Review: The Nationalism of Western Europe by Waldemar Mitscherlich

Mitscherlich, Waldemar, full professor of political science at the University of Breslau, Der Nationalismus Westeuropas. Leipzig 1920. C. L. Hirschfeld. XV, 373 pp.

Nothing impedes the advance of our understanding of the sociological problem of the nation more than the neglect of the distinction between nationality and nationalism, that is, between the fact of the national diversity of human beings and the fact of the effectiveness of certain ideologies that attach a particular significance to the national diversity of human beings for social conduct. One must distinguish precisely between the fact of belonging to the German people and the fact of belonging to the German-National party. Even the adherent of the German-National party will not deny that every German who does not share his views on German politics belongs to the German people; indeed, by a statement such as this — that such laxity in national matters can occur only among Germans, that it is genuinely German — he will at times expressly confirm that his political opponent belongs to the German people. The nationalist party ideology lays claim to the demand that everyone it reckons as part of the nation should join it; yet it need not always count among the nation those whom a demarcation of national boundaries drawn from other points of view would still reckon as belonging to it. The Russian nationalist reckons Little Russians and White Russians as a matter of course as part of the Russian nation; the Czech nationalism of today seeks to exclude the descendants of the Catholic noble houses that came into the country during the Thirty Years' War, and the anti-Semitic wing of the nationalism of most European peoples seeks to exclude the Jews from its own nation. Croats and Serbs, one in nationality, have developed distinct national-political ideologies working against one another, with whose divergent force the new Yugoslav polity has to contend.

That this distinction between nationality and nationalism has been neglected has ultimately led to the wish to seek the criterion of the nation somewhere other than in the commonality of language. It cannot be the task of these lines to deal with the inadequacy of all these attempts to determine the concept of the nation. Only one point shall be noted: for the authors who occupied themselves with the problem without any sidelong glances at the political ideologies, it was settled that the national resides in the linguistic community — so for E. M. Arndt, for Jakob Grimm, for Wilhelm Scherer. Only when the modern principle of nationality sprang from the modern liberal idea of Liberty and transformed itself into imperialism did one begin to distinguish between the linguistic community and nationality.

The present work by Mitscherlich is oriented above all historically. It seeks to explain genetically the emergence of Western European nationalism, which is altogether different from that of Eastern Europe. In doing so it offers a wealth of new points of view and ideas. Regrettably, it neglects the economic problem. Modern nationalism is so closely bound up with protectionism that one cannot investigate it exhaustively without at the same time examining the fundamental ideas of the modern theories of protective tariffs. The neglect of any critical engagement with the ideas and theories of free trade and of national autarky leads the author to an ideal of the union economy — which he doubtless believes mediates between the opposites. The union economy is meant to be an autarkic economic structure encompassing several peoples and states. Yet the strivings towards autarky cannot be justified otherwise than by national-political considerations; an autarky that is national-politically indifferent finds no defender. It is not apparent what could keep the states from free trade,

Everyone who wishes to occupy himself with the problem of nationalism and imperialism will draw manifold stimulus and instruction from Mitscherlich's work.