Patriotism - Perfumed Poison

LEFT NATIONALISM

 We should not be at all surprised that some “theoretical” support to Scottish nationalism is peddled by certain spurious “socialist” groups. In 1891 Engels referred to the British Isles “where the two islands are peopled by four nations”. The Socialist Party is not bound by any Marxist holy writ.

Capitalism cannot be improved gradually; neither can it be managed in a decent human way. It must be overthrown by the working class in a revolutionary way.  The left and right compete and bid against one another in their patriotism, accusing the other of being weak on the national interest, in the same way, they dispute over the management of the capitalism system. Patriotism, even if it becomes prevalent amongst our fellow workers provokes us to stand against the stream and to defend, against this stream, the real interests of the working class. 

The Socialist Party is neither loyal servants of the masses nor their would-be saviours who would be their future oppressors. Our purpose as a conscious element of the working class is to show the direction and the objective that the class struggle has to take against capital, to radically criticise capitalist society, to support the interests of the working class as a whole and to help the proletariat to constitute itself a class in order to overthrow the capitalist system and to establish the socialist society which a world without classes, without exploitation of man by man, without mechanisms of organised violence and oppression in general, without the whole of capitalist relations that are governed by property, commercial exchange, exchange value, surplus value, money and wage labour. It is a world community of freely associated producers, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all, each member of which contributes to social welfare according to his ability and enjoys the social goods according to his needs and participate directly and actively in the collective management of common affairs. We must show to people the need and the vision of socialism because it is the only way out of capitalist barbarism. If they will not organise and mobilise by themselves, nobody can save them. If they raise the nation's flag nothing can be done. 

The Socialist Party remains faithful to our principles. We are together with our class, we are together with it in the everyday struggles that carry on as a class against class, raising its self-confidence, encouraging its self-organisation and contributing to the rise of class consciousness. We neither worship nor carry the working class. If they will not struggle, inspired by a different future,  they will remain slaves. Nationalism is a chain which shackles the wage-slave.

Workers have no interest in supporting nationalism. Times of crisis and upheaval have always provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories and fantasies, creating a social climate marked by the mass growth of nationalism, racism and reactionary ideas. The Socialist Party is faced with the challenge of swimming against the tide and defending our ideas without compromise. The alternative is not to support nationalism. Much less is it about joining in the calls for a return to ‘Old Labour’. For the Socialist Party, socialism isn’t an idealist utopia which has to be sacrificed in the real world. On the contrary, the revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with the cooperative commonwealth is the only solution to world capitalism. In this globalised world the material conditions exist to establish a community without classes and national borders, where the questions of who gets what and how are determined not by money and profit but by administrative decisions taken by ‘freely associated producers’. For anyone who shares this view there is only one political option: join the struggle to win the working class over to the only really anti-capitalist programme: socialism, the real hope for the future. Get involved!