50 Years Ago: May Day before the 1939 War (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no practical effective internationalism except that which springs strong and self-reliant from the workers' community of interest, sweeping across national frontiers like a cleansing wind blowing away bestial hatreds and fears. The future of the human race demands the destruction of the national barriers which divide the peoples of the world. Not the defence of national independence but the destruction of capitalism must be the watchword of those who would build for the future of the human race and at the same time help to stem the flood of war in which capitalism threatens to engulf civilisation. The doctrine that each group of workers should rally round their own ruling class in defence of the "national interest" only plays into the hands of the warmakers in every country. Just as British and French workers gain hope and courage whenever they read of German and Italian workers who have resisted the mass propaganda of their rulers for war and nationalism, so also the internationally minded workers in Germany and Italy would be inspired to further brave efforts if they heard that their British and French comrades were refusing to ally themselves with Anglo-French imperialism: and correspondingly depressed to learn that many of those workers were falling into line behind their capitalist rulers For, make no mistake, Europe is not on the verge of war for the sake of Nazism and democracy, but for the sake of a re-division of the spoils of the last great capitalist war.

(From an editorial "May Day and the War Clouds", Socialist Standard, May 1939.)