Freedom Not Nationhood

From one point of view the prospects for the future don’t look good.  Across the globe, populist nationalists have taken power or threaten to assume power. In addition to our usual activity of putting across the case for socialism, the Socialist Party will have to step up the socialist case against nationalism.  We will be insisting that wage workers in one state have the same basic interest as their counterparts in other states. We are all members of the world working class and have a common interest in working together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the globe will have become the common-owned property of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all.

Patriotism is an objectionable sentiment since it means the placing of one’s own country, its interests and well-being, above those of the rest of humanity.  A nationalist who wants his or her country great and strong invariably wants to see it so, if need be, at the expense of the welfare and interests of other nations. Patriotism Is the enemy of social justice and socialism.  A community of interests and neighbourly feeling does not exclusively apply to nationality. In ancient times it was the city-state rather than the nation-state which was its boundary. The notion that there is something wrong or disgraceful in going against one’s own country is imbued within us all but, of course, it does not involve any capitalist when it comes to determining where his or her investments should go. 

We live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases. What can be done about it? The solution is one world without frontiers and without states, but not a world government presiding over a world capitalist economy. It is world socialism, where the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all, to be used for the benefit of all Earth’s people. 

Firstly, borders and nations are not the real problem, but are consequences of the real problem, which is private class ownership and control of the means of life under capitalism. National borders will survive so long as national capital finds them indispensable to the needs of capital. Independence won't lead to a single affordable house, a single hospital or a single school being built if it does not make a profit for the capitalist and investor. 

The planet we live on has been arbitrarily divided into some two hundred nation states. This is our planet and we want it back. We can replace oppression with equality, waste of resources with production directly for use, and systemic competition with cooperation for the common good. We can create the world that we want, fashioned by the majority, in the interests of the majority. Socialists have no interest in rearranging national boundaries or in changing the nationality of the capitalist class in certain areas. Workers should just take the pattern of states as they find them and abolish the lot.

We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements. Only in a socialist society will the community be able to make decisions about energy production which are based on what is safe and in the human interest including our shared environment instead of decisions based on, and limited by, economic considerations. Only in a socialist society, when human beings can relate to each other as fellows and not as units of labour to be exploited or national enemies to be destroyed, will the threats to humanity's continued existence really be removed. The task confronting us is to free ourselves from the depredations of capitalism and create the World Commonwealth of Humanity.

Capitalist competition leads to squabbles over artificially created national boundaries. Nation states waste resources on maintaining armed forces and developing weapons of mass destruction which threaten the existence of the world. Competition between workers, especially in a dwindling job market during capitalism's periodic slumps, leads to poverty, insecurity and xenophobia. A socialist society will release the potential to satisfy human needs which the computer-age has made possible. And because it will not be limited by market forces or the need for secrecy it will be possible to co-operate on a worldwide scale for the first time.