Things Written Randomly in Doubt Read online

  21 I seem to remember that Tom Nairn produced his own version too.

  22 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism … particularly p. 39. He polishes up his Megalomanian credentials on page 45. Nationalism as a homogenising force is a natural consequence of industrialisation, while ugly nationalisms are the potential minorities. He overlooks that more atrocities have been committed by great nation nationalism than by small nations attempting independence. Even more seriously on page 45, the accusation is “that traditional, ideologically uninfected authorities, such as the Ottoman Turks, had kept the peace and extracted taxes, but otherwise tolerated, and been indeed profoundly indifferent to the diversity of faiths and cultures which they governed. By contrast their gunmen successors seem incapable of resting in peace till they have imposed the nationalist principle of cuius regio, eius lingua. They do not want merely a fiscal surplus and obedience. They thirst after the cultural and linguistic souls of their subjects. This accusation could be stood on its head. It is not the case that nationalism imposes homogeneity out of wilful cultural Macht-bedurfniss; it is the objective need for homogeneity which is reflected in nationalism.” This wonderful bit of sophistry, which presumably justifies the Turkish genocidal campaign against the Armenians and the current near-genocidal one against the Kurds, could be used to justify just about anything, including the crimes of Nazi Germany.

  23 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism …, p. 2.

  24 Where, of course, the rules of the democratic games are grossly abused by an oppressor nation, then the oppressed nation has a right to respond. Current examples are the Palestinians, the minority nations of Burma, the Chechnyans and the Tibetans. Commendably, the latter have always rejected violent struggle in spite of terrible suffering and the systematic destruction of their culture. Tragically, the rest of the world has reacted to this impeccable behaviour by entirely ignoring the Tibetan cause – hardly an encouragement to non-violent action.

  25 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, …, p. 29-31.

  26 The commonly-held belief that Ireland’s economic growth in the nineties and early zeroes was due to EU subsidies is a rather ungenerous distortion. Its growth rose to an incredible 8%, but only 1% could be put down to EU subsidies, which were in any case considerably smaller than the subsidies being injected into the Northern Irish economy by London to little effect.

  27 Quoted by W. Kaufmann, Nietzsche (Princeton: PUP, 1968, 19501), p. 284. Nietzsche’s anti-nationalism has none of Goethe’s humanity (or perhaps it would be more correct to say that Nietzsche liked to keep his humanity hidden). It is based on his contempt for the “human herd animal”. He also wrote, “No, we do not love mankind! On the other hand we are not German enough … to advocate nationalism and race-hatred. … We are too unprejudiced for that, too perverse, too fastidious; also too well-informed and too well-travelled” (The Joyful Wisdom, London: Penguin Books, p. 377). Precisely because it is of the right, Nietzsche’s anti-nationalism is intellectually extremely interesting.

  28 Abram Leon, The Jewish Question. A Marxist Interpretation (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 121. Leon’s extensive reading of classical texts and histories means that this is still an extremely useful book, in spite of it being written under the oppressive conditions of Nazi occupation. He can be forgiven then for the occasionally over-simplistic analysis typical of the times: “Whereas Catholicism expresses the interests of the landed nobility and of the feudal order, while Calvinism … represents those of the bourgeoisie or capitalism, Judaism mirrors the interests of a precapitalist mercantile class” (p. 76). Nor can we accept E. Germain’s assertion that he had liquidated “the Jewish question as a problem from the historical materialist point of view” (p. 21), as no historical question can ever be definitively resolved. But Leon’s book retains its brilliance, precisely because he never lost all his passions as a left-Zionist and does not surrender entirely to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Wanted both for his political views and his “race”, he amazingly avoided capture until 1944 and death followed shortly afterwards in Auschwitz at the age of 26, thus ending his short life so full of intellectual and physical courage.

  29 It has been called the “short century” by Hobsbawm and the “people’s century” by the BBC, both entirely appropriate names, but I would call it the “century of destruction”, in human, cultural and ecological terms.

  30 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism …, p. 47.

  31 Karl Marx, The First International and After (London: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 383; the italics are mine.

  32 The First International …, p. 383. Note the term “reunited”, as though Germany had once existed as a united whole in the past.

  33 Gian Enrico Rusconi, Se cessiamo di essere una nazione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), p. 30.

  34 Hobsbawm, Age of Capital, when Algeria was invaded, its literacy, of a medieval, scriptural kind, was higher than France’s.

  35 I am indebted to Antonio Gambino for his concept of maternal and paternal societies as expounded in his clever and amusing book L’inventario italiano (Turin: Einaudi, 1998). Like many Italians (and displaying one of their endearing traits), he is very self-critical of Italian society, which he considers to be particularly maternal. The book would be worthy of translation not only for what it has to say about Italy, but as an example of national self-awareness that could be usefully applied elsewhere.

  On Writing about Ourselves

  1 Evelyn Waugh, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (London: Penguin, 1998), reprinted by Penguin in 2006 and originally published by Chapman & Hall in 1957.

  2 The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, pp. 135-36.

  3 The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold …, pp. 163-166; Waugh was clearly in more robust psychological health during this 1960 interview.

