Two Centuries of the National Question
Critics say Marxism can’t account for the popular appeal of nationalism. But the Marxist tradition contains some vital insights into the origins and future of national communities.
Communist Manifesto, Brazilian edition, 1982.
In his 1975 essay “The Modern Janus,” Tom Nairn described the theory of nationalism as “Marxism’s great historical failure.” You can find similar claims throughout the abundant literature on the subject.
The argument usually goes something like this. From Karl Marx onward, socialists expected workers to identify with their class rather than their nation, and with international socialism rather than any form of nationalist ideology. When the actions of real flesh-and-blood workers didn’t conform to this abstract schema, most spectacularly upon the outbreak of a general European war in 1914, socialists couldn’t explain the appeal of nationalism in Marxist terms, except as the product of bourgeois manipulation intended to divert the working class from its true historic mission.
Ernest Gellner ridiculed the Marxist perspective in his book Nations and Nationalism:
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