We have no country

 

In the war, in Ukraine, those who do the fighting will get nothing. Some of them will be killed and many of them will be crippled, but beyond that they will only have the glory and honour of serving their master class to gain ownership and control of resources.

 We wish all our fellow workers would stop and consider who will be benefited by war.  No matter WHICH side wins, the workers will gain NOTHING. The capitalists have sufficient good sense to let the working people do their fighting for them and they hire clever writers to publish patriotic editorials.

The only person  worth fighting is the man who ROBS us. The only people worth fighting is the ruling class that EXPLOITS us.

Why should workers  be patriotic? If we are working men or working women, we HAVE NO COUNTRY. We don’t even have a place to eat and sleep, unless we are able to find a boss to pay us wages and when we are out of work we have to beg for welfare. 

Or we have to become migrants and move to other countries to live and to find employment. We are driven from city to city,  from nation to nation by the everlasting chorus of “MOVE ON.”

Fellow workers of ALL countries are OUR countrymen.

 The capitalist is the FOREIGNER. Our only enemy is the capitalist class, the class that, under every flag, hires us for wages and keeps for itself the things we manufacture.

Russian  men and women have no quarrel with Ukrainian men and women. They share the same interests. Both are robbed by a capitalist class and the only way we can stop this robbery is by uniting under the banner of SOCIALISM. 

We must unite to demand the common ownership of the factories and the farms. United we can abolish the present system of society and make production the shared property of all those who perform any useful service in society.

The CLASS WAR – the war of the propertyless and exploited working class against those who live off their labour – is the ONLY WAR worthwhile. That is the ONLY war that can benefit OUR class. The only war in which we should engage is the working class war, which will abolish poverty from the face of the Earth.

Are you a Russian or Ukrainian? Or German, French, English, Chinese? Are you an American? It does not matter. This question applies to every worker in the world. What has “your” country ever done for you?

What has “your” country ever really done for you, fellow worker? Has it always looked after your welfare? Does it give you a decent comfortable home? Has it assured that your children received schooltime and playtime to equip them for useful satisfying life?

Surely no one expects you to love and die for a particular geographical district upon the face of the earth just because you accidentally happened to be born in it, unless that district has done something for you. Why should you love that land any more than any other?

Fellow worker, what has your native land done for you that you should fight for its flag and its power? No matter how large or powerful it may become, no matter how rich its resources and natural wealth, you will share in none of these things. If you are rich, “your” country will open its arms to welcome you and the law and the police will protect your wealth. If you are penniless, you will be vilified. “Your” country has protection only for the powerful and it has no concern for those who are poor and sick. “Your” country has no place for you once you have harvested the crops. For when your work is done your pay ceases. All that you have made, all that you have produced, has been kept by your employers and you are turned out, dependant upon the pittance of a pension from “your” country in your old age. 

Fellow workers of the world, the land of your birth has done little for you. Conditions everywhere are practically the same. Everywhere you will find the workers earning barely enough to live on. Everywhere you will find men and women hunting for jobs. Everywhere you will find the privileged protected and the poor driven out. Every national flag in the world today means benefits for the employing class, who appropriate the things produced by their workers. Flags has no significance for those who sweat and toil.

There is only one flag worth fighting for and that is the red flag, which means universal solidarity of the workers of the world in their fight to abolish the profit system.