Since nationalism is a form of collectivism, it is not surprising that its vulgate plays so much on “together” themes. Vladimir Putin just declared in a public speech in fromt of a “jubilant crowd, amid a sea of Russian flags” (“Putin’s Wartime Russia: Propaganda, Payouts and Jail,” Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2022):
“When we are together, no one can match us,” he said, before singing the national anthem along with the crowd and greeting servicemen who were there.
The crowd responded with chants of “Russia, Russia” and “Putin, Putin.”
We could compare this with former president Donald Trump’s declarations, with his fans’ idolatry, or with the “USA, USA” chanted by the crowd at his meetings. We can also find something similar in the nationalism of Joe Biden, who is in many ways Trump 2.0 or, if you prefer, Trump with a human face. In his recent State of the Union speech, Biden said:
We are the United States of America and there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.
There may be some exceptions, and nuances have their importance as do hopefully constitutional constraints, but when a political ruler says “let’s do that together,” what he really means is “do what I say.”
READER COMMENTS
John hare
Feb 23 2023 at 12:22pm
Your last sentence resonates with me from working with larger companies. “Be a team player” also translated to “do as I say”. Large part of the reason I’ve been self employed for decades.
David Seltzer
Feb 23 2023 at 1:18pm
John, me as well! I hated authoritarian bullies. Of course I also found myself out on an island with little corporate support. I had to figure out how to succeed and much preferred my planet of individualism to being a “team player.”
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 23 2023 at 2:00pm
John (and David): I also tend to be skeptical of team-player rituals. Note two things, however. First, in his famous 1937 article “The Nature of the Firm,” Ronald Coase explained that a firm exists when the recourse to the market (buying inputs including labor from different suppliers on the open spot market) is too costly; thus, in a sense, the firm is indeed a team run by the agent of the owner(s), and only exists when that is the most efficient formula. Second, leaving a firm or any private team is much less costly than leaving your country, especially if it is part of the few countries where, like in the US, the state continues to tax expats. We could add a third point: no firm can do as much damage as a nationalist “team.”
David Seltzer
Feb 23 2023 at 5:34pm
Pierre: Recently read Coase’s work on the firm. I suspect my personality is unsuited to large firms as often the central planners at the top are deaf to decentralized decision-making. Kevin Corcoran has a nice EconLog blog on this subject: Decentralization is good business .
Vivian Darkbloom
Feb 24 2023 at 2:55am
“I suspect my personality is unsuited to large firms as often the central planners at the top are deaf to decentralized decision-making.”
I supect that I may have some of the same personality traits (“my own planet of individualism”). However, in all honesty I’m not entirely sure that this is attributable to “central planners at the top are deaf to decentralized decision-making”. There could well be a different explanation: “I am deaf to decentralized decision-making” myself because I am reluctant to subordinate or even compromise my own opinions to those of others (e.g., “decision- making by committee). Isn’t “I (the individual) know best” another form of “centralized decision-making?
David Seltzer
Feb 24 2023 at 2:29pm
Viv said, “Isn’t “I (the individual) know best” another form of “centralized decision-making?” I wrestled with that after I commented. I suspect you are correct. As I think about it, a rather prodigious task for me, It’s generalizable to all planners, not just centralized planners. The issue is still one person not having sufficient knowledge. Per Jon Murphy, “Thus, while the market economy may face the planner’s problem, LLN indicates that the planning failures will not create systemic problems whereas a central planning network would.”
Thanks for comment. They are always illuminating.
Vivian Darkbloom
Feb 24 2023 at 3:44pm
David,
Another thought regarding your comment about CEO’s, centralized planning” and “authoritarian bullies”:”
I suspect that you, as I was, were a specialist in some specific professional field,. These types of people, I think, are generally reluctant to let others make decisions (after all, “I’m the expert!”) and this leads to a reluctance to delegate. I worked for a large professional services firm (international lawyers). While there was, of course, the equivalent of a “CEO” and others in the heirarchy of management, most decisions were left to individual partners. This is probably not typical of corporate management in different lines of business.
