For those born since this book’s publication, who never lived through the wave of post-World War II national independence movements in the Global South, it is even harder to see the nation as a contingent form than it was in Anderson’s day-in the 21st century, it is difficult to conceive of any country as anything but a nation to which citizens feel loyalty and inherent connection. It is more powerful and seems to be omnipresent, even in Marxist nations that usually hope to collaboratively transform the international economy. Because it is “an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory,” Marxists usually ignore the problem of individual nations-and yet Marx wrote that “the proletariat of each country must first settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.”Īlthough it might seem abrupt or out-of-context on first glance, Anderson’s opening example allows him to make a crucial point about nationalism: it is simply unlike other political ideologies.

This tendency shows no signs of slowing: the concept of the nation is now a “universally legitimate value.” But there is little agreement about what “nation, nationality, nationalism” actually mean and no good theory about where they come from. Although they have the same goals, Marxist countries are not necessarily on the same side of conflicts because “since World War II every successful revolution has defined itself in national terms”-and, indeed, specifically national ist ones. China invaded Vietnam, which had just invaded Cambodia. Anderson begins by describing the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China between December 1978 and March 1979, which he considers significant because they involve independent Marxist governments invading each other.

Imagined community book