In a recent interview for Globus on the occasion of the publication of his book Transition to Nowhere, philosopher Boris Buden described post-Yugoslav ethnic nationalisms as those that “destroyed the social substance of the nation” and left it as an “empty identity shell without any social content”. At the same time, he referred to the social substance of the nation, emphasizing that once characterizations as “…’Austrian philosopher’, ‘American actress’, ‘Czech beer drinker’, etc., served a simple geopolitical or cultural orientation in the world. They guaranteed some comparability of differences and their relative equality. Whoever mentioned national affiliation always meant some kind of society.”
Although Buden did not elaborate on the notion of the ‘social substance of the nation’ in the interview, contrasting it to “the dogma that Croats are only those born of a Catholic Croat father and a Catholic Croat mother, i.e. the logic of blood and soil on which the modern Croatian state is established”, he may have inadvertently opened the possibility of a new conceptualization of the nation outside the civic-ethnic dichotomy.
Although in the last twenty years the study of nationalism has largely abandoned the sharp civic-ethnic dichotomy by arguing that the ideal types of civic nations, such as France and America, are not devoid of ethno-cultural components, this dichotomy is still firmly rooted in the social sciences and in the intellectual public. However, in this essay I will briefly argue that a nation, in addition to its civic and ethnocultural component, also possesses sociality as one of its attributes. On the one hand, I will define it as necessary for the existence of a nation, since it includes the notion of solidarity without which no community can exist, and on the other hand, I will define it as a concept that can reconcile collective ethno-cultural identity with liberal-democratic government.
The basic determinant of civic nationalism is that the members of a political community are basically equal regardless of particular ethno-cultural identities, and that nation-state represents a space for the realization of the liberty of individuals who make up the nation. The concept of civic nationalism was “enhanced” in the 1980s by the concept of constitutional patriotism, introduced into political science and the European public by Jürgen Habermas. Although the concept has developed significantly since then, it basically implies the idea that belonging to a particular political community should be formed on the basis of the norms, values and procedures of liberal democracy. However, it is unclear how a sense of solidarity of the members of the nation, a precondition for the existence of a collective identity, develops from civic nationalism and constitutional patriotism. Even the most famous theorist of constitutional patriotism, Jan Werner Müller, acknowledges that the concept is deficient for the constitution of social integration and solidarity, and therefore emphasizes that the implementation of constitutional patriotism should be adapted to the context of each country.
If we take into account the above limitations of the civic notion of the nation, it seems that the ethno-cultural component is necessary to create a sense of community. However, the question arises as to whether the ethno-cultural component creates a sense of solidarity? The constitutive elements of culture are social forms such as language, myths, tradition, rituals, customs. Several theorists of the nation, of which Anthony Smith is certainly the most famous one, pointed out myths (about the glorious past of the nation, about national independence…) as politically necessary carriers of community integration, and the basis for social cohesion and political action in modern societies within the territory marked as homeland. However, the question arises how, for example, the myth of millennial Western civilization and the bulwark of Christianity creates solidarity of a nation members to achieve its welfare (i.e. in terms of determining the strategy of socio-economic development of the state), which should be one of the basic goals of a nation state?
The myths in question can create solidarity in moments of emergency, for example in war, because they create solidarity of a community in relation to endangering the community from the Other. Apart from the fact that such solidarity is short-lived and may be at odds with liberal democracy, the myths and memories of the nation very often – at least in Central and Eastern Europe – contribute to the myth of historical victimhood of a nation that creates undemocratic nationalism. Eastern European states, as it was demonstrated by the great Hungarian historian Istvan Bibo in his essay “The Miseries of East European Small States”. Therefore, Renan’s famous definition of nation as a spiritual principle where “the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories” determines “the present-day consent, the desire to live together” turns out to be a failure, although Renan’s definition tried to overcome the ethno-cultural definition of the nation. Namely, Renan’s rich heritage means the social capital of the heroic past, “the fact of having suffered, enjoyed, and hoped together”. However, what about nations that do not have a heroic past? Eventually, Renan concludes on how “[a] nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future”. How the projection of historical sacrifice inspires collective action is best seen in the case of Nazi Germany, where the myths of nations’ suffering under the yoke of Jewish and Masonic capital, and the unjust consequences of the Peace of Versailles, led to the collective effort of the German nation to create the Volksgemeinschaft and Volksstaat which was to bring prosperity to that same national community. With what consequences for humanity, and ultimately for the German nation itself, it need not be elaborated.
All these shortcomings of civic and ethnic understanding of the nation take us back to the beginning of the text, to the social component of the concept of nation, which could be defined as the action of community members to achieve prosperity, which in turn becomes part of their identity. Again, we can go back to the example of Germany: the fact that German industrial production in the world has an image of one of the highest quality can inspire national pride in both ethnic Germans and all German citizens. Instead of millenarian narratives, you are proud of Siemens, Bosch, the prosperity and welfare state that comes from Siemens and Bosch… These collective achievements are the work of society as a whole and do not refer to real and alleged historical injustices or myths of chosen people. Even when they have some strongholds in history, such as the French myth of the country-homeland of nation and freedom, or the British as the world shining light of the progress of the industrial revolution, what answer do they give to the problems of today? Will the problems of the British economy be solved by highlighting the myth or by the current creation of a project of joint action of the nation? In addition, such myths can be dangerous and ultimately destructive because they create a sense of superiority, characteristic of the imperial identities of great nations.
In conclusion, this essay does not deny civic and ethnic components of the nation, but points out that sociality as the central concept of the nation can be linked both to its civic and ethnic components: to civic, in terms of norms, values and procedures of liberal democracy, and to ethnic in the sense that sociality of a nation is built by individuals who share a common language and cultural patterns of everyday life. Speaking of which, a part of the ethnic component is also the nation’s past, its social memory, as a cultivation of a democratic historical culture that must face the dark sides of the past so that they do not recur in the future.
