style="font-size:15px;"> Carlton Hayes, who painstakingly researched national ideas in the classic texts of modern thought, had concluded in the 1920s that “the upshot of the whole process is that a nationalist theology of the intellectuals becomes a nationalist mythology for the masses.”44 To this Tom Nairn, a much later scholar, no less original and, significantly, a Scot, added, “The new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism had to invite the masses into history; and the invitation-card had to be written in a language they understood.”45
These two working hypotheses can stand, insofar as we succeed in shaking on the long scholarly tradition of viewing the ideas of its leading thinkers as the causes, or points of departure, for the actual historical development. Nationalism is not a theoretical product that germinated in scholars’ studies and was then adopted by the masses yearning for ideology, thereby becoming a way of life.46 To understand the way nationalism spread, we must define the role of intellectuals in this phenomenon, and perhaps begin by considering their differing sociopolitical status in traditional and in modern societies.
There has never been an organized society, except perhaps in the early tribal stages, that did not produce intellectuals. While the noun “intellectual” is a fairly late one, born at the end of the nineteenth century, the most basic divisions of labor had already seen the rise of individuals whose main activity or livelihood was the production and manipulation of cultural symbols and signs. From the sorcerer or shaman, through the royal scribes and priests, to the church clerics, court jesters and painters of cathedrals, cultural elites emerged in all agrarian societies. These elites had to be capable of providing, organizing and disseminating words or images in three major areas: first, the accrual of knowledge; second, the development of ideologies that would preserve the stability of the social order; and third, the provision of an organizing metaphysical explanation for the seemingly magical cosmic order.
Most of these cultural elites, as noted earlier, were in some ways dependent on and entangled with the politically and economically dominant strata. The dependence could be lesser or greater; here and there, a measure of autonomy—and even, given a solid economic basis, a degree of independence—was achieved. Nor was the dependence one-sided: political power, which in traditional societies intermeshed with the web of economic production differently than it does in modern societies, needed cultural elites in order to maintain control.
By combining the explanation given by Antonio Gramsci for the various ways in which intellectuals exist in the world of production with Gellner’s theory of modernization, we gain further insight into their role in the formation of nationalism and the nation. According to the Italian Marxist,
Every social class, coming into existence on the original basis of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates with itself, organically, one or more groups of intellectuals who give it homogeneity and consciousness of its function.47
To retain control for a long time, it is not enough to possess visible power; it is necessary to produce ethical and legal norms. An educated stratum provides a hegemonic consciousness to underpin the class structure, so that it will not need to keep defending that structure by violent means. In the premodern world the traditional intellectuals were the court scribes, artistic protégés of a prince or a king, and the various agents of religion. Above all it was the clergy in historical societies who helped consolidate a consensual ideology. Gramsci, in his time, admitted that it was still necessary to investigate the rise of the intellectuals in the feudal and classical world, and indeed his writing on the subject is tentative and rather disappointing. Gellner, on the other hand, ventured a more interesting hypothesis.
As stated earlier, before the invention of printing, court scribes and priests did not have the means of communication to reach the masses, nor did they need them. The divine right of royalty conveyed ideological legitimacy primarily to the administrative circles and landed aristocracy, and these groups controlled the territory. It is true that the religious elite slowly began its effort to reach the generality, namely, the peasant population, but it also avoided close contact with it. Gellner gives a good description of the intellectual mechanism in agricultural societies:
The tendency of liturgical languages to become distinct from the vernacular is very strong: it is as if literacy alone did not create enough of a barrier between cleric and layman, as if the chasm between them had to be deepened, by making the language not merely recorded in an inaccessible script, but also incomprehensible when articulated.48
Unlike the relatively small priestly circles in the polytheistic royal courts around the ancient Mediterranean, the spreading monotheism gave rise to broader intellectual strata. From the ancient Essenes through the missionaries, monks, rabbis and priests, to the ulema, there were increasing numbers of literate individuals who had extensive and complex contact with the masses of agricultural producers—one reason that the religions survived through the ages while empires, kingdoms, principalities and peoples rose and fell. Religious bodies that did not fully blend with secular authorities acquired varying degrees of autonomy vis-à-vis the political and social classes. They cultivated lines of communication and were always perceived to be the servants of society as a whole, hence the impressive survival of the beliefs, cults and icons they disseminated. Another reason for the longevity of religions was that the value of the spiritual merchandise they provided to the masses must have been more meaningful than the earthly (and exploitative) security provided by the political powers: “divine providence” secured for believers the purity, grace and salvation of the next world.
We might add that the autonomy of religious bodies in the premodern world was achieved not only thanks to their reputation and widespread universal message, but also to the direct material support they received from the devout producers of food. Moreover, many literate individuals combined physical labor with their spiritual occupations, and those who belonged to the upper reaches of the establishment became in time a socioeconomic class and even a judicial establishment—for example, the Catholic Church.
Despite the growing popularity of religious elites in the agrarian world, and their devotion to the human fock, they took good care of the working tool that enabled them to maintain their authority. Reading and writing, as well as the sacred tongue, were preserved by the “book people,” and there was neither the will nor the means to propagate these practices throughout the populace. Anderson puts it well: “the bilingual intelligentsia, by mediating between vernacular and Latin, mediated between earth and heaven.”49 Not only did the religious elites know the sacred languages and, in some cases, the language of the administration, but they were also familiar with the peasant dialects. This mediating function of bilingual or trilingual intellectuals gave them a power they would not readily give up.
But the process of modernization—the decline in the power of the church, the shrinking of the religious communities, the disappearance of the patron-protégé relations that had sustained the medieval producers of culture, and the formation of a market economy in which almost everything might be bought and sold—inevitably contributed to the transmutation of all cultural morphologies, leading to major alterations in the place and status of the intellectuals.
Gramsci repeatedly emphasized the links between these new literati and the rising bourgeoisie. These intellectuals, whom he described as “organic,” were not large capitalists but came mainly from the urban and rural middle strata. Some became skilled experts who administered production, while others followed the free professions or became public officials.
At the top of the pyramid Gramsci placed the “creators in the various fields of knowledge: philosophy, art, etc.,”50 but he used the term “intellectual” broadly, including in effect the politicians and bureaucrats—that is, most of the modern state’s organizers and directors. In fact, although he does not say so, for him the new state apparatus as an intellectual collective replaced the rational “Prince,” the famous, idealized autocrat depicted by Niccolò Machiavelli.
