Tribalism and the State: A Reply to Michael Walzer
Rule, James B.
The bipolar world is gone. The world's states are careening toward some new equilibrium —or so we imagine, for no one can foretell what the new order will be. All that we know for sure is that...
...The allusive, taken-for-granted language of Walzer's essay is at first simply puzzling...
...And insofar as we believe these things, we cannot support states predicated on the domination of particular racial, ethnic, religious, or national groupings over others...
...Surely any political vision that fails to reject such injustices simply because they are of "tribal" origin is bankrupt...
...This means doctrines of group domination ranging from apartheid and the white man's burden to Manifest Destiny— and all other notions of unique racial, ethnic, and national vocations to rule over particular peoples and places...
...The distasteful strand running through all such ideologies is that the people concerned simply do not "belong" in the tribal state—that they are, once again, the wrong kind of people...
...But many—often the same people—also find it deeply disturbing...
...It is through such processes that Israel has become one of the most telling demonstrations of the debacle of tribal domination...
...What makes all this particularly perplexing is the central appeal of Walzer's essay—that "the tribes" be allowed to "go their own way," wherever possible, to statehood...
...The same has to be said for egalitarian and democratic political ideas...
...They are the quintessential wrong kind of people...
...The task of the left is not to minimize or undermine these ties but to see to it that they never become bases for systematic cruelty or exclusion from public life...
...Let each tribe live secure in its own destiny, Walzer suggests, and these things will take care of themselves...
...It is a heart-warming notion, and utterly unconvincing...
...What passes for them," because what is perceived as national sentiment may be as much a result of the disarray of states as the cause of it...
...The sentiment was exquisitely nasty, and undoubtedly a perfectly accurate reflection of some of the feeling underlying Reagan's support...
...but all too often, it is...
...Then, too, a number of the twentieth century's most exquisitely illiberal, indeed, bloodthirsty political movements have been efforts to realize fantasies of national purity...
...None of this means that nationalism, ethnic solidarity, or other forms of group particularism should be rejected as elements of a vigorous civil society...
...Suppose they had prevailed...
...Historically, of course, national movements have often been competitors to left politics—seeking to substitute solidarities of race, religion, or ethnicity for those of economic condition...
...If so, Walzer is telling us that the dictates of "tribal" sentiment must take precedence over other ethical, moral, or political obligations —at least when the "parochialism" of tribal identity is "threatened...
...But that seems to be what Walzer thinks...
...Clearly their impulse aimed at realizing what almost anyone would recognize as a "tribal" vision—apparently including various nativist and racist doctrines, in conjunction with resistance to central government...
...Or they may be regarded (as with slaves and their descendants in early America) as inherently incapable of assuming the responsibilities of citizenship...
...For weeks, politicians, clergy, and miscellaneous pundits scrambled to condemn, to explain, to defend, or to apologize...
...The hard questions have to do with what principles, arrangements, and strategies we must adopt when the demands of "tribal" solidarity conflict with other fundamental values...
...But the unit in which liberty or democracy is to be pursued here must perforce be the "tribe...
...What's worse, when the dominant group seeks to portray the identity of the state as isomorphic with its own, the very existence of "the wrong kind of people" is apt to become a scandal and a threat...
...Any sizable population, it would seem, includes people drawn to contrasting particularisms —sub-categories or groupings with which people identify more or less intensely...
...For the Palestinians, unlike Jews, there is no "law of return" —no matter how deep the identifications or how long the family histories linking people to Haifa, Jerusalem, or Nazareth...
...Consider current debates over the terms under which immigrants from the former Soviet Union are to be instated in Israel...
...Thus the stage is set for unspeakable oppression, ranging from wholesale denial of political rights to outright extermination...
...But the unanswered questions are too compelling to be dismissed: how must democratic and egalitarian thinkers react to evident injustice perpetrated on behalf of "tribal" values...
...We are first members of our "tribes," he suggests— and then, possibly, other things, as well...
