Nationalism and capitalism (2025)

From the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pedants like to distinguish between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’. The former signifies love for one´s country; the latter, while meaning that too, also means not being particularly tolerant of other countries (or cultures). In practice, though, ‘patriots’ can very easily become ‘nationalists’ even without knowing it. These are just two points along the same spectrum.

What that spectrum is based upon is an emotional attachment to the rather fuzzy concept of ‘national identity’. This is supposed to provide a kind of social glue that holds together large-scale, culturally diverse societies and allows them to function reasonably well.

National states

Benedict Anderson´s seminal work, Imagined Communities (1983), discusses the way ‘print capitalism’ and the growth of literacy aided the spread of national consciousness. Other factors, like improvements in transport and increased mobility, also helped to widen the social horizons of what were once relatively isolated communities that characterised a feudal society.

Before the rise of capitalism, nation-states did not really exist. Though there are strong grounds for saying that capitalism originated in England (specifically, in the English countryside, where the practice of wage labour became universalised), the first prominent individual to put nationalism on the map was, arguably, a Frenchman – Napoleon. Napoleon explicitly appealed to the idea of the nation as the basis of legitimate political power, where his predecessors had relied instead on such arcane notions as the ‘divine right of kings’ to govern.

However, we should not infer from this that nationalism is the indispensable precondition for a large-scale society to exist. Long before the nation-state existed, large multi-ethnic empires with extremely porous borders existed in the ancient world.

In Europe in 1500, there were approximately 500 more or less autonomous political units – an intricate patchwork ranging from Italian city states (many of which subsequently fell victim to conquest) to numerous principalities (often themselves the product of dynastic quarrels within aristocratic families) and a scattering of relatively consolidated kingdoms. Some of these were nominally part of one or other, much larger, ramshackle, sprawling entities, such as the Holy Roman Empire, which, as Voltaire once scornfully remarked, was ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire’.

By 1900, however, the political landscape looked very different indeed. The number of self-governing units involved had been drastically whittled down to a mere twenty-odd nation-states having jurisdiction over the entire European landmass. Napoleon´s armies, which conquered much of Europe in the early nineteenth century, contributed to this development in the sense that they helped to create circumstances that eventually led to the rise of nationalist movements later on in that century.

Pseudo-traditions

Then there is the thorny question of nationalism and cultural diversity. Though it is claimed that nationalism enabled the emergence of large-scale culturally diverse societies, the fact of the matter is that cultural or ethnic differentiation has often presented a serious challenge to the nationalist project. If anything, the rise of nationalism has brought about the erosion of local cultures and languages and, in general, has had a flattening effect on the cultural landscape.

What is called the ‘national culture’ is not always what it seems. In The Invention of Tradition (1983), edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, the claim that certain national traditions or institutions have their origins in some mist-enveloped remote past (something that is supposed to invest a tradition with more authenticity) was critically scrutinised and found to be often false. Many of these traditions are pseudo-traditions only recently invented for the express purpose of trying to fashion a national identity – in more concrete terms to facilitate nationalist sentiment.

In short, the basic thrust of nationalist ideology tends towards cultural homogenisation. The more culturally homogenised a population is, the easier it is for the state to manipulate it and elicit its support. Standardisation also enables more effective bureaucratisation.

Taken to an extreme, this homogenising thrust can manifest itself in the form of genocide. As Ernest Gellner points out, where ethnic pluralism exists, ‘a territorial political unit can only become ethnically homogeneous… if it either kills, or expels, or assimilates all non-nationals’ (Nations and Nationalism, 2009).

However, one should note that this is only a tendency within nationalist ideology; in the real world, most nationalisms have had to opt for some kind of pragmatic or more inclusive compromise in the form of ‘multiculturalism’.

Globalisation

Factors curbing nationalism´s tendency towards cultural homogenisation within the confines of a given nation-state include not only the resilience of ethnic subcultures and the inward migration of ‘foreigners’, bringing with them their own cultural beliefs and practices, but also the impact of what might be called ‘global culture’:

Back in 1848, the Communist Manifesto had something to say about that:

‘In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature’.

Big business is, today, a major purveyor of this global culture. One thinks of the role of big tech companies in providing social media platforms or the impact of global chains like McDonald’s in shaping our culinary tastes. Wherever you go in the world, cities are getting more and more alike with the same monotonously predictable selection of High Street stores.

There is a certain irony in all this. Capitalism, which gave birth to the ideology of nationalism, has also unleashed powerful forces that tend towards the erosion of national distinctiveness.

Backlash

In some ways, this contradiction has brought us to the fraught times we are living in today. The unravelling of the Neoliberal project that has been the dominant paradigm since the 1970s has prompted a backlash against globalisation and the resurgence of virulent nationalism. Far-right movements are on the rise in many parts of the world. Their animus is mainly directed at that most emblematic aspect of globalisation – the movement of migrants across those imaginary borders that define the capitalist nation state.

Such migrations are often fuelled by wars and the devastation inflicted by military action undertaken by the very countries which now have some citizens bitterly complaining about the ensuing blowback in the form of desperately impoverished boat people arriving on their shores.

It’s not just war that is to blame; there is also the economic devastation wrought on people´s lives and livelihoods. For instance, the traditional Senegalese fishing industry has been virtually decimated by overfishing and the use of destructive methods, like bottom trawling, by industrial fleets from Europe and China. This has been a major factor in the increase in Senegalese migrants risking their lives to reach the Canary Islands in the hope of being relocated to mainland Spain.

Robin Cox

Life and Times: Football Is Our Life (2025)

The Life and Times column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’ve always watched football, but I hadn’t been to a match for quite some time when a friend told me he’d managed to get tickets for Liverpool playing Manchester United. Did I want to go? Though I don’t support either team I couldn’t resist. So on a balmy spring evening I found myself at Anfield, Liverpool’s famous ground, among 70,000 other fans of both teams. People milled around everywhere outside the stadium, and when we got in we found ourselves high up in a stand above the pitch looking a long way down. Impressive to say the least. I had a good look around and, among the banners on display, a particularly huge one stood out. It was, being held up by quite a large group of people and it said FOOTBALL IS OUR LIFE. Another banner some way away had the words WE LIVE FOR LIVERPOOL FC.

People’s priorities

I couldn’t help but feel a little sad about this. I appreciate and to a large extent share the love and enthusiasm so many people feel for ‘the beautiful game’ and I can see that it also helps to create the sense of community that may be missing in many people’s lives. But for football or one of its teams to become so all-consuming a part of some people’s existence seems to me a reflection, an admission, of their underdog role, acceptance of a life that does not give them adequate opportunity to develop their own individual talents and capacities and to make their own unique contribution to a common social end.

I am reminded of this too when I go on the website of my local newspaper. Down the side there’s an invitation to click on a choice of three categories of article – ‘Latest’, ‘Most Commented’, and ‘Most Read’. If I click on ‘Most Read’, I know that top of that list will be news of sports stars, actors, singers or other celebrities who are in the news rather than more ‘serious’ matters or events that should be of wide human interest. So, as I write, the biggest audience on this site is not for events in Gaza or Ukraine or how people may be affected by the latest proposed government policy changes, but rather for news of, say, the football transfer market deadline and the pay the stars involved will be receiving.

