Max Weber On Naitons and Nationalism

Max Weber on Nations and Nationalism: Political Economy before Political Sociology*
Zenonas Norkus
Abstract: Although Weber voiced doubts about the scientific value of the concepts of ethnicity and nation, in his work one can detect the outlines of two theories of nation. In the politicalsociological theory (exposed in Economy and Society), the nation is understood as a status group united by common historical memory and fighting for the prestige of power and culture with other nations. Besides that, in his early work Weber outlines the political-economical (or nationaleconomical) theory of nation, conceiving nation as the organizational form of economic association which is optimal in the fight for elbow-room in the globalized Malthusian world as described by the classical model of long-term economic dynamics. Weberian political-economical concept of nations and nationalism is explicated using recent idea of rent-seeking, and is applied to highlight the deficiencies of the prevailing E.Gellner-E.Hobsbawm-B.Anderson theory of nations and nationalism. Rsum: Bien que Weber ait des hsitations concernant la valeur scientifique des notions de la nation et lethnicit cest possible distinguer les esquisses des deux thories de la nation dans ses travaux. La thorie politique-sociologique (en conomie et socit) dfine la nation comme une groupe de statut uni par la mmoire historique commune, qui se battre contre les autres nations pour le prestige de pouvoir et culture. Dans ses travaux premiers Weber profile aussi la thorie politiqueconomique (ou national-conomique) de la nation. Ici la nation est conceptualise comme une forme dorganisation de lassociation conomique, qui est optimale pour la lutte pour lspace vitale dans le monde selon Malthus (comme il cest dcrit dans le modle classique de la dynamique conomique dune longue dure) globalise. La conception weberienne politique-conomique des nations et nationalisme est rconstruite en utilisant la notion contemporaine des lutte pour des rentes (rent-seeking). Cette conception est aussi utilis pour exposer les dfauts de la thorie de la nation et nationalisme de E.Gellner-E.Hobsbawm-B.Anderson, qui prvaut jusqu prsent.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers of this article for their detailed critical engagement with it, their many helpful suggestions, including very generous instructions how to improve its language.
Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 29(3) 2004
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Introduction In one of his essays comparing the theoretical views of Max Weber and Ernest Gellner, Perry Anderson noted: Whereas Weber was so bewitched by the spell of nationalism that he was never able to theorize it, Gellner has theorized nationalism without detecting the spell (Anderson, P. 1992: 205). Anderson wants to say that Gellners theory of nationalism (Gellner 1983, Gellner 1994) cannot explain the attractiveness of the ideas of nationalism. About Weber, Perry Anderson claims that although the famous German sociologist in his political views was an ardent German nationalist, he had no well-considered concept of nations and nationalism, and unreflectively adopted the dominant ideology in Wilhelmine Germany. In my paper, drawing on Webers early writings (some of them became more accessible only after their reprint in his Gesamtausgabe), I try to reconstruct Webers early political-economic (or national-economic) concept of nation. This is done in the second section of my paper. The first section discusses the later and more widely known political-sociological concept of nation, which is documented by Economy and Society, and the publications during the First World War. In the fourth and concluding section, I will try to evaluate both of Webers concepts of nation from the viewpoint of the contemporary discussion about nations and nationalism. Most importantly, I will attempt to show here how Webers early political-economic concept of nations and nationalism can be useful for the revival of the political-economic concept of nationhood which has unfortunately been eclipsed in current discussions. But firstly, I must explain how my contribution is related to the existing body of literature on Webers notions about nations and nationalism. One of the reasons why Perry Anderson and other authors writing about the irrationalism and arbitrariness of Webers nationalism1 do not find the conceptual foundations of his political choice, is that in their searches they restrict themselves to the quite fragmentary chapters of Webers Economy and Society devoted to ethnicity and nations, written between 1910 and 1914, and not prepared by Weber himself for publication.2 In my view, the texts, which are classified as Webers political publications, are equally important and informative documents on the Weberian concepts of nation and nationalism. David Beetham (Beetham 1985 (1974): 119) has already criticized the view xxxxxxxx
1. Similar view are expressed in Aron 1991 (1964):27, Mitzman 1970:147, Mommsen 1974 (1959): 40 ff. 2. I am referring to chapter 5 Ethnic Groups and chapter 9 Political Communities in the second part of the English edition of Economy and Society by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Weber 1978 (1922)) which I will cite further on.
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that Webers political publications are not relevant to understand his theoretical views. His book Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics is one of the many contributions to the considerable body of literature on Webers nationalism. This literature is centered on the question of his political value commitments: was he nationalist rather than liberal or democrat, or vice versa? How is his nationalism compatible with his reputation as an individualist, a liberal and democratic thinker, whose theory of plebiscitary democracy was an important contribution to the political theory of democracy? The prevailing view of Weber as an ardent German nationalist was most strongly stated and carefully documented by Wolfgang Mommsen (1974(1959): 4096), supported by Raymond Aron 1991 (1964), and is accepted by Andreas Anter (1995), Beetham, Perry Anderson, Nicholas Xenos (1993) and others. The proponents of this view maintain that (German) nationhood was the supreme value and purpose of Webers political theory. The critics of this view include Catherine Colliot-Thlne (1990), Wilhelm Hennis (Hennis 1987; Hennis 1996), Lawrence A. Scaff (Scaff 1989: 31ff), and recently Kari Palonen (2001). While pinpointing the influence of Nietzsches radical elitism on Webers world outlook (Hennis 1987: 167194), Hennis foregrounds the roots of Webers value commitments in the Old European tradition of practical philosophy as described by the German historian Otto Brunner (Brunner (1956) 1968). According to Hennis (Hennis 1987: 59114), Weber inherits from this tradition his concern with the quality of human beings or humankind (Menschentum), sharing this concern both with Nietzsche and the Social Darwinism of his time. In Hennis view, Weber was interested in nationhood and the national state not because he was committed to them as ultimate values, but only because under modern conditions they have became unavoidable matters of fact which must be taken into account by all realistic or sober (nchtern) proposals on how to improve the quality of human beings and life conduct (Lebensfhrung) (Hennis 1987: 8288). However, the most important challenge to the prevalent view is Kari Palonens paper Was Max Weber a Nationalist? (2001). This challenge is part of his enterprise to reestablish Webers reputation as a liberal and democratic thinker by interpreting his work as a continuation of another part of Old European heritage the rhetorical tradition (Palonen 1998; Palonen 1999; Palonen 2002). Palonen pleads for a rhetorical turn in political science which means its transformation into the kind of discourse analysis concerned with redescription techniques used by politicians and publicists in their speech acts to adapt the existing political language to the contingencies of political action. Rhetorical turn also means the transformation of political science into the kind of history of political and social concepts concerned with the (macro)changes in the vocabulary of some specific community or with (micro)changes in the vocabulary of some specific author.