...Even among Israel's most liberal apologists, few can contemplate any vision of Israel that does not severely penalize the country's wrong kinds of people...
...They did this by encouraging their members to take up legal residence in the county, which otherwise had few year-round residents and hence few voters...
...But these are the easy cases...
...The more one reflects on this ambiguous remark, the more ominous it seems...
...Surely such a position ascribes stunning moral and political precedence to the claims of such parochialism, over and against other considerations...
...But we all have reason to rejoice that questions of this kind are not matters of public policy in America...
...Wherever in Israel the immigrants ultimately reside, their arrival can only further diminish the life chances of the indigenous Palestinians...
...The closest he comes to a definition is at the end of his remarks, where he describes tribalism as "the commitment of individuals and groups to their own history, culture, and identity...
...But mostly Walzer seems to consider the matter self-evident...
...How are we to respond to claims of the special vocations of national, religious, ethnic, or racial groupings to rule over specific peoples and places...
...Walzer apparently intends this anodyne language—the depiction of "the tribe" as an indispensable, life-giving, identity-forming facilitator of democracy—to disarm any critical reaction...
...The disfranchised group may be seen as transients—temporary occupants of the national territory, even if they have nowhere else to go...
...For the Protestants of Northern Ireland, the very idea that Catholics might stand on equal footing calls into question their own national identity...
...But, of course, the needs being reckoned are only those of people falling within tribal boundaries...
...Or what if the new government had sought to do what many national governments have attempted, in defense of "tribal" sympathies: forbidding the public display of any religious symbols other than the established faith...
...In other words, a direct response to self-evident human needs...
...520 • DISSENT In short, how do we react when the logic of "tribal" demands runs a collision course with the demands of justice, equality, or even ordinary decency...
...This means that "letting the people go," in Walzer's soothing phrase, will never do, if it means putting state power in the hands of those bent on using it to uphold their own "tribes" against outsiders—that is, against "the wrong kinds of people...
...For the impulses that Walzer brackets as FALL • 1992 • 519 "tribalism" generally militate, as he seems to acknowledge, toward control over states...
...The collapse of central power is exhilarating for many...
...In particular, we must do everything in our power to prevent the state from becoming the vehicle for implementing visions of ethnic, religious, or national domination...
...But it is hard to see why religion, ethnicity, or nationality necessarily has, or deserves, any prior or overriding status among all possible attachments...
...In a moment of characteristically American political bathos during the 1980 presidential campaign, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention declared to a gathering hosting Ronald Reagan: "God does not hear the prayer of a Jew...
...When taken seriously, however, their consequences can be harrowing —from forced conversions to forced transfers of population and wars of extermination...
...A few years ago in California, a militant right-wing sect quietly sought to take over one of the remote, sparsely populated mountain counties...
...Perhaps the temptation to draw such ultimately invidious distinctions is inherent in the logic of religion itself...
...In times of uncertainty, when long-centralized systems of coercion lose their grip, people reflexively grasp at ethnic or national identifications, or what passes for them...
...All that we know for sure is that it won't resemble what went before—and that nationalism will count much more than before, both within states and in relations among them...
...Not only in Israel, Northern Ireland, and India, but now, too, in Croatia, Myanamar, Rwanda, and on and on...
...As the 522 • DISSENT right kind of people exercise the option of returning to Israel, Palestinians will be lucky to hold onto what is theirs now...
...Much of the apparent upsurge of national feeling in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, one suspects, represents a feverish search for a principle that will promise safety in an increasingly menacing political environment...
...The implication is that all people's identities are bound up with their "commitment" to "their own history...
...We have to reject racial, ethnic, religious, and national chauvinism in all their forms, wherever they surface in social practice...
...This severe inequality is built into the logic of the tribal state...
...The left can hardly afford to ignore these developments...
...I take much issue with his statement, less for what he says than for the yawning moral and political issues that he skirts...
