Antun SAADEH’s Social-Nationalist Doctrine. Presenting and Reconstructing an Original Economic and Social Theory

Abstract

The rising of “extreme right” approaches in Europe, and the ascension of the “catastrophic nationalism” doctrines deem having a “new” nationalism approach inevitable; not to mention or disregard the “Wahhabism” approach to Islam. The social European collective memory about nation and nationalism tends to consider these subjects as diabolic. This article aims to shed light on an unconventional approach to these notions of “nation” and “nationalism”. The approach covered in this paper was elaborated by Antun Saadeh. In his view the nation is neither racial nor cultural but a single unity that “is formed over time” and emerged from the interaction of human elements “within and with the environment”. Economic theory and economic strategies derive organically from Saadeh’s general social philosophy of nationalism.