Socialist Sonnet No. 234: Patriotic States of Mind (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Patriotic States of Mind

Problem is not simply Zionism:

Nation states however constituted

Are, by definition, ill-reputed,

The foundation of discord and schism.

Meanwhile, picking on one to vilify

And then promoting another to toast

Is to risk taking route to holocaust,

In which not only the selected die.

Power may grow from the barrel of the gun,

But justice doesn’t, nor finds solutions,

As conflict grows from national illusions:

Poll the too many dead as to who’s won.

Patriotism might motivate crowds,

While patriotic flags turn into shrouds.

 

D. A.

50 Years Ago: Patriotism and Scarlet Coats (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our ruling class can see that their Continental rivals are determined to obtain as large a share of the markets of the world as possible, and that sooner or later this must culminate in world-wide disruption. Hence their anxiety on the score of “patriotism.” Lord Esher gives expression to his anxious thoughts in the suggestion that “patriotism” is an attribute of the empty-headed. “How can you expect,” he writes, “recruits for your Territorial Force, when you dress them unbecomingly?” One paper, commenting on his noble Lordship’s article, suggests “a scarlet coat and a towering headdress” as the most effective appeal to the “patriotism” of the working class, though whether on the old, tried and trusty ground that those who have least in their heads must make the greatest show on them, or on the later calculation that now the workers are discovering how little country they have to fight for they may be induced to fight for their togs if only they are sufficiently removed from the humdrum drab of the corduroy to enable them to forget that they are countryless workers, does not transpire.

[From “The Decline of Patriotism” by J. R. R., Socialist Standard, January 1911.]

Corporal punishment (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most inner-city High Streets have an army-recruiting office where the raw are taken in (literally) to find themselves in plush surroundings; where the harvesting recruitment sergeant patronises the newly-germinated with smarmy small-talk about ski-ing and discos on far-off shores, using all the underhand skills and techniques of a sales representative for Cannon Fodder Incorporated. The process of recruitment from the High Street Office to the training camp can be as little as two weeks. During this period there is hardly enough time for the recruits to read the large-print in the glossy magazines, let alone the small-print surrounding their twenty-two-year contracts.

At the High Street Office the unsuspecting windfalls are tested in Arithmetic. English and Physical fitness, after which there is an interview. The Arithmetic and English are to ascertain the recruit's degree of simplicity. The medical decides whether the next in line can walk or hold a gun. The interview is perhaps more sinister. This is when the would-be soldiers are asked — prior to taking the Oath of Allegiance — if they are Communists. Have they ever been a Communist? Do they know any Communists? Answering "No" to these questions. they receive their one-way tickets to the training camp. Recruits are then trained like animals in a circus, with tit-bits for the good dog and a crack of the ringmaster’s whip (the Regimental Sergeant Major's pace stick) for those who don’t sit up and beg.

To obtain discipline and control the Army has more subtle methods than boot bulling and potato peeling. They have a long history of expertise in military psychology on which they can draw. The tools they use for processing the recruits are Conformity, Alienation and Competition.

Conformity

To impose Conformity the recruits must first be robbed of their individuality. This is done by inflicting uniformity of looks and behaviour on all soldiers. Uniformity of personal appearance is achieved at the first stop in camp, the barber's shop. The haircut and the clean-shaven look strips many young people of a part of their identity. If they were a little green in joining the Army in the first place, they become greener with a visit to the Quarter-Master's stores where they are issued with about six suits of varying sizes, just as many hats and the obligatory identity tag. informing them of their new name: an eight-figure number. Loaded with more new clothes than they have ever had at any one time, they set off to their accommodation having almost forgotten their frightening new hairstyle.

Impressed by the self-confidence of the reception Corporal, the new recruits are under the misapprehension that all they need to do is put on one of their new suits and they will be transformed into the new macho man. The dormitories each house twelve to twenty and are furnished in the most basic fashion — one bed, one locker and one chair for each person, laid out in a military style which is about as welcoming as a nuclear winter. With so little furniture you could think it easy to keep clean. The recruits soon discover that this isn't the case. For the forthcoming weeks they are cleaning the floor and removing dust from 5am to breakfast and then later from 5pm until lights out. with short breaks in between to clean their kit. Complete uniformity of behaviour is hammered into those with any remaining personality of their own during square bashing. Here marching, saluting and rifle drills are choreographed to such a degree that Lionel Blair would be envious.

Alienation

Alienation is another wrench in the mechanism of the military machine, used to twist the squaddies away from social interaction and to tighten the nut of docile acquiescence. Few of the trainees have much experience in letter-writing and many of their families cannot afford a telephone. so it isn't too long before they become isolated. This separation from family and friends, coupled with the confinement to barracks that most training camps impose. make it impossible to make new friends in the local community. The new soldier becomes so lonely and introverted, bullied helplessly into shape. For the smallest mistake the recruits are humiliated, bawled at and in some cases physically beaten.

