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Introduction
The purpose of this article is to re-examine from an historical and political
perspective the relationship between nationalism and socialism; to show, with
special reference to France, the development of an attempt to reconcile the two
through a position of ‘left nationalism’; and finally to give a brief indication of
the significance of such a position for contemporary socialism. ‘Left
nationalism’ or ‘socialist nationalism’ is here used to mean the socialist
development of a democratic or radical nationalism whose origins go back to
the French Revolution. Clearly, such democratic and socialist forms of
nationalism need to be distinguished from right-wing variants of the nationalist
idea. The multiplicity and variety of nationalisms is in itself of course no new
discovery. This article seeks to explain and develop further the political implica-
tions of the different types of nationalism, based on a broad distinction
between nationalisms of the left and those of the right.
There has been plenty of discussion and analysis of the relationship between
nationalism and socialism, particularly Marxist socialism.’ There has also been
I See, for example, H. B. Davis, Nationalism and Socialism (London and New York, Monthly
Review Press, 1967); H. B. Davis, Toward a Marxist Theory of Nationalism (London and New
York, Monthly Review Press, 1978); I. Cummins, Marx, Engefs, and Nafional Movements
(London, Croom Helm, 1980); A. W. Wright, ‘Socialism and nationalism’, in L. Tivey (ed.), The
Nation-State(Oxford,Martin Robertson, 1981); M. Lowy, ‘Marxism and thenational question’, in
R. Blackburn (ed.), Revolution and Class Struggle: A Reader in Marxisf Politics (London,
Fontana, 1977); G. Haupt, M. Lbwy, CI. Weill, LesMarxisteset la Quesrion Nafionale, 1848-1914
(Paris, Maspero, 1974); R. Debray, ‘Marxism and the national question’, New Left Review, 105
(1977), 25-42.
from a distinct class viewpoint, upon greater justice and equality between
classes’.6 Such a socialist nationalism has arisen at other times and in other
places than pre-First World War France. The French case sheds light on the
strengths and weaknesses of the more general position of left nationalism, and
thus contributes to the discussion of the whole question of the relationship
between socialism and nationalism.
Before explaining in more detail the different types of nationalism, two basic
points should be made, which are crucial to understanding the power of
nationalism in the modern world and the problems it posed for socialist thought
and practice. First, nationalism came into the world, so to speak, in an
explosive and revolutionary association with the democratic idea of popular
sovereignty. The conventional association of nationalism with right-wing ideas
brings with it the risk of neglecting the revolutionary origins of European
nationalism. Article 3 of the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen stated that ‘sovereignty resides essentially in the nation’.’ This
idea may have received its earliest formulation in France, which was the first
country to witness its revolutionary impact. Yet everywhere throughout Europe
and, later on, well beyond Europe, the demand arose for the formation of
independent sovereign nation-states, for each nation (however defined) to have
its own democratically constituted state. At the time of the Revolution, to be
called ‘un patriote’ in France was synonymous with being a revolutionary, a
friend of the people. It meant being an enemy of the emigres and aristocrats
who from their position of exile attacked France and threatened the revolu-
tion.8 Nationalism, then, in France as elsewhere, was part of the revolutionary
tradition; the nation was defined in democratic terms, as consisting of the
whole people.’
Secondly, while both nationalism and socialism are doctrines of the modern
period, nationalism, historically speaking, preceded socialism. Socialism
developed in a world of nation-states where the legitimacy and apparent
‘naturalness’ of the nation-state as the basic political unit had already been
established. The prior existence of the nation-state as the context within which
the class struggle developed meant that patriotic loyalty to this national unit
was built up over a long period of time. Loyalty to the nation-state, the
emotional attachment to the nation and its history (the sentiment of
patriotism), the symbolic representation of the nation through the flag, the
national anthem and so on, and last but not least, the growing national
consciousness instilled through a common national educational system, all built
up the strength or grip of nationalism. Nationalism had established itself in
these ways before socialism with its idea of internationalism came on the
scene. Where the unity and independence of the nation-state had not yet been
achieved, socialists had to work out their attitude to nationalist movements
making such goals their priority.
6 J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1982).
p. 321.
J. Godechot (ed.), La Pensee Rkvolurionnaire en France et en Europe 1780-1799 (Paris, A.
Colin, 1964), p. 116.
8 T. Zeldin, France 1848-1945: Intellecr and Pride (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980),
p. 4.
