• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • FAQ
  • Meet the Team
  • About The London Economic
  • Advertise
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
NEWSLETTER
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home Politics

Multiculturalism? We’ve been here before

By Marcus Hunt Whether it is welcomed or not, Western Europe is in the midst of a great upheaval driven by immigration, one that poses questions about ethnic and national identities and how the state and civil society should relate to these identities. It may at times seem as though this upheaval is the first […]

Joe Mellor by Joe Mellor
July 16, 2014
in Politics

By Marcus Hunt

Multiculturalism

Whether it is welcomed or not, Western Europe is in the midst of a great upheaval driven by immigration, one that poses questions about ethnic and national identities and how the state and civil society should relate to these identities.

It may at times seem as though this upheaval is the first of its kind: that there is nothing to be gleaned from history with which we might infer our future course. Although it is true that the current circumstances of Western Europe are unique, there are in fact some interesting historical parallels to be drawn.

In Austria-Hungary, in the decades prior to the First World War, questions of nationality and how to maintain a cohesive multi-national state were often asked. There were frequent political power struggles between the ethnically distinct provinces: German Austria, Magyar Hungary, Czech Bohemia, Polish Galicia. Moreover, as industrialisation gathered pace, the ethnically German inhabitants of Vienna and other cities were highly aggrieved by the massive influx of Czechs and other Slavic peoples, who fed labour-hungry enterprises and formed new ‘language islands’ amongst them. Debates, which may have some contemporary familiarity, raged about whether Czech children in traditionally German territory should be educated in Czech or German, and to what degree Czech immigrants ought to adopt the habits of their German neighbours.

Of this largely ignored debate, one scholar is still sometimes remembered – the Austrian Marxist Otto Bauer. In his 1907 work ‘Social Democracy and the Nationalities Question’, Bauer examined the origins and nature of nations and nationalism. This makes him something of an exception amongst early socialist thinkers, who believed that the only significant social cleavage was class – and that even to acknowledge national differences and the problems they bred was reactionary. Although Bauer agreed that class division was the most ‘truly’ important social cleavage, given the circumstances of Austria-Hungary at the time he could not ignore the importance that national and ethnic consciousness played in politics and the power it exerted on popular discourse.

Bauer was friendly in principle to the notion of national self-government, but recognised that in the Austro-Hungarian context this was not a possibility due to the highly dispersed nature of the empire’s national groups, due both to the new industrial ‘language islands’ and older myriad scattered villages. He was also concerned that the disintegration of the empire into several nation states would lead to overly assimilationist programmes in the new polities and the abuse of remaining minorities.

RelatedPosts

Ex-minister says it’s ‘morally wrong’ to cut NHS pay as Tory rebellion brews

One per cent pay rise half of what staff were promised, NHS trusts claim

No. 10 splashes £2.6 million on renovations for White House-style TV briefings

Britain plans to cut aid to some of world’s most war-torn countries

He therefore proposed a system of federal government which maximised the autonomy of each ethnic group in the geographical region of its predominance. In order to protect national minorities in each of these jurisdictions he supported the idea that they be ‘constituted as corporations under public law, which, with complete autonomy, provide for the education system of the national minority’.

Bauer’s vision, translated as far as is possible into contemporary circumstances, is an extreme form of multi-culturalism: devolution of political power to nationally distinct regions and the legal classification of each person according to their ethnicity with a corresponding provision of state services by separate ethnically defined institutions.

Whilst the notion of devolving power to the United Kingdom’s constituent nations is popular, Bauer’s latter suggestion is a model which will appeal to few of even the most extreme multi-culturalists. But a study of Bauer and other such political thinkers can be worthwhile for the context they give our own debates and their ability to impress upon us the importance of principles that we merely assume, like our ethnically-blind, undifferentiated and equal citizenship. As it happens, Bauer’s policies were never implemented.

Instead, Austria-Hungary collapsed under the weight of its ethnic differences. Remarkably, two of its successor states – Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – did the same. These historical cases show that whatever the right response to our own great upheaval is, and whatever sources we draw upon in making it, we need it soon.

Since you are here

Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.

Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.

Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.

If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.

To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.

The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.

The shop can be found here.

You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .

Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending fromTLE

  • All
  • trending

What If We Got Rid Of Prisons?

Stress, fear and homelessness: The threat looming over families confronted with eviction

File photo dated 07/11/03 of a prison cell.

The Other Prison Pandemic

Latest from TLE

Brexit is battering UK-EU trade flows, shocking figures show

The Advantages of Virtual Hair Transplant Consultations

This photo made available by NASA was taken during the first drive of the Perseverance rover on Mars on Thursday, March 4, 2021. Perseverance landed on Feb. 18, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)

Nasa’s groundbreaking Mars rover hits the dusty red road in first trip

New variants ‘very unlikely’ to stop Brits getting back to normal by summer, top scientist says

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

Address

The London Economic Newspaper Limited t/a TLE
Company number 09221879
International House,
24 Holborn Viaduct,
London EC1A 2BN,
United Kingdom

Contact

Editorial enquiries, please contact: jack@thelondoneconomic.com

Commercial enquiries, please contact: advertise@thelondoneconomic.com

SUPPORT

We do not charge or put articles behind a paywall. If you can, please show your appreciation for our free content by donating whatever you think is fair to help keep TLE growing and support real, independent, investigative journalism.

DONATE & SUPPORT

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech & Auto
  • About The London Economic
  • Meet the Team
  • Privacy policy

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.