Revolution and nationalism are pirateable inventions like capitalism and Marxism

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, 619

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames revolution and nationalism as modular, unpatentable inventions — a striking conceptual framing.

Related

• Revolution and nationalism are piratable inventions that lock societies into ahead-behind self-perception (similarity 0.92)
• Nationalism could be consciously modeled and pirated once visible predecessors existed. (similarity 0.81)
• Planned-‘revolution’ was a learnable module that made twentieth-century revolutions conceivable in backward societies (similarity 0.80)