...What measures must we take to make sure that no racial, religious, or ethnic group will be bracketed as "the wrong kind of people...
...It is easy to applaud impulses like Walzer's for the encouragement of "tribal" solidarities—where the encouragement involves no claims against those not included in such solidarities...
...Those who framed the Constitution had the good sense to keep government out of the business of dictating religious positions—and, thereby, to forestall any sort of government-sanctioned efforts against "the wrong kinds of people" —in this case, those whose prayers God is deemed not to hear...
...This means designing institutions broad enough to afford space for both the Amish and for ActUp, for the traditional regionalisms of rural Western Europe and for the customs of newly arrived non-European workers admitted to those countries...
...The litany of justifications for such harm are a testament to the powers of collective rationalization...
...Israeli spokespersons at many points in that political spectrum characterize the aim of the exercise in terms that Walzer himself has used: "the humanitarian purpose of absorbing hundreds of thousands of new immigrants...
...At best, these invidious themes are downplayed in interpretation, having minimal effect on social practice...
...And note: these questions become most acute where those extolling national solidarity seek to appropriate the state as a vehicle for their aspirations...
...For some people, such identifications are emotional and exclusive...
...One would have hoped that any such politics would be intolerable to all thinkers of the left...
...And from the appropriation of state power by particular "tribes" grows one of the most malignant fruits of modern politics: the permanent bracketing of those outside "tribal" boundaries as the wrong kinds of people— inherently ineligible for full participation in the polity...
...These range from ties based on religion and ethnicity to those of region, profession, political philosophy, sexual orientation, and on and on...
...The left has never understood the tribes," he wistfully avers, as though what constitutes "the tribes" were transparent...
...With the collapse of the Soviet system, these notions join the vast array of once familiar certainties that now appear merely quaint...
...As exponents of political democracy, we perhaps do best to avoid passing judgment on theology or other strictly metaphysical manifestations of "tribal" ideology...
...The materialist interpretation of history," wrote Weber in a famous passage, "is no cab to be taken at will...
...In short, we must stand for a world where there are no "wrong kinds of people" in political life—where religion, race, ethnicity, and national heritage are natural expressions of social identification, but neither the inspiration for nor the targets of invidious state policy...
...Pressures to this end are always enormous...
...What if they had sought to deny those of the wrong race or religion the option of residing, or even of spending the night in the county...
...But before we can be any of those other things, we must be secure in our "tribal" identities...
...Second, the left must remain vigilant in defending those who suffer the effects of tribal domination, in any and all of its forms...
...And, should these new rebels make good their claims, will not still smaller units assert themselves against the victors, seeking to secure their own freedom in still smaller units...
...It was one of those uncontrolled FALL • 1992 • 521 outcroppings of candor that occasionally enliven American politics by disclosing things widely felt, but mostly suppressed...
...In a world where states remain key arbiters of power, mastery over "one's own" state has come to represent the ultimate chance for "a people" to take control of its own destiny...
...The trouble with "tribal" identity is that it so often upholds the specialness of those on the inside by invoking the disparagement of the Almighty against all others—that is, against the wrong kinds of people...
...First, conceive and encourage the practice of social arrangements that afford the widest possible flourishing of particularisms, in ways that enrich rather than restrict civic life...
...What stance are we to take on clashes between representatives of rival "tribal" claims—as when two or more such groups both insist that a particular territory forms an indivisible element of their tribal patrimony...
...In India, the presence of Sikhs and Muslims challenges the self-image of those cherishing the notion of a Hindu tribal state...
...Some localities in the Deep South have enforced such practices, even in recent years...
...From all evidence, such claims are growing more widespread...
...I would have thought the truth more banal, more ambiguous...
...We all have our tribes, apparently, and to lose touch with them is to lose identity itself...
...The only silver lining was the fact that the sentiments were clearly no part of the American constitutional system...
...Should they have been permitted to pursue their "tribal" vision, abetted by the instrumentalities of government power...