  4 The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold …, p. 165

  5 Bertha Husband, radical artist and co-founder of the Axe Street Arena, which was active on the Chicago arts scene in the eighties and ninties. She has often been obliged to read my manuscripts and provide advice.

  On Publishing

  1 The publisher of this book. I never noticed who the publisher of a book was until I got into publishing. Why should you? A reader’s disinclination to care about such things is helpful in my opinion, although I now want to know the minute I pick a book up, just as I examine its physicality in a way I never did before. Occupational hazards.

  2 You will understand this immediately, but the corporations never will. They have one template for all businesses.

  On Nation, Polity and Cosmopolity

  1 L. Colley, Captives (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p. 39.

  2 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves and Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2002).

  3 The Fascist regime in Italy relocated Slovene railway workers to southern Italy, and southern Italians to Slovene areas in the north.

  4 J. Sillars, In Place of Fear II (Glasgow: Vagabond Voices, 2014), p. 53.

  On Class, Work and Politics

  1 Today the Santa Croce district is very different and has been partly gentrified. The prison has been removed, and the building turned into an arts centre. The Italian Communist Party is no more, and its paper, which was not at all bad in spite of my comments, is now in private ownership. I wrote about this incident in a short story “In That Moment”, part of the collection, On the Heroism of Mortals (Glasgow: Vagabond Voices, 2012), pp. 113-16.

  2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Verso, 1998), p. 33.

  3 The Che Reader (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2005).

  4 Lorenzo Milani, Pensieri e parole (Turin: Paoline, 2007), p.22.

  5 Pensieri e parole …, p. 48.

  6 Ian Thomson, Primo Levi (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 475.

  7 Plato, The Symposium (London: Penguin, 1951), trans. by W. Hamilton, pp59-65 (1906-193e) Plato has Aristophanes argue that Zeus split the original arrogant, four-legged huma
ns in two, and so love became a search for the other half.

  8 Plato, Republic (Oxford: OUP, 1993), p. 125 (421d-e).

  9 Plato, Republic …, pp. 121-24 (416c-421-a).

  10 Some will say that I’m in this group, and they would be right: I have already admitted that the intellectual and the writer require arrogance for their uncertain metiers.

  On Essays

  1 If I were you, I would now protest that some of these essays, this one included, are mere nibbles. Your money will not be refunded.

  2 Journalists’ articles quite often are pure essays in the literary sense, and only journalistic in that they’re published in a newspaper or magazine. Obviously some academics write beautiful articles, which are published in collections and earn a wider readership, possibly earning the opprobrium of other academics who accuse the writer of “popularising” their subject. These are not clear distinctions.

  3 The justification for its inclusion was that it contains arguments putting the case for small-nation nationalism, which is often confused with the more selfimportant great-nation nationalism. It was a wordy piece, and I have cut it back considerably.

  4 Ryszard Kapu´sczi´nski, The Other (London, Verso, 2009).

  A Sceptic’s Defence of Religion

  1 I have long been obsessed with Servetus, because I have read much about him and he seems to represent an alternative liberal Reformation. His terrible death at Calvin’s hands was a crime at the time, and Voltaire justly took up the posthumous cause. For this book I have read parts of the recent English translation his Christianismi Restitutio: Michael Servetus, The Restoration of Christianity (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). It has an explanation of the circulation of blood, which was overlooked for a long time and had to be rediscovered by William Harvey in the seventeenth century, but it sounded disappointingly like so many works of the time – covered with the biblical references of the mad proselytiser who today stands on a box near a shopping centre, quoting Isaiah, berating the public about their consumerist rituals and proselytising no one. When you read Servetus, noble in his own way, you realise the uniqueness of Erasmus amongst all the other religious voices.

  2 It has been known for academic histories to be tainted with ideology even in the wondrously propaganda-free democratic societies of the West, and they are only a tiny part of the output, because we clearly have a greater facility to reproduce the written word.

  3 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2006), and Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (London: Atlantic Books, 2007) Hitchens’ title is purposely insulting to Islam, which is unmannerly and obtuse.

  4 Quaker Faith and Practice, 19.01.

  5 Quaker Faith and Practice, 19.28.

  6 I won’t waste our time explaining this reference, which you can probably guess at. Those who have had the misfortune to encounter this embodiment of certainty and proselytising zeal will shudder and dislike me for stirring up an unpleasant memory that should have been left alone.

  What Was Wrong with the Left?

  1 See Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton and Oxford: PUP 2006), trans. by George Staunton.

  Conclusion

  1 The Italian original: “Non c’e piu religione..

  2 i piagnoni: the whingers.

  3 Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), trans. by David McLintock, p. 31.

  4 Walter Kaufmann is also good on the sister; see W. Kaufmann, Nietzsche (Princeton: PUP, 1968, 19501).

  Riflusso

  1 Riflusso: a return to conservative thinking; disengagement with politics – another word we don’t have in English.

  Copyright

  © Allan Cameron 2014

  Published on 19 May 2014 by Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland.

  E-book edition published in May 2014

  ISBN 9781908251374

  The author’s rights to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 have been asserted.

  Cover design by Mark Mechan

  The author acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards the writing of this book

  For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website, www.vagabondvoices.co.uk