Jeffrey Hao Hu

Marx v. Benedict Anderson and Craig Calhoun on Nationalism

Perhaps Karl Marx was not entirely wrong about the decline of capitalism and the
ascent of communism. There have been multiple cases of communist revolutions, and
there are strong socialist parties in many of the major countries. What Marx really failed
to see was the dominance of nationalism. The working men and women of the world
never had the chance to unite. In contrast, there have been an increasing number of
nation-states as revolutionary movements struggle against the old regimes not based on
the principal of class interest but based on the principal of national self-determination.
The recent war in South-Sudan and the secessionist movements in Catalonia all further
reinforce the theme of nationalism as the driving force of modern history.
Although it may be unfair to compare Marxs views on Nationalism with two
present-day authors, Benedict Anderson and Craig Calhoun, as Anderson and Calhoun
undoubtedly have the benefit of hindsight, a comparison of their philosophies
nevertheless gives us invaluable insight on why Marx neglected nationalism as a
historically significant force and how nationalism has come to dominate our present-day
consciousness.
It is useful to first compare the basic tenets of Marx and the two present-day
authors philosophical worldview, because their views on nationalism are for most parts
informed by their particular philosophies on what divides people and what binds people
together. Marx is famous for his doctrine, as written in the Communist Manifesto, that in
every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and
social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up,

Jeffrey Hao Hu

and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that
epoch.1 Marx believed that any social organization, including the state, the nation, and
the government, is a construct based on that societys economic stage of development. In
other words, the interpersonal economic interactions between individuals dictated the
way in which political power would be distributed, whether in a feudal manor or in a
nation. It is a one-way cause and effect principal, the cause being social economic
relations and the effect being social organizations. Friedrich Engels nicely sums up this
view by saying that it is not the state which conditions and regulates civil society, but
civil society which conditions and regulates the state, consequently, that policy and its
history are to be explained from the economic relations and their development and not
vice-versa.2 Consequently, since economic interactions serve as the basis for society and
politics, what divides people and unites people is also determined by their relative
economic position. From this emphasis on economic interpersonal interaction derives
Marx and Engels argument that the whole history of mankind... has been a history of
class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes.3
Marxs argument makes a lot of sense. With regards to nationalism, it would be
impossible for nationalism to develop without a certain level of economic and
technological progress. If people did not have any means of learning about people who
lived outside their immediate surrounding and did not produce any materials to have the
incentive for interactions with outsiders, then it would be difficult for people to identify
with these strangers. Calhoun confirms that improvements in transportation,

Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 5.

Roman Szporluk, Communist and Nationalism: Karl Marx Versus Friedrich List (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 30
3 Marx, Communist Manifesto.
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Jeffrey Hao Hu

communications infrastructure, and other structural developments especially in the latenineteenth century made it possible to conceive the nation as unitary.4 Without a doubt,
economic development came hand-in-hand with nation-state formation. Benedict
Anderson, on the other hand, especially emphasized print-capitalism as a prerequisite to
the emergence of nationalism for these forms provided the technical means for
representing the kind of imagined community that is the nation.5 Anderson argues that
the possibility of imagining nations only arose historically when, and where, three
fundamental cultural conceptions ... lost their axiomatic grip on mens minds to
newspapers and novels.6 The three cultural conceptions were the idea that a particular
script-language [here referring to Latin] offered privileged access to ontological truth,
the belief that society was naturally organized around...monarchs who were persons
apart from other human, and the conception of temporality in which cosmology and
history were indistinguishable and the origins of the world and of men essentially
identical.7 Print-capitalism was able to transform these three conceptions because the
nature of capitalism drove publishers to pursue production of books, most importantly the
Bible, in vernacular languages. For Anderson, the metamorphosis of the vernacular into a
position of power meant that print capitalism made it possible for rapidly growing
number of people to relate themselves to others in profoundly new ways.8
An American will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his
240K odd fellow-Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. but he
has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity.... This
imagined linkage derives from.... [firstly] simply calendric coincidence. The date at the top
of the newspaper...provides the essential connection the steady onward clocking of
homogeneous empty time.... the second source of imagined-linkage lies in the relationship
Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1997), 68.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso/New Left Books, 1996), 15.
6 Ibid., 19.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 25.
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between the newspaper, as a form of book, and the market.....The book was the first
modern mass-produced industrial commodity. 9

