Patriotism - A Message of Misery

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.