Thirty years later Marxism is a memory-and so, sadly, is the notion of a melting pot. Tribalism is rampant. The utopian transethnic conceits of the 20th century-from Moscow to Maastricht-seem as irrelevant now as ethnicity once did. The borders imposed by communist and colonial empires have proved fictitious; the work of drawing the real maps of Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa will be the source of mindless savagery for decades to come.
But even the more stable multiethnic experiments like the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada are feeling the strains of a new era-from above and below. On the one hand globalism (an economic phenomenon) has triumphed over internationalism (that enduring political phantom). Nation-states have less control over their economic and-to some extent-cultural destinies; in a global economy, borders lose meaning. At the same time there has been pressure from below-an atomization into tribes, market regions and market segments (which are postmodern cultural tribes). Scots, Quebecois and MTV watchers each strut their own notion of sovereignty.
As a result, the civilizing, law-providing functions of nations have become more tenuous. In the United States, for example, the definitions of family, justice, culture-and even truth-are up for grabs. In New York, Afrocentric radicals have determined that truth can be “metaphoric” rather than actual-if a black child is killed in a traffic accident involving a white driver, it can be called “murder” because black children have always been brutalized by whites. (Not to be outdone, Jewish fanatics call Mayor David Dinkins “anti-Semitic” when a black who may have murdered a Hasidic Jew isn’t convicted.) In Los Angeles, local warlords pretend a riotous crime spree targeting Asian shopkeepers is an “insurrection” to protest “injustice.” Meanwhile, in Bill Clinton’s mind, a cabinet that “looks like America” is one in which tribal identity neuters meritocracy. Perhaps nothing has changed: Glazer and Moynihan would submit that a “balanced” ticket in New York always was balanced by ethnicity, not ideology.
Indeed, a provocative new book called “Tribes,” by the Los Angeles journalist Joel Kotkin, takes Glazer’s thunderbolt to a new level of sophistication: the global economy, he argues, is largely the work of tribal networks. He cites five “global tribes”-Jews, Anglo-American Calvinists, Japanese, Chinese and Indians-and admits the possibility of others. In each case, the ethnic group in question has used a diaspora to great economic effect, maintained a strong group identity despite geographical dispersal and adheres to a fairly predictable set of values, “a belief in self-help, hard work, thrift, education and the family.” Kotkin’s theory is a bit too neat. The world is full of post-tribal entrepreneurs, and even the strongest ethnic identities can be diluted by affluence and intermarriage. But Kotkin does establish a clear pattern and makes a valuable distinction: not all tribes are parochial; some are forced, or choose, to be cosmopolitan.
The trouble is, most tribes aren’t lucky enough to achieve the international pariah status that breeds “cosmopolitanism” (which was Stalin’s favorite euphemism for Jewishness). Nor are many confident enough, as the British and Japanese were, to build their own diasporas. Most just hunker down where they are, demonizing their neighbors and coveting their turf, extrapolating clans into “nations” with “destinies,” even at the expense of economic viability. If utopian idealism was the delusion of choice in the 20th century, the right of “national” self-determination may plague the next. In any case, it’ll be the subject of Moynihan’s next book. “I’m calling it ‘Pandemonium’,” he says. “In ‘Paradise Lost,’ Pandemonium was the capital of hell.”