The newspaper enabled the readers to think in simultaneous time. Reading the same
text, sharing the same information, and taking in the news in a same language had a
transformative effect on the readers because they could now imagine other people just
like themselves doing the same activity in simultaneity. Although they had no necessary
reason to know of one anothers existence... they did come to visualize in a general way
the existence of thousands and thousands like themselves through print-language.10 On
this point, Anderson is perhaps most aligned with Marxist thinking by saying that thus
in historical terms bourgeoisies were the first classes to achieve solidarities on an
essentially imagined basis.11
However, for Marx, capitalism was not only a prerequisite for nationalism, it was
also the sole reason for nationalisms existence. To Marx, nationalism was not, as some
people mistakenly argue, a contradictory force to communism. Nationalism was a
machination, a kind of invention that came along with the Bourgeoisie revolution.
Nationalism was a necessary stage in historical evolution that originated directly from the
rise of the bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie wants to exploit the proletarians in his own
country, but he wants also not to be exploited outside the country... [thus] he puffs
himself up into being the nation in relation to foreign countries and says: I do not submit
to the laws of competition, this is contrary to my national dignity.12 The exploitative
instincts of the Bourgeoisie class produced competition, which in turn took the shape of
nationalism. Marx emphasizes that the conjunction between the rise of capitalism and
Ibid. 15
Ibid., 46
11 Ibid.
12 Szporluk, Communist and Nationalism: Karl Marx Versus Friedrich List, 49.
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the absolutist state system produced a system of nation-states that ... is integral to the
world capitalist economy.13 To Marx, nationalism was not a driving-force of history in
itself, but an expression of the capitalist Bourgeoisie movement that was about to be
superseded by a Proletariat revolution.
Marx is only able to see nationalism as a by-product of the Bourgeoisie movement
because his theory that all social organizations derive from interpersonal economic
interactions critically limit Marxs ability to see the reverse side of the cause-and-effect
relationship political and administrative developments can influence individuals just as
interpersonal relationship shape societies. Craig Calhoun points out that it would be a
mistake to regard national economies as primary [determinant of nations]; economies are
not national in some autonomous way.14 In certain circumstances in fact, economic
developments are the direct result, not the cause, of political reformations. Improvements
in tax collection, monopoly on violence, political and administrative and political
integration allowed for the emergence of national economies. In other words, nations
began to take shape before factory-owning bourgeoisies began to worry about
competition in national terms. Calhoun makes it plenty clear that nations are made by
internal processes of struggle, communication, political participation, road building,
education, history writing, and economic development.15 Furthermore, Calhoun warns
that the process of consolidating states and nations was long and far from automatic. It
was historically conflict-ridden in states we now think of as stable democracies, just as it
is conflict-ridden in emerging states.16 Indeed, if nationalism arose solely as a product of

Ibid., 73.
Calhoun, Nationalism, 68.
15 Ibid., 79.
16 Ibid., 85.
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capitalism, then the nationalist revolutions would follow much more closely with the
development of industry in different countries. Yet, as Calhoun notes, national
movements are unique in time and process for different cases.
The most salient example is the emergence of national movements in South
America. Anderson points out that these national movements predate European ones even
though middle classes were still insignificant at the end of the 18th century [in LatinAmerica]. Nor was there much in the way of an intelligentsia....Yet they were national
independence movements.17 Bolivar famously decreed in 1821 that: in the future the
aborigines shall not be called Indians or Natives; they are children and citizens of Peru
and they shall be known as Peruvians.18 In Latin America, political and administrative
integration, or rather the lack-of-integration played the crucial role in forming a national
consciousness amongst the Creoles, the American born Spaniards. That the new nations
ended up with roughly the same boundaries as the colonial divisions was no mere
coincidence. Although the original shaping of the American administrative unit was
arbitrary and fortuitous...over time they developed a firmer reality under the influence of
geographic, political and economic factors.19 Because the economic and industrial
development in Latin America was so backward, the immense difficulty of
communications in a pre-industrial age tended to give these units a self-contained
character.20 Furthermore, for the Creoles, their sphere of activity was limited to the
administrative unit since the the apex of his looping climb, the highest administrative
centre to which he could be assigned, was the capital of the imperial administrative unit

Anderson, Imagined Communities, 31.

