‘Neutres dans les grandes revolutions des Etats qui les environnaient, les Suisses s’enrichirent des malheurs d’autrui et fondèrent une banque sur les calamités humaines.’ (Chateaubriand)
‘Switzerland does not exist’. (André Gorz)
From a political point of view, Switzerland represents three things: a haven for international capital, the embodiment of the petit-bourgeois spirit, and an apparent challenge to Marxist theory on the national question. Though these phenomena are swiftly conjured up by the word ‘Switzerland’, they are not seen as forming an essential unit. Yet Switzerland is all these three things precisely because it is not an ordinary nation-state: it was created, by both internal and external forces, against the nation-state at a strategic moment of history. Switzerland is a unique construct—an international mercenary state, first of feudal militarism, and now of world capital.
If Engels was correct (Der Schweizer Bürgerkrieg, 1847)—though this position is disputed by Grimmfootnote1—the Swiss displayed their profoundly reactionary propensities as early as the 13th century when they performed the extraordinary feat of breaking away from Austria at the one and only time in history when Austria was a relatively progressive state. Switzerland’s mercenary role in the feudal ages is even today evidenced by the fossil Swiss Guard of the Vatican—the only such surviving relic in Europe.