Tema: Hereditary Evils of the French Revolution: Nationalism

Hereditary Evils of the French Revolution: Nationalism (I)

Nationalism is the ideology or attitude derived from what has been called the right of self-determination. This can be defined as the capacity and right that every nation or people has to constitute itself into a sovereign State. It can be inferred from the literal reading of this definition that it is inalienable; that is, just as someone should not have the freedom to give oneself into slavery, so a people should not be able to renounce this right forever. In practice, nevertheless, clearly it isn't interpreted with the rigidity of this sort of right/duty. It would be more correct, therefore, to define it as the right that a people has to decide if it wants to constitute itself into a sovereign State.


At first glance the historical nature of this concept stands out: its definition is dependent on the terms “people” and “State”, which take on their present meaning with the French Revolution, as we shall soon see. Therefore, if the parts that make up its definition are a legacy of the French Revolution, so must be nationalism itself. Once this is established, it remains to see whether it is an evil or not.

1. State and People

The State to which every nation has a right is, forgive this obvious remark, the State. That is, the modern State (here the adjective “modern” is descriptive, not limiting; that is, it stresses a fundamental quality of its object, but it is not used to differentiate it from others of its kind). Even though it may share the denomination of “State” with previous incarnations of the political community, the modern State constitutes a completely new reality since its birth with the French Revolution. To give a very brief characterization, it can be described as the State that is an artifact, as opposed to a natural political structure; that is neutral, as opposed to orthodox; and that is particularistic, as opposed to universalistic. [1] With regards to our present objective, it is important to underline this particularism or exclusivism, which as we will see has a significant impact in the wickedness of nationalism.


When one tries to examine the concept of people or nation, an infinity of definitions soon spring up. What constitutes a people? Is it an objective element, like language, culture, race? If so, which one? Or is it rather something subjective, a willingness to belong? It is useless to go deeper into each option, as from this point of view it is an unsolvable problem. No one who has tried to defend a single criterion has managed to convince everyone else. The problem lies in an erroneous approach that takes as its starting point the idea of the exclusivity of peoples, idea upon which the exclusivity of modern nation-States is founded. When one believes to have discovered a characteristic that exactly describes a concrete people, and nobody else outside that people, it does not take long for reality to prove it wrong. And this is so because the idea that peoples are homogeneous within and exclusive to those without does not belong to reality. It is clear that peoples are not unmoving compartments, so that where one ends another must begin. There are different levels and degrees of identity and community, interacting with variable intensity in diverse territorial extensions. The Balkans are paradigmatic: looking at their demographic complexity, it is easy to see the consequences that the principle of national self-determination has wrought on this territory ever since the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which to a great degree repudiated this doctrine.

Blessed Charles I and IV, last reigning Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, exiled in 1918

The national element is a dreadfully inadequate criterion on which to base political entities and draw their borders. Only the French Revolution, taking advantage of a favorable historical situation (the strengthened post-Westphalian State), turned this union and confusion between nation and State into a political and sociological dogma. A brief glance at history –for instance, at the Holy Roman Empire and the many kingdoms that made up the Spanish Monarchy– will suffice to prove that in order to achieve harmonious societies it was not necessary to unite political community to nation (meaning place of birth, devoid of political connotations, in its original meaning). These two historical examples are doubly significant because they lead to the suspicion that the doctrine of nationalism was not only false and fictitious, but that it was also construed in order to serve meticulously-calculated interests. Medieval and later Imperial Spain and the Holy Roman Empire stand out for the limitations that the central political power found in the different parts that constituted the whole. In Spain, the Cortes and fueros or local law of the many kingdoms that made up the Crowns of Castille and Aragon. In the Empire, the power of the princes and electors, highly independent but vassals nonetheless to the Emperor. These limitations were justified in the historical, juridical and institutional differences that gave an identity to each constituent part. Each one maintained a certain original autonomy –not delegated by the central power– and for that reason did not feel threatened, but rather ennobled, by the superior power's work of cohesion. In other words, autonomy and pyramidal subsidiarity were the indispensable requisite for the separation of nation and political form. They were the reason why peoples welcomed the opportunity of political union with others, without fear of losing their identities. This went hand-in-hand with the understanding that every power was ordained to the fulfilment of its ends and thus limited to them, as opposed to the absolutism and singleness of the modern doctrine of sovereignty. Lower local powers, just as the higher powers, had their own spheres: so long as the higher ones did not interfere abusively in the lower ones, giving loyalty to them did not present any problems. It was not a surrender, it was giving everything its due according to its particular nature.

Hierarchy of the Holy Roman Empire, culminating in the Emperor surrounded by the seven original Prince-Electors

From this necessary correlation between subsidiary autonomy and the existence of multi-national (e.g. Spanish Empire) or partially national (e.g. Republic of Florence) political forms, a suggestive thought soon arises: a Revolution that wanted to destroy intermediate societies and create a despotic direct bond between the individual and the State found the perfect means of doing so by advancing the doctrine of the inseparability of nation and State. It proclaimed the exclusivity of peoples underlying in nationalism in order to bring about a particularistic State in opposition to Christendom's universality.

Modernity's hierarchy: individuals and State

(Continues in Part II)

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[1] As described by Carl Schmitt and Álvaro D'Ors.

