Patriotism is a sham

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense and conscience by the governed and a slavish submission to those who hold-power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery." - Tolstoy

Workers have no country and patriotism is a delusion and nationalism is a snare.  Nationalism denies humanity, and instead interposes nation, and denies humanity to other nations.  It also emphasises the idea that the world cannot change, since the nation is an organic whole as it is and is unchangeable. Let's not forget, that nationalism doesn't "just happen" it is the product of a vast process of material production, from mass media, to civic performance.  The material culture of sports helps produce, reproduce and reify nationalist ideas.  International sporting events are perhaps the finest example of nationalism being expressed after war.  With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest: with the working class it is the brand of utter ignorance. Let us be internationalists.

Working people have no country of their own. Their land is the property of a master class and the worker rarely owns enough to bury his or her coffin. Patriotism runs counter to the interests of working-people. It is therefore opposed by the Socialist Party who do not offer "policies for Britain" etc, but demand a world community without frontiers.  The aims and ambitions of nationalists and patriots are not identical with the principles and ideals of international socialism, and that there is, in fact, no necessary connection between the two things. Too often in history workers have been urged to concern themselves with the interests of nations - to fight to defend one against the other, or to establish new ones.

Let every Scot face the fact that Scottish nationalism is not socialism and that the achievement of the SNP even up to the highest professed ideals of traditional patriotism, namely, the complete separation of Scotland from Britain, would not “free” Scotland one iota in any sense satisfactory to the world socialist and absolutely demanded by socialist principles. This struggle of Scottish “patriots” to “free” Scotland is therefore from the our point of view an utter chimera. In the name of humanity and of sanity let every international socialist in the United Kingdom have done with the traditional follies and foolishness of nationalism or of unionism. Let us direct all our energies to the emancipating the workers from the chains of wage-slavery. Every professed socialist who lends countenance and encouragement to the deluded Scottish separatists in their vain efforts to gain a sovereign Scotland is guilty either of betraying socialist principles or be ignorant of what socialist principles really are, a knave or a fool.  Associating the concepts of nationalism and socialism has done nothing but to add to the confusion in working-class minds about what socialists really stand for. Scottish nationalism has more than its fair share of leftist confusionists. 

The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What binds you to the capitalist? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the lash of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. A bond of shame, a tie that is a degradation to every wage-slave and patriotism is the acceptance and approval of this bond.

When hands clasp across national boundaries in solidarity the workers will know that borders and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international socialism (and there can be no socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or socialism will evaporate. The socialist patriot is an impossibility. If any is loyal to those in the class that exploits, he or she is a traitor to our own class. The capitalist class will practice nationalism and preach patriotism just so long as it serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided. When they face an enlightened and united working class, they themselves ignore every boundary in their need to combat the workers. The Socialist Party does not care whether the capitalist class divide the UK among themselves. What concerns us, is the class ownership, which we work and organise to abolish. Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions used to blind capitalism's victims. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion? Workers have a world to win, not nations to fight for.