Material World: Nation or class? (2024)

The Material World Column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalist sentiment was the form of collective consciousness that emerged as the one best adapted or suited to the needs of capitalism. The nation-state, after all, constitutes the most fundamental unit of spatial organisation from the standpoint of the accumulation of capital and the coalescence of capitalist interests into separate and competing groupings – namely national groupings whose interests the state broadly serves as the primary source of state income in the form of taxation.

Furthermore, as capitalism's collectivist expression par excellence, nationalism neatly complemented individualist ideology. Indeed, nation-states were themselves thought of as quasi-individuals, and so it became possible to think of something so abstract and amorphous as a ‘nation’ as possessing a particular character and evincing certain ‘traits’. In short, the nation came to be ‘naturalised’ and rendered timeless in nationalist mythology.

The 18th century Swiss jurist, Emerich Vattel, author of The Law of Nations (1758), defined nation-states as ‘bodies politic, societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their combined strength’. In legal terms, the nation-state amounted to a ‘moral person’. As Vattel put it: ‘Such a society has her affairs and her interests; she deliberates and takes resolutions in common; thus becoming a moral person who possesses an understanding and a will peculiar to herself and is susceptible of obligations and rights’.

In short, the ‘nation’ has pre-existing moral claims on the citizens who comprise it, claims which also work to ensure the compliance of those citizens to the capitalist mode of production that gave birth to this very concept of nationhood,

It was in the 19th century that nationalism became particularly significant and influential although, of course, it had been gradually building up to this point in preceding centuries. Benedict Anderson in his seminal work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), describes the origins of the nation-state as lying in capitalism itself and particularly ‘print capitalism’ – a reference to the spread of literacy in the modern world that allowed people to ‘imagine’ themselves to be part of a much wider community in the guise of the ‘nation’. Greater mobility and improved transport links would also have contributed to this development.

No doubt there were many other factors besides these implicated in the rise of 19th century nationalism, but what is relevant here is the impact of nationalist ideology on popular consciousness – the point being that nationalism served as a kind of glue that bound people together in a modern capitalist society in the way that religion had in traditional society. Being a secular religion its devotees paid homage to, and worshipped at the feet of, this abstraction called the ‘nation’. Indeed, religion itself was pressed into the service of nations, the latter’s armies being blessed by the priests as they embarked on some holy war against some other nation. Confusingly, God always appeared to be on every side engaged in the bloody business of warmongering

Any functioning society, even the most ruggedly individualist of them, needs some kind of collectivist substratum to hold it together. However, while nationalism was pre-eminent in performing this particular role in a capitalist society it was far from being the only conceivable form of collectivist sentiment that might arise in this society; ‘class consciousness’ was another.

Marx wrote much about the changing circumstances of early capitalism and how the rise of the factory system, along with the concentration of large numbers of workers this brought about in the rapidly expanding urban centres, fostered a growing sense of class identity. This identity came to be forged out of the realisation of a common class interest in opposition to the interests of the owners of capital, and expressed itself in various ways – most notably in the rise of an organised trade union movement.

However, with hindsight it seems clear that Marx gravely underestimated the strength and potency of nationalist ideology and its ability to constitute itself as a kind of overarching value framework that can encompass, co-opt and subsume all other forms of collectivist expression, including ‘class consciousness’. Belief in nationalism of any kind and the existence of some supposed overriding ‘national interest’ (including, it should be noted, the Left´s endorsement of ‘national liberation’ and a programme of ‘nationalisation’) has the obvious effect of blunting the class struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and blurring the distinction between the classes and their diametrically opposed interests in this struggle.

We can see how this, in turn, is likely to have had a seriously retarding influence on the goal of establishing a post-capitalist society. Such a society must necessarily entail the complete removal of class monopoly ownership and control of the productive forces of society. Needless to say, this is something that will naturally be resisted by the class that exercises that monopoly – the tiny capitalist or ruling class. Consequently, the very objective of getting rid of capitalism inescapably has to oppose nation and nationalism and promote class and class consciousness – a post-capitalist society being, by definition, a classless society.

Robin Cox

Nationalism and Communism by Hugh Seton-Watson (1964)

Book Review from the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalism and Communism, by Hugh Seton-Watson, Methuen, 36s. 

One of the minor effects of the many years of political tension between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, that has become known as the Cold War, is a widespread ignorance of those European countries that are within the Russian bloc. Occupied by Russian troops at the end of the second world war, and kept in military and economic subjection ever since, they tend to be dismissed as of no importance.

People with extensive knowledge of West European or American politics and their economic problems, know nothing of the affairs of Eastern Europe. Only when, as in 1956 in Hungary, the scene erupts into violence, do they receive much attention. Yet a hundred million people live here in an area of nearly half a million square miles. We buy food and manufactured articles, gramophone records and books from them in ever increasing numbers, but most of us have a very scanty knowledge of the countries themselves.

Nationalism and Communism is a collection of essays written between 1946 and 1963, and first published in a wide variety of newspapers and periodicals. It contains interesting and detailed reports from the Eastern European States, of the ruthless and cynical methods used by the Communist parties of those countries to gain and hold power.

The book contains also an excellent potted history of the rise of Nationalism. The conceptions of “nation” and “race” that have played so large, and so destructive, a part in recent history, are modern.

The idea of the “nation” was largely unknown before the 18th century, and it first became a major political issue in the French Revolution. As late as 1815 Metternich and Alexander 1 of Russia regarded nationalism as a subversive idea. It was in the 19th century that nationalistic theories spread throughout the world. Not only the major powers, but economic groups seeking independence from domination by a greater power, began to build up theories about their origins to prove that they were a race apart.

Les Dale

Editorial: What to do with the World’s Frontiers? (1945)

Editorial from the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not only the fighting men whose occupation ceases when a war ends; the same fate overtakes the armchair strategists, who can no longer recount each day where General X and Admiral Y were at fault the day before. But by an admirable principle of compensation the armchair strategists, notably those with which Labour’s “left wing” is graced, will at once be provided with another occupation for which their self-certified talent at placing and removing large masses of human beings without their knowledge and consent will specially qualify them. They will be able to unroll the maps of Europe—indeed, of the world—and tell the statesmen just how to redraw all the frontiers and solve all the problems of minorities. It will be the years of the last peace settlement all over again—but with a few differences. The same old schemes based on language, on religion, on history, and on the consent of the people concerned will be argued and criticised, statistics will be produced and disputed, and the claims of the big Powers for spheres of interest and special rights will be heard. Among the notable differences is, above all, the fact that Russia, weak and ignored in 1919, is now powerful and must be treated as such. So the Russian spokesmen no longer talk the language of Lenin, of “no annexations” and “self-determination.” Instead, we find Mr. W. P. Coates, of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, in a discussion about Poland’s frontiers, quite frankly proclaiming that what Russia has she holds :—

“The Soviet Union has already re-incorporated all the territories up to the Curzon Line. Soviet administration has been established in those territories, and no power under heaven can alter that fact, so that’s that.”— (Letter to Forward, November 11th, 1944.)

