The Pestilence of Patriotism

"It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class!"

So the Nicola Sturgeon is rallying her followers at another pro-independence parade today. On this march the word patriotism will be upon everyone’s lips and there will be much waving of the Saltire and the royalist Lion Rampant. The Socialist Party can agree with the Indian writer, Arundhati Roy that “Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” 

Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill another father, mother, brother, sister. Scots claim to be a peace-loving people, opposed to violence and hate bloodshed yet Scots regiments policed the British Empire with brutality and swelled the Scottish hearts with pride. To-day we too often see the spectacle of the working classes uniting to applaud the crimes of their exploiters. Such is the logic of patriotism. The message of “My country right or wrong” will be seen for the abomination that it is. When we deny the patriotic lie, we clear the path for when all separate nationalities are united into a universal one family, where “Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.”

The toxic poison of nationalism must on all occasions be heavily perfumed such words as liberty, freedom and self-determination. Socialists judges ideas not on the basis of ideals and wishes, nor of distant far-off goals, but on the specific answers to specific questions on concrete issues. So long as nation-state exists, people will hold a certain preference for the particular nationality into which they have been born, a bond of a common language, of a common national culture customs and traditions. But does it constitute a virtue to be so especially proud of, even justifying any and every action, of one’s nation? All socialists are internationalists. The belief that class solidarity and patriotism can be combined is erroneous.

If Scotland be our motherland then it is a cruel stepmother who we detest. Working class internationalism springs from the recognition that the working people of all lands have a common interest in creating a world in which the exploitation of man by man no longer exists. Scotland is not "our" country. The title and land deeds belong to our masters. Why should people strive for its independence? There are only two countries in the world: that of the privileged and that of the dispossessed. It is a fact known since the time of the ancient Greeks when Plato observed "Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another."

Our compatriots are not the Scottish capitalists. Our compatriots are our fellow-workers of the whole world, who wage everywhere the same battle as ourselves for the establishment of a better society.

Socialism has ended all national sentiments. Patriotism assumes that our planet is divided into little regions, each one surrounded by a wall and an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born inside these walls consider themselves better than those living outside. Such a belief poison the minds of the children and if need be the sacrifice of children in wars. The Socialist Party finds nothing reasonable to inspire any of our fellow-workers in the thought that they are slaves of one governmental system run by their masters rather than another and a rival one. Hence our adoption of the slogan “Proletarians of all lands unite.”

We all know what nationalism means today. A gang of thieves by fraud to acquire the office of government and gain the the seat power. There are those left-nationalists who tell us that socialism is international in principle, but not necessarily anti-national. But they forget to say that internationalism socialism must inevitably counteract the importance of the nation-state, and weaken the sentiment of patriotism. The cause of the working class is lost if they allow ourselves to be caught again in the net of nationalism. The left-nationalists try to persuade us that the resurrection of a nation of by-gone times is of primary importance rather than the unity of humanity. Nationalism is objectionable since it means the placing of one’s own country, its interests and well-being, above those of the rest of humanity, invariably at the expense of the welfare and interests of other peoples. Dedication to the socialist ideal rather than devotion to a patch of particular soil on which one happens to have been born is what motivates the members of the Socialist Party

If only the Socialist Party could persuade just one among all those demonstrating for national sovereignty for Scotland to see how you are being hoodwinked and duped by nationalist lies, and instead to join us in the World Socialist Movement to hasten the day when the working class of the world will finally abandon the national flags of their masters, and range themselves under the red banner of international socialism and solidarity, our efforts will not have been in vain. Let us do away with nationalism, patriotism and national chauvinism altogether and substitute in its place the “ internationalism” of the class-conscious worker. It is not a question of fighting for the political independence of one nation, but for a new society for all lands – for the Socialist Commonwealth.

“Ubi bene, ibi patria,” (Where it goes well with me, there is my country.)