These changes can be either those of reference (narrowing or broadening) or of attitude (positive, negative, neutral) of the authors use of certain specific words. Analyzing changes in Webers use of the word nationalism, Palonen emphasizes that Weber was rather reluctant to identify himself as a nationalist. He finds only one passage of this kind. This is the well-known statement from Webers inaugural lecture, published in 1895: we economic nationalists measure the classes who lead the nation or aspire to do so with the one political criterion we regard as sovereign (Weber 1994 (1895):20). Palonen contrasts this self-identification with Webers statements in his late publicistic writings. Here he distances himself from nationalism, describing his political standpoint as national anti-nationalist: our policy will furthermore, necessarily be anti-nationalistic, not antinational (Weber 1991b (1918):122). In these writings, Weber associates nationalism with expansionist, annexionist and imperialist policies, as can be seen from the following statement: we are now facing the necessity of a complete reorientation of the foreign policy. This should be a national but not an imperialistic one (Weber 1991a (1918): 114). Palonen explains this contrast by the change in the reference or scope of Webers concept of nationalism: late Weber identifies nationalism with what in his earlier word usage would be referred to as one specific species of nationalism: expansionist, imperialistic nationalism. But what did nationalism mean for Weber in his earlier, not yet narrower usage? As I understand Palonens argument, nationalism in this sense can be defined as a positive attitude to nation. However, in Palonens view such a definition makes sense only provided there is a clear idea of what nation is. Did Weber have such an idea? After surveying Webers casuistic reflections on nation3 in his Economy and Society, Palonen comes to the conclusion (in my view, erroneous one) that they amount to deconstruction or dissolution of the very concept of nation: as an analytic concept nation only refers to a vague expectation of a feeling of solidarity (Palonen 2001: 207).4 Was then Weber a nationalist? Palonen hesitates. On the one hand, he concedes that Nation remained for Weber a quasi-mythical label containing a positive value, and he upheld this value by disregarding the specific chances contained in his own nominalist dissolution of the concept (Palonen 2001: 210). On the other, he maintains that in Webers last years, his positive attitude to the German state was stronger than his attitude to the German nation. Describing this as a relatively marginal change, he concludes nevertheless: it seems to me that the relatively marginal change at the level of the attitudes makes it justified to call Weber, although not a nationalist, an apologist of the nation state within the concert of great powers (Palonen 2001: 210).
3. See also the next section in this article. 4. I provide the criticism of this thesis of Palonen in the next section.
Palonens analysis has the merit of showing that Webers view on nations and nationalism changed. However, I will try to show that it changed not in the way Palonen maintains. This change can be described not as the narrowing, but rather as the widening of his original concept of nationalism. The nationalism late Weber is criticizing (expansionist and imperialist nationalism of great powers) was his own early nationalism. Most importantly, this nationalism was economic nationalism, as Weber says in his famous statement cited above. By questioning the presumption that Webers nationalism has no wellconsidered ideas on nations and nationalism that serve as a conceptual framework for his political choices, the criticisms of the received view by Palonen and Hennis and others are useful. Hennis is only interested in discovering more fundamental value premises in Webers thinking that would make nationalism appear as rational in its role as a means to some more ultimate value. However, Webers political commitment to nationalism or (later) the national antinationalist policy of the German state, had descriptive premises, too, which articulated some specific views on what nations and nationalism are. The reconstruction of these (changing) premises and the discussion of their relevance for contemporary work on nations and nationalism is the main objective of this article. Neither Palonen nor other researchers pay due consideration to the real message of early Webers self-description as an economic nationalist. Weber says he is about to speak about nationalism and nations in terms of the discipline he represents. This discipline was political economy, which in the Germany of Webers times was characteristically called national economy (Nationalkonomie), its name referring to the importance of nation to the very constitution of its subject. In my reconstruction of Webers thinking on nations and nationalism, I will take Webers roots in national economy seriously, proceeding from the assumption that his early writings on nations and nationalism are as important, as his more widely known contributions in Economy and Society. 1. Webers Political-Sociological Concept of Nation 1.1. Casuistry as Deconstruction? The reader searching for a detailed theoretical analysis of ethnicity and nationalism in Webers Economy and Society has (together with Anderson) to be disappointed. The relatively short chapters on ethnicity and nationalism are mostly devoted to the criticism of existing definitions of nations and ethnicity. The German sociologist lists in a pedantic manner the casuistic difficulties and exceptions compromising the efforts to define ethnicity or nation in terms of certain objective traits (race or origin, territory of residence, economic life,
etc.). He even raises the question whether a future rigorous sociological science will be able to do without the concepts of ethnicity and nation by using a more exact classification scheme in which there is no place for such terms (as in the dictionary of the modern physicist there is no more place for concepts of folk physics such as wet or cold).
All in all, the notion of ethnically determined social action subsumes phenomena that a rigorous sociological analysis as we do not attempt it here would have to distinguish carefully <...>. It is certain that in this process the collective term ethnic would be abandoned, for it is unsuitable for a really rigorous analysis. <...> The concept of the ethnic group, which dissolves if we define our terms exactly, corresponds in this regard to one of the most vexing, since emotionally charged concepts: the nation, as soon as we attempt a sociological definition (Weber 1978 (1922): 394395).
Bryan S. Green (1988: 179266) discloses the roots of this period of Webers deconstructive style of conceptual analysis in the tradition of legal science, and provides a very sensitive description: Weber conducts a concentrated containment, belittlement, and undermining of powerful cathectic concepts taken from the social context, using literary methods like parenthetic suspension of ordinary usage, metonymic emptying, and ironic inversion (Green 1988:245). Nation and race are modern concepts with an especially strong cathectic power. According to Greens description (Green 1988: 236246), Webers sociological casuistry proceeds by systematic suspension of the meanings of the terms nation, ethnic group, and race in conventional social discourse, developing a network of qualifications and disclaimers which tries to cover in an exhaustive way the relevant considerations and circumstances. However, scepticism toward the scientific value of these concepts was not Webers own final word. After casuistically criticizing the definitions of nation and ethnicity that he knew, Weber pointed out which of these definitions (despite all their various deficiencies) seemed to him most appropriate (pending the creation of a more precise sociological nomenclature):
We shall call ethnic groups those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for the propagation of group formation; conversely, it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists (Weber 1978 (1922): 389).
