Bertrand Russell and the End of Nationalism

Abstract

This article argues that nationalism is an important topic in Bertrand Russell's thinking about politics and society and that his writings on this subject are worthy of consideration by those who study nationalism today Russell anticipates contemporary "modernist" and "ethnicist" accounts of nationalism, providing, over a lifetime, the precedent of both of these theories struggling within the bosom of one thinker. Russell's theory is structurally closer to that of the modernists. Like them, Russell believes that the growth of a modern global economy has made all nationalisms, whether progressive or reactionary, obsolete. But after declaring the obsolescence of nationalism in 1917, Russell was compelled to wrestle with the persistence and vitality of nationalist movements and sentiment throughout the rest of the century. The author argues that Russell's experience suggests that this modernism, which dismissed all nationalisms, led to political absurdities and compelled Russell to argue for the distinction between predatory and imperialist nationalisms—a distinction he had rejected in the wake of World War I.