Nevertheless, all the CEO’s I’ve known and others in very senior management had one characteristic that I probably lacked to some degree—the ability to delegate rather than micro manage. This is quite different from “central decision making” or “authoritarianism”. In any large organization there is a need to set standards and goals. The way this comes about and what consensus is possible is obtained is probably what differentiates the “bullies” from the good managers (I had enough exposure to one at GE that would probably fit that description and you can see how that worked out). But, I think, that is the exception.
I tend to approach these issues on an ad hoc basis working from the specifics rather than an ideological framework. (My first inclination is not “how can I use libertarian ideology to solve this problem). Whether decisions should be left to an individual or a collective group depends, in my view, on the specific situation. Good CEO’s also know that. They know that a firm is not just a group of individuals persuing their divergent individual interests and methods—it is a collective effort to pursue common goals.
The difference between a firm and a country is that the former is much easier to leave if you don’t agree with the objectives that are set or the means to acheive them. Nevertheless, I do subscribe to the idea that a nation exists as a social compact. See, for example, the US Constitution. We haven’t done all that bad as a result of it.
David Seltzer
Feb 24 2023 at 5:57pm
Vivian, thank you once again for your cogent comment. I was a market maker on the CBOE…sole prop. As I became more successful, I partnered with another successful trader and started a hedge fund. My responsibility was as the firms senior risk manager. We grew and hired oil traders, bond traders, metals traders and FX traders. Managing risk soon exceeded my span of control. My ad hoc solution; appoint senior traders to manage risk in their respective markets as well as hiring more firm risk managers. It was necessary that I delegate to people who were smarter and more experienced in markets for which I was without real time experience. We had meetings daily to discuss individual and firm risk. I deferred to the other managers as I, as an individual, was not as smart as those collectively. The overarching concern was the Poisson event…AKA, The Black Swan.
Jon Murphy
Feb 23 2023 at 6:34pm
I think John and David’s point match up with the Coasian idea. I see John and David making a leadership point. It’s true that a firm is a collection of individuals working together toward a single goal, and that goal requires buy-in (even if in just mercenary terms of “you pay me I will do my job”). But collectivist language like “we’re a family” or “we’re all in this together,” tend to indicate a leadership style more of a bully.
Just my own two cents: when, at my old job, the boss said the word “family,” it usually meant benefit cuts were coming.
Jose Pablo
Feb 25 2023 at 5:20pm
a firm exists when the recourse to the market (buying inputs including labor from different suppliers on the open spot market) is too costly
too costly … to whom?
a team run by the agent of the owner(s), and only exists when that is the most efficient formula.
I think it only exist when that is the most convenient/efficient (in a general sense) to the “agent of the owner” provided that the whole “scheme” still makes money. You never know which one is the “most efficient formula”; you only (barely) know whether a “formula” is profitable or not … which is very different.
Among the many existing “profitable formulae”, the “agent of the owner” will pick-up the most convenient to him. Which almost always imply to have far more many minions (a larger “family”) than strictly required in Coase rational for the existence of the firm. After all, the “agent of the owner” love to have minions around.
john hare
Feb 25 2023 at 5:37pm
My little company seems to have a bit different operation if I understand your views correctly. Company expression, “There’s one pot of gravy on each job, and the more biscuits on the job, the less gravy per biscuit. And I like a lot of gravy on my biscuit.” With follow up, my guys try to do the jobs with small crews rather than larger. Follow up is how the money flows obviously. In companies that do not practice this, there tend to be larger crews with less gravy on each biscuit.
