Fina recenzija zlajine knjige: EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES Journal on European Perspectives of the Western Balkans April 2013, Volume 5, Number 1 (8) Petra Trkov Zlatko Hadžidedić FORCED TO BE FREE: THE PARADOXES OF LIBERALISM AND NATIONALISM DEUTSCHER WIESSENSCHAFTS-VERLAG, BADEN-BADEN, 2012 209 pages, ISBN: 978-3-86888-050-2 Nationalism is commonly referred to as a doctrine that promotes particularist approach, is collectivistic and intolerant, while liberalism is by definition universalistic, individualistic and tolerant. And yet, they are both based on a set for common concepts, inter alia, liberty, equality, popular sovereignty; also, they both introduced the nation-state as a framework for their realization in society. The author, Zlatko Hadžidedić, is a sociologist and a political scientist; he is working as an adviser at Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In his book Forced to be Free he attempts to explain the ubiquitousness of the nationalism in the modern society from the historical perspective. Hadžidedić focuses on historical and conceptual relationship between nationalism and liberalism, through analyzing the works of five paradigmatic classical liberal scholars from the seventeenth century on. He demonstrates that due to liberalism’s fixation on the sovereign nation-state as the only legitimate model of governance nationalism emerges as an integral part of liberalism. Therefore, the ubiquitousness of liberalism in the modern society makes nationalism ubiquitous, too. (...) The book consists of three parts which are divided into five chapters. Each of the chapters is devoted to a distinguished scholar representing a particular century in liberalism’s history. The first part of the book analyzes the relations between nationalism and contractarianism through the works of Algernon Sidney, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and John Rawls. The nation is explored as a source of legitimacy, liberty, and justice. The second part is devoted to the relation between nationalism and utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill’s work is studied in order to examine the nation as the condition of freedom. In the last part, titled A Liberal Against the Nation-state, Lord Acton defines the nation as a negation of liberty. In the inceptive chapter of the first part, the work of Algernon Sidney, British political theorist from the seventeenth century, is presented. He was one of the first authors who clearly and unambiguously proposed that nations have an inherent right to establish their own states with legislative institutions. However, while promoting nations as the sole source of the political legitimacy he failed to provide a definition of what nations were supposed to be. For him - and the present-day nationalists - the sociological content of the nation is perceived as a “variable, subject to arbitrary adaptations, depending on political circumstances” (p. 9). He sees liberty “as national self-determination by means of autonomous legislation” (p. 12).The following chapter is devoted to Jean Jacques Rousseau for whom the ability of the society to form its own legislative institutions is not in the focal point of liberty; rather, he focused on the self-identification of individual’s will with the general will of society. For Rousseau the general will is achieved in political process through direct participation and public deliberation. The society is transformed into nation by formulating its general will through its legislative institutions. Individual’s self-identification with the general will is therefore his self-identification with the nation. Thus, nationalism continuously articulates itself in the society through continuous identification of one’s individual will with the presumed will of the society, ultimately generating the social phenomenon called the nation. Nationalism regards these mass-identifications of individuals with their nation, i.e. mass-manifestation of national unity, as the only possible manifestation of one’s freedom.The last chapter of the first part analyzes John Rawls’s theory of justice, which is based on the idea of perpetual display of procedural reciprocity in individual relations. The ritual recognition, reciprocally extended between the members, is non-reciprocally denied to non-members. In A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism Rawls argues that the basic structure is a well-ordered society and that self-isolation constitutes a precondition for society to build its basic structure on the shared conception of justice as a fair distribution of rights, duties, benefits and burdens between members as equals. This society is continuously homogenized on the basis of its values and norms, as opposed to other societies which are homogenized on the basis of their values and norms. Even if all societies adopt the same values and norms they cannot merge, they have to remain self-contained. Hadžidedić tries to establish that Rawls’s well-ordered society does not intrinsically differ from the homogenous community known as the nation-state. The last two parts of the book are devoted to nineteenth century scholars John Stuart Mill and Lord Acton. In the second part, Mill equates free institutions with national institutions and argues that governmental boundaries which are identical to boundaries of nationalities form an essential condition for the free institutions. The institutional exercise of liberty is linked to homogenization as well as individualization. In these premises we can conclude that the autonomous individual from the liberal doctrine can be free only within the framework of its national institutions. Thus Mill’s theory suggests that only national institutions can generate individual freedom. The final part of the book introduces the work of the only classical liberal scholar who openly denounced both the nation and the nation- state as the embodiment of illiberal and arbitrary power. In his theory classes and corporate interests, rather than individuals, are to be presented in the state institutions. Since the traditional classes and corporations are not present in the modern society, he found their possible equivalent in distinct nations within the multi-national state, which he saw as the only possible framework for liberty.Throughout the book Hadžidedić successfully establishes that liberalism’s fixation on the nation-state as the only legitimate form of governance necessarily generates nationalism as a means to produce such a unit. He provides an original theory of conceptual and historical roots of nationalism and reasons of its lasting presence in modern society. Therefore, it is not a surprise that the book Forced to be Free has drawn a lot of public attention, especially among the academia in the Balkan states, where the formation of nations or nation states is, from a historical point of view, a very recent occurrence.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 09:11:14 +0000
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