Pimping for Capitalism

"I love my country too much to be a nationalist" - Albert Camus

It is rare to meet anyone whose world view is not framed by nationalism in one way or another. This is hardly surprising. The world is constructed on national lines: nation states, national languages, national education systems and national laws. And from a very early age, we are taught about our shared national culture and encouraged to embrace “national identity”. We reflexively support “our” country, “our” military, “our” national sporting teams. Nationalism is not a coherent argument. Nor could it be, because, while the sentiment is in part a reflection of how the world is structured, its purpose is to obscure, rather than clarify, the nature of society.

“National interest” and “European unity” are disguises donned by various vying groups of capitalists in order to lead the workers to abandon resolute defense of their own interests.  The working class has no interest in strengthening its own class enemy whether it is those defending “national sovereignty” or those who call for a stronger European “superstate”. Virtually every political party, regardless of ideological stripe, has to varying degrees been complicit in the closing of minds. Even the Left, can maintain a deafening silence when unpopular views and ideas are under attack. Nationalism is the natural enemy of dissent. Nationalist thinking lies at the heart of the difficulties in managing the migration crisis. Nationalism is an outdated idea, a relic from bygone times. We are living in a globalised age, where collaboration between people across the geographies is what’s helping us solve problems of poverty and disease etc. The evolution of human civilisation is about discovering that there is more to the world than what our ancestors believed. In such a context, we should be looking for ways to connect through concepts of shared values, rather than shared national identity. We need to look beyond our borders to allow a free flow of ideas, no matter how much they offends some people and as long as they don’t call for violence. We need to shed the idea of nationalism.

We have a Hungary whose Prime Minister says he intends to build an “illiberal state,” a Czech President who attends anti-Muslim rallies with the far right, a Polish leadership that declares the media should do the government’s bidding, and a Slovak neo-nazi prime minister. There has been an upswing in xenophobic rhetoric and oligarchs are capturing politics and media. In Czech politics is the rise of Andrej Babiš, the second richest man in the country. He founded his own political party ANO in 2011, “to fight corruption and other ills in the country’s political system.” He is now Finance Minister in the coalition government and bought a significant percentage of Czech media. There are worrying trends in Germany too. Launched at the end of 2014, the social movement “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West” (Pegida), quickly gained momentum, especially in its birthplace of Dresden and other east German cities such as Leipzig. Pegida’s demonstrations against the perceived Islamisation of Germany, have attracted tens of thousands of protestors. Pegida especially benefited from the refugee crisis, but wasn’t the only far-right movement to do so: the right-wing populist “Alternative for Germany” has now become the third most popular party in the country, and will likely enter the Bundestag after the federal elections in 2017.

Nationalism should be placed alongside a range of other taken-for-granted capitalist ideas. It is part of the reflection in people’s consciousnesses of the experience of living in a capitalist world. Just as living under capitalism makes the great mass of people take for granted that commodity production, alienated wage labour and competition are more common than co-operation, so it makes them take for granted the necessity of the nation state. And nationalist consciousness makes sense so long as they do not challenge the system as a whole. As the rich of every country get richer, they are forcing a race to the bottom on the rest of us. Everywhere, workers are being told to expect less, not more, to work harder and longer with fewer social protections and a continually eroded welfare state. The super-wealthyhave constructed their own way of life that excludes workers. Those at the top – whether Chinese, US or British capitalists, top government bureaucrats from poor African states or Middle Eastern oil sheiks – stay in the same international hotels, enjoy meals from the same top restaurants, live in similarly fortified gated palatial estates and send their children to elite private schools where they mix with others of the same class background. At the same time, workers around the world today more than ever share similar conditions of life: tempos of work, patterns of consumption, forms of recreation and leisure, increasingly cut across the old national barriers. Struggles between workers and bosses in one country often combine with struggles in other countries.

If we want to overcome the real divisions between rich and poor, we need to break down the invented divisions between peoples across the globe. Marx and Engels recognised that “working men have no country” and it was a call for overcoming division and uniting working people across borders. No one would suggest that this is an easy task. But all workers have an interest in adopting this spirit, rather than succumbing to nationalist arguments. Working people often will find that their views accord with those of other workers of different nationalities around the world. Starving people could be fed by mobilising the world’s extensive transport networks to get the 1.3 billion tonnes of food that are produced each year to those who need it. There is no technological or logistical barrier to this: every day McDonalds already supplies millions of Big Macs and fries to its 35,000 outlets in 118 countries without too much trouble. But because there’s no money to be made in getting food to poor people, it doesn’t happen. In terms of climate change sufficient wind farms and solar panels to supply the world’s energy needs. These could be built in a matter of months if there was the political will. Poverty could be alleviated without too much trouble in a socialist society. We need to resurrect Marx and Engels’ call to arms: “Workers of all countries unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”