On nation in general Weber decides to state only this: It would be possible to define the concept of the nation roughly as follows: it is a community based on feeling (gefhlsmssige Gemeinschaft), for which its own state (eigener Staat) would be an adequate expression; therefore, it normally tends to bring about such a state (Weber 1924 (1912):484).5 In contemporary
5. Es liesse sich ein Begriff von Nation wohl nur etwa so definieren: sie ist eine gefhlsmssige Gemeinschaft, deren adquater Ausdruck ein eigener Staat wre, die also normalerweise die Tendenz hat, einen solchen aus sich hervorzutreiben.
discussions it is usual to discuss separately the theoretical problems concerning ethnic communities, and those involving nations as well as nationalism. Webers concept of ethnicity having already been discussed in the literature,6 Id like to limit my analysis to Webers concept of nation and nationalism. Palonen qualifies Webers definition of nation above as anachronistic, because Weber allegedly universalizes the connection between nation and state (Palonen 2000: 206). He considers as Webers last word on the subject the following statement:
If the concept of nation can in any way be defined unambiguosly, it certainly cannot be stated in terms of empirical qualities common to those who count as members of the nation. In the sense of those using the term at a given time, the concept undoubtedly means, above all, that it is proper to expect from certain groups a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups. Thus, the concept belongs in the sphere of values (Weber 1978 (1922): 922).
However, in this statement Weber only describes the usage prevalent in the social and political discourse of his time (in the sense of those using the term at a given time), not providing any analytic concept of his own (Cf. Palonen 2000: 207). Sociological analysis is not bound to accept or follow uncritically such usage. Weber provides his own tentative sociological working definition of nation in (Weber 1924 (1912): 484). Palonens reproach of anachronism loses its bite if the details of Webers careful wording are taken into consideration: (1) Weber refers to own, not independent state (so Palonen translates Webers eigener Staat)7; (2) Weber writes that a nation normally tends to bring about such a state (normalerweise die Tendenz hat, einen solchen aus sich hervorzutreiben). So the relation between nationhood and statehood is only probable (that of adequate causation) or holds only ceteris paribus if there are no innumerable special circumstances preventing its realization. So pace Palonen (cf. Palonen 2000: 210), the concept of Nation is explicated by Weber in his standard manner in terms of chances. Speaking in general terms, the explication of the fundamental sociological concepts in terms of chances is Webers original technique of how to construct social-scientific concepts safeguarded against deconstruction by casuistic analysis.8
6. About Webers concept of ethnicity see Bodemann 1993, Jackson 1991 (1982/83), Mannese 1947. 7. As a matter of fact, in 190506 under the influence of the Ukrainian political thinker Mykhailo Dragomanov, Weber came to the conclusion that cultural autonomy and the federal state can be a viable solution of the nationalist predicament. In the federal state the nation has its own (eigener), but no independent state. See Beetham 1985 (1974): 130; Mommsen 1974 (1959): 6164. 8. Only with this provision Bryan S. Greens description of Webers work as casuistic sociology (Green 1988: 226 ff) can be accepted.
1.2. Nations as Status Groups A definition identifying a certain phenomenon is not the same as a theory explaining the phenomenon. In the case of ethnicity and nation, such a theory should explain how and why people acquire or lose ethnic or national identity, why and how ethnic communities and nations appear and disappear. Because Weber believed that scientific sociology in the future would eliminate the very terms of ethnicity and nation from its dictionary, it is no more correct to demand from him such a theory than to demand that a modern physicist provide, for example, theories of holes or heat. However, Webers expectation that future sociological analysis would do without the concepts of ethnicity and nation, has not yet been fulfilled by sociological analysis. Conversely, at the close of the 20th century, the study of nations and nationalism has turned into a booming industry. Importantly, Weber provides several ideas which are useful for those working on a positive theory of nations and nationalism. One of the most widely accepted elements from Webers social scientific legacy is his social stratification model, distinguishing three dimensions of social stratification: wealth or opportunities in the market, prestige or honor, and (political) power (see Weber 1978 (1922): 302307, 926940). The categories of people differing in their economic situation are designated as classes. Groups, differing by their status in the hierarchy of prestige are referred to as estates or status groups (Stnde). In modern societies there are legally no estates, but Weber drew attention to the simple fact that even though law can declare people to be equal and valued equally, they do not respect and value each other equally. People have not only material (economic welfare), but also ideal interests, aspiring to be respected and valued by others. One can imagine a society where wealth is distributed equally, but not a society where everyone would be respected equally. Prestige or honor are positional goods, which disappear if everyone has an equal amount. Social life is a struggle of people not only for wealth or economic welfare, but also for honor (prestige). If one can detect any positive leitmotif in Webers skeptical and critical statements about the definitions of ethnicity and nations, then it is this idea: the division into ethnic groups and especially into nations is part of the hierarchy of prestige. The realm of honor, which is comparable to the status order within a social structure, pertains also to the interrelations of political structures (Weber 1978 (1922): 911). Trying to define more concretely the singularity of national feelings, Weber describes them as how one feels about power prestige or cultural prestige of his own nation state (Weber 1978 (1922): 395, 910912, 925926). The feelings of power prestige are the feelings of pride in citizenship or allegiance to a powerful state. States, just like people, struggle for prestige or honor and are divided into an informal hierarchy of prestige where the differences between the individual ranks of prestige are no smaller than the
differences between the brahmins and pariahs of ancient India. The title of honor for the highest estate in the league of nations in Webers times was the Great Power (Grossmacht). In the Weberian political-sociological perspective, nations are the broadest status groups. All members of a nation ranking high in the league of nations can enjoy a positional good called prestige that satisfies their ideal interests in a way comparable to the satisfaction of these interests by membership in the positively privileged status groups (estates) of traditional societies (so e.g. American citizenship is in our days a title of honor comparable with titles of earl or duke of older times). Political and economic power is not the only dimension in the hierarchy of international prestige. Another one is cultural achievements or cultural contributions indicated by the number of famous scientists, writers, architectural monuments, etc. Citizenship or allegiance to a state not belonging to the league of great powers does not necessarily doom one to feelings of inferiority: the basis for the feeling of belonging to the world elite can be the conviction of the extraordinary value of the culture of ones own nation or of its extraordinary contribution to world culture. According to Weber, the persons most inclined to take pleasure in the prestige of power are those who are professionally involved in the ruling of the state bureaucrats and military officers (Weber 1922 (1978): 911) while men of letters and intellectuals, who are specifically predestined to propagate the national idea (Weber 1922 (1978): 926), are most concerned with cultural prestige. However, one can not speak about the nation in the Weberian sense where only the professions of war and writing (culture) take ideal interest in the prestige of power and culture. The nation exists where pride in the power or cultural achievements (in our days, in sports also) of ones own nation transcends the internal class, status and, in many cases, ethnic differences. As was already noted, being sceptical about the possibility of a positive theory of ethnicity and of nation, Weber does not inquire into the mechanisms on which the appearance and disappearance of national feelings depend. Nevertheless, one can find some observations on these questions in his texts. Besides this, Webers idea of nation as a competitor for a place in the international hierarchy of prestige, doubtlessly has implications with regard to the questions which a satisfactory explanatory theory of nations must answer. I will try to bring to light these implications.9 Weber emphasizes the special importance of collective memories about jointly fought wars (especially victorious ones) for the consolidation of the nation. If warfare is not a monopoly of some specific estate, but is a universal