Hereditary Evils of the French Revolution: Nationalism (I) | Firmus et Rusticus (in English)

Hereditary Evils of the French Revolution: Nationalism (II)

The Basque ikurriña flag: like the swastika in Nazi Germany, a political party flag (PNV) becomes official for a territory (Basque country autonomous community)

2. Evil and Impossibility

Whether this legacy of the Revolution is an evil or not, I leave to the reader's judgment. A glance at contemporary history and daily newspapers suffices to show the consequences that nationalism has provoked and will predictably continue to provoke as long as the so-called right of self-determination is left unquestioned. It is enough to consider the present processes of disintegration (Basque or Catalan separatism, e.g.) and of integration (European Union, e.g.) to understand that this problem is unsolvable: national exclusivity demands its own State and at the same time repudiates political forms of higher complexity. By this logic, it is an absurdity to be Spanish and Catalan at the same time, since nationality is only meaningful insofar as it has a right to claim a State, and if it claims a State it cannot insert itself into another, if the idea of sovereignty is to be respected. Neither Catalan nor Spanish nationalists, both infected by revolutionary doctrine, can consent to this double bond. The former would see it as a capitulation to a Spanish State which they can never belong to (if they can come to be content with mere autonomy at certain points, it is a compromise of political opportunity, only a temporary silencing of an ideology that by definition cannot accept other than independence). The latter cannot accept a Catalan identity meaning anything more than a provincial sense of belonging to an administrative division: if it were understood in a truly national way it would pose a menace to the constituted Spanish State, precisely because they as well cannot consider the nation as something separate from the State. This apparently irreconcilable situation is perfectly comprehensible: both kinds of nationalists share the same doctrine, but differ in their appreciation of who makes up a people.

Embrace of Vergara

This is the unsolvable problem that clutches Spain since the revolutionaries turned it into a liberal State. A problem that is inherent to liberalism, and that curiously never existed in the Spanish federative Monarchy that lived on until the Convention of Vergara put an end to the First Carlist War in 1839. How is this stark contrast possible in such a short time? Because nationalism is not the effect of a long historical process, but the triumph of a doctrine. Because if the reality of the human associative process (especially manifested in the federative nature of the history of Spain's unity) is recognized, as did pre-revolutionary Spain and pre-protestant Europe, a double bond of loyalty towards nation and political power is something perfectly natural and not at all conflictive, since each sphere has its own ends and has autonomy in order to pursue them, as dictates the principle of subsidiarity.

I leave it to the reader to judge nationalism as good or evil, but I will content myself by saying it is impossible: the complete fulfilment of the nationalistic ideal, where each nation has its own State, is not being stopped by the great powers of the status quo, but above all by its own logical impossibility. Because, as it has been said, the notion of national exclusivity that nationalism presupposes is not based on reality, it is not in accordance with the varied nature of the ascending associative phenomenon. Thus, it is impossible to find a truthful criterion that specifies who constitutes the people that is called to form a State. For, in the words of Francisco Elías de Tejada, peoples are not nations, but traditions:

“The present language uses the term nation to distinguish peoples, defining the nation by physical features or as expressions of will: geography, race, language, the plebiscite renovated on a daily basis...

As opposed to these explanations, tradition defines peoples as accumulated history, considering said physical factors insofar as they have had an impact in the historical tradition for what they are: but never as elements valid in themselves, directly and exclusively.” [1]

Linguistic map of 1914 Europe

3. The Illusion of the Vote

Thus established the logical impossibility of nationalism, I conclude by making an observation on its practical operating capacity, which I summarize in this statement: the right of self-determination is not a drive that underlies national and international policy, but rather a (false) theory that is used to legitimize a posteriori acts that are driven by something completely different. In other words, policy does not serve the principle of self-determination, it is this principle that serves policy.

Kuwait: defended in two wars against Iraq by the U.K. and the U.S.A. Zeal for self-determination or sea access to the Gulf?

Consider, for example, how this so-called right is only recognized insofar as it is instrumented through a referendum or plebiscite. A voting can never give a true image of reality, since it only takes into account the will of those who live in the present, forgetting those who belong to the past and the future. Since perpetuation and continuity is probably the backbone of the sociological reality of populations, it seems reasonable that when a vote is to be taken to “decide” if a nation exists or not they also be taken into account. Evidently, a referendum cannot do this. It is not even a true reflection of the opinion of the living, since it can easily change and be as legitimate in a particular moment in time as in another: if self-determination is truly based on the opinion of voters, the instrument destined to measure this opinion must certainly be sensible to these changes in time. Again, a single referendum cannot do this. Suppose Scotland calls a referendum of independence from the United Kingdom, and it fails. Then, next year, it calls another, and so on until the result is affirmative. By the same token, an independent Scotland should be voting year after year with the same regularity whether it wants to re-unite into the former United Kingdom.

What is more: a vote is an instrument that can have very different results depending on how it is prepared by the constituted authorities, the only ones who can call it (this issue will be dealt with more thoroughly, God willing, in a later entry). The time at which the vote is to take place, the options that are offered, and even the wording of the propositions are malleable factors that, dexterously handled by the few who have the legal power to do so, can determine with certain predictability what the result is going to be. This way, every vote ceases to be an expression of the collective will and becomes, in truth, an instrument to legitimize preconceived political measures. Democracy, then, becomes the power of constitutional engineering.

Plebiscite (fixed) about annexation to Italy, in the film The Leopard: during Italian unification plebiscites (whose validity is questioned by some) would often be called in cities already conquered by garibaldine and Savoyard arms.

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[1] Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola, Rafael Gambra Ciudad, Francisco Puy Muñoz, ¿Qué es el carlismo?, 1971, ap. 61-62.

Hereditary Evils of the French Revolution: Nationalism (II) | Firmus et Rusticus (in English)