) Nationalism is not a class conflict which has failed to reach true conscious- ness. Class conflict is a national one which has failed to take off, for lack of

deep cultural, symbolic differentiae. In order to capture at least some of the

complexities of the real world, let us schematize the alternative possible patterns, generated by the three contrasts or boundary-notions listed above. All industrial and industrializing societies are endowed with central authority; there is no point in envisaging the confrontation of two uncentralized (and in that sense powerless) communities. This case does not arise, as central

power is always present in industrial or industrializing societies. There is no

industry in a state of nature. (I am for simplicity ignoring communal hatred and conflict between two communities, neither of which has a better access to central authority than the other. When neither wishes to secede from this

political unit, one would not call this "nationalism". If one or both of them do secede, the conflict becomes one between it or them and the central

power, and then fits one of the other alternatives.) So we have two'columns: Power holders vs. Those with less power. Into this opposition,four possibilities must be fed, covering the alternative conceivable distribution of possessors and non-possessors of industrially usable education:

Possessors Non-possessors Possessors Possessors Non-possessors Possessors Non-possessors Non-possessors

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Remember that this distinction is quite independent of differences in "cul- ture". We must now feed in the possibility of the presence or absence of a cultural boundary. This will be done by means of the letters A and B. If, in the same line, the same letter appears, this indicates that the two groups are of the "same culture"; if not, not. The complete diagram now is:

Power holders Those holding less power Possessors Non-possessors

1. A A 2. A B

Possessors Possessors 3. A A 4. A B

Non-possessors Possessors 5. A A 6. A B

Non-possessors Non-possessors 7. A A 8. A B

Line 1 depicts what may be called the classical marxian case. There is no radical cultural cleavage. The cleavage is between those possessing access to both education and power, and those with access to neither. (Marxism holds that each of these forms of privileged access depends on a relationship to the means of production, which is both obscure and questionable, and that the cleavage will aggravate over time, which is false.) Line 2 represents what might be called the classical case of the emergence of nationalism. The cultural differentiation may take a variety of forms - linguistic, religious - and the differentia may be congealed, made permanent, by pigmentation or even by sheer geographic distance. Here, by superimposing such a difference on the cleavage generated by early industrialism, a powerful nationalism is born. Line 4 represents the relatively bland West European nationalisms of the nineteenth century. Two identifiable cultures face each other; members of each have access to a modern economy, in as far as literacy rates, etc. are roughly equal, and each of the two cultures is possessed of a script, educational infrastructure, etc. The difference lies in access to power, which could guaran- tee further development of a unified single-culture state, protecting its own educational apparatus. This is exemplified by the unification-nationalisms of Germany and Italy; disunity or actual subjection meant less power, though neither Italian nor German cultures as such were significantly at a disadvan- tage. Line 3 represents a non-nationalist situation: no radical cultural differ- ences, no radical difference of ease of access to modern education; but there are some people with more power than others, though there is no cultural or educational way of picking them out. This in effect describes any developed industrial state with no nationalist problem.

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The difference between lines 2 and 4 corresponds to the late Professor John Plamenatz's typology of nationalism into Western and Eastern. By "Western," he meant such relatively benign nationalisms as those of the Italians and Germans in the nineteenth century: possessed of a perfectly viable culture, and generally the equals of those to whom they oppose, they merely needed to attain an equality of power, a state machine capable of protecting, pro- moting, and being co-extensive territorially with that culture. Plamenatz believed that these "Western" nationalisms were relatively tolerant: they were not actually obliged to invent a culture and impose it on populations previously only endowed with rudimentary and unhomogeneous peasant cultures.9 If these nationalisms became nasty, it was by accident rather than necessity. By contrast, he feared that the "Eastern" nationalisms, found in Eastern Europe and in the rest of the world, were doomed to a certain authoritarianism by the very arduousness of the cultural engineering which they were obliged to undertake. The former merely needed to create a- state machine to cover, protect, and perpetuate viable existing culture; the latter had to acquire a state and then, with its authority, create and impose what is in effect a new

culture, however much it claims merely to be the fulfillment or completion of old yearnings. Leaving aside this generalization, there is clearly much merit in Plamenatz's distinction. I should merely claim for my schema the merit of

showing how his two alternatives are generated by the interplay of the basic elements or binary oppositions, thus also highlighting the other historic alternatives which are similarly produced.

His two-term typology notably ignores the historically important alternative indicated by line 6: a situation in which two distinct cultures co-exist, and one is more advantageously placed in relation to political power, whereas the

other, by contrast, is better placed from the viewpoint of access to the kind of education permitting modern economic or bureaucratic activity. This is a situation which arises when a minoritarian and/or politically subject culture is at the same time well equipped educationally, and superior to its political rulers in that respect; and when, through a tradition of commercial activity, urban living, high valuation of literacy and learning, or a combination of these or similar factors, it has a marked advantage at the start of the race to modern-

ity. This kind of situation is of course quite common in traditional societies, in as far as it is often to the advantage of rulers to encourage or tolerate com- merce among politically impotent and/or excluded minorities: in their hands, wealth is less dangerous than it would be in the hands of equals (who could transmute wealth into power and thus become rivals), and it is also much easier to tax or confiscate. Traders are foreigners, as are Regiments of Palace

Guards, and often for the same reasons. (This is far more crucial than the theoretical prohibitions of usury.) This pattern can also be further encouraged or even initiated during the colonial period, when less privileged strata of the

population may have more incentive to try their hand at the newly available

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learning. Examples are provided by Jews, Greeks, Armenians, overseas Chinese and Indians, or Ibos.'?

