Virtue of Nationalism

The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony, 234 pages

In the early twentieth century, all right-thinking people were nationalists - at least two of the great moral touchstones of the era, Wilson's Twelve Points and Gandhi's Indian independence movement, were founded on the principle of national self-determination.  This changed after the Second World War, both due to the rise and fall of fascism and the perceived need for supranational mediating institutions during the Cold War's nuclear-armed superpower standoff and the growth of international commerce, with the result that by the end of the century all right-thinking people were globalists.  In The Virtue of Nationalism Yoram Hazony makes the provocative contention that this shift endangers both international peace and individual liberties.

Central to Hazony's argument is an act of rhetorical sleight of hand in which he defines nationalism and imperialism as antithetical philosophies of government, attributing every positive development to the former and every misstep to the latter.  This is, of course, both philosophical and historical nonsense, requiring him to cast medieval localist feudalism as somehow more imperialist than the European nations at the height of colonialism.  This, in turn, involves a bizarre misconception of the Holy Roman Empire as an entity from which the nations of Europe "won their independence" at the beginning of the modern age, while even in his description the early modern European states appear less as consciously limited entities respecting each others' sovereignty than as competing empires.  Turning his attention to the contemporary world, he insists (plausibly) that international institutions, when given the power to interfere in the affairs of nations, will always seek to expand that power despite actual prohibitions, but then pretends (implausibly) that nations, which must of necessity sometimes interfere in the affairs of their neighbors, will self-consciously limit themselves in obedience to abstract principles.

Hazony makes a compelling case against globalist institutions as necessarily technocratic and therefore anti-democratic.  Even more significant is his observation that, left to itself, rational calculation can never instill the kind of loyalty that is necessary for the self-sacrifice that alone can sustain community.  Unfortunately, the book overreaches in its central argument and is then undone by its own inconsistencies.

Buying Time

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Wolfgang Streeck, translated by Patrick Camiller, 189 pages

In this short book, adapted from the author's 2012 Adorno Lectures, Wolfgang Streeck asserts that the Marxist analysis of the crisis threatening capitalist democracy in the 1970s was fundamentally correct, only the crisis was delayed by factors the analysts had not considered.  In his view, the critics correctly understood that the pending crisis involved the legitimacy of capitalism and its cultural contradictions with a democratic society, but what they had not grasped was the extent to which it would be the forces of capital which challenged democracy, eroding the postwar welfare state in favor of neoliberal free markets.  This was accompanied by an explosion of consumerism driven by easy credit, with private debt supplementing the  of public debt.  This, in turn, has lead to the rise of a globalized creditor class - what Streeck calls the Marktvolk - whose interests differ markedly from those of the ordinary citizens - the Staatsvolk.

In Streeck's view, the economic crisis which began in 2008 exposed the manifold ways in which capitalism has subverted democracy.  Insisting on the distinction between market justice and social justice, Streeck demonstrates how neoliberalism has managed to promote the former over and against the latter, primarily by the delegation of authority to international bodies, especially the European Union, which serve to shield the market from popular political pressure.  A correction, if it is to come, must therefore take the form derided by the elites as populism - an assertion of national sovereignty placing the needs of the Staatsvolk over those of the Marktvolk.

Buying Time is a short book that necessarily presents a simplified view of a complicated matter - although this simplification has the virtue of clarity.  Streeck's Marxist background causes him to treat the Marktvolk as a self-conscious body, and his analysis overestimates their commitment to laissez faire by treating it as an ideological matter rather than one of practical convenience.  He also underestimates the extent to which today's workers are themselves capitalists, especially through their pension plans.  Finally, and most obviously, there is the difficulty of the once-failed prophet assuring his listeners that this time he's right.  At the same time, whether or not the cultural contradictions of capitalism are now approaching their climax, it would be foolish to disagree with Streeck's thesis that they are more glaring now than ever before.