9. In doing this, I am drawing upon the work of Randall Collins. See Collins 1986: 145161.
service, such memories become the basis for the consolidation of a political memory community (politische Erinnerungsgemeinschaft; Weber 1978 (1922):322),10 which transcends inner class and estate differences. These collective political memories are also capable of transcending ethnic differences. As an example, Weber points to the French nationalism of the German-speaking Alsatians, grounded in the common memory of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shared with the French-speaking inhabitants of France; he refers also to the phenomenon of the Swiss nation (Weber 1978 (1922): 395387). On the other hand, Webers concept of the nation implies that the coherence of national community depends on the success of the state with which this community identifies itself in the international contests of power and prestige.11 Recurrent and systematic failures in these contests, continuous national humilations, affect national loyalty in the same way as the relegation of their team to a lower league affects sports fans. When one stops believing that these failures are temporary, a specific national identity is no more an object of pride, but becomes more likely a stigma which one is not always capable of discarding. The hopelessly losing team loses its fans, and its very members finally depart to other teams. A victorious state experiences the greatest nationalism; an embattled one experiences nationalism to the extent that it can draw upon memories of past victories that can probably be repeated. A long string of defeats saps national loyalty, and eventually, after time periods we have not yet measurred, national loyalty disappears (Collins 1986: 155). 2. Webers Political-Economic Concept of the Nation 2.1. The Struggle for Elbow-Room as Human Condition Because Weber in the concept of nation discussed in the previous section emphasizes the importance of statehood, political memories, and of mutual competition between the states for nation building and maintenance, it can be called political-sociological. However, in Webers earlier writings one can also detect the outlines of a somewhat different concept of nation. It is formulated in political-economic terms. A characteristic document of this conception are Webers arguments in one of his public lectures in 1897 delivered to an audience whose significant part was composed of workers holding Marxist views:
10. Translation changed. 11. Randall Collins points out and elaborates in detail this implication in his book (Collins 1986).

The German workers today still have the choice to look for work in the homeland or abroad. However, in a short time this situation will end, whether or not the workers desire it. Then the worker will be restricted to that vital space (Ernhrungsspielraum) which the capital and power of his homeland is capable of creating. We do not know when this will occur, but it is true that this process is taking place. It is also true that the fierce struggle for power replaces the alleged peaceful progress. And in this fierce struggle the strongest will be victorious (Weber 1993c (1897): 851).
Weber does not appeal to the historical memories of the workers and does not talk about the incomparable superiority of German culture. He admits that the principle of Marxist catechism the worker has no homeland is correct under certain conditions: where a free international labor market exists, and workers can migrate to where the demand for their labour power is strongest. Such a situation existed as long as the free territories were there in the world, suitable for European agricultural colonization, and there were opportunities for capitalist expansion into not yet captured markets. Under these circumstances, laissez faire capitalism, acting under a more or less openly competitive regime in the world market, could flourish for a brief time in the 19th century. Weber believed that this intervening period of outwardly free competition (Weber 1993d (1897): 671) was coming to an end.
Already today we notice signs of economic changes which will destroy the dominance of free competition. Free competition is only a transitional stage on the road to a monopolistic era <...>. When the market can no longer expand, the free market will be replaced by agreements in the guise of syndicates, rings, cartels that is a peculiar form of guilds, which stand only one step above the guilds of the Middle Ages, which also liquidated free competition <...>. With frightening speed we are approaching the time when the expansion of exports into the countries of the half civilized nations of Asia will end. Afterwards the control of foreign markets will depend solely on power, solely on naked force. Only philistines can doubt that (Weber 1993c (1897): 851).
After modern capitalism exhausts the opportunities of its external expansion, the worlds economic space splits into economic organisms or national economies (Volkswirtschaft) circumscribed by the state borders. The masses of inhabitants, stuffed into these borders, are linked by an objective community of economic interests. Every such unit of economic maintenance (Versorgungsgemeinschaft)12 competes with others for the markets, sources of raw materials, and control of territories suitable for colonization and other resources. Weber (1994 (1895):16) refers to them metaphorically as elbow-room. Securing its monopolistic control over such elbow-room, a community can create or appropriate rent. In the next subsection, I will explain this concept: how it is defined in the contemporary economic theory, used in theoretical sociological analysis, and how it is present in Webers work.
12. Weber 1978 (1922): 357. The more accurate translation for Versorgungsgemeinschaft would be community of economic maintenance. Webers typology of units of economic maintenance includes household economy, extended household economy (oikos), city economy, and national economy (Volkswirtschaft).
2.2. The Concept of Rent The best way to introduce into the concept of rent is by using as an example the case of a monopolist producers rent. The analytic model for this case is represented by Fig. 1, where y-axis is the price of some specific product, and x-axis is the quantity of this commodity sold. The inclined line represents the demand. Point C represents the perfect competition equilibrium, where price equals marginal cost. Under perfect competition, output and price will be Qc and Pc correspondingly. However, the monopolist is able to charge the price Pm. This will cause the decrease of quantity sold to Qm and the increase of his revenue equal to rectangle PmABPc. This increase in the income of the producer over his revenue under the competitive price is the monopolist rent. The creation of rent causes not only the redistribution of welfare favouring the monopolist (PmABPc), but also the reduction in the welfare of society, represented by the triangle ABC. There is a great variety of rent-creating situations and forms of rent, with land rent being among the oldest subjects of economic analysis (see Tribe 1978). In recent sociological theory, Aage B. Srensen (Srensen 1996; Srensen 2000) considers the appropriately generalized concept of rent as the analytical key to the theoretical account of the phenomena of social inequality and class division. It is my suggestion that Weber in his early work used the concept of rent to account for nations and nationalism on the intuitive level, and that Srensens analysis of class in terms of a generalized rent concept can
Figure 1. Rent and Rent-Seeking
Price
Demand Pm A
Pc
Marginal cost
Qm
Qc Quantity
be used to explicate those Weberian intuitions. Generally, rent is any advantage or surplus created by nature or social structure over a certain period of time (Srensen 1996: 1344). It occurs when the supply of the resource cannot increase either for natural reasons (e.g., rents created by land), or by social constraints on production (e.g., rents created by licensing or distribution of patents). In late Webers terms, these constraints can be described as different ways to close social relations (Weber 1978 (1922): 4346). The most important distinguishing feature of rent is its independence from the efforts of the owner of rent-producing assets. In this respect, it differs from wages (payment for labor), interest (payment for past savings), and entrepreneurial profit (payment for willingness to take risks of enterprise). In his exhortations to German workers to support German expansionist policies, Weber assumes that rents can be created and appropriated not only by individuals but also by communities as interest groups. If membership in a community is ascriptive or nearly so, as early Weber so assumes (see section 3 below) for nations, the accident of being born as a member of a great economically developed nation secures for a person an advantage over the rest of human kind. This advantage arises because of better supply of public goods, opportunities of employment, the possibility to communicate in a mothertongue as a lingua franca, and so on. However, this advantage is enjoyed by the members of a nation (and their offspring) only as far as their nation preserves its elevated status in the world division of labor, and controls the foreign markets. Under the conditions of competition for a share in the world market, membership in the nation acquires a paramount importance for the life chances of an individual in comparison with other memberships and identities. Because of his Malthusian assumptions (see discussion below in this section), Weber believed that this competition had a zero-sum game aspect, not properly accounted for by the economic theories in his time. Now we no longer have that technological optimism and belief in free-trade dogmas that we shared twenty-five years ago; that has gone for good. But this does not alter the fact that this view did have a core of truth <...> (Weber 1989 (1897): 212). This core of truth consists, of course, in Ricardos famous theorem of comparative advantage in production costs. However, the comparative advantage is consistent with the existence of rent because the production cost advantages existing at some specific point of time are not, to the same degree, advantageous to all advantaged parties involved in the international division of labour. Both nations producing and exporting raw materials and nations producing and exporting high-tech production with high added-value, gain from mutual trade. But are these gains equal? Most importantly, many of these advantages are not givens, but could be created by the economic policy of the national state, which struggles, for example, to make natural resources from overseas accessible to its own industry at cheaper prices, or to promote the