9 Nicolet, L’idee republicaine, pp. 400-7.
242 Class and Nation: Problems of Socialist Nationalism
universal values of progress and democracy and also, in the republican perspec-
tive, of freedom from the reactionary grip of the Church. Therefore, the citizen
had, from childhood on, to be emotionally attached to the nation and aware of
its glorious past history.
However, the propagators of this republican patriotism insisted on its
rational and reasonable character. Such an attachment to one’s nation, seeing it
in terms of universal values, was emotional and ardent, but in no way
irrational. It was based or justified on the grounds of rational values, those of
democracy, liberalism, and individualism. This form of pahotism or love of
one’s country was distinguished by its adherents from an irrational ‘mystical
and blood-thirsty patriotism’, full of ideas of hate, aggression, revenge and
conquest. This latter form of patriotism was in no way in the tradition of the
French Revolution, but was nothing other than an ‘archaic chauvinism’, anti-
democratic and hence anti-republican, which wanted to replace the democratic
republic by authoritarian forms of r ~ l e . ~Exactly
3 the same distinction between
a rational, though emotional, patriotism and a patriotism of a mystical and
irrational sort was made by the socialist leader Jaures. His whole perspective, as
has been noted by Reberioux, depended on a rational approach to the concept
of the nation.24It was rational in that it sought to provide rationally defensible
reasons for love of one’s country and attachment to it, as opposed to blind
unreasoning patriotism (‘my country right or wrong’). Such reasons were
couched in terms of defending a national community which gave its citizens
certain advantages, primarily a structure of democratic rights and institutions
in which they could participate. The need to defend the nation was something
which had to be justified through argument and criticism; it could not be taken
for granted and accepted without question. In the course of a polemic against
the Radical leader Clemenceau, Jaures warned against any attempt ‘to let the
fatherland escape the control of reason and plunge it into the obscurity of
instinct’.25The nation could not and should not be defined in terms of race, nor
of instinct. Similarly Jaures ridiculed the attempts of those who wanted to
prevent any rational discussion of the concept of the nation and who tried to
‘define’ it as something which could not be analysed, but only adored in silence,
by prostration before the flag, as something sacred and divine.z6
We thus have a contrast between a rational nationalism, with an affective or
emotional element of patriotism, and an irrational ‘instinctual’ nationalism,
characteristic of the nationalism of the right. Clearly, this right-wing
nationalism was also anti-democratic and anti-republican. It offered an
authoritarian alternative to what it saw as the divisive and degenerate regime of
a democratic political system. This alternative could be couched in populist and
plebiscitary terms, which aimed at demagogically building up mass support for
a dictatorial movement. Clear examples of this were the Boulangist movement,
at least certain elements within it, and Barres’s combination of nationalism and
27 See Barres, Scenes et Doctrines du Nationalisme, and the discussion in 2.Sternhell, Maurice
Barrb el le Nationalismefranqais (Paris, A. Colin, 1972).
28 The 1898 Nancy programme is reprinted in Barres, Scenes et Doctrines du Nationalisme, pp.
429-40.
29 See M . Sutton, Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism:the Politicsof CharlesMaurrasand
French Catholics 1890-1914 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), especially Chapter 2.
J. J . SCHWARZMANTEL 247
of the wrong done to the French nation, to insist on the need to restore French
honour, and to build up the standing army to prepare for the eventuality of war
with Thus a definition of the nation couched in terms of race,
tradition, blood and the soil, more generally in terms of opposition to
democracy, laid the basis for a set of attitudes on international relations which
were anti-pacifist and pro-war. On this point, as on all the others, there were
basic differences between the two forms of nationalism, which derived from the
contrasting ways in which the concept of the nation was defined and the criteria
of nationhood were laid down.
34 Hence the commitment of the right-wing nationalists (though by no means only them) in
France in 1913 to support the ‘Three Years Law’, which extended the length of compulsory military
service from two to three years and built up the numbers of the standing army, as opposed to the
reserves or militia army which the left wanted to rely on for the purpose of national defence. See
G . Michon, L a Preparation u la Guerre: L a Loi de Trois Ans (Paris, Marcel Riviere, 1935); G.
Krumeich, Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War: the Introduction
of Conscription 1913-14(Leamington Spa, Berg, 1984); R . D. Challener, TheFrench Theoryof the
Nation in Arms (New York. Russell & Russell, 1965); D. B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic:
The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France 1871-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., MIT
Press, 1967).
