In-Group/Out-Group Tribalism
If libertarianism is hard to adopt while nationalism unites millions, one reason lies below argument, in a sentiment William Graham Sumner anatomized in 1906. His Folkways gives the wiki the descriptive sociology of the we-group/out-group split and the classic formulation of ethnocentrism — the disposition that collective identities exploit and that an individualist order has to work against rather than with.
The we-group and the others-group
Sumner’s claim is that group life generates two opposite relations at once: peace, order, and loyalty turned inward, and suspicion or hostility turned outward. The cohesion of the in-group and the hostility toward the out-group are, for Sumner, two faces of the same thing — solidarity is partly manufactured by the existence of an outside to stand against.
Ethnocentrism
The disposition has a name and a structure:
Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.
Its everyday expressions are not marginal but central to political feeling:
Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.
Why it explains the asymmetry
This is the missing psychological layer under Nationalism and State Formation. Tilly shows nationalism is manufactured by the state-making process; Sumner shows why the raw material is always available — ethnocentrism is a default sentiment that statecraft can channel into patriotism and, in Sumner’s own term, chauvinism. Nationalism is “easy” because it speaks to a we-group instinct that predates any argument; libertarianism is “hard” because it asks people to extend peaceful, contractual treatment to the out-group — to strangers rated by conduct rather than membership — which runs against the grain Sumner describes.
It also complements Mass Society and Atomization: Arendt explains how the breakdown of intermediate ties leaves lonely individuals craving belonging; Sumner explains the shape that craving takes — a we-group with an enemy. Together they describe the demand a mass movement meets. And it sharpens The Politics of Obedience: the “habit” that binds people to rule is reinforced when the ruler is identified with the we-group, so that obedience feels like loyalty.
Scope
Sumner is a non-libertarian descriptive sociologist; like Tilly and Arendt elsewhere in this wiki, he supplies a diagnosis, not a libertarian ethics. Folkways is a sprawling comparative study of custom, and this article draws only on its in-group/out-group sections. In the extract itself Sumner treats patriotic bias as “a recognized perversion of thought and judgment against which our education should guard us” — but nothing in the concept claims that markets automatically dissolve tribalism. The value here is honesty about what an individualist order is up against in human nature, not a claim that the problem is solved.
See Also
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Nationalism and State Formation - the state-making process that channels ethnocentrism into nationalism
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Mass Society and Atomization - the loneliness that makes the we-group offer persuasive
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The Politics of Obedience - obedience reinforced when the ruler is identified with the we-group
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State Power and Intervention - the “we” camouflage that fuses people with the state
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Libertarianism - the doctrine whose adoption this sentiment works against
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Folkways - Sumner’s 1906 work, the source of the we-group/out-group and ethnocentrism passages
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Libertarianism and Human Nature: The Adoption Problem - newsroom thesis backlink
Sources
- Folkways: We-Group, Out-Group, and Ethnocentrism (extract) - Sumner’s secs 13-15 on the we-group/out-group distinction and ethnocentrism