development of branches of industry with high added-value. This policy of preserving and creating comparative advantages in the international division of labour, which serves to secure rents for members of national units of economic maintenance, Weber calls national economic policy or economic nationalism. Alternatively (in the language of the new political economy of our days), these policies can be described as rent seeking or rent creating. From this early Weberian political-economic perspective, nations can be described for the most part as broad rent-creating and rent-seeking interest groups. 2.3. Economic Nationalism as Rent-Seeking On rent-seeking, abundant literature exists in the body of research work which is alternatively called public choice theory or new political economy (Krueger (1974), Tollison (1982), Tollison (1997), Rowley et al. (1988)). This literature is about the activities of entrepreneurs and interest groups within the institutional framework of the single state. The authors focus their attention on the famous suggestion by Gordon Tullock that in the process of rent-seeking, the rents themselves are dissipated because of the costs involved by rentseeking activities. If this suggestion is true, then not only the triangle ABC but also rectangle PmABPc must be described as welfare loss. According to the prevailing views, Tullocks suggestion is true under some, but not all conditions, with technical work on rent-seeking attempting to clarify respective conditions as closely as possible. Evidently, the same question do rents for nations dissipate in the struggle for them? can be asked about Webers economic nationalism or policies pursuing the goal to secure or create comparative cost advantages for nations. However, in this article Id like to limit my task to the systematic reconstruction of Webers ideas as they appear in his public statements from the early period of his work. In these statements, Weber repeatedly tries to persuade his audience that workers and capitalists (entrepreneurs) as members of the same unit of economic maintenance, share an objective material interest to appropriate monopolistic rents accruing from the control of markets and sources of raw materials overseas. It is a vital matter for us that the broad masses of our people should become aware that the expansion of Germanys power is the only thing which can ensure for them a permanent livelihood at home and the possibility of progressive improvement (1993b (1896): 610). Weber admits that along with this common interest, capitalists and workers have the conflicting interest to appropriate as much as possible part of these rents. However, where the workers are politically educated and the capitalists are politically mature (for Weber, Great Britain was such an example, see Weber 1994 (1895): 21), the struggle for the distribution of the
rents does not destroy the national unity essential for success in economic and political competition with other nations. If we want to understand why Weber considered the fight of the national units of economic maintenance for elbow-room inevitable, the most important reference point is to note with what persistence the young Weber stressed the importance of demographic problem: Yet the sombre gravity of the population problem alone is enough to prevent us from being eudaemonists, from imaging that peace and happiness lie waiting in the womb of the future, and from believing that anything other than the hard struggle of man with man can create any elbow-room in this earthly life. (Weber 1994 (1895): 14). Weber affirms that the demographic problem is the oldest and most serious problem of social history and it is not worthwhile to have a scientific discussion with anyone who does not recognize this (Weber 1993a (1894): 359). One can understand these statements of Weber only in the sense that he accepted the accuracy of the famous population law of Thomas Robert Malthus. As a matter of fact, Webers Malthusian assumptions have not received due consideration in the existing research work on Weber as political (or national) economist (Riesebrodt 1989 (1986); Tribe 1991 (1983); Tribe 1995: 3294) The population law states that the power of human population to grow if unhampered exceeds the growth potential of production (first of all, the production of food). The Malthuss law was an integral part of the classical model of long-term economic dynamics. This model was well-known in Webers times by the broader reading public due to its exposition in John Stuart Mills Principles of Political Economy , which was still widely read at the end of the 19th century. This model portrays certain natural limits of economic growth. These limits were derived from Malthuss law under the condition of the limited supply of one of the factors of production land (see e.g. Schumpeter 1994 (1954):677701; Tribe 1978: 117145). The classical model of limits of growth is represented by the Fig. 2, where the left graph pictures the unstationary status of the economy (where growth is still possible), and the right the stationary one.13 This model implies the
13. Adapted from Snooks (1993: 76). In both graphs, the x-axis represents combined input labor/capital. By the y-axis, the output (product) is represented. In the view of classical political economy, production is a process in which three factors of production are combined labour, capital, and land. Workers receive the part of the product, called wages; the owners of the capital and the organizers of the production profit; and the owners of the land land rent. The better the land controlled by the land owner, the larger the rent he receives. However, as the population and the demand for food increases, land of ever poorer quality is cultivated, so the rents grow. The MP line shows how the marginal product changes according to the law of diminishing returns: the increase in the combined input capital/labour from Q1 towards Q2 will reduce the marginal product of the input. The dotted line indicates the level of subsistence wages.

Figure 2. The Classical Model of Growth and Distribution
Rent Product Profit
I Product S Rent S
Wage
MP Q1 Capital/labour
Wage
MP Q2 Capital/labour
so-called iron law of wages which affirms the characteristic tendency for wages to remain at the minimal level of biological subsistence. If for any reason wages exceed this level, then there is a corresponding increase in the birth rate (or a decrease in the death rate). When economy is in an unstationary state, wages normally are above this level, so population grows. The workers spend their wages for their means of subsistence, and the rents are consumed unproductively by the landowners. The only source of investments necessary for economic growth in this model are profits. However, as capital and labour input increases (Q moves to the right) and the margin of cultivation is extended, the surplus is increasingly redistributed on behalf of landowners. The share of profits in the product decreases, while wages are pressed by the additional supply of labour to remain at the subsistence level. Thus the economy arrives at a stationary state, represented by point S in the right graph. Here profits are eliminated, and the total product is distributed between the workers and the owners of the land, who appropriate all surplus. With profits eliminated, the economy ceases to grow. A catastrophic decrease of population can bring the economy out of this state, reducing for a while the pressure of the population on resources and thus reopening the space for growth. This classic model of long-term economic dynamics is the most important assumption in Webers political-economic conception of nation and nationalism. The national unit of economic maintenance, which succeeds in monopolizing the widest elbow-room (Weber had in mind the Great Britain of his time), collectively appropriates the rent which enables it to remove the perspective of a stationary state, and to ensure for its workers a wage level which is higher than the minimum level for subsistence implied by Malthuss law. It is with this perspective that Weber tried to interest the social-democratically
minded German workers, explaining to them Germanys fate in terms of the struggle for a status of world power (Weltmacht) in the Malthusian world.
