"'List, with his trivial theory of 'national economy', can be more justifiably considered the real messiah of the national unity of Germany than the idealist Fichte, mentioned ususally as the first apostle of the German national rebirth. This 'national' movement...basically represented only a medieval reaction against the seeds of the Revolution, which were brought to Germany by napoleon, and against th eelements of th emodern bourgeois system...By contrast, the gospel of that vulgar agent of German industry, Lis, in the 30s and 40s based the 'national rebirth' on the elements of bourgeois development, on industry and trade, on the theory of the domestic market. The material basis for this patriotic movement, which in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century aroused such strong political, educational philosophical and literary currents in Germany, was above al the need to unify all the German territories ..into one greate integrated capitalistic, 'fatherland,' establishing a broad foundation for mechanized mfg and big industry.'
"Since at the time Luxemburg was writing, Marx's critique of List was not known to have existed, she of course could not have known that Marx in the 1840s vehemently denied what Luxemburg called the need to unify all German territories into 'a capitalist Germany.' For our purposes, however, Luxemburg's judgement is especially valuable. She recognized that are different kinds of nationalism and that individual nationalist thinkers do make a difference. She saw that List, unlike his German nationalist predecessors or contemporaries, understood that the Industrial Revolution in Britain heralded more than economic change; he also grasped that it would exert a powerful political, and cultural economic impact on Germany and on the rest of the world. His nationalism recognized all this...By incorporating the idea of developmental economics as a global process in nationalist thinking, one might argue, List transformed nationalism from a utopia into a 'science.'" p. 149-150
rb