Nation: Imagined community

The etymology of the term 'nation' suggests three possible meanings: community based on blood relationship, a form of social organization, or a political community as a form of integration. After analyzing the limitations of the conception of nation as the 'community of blood', the author concentrates on the concept of 'people'. He stresses the necessity of distinguishing between two meanings this term may have - one belongs to within the democratic tradition, the other to the national-romanticist one. In the former, 'people' denotes the demos, that is, the plurality expressed through the principle of limited majority. In the latter, the term denotes the populus, that is, the plurality expressed through the principle of absolute majority which presents itself as an organic unity. The national-romanticist perspective gives rise to anti- democratic nationalism, with its ideal of the nation-state as the continuum of blood, Lebensraum and predestined life conditions. This ideal reflects anti- modernizing trends, since it preserves traditional patterns, autarchy and self- insulation. Such nationalism is a regressive trend compared to the modernizing tendencies and carries a pseudo-emancipatory potential, since the nation-state establishes a new kind of monolithism, and in the 'post-communist' countries of Eastern and Central Europe strengthens the tendencies towards ruling according to the same old principles.