We need more room externally, we need an extension of economic opportunities through the expansion of our markets, it means the enlargement of external economic power space of Germany. A dozen ships on the East Asia coast are are at a certain moments of more value than a dozen trade agreements which can be terminated (Weber 1993b (1896): 610).
In Webers perspective, nationalism is a specific form of collective egoism (or communitarianism). As an idea it means that members of the national economic maintenance unit and collective memory community have certain obligations of solidarity to other members of the same unit or community but not to the persons who belong to other communities of this kind in the league of nations. These obligations can be compared with the obligations which members of a team have to other team members in a sports contest.14 Every player has the right to maximize his own benefit (be an individualist), as long as it does not conflict with the interests of team play. The team interest is to get and defend the highest possible place in the league. Part of the jointly won glory (with glory, there is no distribution problem as, for example, when a team wins a monetary prize), belongs to every member of the winning team, but only provided that the team is the victorious one. What reasons can be adduced in favour of the acceptance and observance of these team play duties? Let us again look more closely into Webers rhetoric this time in his famous speech, The National State and Economic Policy (1895), that was aimed at a bourgeois audience.
Our successors will hold us answerable to history not primarily for the kind of economic organisation we hand down to them, but for the amount of elbow-room in the world which we conquer and bequeath to them (Weber 1994 (1895): 16). <...> Certainly, only on the basis of altruism is any work in political economy possible. Overwhelmingly, what is produced by the economic, social and political endeavours of the present benefits future generations rather than the present one. If our work is to have any meaning, it lies, and can only lie, in providing for the future, for our descendants (Weber 1994 (1895): 14).
Weber assumes that he and his audience are people who are concerned not only with their own happiness and welfare, but also with the opinion of their descendants about them. Even our highest, our ultimate ideals in this life change and pass away. It cannot be our ambition to impose them on the future. But we can want the future to recognise the character of its own ancestors in us. (Weber 1994 (1895): 13). Thus Weber assumes that his audience consists
14. Any international sports contest is a microcosm mimicking in miniature the political and economic competitive processes in the macrocosm of the world league of nations.
of people who want to earn the gratitude and honor of their successors. For them, Weber advises nationalistic policies as the best method to achieve this purpose. 3. Webers Changing Concept of Nationalism The Malthusian connection should be taken more fully into consideration in order to put into the proper perspective those aspects of Webers early work which are accounted for in the recent research on Webers work as falling under the influence of Social Darwinism and Friedrich Nietzsche. In his investigation of the dynamics of the migration processes in Germanys territory east of the Elbe, Weber referred to the anthropological or racial differences of physical and psychical nature between Germans and Poles as one of the reasons explaining these processes. With the development of industry in Central and Western Germany, German agricultural workers, who were employed on the farms of landlords (Junkers), migrated to the West, and their places were taken by immigrants from the parts of Poland belonging to Russia. Weber explained the success of the Poles by their more primitive anthropological constitution, allowing them to withstand extreme (inhumane) conditions, which the culturally higher, but less sturdy (in the physical anthropological sense) German type, could not endure.
We can not allow two nationalities (Nationalitten) to compete totally freely in the same territory if they have a different body constitution, and speaking absolutely concretely if their stomachs are constructed differently. Our workers can not compete with Polish workers. The needs of our workers would have to sink a whole level of culture lower. Similarly, our agricultural enterprise is not competitive because it would have to slide down an entire level of culture in order to compete with agricultural enterprises of Russia, Argentina, and America. In national economies disorganized by capitalism, situations occur when the higher culture is not superior, but weaker in the fight for existence with a lower culture (Weber 1988 (1893): 457)
Weber considers his findings as evidence that the forces of natural selection do not always operate in favour of the higher anthropological and/or cultural types. The best or strongest are not necessarily those who are most fit in the Darwinian sense (e.g., leave the most surviving offspring). This thesis is distinctly Nietzschean, as compared with the Social Darwinists of Webers times, who identified most fit or strongest with most technologically or culturally advanced (Xenos 1993:129). In the following statement, Weber refers to Social Darwinists as optimists among us: the free play of the forces of selection does not always operate, as the optimists among us believe, in favour of the nationality which is economically the more highly developed or better endowed (Weber 1994 (1895)).
However, the current trend to foreground Darwins and Nietzsches influence on Webers early work (Hennis 1987: 167191) may be an exaggeration15 at the cost of the understatement of the impact that the heritage of the classical political economy had on his thought. As a matter of fact, the basic ideas of Malthusian theory (the pressure of increasing populations on resources; struggle for survival) was the main source of inspiration for Darwin. His original contribution was the idea that overpopulation is a necessary condition for the forces of natural selection to work (Oldroy 1984). More importantly, the main exponent of Social Darwinism was Herbert Spencer, who arrived at evolutionism independently from Darwin and whose idea of the survival of the fittest was inspired directly by classical economists.16 Concerning Webers Nietzscheanism, it should be taken into consideration that although classical economists generally were critical of landlords, considering them as an unproductive class, there was no lack of arguments justifying the existence of this class because it functioned to provide the only possible (in the world of overpopulation and scarcity) milieu where high culture could arise and flourish. These ideas of classical political economists are sufficiently close to the early Webers conception of the struggle for elbow-room between the units of economic maintenance (nations), to the justification of the rentier status for most succesful (however, succesful not in the exact Darwinian sense) by their higher cultural standing and exclusive contributions to the development of culture, to be considered as Webers direct source of inspiration. Concerning the influences of Social Darwinism (as distinct from the older Malthusian legacy of classical political economy), only the racial assumptions in Webers early work can be attributed to this influence in an unambiguous way. So nation in Webers early work is a population distinguished by some specific physical and psychical features, common history, separate territorial unit of economic maintenance in the world market economy, and a state which is strong enough to participate in the world contest for ellbow-room. Referring to the groups lacking the last two features (e. g. Poles in his times), Weber uses the term nationality (Nationalitt), not the nation. However, beginning with his 19056 articles on the Russian Revolution (Weber 1994 (1906)), Weber was increasingly sceptical towards all attempts to ground national identity in psychical or physical qualities which are either
15. There are only a few explicit references to Nietzsche in Webers work. 16. As a matter of fact, Weber never refers to Spencer. However, in Germany the ideas of Social Darwinism were known from the widely read books of Friedrich A. Lange (Lange 1865) and Otto Ammon (Ammon 1900 (1895)). Lange had an important influence on Nietzsche.
natural or have been bred into it in the course of history (Weber 1994 (1895): 8). His casuistic deconstructive analysis in Economy and Society can be considered (at least in part) as a work in self-criticism. In a circular letter for Freiburger colleagues, he qualifies his infamous Freiburg Inaugural lecture as immature and takes a stand against zoological nationalism (Weber 1998 (1911): 356). The economic idea of nation was replaced with a more subjectivist (conceived in the spirit of Webers interpretive sociology in the making) idea of nation as the broadest status group struggling for a higher place in the regional or world estate order of nations. In this struggle, economic and military power is not the only efficient ammunition.
