Research On Tom Nairn's Nationalism Thoughts Of Historical Materialism

Nationalism is a complex,meaningful and controversial concept,it can be some kind of emotions of specific groups,and also can be sort of social political and cultural movements;it can be used as tradition,value and concept of ideology,and also can be used as a practical expression of party's position of national states.As for nationalist problems,we can simply do pure academic theory research,and also can interpret it with the real political and economic strategies associated with regional war.During the progress of the modern world,nationalist ideology and movement have been widely involved in philosophy,sociology,historiography,political science,economics,culturology,anthropology,etc.Therefore every researcher can make investigation from their own perspective which formed voluminous literature achievements,among them,the British New Left representative,Tom Nairn,has his unique mental discernment.He uses history as reference,reality as evidence to understand nationalism,and starts from Marxist basic ideas to analyze the background and motivation,the nature and characteristics,the subject and class,as well as the ideal and goal of nationalism,then forms a nationalism theory under the perspective of historical materialism.The purpose of this paper is to analyze,organize,and seize his thoughts from the angle of Marxist philosophy,in order to form a systematical understanding of Nairn's nationalism philosophy and reveal its value.Following this logic framework,this paper is divided into eight parts:Introduction firstly draws the outline of Tom Nairn,and clarifies the research necessity of his thought through summing up and introducing his academic experiences,works and achievements.Then generalizing,combing the research status of Nairn to highlight his research heat in the west and the blank in China,and point out the urgency and necessity of this study.Whereafter,synoptically outlining the core concept of his nationalism theory,and thus to clarify the significance of this study.Chapter One analyzes the origins of Nairn's nationalism thoughts,namely Marxism,the British traditional philosophy and two western thought giants.Marxism as the theoretical kernel of Nairn's nationalism theory plays a very important role,he constructs his nationalism theory with the succession and development of historical materialism,and at the same time he also challenges and revises some nationalist arguments of Luxembourg,Stalin.British local nationalist consciousnesses,namely empiricism,the research trend of nationalism of the British New Left,the nationalist aspirations of all ethnic groups in Britain,make his theory has a strong British temperament.In addition,the western thought giants-Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci and nationalism theorist Ernest Gellner have a deep influence on Nairn,so to speak,it is Gramsci laid the foundation of his Marxist position and identity,and it is Gellner guided and inspired his modernist perspective of nationalism,these two jointly created the Nairn we know.Chapter Two mainly inspects the contents of Nairn's nationalism.From the fundamental characteristic of modern society-modernity,and following the research method of historical materialism,Nairn forms a concept definition of modernism.He argues that all phenomena related to national issues are neoteric,and explains the concepts of ethnic,national identity,national state,nationality and nationalism with modernist interpretation.First two parts in this chapter mainly introduces the related famous theorists and Nairn's definitions of nation and nationalism,hoping to provide a clear conceptual positioning before us deeply analyzing Nairn's nationalism theory.Then,through comparing nationalism with patriotism,racism,chauvinism,separatism,fascism and Nazism,illustrate the differences and relations between them.Finally,through the analysis of capitalist uneven development and the world political and economic mechanism under industrialization,modernization and globalization,investigating the dynamic mechanism of nationalism.Chapter Three discusses characteristics of the overall cognition of Nairn's nationalism thoughts.Nationalism is an emotional sustenance for many national groups.Although in different regions,different social development conditions,different political systems and people under different history and culture have different types and performances about nationalism,but from the �high-angle' of Marxist historical materialism,Nairn touches the nature characteristics of nationalism,namely universality and regionality,two-sidedness and irrationality,anti-imperialism and positivity.He believes that nationalist ideology and movement are widespread in the modern national states,as a generally necessary stage of social development,nationalism has the character of universality in the modern world politics.From analyzing nationalism in the periphery and core areas,he points out that nationalism has a distinct two-sidedness,namely �the modern Janus',which has been widely recognized by the academic field.On the one hand,Nairn argues the violence problem of peasant chauvinism and great-power chauvinism to interpret the pathology and irrationality of nationalism;on the other hand,he states the national anti-imperialist liberation movement,the awakening of the national state,and civic nationalism to explain the positivity of nationalism,which objectively,dialectically and fully depicts the whole story of nationalism.Chapter Four discusses the subject consciousness of Nairn's nationalism.Marxists' understanding of the people,nation and class experienced a developmental process from �workers without the motherland' to �how to sing the song of the motherland',which reflects the interaction and connection between Marxism and Nationalism and advances with times.Narin is an outstanding thinker of these Marxists.From historical to realistic dimension he analyses the public demand for nationalism,recognizes nationalism is a national subject consciousness,and provides social subject an emotional,political and cultural content.Thus he back to history itself and return to nation,which develops the theory of class struggle.He regards that in the reality of national states we must break through the limitations of class struggle and expand nationalism sphere,develop the category of class consciousness and combine with the national liberation movement.Only in this way can we solve the related problems in the real process of social history and reality,then realize the conversation between Marxism and nationalism.Finally,Nairn analyses the class basis of nationalism,and presents a kind of logical approach of national subjectivity from the elite to the mass.He regards that the emerging middle class intellectuals must guide the awakening of the proletariat,only in this way can the proletariat play an efficient role of the revolutionary subject and achieve national liberation.Chapter Five expounds the construction of socialist ideal of nationalism.Socialist community has always been the theoretical goal and ideal of Marxist theorists,and Nairn is one of them.First of all,he establishes nationalism theory from the view of Marxism.Nairn regards nationalism is the true subject of modern philosophy,its basic ideals are political self-determination,economic autonomy and national emancipation,thus the future of nationalism is bound to give way to socialism.Second,Nairn analyses how to save the ethnic groups in the crisis of capitalism,he thinks that to achieve the ultimate ideal of socialist national community we have to use anti-imperialist nationalist ideology,development of mind productive forces,revolutionary movements and national identity.Finally,Nairn sincerely hope that through the socialist national polymerization to suppress imperialism and transcend capitalism,in his point of view,although the invasion and oppression of capitalism is a reality,we can conflict and fight off it through national independence movement;although the uneven development of world politics and economy is a real and urgent problem,we can improve and narrow the gap between different countries through developing the national modernization;although there are a lot of unignorably differences and conflicts between different classes,in the national states which haven't realize independence and liberation we can solve these problems through integrating the class consciousness;although the human society is leading by capitalist ideology and political system now,we can pursue and realize socialism through developing the form of socialist nationalism.Chapter Six makes an overall evaluation for Tom Nairn's nationalism thoughts.Marxism and nationalism are two biggest ideologies in the modern society which have most audiences and advocates.These two always overlap each other in the connotation,characteristics and demands.Nairn keenly grasp this point,and connects these two in a scientific,objective and dialectical way.Undeniable there are defects in his theory,but it has realized the integration of nationalism and Marxism which has a series of theoretical achievements.His theory not only has a great value for the contemporary study of nationalism,but also has an important enlightenment function for the national construction of our country.The last part is conclusion.Comprehensively reiterates the multi-dimensional construction and good pursue of Nairn's nationalism thoughts which shows out the pursuit and foothold of Marxist theory.Based on the logical structure of these chapters,I want to systematically introduce and analyze Nairn's nationalism thoughts,and point out that he is not only an important scholar of the British New Left,but also a successor of Marxist historical materialism.His thoughts are important references for the research of Marxism,nationalism at home and abroad.As the saying goes,national uniqueness leads to the path of global acceptance,hoping we can all absorb nutrients from Nairn's nationalism theory under the view of historical materialism.