Revolution and nationalism are piratable inventions that lock societies into ahead-behind self-perception

Evidence

What Nairn says of the modern state is no less true of the twin conceptions of which our three embattled socialist countries are contemporary realizations: revolution and nationalism. It is perhaps too easy to forget that this pair, like capitalism and Marxism, are inventions, on which patents are impossible to preserve. They are there, so to speak, for the pirating. Out of these piracies and only out of them, comes this well-known anomaly: societies such as those of Cuba, Albania, and China, which, insofar as they are revolutionary-socialist, conceive of themselves as ‘ahead’ of those of France, Switzerland, and the United States, but which, insofar as they are characterized by low productivity, miserable living standards, and backward technology, are no less certainly understood as ‘behind.’ — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 618

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The pirating of modular inventions producing simultaneous ‘ahead’ and ‘behind’ self-conceptions is a dense, generative reframe of developmental identity that resists quick summary.
• XREF: Connects to the field’s concern with how postcolonial subjects internalize a developmentalist temporality — the ‘not yet’ logic critiqued in racialized/modernity discourse. — connects to: Nationalism could be consciously modeled and pirated once visible predecessors existed. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 284; Planned-‘revolution’ was a learnable module that made twentieth-century revolutions conceivable in backward societies — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 619; the MOC “The Great Derivative: How the Athens-to-Washington Story Fabricates the Inheritance It Pretends to Record”

Related

• Revolution and nationalism are pirateable inventions like capitalism and Marxism (similarity 0.92)
• Nationalism could be consciously modeled and pirated once visible predecessors existed. (similarity 0.85)
• Planned-‘revolution’ was a learnable module that made twentieth-century revolutions conceivable in backward societies (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Nationalism could be consciously modeled and pirated once visible predecessors existed. #corroborates (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 284
• Planned-‘revolution’ was a learnable module that made twentieth-century revolutions conceivable in backward societies #corroborates (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 619