Patriotism
as a devotion to the interests of the class which rules over us has
long been of value to the capitalist class throughout the world.
In
the early 1700s Jonathan Swift recommended it in “The Examiner”
thus – “the first principle of patriotism is to resent
foreigners.” This method, of setting one section of population
against another, has been used ultra-successfully all around the
world – so successfully that great swathes of people can now rouse
themselves, with no apparent external cue, against the newest threat,
the most recent immigrant group, asylum seekers, anyone who looks or
sounds like they may be from a group that’s not their own. That its
workers should be patriotic is vital to each national ruling class
and this, fertilised by official lies, is exploited by all
governments. Enemies
are required by the state elites. Enemies within and without, social,
cultural, economic enemies to keep the population vigilant against
all possible threats, to keep them fully occupied, suspicious of each
other, divided, protecting the national interest against any wayward
individual or group – including themselves.
Workers
have no country, however, the system arbitrarily divides them
according to ruling class rivalries, the workers are united in their
poverty.
Workers,
here and elsewhere, are soaked with the philosophy of nationalism
from childhood, and when their masters summon them to defend their
(the masters') ownership in the means of life, and their right to
exploit and govern, appealing to them in the name of a common
patriotism, their lack of political knowledge renders them—like
clay in the potter's hands— pliable and easily moulded, into the
designs of their social enemies, the master class. They become the
mere pawns in the political game played only between capitalist
groups. The poverty they have endured, their years of excessive toil,
and all their bitter struggles on the industrial field against the
masters are forgotten, when national traditions—the historic
camouflage that veils capitalist interests—are spread to snare
them. Workers of all lands need to know how to throw off the yoke of
capitalism to establish a system in which they will no longer be
exploited by the capitalists of any nationality.
The
World Socialist Movement is their only hope. It
is not a change of masters, or a change in the location of rulers,
that the workers of Scotland need but the establishment of a system
of society where they will democratically control the means of life
owned in common. It
is in the interest of your masters that you should be divided by
national and religious barriers
All
capitalist societies are divided along class lines—capitalist and
worker—therefore any talk of "nation" or patriotism is
palpable nonsense. Capitalists and workers do not share a common
identity nor do they share any interests in common.
We are constantly hoodwinked
by a repetition from the mouths of politicians, of the old fiction of
the alleged community of interest between ourselves and our
employers, and that we should be privileged to defend a country we
do not own. While the capitalist class dominates and controls all the
means of wealth production the creation of nations is not the
business of the working class. It matters not whether the Union
Jack or the Saltire flies over Edinburgh. The patriotism of the
capitalist class is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits all
barriers are broken down, and the capitalist’s love of his country
withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. It
is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working
class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are
their real enemies.
What
the Socialist Party realises clearly is that the interests of fellow
workers in other lands are nearer to our own than are those of our
employers master in our own country. The bonds which bind worker with
worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity.
From the capitalist-class of every country the worker is
divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by
the over-throw of the capitalist-class by the working class as the
result of the coming social revolution.
The
capitalists are clearly parasites. Are the people to be for ever
sacrificed to capital? Surely it is time the workers used their
brains in their own interests. The callous brutality, the greed and
hypocrisy of the ruling class of all nations could hardly ever be
clearer than it is to-day. The workers have only to discard the
blinkers of patriotism to see this plainly. The Socialist Party is
well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries
as they seek to promote their interests . Though it is no easy task
for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as
ever when the fanfare of jingoism and patriotism are sounding.
We
can see why the ruling class in the various different capitalist
states into which the world is divided find it necessary to rely on
workers' identification with 'their' land – it helps them build up
popular support for their rule and their foreign policy aimed at
protecting their interests abroad. But we can't see why Socialists
need to. On the contrary, nationalism is something we need to combat
as it is an obstacle to the understanding that the problems faced by
workers all over the world cannot be solved within a national
framework but only on a world scale, on the basis of a world without
frontiers where the resources of the whole planet have become the
common heritage of all humanity.
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