Wake up, wage-slaves

Workers are encouraged to see in national independence a solution of their economic problems they will—like the Irish, the Poles and many others—suffer a grievous disappointment. It is the duty of the Socialist Party to work to destroy the present illusion and thus avoid the future disillusion. Let the workers organise not as national citizens alongside their home capitalists, but as workers. They should reject the fallacious argument of foreign political parties which urge them to do otherwise. This fallacy is based on an old saying that “The enemies of my enemies are my friends.” In truth, the capitalist enemies of the capitalists are not, and cannot, be the friends of the workers. If the foreign capitalists happen to be at loggerheads with native capitalists, that is no reason why British or foreign workers should imagine they have a friend in the foreign employing class. The real task of the workers everywhere is to fight against capitalism whatever the national flag under which it hides. The duty of the Socialist Party is to keep this issue always to the fore, not to rouse deadly national hatreds which obscure the class divisions in society and retard the growth of socialism. 

The State is the organisation of the division of individuals into masters and subjects and has always been based on the notion of territory, which simultaneously responds to the needs of the various kinds of exploiters to fix their slaves and subjects on a specific territory and to give notice to their potential enemies concerning which regions and inhabitants belong to them.

The nationalist idea is based on the myths of the land of one’s birth, of the foreigner, myths that limit and distort one’s view of the world.  Capitalism conferred worth not on a real community, but on the imagined representation of a community manifested in the fetishism of national anthems and flags and symbolic national heroes.  This invention of a fake community masks the division between socially antagonistic classes, making way for a rationalisation of capitalism’s rule divided by competition, a unity corresponding to the higher interests of the State. While this native capitalist rule shelters behind the borders of the State, it continues to rely on a process of globalisation, on the tendency to conquer and create markets. It has standardised life throughout the world where you find much the same kind of food and everywhere. The carefully nourished local colour is a marketing ploy. Nationalism and xenophobia have developed where a person's knowledge of and sense of belonging in ones environment had diminished and  decayed.

Socialism signals a break with the old ideas of territory, father/motherland, nation, and State. The problems that will have to be solved are global and can only be resolved by a worldwide human community that totally destroys national and international barriers. Men and women will not be imprisoned behind border fences and walls. Cultural and ethnic frontiers will disappear. Socialism will be a single humanity and everybody will be welcome to join and participate in one or another community without birth-place being an obstacle to his being accepted.

To establish socialism the working class must wrest control of the machinery of government and of the armed forces from the hands of the capitalist class and use them to convert the present class ownership of the means of production and distribution into common ownership by the whole of society. In other words, it is necessary to take political action to establish a free society. We maintain and can demonstrate, that Marx’s analysis of capitalism is still valid today.

We also hold that the materialist conception of history is the key to the way in which societies change. The different stages of social development are the result of classes in society pursuing their material interests. Socialism will be the outcome of this class struggle. It will be the outcome of the conscious political action of the vast majority of the working class — the last class in history to achieve its emancipation. It cannot be the work of "enlightened” élites or of a vanguard party of intellectuals. We also hold that socialism means the abolition of the wages system and the institution of a class-free, state-free, moneyless world community with common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production for use not for sale.

The Socialist Party has always warned against workers following leaders, even if and when the leaders seemed people of some quality. Workers must do their own thinking. But how much more sense does our advice appear when it is obvious that the famous names who monopolise the media and make sure that a socialist voice is almost never heard.

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