This is, of course, only the customary attitude of all capitalist governments when they believe themselves possessed of sufficient force to make their policy effective, and the gulf that lies between modern Russian policy and the early professions of the Bolshevists can be seen from another letter written by Mr. Coates, in which he actually threw in as a reason why Russia should have certain territory until recently held by Poland, the alleged fact that “it was originally Russian territory and was seized by Poland during the Tartar invasion of Russia in 1340.” (Times, December 22nd, 1944.) Yes, 1340 is the date mentioned !

We wait to learn that the Communist Party is going to claim back America for the British Empire, recall the descendants of Caesar to London, put back the Moors in Spain, and make a few other changes based on what happened 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.

However, let us make our attitude clear. We have no scheme for drawing frontiers or solving minority problems. We recognise the fact that many people are much concerned with religious or language or other differences, but we do not believe that these are the cause of national friction and hatreds. If one Power wants oil or some other mineral that happens to be within the territory of a weaker Power, no doubt it is a very useful propaganda weapon to recall what happened in 1066, or to work up agitation on religious or language grounds, but these are the excuses; the cause is the capitalist lust for profit. The propaganda would rarely range more than a ripple but for the alleged economic interests that are woven into it. It is capitalism that causes the poverty of the mass of the population, on both sides of all frontiers, and it is capitalism that threatens the worker always with unemployment: but how convenient it is for the capitalist to hold up the foreigner as the cause of it all ! If the foreign worker stays at home we are told he is destroying “our” industry by his cheap labour. If the foreign worker happens to be a minority group inside the frontier, he is taking “our” job and is moreover helping some foreign Power. If a man who speaks our language is in a minority group in some other country, he is told he can only find prosperity and happiness by agitating to rejoin the land of his fathers.

The problem of making all countries fit for all people to live in will not be solved by shifting frontiers. The new attempt will be just as faulty as the much lauded attempt after the last war. When there is no longer a profit-seeking privileged class to bedevil relationships between peoples, and when there is no exploited class to suffer poverty and unemployment, the frontier problem will be solved, but that means Socialism and no frontiers.

Black nationalism in Africa (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalism as a political theory originated in Germany around the beginning of the 19th century, when the German nationalists put forward the theory that those who speak the same language form a natural community which ought to govern itself.

This was to develop into racialism and to give rise to talk of the “Anglo-Saxon race ” and the “German race".

Despite the fact that nationalism has no scientific basis for its claims, it has been a powerful force in the world. Of course, it was not something which suddenly appeared out of the blue; its roots are to be found in the beginnings of capitalist development in Britain and France and the effect this had on intellectual life in Germany. This put Germany in a peculiar historical position.

Germans who had absorbed ideas developed in Britain and France turned to nationalism—the unity of all German speaking people—as part of the drive to modernise their country. Similar nationalist movements and theories appeared in Poland, Italy and Hungry, though only in Italy was the movement to have success in the nineteenth century. Here the achievement of national unity and independence was the equivalent of France’s revolution of 1789; it created the political conditions in which the evolution of capitalist society could continue.

In short in many of those countries which underwent capitalist development after Britain and France, the overthrow of the old order was represented as a form of national revolution—in some cases as a move for national unity, in others for national independence and in others for national regeneration. To refer to nationalism as a weapon of the social revolution from feudal society to capitalism is not to say that the nationalist movements were composed of traders and small factory owners. In fact the relationship is not as simple as this.

Capitalism created the social conditions for the spread of nationalism by alienating sections of the population from the old order. It is among this section—students, past and present, modern army officers and wage workers — that nationalists were to be found. These set about agitating among those they considered their fellow nationals in order to awaken their national consciousness.

From Europe, nationalism spread out during the twentieth century to the Middle East and Asia. Today it is spreading through Africa—Macmillan’s wind of change. The outward form of this nationalism varies from country to country depending on historical circumstances, but its essential remains the same; it is an instrument of the capitalist social revolution in relatively backward countries

In Europe the nationalist theories were based on language. In Africa they are based on colour and “race”. For this reason African nationalism is sometimes referred to as “racist ”. This use is permissible in so far as African nationalism does claim to champion the interests of the black people or “race”. Perhaps a better term would be Black Nationalism; this however should not obscure the fact that there are groups working among Africans which do preach race hatred and race domination. These can be called Black Racialist groups.

The intellectual roots of African nationalism go back to the Negro nationalist movements which appeared in America and the West Indies in the first part of this century. These ranged from openly black racialist organisations such as that of Marcus Garvey — the forerunner of the present day Black Muslims in America and the Rastafarians in Jamaica — to the cultural nationalism, so-called negritude, of the poet Aimé Césaire.

From this developed the doctrine of Pan-Africanism, which proclaimed the unity of interest of all Africans and those of African descent. Educated Africans and African students abroad joined in this movement. On returning to Africa, the students set about agitating for national independence. They would have had no success had not social conditions been ripe for the spread of their ideas.

As in Europe and Asia, nationalism in Africa spread only to the degree that the old order was breaking up. The colonial powers, in training Africans as soldiers and priests and civil servants, in employing them in the mines and on the plantations, undermined their own position. For these detribalised Africans formed the social base of the anti-colonialist struggle. Since the war the further break-up of the old order has proceeded apace. So has nationalism. It is only nine years since the first black African state, Ghana, became independent from colonial rule. Now, with the important exceptions of parts of central and southern Africa, most of black Africa has achieved independence.

The regimes that have taken over from the colonial governments have been various. Some have consisted of a motley collection of tribal leaders and opportunist and corrupt politicians. Others have an iron handed industrialising clique. Ghana provides the model of this last type; there the administrative techniques of Russia have been combined with the doctrine of Pan-Africanism to get what Nkrumah calls "African socialism ”.

Other nations which are modelled on Ghana — Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania — are one party states in which a vanguard party is used to mobilise the population for carrying through the capitalist social revolution. Because of the role of the state —and the influence of Russia—it was perhaps inevitable that these regimes would label themselves socialist. In fact they are totalitarian state capitalist regimes in which an élite uses the state power to try to extend capitalism rapidly throughout the area under their political control.

The situation in central and southern Africa is complicated by the presence of a not inconsiderable minority of persons of European descent. These—the whites—once enjoyed certain political and economic privileges at the expense of the Africans. It is in these circumstances that ugly black-white clashes have occurred and will almost certainly occur again. Among both white people and black there are groups preaching race hatred and intolerance. Many of the white workers are under the impression that they can preserve their security through discriminatory legislation. The African workers, on the other hand, see the solution to their miseries in African nationalism. The murders of Mau Mau in Kenya, and those of the Congo rebels, are examples of nationalism in action, just as the terrorist tactics employed by European nationalists in the past were. In Africa, however, they are now complicated as a clash between black and white.

African nationalism and the one party regimes it tends to set up are respectively the theory and practice of the capitalist social revolution in Africa. The spread of African nationalism together with the attempt by the Whites to maintain their privileges, is almost .certain to lead to further inter-racial violence and terror. Nationalism, with its talk of equality, may not at first sight appear as repugnant as racialism pure and simple. It often however, has the same results: bloodshed in which members of the working class are killed—not for their own interests but for those of their masters present and future.

