Across the world nationalism is rearing its ugly head again. Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to "The Nation". Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests. What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations. The presence of political nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation. Of course, the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity.
Socialism and nationalism are opposed. They are irreconcilable. For the socialist the propertyless working class have no country. The nationalist, on the other hand, ignores the class division of society and the class struggle. For him or her, the nation is all-important. The worker is encouraged to believe he or she has a country. Nationalism is, in fact, one of the means which capitalism uses to blinker the workers to class society. The Socialist Party urges workers to unite with workers elsewhere to set up a world socialist system where the peoples of the world will co-operate to produce for their needs on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. This will be a society without frontiers and without nations. Certainly, socialism will allow the fullest linguistic and cultural diversity, but to make this the basis of a political programme is something altogether different. The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible.
Socialists explain how workers are exploited not as individuals or particular nationalities, but as members of a class. From this perspective, identifying with a class provides a rational basis for working class political action. We argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). And the state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history. One popular misconception about nationalism is that it's synonymous with fascism. This is inaccurate. Fascism is the most degenerate form of nationalism but any kind of patriotism no matter how soft or innocuous can only be defined as anti—working class. It not only diverts workers minds away from the problems that surround them.
Nationalism has always been one of the biggest poisons for the working class. It has served to divide workers into different nation-states not only literally but ideologically. Today it is probably fair to say that a majority of workers—to one extent or another—align themselves to their domestic ruling class. After all, the ideology of nationalism ultimately means that workers and capitalists living in a particular geographical area must have a common interest. It has never been explained in what way capitalism administered by Scots from Edinburgh or by the Welsh in Cardiff will be better workers than capitalism administered from London. The simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one. Nationalists cannot will or legislate away those problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, or insecurity. For the working class, there will be wages while they are working and pensions when they are too old or disabled.
Nationalists see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-medieval times and now outmoded by the global nature of society. It is the Socialist Party who are the men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources, and uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand-in-hand with "the nation".
The objective would be a stateless world community of free access. Given that nationalism does nothing to further this understanding it is an obstruction to world socialism. Because of the international nature of capitalism, workers are exploited everywhere and therefore the attack against exploitation must be on a broad front recognising no national barriers. Socialists say without any hesitation that there can be only one way to achieve lasting peace across this planet and that means an organised retreat from nationalism in all its forms and an escalation of the struggle for global working class emancipation. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion of the world? Workers have a World to win, not nations to fight for.
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