Some thoughts on Ernest Gellner’s _Nations and Nationalism_

I like the book. My wife told me that I tore it up. Nationalism is something that has interested me recently, especially as I see it as a major stumbling-block in improving the course of mankind in the world. Nations and flags are something you hold onto instead of opening up your arms and hands to the idea of a better world. That said, I have read little in the subject, the most pertinent being Hobsbawm’s essays in the collection _The Invention of Tradition_. I am just opening up the hermeneutic circle in hopes of someday closing it.

I do have several critiques of the book, and many of them are answered or at least brought up in the introduction to this addition. The primary critique is that the book is overly generalized. To illustrate his concept of nationalism only arising after industrialization, Gellner uses a hypothetical country to make his point. While I understand he is trying to construct a general model of nationalism, his experiences and theories naturally have to be based off of real situations to be a working model. All nations and nationalistic movements will differ in specifics from the model he creates. Does this show the strength of his model, or its weaknesses.

A secondary critique is that the models he uses are entirely too Eurocentric. The book could be titled _European Nations and Nationalism_ quite easily. The post-colonial struggles for a definition of nationalistic identity all over the formerly colonized worlds are give short shrift, and I think this is because they do not fit as easily into the model he argues for in this book. The idea that the European culture imposed on the developing world is too strong to be subverted by one of the native folk cultures seems to me rather patronizing in a cultural aspect. That many of the colonial borders still exists should be reason to reexamine the model, not look for reasons why the cultures do not fit the model working in it.

A final, more personal critique is Gellner’s dismissal of the Marxist view of history. While the Marxist view can be open to some of the critiques I have against Gellner, I feel that the burden lies to Gellner to show more particularly how his model is superior to one that has been studied and refined through academic discourse over the past century and a half. I recognize that this book is long in print, so I am sure some Marxist historian has taken up Gellner and his glib dismissal of the Marxist system. I respect the cultural model drawn by Gellner, but I doubt the prevalence of the influence on a large scale of the socio-linguistic system he uses as the center of his theory. To me, class still seems like a larger division, even if Gellner disagrees. I still find this work interesting and illuminating, so I will not dismiss it despite my critiques. I have to read more on the subject

On The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman

This is a very good, even-handed analysis of the the WalMart effect on the economy from the local consumer to the globalized manufacturing of the products we consume ever day. It was well-written and easy to read.

My main complaint is that the writer at times speaks of some of what we might call the company's evils in a most dispassionate manner. At the time of reading, this feels like he is implicitly condones the actions of the companies and its suppliers (even though its clear the suppliers have little option in going along with WalMart).

Overall, I think the objectivity of the author plays a key part on the effectiveness of the book. His bias is in the pages, but they do not yell too loud. Anyone looking int the effect of late twentieth century capitalism on America would be well served to read this book.

I Love Unemployment!

Having been unemployed for a long time now, I and my family are at the mercy of the continual incremental increases in the unemployment. I am grateful, but as time goes on and hiring has lagged the rebound in the stock market by a year, I become contimually more pessissmistic about employment in the short-term. I think the media plays a part in this. Now the news in my area trumps when there are job openings in low wage areas. A while back there was big news that Home Depot would be ramping up with several part-time openings. This is how you make discouraged workers ever more hopeless.

The vast underclass of surplus labor just has to watch in horror, hoping the government's largess doesn't end, because there are many in my boat. There are even more that have fallen through the cracks. They never were eligible for the benefits because they're inconvenient for capital to fund. I'm just waiting for my own benefits to stop. They never were big, as they represent more than a 50% cut in my former wage. However, with austerity measures in my household, we have been able to adjust to a new normal.

This new normal is not the American dream that I was sold in school and college. Many who bought into it and did well in school and studied hard are in trouble, and disenchanted with the system. These people have radicalized on both the right and the left. Our system has been built on consumption, and we hope to return to consumption, but that's not a long-term plan of any stability. Right now the market is failing many of my peers, as well as myself.

What's needed right now is a return to new deal or great society ideals. I'm losing job skills and future potential earnings by the day as I sit idle. I don't want to be idle. My background is not in any sort of heavy labor, but I would gladly dig ditches in a make-work program if that gave me the needed sense of accomplishment and creation. The main caveat is that a potential resurrection of the WPA must be new work in infrastructure or building for the common good. It must not replace work already being done or planned, the so-called 'shovel ready' projects. Right now the government is paying for my labor and getting nothing from it.

I know this would increase the cost, as the training and material costs would increase, but this would bring back a sense of self to many workers who lose who they are in a society that creates identity in your occupation. When asked to describe yourself or others, occupation tops many lists of identifiers. In our country right now, too many people are nothing.