Adam Buick

Multinational’s charter (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the last few years the 29 members of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) including Britain, have been secretly negotiating a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) which they hope to conlude by the end of April.

This treaty is ostensibly meant to provide a framework for international co-operation in protecting investments made by multinational and international corporations and institutions. The OECD will adopt the procedures of this treaty among its membership, which includes the most economically advanced states in the world. The plan is to extend it to all states, through pressure and the development of the idea of MAI being a hallmark of investment security. Once any state joins it will be bound to the treaty’s strictures for a minimum of twenty years (that being the time it takes to actually withdraw from the treaty).

The treaty seeks to protect international investment in two ways.

Firstly, it will forbid any member state from distinguishing between local capital and foreign capital (for instance this could forbid states from putting restrictions on media ownership by non-nationals, as is found currently in several states). This would extend towards the prevention of compulsory nationalisations and expropriations without compensation (as an example, Chancellor Brown’s windfall levy could have counted as an expropriation, which the British government would have had to compensate foreign investors for, had the treaty been in force then).

Secondly, it will for the first time give multinationals and investors rights under international law. The treaty will provide a set of provisions for punishments for infringing its strictures. Effectively this means that if a corporation does not like a law passed by a country, it can take that country to court to try to get the law changed. Of course, as usual when our corporate masters grant themselves rights, there are no corresponding duties–there is no commitment upon them to protect the welfare of their workers or the local environment.

The Green movement is mobilising to attack this treaty, on the grounds that it will damage the environment, and impede national sovereignty and restrict democracy by providing for unelected, unaccountable business elites to be able to change the laws of democratically elected governments, and by restricting the capacity of individual governments to stimulate their own economy or build a local economic base of their own. What, though, is really so new in this?

As far as socialists are concerned, states have always been in the pocket of unaccountable business cliques, and have always worked in their interest. Many of the states whose “sovereignty” will be infringed are already corrupt and toadying lackeys to our corporate masters, with despotic elites living the life of Riley out of ill-gotten plunder from environmental despoliation and pillage, wealth almost literally torn from the bodies of the world’s poor. A little more formalisation of this relationship, and a little extra protection for our masters can’t be such a bad thing, really? Can it?

This treaty is important because it means that for the first time our corporate elites are taking direct control of matters, instead of working through their state. One of the greatest threats to their own dominance of the world has been nationalist competitors, restricting their access to markets by asserting a claim to rights in a particular territory. Just look at how many wars have been fought these past fifty years by our imperial masters against nationalist upstarts: Suez, Vietnam, America’s dirty wars in South America; all in the name of keeping some particular territory within the web of international corporate capitalism. Having crushed most such opposition, all that remains for them now is to assert their authority within such territories and to lay claim to plunder of the world.

As the economic situation deteriorates, with the older capitalist states almost unable to sustain growth and the South Asian tigers suffering crises, our masters must desperately search around for new markets and sources of profit and new investment outlets. And they must seek to protect that investment, and make sure that every drop of wealth that they suck out of these areas will return to them, and not to some group of local rivals.

This treaty will strengthen the negotiating hand of multinationals against local power elites, enabling them to get even better returns on their profit than they could if they had to bribe the local rulers. It also makes it easier for them to try to force local governments to act against the workers, and write into law whatever is to the benefit of our international overlords.

As their position has become more precarious they have had to cut out any room for manoeuvre by states, and that includes the pressure release of even a moderately reform-minded government. By cutting off the route of reform in the way that this treaty does, our rulers are accentuating and revealing the truth about the class divide.

The MAI means making the strong even stronger and even more effective and efficient in the exploitation of the working class and the environment the world over. In their desperation our corporate masters are opening their greedy maw even wider, determined to swallow the world whole.

Pik Smeet

Scots Nationalism (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First of Two Articles

Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to “The Nation”. Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests.

What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.

This is certainly true of Scotland and far from having a common history or anything else the population there are mainly the descendants of native Picts, invaders from Ireland (the original Scots), Western Europe and Scandinavia. After centuries of what were really tribal wars the whole land came under one king by the middle of the ninth century and the nation was born–by the coercion of the people and in the interests of a class of bandit chieftains.

Right up until the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707 there were really two distinct nations in Scotland. The Highlanders  spoke Gaelic and had a culture (way of life) very different from that of the dialect-English speaking Lowlanders. Indeed

“In rural districts, the Scottish dialect or dialects was barely intelligible even to a Scot of another district” (James G. Kellas. Modern Scotland–the Nation Since 1870. p. 7)

So the nationalist idea of a once united Scotland is just a myth. Yet no one can deny that despite over two hundred years of Scotland’s incorporation within the United Kingdom most Scots feel themselves to be part of a separate nation. This can be explained by the fact that the Act of Union allowed Scotland to retain its own law, religion, and education system thus ensuring the continuation of national identity.

Why, then, has nationalism never been a strong political force until recently? The answer is that after 1707 the Scottish bourgeoisie, the only ones who could have provided a nationalist impetus, were far too busy building their fortunes through the Empire trade which had hitherto been denied them by the English Navigation Acts. Later on there was the industrial revolution and even greater opportunity to find wealth and contentment within the Union.

Even so, there were some malcontents and by the middle of the nineteenth century we find some bourgeois complaining

“that England was getting very much more out of the Union than was Scotland . . . that during the last few years public expenditure had been largely for the benefit of England . . . Naval expenditure was almost exclusively allocated to English dockyards, shipyards and arsenals. (H. J. Hanham. Scottish Nationalism, p. 76).

This discontent resulted in the founding of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights in 1853 and it was composed of Tory and Liberal notables plus some aristocrats. Although the Crimean war soon killed off the Association this didn’t prevent some Scottish propertied interests (the Tory Marquess of Bute among them) returning again and again to the theme that not enough time was devoted to Scottish business in the House of Commons, that public money (their taxes) was being spent unfairly, etc.

And as if to emphasize the propertied interests represented by nationalist ideas the Scottish Home Rule Association was formed in 1886, again comprising Tory and Liberal bigwigs but this time with a sprinkling of Labourites. Basically the SHRA represented those sections of the Scottish owning class who wanted more time spent on and more control over their affairs in a separate parliament in Scotland but still within the United Kingdom. The movement took its inspiration from the Irish bourgeoisie who were struggling to obtain Home Rule for themselves, and Gladstone’s support for this fanned the flames in Scotland.

Of course Home Rule met with opposition from other sections of the owning class who had different interests. Liberal business men who had trade links with Ireland feared any kind of Home Rule, Scottish or Irish, while Liberal MPs representing seats in west and central Scotland had to make sure they didn’t antagonize the Orange vote. The result was a split in the Liberal Party and the emergence of a group of Liberal-Unionists who allied themselves with the Tories against Home Rule.

Tories generally opposed Home Rule for the same reasons as did Liberals. Also the landowning section opposed it because they were outraged at Liberal plans for land reform, while the ambitious politicians were worried about how their career prospects would be affected since there wouldn’t be the same opportunity of landing plum jobs in “the government of Empire” if Scotland were to have its own parliament.

