EGALITARIANISM AND ARISTOCRATISM AS TWO FACES OF NATIONALISM

It is generally, and wrongly, assumed that the egalitarian slogans of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution point to the Marxian conception of a proletarian internationalism, which, in turn, must be by definition inimical to all forms of nationalism. What is completely lost in this mistaken assumption, is that the distinctive Russian brand of free brotherly egalitarianism has far more in common with these same concepts as promoted by the Great French Revolution, than with Marx, or any other internationalist ideas. In both cases, egalitarianism is a powerful expression of a self-asserting nationalism coming of age. In both cases internationalism serves only to bolster national pride, not as a substitute for it.

One people, one nation, one state. To understand these concepts, egalitarianism teaches that all citizens are parts of the whole, and, as such, all are equal. It was the caste internationalism of the French monarchy and by the same token, the caste internationalism of the Russian monarchy, where the upper classes seemed to have a much greater affinity with their rank-equals across Europe than with the lower classes of their own respective nations, that ushered in the nationalist revolts, and brought about irreversible historical changes. Without understanding this, it is impossible to understand history.

Curiously, Nietzsche, in this case, is resentful of egalitarian nationalism for the very same reason that he is resentful of religious egalitarianism, complaining that it is wrong not to take into account the difference in value between various individuals. His ideal of the new man is essentially internationalist, and in this rare blindness, disregarding the power of nationalism among the nations of Europe, and inflating the prospects of an internationalist transformation of world history, is his missed opportunity to appreciate and properly analyze subsequent history, which in large part he was able to predict with exceptional brilliance, but with a key piece missing, his jigsaw puzzle solution could not be, even at its very best, up to par.

However, nationalism is not all about egalitarianism. Only nascent nationalism is. As soon as nationalism matures, and this happens quickly, crude egalitarianism fades away, giving way to aristocratism in various forms. Thus, the French Revolution was quickly and fairly easily transformed into the Napoleonic Empire. In Russia’s case, however, society was transformed into a totalitarian entity, under Stalin, and the kind of aristocratism, which sprung out of it, would have been very much to Nietzsche’s liking: The Stalinist State placed an exceptionally high value on exceptional individuals, persons of superior skill, talent, and genius, recognizing that as they were all State assets, the difference in human value of these assets had to be just as important, or, perhaps, far more important than the difference between a skyscraper and a tool shack. No “egalitarianism” here, thank you!

Thus, the bottom line of what I have been saying here is, as reflected in this entry’s title, that egalitarianism and aristocratism in a nationalist society are by no means mutually exclusive, but that they represent the two faces, or, better to say, the two phases of nationalism: the lower and the higher one.

(In this connection, I advise the reader to read my entry Cult Of Personality, published on this blog as part of the multiple-entry posting under the title Sensus Communis, on January 16^th, 2011.)