Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, as translated by Norman Denny.  An excerpt.

Distinction between a nation and its social structure

I cut the following out of the previous quotation on solving the problems of (1) the production of wealth and (2) its distribution.  He makes a similar distinction to the one between people and their government that many of us consider important.

To solve the first problem alone is to be either a Venice or an England.  You will have artificial power lake that of Venice or material power like that of England.  You will be the bad rich man, and you will end in violence, as did Venice, or in bankruptcy, as England will do.  And the world will leave you to die, because the world leaves everything to die that is based solely on egotism, everything that in the eyes of mankind does not represent a virtue or an idea.

It must be understood that in using the words Venice and England we are not talking about peoples but about social structures, oligarchies imposed upon nations, not the nations themselves.  For nations we have always respect and sympathy.  Venice the people will revive.  England the aristocracy will fall; but England the nation is immortal.  Having said this we may proceed.

Page 723.

(Note that his prediction about England could almost be seen as come true, despite the moderate strength the working class eventually gained there: the economy of Italy, for instance, is now larger than that of the UK, which had the largest empire ever known.)

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