Media priorities

I was also reminded of my Anfield trip by the recent sad death of one of Liverpool’s star players in a road accident. Diego Jota had died together with his brother when the car he was driving came off the road during an overtaking manoeuvre. Tragic of course, yet the overwhelming grief depicted in the media as being experienced by Liverpool fans brought into sharp focus the phenomenon of mass idolisation of celebrated individuals by people who don’t know them personally. This contrasts with the almost routine acceptance of the fate, whether accidental or not, that may befall ‘ordinary people’ and was illustrated by the tragedy which happened to coincide with the footballer’s death. Dozens of people, many of them young children, died in flash floods in Texas. It was reported on, yes, and words of sorrow and regret were expressed, but in that week’s media coverage this ‘act of god’ in which many ‘ordinary’ people died always took second place to the death of the millionaire footballer whose handling of his Lamborghini may have contributed to the accident that killed him. And the Texan tragedy was also subordinated in many places to coverage of a pop music event – the ‘second coming’ that was the Oasis reunion concert.

Worship and idolisation

Of course, there’s no reason why people shouldn’t take pleasure in and appreciate the skills of talented sports people or the artistry involved in producing music. But is it not a sad commentary on the lives so many lead that this should take the form of displays of near fanatical passion or worshipful admiration – an exhilaration not normally available in the existence they are tied to? Is this not a substitute for the lack of interest, meaning and satisfaction workers experience in the employment activities they’re obliged to engage in to survive and that consume most of their waking hours? Does it not stand as some kind of replacement for the lack of opportunity to express their own talents freely in their daily lives? Is it not a patch of colour in drab lives?

And is it not a pity that so many are unable to see beyond this and seem to place so little value on the everyday heroism of those people who spend much of their time not worshipping heroes but helping others, often those at the very bottom of the social pile?

Meaningful lives

The system we live in spurs us to see certain rich or powerful individuals as more important than and superior to others and to almost merge our own identity with them (think the ‘Swiftie’ fans of Taylor Swift). Is this anything other than a denial of their own uniqueness, a rejection of themselves as meaningful individuals in their own right? As an alternative to this, the society of common ownership of all resources and free access to all goods and services which socialists work to see established will surely be one in which each individual is able to develop their own particular talents to the full, achieve personal satisfaction via meaningful activity and in so doing be recognised and valued for the contribution they make to the social effort. In that society every individual will be their own hero.

Howard Moss

Letter: 'Do you maintain . . . ' (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Do you maintain . . . '

Dear Editors,

Of course you are correct: ultimately workers have no state. However, until that reality is widely appreciated, it is surely necessary to rely upon workers’ identification with their (familiar) place of nurture, and “natural” abhorrence to the occupation of “their” land by an invading force – e.g. as in WWII, when many were happy, and proud, to enlist under the Union Jack.

There is, surely, every distinction to be drawn between patriotism and bigotry; the first can incorporate pride in, e.g., Shakespeare, whilst the second may involve the idea that no other nation or country could have “produced” Shakespeare or his equivalent.

Your principles include that “the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party”. Yet you must surely acknowledge that organised workers (trade unions) formed the Labour Party (including Clause 4) precisely because the Liberal MPs vacillated in the degree to which their policies fostered the welfare of the working class/es?

Do you maintain that Labour’s occasional landslide votes had nothing to do with the perception that political support should not be squandered on dilettante, fair-weather or eclectic “supporters” of ordinary people’s interest?

Do you maintain that the election of Labour governments did not directly result in better conditions, social welfare, trade union legality, a minimum wage, the NHS, compulsory free primary and secondary education?

D. Shepherd, 

London NW4

Reply: 

1. We can see why the ruling class in the various different capitalist states into which the world is divided find it necessary to rely on “workers’ identification with their (familiar) place of nurture and ‘natural’ abhorrence to the occupation of ‘their’ land by invading forces” – it helps them build up popular support for their rule and their foreign policy aimed at protecting their interests abroad. But we can’t see why Socialists need to. On the contrary, political nationalism is something we need to combat as it is an obstacle to the understanding that the problems faced by workers all over the world cannot be solved within a national framework but only on a world scale, on the basis of a world without frontiers where the resources of the whole planet have become the common heritage of all humanity.

We can see why, too, ruling classes prefer moderate nationalism to bigotry – yesterday’s enemy can become today’s ally. Thus, the “Huns” and “Japs” of yesterday are now our rulers’ allies and workers who continue to believe what they were told when these countries were our rulers’ enemies are an embarrassment.

Socialist opposition to political nationalism does not challenge cultural diversity. English speakers can appreciate Shakespeare, Dickens, etc without thereby ceasing to be socialists. Again, people living on the big island off the north-west coast of the Eurasian land mass can like warm beer, and fish and chips, pork pies and roast beef, without being nationalists. Maybe they’ll still like these things in Socialism.

2. Yes, we do acknowledge that the Labour Party was originally set up by the trade unions as a parliamentary pressure group to try to get a better deal within capitalism for trade unionists and workers generally. In other words, its aim was not to seek working class emancipation from capitalist exploitation but merely to lessen that exploitation a little. While not of course being opposed to exploitation being lessened, we regarded this as a mistaken political (as opposed to trade-union) aim and so opposed the Labour Party and this reformist tactic from the start. It is true that in 1918 the Labour Party did adopt Clause 4 (nationalisation) as its policy, but this was still not socialism, merely state-run capitalism.

The experience of the last century has confirmed the soundness of the position we took then. Far from gradually changing capitalism, the experience of governing capitalism changed the Labour Party into a party that merely seeks to administer capitalism, into in fact the modern equivalent of the old Liberal Party that used to alternate with the Tories in governing capitalism and which the unions set up Labour to replace.

In fact, we are not sure whether your description “dilettante, fair-weather or eclectic ‘supporters’ of ordinary people’s interest” is meant to apply to the modern Labour Party or the old Liberal Party since it would seem to apply to both.

Nationalisation has been and gone without making much difference to the workers affected.

Some measures, such as trade union legality and free education and health care, can benefit workers under capitalism even if they were introduced for other reasons (such as ensuring capitalist employers with a trained and healthy workforce). And, yes, some such measures were introduced under some Labour governments (though others were introduced under Liberal or Tory ones). However, these governments by no means governed in the interest of the workers. They were governments of capitalism and had to run capitalism in the only way it can be – at a profit – making system in the interests of those who live off profits rather than those who work for wages. So the 1929 Labour government reduced civil servants’ wages and fell over a proposal to reduce unemployment pay. The 1945 Attlee government kept the wartime ban on strikes and used troops to break them. The Wilson and Callaghan governments of the 60s and 70s also imposed wage restraint and clashed with strikers. And we all know about the Blair government elected in 1997—Editors

Letter: The Root of Roots (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Root of Roots

Your article under the above title, written by Harmo, caught my attention as I feel it misses the particular significance of the “roots phenomenon” in race relations in Britain today. The quotation your correspondent gave from Kautsky that “the study of the past, far from being mere dilettante antiquarianism, will become a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present . . ." is indeed apt, but he did not, it seems to me, draw an important conclusion from it. I don’t believe that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity” as is implied by your writer who correctly points to the miscegenation which has existed from time immemorial. The point is that the slave background, common to so many in the USA and the Caribbean, has left black people with a feeling of disorientation, not of belonging—in short, of “rootlessness”.

Historically therefore the story of slavery is important in leading present day peoples to struggle for real equality, but psychologically the study of one man’s own history may be equally important in helping oppressed groups not only to a better awareness of the injustices of the past and the need for social change, but also to a confident awareness of their own great cultural tradition which is only slowly but surely becoming evident particularly in studies in the African continent. Thus the study of history may not only be informative but also may have a profound psychological part to play in the struggle for equality.

