For example, in the early days of the Russian Revolution there was a very high standard of democracy which those fighting the revolution created.
In the early days soviet democracy prevailed, land and factories were turned over to peasant and worker soviets, the debt was canceled, the banks, trusts and cartels were nationalized... [it was] democratic to the core, in which the police and standing army were to be replaced by the armed people." (weissman) This was changed not by an internal failure, but because European and American forces both sent armies and provided military and monetary support to counterrevolutionaries within Russia.
The Civil War, brought on by the world bourgeoisie... [with] fourteen invading armies and the White 'contras' of the day... brought the end to soviet democracy.... [partly because] the advanced revolutionary workers had been killed in the Civil War; Bolshevism now governed a mass of war-weary, semiliterate peasants in a world in which the revolutionary advance had been halted."
Weissman)
As these paragraphs have discussed, the essence of socialism is in the solidarity of the working class and power to the working class. The working class cuts across all national borders, and is only strong when it is united. The Russian revolution became isolated and was eventually destroyed by Stalinism specifically because, many believe, it was not able to become international and the essence of socialism is international. "They adopted a state of siege stance." (Weissman)
If socialism is about the solidarity of the working class, nationalism is about the solidarity of the regionally or ethnically related group. Nationalism is, briefly, the idea that similarity of culture is the most essential and important social bond. Power, then, comes from being part of a wider group which has power. Nationalists generally do not promote any sort of economic class welfare, and chose to leave the economic class system intact, though they may attempt to assure that the lower classes are adequately supported to make the entire structure stronger. Power, in the nationalist position, is in the nation itself, in the state -- in fact, power is in being a uniform part of a cohesive whole which is strong enough to be dominant over some space. An argument offered by John Breuilly defines nationalism as follows, and the implications for power should be relatively obvious:
nationalist argument is a political doctrine built upon three basic assertions: a. There exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character. b. The interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests and values. c. The nation must be as independent as possible. This usually requires at least the attainment of political sovereignty." Power, then, is being funneled into the political sovereignty of the group, which is supposedly deserving of it because it's values take priority over all other values.
Historically, power in what would be considered "ideal" nationalist states tends to be more centralized than in similarly "ideal" socialist states, which is to say that nationalist theory is more accepting of authoritarian approaches to power, and has an instinct to suggest that the power and authority of the nation/state/group should over ride and make unimportant the minority. There are numerous examples of this tendency, many of which would tend to fall into the "fascist" category. (All fascism is nationalistic, but not all nationalism is fascism) as Mussolini once wrote, "The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans.... If classical liberalism spells individualism,... Fascism spells government."
That said, though nationalism is perhaps best expressed through an authoritarian response...
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