Whereas line 1 describes the classical class conflict as envisaged in marxism, line 5 characterizes the more typical revolutionary situation in a Third World

country which happens to be culturally homogeneous (either through the historical accident of cultural unity, or because the only economically signifi- cant culture is the one left behind by a colonial power, because local vernaculars are too fragmented, devoid of script or literature, etc.). Here, within a cultur- ally more or less continuous population, the old power-holders are less able to operate a modern division of labor than are some other segments of popu- lation, which may in fact have been created by the old elite itself (e.g., in providing a modern education for the officers of crack units of the army, so that the first rising is Decembrist, as was the case both in Russia and in Abyssinia). Of course, all the cases in which there is no difference of culture (lines 1,3,5,7) are negative cases from the viewpoint of a theory of nationalism. So are lines 7 and 8, where there is equality in the society from the viewpoint of access of modernity, no segment having greater access than any other, none of them having much. Thus of course the situation in line 7 is excluded twice over. Line 8 may exemplify some kind of traditional conflict between communities, but not anything resembling real nationalism. The varieties of nationalism are exemplified by lines 2,4, and 6: Eastern (Habsburg, etc.), Western (unificatory), and Diaspora nationalisms.

The whole schema, as such, proves nothing, of course. The schema as such is a simple deductive exercise, which works out the various possible combinations of a series of simple, and, one might add, loosely defined oppositions: participa- tion in power or exclusion from it; access to the kind of education which enables a person to take part in modern industrial life, or deprivation of such access; and the sharing of the language/culture by the population enclosed within the boundaries of a single political unit, or, on the contrary, for the

fragmentation of such a population into two or more discontinuous cultural

pools. The various possibilities outlined follow fairly mechanically from the various possible combinations of these alternatives. What, however, is not tautological at all is, on the one hand, the assumptions that these are the alternatives which really matter under conditions of industrial social organiza- tion, or during the process of industrial organization; and the arguments sustaining these assumptions. The arguments are, briefly, that industrial and industrializing societies are inevitably politically centralized, much more so than the agrarian societies which preceded them; but they are inevitably mobile in daily life, throughout an individual's career, and over generations, and that this mobility presupposes easy communication of varied and com- plex messages, and hence precludes cultural chasms between segments of the population; and third, that an individual's entry into this world presupposes

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prolonged and so-to-speak generic, unspecialized training, of a kind which is completely beyond the powers of an isolated family, village, clan, or guild, but can only be managed as part of the cultural infrastructure of a large cen- tralized political unit, roughly of the size we have come to associate with the national state.

If these three crucial assumptions are correct (and I have tried to specify the

arguments which persuade me of their correctness), then one would expect the various alternatives generated by combining the three pairs of oppositions to correspond to the actual consolations which we find in historical reality. In other words, one would expect our mechanical deduction to generate a useful

typology. Whether or not it does so constitutes the test of the assumptions which produced it. It seems to me that the types produced by it do in fact

correspond to the major species of political nationalism.

NOTES

1. "Nationalism was associated with the mass mobilisation of precommercial, prein- dustrial peasant peoples .... The fact of inequality was perhaps not decisive, but its vast extent, and its tendency to shrink so slowly, or sometimes even to increase was decisive." Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (M.I.T. Press, 2nd ed., 1966), 190-191.

2. Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Hutchinson, 1960). 3. M. Ginsberg, On the Diversity of Morals (Melbourne: Heineman, 1956). 4. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (Lawrence & Wishart, 1940). 5. A marxist who is sensitive to this problem is Mr. Tom Nairn. Cf. "Scotland:

Anomaly in Europe," New Left Review, 83 (1973), and "Marxism and the Modern Janus," New Left Review, 94 (1975).

6. Kedourie, 127. 7. Quoted in L. C. Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837-1855 (Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1974), 59. 8. For an interesting example of a nationalist irredentism by an economically privileged

but politically peripheral group, but one which is not dispersed but on the contrary territorially compact, see Marianne Heiberg, "Insiders/Outsiders: Basque National- ism," European Journal of Sociology, XVI (1975).

9. John Plamenatz, 'Two Types of Nationalism," in E. Kamenka, ed., Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (St. Martin's Press, 1976).

10. Elie Kedourie is of course right when he observes that "Greek and Armenian nationalism arose among populations which were generally more prosperous and better able to understand the wealth-generating economies of modern Europe than their Ottoman Muslim overlords." E. Kedourie, ed., Nationalism in Asia and Africa (World Publishing Co., 1970), 20. But the present theory does not require all nationalists to be economically-culturally at a disadvantage. Political disadvantage will do just as well, or better. In a traditional context, political disenfranchisement may be a positive advantage in economic activity; in a modern situation, in which the entire population becomes mobile and takes part in economic competition (instead of being tied to locality and agrarian production) it becomes disastrous. Greater wealth in an identifiable community (i.e., a culturally distinct one) becomes a permanent provocation, incitement to envy, and a temptation. Moreover, the state no longer has much incentive to protect it, and a great deal of incentive to buy the good will of the envious majority by allowing, encouraging, and taking part in spoliation of this minority, which is faced in turn with only two alternatives: to try to dissolve in the majority and become culturally indistinguishable, or to acquire its own territory and its own protective state machine.

Theory and Society 10 (1981) 753-776 Printed in the Netherlands 0304-2421/81/0000-0000/$02.50 ? 1981 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company