D. C. Mayer

Romford

Reply:

Our article did not imply that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity”—the reference was made to Haley (the author of Roots) and militant “Afro-Americans” who do pursue this line, and who invariably do so for commercial or political reasons. You say black people have a “feeling of disorientation” and "rootlessness” and if we are, for the sake of brevity, to assume some positive meaning from such phrases, is not this “feeling” common to the Irish, Polish, Italian and other elements —including the native Indian—which go to make up the American population?

The mistake is made by some in assuming that "a feeling of disorientation” reflects a form of almost instinctive desire to get back to “roots”. As our article pointed out, this is likely to prove a most difficult exercise in itself. It also fails to take into account the effects of capitalist society which, with its lack of social plan, its requirement for the free movement of labour coupled with reversals in this policy, so-called national rivalries and shifting alliances, in itself creates insecurity among members of society as a whole.

We have always stressed the need for men and women to both study, and learn from, history. Any real study will reveal that the vast majority have a common solution to problems, including racial problems, which in capitalism are falsely made to appear as group problems to be dealt with in isolation. If you feel that there is a psychological barrier to be overcome before members of the working class can understand and work for the establishment of a society based on common ownership, it is not one erected by Socialists.

Editors.

Proper Gander: Exploring Englishness (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Artist Grayson Perry’s latest side-job as a documentary presenter treads similar ground to his previous investigations into what makes up people’s identities. His focus this time is how and how much people feel ‘English’. He asks if there is ‘a shared identity that binds the English together? Or is Englishness just a fantasy that’s keeping us stuck in the past?’ and to find out, he gets in a van and goes on a road trip around the country. Over one episode each for the South, the Midlands and the North, Perry meets and chats with various people, his amiable and direct style drawing out how they define themselves as English. Grayson Perry’s Full English (Channel 4) has enough flavour, but doesn’t satisfy an appetite for explaining everything about what a national identity is. He mentions the context of the UK having left the EU alongside calls for Scotland to secede, and points out that English culture has been shaped by a history of empire and immigration, but the programme’s remit doesn’t stretch to covering the political and economic structures behind a sense of ‘Englishness’.

‘Englishness’ is bound up with nationalism: having allegiance to a state in the mistaken belief that it runs in our interests. In recent decades, nationalism has acquired more negative connotations when associated with England than with other parts of the UK. Perry says that for many people, English pride comes with the caveat ‘I’m not racist, but…’, because ‘Englishness’ has a baggage of knuckle-dragging bigotry. The programme doesn’t feature the stereotypical racist skinhead; although shaven-headed interviewee Ian has St George’s flag tattoos, he emphasises his view that Englishness can be for anyone. However, another person featured, long-haired Jeremy, spends his spare time reminiscing about the Second World War and patrolling the sea in his boat looking for unofficial crossings, to defend what he sees as his country. Other people Perry meets in the South, like Jeremy, tend to have ‘Englishness’ embedded in their character more so than those elsewhere, and they show this in a more theatrical way, whether taking part in a Druid ritual in the woods or styling their life around previous decades. In comparison, those in the Midlands and the North tend to be more down to earth. The people he meets in the Midlands demonstrate that associating ‘Englishness’ with ‘whiteness’ is increasingly out of date. Younger people in particular, such as Birmingham-based rapper Jayekae, have grown up in diversely populated communities, and so have a wider understanding of who can be English. Those Perry meets in the North relate more to their local area than to England as a whole. His driver Kirk and musician Paul Heaton both say that growing up in hardship means you identify with people around you in the same situation, bringing a sense of belonging.

A shared struggle through adversity is one way that living in capitalism distorts the basic human need to feel part of a community. Nationalism is another, which for many people has turned to patriotism, which emphasises identifying with a nation’s culture rather than with a nation in itself. As the programme demonstrates, patriotism is often towards a mythical vision of England, whether seen through Druidism’s reinvented folk traditions or an impression of the 1940s, 50s or 60s either with the rough edges smoothed away or as ‘nostalgia for the bad times’. This aspect of ‘Englishness’ looks backwards and therefore doesn’t point towards creating a different future. Perry sees the emotional appeal of this, but he’s more excited by how ‘Englishness’ has been changing through the impact of people whose families came from overseas. When cultures dialectically rub up against each other, something from both is created: the Northern Soul scene, Desi pubs, the only halal tea room in the Peak District, Grime music, or the domino club at the West Bromwich African Caribbean Resource Centre. This fluid, diverse notion of ‘Englishness’ promoted by the programme doesn’t have any room for the racist, flag-waving connotations of the term.

The mixing of people and cultures has tended to dilute nationalism, apart from during football or cricket World Cup tournaments. Nationalism has shifted to patriotism for those who reinvent traditions or yearn for the past. ‘Englishness’ as shown on Grayson Perry’s Full English often means something more personal yet. Perry asks those he meets to each lend him an object which represents what England means to them, to be part of a tie-in exhibition. Most of the items donated tell part of their owner’s story rather than being attempted symbols of England itself: a refugee’s ticket into the country, a body-building competition medal, a fur coat and knickers. If the people Perry meets are representative (and they tend to be on the eccentric side), then this suggests that ‘Englishness’ is changing its meaning to something more subjective than it may have been defined as in the past. And many of those featured in the programme understandably relate closer to their immediate community than to an abstract idea of ‘Englishness’. While this isn’t the same as rejecting nationalism because it’s part of a wider system which works against us, the programme optimistically suggests that nationalism is becoming less important as society evolves.

Mike Foster

National nonsense (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Nationalism is utterly opposed to socialism. Socialists therefore oppose nationalism in all its forms.

It might be supposed that people who profess an interest in the doings of human beings—such as, say, journalists—might well consider a solid and determined strike by nurses over pay to be a worthwhile subject for their notice. This should be especially so when such a strike is going on within but a few hundred miles of their offices, as happened when in October the nurses of Ireland voted by an overwhelming majority (90 percent for) to go on indefinite strike over their shoddy pay. Devoted consumers of the British media, however, would have found nary a whisper on the subject. Clearly, a story of dedicated health care professionals—usually referred to as “angels” by our sharp-eyed reporters—feeling so ill-used and battered by the system that they decided to take action for themselves, is not of interest to human beings on the other side of a small stretch of water. Instead we were treated to facile dissertations upon the constitutional significance of Prince Charles skipping dinner with the Chinese president.

The story is ever the same. Events that occur outside of Britain’s boundaries are of no concern to our intrepid observers of humanity, unless they somehow have a “British interest”. We are not meant to be interested in the affairs of humans generally, but instead to be concerned with “the British” first and foremost. Indeed, when BBC journalist Kate Adie reported on the Dunblane massacre, using exactly the same style and technique as she would have reported a massacre in some far-flung war-torn region, she was execrated for her insensitivity. The deaths of British children are clearly more important than children dead in war.

Tool of rising capitalist class

Historically, nationalism and national feeling have been the tool of the capitalist class for both winning and retaining power. England, for example, can be seen as having developed through the growth of the economic power and influence of London. As London grew, and began to dictate the economic priorities of the surrounding regions, so to it began to need to control them politically, and socially, in order to protect its own interests. Up until the reign of Henry VIII the feudal barons had lived in almost total autonomy, specifically the far-flung magnates like the Percies of Northumbria. Most regions, villages even, maintained a distinctive identity, set of values and traditions. As their influence grew, it became incumbent upon the London capitalists to try and tailor these values and traditions to win over more support for themselves, or at least to ensure an absence of conflict.