So although support for and opposition to Home Rule cut across party lines the growing band of nationalists usually supported the Liberals who had created the post of Secretary for Scotland and because the party in Scotland was committed to Home Rule. Various Bills for a Scottish parliament were submitted to Westminster until in 1913 one actually looked like succeeding but was cynically dropped by the Liberal government because of political complications over Ulster.

The emergence of independent Labour politics at the turn of the century meant that much working class support was drained from the Home Rule party, the Liberals. By the end of world war one the Liberals were completely shattered so Home Rule looked a lost cause to any Scottish capitalists who had been interested. In any case, as the division between the Liberals and Tories became more and more blurred the owning class had gradually been turning to the Tory Party, which had strong working class support, as the guardian of their class interests.

Nationalist now had to look elsewhere for support and they found it in the growing Labour Party and Trade Union movement in Scotland. John MacLean, plus James Maxton, Tom Johnston, and other prominent Labourites were ardent Home Rulers and they followed in Keir Hardie’s footsteps by pandering to nationalist sentiment in their writings and speeches. Indeed Scotland is currently plastered with a Scottish National Party poster which quotes one of Maxton’s contributions:

“I am convinced we can do more in five years in a self-governing Scotland than could have been done with 25 or 30 years of heart-breaking struggle in the British House of Commons.”

Today the Labour and Communist Parties, along with various “revolutionary” groups continue the reactionary work of spreading nationalist ideas among the working class.

However, the honeymoon with Labour was soon over and eventually it dawned on the nationalists that they could hope for nothing from the three major parties, none of which had even included Home Rule in their 1924 general election manifestos, so the warring groups swept their differences under the carpet and merged in 1928 to become the National Party of Scotland.

The presence of political nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation. Of course the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity. Next month we will continue to show why the workers in Scotland should oppose nationalism.

Vic Vanni

(concluded next month)

Nationalist Myths (1992)

Book Review from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Identity By Anthony D Smith. Penguin. £5.99.

This book begins by defining a nation as “a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members”. Smiths view that nations are based on “common myths" is something that socialists can certainly go along with, one of the most common myths of all being that a nation is a homogenous unit whose members share a "common economy" or have a fundamental identity of interests.

Unfortunately. Smith has little conception of the antagonistic class interests masked by the division of the world into nation-stales and comments that “nationalism provides the sole vision and rationale of political solidarity today . . . all other visions, all other rationales, appear wan and shadowy by comparison". In recognizing that nationalism has some negative as well as positive aspects for the capitalist world order. Smiths preference rests on a vague hope for a developing pan-nationalism in Europe Arabia and other parts of the globe that could provide a form of "collective identity" while serving to diminish social and political instability caused by national conflicts.

But what this shows is that Smith has failed to comprehend the role of nationalism—not as some autonomous or independent source of instability—but as a product of the competition and rivalry inherent to the capitalist system itself. It was as such that modern nationalism developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century as a challenge to the decaying old feudal empires. Then it was part of a progressive movement, a movement towards independent liberal-democratic capitalist states at the expense of feudalism and absolutist government. Indeed at that time some early socialists like Marx and Engels did support some movements for “national independence" and "self-determination for nations" as a way of hastening the development of capitalism and so providing the economic preconditions for socialism.

In the twentieth century the situation has been vastly different. Capitalism succeeded long ago in sweeping away the old feudal restrictions and has now become a world system with a global market for commodities and an international division of labour. All of the world’s nation-states are capitalist and all seek to defend the interests of the sections of the capitalist class operating from within their borders, whipping up nationalist fervour one minute while trampling on local cultures and traditions the next, and periodically sending their wage slaves in uniform to die in bloody battle on the capitalists' behalf. Nationalism and "national liberation", as ideologies serving the interests of differing sections of the ruling class, now stand as barriers in the way of the progressive movement which seeks to establish a real world human community without class division and national frontiers on the basis of the potential economic abundance made possible by capitalism. That movement of course, is the movement for world socialism, and Anthony Smith might have done well to acquaint himself with it before writing this book.

Dave Perrin

International politics (2011)

Book Review from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and World Politics. Contesting Global Capitalism, edited by Alexander Anievas. Routledge, 2011

One of the roles of academics is to clarify the concepts used in everyday talk. The trouble is that today they are obliged to come up with something new, so now we have “MIRT” – Marxist International Relations Theory – , though most of those involved seem to be Trotskyist or Trotskyoid.

The basic subject is interesting. Why, when there is only one global economic system, is the world divided into separate states? Is this something capitalism created or did it simply inherit it? Is it intrinsically necessary to capitalism? Could capitalism exist with a single world state? If not, why not?

These are discussed by the different authors in this collection of articles. The clearest and most informative, in terms of setting out the issues simply, is that by Neil Davidson. Most of the others employ an obscure terminology which no-one outside academia, indeed outside the small circle of those discussing MIRT, uses. As one of them revealingly, but apparently unself-consciously, noted:

 “A fellow traveller amongst Marxist circles – though not a Marxist himself – once asked us what was all the fuss about U&CD and ‘the international’. In exasperation with the whole debate, he threw up his hands declaring: ‘This uneven and combined shit is the dog’s whistle that only Marxists can hear’!”

True, very true, as long as you substitute “Trotskyist” for “Marxist”.

Adam Buick

One world or many states? (2020)

From the June 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked for our view on the movement for West Papua to gain independence from Indonesia. Here is our reply.

The Socialist Party and wider World Socialist Movement in various locations throughout the world, consists of individuals who have come together for one purpose: to assist in the urgent task of establishing world-wide socialism. We define socialism as a society in which all the resources of the world are used in common to meet all the needs of all the people of the world, without any distinction whatsoever, including the distinction of so-called national identity. It follows, then, that we do not concern ourselves with either the destruction or the creation of national or territorial borders within capitalism. This is a policy that we have upheld from our formation in 1904. During that time, we have, of course, been admonished to recognise the seemingly vital need to defend this national group against that one; to support the imposition of this territorial border or the dissolution of that one; to denounce this act of nationalist aggression or to excuse that one. Our reply has always been that while capitalism exists, such disputes and conflagrations are unending and it is not the role of socialists to act as adjudicators over the rights and wrongs of conflicts that are endemic to capitalism. 

To talk of self-determination is to play with words. Past circumstances notwithstanding, the world is today so integrated that no country can be genuinely independent in how it acts. Usually, it can’t even independently decide how it behaves within its own ‘borders’, for fear of criticism or censure from international bodies, or, more usually, powerful outside interests.

World capitalism always has been, is now, and always will be a quagmire of different competing interests along national, religious and ethnic lines. But all such differences are artificially created by artificial scarcity. Only world socialism can finally put an end to this fight for resources – a sordid fight that, in order to acquire a semblance of decency, hoists coloured rags on poles and conscripts evolved human morals and ethics into ‘national’ armies and risibly ordained ‘national’ interests.

Socialists don’t deny the value of human culture, of course not. What we abhor and oppose is the culture of all the people of the world – which ‘belongs’ to and should be accessible to us all – being turned into nothing more than ruses to corral the working class of the world behind artificial borders, the real and sole purpose of which is to enlist us into fighting for and protecting world markets for ‘us’ and not ‘them’.