It is nave to imagine that a people which is small in terms of numbers or power is any less valuable or important in the forum of world history. It simply has other tasks and thus other cultural possibilities. <...> It is not only question of the simple civic virtues and the possibility of a more real democracy than is attainable in a great power state; it is also that the more intimate personal values, eternal ones at that, can only flourish in the soil of a community which makes no pretensions to political power (Weber 1980 (1916):142).
This broader concept of nation provides Weber with a reference point both for his late self-identification of national anti-nationalist and for his views of what national anti-nationalism would mean in terms of practical policies. In his articles about Germanys aims in the First World War, Weber was sharply critical of his nationalist compatriots who militated for Germanys maximal territorial gains. Webers idea of German national anti-nationalist policy was the containment of Russian imperialism by establishing on Germanys Eastern borders a number of states for the minority nations within the Russian state (e.g., Finns), with Germany as a guarantor of their national self-determination (Beetham 1985 (1974): 140142; Mommsen 1974 (1959): 222246). Generally, late Webers advice for his German compatriots on how to win the gratitude of their successors was to promote the prestige of German culture by using the power of the German state to protect the autonomy of smaller nations. The important question, which cannot be answered in satisfactory way without going into the biographical details and inquiries about Webers experiences, reading and personal contacts while recovering from his breakdown in 1897 and after, is that about the causes and reasons for the transformation of Webers view on nations and nationalism. David Beetham considers Webers contacts with Russian emigrant liberal intellectuals in Heidelberg during the time of Russian revolution (190506) as crucial influence. He emphasizes the impression made on Weber by writings of Ukrainian political thinker Mykhailo Dragomanov (18411895) discussing national question in Tsarist Russia (Beetham 1985 (1974): 129131)).17 However, Webers
17. See also the footnote 7.
experiences during his voyage to U.S. in 1904 could also be important, where he could observe young vigorous nation, which evidently could not be described as an (physical) anthropological or racial type shaped by long history. Instead of going into this question of historical interest, I will concentrate in the conclusion on the contemporary relevance of Webers work on nations and nationalism. The comparison with the presently dominant views should open the perspective where this relevance can be revealed. 4. Concluding Discussion: Comparisons, Evaluations, and Open Questions 4.1 Max Weber and Contemporary Theories of Nationalism Research on nationalism and ethnicity is one of those specific fields of the social sciences which has attracted many investigators in the last decades. How can Webers ideas on nations and nationalism be located in the context of current discussions on nationalism? Where lies their relevance for these discussions? The researchers on ethnicity and nationalism are divided into perennialists (those considering ethnicity and nations as historically universal phenomena); modernists (according to them, nations are a modern phenomenon); primordialists (believing that ethnic and national identity are not for instrumental choice); contextualists or instrumentalists, holding the opposing view; culturalists (defining and explaining ethnicity and nationalism in terms of culturalist social science), represented most impressively by the work of Liah Greenfeld (Greenfeld 1992, Greenfeld 2001); and naturalists (who choose sociobiology as their point of departure). However, if we assess the relative influence of present theories of nations and nationalism bibliometrically, then the leader is the modernist and instrumentalist theory of nationalism of Ernest Gellner (1983), Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Hobsbawm 1990), and Benedict Anderson (1991 (1983)). These thinkers are the best examples for comparison with Webers notions of nations and nationalism, and for assessing these notions remaining epistemic relevance. Of course, there are important differences, how these mainstream thinkers conceive and explain nations and nationalism. For Hobsbawm, the most important truth about nations is that most of them are products of social engineering by elites which are coming into power or consolidating their power position. Doing engineering work, they invent and fabricate traditions, and falsify histories to foster the feeling of belonging to a nation as a community. For B. Anderson, the most important truth about this community is its imagined character. According to his definition, nation is an imagined community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson 1991 (1983): 6). The rise of this imagined community to its paramount status was contingent on the invention of print which made mass
literacy in vernacular languages viable. Print capitalism interests have also created the periodical press as a new resource of political power to be used both by old established (official nationalism of naturalized dynasties) elites and by new creolic or native elites in colonial countries. However, the most important version of this theory was advanced by Ernest Gellner, who focuses on the structural change which made literacy in vernacular a life necessity for the broader masses, and inculcated a nationalism, defined as a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent (Gellner 1983: 1) with persuasive force. According to Gellner, this structural change was industrialization which created a broad demand for a labour force endowed with a standardized basic knowledge of high culture provided by a modern-style education using a shared, standardized linguistic idiom (literary language as distinct from innumerable local dialects). According to Gellner, nations are created by nationalist movements engendered by social situations where the same territory (political unit) is inhabited by different cultural groups which differ with respect to their access to high culture or power. Gellner distinguishes 3 types of nationalism: Habsburg or Ruritanian, classical liberal, and diaspora nationalism. Gellner concentrates on the first type, because in his opinion this type surpasses the others by its potential for outbreaks of collective violence. It is generated by situations where the political unit (Gellner refers to this unit as a pseudo-hypothetical imperial state of Megalomania its real prototypes being Habsburg monarchy and Tsarist Russia) is politically controlled by the members of a cultural group with privileged access to high culture. Whereas, other cultural groups (constituting a numeric majority in some parts of Megalomania, referred by Gellner to as Ruritania(s)), are excluded both from power and high culture. A succesful nationalist movement, engendered by this type of social situation, has to create both a separate high culture disseminated by the educational system, and a separate political state. Solving the first task, nationalists (aspiring intelligentsia of the subordinate group, knowledgeable in the supressors high culture but discriminated against because of ethnic origins) make broad use of opportunities provided by modern media (as described by B. Anderson) and techniques of fabricating traditions and falsification of history (as described by Hobsbawm). These ideas on nations and nationalism, which still predominate in the current discussion,18 have many evident affinities with Webers political-sociological approach. Although B. Anderson and Hobsbawm are Neo-Marxists in xxxxxxxxx