In order to achieve this they adapted the traditions they found among the subjected communities, or even made them up when none suitable existed. A classic example was the myth of the Norman Yoke—that Saxon England had been a bastion of Freedom and Democracy, but that William the Conqueror had imported the tyrannical monarchy and feudalism with him. The historical record shows that the Saxons had extensive feudal structures of their own. Of course, that was irrelevant to the myth-makers. They had a tradition to invent, specifically, one which would unite people behind them against their feudal opponents.

The aristocracy itself maintained a preference of looking towards the complex familial power structures across Europe, rather than to a feeling of community with people of their own domain. Title, land and religion were the factors that mattered to them, not nation. They were more concerned with status among their peers. It didn’t matter what language the people who lived on their lands spoke. Further, avowal of the doctrine of the nation was seen as placing an ideological category above the monarch; where before the monarch was the state, now the monarch was to be subordinated to the state.

Making (up) a nation

As the power of the proponents of these ideas grew, so pronouncing an adherence to their ideas became a swift and secure way to win preferment. Hence the power of their ideas grew too, to become the dominant, ruling ideas. There was a further practical impetus for cultural standardisation: the extension of state and bureaucratic power further into life, in order to more efficiently control the economy and delineate property. Coupled with the increased capacity and need for rapid communication, this meant that standardised linguistic practices were needed. Language became a factor in establishing state power, and thus it became a factor in determining a “nation”. It’s no coincidence that the rise of the nation-state coincides with the invention of the dictionary and the encyclopaedia. It’s no coincidence that nationalism is accompanied by a mania for classifying, delineating and defining people into categories. These practical considerations were made explicit by the Polish nationalist Pilsudski, who observed that “It is the state that makes the nation, not the nation the state.”

Nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood, its foundations dug out of human flesh. England was nationalised by Cromwell with the deaths of the Cornish and the Irish. France was nationalised by bloody wars between the monarchy and local lords and interests (not to mention the interminable wars with the Germanic states to set the exact boundary between the two “nations”). America was built on the bodies of the native population. It is a process that continues today in the form nation-building, which has taken in Yugoslavia and Central Africa.

The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture. An example of this can be seen in the Thatcher government’s enforcement of the intellectually bankrupt notion of a Literary Canon in the National Curriculum: a gallery of literary luminaries, led by Shakespeare, that bored, uninterested children are told are great and something for them to be proud of. On the continent, it was the task of “turning peasants into Frenchmen” that the Republic set itself. Nations are made, not born.

In order to enforce the new system of property over the whole range of its influence, the capitalist class needed the state, and its legitimising idea of nationalism and the nation. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practises that set out a sense of precedent, self and future possibility. By imposing the idea of the nation upon a culture, complete with its inherent notions of territorial ownership and property, the ruling class impose their notions of property on the very self-image of the people within that culture.

All possibilities and plans are circumscribed by, or at least must be made in relation to, this logic. So long as people think in terms of the “common good” of the “national economy”, in terms of the overall performance of one unit in the world-wide division of peoples, they are, whether consciously or not, serving the interests of the capitalist class. All evaluations, priorities and hierarchies of value within a “national culture” are made from the point of view, from the self-interest, and, indeed, the apprehended self-hood, of the members of the capitalist class. When the economy is “doing well” it is doing so for the capitalists, when the economy is ailing, it is ailing for the capitalists. Their interest and feeling is the condition for action and evaluation of a national culture.

The idea of “the nation”, then, functions as a supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the state, to which any cause may appeal. Thus, both Blair and Hague are claiming that their position on the Euro is the true “patriotic cause”. Put another way, it is a fantasy, a dream, which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the state’s daily life. Its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule, and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideals of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as, and have the same interests as, their masters.

No common interest 

Workers, of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the “national wealth” increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. In fact capitalists can only make a profit by appropriating the wealth produced by the workers to themselves; but in the topsy-turvy world of ideology, it seems that workers will only have good pay and wealth when the capitalists are doing well. So it appears that workers and capitalists share a common interest. In fact, the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the capitalist, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper-capitalists’s demands are met, they will not allow the hostage-workers to have what they need to live.

There is a well-documented effect of hostage situations, called “The Stockholm Syndrome” in which hostages under duress began to identify with their kidnappers, and believe in their cause. Nationalism works in much the same way. It is the Stockholm Syndrome on a grand scale. The working class who are dependent (under the current system) on the capitalists, to whom they are bonded by state-boundaries across which they are not permitted to escape, begin to believe that they share an identity with them. Hence the ridiculous comments we’ve all heard from people flipping burgers in McDonalds, insisting blindly that they don’t like socialism because they’re capitalists. Hence further, the ridiculous spectacle of people wittering on about the Union Flag being on British Airways’ planes, as if BA were anything more than a vehicle for enriching share-holders.

Workers have no country

The only way to define such national identity is to define it in terms of what (who) it is not, i.e. negatively. Thus nationalism sets itself as being against other countries, striving to define a uniqueness of national culture so as to once and for all set its country apart from others, to know itself by what is un-like it. At one extreme this can include myths about race and blood, trying to attach the national abstraction to some trait of genetics or similar such nonsense. Since people have a strong desire to retain their own perceived identity, and to have a good opinion of themselves, often the creeds based on such identities function in a highly irrational, and ultimately, defensive way. Thus it is usually a sign of desperation and of an incapacity to formulate a coherent argument when our masters resort to playing the nationalist card.

It is clear, then, that socialists must oppose nationalism in all its forms: not just refusing to espouse their creed, but defying the rituals, the anthem signing, flag saluting and other expressions of craven loyalty to the nation-state, that help enforce the idea of nation in our minds. There is no national interest for workers, and any attempt to reform capitalism must be based on a national interest and thus be opposed to socialism. Self-determination for “nations” just equates with freedom and self-determination for a ruling class. It must be opposed in favour of self determination for people, concretely and actually in their own lives. It must be opposed with socialism.

Pik Smeet

Fear or Freedom ? (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a society which is full of scared people. Millions of men and women who are scared of powers which they do not control. At work you fear the boss, even if you have never met him—even if he only ever manifests himself through the anonymity of a company logo. The boss is Capital and Capital is King: if the economic overlord does not like you, if you are not delivering the profits to order, then you will be thrown out of a job. The incessant insecurity of employment will be transformed into the nightmare insecurity of unemployment.

If you are an unemployed wage slave you live in the constant fear that you will become too poor to exist. You stand shaking on the verge of the living hell reserved for workers who have no money. If you have a home you fear falling behind with the mortgage payments or rent. Repossession is your constant threat. If you are homeless and have joined the growing army of workers who must sleep on the streets, then be sure to fear the friendly reminder of your poverty from the policeman's boot. When you walk down the streets of most cities you are scared. Who is behind you? The ethic of competition makes you prey for the bully who robs from the poor. You are scared of war. Unless you are crazy, in a world crammed full of the weaponry of mass destruction you feel miserably insecure about the prospect of the next full-blown market shoot-out.