Historically, West Papua is little different from any of the countless other regions that have been colonised and invaded over centuries. Today, a population of less than a million in West Papua contains 6 ‘ethnic’ groups, practises 5 religions and speaks a variety of languages. Yet, the twin issues of personal poverty and the human rights of the individual are the main concerns in West Papua, just as they are in West Ham in London or West Bronx in New York. Why should the members of the human family who happen to be born in the particular part of the world named (by ‘foreigners ‘) West Papua limit their horizons, in this day and age, to West Papua? Why shouldn’t an inhabitant of West Papua not see themselves as a citizen of the world, free to live wherever they choose on the planet? Why shouldn’t anyone have the right to go and live in West Papua if they so desire?

Capitalism, of course, can never allow for such a world at peace with itself, of personal universal rights and personal self-determination – the only form of genuine self-determination and the only form that socialists care a hoot for. Only in capitalism is it necessary to construct borders around a designated area arbitrarily created by history, to keep certain people in and keep other people out. Socialism, the only universal solution to ‘borders’ will require no such artificial distinctions between the world’s people and will have no borders. And since this is the goal of socialists, why would we do something as illogical as interrupt or postpone our endeavours to create a borderless world in order to advocate new borders that we aim to abolish?

Nationalism—an enemy of the workers (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nation state was created as the political unit for capitalism in a series of changes which began four or five hundred years ago. It was accompanied by the growth of national consciousness. People were half encouraged and half forced to identify themselves with the countries they lived in, not simply in a territorial sense but as “subjects”. The national myths appeared — Saint George and his ilk, the idea of special traditions and virtues which other countries did not have. In a remarkably short space of time each nation produced its exclusive dedication to “my country, right or wrong”, and has sustained it as an active force into the present day.

The overt symbols of nationalism — flags, slogans and silly songs — are by no means the only ones. Because it is made a general outlook, it intrudes in almost all fields and pervades the upbringing of the young. At random from boyhood can be recalled the cigarette cards which showed British wild flowers, birds and butterflies (as if foreigners were, rightly, denied such beauties); the Scout game called “British Bulldog” in which the players battered one another in increasing numbers (native durability and grit); the depiction in comic-books and school-books alike of other nations as “types” comic or villainous, or both. And the casual pejoratives incorporated in everyday speech—“double Dutch” for incomprehensibility, “French” for whatever smacked of indecency, “Chinese torture” for diabolical and unjustly-inflicted suffering.

If none of these is very sinister in itself, all produce a condition of mind. Moreover, the other nations all have their own equivalent versions. Each country has its popular account of history which would be startling to people who have learned the rival views: transposing victories and defeats and presenting saintly heroes as infamous rogues. A recent German work showed Queen Victoria not as a dotty old lady, which is sentimentality tolerable in Britain, but as a drunkard. The nearest thing to a foreign account of history that can be read in English is a Roman Catholic textbook, where a good many episodes appear altogether different.

The fiercest jingo nationalism today is to be seen in the new nations. In crude militaristic and patriotic preaching the Tory Party in Britain is almost outclassed by the Russian and Chinese governments; and their language is echoed in turn by the leaders of the “third world” countries. Clamouring for a place in the capitalist world, these new ruling classes vie for whatever gives prestige and is good for business. At the same time, they have to impress the natives with the importance of nationality: history is rewritten, “alien” defined and condemned.

The Social System
Before the nation-state, partisanship was related to small-scale economic interests. Wars were fought between cities, tribes and the proprietors of rival domains. The peasant population took part only to the extent that it was tempted or compelled to. The armies and mailed knights of the Middle Ages were mostly mercenaries — an outstanding example was the Janissaries of the Turkish Sultans: as youthful captives from Christian provinces they had no attachments to the Muslim empire, but they nevertheless provided its military strength for several centuries.

Capitalism has existed as a fully-developed system for two hundred years. Before that, for another two hundred years, the growing capitalist class struggled — consciously — towards political power. Commodity production forced the nation-state into being, on the lines of good-sized geographical units in which the powers of government were to legalize private ownership and ensure the freedom of the commodity. Capitalism means the ownership by a single class of all the means of producing and distributing wealth, and the directing of all activity to the single end of sale at a profit.

This was the end of barons, domain-holders and twopenny princes (though, development being uneven, some of them held on until the 1914-18 war). But the rise of capitalism meant also the creation of a vast single class of non-owners: the “free” working class, with its own commodity labour-power to sell, and indeed unable to survive as persons in any other way. On one hand the working class was (and remains) doomed to insecurity and varying degrees of poverty by the economic laws of capitalism. On the other, production for market in a world of nation-states has led inexorably to national and international crises and to wars on a different scale from any in previous history.

It is a world-wide system into which more and more regions and peoples have been drawn swiftly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In each one, that class division and the associated problems have been reproduced because they make the organic structure of capitalism. This is the fundamental issue in modern society — yet it is obscured by the banners of nationalism. It can be seen as a test for those who say they believe in Socialism. When the choice has to be made, do they declare for the working class or “the nation”? In all the wars of this century the world’s social democrats and “radicals” have chosen the latter without hesitation. In the present economic crisis they are all talking about getting “the country” out of trouble. It is logical, because they support capitalism.

Frauds of Nationalism
The Germans were hated and caricatured in Britain before 1914 because they were rivals in trade. Through nationalist eyes all other nations are different from “us” and actual or potential rivals. Every event is in some sense a contest, demonstrating that one’s own side is better than some or all of its rivals. “Our” country is superior to all the others in art, literature, sports, military power, inventiveness, the character and physical beauty of its inhabitants, climate, scenery and cooking—and must remain so. Plenty of working people hold this belief; “my country, right or wrong” was parodied by G. K. Chesterton as “my mother, drunk or sober”.

The political claims of nationalism build on this. They argue that the problems of workers in a given country will be solved, and a golden age for them begin, by recovering or enlarging the country’s supremacy. This is the promise of nationalist leaders in new countries, and is also being made by the Scots Nationalists with reference to the oilfields off the Scottish coast.

Unfortunately there is not a shred of evidence that this could be or has ever been so. In The Other America, published in Britain as a Penguin Special in 1963, Michael Harrington investigated the assumptions of Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. Using figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, he estimated that the poor—families with “inadequate housing, medicine, food and opportunity”—numbered between forty and fifty millions, or between 20 and 25 per cent of the population of the United States. “As technology has boomed, their share in prosperity has decreased.” The period when Britain was industrially and commercially supreme was also the time of Marx’s indictment of capitalism, of Engels' Condition of the Working Class, of horrifying reports by reformers like Chadwick and Booth.

Nationality is an accident, and national causes are frequently accidents too. In February this year The Guardian published reports on a possible “trade war” between the EEC and Japan. On 8th February it said the Japanese Prime Minister was “strongly inclined to draw parallels” with the 1930s, and went on: “Last week he gave warning that efforts to restrict Japan’s export flow could create the same chaotic conditions that led to World War Two. If there was a ‘trade war’, as he predicted, the blame would be with Britain and every other country contemplating limits on Japanese imports." It must have been surprising to many to learn that, if war with Germany had not broken out in 1939, war with Japan was on the cards.

