Workers Without Borders

Critics have dismissed the notion of open borders as utopian. Socialism has to be worldwide. It's impossible to create socialism in one country, surrounded by a global capitalist market. John Lennon wrote Imagine, which some people believe to be a beautiful political song:

imagine there’s no countries

it isn’t hard to do

nothing to kill or die for

and no religion too

imagine all the people

living life in peace…

Instead of division into artificial, competing, and necessarily adversarial nations, socialism will be a world of cooperation.  Instead of wars for the economic benefit of the capitalists, whether religion is used to incite the blood lust or not, we will live life in peace. In every war that has ever been, the poor have been the cannon fodder in the wars of the rulers. Working people were the cannon fodder for the birth of capitalism, and every war since. When the cause of war — economics — is eliminated with capitalism, it will no longer be able to cause war. Around the world, today, people are far more alike than they are different. But the differences are used to set us at eachothers throats. The only beneficiaries are the capitalists for whom we have built a paradise, and trick us to kill each other, in wars to maintain their parasitical paradise. Socialism will be a society of cooperation, not competition. The computer revolution and the internet have changed our lives, creating a world without borders and opening new opportunities every day.

When humanity has truly grown up, it will look back on the division of the world into national states, and the restriction of the right of humans to travel, live, and work where they wish, as a kind of world apartheid. We will wonder, I think, how we ever felt it was justified, or even meaningful, to speak of a human being's statehood. We will understand, of course, the material history and the social causes which lay behind nation states, in the same way that we understand the history of apartheid itself, or slavery. We will wonder how we ever managed to escape awareness of the obvious fact that there is but one, common humanity, and that all rights spring from it alone, and not accidents of race, sex, or geography. Countries are cages into which humanity is divided for the purpose of being ruled over and exploited by minorities. They exist to limit human freedom: money and goods travel the world freely, while humans are kept in check by passports and border controls. Humanity's freedom will not be won by building new states, but by destroying them all.

Frontier guards and worse confront most of the world's people whenever they contemplate changing their residence between countries. This situation is so widespread that many people accept it as a matter of course, without asking why governments should restrict international movements. National borders are made by and for the rich and powerful--to enforce or ignore at their will. As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."

We need a world without borders, not glorified bouncers for global capitalism patrolling them. National borders have separated humanity into distinct artificial communities, defining. While borders are permeable to some the privileged, they are impermeable to most others.

Corporations move across borders and conduct business however they please, but the same rules don't apply to workers. Immigration rules and penalties are set up to control--but not stop--the flow of workers. Considering that national boundaries only benefit our rulers, it stands to reason that a socialist society would dispense with these borders, a world without borders. People and produce would travel without restriction, from place to place. We recognise that borders are merely lines drawn on a map that wish nothing more than to divide the workers of the world. As socialists we unite to build a world without borders in which everyone will be able to freely visit and live wherever they choose.

Only the people themselves have the collective intelligence to know what they want and when and how they want it. Social democracy implies an educated, conscious and responsible citizenry made up of aware members of society. The main tenet of socialism is to create an integral society that allows its members to freely develop their highest human potential. Socialism is peaceful because violence goes against the meaning of life. Violence is a last resort. Democracy must defend itself and as a preventive formula must make clear that it has the capacity to do so. For this reason it is forcefully peaceful.

“Patriotism is being used today the way patriotism has always been used and that is to try to encircle everybody in the nation into a common cause, the cause being the support of war and the advance of national power. Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has…to see society in class terms, to realize that we do not have a common interest in our society, that people have different interests.” Howard Zinn

Patriotism is not love of your country. Patriotism is love for someone else’s country. You see, the Earth and its resources are owned by a tiny minority. For example, 84 people - a mere bus full - owns more wealth than half the world's population put together. The UK and its resources are owned by a few families - it is their country and not ours.

 There are thousands of ex-military, some without limbs, that have come back from fighting for 'their' country and they are homeless and hungry. In fact most who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing. This is because they have been fighting and dying for a country they do not own.

The World Socialist Movement asks not for patriotism but instead we ask that workers of the world cease fighting each other and instead take the earth into common ownership. Without countries there will be no need for patriotism and war.