The media, over which the vast majority has no control whatsoever, thrives on popular fears and depicts a world of beasts, be they East Enders' wretched brutes who fight and con one another or the ugly caricature of Dirty Harry: Winner Man. The government, with its laws and machinery of coercion, scares you: “Do as we say or suffer the force of violent sanctions". You submit because you are frightened not to. Fill in the census with its meaningless questions about ethnicity, discuss your sex life with the Department of Social (In) security official, keep off the grass and away from the Earth because it does not belong to you. We live in a "Keep Off—Keep Out— Keep Quiet" culture, and if you think of resisting, beware, for you may be labelled The Enemy Within. You fear the price of resistance; who knows how the powers that be will retaliate?

Fear is characteristic of the normalised wage slave. You were sent to school to learn to become scared. You were taught the skills of conforming, obeying and stifling awkward criticisms. Indeed, you were taught to be afraid of your own fear: it is not "manly” to be scared. It is "manly” to suffocate your self-respect until you have a slave's contentment with the sound of the whip hitting someone else. It is so much easier to down eight pints of lager and cheer in unison in a football stadium than to face up to the fears which this social system thrusts upon us.

This fear which is the daily companion of most workers is not something natural. To be sure, there are natural fears: physical dangers which threaten all of us occasionally and some to the extent that it destroys them. But most of the powers which assault the working class are the product of the way that society is organised. They are the socially-created effects of a social cause. The cause of our fear is the capitalist system.

The truth about capitalism

Under capitalism the means of wealth production—factories, farms, mines, media, means of communication and transportation—are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The world is run for the purpose of accumulating profits for that capitalist minority. In the pursuit of profit, the needs, feelings, hopes and dreams of the vast majority. who are the wealth-producers, will inevitably be hurt. Capital uses (exploits) the working class and also it abuses us in many ways. It makes workers subjects of a set of economic, political and social relationships which we do not control. In fact, even the capitalists do not control the workings of their system—the system ultimately controls the capitalists and the governments which rule on their behalf. The truth about capitalism is that the workers are economically disenfranchised from real power and the bosses only imagine that they are in charge; everything is chaos and disorder: nobody knows what will happen next.

Under capitalism it is quite sensible to be scared. The record of the system is one of persistent disasters, usually unexpected. Just as one social problem is apparently being reformed out of existence two more emerge to plague us. Plans and policies to improve the system fail, either immediately or in the long term. Optimistic prospects of peace collapse when new ruling gangs with unforeseen appetites for profits make war a necessity. In late 1989 the capitalist leaders were celebrating the end of the Cold War, the outbreak of world peace, freedom from the threat of military strife—and exactly a year later they were preparing for a potentially global war commencing in the Middle East. Even at its moments of greatest hopefulness, capitalism only offers the reasonable observer grounds for worry.

The result of this fear-inducing system is a society characterised by socially-caused suicide statistics (rising in recent years amongst teenagers) and massive addiction to drugs, both legal tranquillisers offered to the fearful by helpless doctors and the illegal variety, used as an illusory form of escape by those for whom fear and insecurity have become too much. This system sells escape as one for the most sought after commodities. Holidays offer a fortnight of artificial relief from the worries of everyday wage or salary slavery; there is escape through film and escape through astrology and escape through bopping up and down to the sterile non-songs of Jason, Kylie or the latest packaged boil-in-the-bag superstar. Escape is the dream of the captive. The prison of capitalism, which captivates us in the trap of working for wages and buying everything we need for money, makes the fantasy of escape an appealing one.

Mass emotional repression

Capitalism requires repression. Not only that visible, brutal, blood-stained repression which comes out of the barrel of a gun. or other means of state coercion. Mass emotional repression is the order of the day. Workers must learn to know their places, fear stepping out of line, feel afraid to question what it is not for us to question—run and hide, mentally if not physically, when talk of freedom is in the air. The “fear of freedom" (to use the term popularised by Erich Fromm, whose writings have much to offer us in examining the psychology of capitalist life) is amongst the greatest barriers to majority socialist understanding in the world today.

The problem is that to understand the possibility for social revolution—socialist liberation—people have to want to be liberated. to become free, to overcome the forces of oppression. For many workers such a desire for freedom is too much to cope with. To think about the socialist demand that the we should emancipate ourselves from wage slavery involves making the admission that we are now slaves and then accepting the desire to be something better. This recognition presents a difficulty to workers who have become accustomed to their condition: the happy slaves and the victims of fear who tremble at the thought of seeing what the system has reduced them to and what they could rise to become in a free society.

In a socialist society humans will be free. The most basic social freedom of all is free access to the goods and services we need. Capitalism can never offer such freedom. The market is the antithesis of free access. Socialism means that the common store of global wealth, including all services and the widest artistic opportunities, will be free to all. There will be no money. Each will take from what is available according to their needs, just as all will give to society according to their abilities. Co-operative, democratic human freedom will prevail.

With this economic freedom from the shackles of the market will come a profound emotional freeing of people from the burden of living in fear of powers beyond them. No more bosses, no more gods, no more money-worship, no more moral absolutes. Stateless, leaderless and classless humanity will be free to explore what we want to make of ourselves. The dreams which had previously been confined to fear-free utopian visions will be on the social agenda. Humans will be free to live with a consciousness unhindered by the fears which come from always having to look over your shoulder.

The psychological freedom which many have sought through individualist therapy or mystical diversions is only going to be possible when there is a collective fightback against the fear-culture of capitalism. If the movement for socialism is small today it is not because most workers have heard our ideas and rejected them. Nor is it the case that those who have rejected socialism have done so consciously. For millions of workers the dream of being free from all the fearful strains of life under this anti-life system is a powerful one. What is needed is the strength to act and the knowledge that conscious, democratic action for socialism is the way out. To our fellow frightened workers we say: Don’t be afraid; it’s time now to give the capitalists something to worry about.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

Editorial: The battle for ‘We’ (2021)

Editorial from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somebody once remarked that the most important word in the political vocabulary is ‘we’. It was a shrewd observation, since to get someone to use ‘we’ in relation to some group of people is to get them to identify their interest as the interest of that group.

In the battle for ‘we’, socialists are trying to get all those excluded from ownership and control of means of production to recognise the fact of their common interest as one class within capitalist society, to regard themselves as ‘we’ and to use ‘our’ and ‘us’ only in relation to that class and its interests.

Those who control one or other of the two hundred or so armed states into which the world is divided have to try to prevent this practice emerging, and deliberately seek to undermine it, in the interest of the other main class in capitalist society – those who do own and control means of production and who derive a privileged income from this. They seek to convince the people who they rule over that the ‘we’ they should identify with is ‘the nation’ as the nation part of what they call the ‘nation-state’.

Those born and brought up in Britain have been taught, through what’s been drummed into them in school and through what they continuously read in the papers or hear on the radio or television, to regard themselves as British. In school they are taught the history of the kings and queens of England, and of the wars in which the British ruling class has been involved over the centuries, and of the evolution of the British state. The media reinforce this by reporting news from an almost exclusively British angle and encourage identification with ‘the nation’ via identification with ‘our’ sports teams and performers.

It therefore comes almost as a reflex action for people to use ‘we’ in relation to the British state and to regard themselves as part of a British ‘nation’. So they spontaneously say such things as ‘we beat the French at Waterloo’ or ‘we won the Second World War’ or ‘we got twenty gold medals at the Olympics’. Even opponents of particular policies pursued by the British state, yesterday as well as today, fall into the same trap and say such things as ‘we should never have conquered India’ or ‘we shouldn’t have nuclear weapons’.

Such usage is music to the ears of the ruling class as they know it means that they currently have the upper hand in the battle for ‘we’.