A further example is Namibia, which is due to become an independent state in 1978. The present collection of tribes and ethnic groups are about to become Namibians; they will have a flag and a national anthem, and the nationalist “ours” will centre on diamonds—it is one of the richest parts of Africa in minerals.

Whose ?
“Ours” is the deceitful word in nationalist propaganda the world over. In a newly developed country, nationalism is the demand of native capitalists to exploit the workers and peasants lest somebody else should do it and have the profits. What kind of “ours” is being talked about? In Britain and other industrialized countries workers talk about “our” trade, “our” reserves, “our” jobs allegedly taken by immigrants. They are not. They are all at the disposal of those who own the means of living. The worker has no claim on them: he owns nothing but his labour-power.

The working class have no country. By persuading workers that they have a stake in “the nation”, capitalism obtains their support at critical times. What they should bear in mind is that the nation-state is the political institution of the capitalist system: its raison d'être is to keep the working class propertyless. Nationalism can do nothing for the workers except confirm or worsen their position. Pleasure in a locality or its culture has nothing to do with the matter; it is a reasonable sentiment on which nationalist fraud builds, but which capitalism will destroy without compunction.

There is a different affinity to recognize. This is the identity of interest of all those who live by selling their labour-power. The working class is worldwide, and as members of it become conscious of the nature of capitalist society and their position in it, they open the way to a different social organization based on common ownership. Just as capitalism has produced a world of nations in conflict, Socialism will mean the end of nationalities and frontiers—and classes. What will bring it into being is you thinking for yourself instead of letting them think for you.

Robert Barltop

Editorial: A Borderless, Stateless World (2018)

Editorial from the January 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been hearing a lot about borders lately. As part of the negotiations to leave the EU, the UK government has had to provide proposals to ensure that there is no ‘hard" border’ between the North of Ireland and the Irish Republic. A key argument for leaving the European Union was that the UK would be able to reclaim its borders. Donald Trump, the US President, has pledged to build a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico. Millions of workers have fought and died in wars to defend national borders. It is assumed that they are as natural to humans as dams are to beavers, and are, therefore, a permanent feature of human society. This view is mistaken.

Borders with their customs and passport controls are part and parcel of the modern nation-state. We are expected to feel a belonging and loyalty to the nation, in which we happen to be born and raised. After all, do not most of us share the same culture and language ? Maybe, but it does not follow, therefore, that we all have the same interests, for within each nation there are the capitalists, who own the means of production and live off the surplus created by the workers and therefore have an interest in minimising their labour costs; workers, on the other hand, have an interest in achieving the highest price they can for their labour power. This sets the stage for class conflict.

The nation-state is not a natural entity, but a product of history. Its origins lay in the struggle by the aspiring capitalist class for political power from the 15th Century onwards. Once they succeeded in toppling the old feudal order, new states emerged which replaced the old feudal monarchies and empires and better served the needs of the new capitalist ruling class. The latter were able to enact laws which protected their private property rights, legitimised their ownership of the productive resources and their control over their workforce, and removed any institutional barriers to capitalist trade and commerce. Police forces were established to enforce these laws. As the state governed over a given area, a border was required to control the movement of people and commodities between the home nation and other nation-states, and, at times, It needed to be defended by a standing army against hostile foreign powers. Its purpose was and is to protect the property of the capitalist minority. The foregoing also applies to the so-called ‘communist’ states that existed in the former Soviet bloc countries and still survive in North Korea and Cuba. These were state capitalist regimes, where the state took on the role of the capitalists.

Capitalism is also a product of history and is not a natural system. As feudalism was swept away by the revolutionary capitalist class, it is about time that the working class do the same with capitalism. Once capitalism is abolished, there will be no need for the nation-state, with its armed forces and borders. We will have a world society without any nation-states or borders.

The Meaning of Class Consciousness (1933)

From the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

What does the Socialist mean when he claims to be “class-conscious” ? Class is one, the most important, of the social groups into which human beings tend to be divided by the mutual association of individuals with like interests. It is the most important of these groups because the common interest involved is the primary one of bread and butter. The class structure of society rises immediately out of the prevailing mode of production and distribution: and in general every individual must belong to one or other of the classes existing at a given period, though he may belong to comparatively few of the sets and circles which serve his secondary activities.

From this standpoint, class-consciousness is thus one kind of “group-consciousness,” about which many academic sociologists have offered various confused and unsound views. Particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the capitalist class rose to political supremacy, the “Nation-State” was exalted to the skies by political and social writers who spoke of the “spirit of the people,” of the “will of the nation,” of the “group mind,” as something which had real existence over and above the brain-boxes of the individuals brought together in the group. Much as the ancients conceived the sky as an inverted bowl fixed over the earth, so Hegel’s “Absolute Spirit of the Universe” became for him incarnate in the kingly representative of the Nation-State—thus moulding to capitalist needs the idea of the divinity of the sovereign power which is inevitably generated in every society divided into classes, into exploiter and exploited.

To the Socialist, the "mind” of a group is but a mental abstraction of the common features of thought of the individuals belonging to it, by reason of their like reaction to like conditions. Another word for the thoughts and feelings which constitute the common mind of Socialists, or to a less degree of the capitalist class, is class-consciousness.

Notice that we do not say “of the working class”: for the principal element in class-consciousness, the recognition of a paramount class interest opposed to the interest of another class, is not a common feature of the minds of the workers as a whole. On the one hand sectional differences still loom largely in their minds; and on the other hand, consequently, they are all too easily beguiled into believing that they have some common interest (of “nationality” or trade, for instance) with their masters, the capitalist class.

The workers still tend to be split by differences of occupation, by slight differences of dress, or speech or education, unable to see the working-class wood for the trees, because they have not thoroughly grasped the common economic bondage of all who have to sell their energies for bread, that unemployed labourer and “disengaged" expert are dike under the necessity to beg for a job from a master.

Nor does the capitalist openly recognise that his interests are opposed to those of the workers. He is, indeed, anxious to impress upon the worker that they have a common interest in the running of the nation. It goes without saying, however, that this “community of interests" lasts for the capitalist only so long as the workers are content to accept the economic status of wage-slaves, and to maintain the master class in their privileged position as owners of the means of living. The class-consciousness of the capitalist is thus little more than an instinctive conviction that existing conditions are best—the natural conviction of a dominant class, in contrast with the class-consciousness of a subject and revolting class, which tends to he altogether more virile of thought in proportion as it questions the validity of current ideas and institutions, in proportion as it becomes revolutionary.

The class struggles of society, because they grow out of its economic foundations, work themselves out, as more or less blind trial and error adjustments of conflicting interests, whether or not the participants in a struggle realise its historical meaning as a social process having a necessary origin and a necessary outcome. And it is the peculiar feature of capitalism that it generates in the workers just that historical perspective which other classes have lacked. Forced to question the beneficence of the existing order, and the need for its continuance, by the pressure of unrelieved want and anxiety which the defenders of capitalism can neither remedy nor explain, armed with the scientific knowledge which is one of capitalism's essential products, the working class has in addition the lessons of all other class struggles to learn from. Because the working class is the last class needing emancipation, because the struggle between capitalist and worker is the last of all class struggles, capitalism only can provide the historical material for an analysis of all class struggles, of class in general.