...Was the classic Hindu custom of suttee—in which widows were expected to cremate themselves alive on their late husbands' funeral pyres—any more morally acceptable, for being an authentic expression of tribal morality...
...Any doctrine purporting to place believers in touch with the ultimate design of the universe raises questions about those who (seemingly) don't have the sense, or the God-given grace, to recognize revealed truth when they see it...
...To be sure, this need not necessarily be the case...
...next, rebellion within those units, as Ossetians seek independence from Georgians, Russians from Moldavians, ethnic Poles from Lithuanians, and so on...
...Is it intended as a normative statement, as an affirmation of how things ought properly to be...
...Basic to any such perspective, I would have thought, is the assumption that no "tribe," however we understand the term, can be held morally superior to any other...
...for others, casual and pluralistic...
...Surely there is a lesson to be learned in the evolution of aspirations for a Jewish homeland into plans for extending Jewish supremacy to all areas dictated by tribal doctrine—especially as these doctrines fan the flames of tribal ideologies among Israel's immediate neighbors...
...What we can do—and must—is to prevent doctrines of tribal superiority from becoming bases for social practice...
...In the former Soviet empire, the process of political fission has begun...
...What listening policies the Deity follows in these respects I cannot say...
...When my parochialism is threatened," he writes, "I become wholly, radically parochial...
...One does not have to go far afield to confront such dilemmas...
...Nationalism was supposed to be an anachronism in the twentieth century—overwhelmed by the economic bounty and social universalism of the world's "advanced" societies...
...The trouble is that by making a particular state the vehicle for the aspirations of a particular "people," much harm is apt to be done to all those bracketed as the wrong kind of people...
...Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, unfortunately, is not only a Christian doctrine...
...For the fact remains that political life often forces us to choose between condoning cherished customs and aspirations of a particularistic group and elementary justice...
...Or they may be depicted as an upstart historical presence—a people with no "real" history...
...It would be a bizarre world—and not a very attractive one—in which people felt no special affinities for particular categories of their fellow citizens...
...Who can say that being Irish is, or should be, inherently a more basic identification than being gay, or Protestant, or socialist, or disabled...
...But Walzer evidently holds that the overriding moral claims of tribalism warrant it: "What is at stake is the value of a historical or cultural or religious community and the political liberty of its members...
...It ought to give pause...
...tribes" will cease to be intolerant if only they feel no threat from outside...
...Would Walzer have wanted to "let them go their own way...
...Self-determination for the many different kinds of tribes (nations, ethnic groups, religious communities) is bound to be complicated," he writes...
...Instead, the left can do two positive things...
...But even absent all the historical baggage, it is hard to mistake the conflict of principle as applied to current cases...
...Or they may (like Catholics in nineteenth-century America or Jews in many countries today) be considered to hold incompatible loyalties to other powers...
...Nationalism has always been a troublesome issue for the left...
...Michael Walzer addresses some of these issues in his recent essay on "tribalism" (Dissent, Spring 1992...
...From the rest of the article, one gathers that this means the history of "one's own" ethnic, religious, or national group...
...Walzer seems to consider the satisfaction of "tribal" requirements a sine qua non for any form of democracy: "Bring the 'people' into political life and they will arrive, marching in tribal ranks and orders, carrying with them their own languages, historic memories, customs, beliefs, and commitments...
...First the breakup of the old Russian empire into constituent national states...
...From these sentiments, it is a short, cynical step to denying even the legitimate existence of the wrong kinds of people within the state—and we have statements like Golda Meir's declaration in 1969 on the Palestinians: "They do not exist...
...And what are we to make of the virtues of "tribalism" when two or more particularisms both interpret their traditions to vest in them exclusive, perhaps God-given rights to control a particular territory or a particular activity, such as the slaughter of cows...
...Is the suppression of homosexuality, or atheism, or any number of other particularisms justified, simply because of tribal inspiration handed down from sacred scripture or other age-old lore...
Vol. 39 • September 1992 • No. 4
