Here are the fleshed
out notes from the introductory talk at our recent discussion meeting on Nation or Class. Those who were at the discussion are welcome to add comments they may have made on the night. Those who were unable to attend can also add comments if they so wish.
[NB: comments subject to moderation]
The idea of
class has been around in one form or another throughout history (and
pre-history) and Marx described history itself as the history of class
struggles: workers/boss class under capitalism, lords/serfs under feudalism or
slaves/masters under slave societies.
The idea of
the nation, on the other hand, is a relatively recent construct, going back a
couple of hundred years to the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution.
The idea of a nation state is a construct of capitalism itself, the ideal
geographical unit for managing capital and controlling workers within a
specific region. This is how the nation state developed over the last 200 years
– as the ideal form of social organisation for rapid technological change, mass
production, automation, modernisation and increasing urbanisation that resulted
from the industrial revolution. Before capitalism, the idea of nation made
little sense and people were far more likely to owe their allegiance to their feudal
lord, tribe, family, god or monarch rather than to a “nation”. Now, though, the
idea of the nation is everywhere, seen by many as a natural state of affairs
and sometimes portrayed by nationalists as ever present, going back to the
beginnings of history .
Today, in
this period of global capitalism, the
nation and the nation state as a social entity still serve capitalism well. But
for us anarchist communists, just as capitalism is incompatible with socialism,
the idea of the nation, nation states or any form of nationalism is also
incompatible with any meaningful idea of socialism, communism, anarchism. We
accept that history is the history of class struggle in various forms and
history does not stop now that the world is divided into nations (nations that
still continuously change, divide, enlarge, swap allegiance). And if real
socialism entails seizing the means of production from the ruling class and
abolishing class society and replacing it with a communist society based on
“from each according to ability to each according to need”, then to see any
kind of commonality with the ruling class makes no sense.
As we often
say, the working class has no country.
In fact, we have far more in common with workers in Poland, China, Johannesburg,
Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro than we do with people like Richard Branson or Alan
Sugar, just because they happen to come from the same islands as us. Or, in Alan
Sugar’s case, happen to be the archetypal “working class boy made good” (and became
an enemy of the working class, is
what they don’t usually mention).
Just as
capitalism and its ruling class is international, so the working class is also international.
For us then, revolutionary working class internationalism is vital if we are to
ever get anywhere as a class and one day defeat the international ruling class
and abolish the capitalist system. Any kind of
unity between workers and bosses, rulers and ruled, order givers and order
takers, exploiters and exploited is a contradiction. This unity includes “national
liberation struggles” in which the (neo) colonialized workers and peasants unite
with their native oppressor against a foreign oppressor or imperialist power.
The idea of
uniting the oppressed with their oppressors in “the national interest” was unsuccessfully
attempted by Mussolini’s Fascist corporate state. Also, Nationalism
has been a constant part of social democracy, back to the days of the Trade
Unions and the Labour Party acted as prime recruiting sergeant for the carnage of
World War 1 (all in the national and patriotic interest, of course); and the collapse of
the Second International, when the respective socialist parties lined up behind
their own ruling classes in that inter-imperialist “war to end all wars”. Since it was formed, the Labour Party in
and out of government has been consistently every bit as nationalistic (and war-mongering)
as its Conservative/Liberal opposite numbers (possibly more so under the Blair
government). The Corbyn led party of today is every bit as supportive of the national
interest - which is always, by definition, the ruling class interest.
In these times
of neo-liberal global capitalism and the existence of powerful multi-national
corporations, which have more economic clout than many nation states, the
concept of the nation is still valuable as a way of carving up the world,
dividing and ruling… but also possibly because workers are far less likely to
pledge allegiance to “the company” than they are “the nation” or some vague notion of
patriotism.
More
cultural aspects of modern life, work, social organisation, education, sport,
festivals, all reinforce, in one way or another, patriotic and nationalistic
ideals. So, a red or a red and black flag at a sporting event would be seen as
overtly political, while a union jack or other national flag would not. Come October
and November (all year round for some), the wearing of the red poppy to
commemorate the 1918 Armistice has become compulsory for anyone being interviewed
on TV or for footballers at all levels kicking a ball about in public. Failure to "wear your poppy with pride" may have repercussions.
The Left,
including sections of the anarchist movement, still clings to its stance of
supporting national liberation struggles. And while it is right to be supportive of
those who are exploited or oppressed by a colonial or neo-colonial force and who
resist that oppression, when that support is for what is clearly a national, cross-class movement, then we
will criticise this.
It is not so
long ago when slogans such as “we are all Hamas” were popular on the left in
support of a range of particularly vile, often anti-Semitic and
religious fundamentalist “anti-imperialist” factions against the Zionist regime
in Israel. Further back, elements on the UK Trotskyist left (and to their
shame, the Anarchist Workers’ Group) were calling for support for Saddam
Hussein in Iraq against the imperialist bloc – much to the bemusement of Iraqi
communist and anarcho-communist refugees in Britain who had fled the terror of Saddam’s
ruling Ba’ath Arab National Socialist Party. Going back even further, UK
Trotskyist groups (among others) were vocal in uncritically supporting the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese goverment, doing so in
the awareness that the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army was, at the time, engaging
in pogroms against… Vietnamese Trotskyists. Now, the left, including many who would call
themselves anarchists, are offering increasingly uncritical support for the PYD/YPG
– Syrian offshoot of the nationalist PKK in Turkey. Clearly, lessons have not
been learnt.
Interestingly,
another more recent phenomena on the left seems to be of a kind of working
class identity politics that has always been there but which is now developing
a distinctly national flavour. Most significant perhaps is the Patria Socialista
organisation in Italy. For such groups, the working class clearly does have a
country (Italy, in their case). Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any such grouping
at present in the UK, but such a stance is not completely alien to some
individuals on the UK left, so time will tell.
For us though, we’re sticking with the old “workers
of all countries unite” motto, revolutionary internationalism, and when faced
with inter-imperialist war, we’ll carry on with “no war but the class war”
thank you very much.
But all that said, this gives us an enormous challenge. It’s
one thing to disagree with the national liberation politics of various elements
on the left but, given the depth of nationalism that exists within the broader
working class, the question is how to undermine nationalism, patriotism,
national identity and national unity in the wider class?
Comments welcome...