It is this historical attitude, this scientific analysis of the past used to illumine the present class struggle, which constitutes the essential core of the class-consciousness of Socialists.

The Socialist is simply the worker who has become class-conscious, and who organises with his fellows who are like-minded. But if the numerical strength of the world's Socialist Parties is thus a measure of the number of workers who have achieved mental emancipation, it is by no means the exact measure of capitalism's remaining days. Elements of class-consciousness are present in the minds of large numbers of workers who are still confused and unclear. In any large gathering of workers, such as the recent unemployed demonstration in Hyde Park, there can be seen writ large on the faces around a grim antagonism to some dimly conceived enemy, a half articulate knowledge of a conflict which knows no reconciliation, a muddled but profound resentment against the mounted representatives of capitalist law and order who ride ruthless through their unarmed fellows. These vague feelings of solidarity with the “poor" against the "rich," so long as they remain uncrystallised by Socialist principles, into clear-cut class-consciousness, readily lend themselves to exploitation by the numerous brood of Communist and Labour leaders, and indeed by every politician who is in opposition to the Government. The reformist Labour and Communist parties are no less parasitical in the political field than is the capitalist in the field of production. These “leaders of the masses" suck up the discontent of the workers, leaving them politically anaemic and helpless. They feed upon the mass emotionalism which, uninformed by sound knowledge, degenerates into hooliganism and hysteria. The Communist Party attempts to reconcile its reformist activities with its revolutionary pretensions by the tragi-comical plea that the way to generate in the workers a revolutionary Socialist outlook is to concentrate on immediate reforms of capitalism. The “tactical" value of going out for particular reforms is recognised no less by the capitalist than by the Communist Party. For such activities divert the workers from the main issue, befog their minds, pit one section of workers against another, and all too often turn their political energy and enthusiasm into exhaustion and despair.

It is only the Socialist, the class-conscious worker who has analysed his class position for himself in its historical setting, who is at once independent of leaders and proof against their entire stock-in-trade of sentimentalism and reformism. It is he alone who cannot be sold, because he has no need to put himself in pawn. It is he alone who realises that the defensive struggle to resist the encroachments of the capitalist class upon the workers' standard of living is essentially subordinate to the aggressive policy of dispossessing the capitalist class at their political seat of power.

The function of the class-conscious worker, organised in the Socialist Party of Great Britain, is to fertilise the discontent of his fellow workers with this knowledge, which alone has power to make the master class tremble. It is in this sense that the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and comrade parties abroad, their steady growth in numbers and activity in the face of every obstacle, is the vindication of the Marxian prediction: "What capitalism produces above all are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are alike inevitable."

Frank Evans

Contradictory (2016)

Book Review from the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Nation-States: Consciousness and Competition'.  By Neil Davidson, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2016.

This book, a collection of previously published articles, does not live up to the blurb on the back that ‘Davidson draws out how nationalist ideology and consciousness are used to bind the subordinate classes to “the nation”, while “the state” is simultaneously wielded by capital as a means of conducting geopolitical competition.’

That Davidson is going to criticise and oppose all nationalism as an anti-working class ideology is shattered in the preface where he reveals himself as a supporter of both Scottish independence and Brexit. As a Trotskyist, who was in the SWP till 2013 (when most of the chapters were written), he is able to come up with some convoluted non-nationalist argument for doing so – that either or both would ‘provoke a crisis for the British nation-state, of a type that has been relatively rare in its history.’

More generally, he agrees with Lenin (introduced on page iii of the preface) that the left should support oppressed nationalisms against oppressing ones (though he thinks Scottish nationalism is neither) and the ‘right of nations to self-determination’, i.e. to a separate state. He explicitly rejects Rosa Luxemburg’s view that, in the era where capitalism dominates the world, this doesn’t make sense.

Luxemburg also argued that this wasn’t possible and so was clearly wrong about that as at the last count the world is divided into some 194 states and statelets. Davidson discusses why in the chapter entitled ‘The Necessity for Multiple Nation-States for Capital’. The emphasis here is on ‘necessity’ as he is arguing against both the possibility of a single world capitalist state and that the world just happens to be divided into capitalist states but doesn’t have to be, positions defended by some of those he is arguing with (including SWP leader Callinicos who defends the second).

His argument is that capitalism is necessarily a competitive system for profits and that states are, and have to be, just as much involved in this as capitalist enterprises:

‘Capitalism is a system of competitive accumulation based on wage labor, and these two defining aspects also point to the reason for the persistence of the states system: on the one hand, the need for capitals to be territorially aggregated for competitive purposes; on the other, the need for that territory to have an ideological basis – nationalism – that can be used to bind the working class to the state and hence to capital.’

So, for him, and rightly, nationalism is a product of capitalism, a position he defends in polemics about when a Scottish ‘national consciousness’ arose. He argues that it was only after the 1707 Union as it was only after then that capitalism developed in Scotland. His opponents – a Stalinist hack and the more respected Tom Nairn – put the date, in accordance with Scots Nat mythology – much earlier, to 1296 even.

Another chapter criticises the term ‘ethnicity’, which has become a politically correct substitute for the unscientific and discredited term ‘race’, and calls for it to be dropped. We agree and is why we refuse to answer the question about this on the census and other official forms except by ‘human being’ or ‘member of the human species’.

In view of the rise of Trump in the US and the victory of the UKIP position in the UK EU referendum, the chapter that has the most immediate relevance is the one on ‘Far-Right Social Movements as a Problem for Capital’. In it Davidson discusses why so many workers have been turning to such non-fascist, far-right movements as the Tea Party and UKIP. He attributes this to disillusion with and contempt for the current political elites for imposing ‘neo-liberalism’ (in practice, redundancies, job insecurity, cuts in social services and payments). This is a plausible explanation of the Brexit vote in Britain, which certainly has caused a problem for British capitalism.

Davidson writes

‘… even if I am right that certain aspects of far-right politics are detrimental to the needs of capital, it does not follow that the increased chaos resulting from the implementation of these policies would necessarily benefit the left, even indirectly.’

Which rather contrasts with the reason he gives in the preface for voting Brexit.

Adam Buick

Democracy and Capitalism (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why in the end the two are incompatible

Democracy, either as simply a word in our lexicon, an actually existing system or a utopian ideal, is a  concept which should be wide open for discussion. The term is bandied about to represent something which is generally poorly understood, something which is widely recognised as being the status quo but  with little or no thought given to the relationship between what we each individually mean when we use it and the situation on the ground to which we are referring.

Democracy is something alleged to be a system of popular involvement which leans towards majority consensus; but ask ten people, or a hundred, and get widely differing explanations of what it is or what it should be. It is a word that is ill-defined, misused, overused too ambiguously and has been hijacked by governments and elites to deliberately misinterpret their actions and so deceive a captive and poorly represented electorate.

For example – In the 'largest democracy in the world', India, how do the majority of the population on $2 or less a day consider they are being represented? And how many of the minority even pause to consider the possible effects of this lack of representation on the majority?