A recent case of bullying was that of a new boy, or “sprogg" who, after a kangaroo court in the barrack room, was found "guilty” of not polishing his floor space to the required standard and was sentenced to be hung. He was beaten up by a dozen others, stood on a chair, blindfolded and a noose was tied around his neck. After a lengthy pause in which he broke down pleading for mercy, the chair was kicked from under his feet. Fortunately for him the rope was not secured to the rafters above.

Black balling is common among recruits. and many of the dangers they face in training are from each other, as each tries playing at soldiers with little more than an Action Man comic to go on, plus the stories learned from dad down the pub the night before they left. The recruits show a willingness to participate in any community pursuit and try to to impress anyone and everyone with their mixed-up league of priorities. They will take part in the humiliation of others, pleased that it is not happening to them. They have the childish notion of one who does not know right from wrong; if everyone else does something then it must be right. The alienating process has them so frightened that when they do join in group pursuits they often show their insecurity with violent reaction. 

Competition

Competition is the third bracket that straps the cogs to the tank tracks. Recruits are told from the outset that they must shape up to perform with team spirit in an endless cycle of competition that ends up like a game of snakes and snakes. Those who fail to perform well enough at individual and team skills are made to go back in training (back squadded). Competition strains at every level of the Army. At Battalion level there are about 600 men divided into four Companies, each of which has four Platoons of 30-40 soldiers. They are divided further into four sections of 8-12 and competition is intense for promotion and the cushy life. The sections are at loggerheads to be the best section in the platoon. The platoon is rife with the obsession to be top in the Company and the Company, predictably, is all-out for the coveted Battalion premiership. Of course the Battalion has its role to play at Garrison level and every Garrison goes all-out to be the best in the Army. The question is. where you go with the best Army in the world? Afghanistan? Grenada? or the Falklands?

Armies compete on behalf of the nation-states they represent for strategic positions on the trade map, areas rich in mineral resources and trade routes. In the name of defence they are often sent by governments to embark on expansionist imperialism. The sporting competitions of football and rugby, much advertised in the glossy brochures that could well have been composed by Saatchi and Saatchi, fall by the wayside when the Army enters the big league of politics at its sickening best. With such an extensive conditioning attack it is little wonder that the trainees soon appear to be the unthinking patriotic morons that the drill sergeants, non-commissioned officers and officers have set out to make them. The Army has disrupted everything that was important to the ex-civilian and imposed a new set of values. It is by treating the recruits in this way that governing them becomes easy and so effective.

The Queen's Regulations (the bible of the British Army) make interesting reading. For example, under Section 69(a) of the Army Act 1955 are listed offences against their god — good order and discipline — under which it is possible to charge someone with anything, including breathing. It is not uncommon for soldiers to be charged with “dumb insolence” when there is no better excuse than the face not fitting. Soldiers are caught by the jankers under these Acts. 'Frying to quote from the Queen’s Regulations in their defence can lead to another charge of insolence.

The ranks above are continually reminding the soldiers that they are not paid to think, with the old cliche:

Yours is not to reason why;

Yours is but to do or die.

This is shortly followed by a reprimand for not using their initiative. In recognising that the soldiers go through a very severe conditioning process we ask ourselves a few questions: Does it work in every case? Are there any long-term effects? and Is this conditioning a barrier to socialism? The answer to the first question must be that the conditioning of the soldier does work in most cases, proof of which can be found at the graves of Verdun or the Somme or Arnheim and the countless millions of nameless graves across the world where worker has killed worker for countries in which they had no stake. There are a few trainees who get out of the Army in the first few weeks but the majority feel compelled to stay, under the misbelief that it would be cowardice to leave. Secondly, are there any long-term effects? The sad answer is yes. We are familiar with the war wounded who were never hit by the enemy’s bullets, but were struck by a life in billets and camp songs for whom the last war has never ended. Many workers, however, have learned that no workers' interests are at stake when the capitalists make battle. Thirdly, what about the conditioning process? This is not a barrier to our achieving a socialist society. We have seen American soldiers conscripted to fight in Vietnam desert to the safety of Sweden. We have recently seen a film of the Russian soldiers defecting in Afghanistan and must conclude that as the individuals mature, so do the ideas and vice versa.

Jimmy Bob

Letter: Royalty – an irrelevance? (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Royalty – an irrelevance?

Dear Editors,

On the road to Socialism there are powerful institutions in the way. Monarchy, with all its associated inequalities and public loyalty, is a powerful support for capitalism. It embodies wealth and privilege alongside emotional adoration by the poor. Cromwell managed to remove a king, but soon after his death the monarchy was re-established.

Why has it been as successful as an institution? It no doubt has its own methods for self-survival (modern PR experts, and years of experience of being a monarch, plus perhaps a genuine love for the British people). Yet the institution can only survive with public consent. None of the political parties that have attained power has bothered to question in any serious way the existence of the monarchy; partly I assume because they dread the loyalty of the British people.

We are been socialised into a culture that respects the royal family, at least in principle (people may frown at certain incidents with the royals, but basically accept their existence). Submission to the monarchy is encouraged from the cradle to the grave, and even if cynical, a person may find it difficult to resist a feeling of pride when a member of the royal family visits their factory or local area. Celebrities have occasionally returned MBEs, but they are few and far between.

Vast arguments are put forward to justify the royal family (e.g. encourages tourism and hence the pockets of the people) We all ‘immersed’ in royalist propaganda and culture. Yet how can it be right for one family to be so well provided for (houses, land, wealth, public adoration etc) when other families struggle from day to day?

They also assist and legitimise other people who have unfair amounts of wealth (in the past kings and queens have helped each other in difficult circumstances – when the peasants are getting above themselves for instance).

The institution also puts unfair pressure on the members of the royal family. The horses the Queen must have sat on horses on rainy days to fulfil her royal duties; and the boredom of watching parade after parade! The lack of privacy – even minor scandals blown out of all proportion, and the difficulty of moving in privacy from A to B.

We are so ‘brainwashed’ into the advantages of monarchy, that we grossly underestimate the disadvantages. Yet it take courage for a politician to suggest to suggest we abolish it – the inaction of millions of indoctrinated people can be a formidable thing to experience. Other politicians would condemn his very words (in the hope of gaining votes for their own parties!).

Are we all involved in a ‘mother-figure’ complex (or for ex-public school types –‘matron’)? Do we feel more comfortable knowing she is then looking after us? Or are we being childish? Shouldn’t we liberate her and her family, as well as the public, from an institution that goes hand-in-hand with unequal society? Draw a line under history and move on?

Paul Wilson, 

Brighouse, West Yorks

Reply:

Obviously if the monarchy is still around at the time socialism is established it would be abolished immediately. Such institutionalised privilege can have no place in a society of equals. This said, we don’t see any point in wasting time campaigning to get it abolished under capitalism. Whether or not a capitalist state is a monarchy or a republic makes no difference to the economic structure of society, which is the root cause of the problems wage and salary workers face today. Just look at the USA, which has been a republic since the 18th century – Editors.

Away with all national flags! (2025)

From the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bertrand Russell once said ‘Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country’. What, then, should we make of a recent poll carried out by the Daily Express (30 August) that found ‘Nearly three-quarters of Brits unwilling to fight for UK in the event of war’?

If the Express is to be believed, a majority sensibly enough have lost their appetite to fight for ‘their’ country in a war. One should be wary of jumping to hasty conclusions, however. Sadly, unwillingness to ‘fight for the UK’ does not necessarily translate into a decline of patriotism. It doesn’t seem to have dampened nationalist fervour.

In August 2025, a high-profile and, seemingly, widely supported grassroots campaign was launched, dubbed ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, ostensibly to ‘promote patriotism’ by flying flags from lamp-posts or painting the Saint George Cross onto mini-roundabouts.

However, one would have to be politically naïve not to see that the ulterior purpose behind all the flag-waving protests accompanying this bizarre fad has been to promote a far-right agenda. The frankly racist targeting of asylum seekers holed up in migrant centres exemplifies this.

This development is notable for the sheer amount of misinformation it has generated – whether we are talking about the costs of the asylum system, the lavish lifestyle asylum seekers are alleged to enjoy (they get a measly £7 a day), or the actual numbers involved (the UK has below the European Union average for asylum applications).

According to the ‘Hope not Hate’ group, the campaign´s organiser is Andrew Currien (AKA Andy Saxon), an ally of the far-right activist, Tommy Robinson. He was formerly in the English Defence League and now runs security for the far-right party, Britain First.

One theory that has been doing the rounds is that the ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ campaign is a reaction to the widespread display of Palestinian flags at protests against what is happening in Gaza. Whatever the case, as far as socialists are concerned, we would far prefer to see no national flags displayed anywhere. In the words of the novelist, Arundhati Roy: ‘Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.’

Shrink-wrapping people´s minds means, among other things, instilling in them the absurd notion that they possess something called a ’country’ in the first instance. It is not just the usual suspects that are actively engaged in this indoctrination process – the state, the church, the media and so on. In its own way too, the Left, when it talks of ‘nationalising the commanding heights of industry’ or glorifies ‘national liberation struggles’ against ‘imperialism’, reinforces a nationalist mindset and by extension, capitalism. To refer to the Communist Manifesto: ‘The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got’.

To those who imagine that ‘Britain’ is ‘their’ country, one might well ask – in what meaningful sense is this true? According to one source, ‘just 0.3% of the population – 160,000 families – own two-thirds of the country, and less than 1% of the population owns 70% of the land’.

Also in Britain, according to a report from the Office for National Statistics (2018), foreign-owned businesses accounted for 13.4 percent of total UK company assets, while foreign buyers account for over 40 percent of London’s prime property market. Most ‘British’ workers don’t even own their own homes, let alone this abstraction called ‘Britain’. A Google Earth photo reveals no borders whatsoever that might delineate those particular spatial units we choose to call ‘countries’. All we see are mountains, forests, farmland, urban settlements, rolling on as far as the eye can see and in every conceivable direction.

Borders only exist in our minds – in our imagination. They are nothing more than social conventions. There is nothing ‘natural’ about them whatsoever, any more than the nation-states they spatially delineate. Our capacity to imagine is part of what makes us human beings. As John Lennon´s song famously put it, ‘Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.’

Today, the great majority of us are little more than prisoners with shopping rights in this open prison that is called capitalism. In this society, the industrial and natural resources of our planet are monopolised by a super-rich, tiny parasite class. It is in their economic interests –not ours – that wars are fought.

At present, there are literally dozens of armed conflicts going on in the world – from localised insurgencies to full-scale wars. To what end? Where is the sense in workers killing other workers just like them – complete strangers with whom they have absolutely no reason to quarrel – just to ensure one piece of tatty cloth, as opposed to another, gets to be raised on the town hall´s flagpole?

Whatever tatty cloth is raised is not going to affect the basic situation of working class people. The same goes in wars. For example, whether in Ukraine it’s a Ukrainian or, alternatively, a Russian rag on the end of a pole. There are no winners in a war (apart from maybe the undertakers and the weapons manufacturers). Workers on both sides will have lost, having succumbed to the death cult of nationalism, their battered bodies draped in the symbol of what is so detestable about the society they currently live in.

Robin Cox

Patriotism and Class Interest. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

R. W. Housley

Capitalist Unity and Socialist Solidarity. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

H. J. Neumann

King Capital’s Coronation and its real meaning to the working class. (1911)

From the June 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much Ado About the.

A King is to be crowned.

In the presence of our Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Premiers of the five dominions of “our” mighty Empire, arid the assembled monarchs of many lands, and the Lord God of Israel and the Stock Exchange himself.

The Crown, and the Sceptre, and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the Rod with the Dove, and the Monkey on the Stick, and all the other symbolical insignia and regalia which have come down to us from barbarism, along with ye Ancient Order of Foresters and ye game of skittles, are to be brought from their dungeon in the Tower (where they have rivalled a pawnbroker’s window) and taken to the House of God at Westminster, there to be used in the great ceremony.

And there, before a vast concourse of gentlemen who have won the same distinction in the divorce court that their forefathers gained in piratical, slave-hunting, and other plundering forays of the past, and of high born dames whose “Sir Joshua Reynolds” peach-bloom cheeks are veritable triumphs of the house-decorator’s art, and other high-born dames whose ancient lineage goes back to the mighty Pork Kings of Chicago, one George Wettin, a most cosmopolitan British gentleman, will swear great oaths to be faithful to certain hoary superstitions, and to uphold certain important and worthy institutions, and to lay hold of eternal life, and to do it all for the dirt-cheap, upset-competition price of a million a year or nearest offer.

Shampooing of George Wettin.

And then another gentleman, who makes a point of doing the job in his nightshirt, scabs on and scandalises every tiddle-wig in the Kingdom by giving the said G. Wettin a dry shampoo with consecrated hair oil, in the full blaze of the public eye, and to the evident perturbation of the Unicorn, who claims affinity with the barbers by virtue of the pole sticking out of his forehead.

What does it all mean; the Crown, and the Orb, and the Sceptre and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the rest of the jewelled symbols?

What does it mean: the swelling Anthem, the mumbled prayer, the intoned exhortation, the anointing with oil, the Crowning and Enthronisation?

What does it mean: the barbaric pomp and splendour, the lavish display of wealth, the clank of arms and armour and the jingle of spurs, the foregathering from the ends of the earth of the Empire’s rulers?

What does it mean: the flaunting flags, the streets lined with police and military, the hoarse acclamation of pallid millions whose rags flutter a significant reply to the bunting overhead, the bestowing of a meal upon thousands of little children whom hunger makes glad to accept even such a trifle from hands so heavy-laden with wealth that they cannot feel the weight of the charitable grains they scatter?

We are told that these gaudy jewels, this “impressive service”, are full of symbolism and historic significance. They are indeed. To the worker who will think it is very obvious that the Crown and the Sceptre and the rest are the symbols of ruling power. But who it is that rules, and who it is that are ruled, are matters less generally understood.

It is commonly believed that “royal” power is the attribute of the monarch of a constitutional country, but nothing could be farther from the truth. That question our capitalist masters in this country fought out many years ago. They have left the King his name and his robes, his Crown and his palaces, but they have stripped him of every vestige of power. The “Crown” is not the King, in any capacity, but the capitalist State. The King’s Speech to Parliament is written by his Ministers, even the prerogative of mercy is not the King’s, but belongs to the capitalist Cabinet.

How are the Mighty Fallen!

The subservience of the royalty of capitalist countries to their capitalist paymasters is shown in such acts as that of the present King’s father (then Prince of Wales) in publicly associating himself, at the time of the “trial” of the Jameson raiders, with Cecil Rhodes, the arch-fiend in that disgusting business, who was even then busy engineering the war which was to give the cosmopolitan mine-owners £4,000,000 a year in extra profits, at the cost of so many thousands of workingmen’s lives.

Even the swearing to uphold the institutions of capitalism is all bunkum and make-believe, There is today, in this country at all events, no institution of capitalism that the capitalists themselves are not fully able to maintain, or that they trust to other hands than their own. Why, this man whom they swear to uphold the very walls of capitalism, they do not trust even with the command of one of the fleets of his own (!) navy, for fear he might be in a position to dictate terms to them, or act detrimentally to their interests.

The King as such is a nonentity, a dummy, a convenient cloak behind which the capitalist class carry on their operations of robbing the workers of the fruits of their toil. As a private individual, the landlord of vast estates, George Wettin may make himself feared, but no one trembles at his royal word, or quakes at the thunder of his anointed brow. If the great ones of the capitalist world bow and scrape before him, it is only because he is the incarnation of capitalism, the symbol of the domination of a class of parasites and thieves, the image of themselves triumphant. They know that while the workers will flock in millions to cheer this straw man of theirs, dragged through the streets like a fifth of November guy, they and their plunder are safe. Hence they set the example of deification, knowing well they will be followed by their sheep.

Playing the Game.

The aim of the master class is to keep the workers ignorant, for an ignorant subject class, not knowing how to act in their own interests, can be more easily and inexpensively kept in subjection than an educated one. In fostering this ignorance the first thing to be done is to preserve the inertia of the mind – the tendency of the mind to run in an unchanging direction.

The capitalists know, as well as we do, that it is changing environment that causes the alteration in the mental outlook of the people. Their great endeavour, therefore, is to oppose to that ceaseless evolution in the world about them, over which they have no control, counteracting conditions and influences. Hence they cling with the tenacity of desperation, to the empty husks and decaying forms of the past.

This can be seen in every dominant interest, since every interest, when it has become dominant, becomes conservative and reactionary. It explains why the Catholic Church clings so frantically to its out-of-date forms, why the Anglican and other Churches set their faces so relentlessly against innovation, and why capitalist countries would rather convert their monarchies to their own ends than abolish them.

The Use of Kings.

A king, in the popular mind, rules by divine sanction and in accordance with grey and hoary custom – as the Archbishop will remind the world at the great shampooing in the words: “Be thou anointed with holy oil, as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed. And as Solomon was appointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be you anointed, blessed and consecrated king over this people, whom the Lord thy God has given you to govern.”

The capitalists, on the other hand, have no ancient usage behind them, no special appointment from heaven. Unless they can disguise the fact of their dominance, they are clearly seen to rule by might alone – a perpetual challenge to might. A ruling class which has to confess that it rules because it possesses the means of life, already has one foot in the grave, for it holds a lamp to the line of class cleavage that all men may see.

This is the real use of monarchs in capitalist States. Behind the person of the King the capitalists can hide the fact that it is they in reality who rule. By parading their kings before the workers at every possible opportunity, and with every circumstance of pomp and display that their ingenuity can invent, by investing them with divine right and something of divinity itself, the capitalists awaken and stimulate and nurture that spirit of reverence which is so deadly an enemy to the growth of revolutionary ideas, and so detract attention from themselves.

As it is to the interest of the capitalist class to represent that they, together with the working class, are subservient to a greater power, and to set the example of loyalty to their king, it becomes the imperative duty of Socialists to strip the sham of all its disguising tinsel, and to expose the grim, sordid, unromantic, iron form of tyrant Capital beneath it all. No kingly power exists today in Western Europe. Everywhere the owners of the means of production have either bent the monarchy to their will or broken it. Power lies alone with the class of property-owners. They rule who “buzz” us to the check-board at dawn, who tell us we are “sacked” at dusk; they rule who grind our faces on the factory mill-stones; and rob us at the pay-box; they rule who lock us out of the workshops and quarries and mines, in order to convince us by starvation that their view of the value of our labour is correct; they rule who make mockery of their own laws, and bury our poor fellows alive in blazing coal seams in the bowels of the earth. They rule who own.

Clear your minds, fellow workers, of any idea that these Prime Ministers of the Dominions of the Empire have gathered together to render homage to the house of Hanover. They come to celebrate the dominion of their class and to take steps in conference assembled, to ensure the continued crucifixion of Labour. The whole of this inglorious show, indeed, is subordinate to this object. It is not an effort to solidify and make more stable the monarchy, but to blind the workers to their true position, and make capitalist domination more secure.

It is for this reason that the impudent thieves mock your poverty by flaunting in your faces the wealth they have stolen from you. They wish you to believe that you are sharers in the stupendous opulence all their efforts could not hide from your vision. The late Lord Salisbury, wise in his generation, once cynically said that what the working class wanted was not education but a circus. They are giving us a circus, in order to make our minds less receptive of education.

Fellow workers, there is but one meaning attaching to class rule, and that is class plunder. No man wishes to rule over another except to plunder him. Consider whence comes all this wealth and luxury which is to riot before your weary eyes? Is there one jot or tittle of it that you have not made? You, the workers of the world are the true Atlas. You carry the world upon your shoulders. Your strong arms sow, and reap, and gather the harvest of the field, your stout hearts face the terrors of the mine and battle with the dangers of the deep; your virile brains conquer natural forces, and turn the tyrants of the Cosmic System into agents of wealth production. And what is your portion of it all?

This question is answered by the ranks of armed men who press your serried masses into the gutters, by the gaudy regimental banners whose last glorious inscriptions are “Belfast” and “Tonypandy”, by the proposal to compel you to pay to ensure that you shall have 6s. a week to keep wife and family on when you are unemployed.

As long as you are ruled starvation will be your lot, for those who rule over you can always plunder you and always will. You are ruled, not by kings, but by those who possess the land, mines, factories, machinery, railways, and other means of production and distribution, and just because they possess those things. Since you are denied access to those things all the doors of life are shut against you except that of the labour market. You must become wage slaves – must sell your energies to those who own the productive forces. This means that goods are produced for profit, and that profit, that wealth you produce but which is taken away from you, goes to glut the market and to throw you out of work, so that you and your children starve when the warehouses are fullest.

The remedy for all this is to take these means of production and distribution away from their present owners and make them the property of the whole community. Bread will then be produced to feed people, not for profit, and clothes to clothe them, and houses to shelter them. All able-bodied adults will take part in the necessary social labour, and all will partake freely of the wealth produced.

To do this the workers must first study Socialism and organise to capture political power, in order that the political machinery may be used to end for ever the class domination which political power alone upholds.

A. E. Jacomb

The Euros – how beautiful is the game? (2024)

From the August 2024 of the Socialist Standard

Many people in England will have been disappointed that England didn’t win their final. Yet records were broken, for example the maximum number ever of TV viewers for a football match, tens of thousands of people travelling abroad not to see a match live but to be in the country where it was taking place. There was also an outpouring of patriotism, jingoism, nationalism – call it what you like – probably never before witnessed over a sports event. But that’s what the system we live under is good at – distractions from the daily grind offering momentary thrills to mitigate the condition of powerlessness that most of us experience in our daily lives. Supporting a team, especially if it’s a winning one, may manifest itself, at least momentarily, as a kind of power – even if some would label it bread and circuses.

But what is that powerlessness of our daily lives? Largely it’s the necessity we are under to sell our energies to an employer for a wage or salary day in day out whether we get satisfaction or fulfilment from that activity or not. We ignore that at the risk of dire poverty or destitution. We spend most of our lives, as one commentator has put it, ‘under conditions of duress and unfreedom’. The exhilaration we may feel in supporting a sports team and witnessing it play – and hopefully succeed – in an event such as the Euros serves as a kind of poor substitute for the lack of opportunity to express our own talents freely in our daily lives.

Not of course that most people perceive the paid work they are forced to do for a living as a form of subservience or oppression, so docile have they been made by the conditioning process of the society they have grown up in. Part of this conditioning is the stress put on the need to regard as special and superior the country they happen to have been born into – so-called patriotism. This can even mean that, in the event of a conflict between the leaders of their country and the leaders of another, many people are willing to fight and even lay down their lives for the abstraction of patriotism.

Of course supporting your ‘national’ team is far from fighting a real war or laying down your life. In fact for many it’s a genuinely enjoyable experience. But the paroxysm of ‘national pride’ that an occasion such as the European Football Championship elicits and, last month, was encouraged at all levels is also a mirror of the unthinking worship of the idea of differences and divisions between men and women living in different parts of the planet –the anti-human mentality of better and worse, of winners and losers. Nothing could be more antithetical than that to the socialist pursuit of unity between peoples and the establishment of a stateless, borderless world of free access to all goods and services. In such a world, we will all be autonomous individuals pursuing our own goals and interests but at the same time exhibiting social reciprocity in all areas. In such conditions, apart from cooperating in work and production, we may also enjoy taking part in sport or watching and appreciating the skilful sporting activities of others but we will do this in a socially healthy way. It will no longer take the current grotesque form of fanatical fandom, of the passing thrill offered by a ‘hyped-up’ form of mass entertainment billed as a life-shattering event but in reality little more than a brief distraction from the daily grind of life under the buying and selling system that is capitalism.

Classic Reprint: What is patriotism? (1963)

A Classic Reprint from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

We reprint this article from the Socialist Standard of December, 1915, written in the middle of the first World War, its message still rings true, and we know it will be of great interest to our readers.

The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.

The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.

Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism” and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism” that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial ? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.

This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.

With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.

Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.

Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.

Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.

Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.

Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other’s throats.

Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.

That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of a régime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.

F. C. Watts

Letter: Silly ceremony (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

“I, […], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and successors, according to law.”

The above is the Affirmation of Allegiance required to be taken by applicants for British citizenship, at one of New Labour’s more inane gifts to the nation, the Citizenship Ceremony. Any applicant for British citizenship has to attend such a ceremony within six months of their application being accepted. Failure to do so means that one’s application is deemed unsuccessful, and that the whole tortuous process must be started again.

I recently found myself attending such a ceremony as a guest, struggling to keep a straight face as the Lord Mayor of Bristol, in his full regalia, informed us, while standing in front of a picture of the Queen, that, in Britain, “No-one is above the law.”

Twenty-three new citizens, plus their guests, were present to hear the Lord Mayor eulogise about the Greatness of Britain and its democratic institutions. Tellingly, however, he opened his speech by reiterating a couple of questions from the Citizenship Test (analogous to the Theory component of a driving test), which all of the new Citizens were required to have passed before reaching this stage. Unaccountably, not one of them could remember the literal meaning of Prime Minister or how many members the Welsh Assembly has.

I took some small encouragement from the fact that slightly more citizens chose to take the Affirmation of Allegiance, rather than the Oath (which beings, “I […] swear by Almighty God). However, the overall effect reminded me of nothing more than a school assembly, with a hall full of bored students intoning words to prayers which they find more or less meaningless.

And this, of course, is the point. The whole process has less to do with “citizenship” per se than with reminding workers who have often overcome massive difficulties and obstructions in order to be allowed to settle here (admittedly not the case for the person whose guest I was) of precisely who is the boss, and showing that they are expected to be good little boys and girls.

Needless to say the proceedings ended with the playing of the National Anthem. Not wishing to embarrass my partner, I confess that I did stand up for the wretched dirge (albeit with my fingers firmly crossed throughout!).

Surely the world can be organised more sanely than this? Why should it not be the birthright of every human being to settle in any part of our planet (or even to continuously travel around it, should one so require), and be accepted as an equal member of one’s community without having to participate in silly ceremonies to prove one’s worthiness to do so? Why should we have to swear (or affirm or whatever) Allegiance to anyone? As Leon Rosselson wrote in his song “The World Turned Upside Down”, “This world was made a common treasury, for everyone to share.” However, until the world’s working class unites consciously and politically to ensure that the treasury can indeed be shared, a minority class with retain control and the rest of us will continue to be expected to be grateful when we’ve passed enough of their patronising “tests” (and, of course, have sufficient funds) to be able to relocate from one part of the planet to another.

Shane Roberts,

Bristol.

Patriotism – a politician’s refuge (2006)

From the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gordon Brown wants us to “embrace” the Union Jack and to ape the sillier patriots in America by displaying it in our front gardens. But why do they want us to be patriotistic?

It was not so long ago – certainly within the tormented, frustrated memories of masses of under-educated children – that we were taught British history began with the arrival in these isles of the Romans. Well at least that made it easier for the people who needed to be known as teachers; rather than work at any seismographic-type research or presentation they need only instruct their famished pupils to open the allocated history book and begin to recite from Page One. A corollary of this careless policy was the assumption that history began in Britain because it was a special place, where special people were bred. Telling those kids they should be grateful to be British elevated them from their hopeless, infested poverty through a belief that to be British was best and that all other peoples of the world should be treated with sympathy – respect could be allowed to intrude only if the others kept to their place in the anthropological order of things. It worked alright – as witnessed by the pupils’ daily salute of the classroom portrait of the king and queen.

One whose portrait did not hang in the classroom, but whom the kids were often reminded of as an icon of British superiority, was Captain Scott the naval officer who led the 1910 expedition to Antarctica. Scott’s previous experience there taught him a lot about the perils in setting foot in the place and about the need for detailed, meticulous planning. He was ready to go back and this time, apart from certain scientific operations, there was no doubt about the intention of the expedition. The brochure aimed at potential sponsors put it: “The main object of this expedition is to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of that achievement”. Scott himself saw it as “. . . an empire expedition . . . by a set of men who will represent the hardihood and energy of our race”. Implicit in these declarations was that Scott’s men would be the first to get to the Pole but when he stopped off at Melbourne on the way to Antarctica he learned that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen would be in competition with him.

Scott

After landing and setting up camp at Cape Evans Scott’s men experienced a succession of emergencies which, while no lives were lost, were a grim foretaste of what was to come. The Pole party – Scott and four others – set out on 1 November 1911. They arrived at the Pole on 16 January 1912, after a journey which had all but drained them of all their resources, to find that Amundsen had got there a month before them; a black flag was there, fixed to a sledge. “Well we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition with some feelings, and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging – and goodbye to most of the day dreams” wrote Scott. But it turned out to be worse than that. Battered by savage weather and malnourished, the five men were simply unable to get back to Cape Evans. The first to die was Taffy Evans, whose reputation was as one of the strongest in the expedition. He collapsed on 17 February and died quietly in the tent that night. The rest of them pressed on; Titus Oates could hardly walk and Scott’s feet were so damaged that he thought amputation was the best he could hope for. They had no choice but to shelter, as best they could, in the tent until the blizzard blew itself out but there was no let up in the weather.

It was then that Oates went out into the storm to die and the three others – Scott, Wilson and Bowers – stayed to die together, on or about 23 March 1912, eleven miles from the depot where they had left the food which should have saved their lives. “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far” wrote Scott in his diary. Their bodies were found by a search party eight months later.

Decline

That was not the time for any useful appraisal of Scott and his expedition – of the mistakes, the miscalculations, the flawed equipment. That would come later. Meanwhile, on 14 February 1913 there was a short memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral in which, according to the Daily Sketch, the keynote was “ . . .  a song of thankfulness for that these sons of our common country had died as they had lived, in the spirit which is the noblest heritage of Englishmen”. During the service thousands of captive schoolchildren throughout the country were subjected to “. . . the true story of five of the bravest and best men who have ever lived on the earth since the world began. You are English boys and girls, and you must often have heard England spoken of as the greatest country in the world, or perhaps you have been told that the British Empire . . . is the greatest Empire that the world has ever seen . . .” How many of those schoolchildren, or readers of the Daily Sketch, thought back to a year before, to another service at that same cathedral centred on the victims of the Titanic disaster, when the destruction of the unsinkable liner had said something about the decline in British power, as had the humiliation of the British army by the Boers. In the near future was the 1914/18 war, the traumas of the naval battle of Jutland (when a British admiral wondered out loud whether there was “something wrong with our bloody ships”) and the slaughter on the first day of the Somme offensive, which re-aligned British military history. Scott’s tragedy was cynically used to blanket the reality of what was happening to British capitalism and to its people.

Falklands

On the way southwards to Antarctica lie the Falkland Islands, which hardly anyone apart from stamp collectors had heard of before 1982 when they were briefly occupied by Argentine forces until they were ejected by a British Task Force. This victory in a far away place was remarkable for its effect on the British political scene. Since the end of the war British armed forces had not enjoyed a string of unqualified successes; among their most stressful experiences was the Suez campaign in 1956, which was little short of humiliation for British interests in the Middle East. At home the 1970s were notable as a time of economic decline, with unemployment reaching three million. In this situation the effects of a British military victory reached far beyond the battle zone, encouraging workers to believe that although they were on the dole there was still something to be said for being able to call themselves British. In 1982 this particular delusion was called the “Falklands Factor”. According to Thatcher, “it is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the Falklands War transformed the British political scene . . . but the so-called Falklands Factor was real enough. I could feel the impact of the victory wherever I went”. One of the places she went to was Cheltenham Racecourse, to address a Tory party rally, where she exulted that after the Falklands victory “. . . we rejoice that Britain has re-kindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before”. To encourage the mood and flavour it with a bit of Battle of Britain memories, Vera Lynn was recruited to sing The White Cliffs of Dover at the victory parade.

Strikes

But in the same speech Thatcher stated what she meant by the impact of the Falklands factor and the re-kindled spirit. As the troopships returning from the Falklands sailed into Portsmouth harbour a banner hung from the sides of one of them, with advice for striking railway workers: “Call Off The Rail Strike Or We’ll Call Down An Air Strike”. This referred to a strike called by the National Union of Railwaymen (as it then was) which, Thatcher said, “. . . just didn’t fit – didn’t match the spirit of these times . . .” The strike leaders were “ . . . misunderstanding the new mood of the nation”. Another dispute involved the ancillary workers in the NHS; it had been rumbling on for some time but Thatcher was not impressed: “There is a limit to what every employer can afford to pay out in wages”; clearly, the new spirit did not involve any appreciation of the value of low paid workers doing jobs which were vital to the welfare of patients. Partly through the Falklands Factor, the Tories swept to a massive victory in the 1983 election, which gave Thatcher all the encouragement she needed to take on the trade unions – in particular the miners. It was an example of how patriotic hysteria is used directly against the working class.

Brown

One who has obviously absorbed the necessary lesson in this is Gordon Brown. Addressing the Fabian Society last January, in what was heralded as his first major speech of 2006 – which did not leave us breathless about what else was to come from him before the year was out – he declared that it was time for the “modern” Labour Party and its supporters to be “unashamedly patriotic as, for too long, such feelings have been caricatured as being tied up with right wing beliefs, when in fact they encompass progressive ideas of liberty, fairness and responsibility”. He also raved about what he saw as the need to “embrace” the Union Flag and to ape the sillier patriots in America by displaying it in our front gardens. Brown was “absolutely right” about this, said ex-Tory Prime Minister John Major, whose concept of an ideal Britain encompassed warm beer and elderly ladies cycling through country lanes to get to evensong at some ancient village church. It was not known whether Brown was comfortable to receive support from such a quarter; in any case he is probably accustomed by now to dealing with the fact that his party is indistinguishable from the Tories, especially in the matter of showing up as flag-waving, mindless patriots.

Malignant

Patriotism has run through politics like a malignant fault. It did not represent progressive ideas when, in the case of Scott, it was applied to persuade millions of workers that they should endure the terror of the trenches and all the other miseries of that war. The same was true when it was used by the Thatcher government, in the wake of the Falklands victory, to push through measures which damaged the trade unions and so increased the vulnerability of the working class in relation to their employers. It is not a progressive idea now, when the Blair government wields it to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with all they mean in terms of destruction and murder. Enormous damage has been done, throughout the world, by the notion that one country and its people are superior to the others. A truly progressive policy – socialism – recognises the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building society on that basis.

Ivan