> they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state And, moreover, one particular nation-state. But still, the scholarship you find in

> they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state And, moreover, one particular nation-state. But still, the scholarship you find in American Interest tends to be high quality. I can respect a sincere concern with quality argumentation, even if the reasoning is motivated and even if I don't entirely sympathize with that motivation. > Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely The second sentence is entirely accurate. However, the article doesn't claim that communists (or capitalists) of the 20th century were trying to nurture "the middle class". Rather, the article (carefully) claims: "virtually all states—whether capitalist or communist, industrialized or developmental, great power or post-colonial—aimed to legitimate themselves by serving the interests of middle classes whose size they sought to expand... Both capitalist and communist accumulation strategies were based on the nurturing of industrial laborers". I think the article's characterization is fair, in-so-far as you can say anything at all about such a broad group of political projects as "all capitalists and also all communists"! WRT your first sentence specifically, the communist project did aim to "nurture" industrial laborers; the purported means was abolishing class, of course, but all the same.