For socialists, ‘we’ are all those, wherever you are born, wherever you live or wherever you come from, who are not members of the privileged ruling class. ‘We’ are all members of a world-wide excluded class of wage-working wealth producers, who have a common interest in coming together to abolish so-called ‘nation-states’ and establish a world community without frontiers in which all the natural and industrial resources of the Earth will have become the common heritage of all humanity, to be used for the benefit of all instead of, as today, to make profits for the few.

Questioning Nationality (2021)

From the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ten-yearly census once again literally poses the question of nationality. The Socialist Standard runs the occasional article on ‘How I became a socialist’ to which this is a companion piece, ‘Why I am an internationalist’.

I begin with a report of migrant labour being used to undercut wages and actually displace local workers from their employment and eviction from their homes. This, naturally, caused resentment and a reaction that became violent resulting in the authorities responding with decisive force.

If this incident seems to have been missed in these days of all-revealing social media, that’s because it occurred in 1832 on the south bank of the Tyne at Friar’s Goose. The mining community there had been in a protracted dispute with the local coal owner who determined to break the strike.

To this end migrant labour was brought in to replace the local workers, some from as far away as Derbyshire and Cumberland, where lead mining was in sharp decline. With the benefit of historical perspective it is clear that both sets of workers were victims of a common foe, capitalism.

Lead mining had ceased to be profitable while coal, at the very heart of the burgeoning industrial revolution, promised rich dividends. All the more so if labour costs could be minimised. Unemployment and the prospect of poverty were wielded to pitch one group of workers against another, keeping them divided and thus effectively powerless.

One hundred and twenty years or so after this event the world was blessed by my emergence, in a maternity hospital named for the local pit. Not on Tyneside though, where I would move to a couple of decades later, but in a Lancashire town ruled by King Coal and Queen Cotton.

However, those two economic monarchs were already relinquishing their power and both had largely been deposed by the time I deserted their realm in the early 1970s. By which time a sizeable community of migrants, on this occasion textile workers from the Indian sub-continent, had settled in the town.

Economic decline fostered resentments and would eventually lead to the election of British National Party members as town councillors. They proved to be so spectacularly useless as councillors their moment was brief, but again indicative of how capitalism, whether consciously or not, can stimulate misdirected resentment and anger.

As already indicated, I moved away from the town and settled in the North East. However, I maintained my allegiance to the football club, a curse I eventually visited on my Gateshead-born son. So was I merely a Lancastrian living in economic exile, all the more so now that I’m domiciled in South Yorkshire?

A reason I was born in Lancashire is that one great granddad migrated from the then North Riding of Yorkshire in search of work. His son, my granddad, married a woman whose family hailed from the Trough of Bowland which was split between Lancashire, and the North and West Riding of Yorkshire.

On the maternal side, my grandmother was many generations Lancastrian, but her husband was of Devonian stock via Wales, another example of economic migration. So, I am the offspring of migrant labour.

This is by no means an unusual story, rather it is the norm. To say I am a …………………………… (please add your own label) is merely to identify an accident of birth. It is no more significant than that. I have a friend who, by his own admission, is vertically challenged and of a placid demeanour. With a beaming smile he informed all he knew that a DNA test revealed he was, at least in part, of Viking stock.

To return briefly to Friar’s Goose, the only difference between the reluctantly itinerant lead miner migrants and those of today who cross continents, is distance having to be travelled. The cause of migration remains constant, in the modern era it is capitalism.

Direct economic necessity, such as brought sub-continent workers to the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile towns, lays the imperatives of capitalism bare. People largely don’t uproot themselves and their families without good cause and capitalism exploits the imperative of need for its own profitable ends.

However, capitalism, driven by its absolute need to pursue profit, can manifest its competitive nature in extreme form, war. Whether cross border or civil, the root of armed conflicts is economic. Trade routes, resources, control of the levers of state and/or corporate power all too often lie at the bottom of martial conflict.

Not unreasonably, people will move away from battle zones if they can. But, even if the prospect of being killed or injured recedes, the local devastation of homes, workplaces and basic services can make life virtually untenable, especially in the short term. And for the poor the short term is all they have.

Whether it’s your lead mine being closed two hundred years ago or your village/town bombed out yesterday, you essentially face the same dilemma, to stay and try to survive, or move and try to survive.

For all that racism manifests itself, capitalism is ultimately equitable, it will exploit any and all whatever their skin tone, language, dialect or point of origin. For its own purposes it will encourage people to consider how their apparent differences make them somehow special, unique, perhaps in some undefinable way superior to others.

After all, it would be disastrous for capitalism if (when) people realise that their differences are superficial, determined by circumstance not race or ethnicity. Cultural diversity can be a positive, but even culture is not a fixed thing, setting people apart.

I will continue to look at the results for the football team I was born to follow, which is about as deep as my support goes these days. It is an example of how capitalism has become transnational. The club was one of the founders of the football league reflecting the economic power of local capitalism in the 1870s and 80s.

One hundred and fifty years later it is a minnow in (to mix my fresh and saltwater metaphors) in the soccer shark pool, recently bought out by an American deal using leveraged finance to raise the capital. My club? Rather like my country, it seems.

For the vast majority of people, the working class of the world, there needs be to be a recognition and acceptance of the one answer to the surely hackneyed question of, what race am I? The human race!

The national question, as posed by the census, merely confirms the limits of capitalism. To push beyond those limits, to socialism, means making that question is as obsolete as a Cumberland lead mine.

Dave Alton

Between the Lines: Late night horrors (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late night horrors

I have just finished watching the all-night local election results coverage (BBC1/ITV, 8-9 May) A depressing experience:

Dimbleby: Well, we've just heard that Labour has held Hackney, the Conservatives hold Harrow. Waltham Forest could be close. What do you think about Waltham Forest. Peter?

Snow: Well. David, if the computer is right it looks like Waltham Forest could be picked up by Labour (Picked up? Isn't that an expression used by hookers? SC)

Dimbleby: Interesting. And the Alliance has given the Conservatives a good run in Kingston on Thames. (A run into the Thames would be the preferred route! SC) What does the panel have to say about Waltham Forest. Robin?

Sir Robin Day, looking very much like he is enjoying the facilities of Broadcasting House which is not affected by the licensing laws, grins at a panel of faces one half recognises.

Baker: What one has to realise. Robin, is that midterm blues is not surprising.

Cunningham: This is a great night for Labour. (Being paid a few hundred quid for sitting in a studio mouthing platitudes would be a great night for any con-man. SC)

Steel: And it's a terrific night for the Alliance - to some extent.

Baker: Labour is in the grip of a bunch of commie queers. (Or words to that effect).

Cunningham: Hard luck, Baker: it's our turn to screw the wage slaves now.

Steel: But we'd like to help as much as we can please.

Dimbleby: And we've just heard that the capitalists have picked up the means of wealth production and distribution. Any news on the computer Peter? 

Snow: This could definitely have implications for Waltham Forest, David.

Dimbleby: And over to Islington Town Hall now; it seems that all the councillors are in the subsidised bar thinking about the poor. . . Let's just go over to Rydale — yes, it looks as if there might be a slight swing against the feudal system there . . . And the working class has voted to abolish the wages system in Waltham Forest.

Snow: Stop playing Star Wars on my computer. 

Robin: I'm trying to give viewers the impression that they've been doing something meaningful in the polling stations.