35 Cf. Jaures’s articles on ‘Le proletariat, la patrie, et la paix’ (1902), in Jaures, Oeuvres, Pour la
Paix I , especially p. 278.
J . J . SCHWARZMANTEL 249
community, socialist thought added the idea of social reforms, which would
give the working class a stake and position in the nation. French socialist
thought referred back to Saint-Just’s dictum that a people which is not happy
has no fatherland.40 The ‘anti-patriotism’ of the workers was a sign that they
had no share of the national wealth, the nation’s culture, or the nation’s
productive resources. As Sembat warned, those who regretted the anti-
patriotism of the working class should concede social reforms. If they made the
nation a community in which social welfare legislation created social as well as
democratic rights, then workers would have reason t o love their nation and be
prepared to defend it in time of war.41Or as Otto Bauer explained, in capitalist
society the working class remained outside the nation, they formed a sort of
backdrop to the nation. However, as the working class developed its organiza-
tion and progressed towards a socialist society, workers would come to share in
the national culture. The victory of socialism would mean that the workers
would become for the first time properly part of the nation.42This was the same
line of argument as that put forward by Jaures at the 1907 Nancy conference of
the French socialist party, the SFIO. The workers ‘had n o fatherland’ only so
long as they were a disorganized and ineffective mass. Once they became more
cohesive and able to secure reforms within the framework of the nation, they
would cease to feel or to be alien t o it; they would share in true membership of
the national community.43 Finally, the former leader of the Parti Ouvrier
Francais, Jules Guesde, stressed the significance of the fact of universal (male)
suffrage, of structures of republican democracy which gave the working class
the opportunity of taking over the nation, of coming t o power within the
framework of the democratically organized nation.44
(3) Finally, the conclusion was drawn that, once the working class and
socialists had a stake in the nation, they would be committed to defending its
independence and autonomy. The nation would be an historic, cultural and
political community in which the workers had conquered their place, and so
they must protect it. This led then to the view that, in the event of a war,
socialists had to defend the nation if it was the victim of a g g r e ~ s i o nThis
. ~ ~ ran
parallel, in the French case as elsewhere, t o a particular view of the army. The
army should be reformed along the lines of a popular militia, or citizens’ army,
so that it would be a suitable means of national defence, yet would not be used
for aggressive purposes against the independence of any other nation, nor for
threatening democratic liberties and republican institutions at h0me.~6 The
army would be transformed into a democratic and popular institution for
protecting a national territory, which itself furnished the terrain for socialist
advance. Such socialist progress was made possible through the political
40 Jaures, Ouevres, Pour la Paix I I , p. 239 [reprinted from L’Humanite (29 June 1905)l.
41 M . Sembat, L’Ouvrier et la Patrie (Paris, Librairie du Parti Socialiste, 1905).
42 0. Bauer, Die Nationalitatenfrage unddie Sozialdemokratie (2nd edition) (Vienna, Verlag der
Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1924), p. 101.
43 Parti Socialiste (SFIO), 4-ieme Congres National, Nancy (1907), pp. 271-2.
Parti Socialiste (SFIO), 3-;$me Congres National, Litnoges (1906), p. 243.
45 The French Socialist Party committed itself to this position at the Limoges congress of 1906,
and again at the Nancy congress the following year.
46 See Jean Jaures, L’Armee Nouveile (edited by M. Bonnafous) (Paris, Rieder, 1932);
E. Vaillant, Suppression de I’Armee Permanenle et des Conseils de Guerre (Paris, n.d.).
J . J . SCHWARZMANTEL 25 I
4’ See, for example, Sinclair W . Armstrong, ‘The internationalism of the early Social
Democrats of Germany’, American Historical Review, 47 (1941-42), 245-58; D. Groh, ‘The
“Unpatriotic Socialists” and the state’, Journal of Conremporary History, 1 (1966), 151-77;
D. Groh, Negative lnregrarion und revolutionarer Attentismus. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie am
Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Frankfurt, Prophylaen, 1973). especially pp. 49-55.
48 See G . Herve, Leur Patrie (2nd edition) (Paris, Aux Editions de ‘La Guerre Sociale’, 1910).
49 The C G T passed a ‘Herveist’ motion rejecting any commitment to national defence at its 1908
congress at Marseilles. For anarchist perspectives with regard t o patriotism, see J. Maitron, Le
Mouvement Anarchiste en France (Paris, Maspero, 1975). Vol. 1, pp. 368-79.
