Building a world socialist movement

We see the need for building a mass socialist party and recognise the importance of clarifying the many questions such a task demands. The class struggle teaches one lesson above all others, a lesson summed up in a single proposition: The most important project for the working class is the creation of a party to reflect and represent its interests, a leader-free party where members do their own thinking. The Socialist Party unfurled the red banner of socialism from the hour of its birth, has no rival in the field. It is the only revolutionary party, the heir of the rich traditions of the past and the herald of the future. The various groups and cliques which challenged the Socialist Party have all, without exception, fallen into pitiful disintegration and demoralisation.

It is nationalism that can divide the workers so that the workers of one nationality are struggling against the workers of another nationality for a few illusory crumbs the rulers throw out exactly for that purpose! It is nationalism that can pit groups of workers against each other with the most hideous rage, while their mutual oppressors skip off with both their purses for a little sun and fun. Nationalism means exclusivism and isolation. Any nationalism finally implies that those people are better than all others. Even the most “justifiable” nationalism, taken to its logical conclusion, can end up justifying the slaughter of almost anybody else outside the nation. We are the victims of a nationalism that preaches superiority and inferiority. We have seen its obscene terror and oppression. We are not fighting so that we can put these on somebody else. Nationalism does not serve the real interests of the people. This is true and has been proven correct time and again. Nationalism delivers workers into the hands of the exploiters of their own nationality.

Patriotism’s effect on the body politic is like a malignant tumour. It has persuaded millions of workers that they should endure the miseries of austerity and war. Enormous damage has been done, throughout the world, by the notion that one country and its people are superior to the others. The Socialist Party recognises that there is an irreconcilable conflict between workers and owners everywhere. We recognise that workers have no country and that patriotism is a delusion and a snare. Patriotism is not supportable with fact and reason but by deception and prejudice. That is why it is so easily incited into a mindless frenzy. Governments attempt to persuade us all of the merits of patriotism and sacrifice for our country. With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest. The more people who see through it the better. We have more in common with the ordinary people of all other countries than we have with the leaders of 'our' own. It's not 'your' country, it belongs to the rich.

Nationalism was born out of commercial mercantile capitalism of the 16th and 17th century State, politically. It developed under the industrial capitalism of the 18th and 19th century State. It grew to its greatest State power in the republics of the 20th century represented by fascism and “National Socialism,” and the enormous growth of State Capitalism. Socialism cannot be accomplished under capitalism and under the national relations engendered by capitalism. Socialism must be international or it cannot exist at all - it is a sham. More and more the growth of economic forces demands appropriate economic and political relations which cannot be realized by the nation-state. Unable to be resolved by the national State are such problems as air pollution, climate change and the impact upon weather patterns; proper energy policies; ecological problems; oceanic problems and collective use of the oceans; world resources and their exhaustion; problems relating to world fauna and flora and their extinction; pollution of all kinds, urbanisation and over-crowding problems, In the end, not socialism but nationalism will have to disappear. The world is irresistibly being driven to internationalism and interdependence, the only race remaining, that of the human race as a whole. Socialists have to understand the only way to bring workers of different nationalities together is to insist on free association. Socialists are not proud of their nationality. They are proud of the denial of their nationality.