Page - 128 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

128 chapter 4 fromculturalassets forhundredsofyears, afterall, it emerges free fromtradi- tion. Inplaceof therigidandobsolete, it createsanewideology.Accordingto thelawofhistoricalprogress,Bauerargued,nationalvalueshavetogivewayto thevaluesof theproletariat.The first reason for this is that the ideaof social- ism embodies the highest supranational and universal human values.19 The second,whichdeservesparticular scrutiny, is that socialistandnational ideas arenotmutuallyexclusive,aswillbeelaboratedonlater.Withoutdelving too deeply into this, it is important tonote that the reality of themulti-national monarchywasverydifferent fromBauer’s idealisedperception.For thework- ers ofmanynations– especially Polish andCzechworkers –nationalist and pro-independencerhetoricboremoretruththanproletarianinternationalism andsocialism. 1.4 CulturalandNaturalCommunity Bauerchallengedthetheoryof thenationcommonlyacceptedincontempor- arysociology.Inparticular,hecriticisedempiricistpositionsandthenaturalist current.Theformer, inhisopinion,wereparticularlysalient inthewritingsof Italian sociologists. Theywerealsopresent in Stalin’s renownedessayon the subject.Definitionsofthenationofferedinthesetextswerebasedonchronic- lingcommonassetssuchasancestry,territory,language,customs,morality,law, religion,andthepast.InBauer’sview,althoughtheseelementswereimportant tovariousdegrees,merely listing such idiosyncrasies revealed littleabout the essenceofthenation.Hepointedtothemaindifficultythatrearsitsheadwhen this factor theory is applied to living, changingorganismssuchas thenation. Theproblemrelates to structuralising individual componentsand thenature of theirmutual relationships(thosewhofollowcontemporarysociological lit- eraturewillbeawarethatthisproblemremainscontested). The crucial point of Bauer’s research was to find a concept that would overcome this problem. For this purpose, he developed a definition of the nation that harkedback to theKantian concept of community,whichBauer borrowed fromMaxAdler’s texts, andFerdinandTönnies’s understanding of the same term.20 Claiming that the ‘community’ was the original source of 19 TheSecondInternational turnedthenotionofsocialismastheembodimentofuniversal values intoadogma. 20 SeeAdler1978.InCommunityandSociety,Tönniesintroducedtheconceptof ‘community’ to denote thenation and the concept of ‘society’ to denote the state. For this purpose, he distinguished two types of regulation: internal (linked to the emergence of social bonds andbasedon the communityofmindset and fate) andexternal (whichemerges due to theeffects of legal norms, customsand language). Tönniesbased the conceptof