50 For example, in the period of the French Revolution and again in 1870-1871.
252 Class and Nation: Problems of Socialist Nationalism
risks dismissing the theme of a democratic national heritage which the socialist
movement should continue and develop.51There have been plenty of examples
where the forces of the established order have claimed that the left is indifferent
to the fate of the national community, that it has been willing to neglect
national traditions and institutions in favour of abstract internationalist creeds.
The French taunt of the socialists being dessuns-putrie was the equivalent of the
German version that their socialists were vuferlundslose Gesellen, people
without a fatherland.52The assertion of a democratic and socialist concept of
the nation makes possible the claim that the left is the true defender of
national interests and the ‘bearer’ of the true values of the nation.
A further argument for a socialist form of nationalism involves questions of
economic nationalism and of capitalist internationalism. This aspect of the
question is of both historical and contemporary relevance. Capitalist inter-
nationalism takes the form of a cosmopolitan search for profit, irrespective of
the interests of the majority of the nation’s citizens.53This theme may have
increased relevance in the age of multinational corporations and international
currency transactions of unprecedented rapidity and volatility. Raymond
Williams makes the point that ‘the fiercest drives of the modern international
capitalist market are to extend and speed up these flows across nominal
frontiers’, a system in which ‘the frontiers are only there to be economically
dismantled and the flags, if the calculations come out that way, are quickly
exchanged for flags of c ~ n v e n i e n c e ’ .It~ ~could be argued that the best
opposition to such ‘capitalist cosmopolitanism’ would be a form of socialist
nationalism. The argument would be that the nation provides, in the present
world order, a unit within which effective popular control and a socialist
economic policy are possible. The nation is seen as a suitable framework for
democratic and socialist advance. There are national traditions which can be
mobilized for such purposes. Ideas of socialist internationalism might be too
abstract and ‘intellectualist’. The direct transition from the individual to
humanity, as a universal concept, remains an empty idea. Nations remain a
mediating stage through which a genuine socialist internationalism could be
built up. It is true, however, that the idea of a socialist nationalism has its
dangers. It might lead to isolationism and eventually to attitudes of hostility to
the foreigner, to those who are not members of the national community.
Left-wing nationalism attempts to work with a democratic conception of the
nation, held to be compatible with internationalism. The nationalism of the
1848 variety put forward the vision of an international community of demo-
cratically constituted nation-states, coexisting harmoniously with one another;
the patriotic love of one’s nation was a stage on the way to love of h ~ m a n i t y . 5 ~
5 1 For contemporary examples of such arguments, see R . Debray, ‘Marxism and the national
question’, p. 40: ‘there is nocontradiction, in either theory or practice, between the tricolore and the
Red Flag’. See also R . Williams, ‘Key words in the miners’ strike’, New Socialist, 25 (1989, 6-1 I ,
for a discussion of ‘community’ which implicitly raises similar issues.
s2 Groh, ‘The “Unpatriotic Socialists” and the state’.
53 For a pre-1914 criticism of such ‘capitalist cosmopolitanism’, see J . Walter-Jourde, ‘Inter-
nationalisme et patriotisme’, Revue Socialiste, 42 (1905). 676-705, and 43 (1906), 69-81.
j4 Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985), p. 189.
55 For some illustrations of this perspective, see M. Merle (ed.), Pacifisme ef Infernationalisme
(Paris, A . Colin, 1966). for example, p. 214.
J . J . SCHWARZMANTEL 25 3
Once nations were each ruled internally according to the principle of popular
sovereignty, then wars between nations would be a thing of the past, since wars
stemmed from dynastic ambitions and the greed of tyrannical despots. The
socialist nationalism of the left took over this idea. The working class had to
defend the nation, yet this was not seen as in any way incompatible with
socialist internationalism. Internationalism involved strengthening the links
between workers of different nations. This would make war impossible whilst
still preserving the diversity of nation-states. National characteristics would
persist even in a socialist
The problem with such a perspective arises from the difficulty of maintaining
the distinction between a democratically based nationalism of the left and a
nationalism of an entirely different order, in which the themes of democracy
and class conflict get totally submerged. In theory, it is certainly possible to
distinguish between left nationalism and nationalism of the right. Yet, in
practice, the division between the two can get very blurred, and left nationalism
merges into nationalism tout court, at the expense of themes of socialist inter-
nationalism as well as of the ‘modified view of the national interest which
reflects a particular class vision’.57 The experience of August 1914 bears this
out. It has been argued that, in the French case, the working class did not accept
the war out of chauvinist exultation, a desire for La Revanche against
Germany, and other themes of right-wing n a t i o n a l i ~ mThe
. ~ ~war was accepted
because it was felt that republican and democratic France was under attack
from autocratic Prussian Germany. Overthrowing Hohenzollern Germany
would not only secure the national interest of France, but would be in the
interest of international socialist revolution, since the defeat of the German
Empire would remove one obstacle to the international progress of socialism.s9
However, it was possible for socialists of other nations to claim that their
nation too had, so to speak, a privileged position in the process of socialist
revolution: the German socialists could point to their r6le in defending Europe
from the menace of Tsarist autocracy and to the fact that the French Republic,
however democratic it might be, was in alliance with Russian Tsarism. They
could also stress the fact that the German socialist and trade union movement
was larger and better organized than the French. All these were reasons for
defending the (German) nation and for seeing that as equally compatible with
socialist internationalism.