Next time round, use your vote for socialism: vote for yourself for a change. In addition to all the other good reasons for doing s, it will take this contemptible, ridiculous mockery of democracy from our screens.

Ealing culture

If asked to define the main characteristics of post-war English culture it would be hard not to mention the names of Michael Balcon and T. E. B. Clarke. Balcon owned and very much controlled the Ealing film studios, the subject of an Omnibus documentary (BBC2, 5 May). Balcon, an immigrant who came to Birmingham and was obsessed by the culture of small-village Englishness. was a man whose mission was to transmit the smugness and the amusing peculiarities of life in England. When he asked a group of film critics to bear in mind the studio's virtues when they condemned its vices, one critic responded wittily that he could willingly forgive Ealing's vices, but not its virtues. The studio was the home of imperial cinema — war glorified. English characters seen as possessing unique strengths, the contradictions of life neatly written out. Clarke was the main writer at Ealing and his film scripts tell more about what English conservative ideology is all about than many a lofty treatise could do. An ex-policeman, Clarke's conception of cosy English life had no time for the class struggle, but only for decent bobbies (usually including Jack Warner) fighting to defend civilisation as it is experienced in the home counties against any characters who have not accepted the rules of the system.

Materialism and consciousness

Nicholas Humphrey, a Cambridge zoologist, has presented a very worthwhile series of programmes called The Inner Eye (C4, Mondays. 10pm) in which he has attempted to show how humans are uniquely conscious and how this consciousness is a material product. His references have been educative and his arguments presented convincingly. Humphrey upset animal liberationists by denying that any other species possesses consciousness like that of human beings. Someone went into the videobox on Right To Reply (C4, Friday 30 April) to say that Humphrey obviously didn't know her dog which is quite as conscious as she is, and a foolish young philosopher from Balliol College. Oxford had a studio debate with Humphrey in which the former's case for animal intelligence rested on the fact that dogs bark when you kick them. Humphrey stated that he is a materialist and pointed out that reacting to being kicked is one thing, working out how not to be kicked again is quite another. For some reason I kept thinking about that remark as I watched the election results.

Steve Coleman

Identity (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

When discussing socialism with someone who has had little interest in politics we invariably find ourselves confronting their “identity”. This is because we all identify, sometimes unintentionally, with certain ideas and values. We may not be aware that we do until we attempt to articulate them in response to another idea asserted by someone else. At a basic emotional level we might take an ideological position because we feel that our status is being threatened by the other personality that confronts us.

The concept we have of our social status is one of the most emotionally-charged elements that constitutes our identity. It also aligns us politically with the values of a class or a subdivision of a class or cultural group. Other components such as gender, age, sexuality and “race” also play a part in defining identity but only through the lens of group ideology (ideas of masculinity and homosexuality are very different in “blue-collar” and “white-collar” communities).

Indeed the very concept of class itself is received differently as can be seen readily by its relative acceptance by those on a lower income (sometimes erroneously called working class) and its complete denial by those on a higher income (incorrectly called middle class). A friend of mine who resolutely denies that class has any effect on their tastes refuses to attend a “multi-plex” cinema to watch a film but is quite happy in the local art-house theatre. When pressed for the reasons why this is so he points to their respective atmospheres; he clearly prefers intellectual pretension to Hollywood popularism and the audiences they generate.

This choice can be interpreted in a class context because of the identification with certain tastes and values and a rejection of others; or to put it more bluntly, a liking for some “types” of people and a dislike for others. This kind of division exists in almost all areas of life and certainly inhibits the political cohesion of the working class being properly understood (since both communities have to sell their labour power to the capitalist class to make a living).

So it can be said that identity, in some important respect, is based on an association of the self with others in a social group and their value system. We may even go as far as to say that the nature of those values is dependent on their association with a group with whom we wish to identify and not essentially on the internal logical structure of the ideology in itself. The motivation for this social/ideological identification derives from our need for social status and the self-respect it supplies.

Paradoxically an example of our need for status to confirm our identity is when we appear to give it away to someone else in the form of exclusive love. During such an event between two people the individual identity seems to depend on the other and this would seem to contradict the cult of the self that so characterises our society.

There is a very revealing and desperate need to escape the prison of our identity in this search for such a liberating synthesis with another. Invariably such a relationship fails because it reveals itself to be yet another example of the attempt to confirm identity through conforming to a social convention to achieve status. The projection of our needs onto another can become so comprehensive because of the socially restrictive context imposed by a competitive culture that it leaves little space for the other to express their needs. The relationship crumbles under the pressure caused by the crowded desires needed for the mutual confirmation of identity between just two people. Sometimes we look to parental love as an example of an escape from status inspired identity but many times this too succumbs when children grow up to deny parental aspirations for the same reasons.

If we are to accept that to an important degree identity is generated by our need for social status must this always be a destructive element within human society? To answer this let’s return to our starting point, the political discussion. If we are honest about our desire for status and the respect it gives us from others we have to understand what it is and how we achieve it within contemporary society.

For most of us status is acquired through competition in a capitalist system except for those who inherit it. Those who are regarded as successful manifest their status in the accumulation of material wealth which in turn enhances their social influence. We may come to dislike these people through envy but who has not daydreamed of having wealth and power? There are those amongst us who have turned their backs on the rat-race and devote their lives to helping others such as nurses, carers, charity workers and even social revolutionaries. As a psychologist once said: “political ideology is a kind of love affair”, and there’s no denying that the identification with a political group is in part motivated by the desire for social status, albeit of alternative nature.

The difference is, of course, that this time it confronts the values of society because by acquiring membership status socialists undertake the formal denial of competition. This can be seen as a positive manifestation of the need for social status because this time it motivates the need for social liberation. It also serves to undermine our culture’s insistence that it is only through competition that the human spirit is creative and productive. There is also the possibility that competition is a perversion of human social instincts because, as the psychologist observed, identifying with an ideology shares the emotional liberation felt during the first stages of a relationship—but this time with a community and not just an individual. Once the needs of the individual are identified with the community and not in competition with its members then socialism becomes not only possible but necessary.

The litmus test for this perspective concerning identity can only be our emotional well-being. Even within the group of high wage earners it is difficult to deny that unhappiness has become something of a plague. For all the inherent frustration of working for socialism it does afford some emotional protection against the pain caused by the loss of a job or the breakdown of a relationship.

Those who believe in a socialist future do not make the same emotional investment in the capitalist present and so have another place to go to when the anxiety endemic in the sick culture in which we live threatens to overwhelm us. The capitalist class and its supporters of left and right hate socialists for their identification with hope and liberation but they can never destroy it because to do so they would have to kill part of their own humanity forever.

Wez.

England’s Dreaming (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mike Wayne: England’s Discontents: Political Cultures and National Identities. Pluto Press. 2018.

This is an attempt to make sense of political cultures and national identities with a particular focus on England in the light of both Brexit and moves towards Scottish independence. It is influenced heavily by the Italian quasi-Marxist Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony. As such, much of the book is concerned with the formation of political cultures and identities – and how these inform national identity and political movements.

It is full of phrases like ‘highly multi-accentual’ and ‘counter-hegemonic organic intellectuals’ and so if you have an aversion to this sort of academic ‘discourse’ the book is not for you. Nevertheless, there are some good points within it and it is generally worth persevering. Much of it is concerned with the identification of ideologies and their key characteristics, mainly conservatism, economic liberalism, social liberalism and social democracy. Wayne explains the differences that characterise them and the relationships between them, including how they have often interlinked to form dominant ‘hegemonic blocs’ in various periods of modern British history. The most recent and notable has been the alliance between conservatism and economic liberalism, an alliance which is now facing various challenges as well as internal contradictions.