Ibid., 32.
19 Ibid., 33.
20 Ibid., 33.
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Jeffrey Hao Hu

in which he found himself.21 Thus, in this case, the arbitrary administrative unit has
meaning in real terms, because a Creoles career and social interactions would be limited
to the administrative unit. The meaning is created through the journey, or pilgrimage as
Anderson calls it, of the local Creoles in trying to attain a higher social and economic
status.
On this cramped pilgrimage he found traveling-companions, who came to sense that their
fellowship was based not only on that pilgrimages particular stretch, but on the shared
fatality of the trans-Atlantic birth... born in the Americas, he could not be a true Spaniard;
ergo, born in Spain, the peninsular could not be a true American.22

The Latin American nationalist movement shows that Marxs limited interpretation
of nationalism severely limits his ability to see any other motivating factor for people to
unite other than individual economic interest. Marx believes in a purely economically
motivated model of individual attachment to communities, which argues that individual
and interpersonal economic relations are the basis for determining social structures. For
Marx, the bourgeoisie can never transcend nationality because they are divided by
competing economic interests. In contrast, the proletarians in all countries have one and
the same interests, one and the same enemy, and one and the same struggle, and thus the
proletarians must inevitably unite to fulfill their collective economic interest.23 A united
proletariat means that they are free from national prejudices and their whole
disposition.... Only the proletarians can destroy nationality.24 According to Marx, the
Bourgeoisie are divided due to economic interests and the proletariats are united due to
economic interest. Consequently, the only way for the peoples to be able to truly unite,

Ibid.
Ibid., 35
23 Szporluk, Communist and Nationalism: Karl Marx Versus Friedrich List, 59.
24 Ibid.
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they must have common [economic] interests.25

If Marx argues that societies and communities form based on real economic
positions, then Andersons theory on formation of communities runs in direct opposition.
Anderson proposed that a nation is an imagined political community and imagined as
both inherently limited and sovereign.26 The nation is imagined because members of
even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members... yet the minds
of each lives the image of their communion..... Communities are to be distinguished not
by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.27 Furthermore,
Anderson clarifies that regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may
prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.28 In
simpler terms, there does not need to be an alignment of economic interests for people to
feel attached to each other. Of course, it helps that members of a community are mutually
beneficial economically, but it is a supporting not necessary condition for a community.
Perhaps, Calhoun puts this concept more bluntly: Marx and Engels did not give
adequate recognition to the fact that these other identities not only existed but could
shape the way people responded to global capitalism.29 Indeed, people would often
identify themselves as father, students, Americans, or liberals before they identify
themselves as workers or business-owners.
However, the national identity is different from the other traditional identities as
well. Calhoun argues that nationalism is not just a doctrine, however, but a more basic

Ibid., 60.
Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 8.
29 Calhoun, Nationalism, 27.
25
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way of talking, thinking and acting.30 To be more specific, nationalism is not just an
identity alone, but rather an entire construct that includes the government, the language,
and very importantly, the public schooling system. The public schooling system is a
testament to the ability of national movements to create nations. Quite contrary to Marxs
idea that nations are by-products of another history-driving force of capitalism, the fact
that nationalism can change the way people thinking means nationalism has immense
power and control of its own. Germans did not think of themselves as Germans, but
rather as Bavarians or Prussians, before the unification of Germany; Indonesians right
across the border from Malaysians did not think of themselves as Indonesians as opposed
to Malaysians before the establishment of Indonesia and its public schooling system.
Anderson points out that in complete contrast to traditional, indigenous schools, which
were always local and personal enterprises... government schools formed a colossal,
highly rationalized, tightly centralized hierarchy, structurally analogous to the state
bureaucracy itself.31 The introduction of uniform textbooks, standardized diplomas and
teaching certificates, a strictly regulated gradation of age groups, classes and instructional
materials created a national consciousness as kids learnt about national heroes and
national wars as if the whole of history was a march towards national formation.
Furthermore, it was not only the content of education systems, which built national
consciousness, but also the system and the journey of education itself. For Anderson, the
20th century colonial school systems brought into being pilgrimages which paralleled
longer-established functionary journeys. The Rome of these pilgrimages was Batvia: not
Singapore, not Manila, not even the old Javanese royal capitals of Jogjakarta and