The attempted reconciliation of nationalism and socialism may well lead to
nationalism emerging as the dominant partner. The need to preserve the
national community comes to be seen as the prime value. According to Breuilly,
a ‘nationalist argument’ involves three assertions:
(a) there exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character; (b) the
interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests and
values; (c) the nation must be as independent as possible. This usually
requires at least the attainment of political sovereignty.60
The French socialists attempted to give a democratic and socialist form to
element (a) by maintaining that the ‘explicit and peculiar character’ of the
French nation consisted precisely in its revolutionary and socialist traditions
and in the vitality of its working-class movements. Socialists could well accept
assertions (a) and (c), but clearly not (b). Yet it is not so easy to separate out
these elements of the ‘nationalist argument’ or to avoid slipping into acceptance
of (b). The attempt to develop a democratic nationalism of the left could easily
slip into a much vaguer and diffuse form of nationalism, which could be
exploited for purposes quite at odds with the socialist idea.
Conclusion
The conclusions and broader implications of this analysis can now be briefly
stated. There are three basic issues which emerge. First, one can take the
argument back to The Communist Manifesto and its famous statement that
‘the working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have
not got’. Capitalist development was seen as transcending the boundaries of the
nation-state. Socialism, as the heir to capitalism, would continue this develop-
ment; one of the ‘first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat’ was
‘united action, of the leading civilised countries at least’.61 However, and this is
the second concluding point, in the history of socialism since the Manifesto,
developments have taken a somewhat different course. Capitalist inter-
nationalism, or cosmopolitan profit-seeking, has certainly developed apace.
Yet socialist and working-class action has remained chiefly focused within the
framework of the nation. This was demonstrated by the experience of August
1914. This may be especially true of what Marx and Engels called ‘the leading
civilised countries’. The current of what has here been called left nationalism
accepted this. Its exponents built on a democratic and ‘voluntarist’ definition
of the nation, stemming from the French Revolution. They added to this
democratic nationalism an economic and class element. Using the democratic
rights and institutions of a republican system, the working class would take its
place within the nation and become ‘the leading class of the nation’, as the
Manifesto put it.62 This socialist nationalism was not seen as aggressive with
respect to other nations, nor as incompatible with internationalism.
Thirdly, and finally, the implication is that nationalism, explicitly linked to
its democratic and revolutionary origins, need not be inimical to socialist
purposes. This conclusion has to be stated carefully; it has been shown how the
malleability of nationalism can all too easily blur the distinction between a
nationalism of the left and one of an altogether different character. Yet the
above analysis has suggested the possibility of socialist thought developing and
60 Breuilly, Nationalism and ihe State, p. 3 .
61 K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1962), Vol. I, p. 51.
62 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 51.
J . J . SCHWARZMANTEL 255
taking over a concept of the nation suited to socialist purposes. Given the
undoubted force of the nationalist idea and the still comparatively abstract
nature of ‘socialist internationalism’, not to mention the distortions imposed
on the idea of ‘proletarian internationalism’, this may be a fruitful vein for
contemporary socialist thought to develop, with due regard to both the political
and theoretical dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Obviously, for
socialists, the nation cannot be the sole or overriding unit of action or focus of
loyalty in the way in which it is envisaged by nationalists. The argument is that
in the contemporary world it still provides a necessary framework for socialist
policy and action. One way of recognizing this within socialist thought may lie
along the lines of a development of a nationalism of the left, whose historical
and theoretical origins have been presented above.