Andrew Mason, “The state, national identity and distributive justice”

Socialists have tended to be either ambivalent or outright hostile towards nationality because of its perceived opposition to the notion of the “brotherhood of man.”

Recently, however, it has been argued that socialists and left-liberals alike have a fundamental reason for regarding national identity favourably: their defence of redistributive policies commits them to maintaining that it is valuable for the citizens of a state to share one. [241]

1. National identity and distributive justice [241]

The arguments:

a) Sandel’s argument against Rawls [241]

This is a conceptual argument that the redistribution that implementation of Rawls’s difference principle requires itself entails seeing people’s talents and resources as collective assets, which is defensible only if we view individuals as partially constituted by the community to which they belong (which is then viewed as the owner of these assets).

Even if this argument falls short of the mark, it still presses Rawls to define and defend the limits of the group within which redistribution is to take place.

b) Miller’s argument for nationality [241]

Miller’s argument is empirical. His thesis is:

widespread support for redistributive policies in the belief that they are required by justice will occur only when people see themselves as con-nationals [244]

Challenge to this thesis: cases where a perception of common humanity has motivated people to act altruistically over sustained periods – e.g., those who rescued Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

2. Is there a shared national identity in Britain? [245]

Problem for Miller’s claim (which seems to assume that, as there is redistribution on the grounds of welfare in Britain, there must be a sense of shared nationality):

there is no culture, first language, or robust set of values shared by British people. There are also class divisions in British society, as well as divisions along lines of gender and ethnicity. There seems to be no ‘shared way of life” which could provide the basis for a shared national identity. [245]

BUT: if diversity threatens national identity, then practically no country’s members have a national identity, and yet the vast majority of people in the world see themselves as having such an identity.

Response: a person’s identity can have a number of different constituents. These different constituents may interact in such a way that “what it is to be British” will be different for each person (compare “what it is to be a Christian”)

what it is to be British for a working class man may be different from what it is for a middle class woman. National identity, gender identity, and class identity (for instance) are not ‘independent variables’; a person’s social identity does not consist of a simple combination of particular group identities. [245]

As a result “a person’s national identity may be partly or wholly non-conscious. Having a national identity does not necessarily imply having a sense of national identity.” [246]

Conditions for a group of people sharing a national identity [246]:

1. they believe they belong together

2. their perceived relationship to one another is an important part of their self-understanding

3. they are territorially concentrated

4. not all of the relationships between them are face to face

Criticisms:

a) can conflate national with regional identity
Response: not really a problem, unless you think that nationhood entitles you to a right to self-determination (a la Margalit and Raz) which Mason does not

b) can conflate national identity with citizenship
Response: citizenship grants you the rights of a citizen but is neither necessary nor sufficient for national identity. Not sufficient because: “If someone says ‘I am British’, and by this means merely that she has the rights and duties of British citizenship, then we are not entitled to conclude that she has a British national identity” [247].

c) Miller: these criteria are insufficient because also needed is an actually existing common national culture/character, not simply the perception of commonality.
Response:

people may share a national identity if they believe they belong together, even if they have no common public culture. When there is nothing in common between a group of people other than their citizenship, they are mistaken in believing they belong together in any genuine sense; however, that would not destroy the fact that they are united by the belief that they belong together and that this bond is real enough. They constitute... ‘an imagined community’... a community constituted by belief but no less real, imagined without being imaginary. [248]

Even if national identity does not require shared common culture, Miller can still claim that such a culture is necessary for redistributive justice to be viable. If so, what state policies would this require?

3. Should the state aim to foster a shared national identity? [248]

Importance of role of historical understanding:

In Miller’s view, multi-cultural education pays no regard to the way in which each person’s life is embedded in a particular network of social relationships which have evolved historically, and thereby fails to provide the maps that people require to make sense of their social environment. [240]

Problem: Miller seems to assume that there are “interpretations available of important events in Britain’s past which could be authentically and freely endorsed by all (or at least most) British citizens” but this seems unlikely (compare White Americans’ interpretation of the founding of the nation with Native Americans’, or remember the different response to O.J.

4. A dilemma for the Left [250-2]

If Miller is right that support (of the right kind—that is, as required by justice) for welfare institutions requires a national public culture -

The dilemma (for socialists and left-leaning liberals):

I. Welfare is good

II. Fostering national public culture requires false ideology, harmful to minority cultures

Why not abandon welfare?

Miller’s answer: fostering national public culture has the additional benefit of enabling nationals to avoid alienation, allowing them to identify with the collective which makes the major decisions affecting their lives.

Response to this further argument: a sense of belonging need not require a nation – it can be achieved locally or globally (e.g., world religion)

Further criticism of fostering national public culture:

this could create conditions that undermine global or international justice

Does this mean we should abandon welfare?

Not necessarily: we might be able to engender support of a different kind (i.e., not a simple requirement of justice) for welfare, e.g.:

· as an insurance policy (like Social Security)

· as a way of ensuring stability

· as a way of meeting humanitarian obligations

Finally, a shared national identity is not even sufficient for support for welfare on the grounds of justice (see the US).