Socialism is a world community

Socialism cannot be established in one country. Socialism must be a world system. Socialism can only be a world community without frontiers. It cannot be established in one country let alone in one factory or on farm. The kibbutzim do show that human beings can live without money and can work without wages, but their small scale means that what they can offer is very restricted so that young people are tending to leave them. In practice they have paved the way for the development of capitalism in Israel and most have become capitalist institutions employing outside wage labour and producing for the market with a view to profit.

There are those who see the constant internationalisation or globalisation of production and life, as a threat to "national sovereignty". This is a reactionary position. The World Socialist Movement does not defend capitalist national independence. On the contrary, one of our criticisms of capitalism is precisely that it has divided the world into competing and armed "nation-states." What we want is not national independence but a socialist world without frontiers. Our planet already possesses enough resources to properly feed, clothe and house every single man, woman and child on the planet. There's no need for anybody anywhere to go without adequate food, drinking water, health care, housing or education.  What trading treaties a particular country makes concern only its capitalists not its workers.

The answer to "global" warming and "world" poverty and the other problems caused by capitalism can only be found within a world framework. So we are talking about a united world without frontiers, no longer divided into separate and competing states. This will save the enormous amount of resources currently wasted on armed forces and arms, that could be redirected into satisfying the basic human needs that are now so scandalously neglected.

All the productive resources of the world should become the common heritage of all the people of the world. They must no longer be owned by corporations, rich private individuals or states. There are already treaties saying that Antarctica and the Moon cannot be appropriated by individuals or states. The same principle should apply to the whole planet, not just to its natural resources but also to the industrial plants and means of transport and communication that humans have built up by their collective labour over the centuries.

 Appropriate democratic institutions will need to be set up to control the use of this common heritage. World bodies to deal with inherently global questions such as the state of the biosphere and energy supply (as well as, initially, the urgent temporary problems such as world hunger, disease and lack of education that will be inherited from global capitalism). Regional bodies (replacing existing states and respecting cultural and linguistic differences) to organise industrial production. Local bodies to arrange access for people to the things they need for everyday living. Starting with democracy at local level, people will be able to create and maintain a genuinely people-based society.

Goods will be produced, whether globally, regionally or locally, solely and directly to satisfy people's needs, not as at present to make a profit or for sale on a market. In fact, the whole market system of buying and selling, and the whole wasteful structure of financial and commercial institutions that arise on its basis, must go. As long as the market exists we will be dominated by its uncontrollable economic laws. As long as money exists financial and commercial, not human, values will prevail. So, we're talking about a money-free society in which, instead, people would contribute according to their abilities and take as their right, from the common store what they need to live and enjoy life.  Technology will be used to provide enough for everybody in an environmentally-friendly way.


A world without frontiers or separate states, a world based on its resources being the common heritage of all humanity, a democratic world governed by what people decide they want and need not by money, profit and market forces, that's the alternative to the transnational corporate conglomerates.


We will have to step up the socialist case against nationalism. The phrase ‘nation-state’ itself assumes that the states into which the world is divided are the political expression of pre-existing ‘nations’. In fact, it’s the other way round. It is the ‘nation’ that is the creation of the state. States inculcate into their subjects the idea that they form a community with a common interest and that the state represents that interest. The result is that people come to refer to themselves and other subjects of the same state as ‘we’ and ‘us’. Socialists do not speak of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in relation to so-called ‘nation-states’ in which they happen to have been born or live. We know that, in every state, there are two classes with opposed interests: the class of those who own and control the means of production and the rest, the vast majority, who do not and, to live, have to sell their mental and physical energies to those who do for a wage or a salary.


Wars are not fought between ‘nations’ but between states, and states represent the interest of their ruling, owning class. Wars arise out of the conflict of economics between states, representing the owning class within them, over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets and strategic areas to protect these. Nationalism is used by states to win support – and cannon fodder – for wars. But it can prove counter-productive if it escapes from state control, as it risks doing over the question of Europe. The interest of the dominant section of the capitalist class in Britain is that Britain should stay in the EU so as to have free access to the European ‘single market’, but as the Brexit vote showed public opinion is opposed to this on nationalist grounds. We insist that 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 heritage of all the people of the world and used for the benefit of all. We re-assert the original socialist position that workers ought to act as a world-wide class with a common interest in working to establish a single world community.  As socialists we refuse to pander to petty nationalism but work to promote a world without borders or passports.


  Since today capitalism is worldwide, the society which replaces capitalism can only be worldwide. The only socialism possible today is world socialism. No more than capitalism can socialism exist in one country. So the common ownership of socialism is the common ownership of the world, of its natural and industrial resources, by the whole of humanity. Socialism can only be a universal society in which all that is in and on the Earth has become regarded as one country and humankind as one people. , and in which the division of the world into states has given way to a world without frontiers with a democratic world administration as well as local and regional democracy. We campaign to get workers to say no to a society based on profit, privilege and competition and yes to a society based on equality, cooperation and meeting people's needs.  It is all very well being anti-capitalist but if this is to mean something more than merely protesting against the effects of capitalism, it has got to also mean having an idea of an alternative to capitalism. 


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 the familiarity of their place of nurture and 'natural' abhorrence to the occupation of 'their' land by invading forces” – 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, political 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. We can see why, too, ruling classes prefer moderate nationalism to bigotry – yesterday's enemy can so easily become today's ally. Thus, the “Frogs”, “Huns” and “Nips” of yesteryear are now our rulers' allies and workers who continue to believe what they were told when these countries were our rulers' enemies are an embarrassment. Socialist opposition to political nationalism does not challenge cultural diversity. We can appreciate Shakespeare or Dickens without ceasing to be socialists.  We can enjoy our warm ale, mince and tatties, or a Sunday roast, without being nationalists.