18. But see Armstrong (1982), Smith (1998), Smith (2000) et al.
their theoretical predilections, and Gellner is Durkheimian or Parsonian thinker, they all share with (late) Weber the basic idea of culturalist thinking on nationalism that nationalism politicizes the culture by striving to establish a territorial political framework for people a with shared higher (literary) culture. However, elements of naturalism abound in Webers early views on nation, where a political-economic approach is blended with anthropological and racial assumptions. Webers early political-economic concept of nation is modernist too. However, differently from Gellner, Weber relates the rise of nations and nationalism not to industrialization, but to the formation of the world market and the globalization of the fight for elbow-room. According to early Weber, a nation is the most effective form of political and cultural consolidation for a unit of economic maintenance participating in this struggle. With the racial and Nietzschean elements suspended, this idea of nation is most reminiscent of the view of nation in the World-System theory of Immanuel Wallerstein, who considers nation as the optimal form of organization for those units of economic activity and interest which belong to the core of the world system or strive to empower themselves in the struggle for a more central position (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991 (1988)). Webers political-sociological concept of the nation does not fit neatly into the frame of the dichotomy of modernism and perennialism. Weber would agree that the phenomenon of the nation is more characteristic for modern times than for premodernity. However, he does not consider this phenomenon as specifically modern. Nations can be formed everywhere where there exist states competing for the prestige of power and culture, and involving in these contests broad masses of their dependents or citizens. 4.2 Webers Contemporary Relevance I: Weber contra Gellner However, the most important differences between currently prevalent ideas of B. Anderson, Gellner, and Hobsbawm and those of Weber are elsewhere. Gellner and other modernists are most interested in the causes for the appearance of new nations in the world. Weber was more interested in the preconditions for the success of already existing (old) nations in the international contest for economic power, political power, and prestige. The neglect of the problem of nation-building of the new nations can be considered as one of the main shortcomings of Webers conception, which was shaped by his limited experience of the world as it was before World War I. In his early work, Weber raises and discusses the problems of nations and nationalism as a member of one of the great nations fighting for world hegemony. The economic nationalism of his early work was the imperialistic and great power nationalism of the great nations.
The B. Anderson-Gellner-Hobsbawm modernist theory of nations and nationalism reflects another experience, that of the time after the First and Second World Wars, when many new (and small) nations, with their usually ethnic nationalism, joined the world league of nations. If one describes the state of the art in contemporary modernist theories of nationalism with Gellners own pseudohypothetical vocabulary, then these theories are centered on the ruritanian nations and nationalism, while Weber was more concerned with megalomaniac (imperialistic and hegemonist) nations and their nationalism.19 However, there is no sufficient reason to regard these differences in problems and conceptual optics to Webers disadvantage as an evidence that Webers ideas are no more relevant in the changed (postimperialistic) world. On the contrary, these differences enable one to notice one constitutional defect in the prevailing contemporary theories of nationalism, which can be called ruritaniacentrism. This peculiarity of prevailing theory is inherent in the famous definition of nationalism by Gellner as a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent (Gellner 1983: 1). If this definition is accepted, then one has to assert that policies going beyond the goal to unify a nation in one state (e.g. striving to enhance the economic power and prestige of a nation state relative to its rivals in the world league of nations, not to speak about colonialist and neocolonialist policies) do not have anything to do with nationalism. If we accept this definition, we have to maintain that nationalism cannot exist in a nation which has an independent state and no territorial claims to his neighbours. Characteristically, the author of one of the recent modernist works on nationalism stipulates that in the cases where boundaries of the nation and governance unit are already congruent, there is no nationalism, but patriotism (Hechter 2000: 17). In this way, American, French or other nationalisms of great nations are ruled out of reality by a feat of definition, and the concepts of nation and nationalism are turned into conceptual tools, which are relevant only to explain happenings in all kinds of new Ruritanias (in the Balkans) to be looked upon with enormous condescension. For my part, I find this procedure quite arbitrary. A look at Webers megalomaniacentric thoughts on nations and nationalism helps one to understand the necessity of a broader theory of nations and nationalism, which includes both the ruritanian and megalomaniac (imperialistic, hegemonistic, or expansionistic) nationalisms.
19. So I am taking the freedom to extend the reference of Gellners Megalomania, including into its scope all great nations.
4.3. Webers Contemporary Relevance II: Is There Rent-Seeking in International Relations? One has to admit that most of Webers purely economic assumptions in his political-economic analysis of the global development, are inadequate, reflecting the state of art in 19th century economic theory. Looking retrospectively, the classic model of the limits of growth represents the real state of preindustrial society. Members of industrialized societies live in a world which differs from the Malthusian world (see North 1981: 1319, 158160, 171 174), North and Thomas 1970). The systematic technologic application of scientific knowledge makes possible so-called intensive economic growth, which allows for ever more efficient use of natural resources, and for the substitution of exhausted and therefore too expensive resources by others. However, Webers insight that power struggle among nations can be considered as rent-creating and rent-seeking activities has a heuristic potential which remains unused in the recent research. The concept of rent-seeking is currently applied in new political economy (also called public choice theory) only to explain political processes within an institutional framework of separate states. On this scale, the phenomenon of ethnic rent-seeking was investigated (e.g. Congleton 1995). This work has some affinities to early Webers idea on nation and nationalisms, albeit they are not pinpointed by the authors writing on the ethnic rent-seeking. In its applications within the realm of the theory of international relations, public choice theory usually considers national states as clubs, providing public goods for their members for membership fees (taxes) and competing for mobile factors of production (Frey 1984, Sinn 1992). At the same time, this competition compels the governements to lower the costs of production of public goods and works in order to contain their own Leviathan tendencies. In this framework, nationalism can be considered as a residual variable influencing the order of preference of the members of these clubs between voice and exit as ways to protest against the decline in the governments performance (Hirschman 1970). Because of their preference to live in some specific location (affection for motherland), nationalists are more ready to allow their governments to overtax them. If they protest, the voice is their preferred protest strategy. The theory predicts that the owners of mobile factors of production are less susceptible to nationalism in comparison with those who own immobile factors or have greater exit costs. It is a difficult question, demanding further research, how Webers suggestion about the rents created by the economic nationalist policies of building and preserving comparative advantages in the international division of labour, can be integrated into this framework or help to expand it. In the contemporary world, there are no more colonial empires and spheres of influence,
which spurred Weber to write that a dozen ships on the East Asia coast are at certain moments of more value than a dozen trade agreements which can be terminated (Weber 1993b (1896): 610). Contrary to Webers apprehensions, the international regime of free trade is on the march. However, as international organizations multiply and supranational political units (like the European Union) are under construction, an institutional framework arises where artificial monopolies can be created, and new possibilities of rent-seeking activities by nations are opened. I predict that these new possibilities of rent-seeking will foster the vitality and virulence of nationalism in the old nations. The situation is not dissimilar to the rise of regionalism and ethnic rent-seeking as a consequence of the development of the welfare state. Webers early idea of economic nationalism encourages us to ask how the concept of rent-seeking can be useful for the explanation of competition between nations in this new institutional environment.
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Max Weber on Nations and Nationalism: Political Economy before Political Sociology*

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 29(3) 2004

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