For example, in so-called 'developed' countries, many of which have just two or three major political parties becoming ideologically closer and closer so that there is little difference whichever is voted in, how can this false choice be deemed democratic? A choice between two or three closely related manifestos, differing in minor details but overall being variations of the same business-friendly agenda, distanced from the majority of the voters.

Existing political democracies

Electorates worldwide haven't had the true experience of involvement, of having had their voices heard, at any significant level to have resulted in a culture of expectation of inclusion in the various processes of so-called democracy. Rather than an expectation of involvement there is apathy, cynicism or a complaining mantra heard far and wide that governments don't listen to the people or that they put on a performance of listening pre-elections and then make wide ranging excuses for their negligence in following up on promises or manifesto declarations.

Polls show people in greater numbers becoming further and further removed from statements made by politicians both right and left on topics which impact on daily life – wages, working conditions, high unemployment, cuts in health care, education and general public spending, poor infrastructure, creeping surveillance, big-brother laws and questionable aggressive involvement in the affairs of other nations. And who can determine any significant difference between left and right whether in the US, UK or most other nations where all are beholden to corporate capitalism?

The current hierarchical systems of 'democracy' can never effectively represent the widely differing demands of majorities on wide ranging topics. What this system gives can more accurately be termed imposition. When people judge they are getting less democracy as time goes by – arrest on suspicion of almost anything, tighter control of cyberspace, personal information passed from agency to agency without consent, working conditions changed without consultation, retirement age increased, education budgets severely cut (all these currently in focus in many countries) – the discussion required is much more than how to take back lost ground and go on to gain more leverage. It becomes how to take control of the direction and quality of our own lives; in other words how to move forwards to a true and meaningful democracy.

“Capitalist democracy”

A UK government sponsored think tank, Wilton Park, concluded in a paper in 1996 that 'Democracy must not be confused with capitalism. The former is a political system while the latter is an economic system. Although many capitalist countries are democracies, capitalism can exist without democracy.'

According to Noam Chomsky, writing in On Power and Ideology and referring to the US as a 'capitalist democracy', true capitalism isn't possible, state intervention being a necessary component for several reasons: to regulate markets, to support business interests and to employ its means of violence in the international arena on behalf of  business.

Chomsky being a highly respected political commentator and activist over a number of decades, many would agree with this assertion and with his comment that democracy is a commodity – you can have as much of it as you can afford. It is probably pertinent to add to Chomsky's statement that true democracy also is not possible in capitalism because the system (and the market) is manipulated by the capitalists to fit their agenda by use of media, advertising and lobbying. The incompatibility of capitalism and democracy, which follow opposing principles, render democratic capitalism an oxymoron.

Apathy and complaint

Many so-called democracies tend to breed apathy for a variety of reasons. Decisions have long been made for people not by people, electorates distanced from their representatives, decisions made with no consultation process and 'leaders' believing they have been selected to take the reins and make all decisions on behalf of the voters. It's taken for granted that once elected the 'member' decides on behalf of the electors.

There is scant reference to the masses in times of major decisions – where to cut public spending, whether to involve a population in invasion or war, how to deal with the effects of harsh economic downturn. Even mass demonstrations against unpopular decisions can leave the elected unmoved and intransigent. As a result there has long been a culture of complaint, a collective feeling of  impotence with no expectation of being heard, even if seemingly listened to.

It is easy to recognise from both an individual and collective standpoint what it is, in work, in life, society, environment, that is required to be changed, removed, expunged; however it is not so simple to know exactly what should be put in its place or how to do it. Most people can more readily identify the negative aspects of their lives which they want rid of than they can imagine the positives to replace them. They have been part of a manipulative system for too long and have become passively compliant.

Anger and indignation can be positive motivating factors enabling people collectively to come to the realisation that if power won't heed the people then the people must act together, take hold of the power and make it their own if they are to become the active part of the decision making process.

Whereas emotional stimuli can play a useful part in rallying individuals to a cause overall a plan is vital. We need to understand not only where we're coming from but why and where we're headed. It's not enough to know what we're working against but significantly more important to understand and affirm what we're working to achieve. This largely entails each individual actively raising their own consciousness to higher levels of understanding and commitment which ultimately will lead to a majority of the working class pulling together in order to take control of their own collective destiny.

                               

Dissent

Politically to dissent is simply to disagree with an official decision, course of action or set of principles but the term of reference has become debased and it is now commonly understood to be something other than seeking to have an alternative view expressed overtly; it is often conveyed as being connected to some kind of subterfuge, a covert, possibly illicit movement to overturn an established regime.

Dissent, because it is seen to be too far outside the mainstream of traditional politics, becomes a threat. And what leads to dissent? Poor working conditions and levels of pay, high costs of food, services, fuel, etc., high levels of unemployment, high levels of homelessness and poor housing conditions, perceived injustices with regard to minority groups, creeping surveillance and curbs on freedom of expression, limited access to health care and education, widespread corruption in the corridors of power, inconvenient secrets leaked to the media revealing a catalogue of lies and deceit that the people aren't supposed to be a party to, oppression and repression; in general lack of democracy in one form or another. Any one or any combination of these issues, coupled with a particular geographical location and appropriate timing could lead to the blue touch paper being lit and then look out for the explosion.

Active dissent from the majority.

It is surely too narrow official, bureaucratic and parliamentary or oligarchical decisions which lead to all the states referred to immediately above – decisions taken which sideline, ignore, humiliate, debase and exclude the recipients from active participation in any of the decision making processes for surely  one does not dissent from decisions one had a free hand in making.

Real Democracy 

If democracy is to mean more than one vote nationally and another regionally every few years, an arrangement that most will agree displays a huge deficit of democracy and does little to represent public opinion, then an alternative system must be devised. An alternative system involving the general public in all decisions which impact upon them, their communities and local environments, one which embraces the notion that all are entitled to be active participants in the local and global community.

In order to invert the current system with the outcome that it will be society at large's decisions that are to become the norm means that each community's ideas and plans will be presented, discussed and decided upon by those within those communities. All discussion in the public domain; no minorities behind closed doors weighing up pecuniary advantage. The will of the people – so often disregarded – the will of the people on an ongoing basis, not just for the moment when they put their tick in a box, but the ongoing will of the people, giving ongoing legitimacy to all decisions in the best interests of all.

Hierarchies are necessarily divisive in their manner of imposition, patriarchal minorities holding onto power in situations opposed by their electorates until forced to give concessions or step down. Governments don't easily give up their power and use various means to cling on through thick and thin whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas. Noam Chomsky has said, 'Propaganda is as necessary to bourgeois democracy as repression is to the totalitarian state.' The purpose of both to keep control.

In contrast the ethos of true democracy, with a horizontal structure, has a unifying factor with people working together for the best outcomes for all. Real democracy must mean a system of common ownership, production and consumption, moving from a system of passivity to one of proactivity and empowerment by sharing responsibility for decisions and outcomes. In a true democracy people would have real choices in all areas of their lives, not choices manufactured to suit business, market and monetary interests.

Janet Surman