Of course, the expression probably only makes sense in the south where biscuits and gravy is breakfast menu.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 25 2023 at 7:55pm
José: Too costly for the entrepreneur/owner, of course. A plumber who starts to have too many customers can hire subcontractors to fill in for him (for a price lower than what is collected) or, if coordination is too costly, hire his subcontractors in his new firm.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 25 2023 at 8:03pm
José: Of course, as agency theory tells us, an agent never has the same incentives as his principals. This is why private ownership is efficient compared to (ideal) collective ownership: there is a residual claimant (the owner) who has the incentive to closely monitor his agents. The presence of several owners/shareholders dilute the incentives, but stock prices and/or take-overs (together with size and the cost of capital) compensate.
Jon Murphy
Feb 25 2023 at 10:15pm
To the entrepreneur
Roger McKinney
Feb 23 2023 at 5:25pm
Nationalism is good if you know what is best for your nation, such as free trade and free markets, equality before the law, limited government, rights to life, liberty and property that the state can’t violate, in other words, classical liberalism.
What passes for nationalism today are things that destroy a nation.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 23 2023 at 10:09pm
Roger: What would you say is a nation?
TMC
Feb 24 2023 at 8:57am
“What passes for nationalism” is still nationalism, both the good patriotism and the bad overzealousness. I’ll give you a good example of nationalism in the US. It made all the factions coming through Elis Island put their quarrels aside (after some time). Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans go to each others festivals instead of Irish and Italians fighting over neighborhood boundaries as they did when they first arrived. When you value your country smaller tribal issues fade.
Unfortunately this doesn’t scale globally. Human nature is to be tribal. Larger tribes seem to be the more stable unit though.
Mactoul
Feb 24 2023 at 8:37am
What is your point in singling out Putin or Trump? Or even Biden.
There are 200 nations and all these have leaders filled with the same collectivist spirit and untold millions of their followers in perfect sympathy (indeed as Bryan Caplan has often explained, the followers are even more xenophobic than the leaders).
Jon Murphy
Feb 24 2023 at 10:39am
Because they’re examples that would be known to most (probably all) readers. It’s true that many leaders have the same collectivist tendencies, but if you’re going to speak to a wide audience, having examples they do not need to go and research helps. This post wouldn’t make the same impact if it featured President Nikenike Vurobaravu of Vanuatu
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 24 2023 at 11:56am
Jon: Ha ha! Vurobaravu! Vurobaravu! I would add that reliable information is more difficult to find about that Excellency.
Mark Brady
Feb 24 2023 at 1:29pm
Pierre, why not illustrate your thesis with reference to Zelensky and Ukrainian nationalism?
That’s an example that would be known to all your readers.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 24 2023 at 2:55pm
Interesting comment and deep comment, Mark. But the topic is complicated. Dangerous things are sometimes useful. (It’s the case of love and guns, for example. Dynamite is another example.) I think this is also the case for nationalism in case of foreign attack by a tyrant much worse than the domestic one, as it can then prevent a loss of liberty. This aggression-fuelled nationalism can of course be dangerous and turn against liberty. Ideally, in an individualist society, defense would not require the revival of tribalism. As Randolf Bourne said, “war is the health of the state.” However, it seems pretty clear to me that liberty is much more at risk under a Russian empire than under the Ukrainian state.
Craig
Feb 24 2023 at 10:16am
“hopefully constitutional constraints”
Did you take your hopium this morning? 😉
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 24 2023 at 11:50am
Craig: Many if not most classical liberals thought that constitutional constraints are a way to prepare for the worst, which is that some demagogue would only need a see of flags to win the favor of “the people.” But of course, whether and which sort of constitutional constraints can hold is a valid and important question. It has guided the whole of James Buchanan’s work. Anthony de Jasay would be more on your side, which would justify anarchy, although he wondered whether anarchic liberty could survive external security threats (see my “The Valium of the People,” scrolling down to p. 53 ff.).
Craig
Feb 24 2023 at 4:53pm
The federal government is many things, a harbinger of peace or fiscal responsibility is not one of them.
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