Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Food for thought

Britain, like most countries these days, is up to its eyes in economic woes. Now David Cameron is talking about a "One nation, deficit reduction plan, from a one nation party", and opposition leader, Ed Milibrand, used the phrase 'one nation' forty times in his conference speech last Fall. Even Nick Clegg used it when he told everyone to "Pull together as one nation". The idea is to convince the working class that their interests are identical with those of the capitalist class, whether it is making products for them to sell at a profit in the market place or fighting wars to further the local capitalists' commercial interests, as opposed to the interests of capitalists in other countries. The plain brutal fact is that the working class of any country has more in common with workers ten
thousand miles away than with the capitalists in their own country. One may like certain things about the country one lives in, but it is folly to identify that with the country as a political identity that is a means whereby the few live well at the expense of the many. As for the term 'one nation', the arithmetic is a bit off because there are in fact two nations on this planet – those of the capitalist class and of the working class. The idea should be to abolish all concepts of nation and replace it with 'a world for the workers'. John Ayers

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