Nationalism and Culture - Publication and Reception

Publication and Reception

Nationalism and Culture was originally supposed to be published in Germany in 1933, but the Machtergreifung and Rocker's emigration intervened. It was not published until 1937, by the Spanish anarchist Diego Abad de Santillán and the publishing house Tierra y Libertad. Soon after the release, however, the Spanish Civil War made the book hard to sell. Alexander Berkman, one of Rocker's friends and also a well-known anarchist, started an English translation. Rocker, however, was unhappy with Berkman's work. With the help of anarchists he had met on a lecture tour in the United States, Rocker contacted Ray E. Chase, a professor at the University of California, who agreed to translate the book. This translation was published by the Rocker Publication Committee, which had been formed for this purpose, and the Covici-Friede publishing house in New York City, despite Emma Goldman having warned Rocker of Covici-Friede's bad reputation. Rocker's bad luck continued and the publishing house declared bankruptcy just a year after Nationalism and Culture was released. Nevertheless, the book was soon translated into Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese. It could not be published in Rocker's native Germany until 1949, after the end of World War II. There it was published under the title Die Entscheidung des Abendlandes (The Decision of the West).

Nationalism and Culture was received very well in the anarchist movement. Many compared Rocker to the likes of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin to underline the work's importance for anarchism. Augustin Souchy claimed Rocker deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for the book. It has some influence to this day. For example, Noam Chomsky was greatly influenced by Rocker and Nationalism and Culture in particular. In the socialist spectrum, the book was lauded by Willi Eichler's magazine Geist und Tat and F. A. Ridley of the Socialist Leader. Lewis Mumford also expressed admiration for the book. The English socialist philosopher Bertrand Russel considered Nationalism and Culture an important contribution to political philosophy.

Both Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, despite disagreeing with Rocker on many points, considered the book significant and wished it be read by as many people as possible. Solomon F. Bloom, reviewing the book in The New Republic considered the book "a most welcome contribution" and conceded that Rocker "supports his position with a wealth of information of encyclopedic range", but criticized that "rucial concepts such as will, nation and religion are inadequately defined". Hans Rothfels in the American Historical Review criticized that "bvious misstatements and misinterpretations are not infrequent", but called it "a combative book, but not one of rattling bones nor a mere rehash of enlightened misconceptions about dark ages or the great impostors" and attributed "a wealth of information not easily accessible, and a sharply focused insight into cultural dynamics, which too often has been obscured by conventional theories of progress or of an organic or any other sort of determinism" to it. The American Sociological Review's recension is largely positive: "The book gives the historical and philosophical description of the problem. Its solution is still a challenge to the future", the reviewer C. R. Hoffer claims. The American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, although he disagreed with Rocker's condemnation of the state, conceded that Nationalism and Culture included some interesting ideas. T. S. Eliot's The Criterion compared Nationalism and Culture to Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. Rocker and Spengler agreed in that there are no "eternal truths" and both considered there to be an antagonism between culture and power. While Rocker affirmed the former, Spengler considered the Roman Empire's imperial power a model for modern society. Nationalism and Culture became one of very few anarchist works to be used by university professors; several American professors had students read it for discussions about nationalism.