30
31

Ibid., 6.
Anderson, Imagined Communities, 70.

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Kurakarta.32 The destination of the peoples academic and working careers was the
capital of the new nations due to the political, educational, and administrative integration
of these new regimes. Thus, this mutual experience as fellow travelers, who have lived
through the same path to get to where they are, provided the possibility for an imagined
community even if these travelers have never met each other.
For Anderson and Calhoun, the advent of the public education system played an
incredible role in helping political elites exercise control and build national sentiment.
Perhaps in a negative sense, one could say that national public education brainwashed
kids since an early age to force identification with a national language, national culture,
national history, and even national hatred. Certainly, Hitler, Stalin and Mao have all
provided extreme examples for how to use public education in instilling national
sentiments. For Marx, unfortunately, there was no way he could see the transformative
effects of a compulsory education system because public education began in United
States only in 1830s, in England in the 1870s, and in France in 1880s. However, for
modern-day writers Calhoun and Anderson, they grew up in an environment where one
cannot imagine how to think of us without identifying with a certain nationality. As
Calhoun says, nationalism has emotional power partly because it helps to make us who
we are, because it inspires artists and composers, because it gives us a link with history
(and thus with immortality).33 For Anderson, in an age of religious decline, only
nationalism can make sense of the arbitrariness and inescapability of mens death by
tying men to something larger and more powerful than himself.
Why was I born blind? ... The great weakness of all evolutionary/progressive styles of
thought, not excluding Marxism, is that such questions are answered with impatient
32
33

Ibid.
Calhoun, Nationalism, 3.

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silence....With the ebbing of religious belief, the suffering ... did not disappear.
Disintegration of paradise: nothing makes fatality more arbitrary....What then was required
was a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning....few
things are better suited to this end than an idea of nation... It is the magic of nationalism to
turn chance into destiny... [It is nationalism that enables Debray to say:] Yes it is quite
accidental that I am born French; but after all, France is eternal!34

The conflict between Marx and Anderson is the conflict between economic selfinterest and social solidarity in an imagined community. Both make for the case that
either one of the two is the dominant driving force in creating societies and political
organizations. Both may be right. There is perhaps no quantitative ratio between how
much people value economic interest and how much people value a connection with an
eternal force, but the question lingers on for future historians and sociologists what is
the dominant force that unites people and divides them? In our lifetime, nationalism has
proven to be a powerful force through various nationalist revolutions, but class interest
has not always been on the sideline. Communist revolutions have occurred in numerous
places including famously Russia and China. Although they often have a nationalistic
tinge, the call for action within those movements is undoubtedly class-based. Moreover,
the conflict between Marx and Anderson is also a conflict between internationalism and
sectionalism. For Marx, the progression of history leads to an end of conflict, and a world
unity, but for Anderson and Calhoun, nationalism is a potential force in many
communities and the question of when national movements arise depend only on time.
This leaves questions and problems for future policy makers, who must decide the degree
of international co-operation and national competition. We already see this conflict in the
WTO as the struggle between protective tariffs and free trade continues. Despite all the

34

Anderson, Imagined Communities, 10.

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uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding this topic, at least we know that in the near future,
nationalism is not going anywhere else.

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Jeffrey Hao Hu
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.
Calhoun, Craig J. Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1967.
Szporluk, Roman. Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.