The period from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the present has been the period of political ascendency of what’s often termed the “nation-state,” perhaps the successor of the “empire.” The phrase “nation-state” may appear redundant, but it does join two distinct concepts. However, only one of these concepts corresponds to something in reality. "The state" is concrete, consisting of a group of humans, as well as artifacts such as weapons, uniforms, internment facilities, and (possibly) public services. The concept of “the nation,” on the other hand, suffers from a dearth or maybe overabundance of significance: I don't think we can say what a nation is, though we’ve talked around it for some centuries.
For the 250th anniversary of the American state, I’m denying the existence of the American nation, or pointing out gently that the alleged fact that we’re a nation is the product not of observing what we do or who we are, but of excruciatingly problematic story-telling enforced quasi-covertly with weapons.
As defined by philosophers such as Herder and Hegel in the early-19th century and by early-20th-century sociologists and anthropologists such as Emil Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, the nation is the "collective consciousness" of "a people" who share a culture, a tradition, a language, and possibly also some genetic commonality. The nation of America is all of us and none of them in our common identity, if any, our shared belief system, if any, and our sense together of our own history, if any. It’s us, thinking and emoting together in a way analogous to a single individual. The nation is, in addition, the story we tell together about "who we are."
Is the nation us, or is it a story? Because us is not stories. Let me put it like this: the concept of “nation” (a) is loose, so loose that it’s already fallen apart at the moment it’s articulated, (b) corresponds to nothing in reality because it’s designed to transform rather than reflect the truth, and (c) is morally problematic to the tune of millions of deaths by war and genocide.
Treating people as though what they most essentially are is bits of stories suggests that you can't do anything at all to them that’s morally significant. In the story world we all have the same sort of moral status as Mr. Darcy in a piece of Jane Austen fan fiction. If he does something wrong, it's only a story, just a bunch of words; it's fictionally wrong, wrong in the world of the fiction, which isn't wrong at all.
The American nation is a narrative. But nothing is easier than re-narration. George Bancroft narrated America as a beautiful fulfillment of providence and realization of freedom. Howard Zinn re-narrated it as a degrading history of oppression and genocide. They both made efforts to do some research and they both marshalled facts. Barack Obama re-narrated American history in his first inaugural; it only took a few minutes. Trump narrated it right back at his. Anyone can narrate however they like and if nations are narratives, then they can be torn down and reassembled or merely erased, essentially without effort and, insofar as they remain on the story level, without practical consequence.
The 250th anniversary of American independence has featured dozens of re-narrations, many of them re-narrations of the re-narrations developed in 1976 for the bicentennial. It's a real snoozer. Heather Cox Richardson and Jill Lepore are re-narrating American history to make a new American future. So are Curtis Yarvin and JD Vance. I'd say the commitment of any of these people to the facts runs just so far as the facts will enable them to portray their preferences as identical with those of the American people and not merely with those of the political parties that, for some reason, they serve.
Also, the idea of “collective consciousness,” in particular a collective consciousness allegedly joining the living and the dead in their hundreds of millions or billions is a wee bit fictionalized as well. When I hit my thumb with a hammer and all Americans living or dead or yet unborn cry out in pain, then I'll believe we’re the same person. If not, not. So quiet down. The solemnity of your narration is matched only by its clichéd emptiness and its extreme repetition.
On the other hand, a state, say the government of the United States, is all too real. More or less the same sociological tradition that defines the nation as a collective consciousness and somehow also as a story or narrative of progress or regress, defines the state more concretely, as a group of people effectively operating a monopoly of violence over a certain geographical area. I agree that the monopoly of force is necessary and sufficient for something to be a state and no other conditions of legitimacy or narratological elements need intrude. If there’s a group of people with enough power to take your possessions and toss you in the clink, or to conscript or tax you under threat of force, that’s your state.
Armed with these characterizations, move on to defining “nation-state”: what items like Italy, France, USA, and China allegedly have in common. The nation-state combines an abstract object (a story, let's say) and concrete stuff (missiles and razor wire) into a single chimera or hybrid entity. When a story loves a prison much, a nation-state is born. I don't think this yields a possible love child or a comprehensible entity. The two can't mate, if you get me.
States are real. Nations are largely produced by states (though also sometimes by resistance to states) as fictional entities or as ideologies intended above all to reduce state expenses, to try to replace force with loyalty, or to convince you that our army and police force is your very self, because we’re all one thing together, narratively speaking, though not ontologically. Nations are fictions or ideologies produced by states (I owe this insight to Cory Massimino of the Center for a Stateless Society.
The idea that a nation is "organic" (as Durkheim puts it), a kind of natural collective person, is put to the lie by all the state technologies for producing a patriotic or loyal population, or for producing the simulation of loyalty as an expression of capitulation. The nation is a fictional production of states, a novel written by bureaucrats.
Decide on this 250th July 4th whether you really want to celebrate the American nation-state in all its algal bloom and infinite debt. Think about whether it's a good or sensible idea to declare your loyalty to a fiction, even as you pay your taxes to a real group of people.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell