Letter: National cultures within socialism (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

National cultures within socialism

Dear Editors.

How pleasing it was to read Steve Coleman’s support for national cultures (though it’s true he refers to ’’local areas", a term which nationalists with whom I am in contact would not quarrel with). He would be pleased to know that there are very many on the ’’fringe" of Plaid Cymru who hold Steve Coleman's view that some nationalists do not indeed want to be dominated by capitalists, and that their nationalism arises from a desire to be masters of their own destiny, on their own patch of ground and at the same time aware of their rights and duty to society in general throughout the world. This must include a natural pride in their own contribution which can only be made by nurturing its own distinctive culture including its indigenous language. Regarding the latter, the Socialist Standard itself paid a compliment by printing an article in the Welsh language - something which did not go unnoticed by the Marxist-thinking element on the edge of Plaid Cymru. (I refer to the SS of July 1969.) Such understanding of the nature of Welsh and Scottish nationalism is to be expected of a party like the SPGB who speak of the international nature of socialism inasmuch as internationalism has no meaning without its constituent parts, ie nations.

Speaking of the Marxist influence among present Welsh nationalists. I quote Gareth Miles, a member of the Marxist "fringe" movement within Plaid Cymru, as follows: "A nation's language is part of its cultural heritage and its continuation, growth or decay depends on the social conditions prevailing”. He continues: "There is already in existence a philosophy which, if adopted, could solve the ideological problems of its nationalists — its name is socialism". This is in line with Steve’s statement about a society, local area or what you will wherein people can control their own lives or. as he puts it, "one that they can call their own".

Gareth Miles exposes the fallacious thinking within the nationalist party: "Some of the leaders of Plaid Cymru claim it to be a socialist party — that is not true. It does not look to the creation of a socialist Wales. Its aim is to fashion for Wales a more effective capitalist system than exists at present. Its policies are not different from Labour's". The Editor of Welsh Socialism emphasises this theme: "it is vital that we recognise that we are merely another part of the international capitalist economy . . . I believe that the answer. . . lies in international socialism with the establishment of a world socialist order". (The writer is an active member of the Welsh Republicans, a body which is antagonistic to what is described as loony anarchism or Stalinism.) Miles, in the pamphlet A Free Wales, points out to the Nationalists in no uncertain manner: "A government which would try to operate capitalism in a Welsh way would be a servile one to outside capitalist corporations . . . in such a crude materialistic climate every language other than a commercial language is a valueless anachronism. Profit not culture is the ideal"

While we see a measure of unanimity between Steve Coleman and spokesmen on the fringe of the Welsh nationalist party, it would be interesting to remind ourselves of other thinkers and writers of the past. One such a person was Rudolph Rocker whose manuscript Nationalism and Culture was published in English in 1937. This scholarly work explains how. in terms which pre-date Steve’s statement on the nature of nationalism, pride in one's homeland is not patriotism or love of the state but a natural love of familiar surroundings. one's friends and of a culture that has grown out of the soil. Rocker insists that the alchemy which exploits this natural feeling into a love of the state is: "One of the most grotesque phenomena of all time". (How many readers today remember Lord Baden Powell's book Scouting for Boys wherein is found a classic example of this: ”. . . be prepared to die for your country if need be. so that when the moment arrives you may charge home not caring whether you are to be killed or not".

Many present-day members of Plaid Cymru are aware that that party has equated its so-called socialism with that of the Labour Party and there is much to be grateful for that they are no longer hoodwinked. The pamphlet. Welsh Socialism. asks the question "Who will formulate a revolutionary policy for us?” and answers it by saying "Who but you and me?". In other words the thinking is that of Clause 5 of the SPGB. ie "The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. There is. it seems to me. much hope inasmuch as the republican/Marxism element of Plaid Cymru can state openly: ". . . the answer lies in international socialism and the establishment of a world socialist order”. It seems to me that workers holding such a view can no longer afford to fight the class struggle in isolated political boxes.

Steve Coleman invites all workers by saying: ". . . let us unite as a class". A great idea! Would he agree that a class is but an economic concept and as such the skeleton of production for use must be clothed with the rich and diverse cultures of the world s ethnic/national/regional groups, if life is to be lived to the full?

In the present worldwide uniformity of the capitalist "blanket" we have reached the position where the only cultural forms which are "pushed" are those which are tied to profit-making. "Big is beautiful ”, is the philosophy and small organisations (and indeed nations) must fare as best they can. Welsh people know this to their cost and one would suppose that the SPGB in its day-to-day struggle against the overwhelming propaganda of the capitalist machine also knows it.

"Gyfaill"

Cwmdeall, Trecynnon 

Reply:

Socialists are opposed to all nationalism: the workers of the world have no country. As our correspondent recognises, there is a difference between political nationalism and the desire of people to retain or revive their own cultural traditions and identities.

Our correspondent is mistaken in suggesting that the difference between national cultures and regional cultures is of merely pedantic significance. While socialists support fully the aims of our fellow workers who wish to live in particular localities in cultural conditions which are not imposed upon them from without, we are opposed totally to those who seek to establish "national cultures ”. To take Wales as an example, we have little doubt that within a socialist society many Welsh people will choose to use their own, native language and to maintain Welsh traditions of living. Those who decide to develop their cultural Welshness will not be discriminated against for so doing or denied free access to the common store of social goods and services, even if they constitute a very small minority. But they will not be living their culture within a nation called Wales, for, like all other nations, that country will not exist. In a world socialist society there will be no national frontiers, there will be no presiding states. Rather than there being a single Wales, embodying its own national culture, which is what nationalists aim to achieve, a socialist society will respect the various local cultures which exist within the administrative territory which is now lumped together as Wales. Socialists are aware of the danger which nationalism poses of creating new states which then impose their own national cultures, often at the expense of local cultures which are then discriminated against. For example, would a new Scottish state, so desired by the SNP, impose the cultural norms of urban industrial Scottish capitalists upon rural highlanders? Would a united Palestine under the PLO be tolerant towards ethnic minorities within a new Palestinian state? Under capitalism, with its national powers, we have every reason to believe that the gain of the right to a national culture for some will mean cultural oppression for others who lack economic power. The case of the Eskimo minority in Greenland is instructive. The Eskimo language is called by three different names, depending upon whether you live in Canada (where it is called Inukitut). Alaska (Inupit) or Greenland (Kalaalisut). In Greenland, where books in Eskimo language are published with government funding, the Eskimos’ main complaint is the destruction of their linguistic culture by Danish and English. But in Canada and Alaska the Eskimos have an additional grievance: most books published in Greenland are inaccessible to them because they are written in Kalaalisut. This shows how absurd it would be for capitalism to attempt to create some kind of "right” for a single Eskimo culture to exist. In a socialist society the world's 100.000 Eskimos will not only be able to live their own cultures if they so choose, but will be free to do so in accordance with local variations.

The Socialist Party does not stand for international socialism, but world socialism. In a socialist society there will be no nations to unite.

We are pleased to be alerted to the existence of people on the fringes of Welsh nationalism who recognise the capitalist outcome of a Welsh nation, the anti-socialist nature of the Labour Party and the need for workers to emancipate themselves without leaders We look forward to talking with such people, but under no circumstances would we compromise our hostility to all nationalist movements. and nor can we see any possible future for such people within a party which is fighting a losing battle to create yet another rotten capitalist state. 

The Editors.

Letter: Control and countries (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Control and countries

Many people on the Left define Socialism simply as workers’ control of industry through workers’ councils or soviets. As commodity-money relations would remain this cannot be Socialism, could it be workers’ control of capitalism? or would such circumstances inevitably give rise to a governing élite? If not would the workers to be exploited, if so by whom?

Marx wrote that “no nation that oppresses another can itself be free.” Whilst it is correct not to support capitalist “National Liberation” movements, what is the position of the remaining colonies of a European nation if that nation becomes Socialist? For instance, in Britain’s case what would happen to Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands, etc?

In my previous letter regarding the actions a single Socialist country would need to take when surrounded by hostile capitalist countries you accused me of seeing only a “one way dependence” when I said such a country would have to be self-sufficient. In the first instance there will be only one Socialist country, it would inevitably be joined by others, but not immediately. In this period it will be isolated and even attacked by capitalist states who will see it as a threat to their survival, remember the Allies attacked Russia in 1918. In this situation it would certainly require an armed Force even if structured differently than at present. I do not believe you have devoted enough thought to this problem.

As most workers in the world live under some form of dictatorship should they aim first for a parliamentary democracy which would allow them to organize industrially and politically, or is it possible to have a direct transition from dictatorship to Socialism?

Finally, do you think Socialist society should have an industrial or ecological base?

Ian Greenslade

Southminster

Reply:

You rightly point out that any change in the running of industry which left commodity production intact could not be Socialism. Those who advocate workers’ control of industry, through workers’ councils, also envisage the mass of workers following a revolutionary leadership to the promised land. It does not need much imagination to work out who would then do the exploiting.

We suggest that you examine the full implications of Socialism. It would be quite impossible to implement production solely for use and free access to goods and services in one country. Capitalism is worldwide and its inherent contradictions and social problems are experienced by workers in all countries. Ideas do not develop in isolation. Both the need to end capitalism and the possibility for that end arise out of the nature of the system itself. It is extremely unlikely that the vast majority of workers in only one country will realize their class position in society. It is quite inconceivable that Socialist understanding could mature among the working class in one country unbeknown to fellow members of their class throughout the rest of the world. (The Russian revolution was not Socialist). Socialism is by definition worldwide. The establishment of a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means for production will signify the end of national frontiers. There will be no possible use for armed forces. For reasons already stated the existence of dictatorships will not prevent the spread of Socialist knowledge. The aim for democracy should never be separated from the objective of Socialism.

In Socialist society production will be geared to human need. Industry will be necessary and ecological balance possible.

Editors.

Blood, oil and tears (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a hundred years since the first Zionist colonists “returned” from the diaspora to Palestine, and it is from them that we can date the origins of the current Middle East situation and its succession of bloody wars. It would have been far less traumatic a period, however, but for the fact that beneath the desert sands lay a substance which was to become one of the major objects of twentieth-century capitalist rivalry – oil.

Prior to the First World War, much of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire; Palestine; for instance, became a Turkish province in 1516. After the Turkish defeat in the war, much of the former empire was divided into British and French spheres of interest, and these two countries sought to divide up the area’s oil resources. A joint consortium explored for oil in the new state of Iraq, while a British-owned company (the forerunner of British Petroleum) ran the oil industry in Persia/ Iran, the Middle East’s first oil-producing country. Further west, Syria and Lebanon, both French dependencies, turned out to have little by way of oil reserves, though they were important locations for pipelines and refineries. The same held for Palestine, which came under a British mandate in 1918. Even an area with no oil of its own, however, could become a pawn in the oil-fired power struggle.

In Palestine, though, there was another complicating factor. European anti-Semitism had been responsible, towards the end of the nineteenth century, for creating a movement known as Zionism which aimed at creating a “Jewish homeland” free of racist persecution. Soon the idea took root that this homeland should be situated not in Africa or South America but on the Biblical territory of Palestine. The slogan was coined of “a land without people, for a people without land”, thus conveniently overlooking the existing Palestinian inhabitants. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government undertook to look favourably on the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”. In a typical piece of capitalist chicanery, Balfour himself wrote in 1919:

“in Palestine we not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right” (Quoted in Edward Said: The Question of Palestine.)

So much for the British government’s respect for the wishes of the inhabitants of its colonies.

We may disregard the rhetoric about “age-long tradition”; but what were the “present needs” and “future hopes” of which Balfour spoke? Basically, an independent Israel was seen as an outpost of Western capitalism in an area that is both strategically and economically of great importance. The continued availability of Middle Eastern oil is vital to Western countries, as was the use of the Suez Canal. Israel represents a sizeable market for Western capitalism, especially the American armaments industry. The Middle East is geographically close to Russia, and consists mainly of developing countries whose policies are, from a Western point of view, largely unpredictable and certainly unreliable. Western nations’ support for the establishment and defence of Israel (without which it would not exist) has not been due to humanitarianism but to familiar economic interests.

After 1918 more and more Zionist colonists arrived in Palestine, though they never formed a majority of the population. The Jewish National Fund began to purchase Arab land there, though prior to 1948 it only owned six per cent of the total land area. British rule used such oppressive measures as the Emergency Defence Regulations of 1922 to control and restrict the movement and settlement of the population, both Jewish and Arab (these regulations were adopted wholesale by Israel to suppress Palestinians after 1948). The rebellion of 1936-9 saw five thousand Palestinians killed by British troops.

The Zionist goal of a Jewish state of Israel was now close to attainment. It involved transforming Palestine into “a land without people”, as was acknowledged by the Labour Party National Executive in 1944:

“Palestine surely is a case, on human grounds and to promote a stable settlement, for a transfer of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in” (Quoted in Rosemary Sayigh: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries.)

And in 1948 the Palestinians did indeed mostly move out, about 840,000 being displaced from the area that become Israel, some to neighbouring countries and some to parts of Palestine that came under the control of Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (the West Bank). The “encouragement” to move out took the form of Israeli military attacks on Palestinian villages, backed up by instances of terrorism and massacre. The creation of a “Jewish homeland” saw a new diaspora, that of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine.

So the scene was set for a further generation of war, killing and homelessness. The Suez crisis of 1956 was the largest in its involvement of outside armed forces, while other major conflicts between Israel and neighbours include the Six Day War of 1967 and the 1973 war. The current Israeli attack on Palestinian camps in southern Lebanon and Beirut alone is estimated to have made up to fifty thousand refugees homeless. All this time, too, there has been fighting among Arab states, and it is worth recalling that more Palestinian fighters have been killed by Arab armies than by Israel. The deposing of the other friend of Western capitalism, the Shah of Iran, in 1979, has been balanced by Egypt’s treaty with Israel and the United States. The post-1973 oil crisis has forced Western countries to be more dependent on good relations with the Arab oil-exporters, while the Suez Canal has lost much of its strategic significance. But all in all, the Middle East remains a region which reveals only too clearly the effects of capitalist rivalry over resources.

There are now an estimated three million Palestinians in the world, of whom one in six live, as a discriminated-against minority, within the 1948 borders of Israel. Most of the rest live in refugee camps in neighbouring areas. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, founded in 1964, aims to restore the Palestinians to their pre-1948 position, via a state that will be open to Muslim, Jew and Christian. But a myth has grown up about what life was like in Palestine under the British Mandate. Rosemary Sayigh, in the book referred to above, claims that older Palestinians in the refugee camps are often heard to say, “We lived in Paradise”. But she then gives plenty of evidence to show that it was a strange kind of Paradise. In 1930, the average rural family in Palestine was in debt to the tune of £P27, which was approximately such a family’s yearly income. On 1936 figures, one-fifth of one per cent of the population owned a quarter of the land! Clearly pre-Israeli Palestine did not belong to the Palestinian peasants: in 1948 they were driven off land which was not theirs.

The PLO represents the interests of a would-be Palestinian ruling class. A minority of Palestinians have benefited from oil-financed development, while most have become a propertyless army of labour. The “secular-democratic” Palestinian state will be a capitalist state, required to play its own part in global politicking. Just as socialists opposed the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, so we oppose the PLO as a nationalist movement that puts forward capitalist not socialist solutions. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian capitalism can serve the interest of the vast majority of the population. The workings of world capitalism in the Middle East show that peace and prosperity there are only possible in a world-wide framework – socialism.

Paul Bennett

Holocaust 2 (1982)

From the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The campaign of genocide which is the current military policy of the State of Israel is a tragic reflection of the real face of nationalism. The mythical image of Zionism as a movement of pioneering, progressive, pious, peace-loving nation-building has been more than exposed by the ruthless attempt to liquidate the city of Beirut “for reasons of national security”.

In early August the Canadian ambassador surveyed fifty-five separate areas of Beirut and declared that “this would make Berlin of 1944 look like a tea party”. The International Red Cross has declared that “at least 80 per cent of the casualties are civilians” (Sunday Times, 8 August 1982). Our TV screens abound with pictures of families which have lost fathers, mothers and children—victims of a senseless struggle of national ambition. In early August a block of flats in West Beirut was destroyed and nearly all of its civilian inhabitants died. Not for a long time has the horror of capitalist war been quite so evident as in the Lebanon.

As ever, when there is killing to be done, God’s rep on earth is to be found sanctifying it. Just as God’s Anglicans were blessing the British killers as they set off for the Falklands, so the British Chief Rabbi, in an interview in the Guardian on August 7, had to say that “to the extent that the only principle governing this action is one of self defence, or that of the security of the State, yes, Biblical or divine sanction can be claimed for it”. One might ask God’s spokesman precisely how a soldier carrying a gun or a pilot dropping a bomb can be engaging in self-defence against unarmed children, but then, one might as well engage in such a seminar with the fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The curse of nationalism is not new. Let it be clear that unlike certain anti-Zionists, socialists do not oppose the tunnel-vision mentality of nationalism only when it is Jewish. To us, the flag-waving, trigger-happy Zionists are no more ignorant and abhorrent than those who have swallowed the diversionary, nationalist message of the PLO. Socialists do not take sides in national conflicts because it is not our aim to support one or other of the competing capitalist or would-be capitalist factions, each of which seeks its own territories and exploitable populations. No socialist will ever fight to defend a border—we want to do away with the divisiveness of countries and states.

But there is a bitter irony about Zionist nationalism. In Dachau, the site of the old Nazi murder camp, a permanent exhibition stands as testimony to the atrocities committed in modern times against millions of Jews. That the survivors of such persecution sought refuge in a nation of their own—a country which would never persecute or exterminate anyone and would be free of the perverse national chauvinism on which Nazism was based—is not difficult to understand. In Israel, and here in Britain, not a few Zionists are now beginning to ask themselves the question: “How can it be that the country created by the holocaust is now inflicting similar misery on people who are just as defenceless as the Jews in Europe had been?” Some of them are blaming Begin. Others say that the PLO has pushed the Israeli government to such measures. The truth is that those who saw a solution in Zionist nationalism—in having their own laws, prisons, borders, army and weapons of destruction—were naive. Their form of nationalism is no less aggressive or bigoted than is ever the case under a system of society where the laws of the jungle are presented as being the rules of civilised conduct. Every nation’s flag is dripping with the blood of its enemies; every ruling class pays for its power in other people’s lives.

Nationalism can never be a solution to the problems of oppression: it was not for the Jews; it would not be for the Palestinians. The problem is class, not national, racial, or religious origins. As a class, workers have no country. The British do not own Britain, the majority of Israelis have no significant economic stake in Israel, the impoverished Arabs do not share their exploiters’ national wealth. There are two classes in society: those who possess without producing and those who produce without possessing. Wars are fought over the interests of the capitalists and would-be capitalists. In the 1940s an aspirant Israeli ruling class, represented by such vicious thugs as the Stern gang (of which the present Israeli Foreign Minister was a member), used terrorist tactics to secure their goal. Having obtained power violently, who could have expected the Israeli ruling class to have maintained power except by the continued use of violence? Israeli workers identify with the aims of their rulers—they see their national identity as more important than their class identity with Arab and other workers. In this they are dangerously mistaken.

The socialist solution to the Middle East conflict is not a piecemeal policy. We do not advocate re-drawing the border or political deals or the exchange of one (American-backed) ruling class for another (Russian-backed) one. These amount to mere rearrangements of the capitalist furniture. Only when Israeli and Arab workers join the worldwide movement for a society without class ownership, nations or armies will the war finally cease.

This is not a pious hope for the future. Workers are dying in Beirut and there is every sign that more will be killed. What is now a local war could turn into something rather bigger. Who will stop the killing once and for all—Habib, Begin or Arafat? To expect this to happen is like hoping for Brezhnev and Reagan to shake hands, make up and disarm. We leave such dreams to the Utopians who are fond of calling themselves Realists. For socialists, it is clear that if there is ever to be peace it is those who are the sitting targets of war who must actively pursue it.

Steve Coleman

Notes by the Way: The Contradictions of Nationalism (1955)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Contradictions of Nationalism

While Capitalism lasts so will its class and international economic struggles, many of them taking on a racial, religious or nationalist appearance whenever this suits the needs of some interested group. Socialists do not support these manifestations of prejudice. But the supporters of Nationalist Movements make use of two plausible arguments. One is that it is a good thing to have a National Capitalist Group in power in preference to Capitalist rule by foreigners because the former are more progressive, and the other is that by winning national independence you get rid of preoccupation with Nationalism and thus make it easier to get down to Socialism.

There is nothing in either argument. In comparatively recent times Egypt, India, Burma, the Middle East Arab States, Hungary, Poland and South Africa, have emerged from greater or less degree of foreign rule and their absence of progress in any sense that matters, is matched by their extreme preoccupation with nonsensical Nationalism.

It has been noticed by many newspaper correspondents in India that there has been in recent years, not a decline, but a growth of Nationalism and now Indians are complaining of growing intolerance towards themselves shown in the countries of South East Asia. Mr. S. K. Patil, one of the chiefs of the Indian Congress Party, has returned from a tour of Burma, Siam, Malaya, and Singapore, “where, he said, dangerous and poisonous Nationalism, if allowed to develop, would result in intolerance for Indians and other foreigners.”—(Times, 17/9/55.)

Nationalism inevitably has its ridiculous side because in the world as it is today the dreams and pretensions of the Nationalists (all of them, including the British, Russian and American) so frequently will not fit into the facts of Capitalism.

The Irish Nationalists may dream as much as they like about ancient myths and glories but the Irish Government is now inviting German Capitalism to come into Ireland to develop the textile industry (Financial Times 13/9/55) so that it can sell more in the British market; though at the same time it is “banning the import of cheap shirts from the Far East in order to protect the jobs of Irish textile workers" (Daily Express 20/9/55.) Doubtless some of the Irish Nationalists would like to live in a really Irish Ireland but in the real world they can’t get the Irish to speak their own language and they need foreign markets and foreign capital, and by a curious arrangement the British Post Office publication “Post Offices in the United Kingdom” contains not only the Post Offices in Britain, but also those in the Irish Republic. With so many Irish workers working in this country the Irish Government doubtless finds it convenient to have easy means provided for Irish emigrants in Britain to send correspondence and remittances to their relatives.

#    #    #    #

The Trade Battle across the Iron Curtain

A year or two ago there were two propaganda drives going on, one to expand British exports to U.S.A. and Canada and the other to popularise the idea that Russia could offer an attractive market for British exports.

The first has received a jolt lately since some big contracts in U.S.A. have been awarded, not to the lowest tender, coming from British firms, but to American firms quoting higher. And, according to the Daily Express (1/9/55) British exports to Canada are not looking too good;

Trade men in America say that Western Germany is making an all out drive to rob Britain of her place as the world’s second largest exporter of engineering goods—next to the U.S.

Main “ battleground" is likely to be in Canada—where already British sales of engineering goods are losing ground to the Germans.

And it appears that Russian competition is a factor in certain lines. The Daily Express of the same date reported the following:—

Dumping of matches in Britain by Russia and other Iron Curtain countries has forced the giant Bryant and May match combine to close one of its plants.

The “Brymay” boss, Sir Anthony Elkins, says this morning that the Red competition is “severe."

That is a masterly under-statement. For imports of Russian matches have leaped from 72,000 gross boxes in 1953 to a current rate of 774,000 gross boxes.

For the statistically minded that is 111,456,000 boxes of matches a year.

#    #    #    #

Religion and Morals

A favourite side argument of religionists has always been that if there were no religion moral standards would decline. While they readily admit, and indeed make a point of asserting, that the real basis of religion is “faith” not behaviour they nevertheless find it convenient to buttress the case for religion by maintaining that the two are linked and that one falls with the other.

Now some American churchmen have had to allow that events in U.S.A. do not support the argument. They say that while religion is booming “ morality seems to be on the decline.”

The following appeared in the Observer (London, September 18, 1955):—

A record increase in Church membership in the United States is reported in figures to be released this week by the National Council of Churches of the United States. It shows a total of more than 97 million, an increase of over 2,500,000 during 1954.

There are 57 million Protestants, 32 million Roman Catholics, 5,500,000 Jews and two million Eastern Orthodox Church members. Among Protestant Churches the Baptists, with 18,500,000, have the greatest number of adherents. The Methodists are second with nearly 12 million.

Whether the present “religious boom" in the United States is deeply seated in religious conviction is doubted by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, this year's president of the National Council of Churches. In a comment on the figures Dr. Blake says: “ Morality seems to be on the decline at the moment when there appears to be a religious boom. Preachers in this industrial age are finding modern man's anxiety for his job is just as acute as primitive man’s for a good harvest"

#    #    #    #

Dividends and Wages; and those who get them

As a propaganda move against wage claims, Sir John Braithwaite, Chairman of the Stock Exchange, recently issued a statement on the relative increase of dividends and wages since 1947. His statement, published in the Manchester Guardian (29 August, 1955) contained the following:—

The total of wages and salaries for the year ending December 31, 1954, was £9,265 millions, as against a total of £1,122 millions for interest and dividends on securities quoted on the Stock Exchange, or over eight times as great.

Wages and salaries have advanced since 1947 by 69.2 per cent. (£3,790 millions) against an increase of 32.1 per cent. (£273 millions) in interest and dividends (of winch ordinary dividends constitute 39.6 per cent). That is to say that the rise in wages and salaries is more than double the rise in interest and dividends by percentage, and nearly 14 times as much by volume.

Socialists of course are not believers in the Labour Party notion that Capitalism would be all right provided the Capitalists received rather less and the workers rather more. And one or two of the more objective defenders of Capitalism have pointed out that on the basis of the Tory argument for the free play of economic forces there is no sanctity about the division that existed in 1947 or any other year—each side gets what it can when it can.

There is, however, a useful corrective to apply to the figures. It is simply this: While “wages and salaries” cover something over 20 million workers, not to mention their still larger number of dependents, the number of shareholders is relatively a very small body. Mr. Harold Wincott, writing in the Unilever Journal “Progress” (Spring 1955, page 161) had this to say:—

“In this country, it has been estimated that out of a population of 50,000,000, only some 1,250,000 to 1,500,000 people are shareholders. Even in the more capitalistic United States, a recent inquiry by the Brookings Institution produced an estimate that shareholders numbered only some 6,500,000 out of a population of 160,000,000.

Of course, included in these apparently exclusive bands of investors are a relative handful of institutions—insurance companies, pension funds, investment trusts, and so on—investing vast sums of money on behalf of a great multitude of indirect investors. But the policy holder and the contributor to a pension fund do not generally speaking regard themselves as being identified with the course of stock market prices. Theirs is a very remote and indirect link. With only three persons in every 100 in this country and four in each 100 in the United States holding shares in their own right, it is not surprising if the events in the world’s stock exchanges are normally things apart from the man in the street."

#    #    #    #

Muddle about Socialism

The Manchester Guardian (17/9/55) had a leading article deploring the confusion and ill-feeling that arise because not many of us “recognise the kind of society in which we are living.”

“American Conservatives are angry if told that their economy, far from being based on the free play of market forces, is almost as Socialist as the British system. The Russian Communists are infuriated if told that their Stakhonovite arrangements, with high wages for exceptional workers and coercion for the ordinary men, are less Socialist than much of the "British system."

The reader will have read enough of the article to see that the Manchester Guardian is doing nothing to remove the confusion. Its conclusion, a masterpiece of muddle, is that “in short our system is neither Capitalist nor Socialist, but a mixture.”

In another Journal (Tribune, 16 September, 1955), a Labour M.P., Mr. Ian Mikardo, adds his contribution. Writing under the heading “Don’t Tell Me this is Socialism,” he makes the discovery that the French system of having the nationalised gas industry and the nationalised electricity industry using jointly the same non-competitive showroom is Socialism, but the English system of having them in competition and using rival showrooms is not. 

Whoever it was that told Mr. Mikardo that either of them has anything whatever to do with Socialism, it cannot have been a Socialist And one wonders what Mr. Mikardo was telling his readers in the past when he supported the Electricity and Gas Nationalisation Acts.

According to his odd test a nationalised industry is “Socialism” if it has a monopoly. Well the Post Office has a monopoly in most of its services but Mr. Attlee long ago described it as “the outstanding example of collective Capitalism” (New Statesman, 7/11/31).

This is the first piece of light so far, and with its help we can put Mr. Mikardo, the Guardian the Americans and the Russians on the right road—that is if they want to be on the right road.

It all boils down to private Capitalism and State Capitalism and indeed on this basis and this alone America, Britain, Russia and all other countries are a mixture— but without any Socialism.

#    #    #    #

When will the Boom End ?

The economist, Mr. Roy Harrod, set out to answer this question in the Financial Times (10 September, 55). He thinks that “recession” will come in the autumn of 1956 or somewhat earlier. His reasons are that the wave of expansion of factories and equipment that began about October, 1954, will be more or less completed in two years that it was excessive in amount; and that it may be found that it cannot be fully operated. He writes:—

“In 1956, we shall be faced with the problems of recession. This might merely take the form of a welcome decline of orders to engineering industry. But it might also be found—which would be more serious—that during this period of expansion we had created, in some lines at least, excessive capacity in relation to markets or to manpower available to operate it Matters would be still worse if some recession in our export markets began to manifest itself at about the same time."

It will be noticed that though he starts off very firmly about the demonstrable feet that the 1954 spate of new orders for factories, etc., will be running out in 1956, and less firmly anticipates a recession then, he becomes quite non committal about the other factors and indeed is not sure that he knows whether there will be factories without factory workers or factories with workers, but without markets.

He remembers no doubt the many other attempts by economists, including the advisers of the Labour Governments and the present Government, to forecast from one year to another what is going to happen.

The Editorial of the Financial Times, commenting on Mr. Harrod’s article, is rather more definite than he is. The Editorial says:—

“He makes what is no doubt a sound case for the view that the investment boom is the major cause of current balance of payment difficulties, and then goes on to suggest that this may lead in turn to an excess of supply in the autumn of next year. The risk is a real one, but not perhaps a very serious one. In the past it has proved the characteristic of long-term periods of rising prices, such as the 1850's and 1860’s, to have major booms and minor recessions. In fact, the United States has absorbed three minor recessions since the war, and we have already absorbed one."

One other point made by Mr. Harrod is of interest in yiew of the current argument by employers and politicians that economic difficulties are due to wage increases and “buying sprees.” Mr. Harrod maintains that the excessive expansion of factories (encouraged by the Government when they ought, according to him to have been discouraging it) is the predominant disturbing factor.

“Other factors making towards inflation—wage increases of 7½ per cent.; consumption increase of five per cent—are trivial by comparison."

Edgar Hardcastle

Dear Editors – Is there a ‘Right of Nations to Self-determination’? (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation called Vote Palestine 2026 asked candidates in last month’s local elections to sign a pledge committing them, if elected to, among other things, ‘uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people’. One of our candidates replied as below; to which another candidate replied. Here is the exchange published in the comment section of the Brixton Buzz.

Dear Vote Palestine 2026,

Thank you for your email. I must respectfully decline to sign.

As an anti-Zionist Jew and socialist standing in Brixton North, I share your horror at the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. But I cannot endorse a pledge framed around national self-determination.

The nation state, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a prison house of nationalities. It tells workers to wave flags and forget they have no motherland to defend. Israeli and Palestinian workers alike are exploited by the same global system of wage labour and capital.

National liberation is a trap. A new state means new masters under a new flag, while wage labour, property rights, and class rule stay intact. Council divestment treats symptoms, not the disease.

My goal is not another state but the abolition of the state itself: a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless world community where people cooperate freely. Real self-determination means workers recognising their shared enemy across all borders.

I stand with working people everywhere. I cannot sign a pledge that reinforces the nationalism keeping them divided.

Yours sincerely,

Anya Krycek

Socialist Party Candidate for Brixton North, Lambeth

Reply from Eduardo Salgado:

I think historically, things happen in stages. According to Marxism-Leninism (ML), national liberation often must precede, or be strategically aligned with, workers’ liberation because imperialism makes national independence a necessary first step to create the conditions for a successful socialist revolution. Lenin viewed the national struggle in colonized or oppressed countries as a key component of the overall world socialist revolution. The core reasoning is that national liberation acts as a necessary step to ‘clear the decks’ for direct class struggle, as it removes the foreign oppressor and allows the working class to battle its local bourgeoisie. Lenin says on this issue:

• Support the national liberation struggle against imperialism unconditionally.
• Maintain independent working-class organization and leadership within that movement.
• Use the liberation struggle to raise demands for socialist transformation (land reform, workers’ rights).

Rejoinder from our candidate:

The stageist model, national liberation as a necessary prelude to socialist transformation, is not merely strategically mistaken but theoretically incompatible with the abolition of capitalism. The historical record of national liberation movements demonstrates a consistent pattern: the ‘stage’ of national liberation does not clear the decks for proletarian revolution it institutionalizes a new form of capitalist state. The foreign colonizer is replaced by a national bourgeoisie that maintains wage labour, commodity production, and extraction. The nation is not a proto political reality waiting to be liberated, but a category produced by capital itself a way of organising populations into manageable units. To prioritise national liberation is to reinforce the very abstractions; nation, citizenship, the state that capital requires to function.

‘The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got’, from The Communist Manifesto (1848).

The Socialist Party position is that the proletariat has no stake in which bourgeoisie administers its exploitation. Anti-imperialism that stops at the nation state leaves exploitation intact. The state form itself prevents the direct social relations that would constitute a break with capital. Socialism cannot proceed through stages it must begin immediately in the content of struggle, as the practical activity of breaking with wage labour, money, and the state. National liberation changes the flag and people in government, it does not interrupt the reproduction of capital. To make it a ‘necessary step’ is to permanently defer the only act that could end exploitation: the immediate social transformation of society by and for the working class. We don’t seek the people’s commodity production we seek abolition of the proletariat.

Editors’ note:

Questioned on ITV on election day, Green Party leader Zack Polanski was reported as saying that ‘no country has a right to exist’. His critics saw this as a reference to Israel, but it would equally apply to Palestine, indeed to Britain and every other state. States may exist but have no ‘right’ to; which rather undermines the Vote Palestine pledge that many of his party’s candidates signed up to.

Blogger's Note:

A version of this correspondence was previously published on the blog back in May of this year.

Socialist Forum: A Question about Zionism. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

March 7th, 1932.

The Editorial Committee,

Socialist Standard.

Dear Comrades,

As a young Jewish worker, I accept the general principles of the S.P.G.B. But, as I am Jewish I have to bear a double load; both the load of exploitation and the load of anti-semitism. Not only do I have to work and sell my labour-power, but I am forced to have many disadvantages which non-Jewish comrades do not experience. What are the Jews to do? Persecuted as they are, and with the prospect of Socialism being very remote, is it not wise of Jewry all over the world to set up a “National Home” in Palestine.

True it is that I will be exploited in Palestine just as well as in England. But in Palestine I could escape anti-Jewish persecution. The German Jews, now threatened by Hitler, would have nothing to fear from him. The Jew-baiting in Polish Universities would cease. Thus, in my opinion, it is essential for the Jews to have a National Home, under Capitalism.

I trust that you will answer my statements in the next issue of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, as this is a serious problem. Perhaps you could explain the causes of anti-semitism.

Yours fraternally,

“JEWISH WORKER.”

Reply

Our correspondent says that he accepts the general principles of the S.P.G.B., but his letter shows that this is not correct. The argument, “Socialism being very remote, therefore let us work for something else,” is the excuse used by every reformist opponent of Socialism and is a repudiation of S.P.G.B. principles. Socialism will only cease to be remote to the extent that the workers strive for Socialism instead of supporting Zionism and other movements which leave capitalism intact.

A basic principle of the S.P.G.B. is that the abolition of capitalism is the only means of solving the social problem that is common to all workers. Acceptance of our principles carries with it a willingness to concentrate on the basic cause and to push into the background the minor and sectional problems.

The hostility shown by some non-Jews towards some Jews is one of many such minor and sectional problems. It is a continuation of traditional hostility based mainly upon economic causes. Non-Jewish traders found themselves in competition with Jews often more successful than themselves. Christians were for long prevented by the Church from practising usury. Consequently their antagonism towards Jewish traders and moneylenders tended to take the form of antagonism towards Jewish people in general. In some countries, especially where non-Jewish peasants still find themselves forced to incur debts to moneylenders, some of whom are Jewish, this antagonism still continues. It is sometimes deliberately fostered by interested parties in order to cloud the main issue.

But, speaking generally, it is not true that Jews, as such, are subject to any material disability. Can it be said in any real sense that the Readings, Monds, Rothschilds and others of their social position need a “National Home” in Palestine? So little is that the case, that they take good care not to go there.

Our correspondent does not say what are the “many disadvantages” from which Jews suffer and from which non-Jewish workers are free. The illusions of Zionists on the one side are balanced on the other by the fixed belief held by many non-Jewish workers that the world is in pawn to the Jews. The complaints of some Jews that they are at a disadvantage compared with non-Jews are echoed by the Arabs in Palestine, but in their eyes it is the Jew who is the privileged and favoured interloper, and the Arab is the bearer of the “double burden.” Similar complaints are heard about the favour shown to Freemasons, to members of various Christian sects, and to adherents of certain political parties. Then there are the complaints of the national minorities—the Austrians in Italy, the Germans in Poland and Belgium, the Flemish in Belgium, the negroes in U.S.A., and the Scots and Welsh in Great Britain..

There is a certain amount of substance in all such grievances voiced by individuals and groups of workers, but they pale into insignificance by comparison with the subject position of the working class in their relationship with the capitalist class.

While all of these groups fight each other and work for their separate minor aims, the capitalist system will remain secure.

There are many weaknesses in the Zionist case. It is an impossibility for all the Jews of the world to settle in Palestine even if they wish to do so. The existence of the Jewish State raises another grievance which takes a racial and religious form—that of the Arabs and Palestine Christians.

The reference to the persecution of Jews by the German Hitlerites shows up another flaw in the argument, for the Hitler movement has developed since the setting up of the Jewish State in Palestine.

Ed. Comm.

"National liberation is a trap" (2026)

Blogger's Note:

The following text is from the SPGB discussion forum, and is in connection to the SPGB contesting the local elections in Lambeth.

"The campaign group, Vote Palestine 2026 "asked candidates if they would sign a pledge, the first point of which was to: “Uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”  [The BrixtonBuzz website has published a list of those who agreed to sign the whole pledge.] 

Our candidate added a published comment explaining why he couldn’t:

“I did request a better wording of the pledge at the campaign launch but those running the campaign didn’t take my advice so this, regrettably, must be my answer.

I can’t help but feel those who have a vested interest in passing off national liberation wars as somehow socialist had a hand in this."

“I did request a better wording of the pledge at the campaign launch but those running the campaign didn’t take my advice so this, regrettably, must be my answer.

I can’t help but feel those who have a vested interest in passing off national liberation wars as somehow socialist had a hand in this.

Reply from Anya Krycek

Dear Vote Palestine 2026,

Thank you for your email. I must respectfully decline to sign.

As an anti Zionist Jew and socialist standing in Brixton North, I share your horror at the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. But I cannot endorse a pledge framed around national self determination.

The nation state, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a prison house of nationalities. It tells workers to wave flags and forget they have no motherland to defend. Israeli and Palestinian workers alike are exploited by the same global system of wage labour and capital.

National liberation is a trap. A new state means new masters under a new flag, while wage labour, property rights, and class rule stay intact. Council divestment treats symptoms, not the disease.

My goal is not another state but the abolition of the state itself: a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless world community where people cooperate freely. Real self determination means workers recognising their shared enemy across all borders.

I stand with working people everywhere. I cannot sign a pledge that reinforces the nationalism keeping them divided.

Yours sincerely,

Anya Krycek

Socialist Party Candidate for Brixton North, Lambeth”

Another candidate, Eduardo Salgado, who is standing for Shake it Up in the same ward, also commented, expressing a “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) point of view:

“I think historically, things happen in stages. According to Marxism-Leninism (ML), national liberation often must precede, or be strategically aligned with, workers’ liberation because imperialism makes national independence a necessary first step to create the conditions for a successful socialist revolution. Lenin viewed the national struggle in colonized or oppressed countries as a key component of the overall world socialist revolution. The core reasoning is that national liberation acts as a necessary step to “clear the decks” for direct class struggle, as it removes the foreign oppressor and allows the working class to battle its local bourgeoisie. Lenin says on this issue:

* Support the national liberation struggle against imperialism unconditionally.

* Maintain independent working-class organization and leadership within that movement.

* Use the liberation struggle to raise demands for socialist transformation (land reform, workers’ rights).”

There is also a Trotskyist candidate standing in Brixton North but he has not intervened yet.

Here is our candidate’s reply to Eduardo Salgado:

The stageist model, national liberation as a necessary prelude to socialist transformation, is not merely strategically mistaken but theoretically incompatible with the abolition of capitalism. The historical record of national liberation movements demonstrates a consistent pattern: the “stage” of national liberation does not clear the decks for proletarian revolution it institutionalizes a new form of capitalist state. The foreign colonizer is replaced by a national bourgeoisie that maintains wage labour, commodity production, and extraction. The nation is not a proto political reality waiting to be liberated, but a category produced by capital itself a way of organising populations into manageable units. To prioritise national liberation is to reinforce the very abstractions; nation, citizenship, the state that capital requires to function.

“The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.” The Communist Manifesto (1848)

The Socialist Party (GB) position is that the proletariat has no stake in which bourgeoisie administers its exploitation. Anti-imperialism that stops at the nation state leaves exploitation intact. The state form itself prevents the direct social relations that would constitute a break with capital. Socialism cannot proceed through stages it must begin immediately in the content of struggle, as the practical activity of breaking with wage labour, money, and the state. National liberation changes the flag and people in government, it does not interrupt the reproduction of capital. To make it a “necessary step” is to permanently defer the only act that could end exploitation: the immediate social transformation of society by and for the working class. We don’t seek the people’s commodity production we seek abolition of the proletariat.

Anya Brixton North SPGB candidate

The hollow cry of ‘self-determination’ in a world of borders (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The air is thick with the rhetoric of ‘self-determination.’ From the hallowed halls of the United Nations to the televised addresses of national leaders, the principle that ‘all peoples have the right to freely determine their political status’ is touted as a moral absolute. Yet, for the global working class, this ‘right’ is nothing more than a cruel joke—a deceptive mask worn by the state to protect the interests of the ruling class.

The hypocrisy of the nation-state

The very states that harp on about self-determination are the ones that have historically opposed it whenever it threatened their own economic or military interests. For example, British imperial history is a masterclass in this hypocrisy; the idea of self-determination was seen as a direct threat to the control of colonies essential for economic benefits, military strategy, and international prestige.

Even today, the nation-state remains a ‘prison house of nationalities’. Leaders preach the moral superiority of national self-determination over sovereignty to justify their own territorial claims or to undermine rivals, yet they remain the routine managers of a capitalist system that thrives on exploitation.

The myth of national interest

Socialists maintain that there is no such thing as a ‘national interest’ that includes both the exploiter and the exploited. The nation-state is a territorial entity that identifies itself with a particular ‘people’ only to better manage them for the benefit of the capitalist class. When workers are told to wave national flags, they are being encouraged to block the path to any higher human synthesis and to ignore the fact that they have no fatherland to defend.

In this elemental chaos, the state uses nationalism and racism as tools to divide the working class, making more privileged groups feel that their interests lie with their masters rather than their fellow workers.

The real victim: working-class self-determination

While leaders argue over where to draw lines on a map, the true self-determination of the working class is systematically trampled. We define real socialism as a society where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and organised for the benefit of all.

Under the current system:

• Freedom is an illusion: workers are forced to sell their labour power for a wage, which entails providing the unpaid labour that forms the basis of capitalist wealth.
• Democratic rights are suppressed: governments and unions often cultivate a myth of an all-powerful government while insisting that nothing can be done about the systemic inequalities of capitalism.
• Solidarity is sabotaged: by emphasising national boundaries, the state ensures that workers of different nations view each other as competitors rather than allies against a common enemy.

A world without borders

We affirm that capitalism is incapable of meaningful change in the interests of the majority. The struggle for national liberation is frequently a trap; when a new national bourgeoisie takes power, the working class finds itself exploited by a new set of masters and mistresses under a new flag.

Our goal is not the ‘self-determination’ of new states, but the abolition of the state itself. We advocate for a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society – a frontierless world community where men and women cooperate freely to produce what is needed. Only by recognising that they are exploited by the same enemy class in all countries can workers reclaim their true identity and achieve real self-determination through a global democratic revolution.

Jake Ambrose (Australia)

Palestine: the failure of Jewish nationalism (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s happening in Gaza and Palestine today shows the failure of the Zionist project, conceived of towards the end of the 19th century, to set up a separate state for Jews.

The Zionists preached that what Jews, including Jewish workers, should do is not simply integrate into the states in which they found themselves but agitate for a separate Jewish state — somewhere, anywhere. Uganda and Madagascar were considered at one point. In the end, on religious and ancient historical grounds, the Zionists decided that this should be Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire.

Arguably, it was a crazy project from the start. To settle people from Europe in another part of the world, where the people and their rulers were unlikely to accept this, was a recipe for trouble. But at the time — the end of the 19th century — this would not have seemed so crazy, as it was common practice for European states in a position to do so — Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and belatedly Italy and Germany — to settle Europeans in various other parts of the world, mainly Africa, on land traditionally occupied by locals.

The idea of a separate state, to be a safe home for Jews, seemed particularly attractive after the experience in WW2. Israel was to be that safe home. But it could never be. Israel was established as a recognised separate state in 1948 but was opposed by the local rulers who immediately went to war to try to prevent it but lost, resulting in hundreds of thousands of the local population being expelled from where they lived.

Ever since, Israel has sought ‘secure frontiers’. After winning the Six-Day War In 1967, again initiated by the rulers of surrounding states, Israel annexed the Golan Heights from Syria and East Jerusalem from Jordan and occupied the rest of Palestine including Gaza and also Sinai. They later withdrew from Sinai but kept ‘security control’ of the rest, creating a sort of Greater Israel. Following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria last December Israel has occupied more of that country.

The Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023 confirmed that Israel was not in fact a safe place for Jews. And Israel’s response — not an eye for an eye, but 40 eyes for one eye and rising — has made things more insecure, through the growth of anti-semitism, for those Jews who choose not to settle in Israel (most Jews in fact).

So, in terms of providing a safe home for Jews, Zionism has been a complete failure. Jews living outside Israel (most of these are in the United States, as many in fact as are in Israel) are in a much safer position.

Israel may well reconquer Gaza but history suggests that in the long term its present government’s policy of trying to hold down a hostile population larger than the number of Jews living there cannot succeed. It is bound to fail, just as apartheid did in South Africa.

What this shows is that socialists were correct in opposing from the start Zionism and its project. Socialism, not a separate Jewish state, was the solution to problems Jewish workers faced. In the meantime, Jewish workers should integrate into the workers’ movement in the state where they lived. Many did — more in fact than went to live in Israel — and took part not just in the workers’ movement but also in politics generally. Some of the key figures involved in current discussions and decisions about the Gaza war chose this sensible path. For instance, Trump’s special envoy Witkoff, the French President Macron, and Ukraine President Zelensky.

Most of the Leninist left enthusiastically support armed action to abolish the state of Israel. That would just be to continue the senseless cycle of massacres and counter-massacres that have gone on since the first Jews arrived from Europe. Today Israel is where 70 to 80 percent of the Jews living there were actually born. More than half have no family connection with Europe but rather with the Middle East and North Africa, so can hardly be called colonists. It is now just another state, which like all states needs to be captured by the working class to establish socialism and then abolished along with all states, not singled out for abolition under capitalism while all other states remain.

Most of those on the marches — and probably of those expressing support for the banned Palestine Action group — will basically just want an end to the daily killing and destruction in Gaza and are understandably frustrated that nothing is being done about it. For them, ‘free Palestine’ will mean simply that the population there and in the West Bank should be free from the political oppression by the Israeli state that it undoubtedly is suffering. Naturally those oppressed want it to end and socialists obviously sympathise with this. But how to bring it to an end?

Most governments say they favour the setting up of a separate Palestine state alongside Israel. That would certainly end political oppression by the Israeli state for the new state’s subjects but, a relief as that would be, it would not end capitalist exploitation; from that point of view, it would just be another capitalist state and a different ruling class.

In any event, a two-state solution doesn’t seem practicable in present circumstances as, to work, it would require a change of attitude by the rulers — and indeed of most of the Jewish population — of Israel. That is not impossible, but the effort required to bring this about would be better employed in convincing all sections of the working class living in the historic territory of Palestine that they have a common interest in ending their exploitation by uniting to bring capitalism to an end. Even within capitalism they have an interest in there being political democracy, which includes the equal treatment of all the subjects of a state (and indeed of non-citizens living there too).

In the end, the only effective and lasting way out is going to be the ‘no state’ solution, the abolition of capitalism on a world scale and the establishment of a classless, stateless world community based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.

Adam Buick

Patriotism and Class Interest. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whoever has more than a very slight acquaintance with Socialist literature will be aware that on nearly every conceivable subject connected with the mental and social aspects of man’s life, the Socialist has a view-point and opinion which is distinct from, and usually antagonistic to, that which is usually regarded as true. This is so because the Socialist holds as correct ideas which, carried to a practical conclusion, would overthrow and wipe out the present condition of society, whereas the ideas of the mass of the population to-day are essentially those which, are favourable to the continuation of the existing system. It is, therefore, only to be expected that the Socialist conception of patriotism, is one which is unacceptable to almost any other school of thought.

Patriotism is often taken to mean “love of one’s country,” but this is misleading, as what is really intended to be the object of this “tender affection” is not actually the country or territory itself, but the social group which occupies it. It is social solidarity which is the essential nature of patriotism. This is plainly to be seen when we consider the more primitive forms of society where, as is the case with cattle-rearing nomadic tribes, the territory occupied is only an incidental factor varying almost from day to day. Here it is actual kinship which is the social “bond of union.” But this is not the case in modern societies, the members of which may be, and usually are, different in point of language and race. But, providing that they are born within the territorial confines dominated by a particular social group, that group claims their allegiance. This is probably the cause of the existing confusion between the terms “country” and “nation.”

Thus far both bourgeois and Socialist theorists may agree ; but when we come to the conception of the modern function of patriotism we find an immediate divergence and antagonism of opinion. To the brain soaked with the orthodox ideas of capitalist society (and suck brains prevail to-day) the sentiment of patriotism appears as one of the very noblest that can animate the human mind. To work staunchly for the welfare of the “nation” is regarded as highly creditable, and as one of the greatest forces of human and social progress. No greater compliment exists than to be called “a patriot.” 

But we—the Socialists—repudiate this view of patriotism. We will have none of it. This sentiment of national solidarity is to us a snare and a delusion. It is in our view one of the most pernicious of the many superstitions which today benumb the minds of the workers—for it is the workers that we stand for : their interests are our interests.

An impulse of loyalty to the social whole is obviously only valid when there is unity of interest therein, and is incompatible with the existence of class antagonisms in the community, when these conflicting interests are well understood by the classes themselves.

The working class of to-day is, because it is property less, in a condition of economic subjection, and the idea that a subject class can look after its own interests and at the same time look after the interests of the society of which it forms a part is a delusion. The reason for this is clear. The existence of a subject class implies the existence of a dominant class. In its structure and its institutions the society is always such as to perpetuate the conditions of the respective classes—the ascendancy of the one and the subjection of the other. If, therefore, the servile class desires to be emancipated from thraldom (as it must do if and when it realises its condition and therefore its interests), it must be antagonistic to the social structure and to the class who would maintain it. Consequently any allegiance to the social whole on its part would be suicidal folly.

For many thousands of years now, the division into conflicting classes has been an outstanding feature of all the most advanced societies. Under the system of chattel-slavery, upon which basis the earliest forms of civilisation were reared, patriotism took an openly class character. Although the slaves were an integral, and indeed, a basic, part of these societies, yet the conditions of their life were such as to prohibit almost entirely any sentiment of loyalty to the social group in which they worked. In the first place the manner of their exploitation and oppression was so clear and open as to admit of no misunderstanding. Secondly, they had usually no tie of blood or language with their oppressors which could serve as “blinkers” as they so often do to-day. The immense hordes of slaves in Babylon, Greece, and Rome, were gathered from all parts of the known world ; they would in many cases remember the land and society of their birth, where they were free men. All circumstances, therefore, conspired to to wipe out any trace of social solidarity among them and to keep alive a hatred of their oppressors.

Of “mighty Babylon” Romaine Paterson, in his valuable work, “The Nemesis of Nations,” says,

“The fact that every new conqueror was hailed with acclamation by her populace is a proof of their immense weariness. Both Cyrus and Alexander were received with shouts of joy by a vast multitude assembled on the walls. A great mass of human beings sunk in slavery, and living in slums where life must have been at least as degraded as it is in Shoreditch, Hoxton, and other parts of modern London, can have possessed no national interests. The peril of the State was not theirs.” (Page 127.)

These slaves of Babylon had not learnt the lesson which the modern proletariat must learn—they looked to the new conquerors for their salvation instead of to themselves, only to find a change of masters and a slavery as intense as the old.

What patriotism existed in these antique societies was found solely among the freemen, who constituted what our “elite” bourgeoisie do—”society.” As the slaves vastly outnumbered the free population, armed slaves were exceedingly dangerous, and consequently we rarely find the slaves taking part in, or being trained for, war. Not until that great class conflict of the ruling classes known as the Peloponnesian War, did the slaves of the Greeks become fighting men, and only then on condition that they were freed from bondage. The ruling classes in the several Greek States were often at war with each other, but when a slave rising broke out they were united in their efforts to crush what they feared as they feared nothing else. We read that Athens on one occasion despatched to Sparta a large force of troops to aid in the suppression of a revolt of the helots.

* * *

Times have changed. Of Babylon we have but a memory and a few crumbling remains dug from the desert sands. Greece and Rome have long fallen. But the slavery remains—changed in form, yes, but the same in essence, and even more effective as a means of exploitation. Under the modern system of wage-slavery the robbery of labour still persists, but hidden under the hypocritical sham of liberty of contract. The antagonism of interests within the nation is with us to-day, just as it has existed in all societies based upon classes. Only upon a recognition of this conflict of the classes can the workers organise effectively with the aim of emancipation.

As capitalism develops it ever widens the breech between the toilers on the one hand, and the parasites of capital on the other. Ever-increasing wealth and riotous luxury among the bourgeoisie presents to the worker’s eyes a more and more glaring contrast to the pitiful condition of poverty in which he exists. This being the case it becomes ever more urgent from the capitalist point of view to devise new, and to perfect old, methods of effecting that mental stupefying process which has always been one of the chief bulwarks of class rule.

Religion, which has served the master class throughout history so well, and which was the main “opium of the people” in the old days of chattel-slavery and of serfdom, through the development of science which the present era-must needs in its own interest encourage, is becoming less and less effective as an instrument of class subjection.

Patriotism, of all creeds, has appealed most to the master class in its efforts to find a substitute for religion, and consequently it is being pushed with greater persistence year by year. It is easy to see why this has been so. A patriotic working class kills several birds with a single stone. First, it offers to the capitalists the delightful prospect of a working class innocent of all “narrow,” “selfish,” class interests, ready to sacrifice all for the “national good,” and content to exude from every pore their wealth-creating energy, under this “harmoni­ous” system, based upon a “just” division into “fair” wages and “reasonable” profits.

Secondly, by fostering a belief in national superiority it creates a mutual distrust and even hatred between the workers of the different nations. Thirdly, it makes possible a ready and willing fighting force, to wage the wars of the various national sections of the capitalist class, which are an inevitable effect of the workings of the present system.

Is not this prospect to our masters’ eyes truly a glorious one ? No wonder they spare no pains to achieve and maintain it ! Through their control of the channels of education, both in the schools and in the censorship, literary, and even (as they find it necessary) of the theatrical and the picture shows, even to the street-corner orator, they wield an enormous power of mental oppression. The perverted “histories,” nationalist “economics” and “sociology,” the glaring pomp and show of “our” national butchers the armed forces, the Empire Day pageants, boy scout and kindred movements, all bear witness to the truth of the above contention.

Those flunkeys of capital, commonly called labour leaders (because of their well-known social function of leading the lambs of labour to the clippers of capital to be shorn of their surplus wool [value] with as little display of irritation among the lambs as the circumstances will permit) are, as would be expected, useful helpers in this process of pumping patriotism into proletarians.

One of the leading lights of this fraternity of leaders, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., President of the Board of Education, recently delivered himself thus :

“He was satisfied that the spirit which has prompted millions of men in all classes to volunteer (?) for service was in a large measure due to that love of country which our schools had fostered. He quoted passages from the publications of the Board to show that the Department was fully alive to the importance of inculcating a sane and healthy patriotism in the minds of the young and promised that any practical proposals for furthering this object would receive his most careful consideration.”—”Manchester Evening News,” 28.3.16). (Query ours.)

* * *

Against all this array of the mental and moral influences of capital the Socialist, brings the logic of his position by which he stands or falls. Against nationalism he preaches the class struggle and the solidarity of interest of the workers the world over. He points to the worldwide spread of capitalism, to the gradual equalising of the condition of the workers in every land, and the sameness of the problems which they have to face. To the jingo “history” which, places in the forefront the blast of the bugle and the roar of the cannon, and conceives history as the rise and fall, birth and death, conflict and alliances of nations, the Socialists confront the facts of sociology, which show that the foundations of society and the driving forces of social progress lie in its mode of acquiring its material subsistence ; that the basic factors in a society are not its politicians and its militarists, but the producers of wealth, not the sword and the cannon, but the tools, the machinery, and the land.

Ours is a hard task, but it must be faced and accomplished. The education of the proletariat as to its interests and destiny is the great work which we Socialists have set ourselves. Once get the seeds of class-consciousness implanted, the favourable soil created by capitalist conditions will cause it to root, and to spread the mighty undergrowth of the international league of the working class. Then will the mental agents of class oppression, among them patriotism, wither and die like the weeds they are.

But that time is not yet. To-day more than ever in the past is the clarion call of ’48 a vital and a stirring necessity, to awaken the giant frame of labour to shake off the leeches which suck his blood and fetter his might :

“WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE ! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT THE CHAINS WHICH BIND YOU, BUT YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.”

R. W. Housley

Capitalist Unity and Socialist Solidarity. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the present time, when various capitalist Governments vie with each other in promoting “International Peace” and “Ententes Cordials”, a pronouncement on Internationalism from the Socialist seems to be necessary, more so because the organisations and organs in this country professing to be Socialist, join with the bourgeois parties and Press to extoll the virtues of King Edward the Seventh and his endeavour to promote the peace of the civilised world. It has been frequently pointed out in the Socialist Standard that the leaders of the S.D.P. and I.L.P., whether of middle-class or working-class origin, are steeped to their eye-brows in bourgeois ideas and conceptions by reason of their reform attitude with regard to the solution of the social problem. In addition to the sickening propaganda of “bourgeois peace” in Justice, The Labour Leader, and The Clarion, and from the platforms of the S.D.P., I.L.P., and Clarion Fellowship, we are from time to time treated to nauseous professions of “loyalty to the Crown” by some make-believe Socialists in Parliament, professions which go to show how far the mass of the workers in this country are still from the realisation of their class position in society. During the recent Parliamentary debate on the King’s visit to the Tzar, Mr. O’Grady lauded the English monarch to the skies, and Mr. Keir Hardie stated that one of the reasons why he did not wish King Edward to meet the Tzar officially was his (Keir Hardie’s) concern for the reputation of the ruler of England.

The fact cannot be sufficiently emphasised that as Socialists, and necessarily revolutionists, we have formed a conception and take up an attitude with regard to international relations that stand in contrast as clearly and definitely to the position of all other political parties, whether avowed capitalist or alleged labour, as our Declaration of Principles and political action stand to their palliative programmes and reform politics. While, therefore, the reform organisations put their faith in the capitalist endeavours of “promoting peace and good-will among the nations,” we, ever true to the principles of the class struggle, consider it our duty to point out to the workers that the reason for a desire for political departure from nationalism on the part of the capitalist class can only be sought in economic necessity. There can be little doubt that the tremendous inroad made by the countries of the world on the markets of the old world, together with the need for more united repression of the workers, are making the closer unity of the capitalist Governments increasingly necessary, if not inevitable. The capitalist unity evidently becomes a more pressing necessity to the extent that the growth of class-consciousness among the proletariat of the world is accelerated by the increasing economic encroachment upon their pitiable existence.

What was the reason for the nationalism of the capitalist class in the past ? Between the nationally organised bourgeois communities of the various countries there exists an antagonism of interests, which often gives rise to armed conflicts. The nation is the tie embracing the common interest of the possessing class. Hence the native country is the only part of the globe for which the bourgeoisie cherishes any devotion. But the proletariat of all countries have identical interests. In every country they have only one enemy, viz., the bourgeoisie. The Socialist Commonwealth for which the proletariat strive will recognise geographical differentiation, but not national antagonism; the Socialist system of society will establish economic and social peace and fraternity among the peoples of the world. It must be clear that the antagonism between the national sentiment of the capitalist class and the international principles of the proletariat are based upon the economic conditions, the material interests, of the two classes.

But the economic development in all capitalist countries has made mighty strides. The evolution of capitalism in our time has deprived its hitherto cherished forms of their usefulness. The new economic conditions are gradually outstripping the political power of the isolated States of the old world, and the bourgeois interests are rapidly outgrowing their national limitations, and completely uprooting orthodox ideas and notions. In the Western hemisphere a gigantic capitalist State has sprung into existence, which has the advantage of being a whole continent, forming a colossal economic unit, while the Eastern hemisphere is split up into a number of smaller countries. The superior economic development of America, with its immense natural resources and productive powers, is becoming ever more menacing to the interests of the industrial and commercial capitalists of the European continent. And in Asia vast empires are rapidly developing into full-blown civilisation. Japan has already reached an economic and political development approaching in many respects that of European countries. As a competitor in the world’s markets Japan is quickly becoming one of the most formidable pitted against the interests of European capitalists. And China, with a population almost as large as that of the whole of Europe, also shows signs of a far-reaching capitalist development. So tremendous, in fact, are the immediate prospects for the enterprising capitalists of all nations in China, that the very moment capitalist industry and commerce on a large scale becomes possible, bloodshed on land and sea between the great powers of the world will be almost inevitable, because the nations that conquer with the sword will also reap the advantage of participating in the first fruits of China’s full-blown capitalism.. Compared with these stupendous interests the quarrels of the European countries, which had their origin at a time when Western Europe was practically the whole economic and political world, vanish into air. The expansion of capitalism over the entire globe necessitates a much wider unity of interests than the old nations are able to muster—it demands the unity of continents. And it is the development of these new economic conditions which prompt the far-seeing politicians, diplomatists and economists of the bourgeoisie to foster closer international relations. When faced by such significant material considerations the bourgeois patriots deplore and condemn the national prejudices, short-sightedness, and jealousy that hinder the international unity of capitalists; above all, they denounce the stupidity of tariff and of a hostile foreign policy as some of the causes which prevent the desired international understanding among capitalists. But in spite of the wider economic development the bourgeoisie clings to its nationalism with the greatest tenacity. A contemplation of the rapid strides made by America and Japan may cause the capitalists of the European continent to recognise the necessity for abandoning the old antagonism between the European nations, and of a united effort to resist the encroachments upon them by the nations of other continents ; but on the other hand, they know only too well that all the capitalist nations of the world have one common enemy, viz., the international proletariat, whose supremacy they are aware would spell the entire abolition of capitalist society. It is true that in the struggle between capital and labour capitalist mutuality plays a most important part, but in the fight against Socialism by the capitalists in each country the weapon of national patriotism remains still the most effective means of rallying the unenlightened masses to the defence of the private-property constitution. Bourgeois internationalism of a permanent character, though it even may promise the furtherance of the economic interests of nations, can never be realised in face of that “hideous monster,” Socialism, which threatens to swallow the bourgeois States irrespective of their size or vitality.

The whole question for the capitalist class resolves itself, therefore, into the plain issue, either to fight out between themselves the struggle for the larger portions of surplus-value and to neglect in the heat of that combat the repression of the working class, or to let the tussel in their own camp be a minor consideration and to concentrate all their efforts upon the relentless warfare against the proletariat, whose increasing sufferings, caused by the ever-growing power of capital, are forcing upon them the class-consciousness needed to realise their emancipation from wage-slavery.

And do we not daily observe how all sections of the capitalist class in this country, as in every other, sink their petty differences when it means to keep down the workers and to prevent them uniting on a revolutionary basis ? The capitalists of each country would like to be internationalists, but that would mean the complete destruction of their nationalism, which, as already pointed out, is at present their safeguard against Socialism. The fact is that the bourgeoisie can only be international when the economic human relations make such a condition possible. Only when the international proletariat will seize political power and will abolish class antagonisms and exploitation will a sound and lasting internationalism become an accomplished fact.

H. J. Neumann