These inherent tensions between conservatism and economic liberalism are brought out well and mean that economic liberalism periodically finds common cause with social liberalism instead (as under Blair). This is because conservatism finds expression in three important strands of identity that the market economy of capitalism tends to undermine or contradict as a matter of course – ethnic/religious identity, national identity and ‘deep-history’ identifications (ie, tradition, routines and rituals, etc). As Wayne explains rather neatly:

  ‘Together these three strands attempt to create a moral framework for an economic system that does not have one, a point of national identification for a mode of production whose expansionary logic cannot be contained within the nation-state and a slowing down of historical change for a revolutionary change-obsessed mode of production’ (p.69).

These are the types of tensions he sees as having helped (among other things) fuel populism in recent years and it’s difficult to disagree. Sadly, as a counter-balance Wayne seems to be a calling for the recreation of the historic bloc that was based, in his terms, on the alliance of social liberalism and social democracy that dominated the post-war period in the UK until it started to break down in the 1970s and was rolled back in the 80s. He sees leftist Scottish nationalism as a potential vehicle for rekindling this and seriously underplays the negative role that nationalism plays in countries like Scotland where it is not as overtly right-wing and conservative as it typically is in places like England. But it is interesting too, that much polling evidence shows that the ideological make-up of the Scottish population is actually rather less different than is often supposed to that of England and Wales, especially on major left/right issues – and this goes unmentioned.

Also unmentioned is any real sense of what socialism might mean. It is a word used occasionally in historic contexts but it is never really made apparent what this is or how it might relate to (or seek to oppose) the other ideologies – or, for that matter, the tendencies some of them have helped foster that Wayne finds abhorrent in modern English political culture.

Dave Perrin

Iconoclasm (2015)

From the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Humanity has always been in danger of being seduced by the creations of its imagination. The gods and monsters that have haunted us still wield enormous power over many. The symbols and images that represent these creations are considered sacred and ‘iconic’ by millions throughout the world. In a sadly familiar ontology the symbols become the very incarnation of what they represent. Representations of gods, saints and prophets, in the original iconic meaning, share some of the power that is presumed to be owned by what is represented. A nation’s flag is thought, by many, to be a symbol of who and what they are. It is this political identification rather than being derived from any supernatural or innate cultural superiority, that is at the heart of iconographic power. An individual’s desire to identify with his family, clan, tribe or nation is an essentially social instinct which, due to any given cultural context, is directed at those whom they love and respect; or more problematically, those whom they fear. Authoritarian cultures thrive on the need of the isolated and alienated individual to identify with the powerful – even if, or possibly because, this power derives from the exploitation and subjugation of that individual.

When a group identifies with a symbol of political power, which in capitalism invariably implies a militaristic power, it is the climax of sometimes decades or even centuries of propaganda and can generate immense irrational emotional destructive energy. Historically it has been partly the manipulation of this negative energy that has made wars possible. It is, then, vitally important to challenge these pervasive icons and the irrational political narratives that they represent. But when indulging in such iconoclasm are we in danger of alienating those with whom we seek to communicate? And, in the light of recent murderous violence, are we willing to put ourselves in danger by doing so?

Although somewhat devalued by journalistic overkill it is still possible to identify something ‘iconic’ in the results of nearly every human endeavour. In the arts, architecture, technology, science etc there arises a consensus that recognises a cultural/historic significance to something, or indeed, someone who or which is created as a result. Sometimes these are intentional (propaganda) or unintentional (cult status) but all, at least for a time, capture the zeitgeist of a cultural moment. It doesn’t have to be of a contemporary nature as, for example, artists from the past can be ‘rediscovered’.

The political significance is always present but varies in its importance. The twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were once icons of the US dominance of the global economic system but are now, as a result of the success of that iconic status, monuments to the terrifyingly potential murderous focus they presented to America’s enemies. ‘A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world’. Some may recognise that quote from the film ‘V for Vendetta’. In that narrative the Houses of Parliament were destroyed without the killing of anyone within, which renders the act one of pure iconoclasm in contrast to 9/11 where those who died (the victims not the perpetrators) were transformed into martyrs. It may well have ’changed the world’ but not, most would argue, for the better. The original ’gunpowder plot’ which ’V’ seeks to recreate was, of course, just as murderous in its intent as was 9/11. But does iconoclasm have to be violent and destructive? Can the political deconstruction of an icon be ideologically constructive? In its reformulation perhaps the underlying meaning and source of its power can be revealed, thus exposing the irrational nature of political symbolism?

It is sometimes said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and an icon is testament to the power of the image. Undoubtedly any deconstruction of such images will anger and alienate some people but others might well be inspired by the unflinching moral and political analysis that can motivate such iconoclasm. Socialists seek to do just this, we do not destroy images but we hope to render them impotent through their subversion. We will never flinch from exposing wickedness, especially when it’s draped in a flag or motivated by religious symbols of intolerance. But what of socialist iconography?

Hammers and sickles

The Socialist Party has never been attached to symbolism; the stars and hammers and sickles of the Leftist totalitarian states have increased our distaste for such icons of ideological/nationalistic power. We do perhaps have a slightly romantic regard for the red flag and its historical association with the Paris Commune and the blood  shed in the class struggle by the workers during and since that time. If anyone was to subject it to contempt and iconoclasm a socialist’s response would typically be analytical in terms of the ideas represented by this essay rather than by any emotional distress; something that continues to perplex and frustrate our opponents. We continue to use the ’iconic’ images of Karl Marx in our publicity but this is mainly because those images gained their fame from their usage by his opponents (the left & right) independently of our use of them; it is his ideas, not his image that inspires us.

Someone once asked me, only half jokingly and because of my militant atheism, if I would be ready to swear an oath on a copy of Das Kapital instead of the bible. The idea struck me as amusing, as I’m sure it would have done to its writer, because at the very heart of that work is the essential need to subject everything you think you know and believe to a constant process of critique – a rather different approach than the one recommended by the contents of the Bible!

Anyone who doubts the continued irrational power of iconography only has to witness the candidates in the upcoming election draping themselves in the Union flag. This is the symbol of capitalist power and political ignorance in the UK; anyone kissing its hem to gain votes is either a hypocrite or a fool. Some years ago I was asked, in my capacity as a graphic designer, to design a symbol for the Socialist Party. Having produced many logos in the past I was surprised how difficult I found this commission. I realise now, in the light of this analysis, why I found it so difficult – in some ways socialism needs no symbols, just as it needs no leaders. Consciousness of the world as it really is makes transparent the once opaqueness of capitalist ideology and its symbols.

Socialism does not depend on marketing or advertising, because, like the revolution itself, it depends on the individuals’ struggle with their own cultural and political conditioning – we can only provide a catalyst for the human need for involvement in the community. We may use the globe as a universal symbol to distance ourselves from the prosaic and insular icons of our opponents, but only as a signpost for the individual to aid their personal struggle and then the inevitable involvement in the class struggle itself. Would we like to destroy the buildings of ’the mother of parliaments’ as in the climax of the film mentioned above? Perhaps we could preserve it as the museum it really is, where the mannequins (MPs) are replaced by waxworks. These will then serve much more purpose as icons of the past. A past, of course, where they were slavish puppets of their capitalist masters.

Wez.