The Cancer of Nationalism in the Workers Movement

A defining moment in the Workers Movement was the decision of the Parties of the Second International, an International which nominally stood on Marxist principles, to abandon Internationalism, and to line up behind their own ruling classes in 1914, setting worker against worker for a mass slaughter. It went against everything the Labour Movement was based upon, and certainly against those few simple words – “Workers of the World Unite”, under which Marx and Engels and their followers had stood. Yet, in reality it is no wonder that it happened. The Labour Movement as part of society is riddled with the same cancer of Nationalism that poisons society as a whole. But, again it is no wonder that society itself is poisoned with this disease.

The first human societies grew up on the basis of kinship, of extended consanguineous families, and these formed the bedrock of the various clans and tribes, which in turn formed the first nations. It is understandable that those blood ties should be strong, and that in primitive times when resources might have been scarce that such societies should see in them protection against potential adversaries. The allegiance to blood, to tribe to nation, precedes class society by some millennia even if its basis has become considerably altered over time. Nor does the fact that such allegiances, based on blood ties, once in the mist of time, were based on the objective interests of those in these primitive societies, change the fact that once class society comes into existence those objective interests themselves change, and consequently, the ideology of Nationalism becomes increasingly reactionary, increasingly comes into contradiction with the real objective interests of the oppressed classes, becomes a tool in the hands of the rulers to maintain that oppression. But, old ideas die hard, and the objective interests of the oppressed are never obviously apparent to them. It is easy to move from what is natural, affinity to and protection of one’s family, to what appears merely a logical extension of that, the same sentiments in regard of one’s own compatriots. Yet, in reality that simple idea on which Nationalism stands, is the greatest weakness of, and greatest threat to the working class and its real interests. It is not just the Second International, which knelt down before its altar, its inheritors within reformism have made it their by-word, and the reactionary National Socialist ideology of Stalinism has continued to infect the Labour Movement with it since the adoption of the reactionary idea of “Socialism in One Country” replaced the idea of international revolution. The latest manifestation is the disgraceful “No2EU” stunt set up by the Stalinists of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), along with Bob Crow of the RMT, and to their shame being supported by the Socialist Party, whose comrades did such a good job in combating the same kind of nationalistic crap during the refinery strikes.

The Platform of this nasty reactionary organisation states:

· Reject the Lisbon Treaty
· No to EU directives that privatise our public services
· Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain
· Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
· No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
· No to EU militarisation
· Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
· Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
· Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies
· Keep Britain out of the eurozone

Let’s take these points in order.

Reject the Lisbon Treaty.

Fair enough, I was in favour of the campaigns organised by the Left in Europe to oppose the EU Constitution, which would have enshrined not just in law, but as the fundamental nature of the EU the ideology of Neo-Liberalism. But, that left campaign generally went beyond just a rejection of the Treaty, and called for an opening up of democracy, for a wide discussion on what SHOULD have gone into the Constitution. In contrast the No2EU position states,

“The Lisbon Treaty turns the EU into a state in its own right and gives the bloc its own legal identity. The unaccountable European Court of Justice, an EU institution, would effectively become the ‘supreme court’ of the EU.”

But, what is wrong with the EU being “a state in its own right”? As Marxists and, therefore, internationalists, we have no desire to defend the continued existence of “Our” British State! On the contrary, whilst Marxists would not actually call for the establishment of some new bourgeois EU state, they have no reason to oppose its establishment, because the fact of its existence would in reality facilitate the rational integration of the European working class, the establishment of a single European Labour Movement, a single EU Trade Union Movement, single EU Workers party and so on. It facilitates that basic element of our programme – WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE. And why pick out the European Court for criticism as being unaccountable? The highest court of the land in Britain – the House of Lords – is probably even less accountable!!!! Our task is not to say No to the EU, which means saying yes, to the UK, with all of its reactionary institutions and laws – including all those opt-outs of progressive EU laws such as The Working Time Directive – but to fight to democratise both EU and British institutions, to defend the interests of workers as workers, not to counterpose reactionary British institutions to reactionary EU institutions just because they are British!!

It goes on,

“Under the treaty, the unelected EU commission would propose all EU law which would then be imposed on member states by the council of ministers mostly on the basis of qualified majority voting.”

Again, anyone who has been a Councillor or worked for a Local Authority knows that the policies adopted by Councillors are nearly all the policies recommended to them for adoption by the full-time Capitalist State Bureaucrats working for the Council. The same is true on a much larger scale in relation to the role of the Civil Service and the Government. Criticising the EU for this lack of democracy and using it as an argument to reject the EU, is again to say that the same lack of democracy, the same bureaucratism in Britain is okay, because after all they are “OUR” British bureaucrats! The real task here for socialists is not to foster such reactionary nationalist ideas, but to work to smash the role and power of that permanent state bureaucracy, and to replace it with a real democracy based on the utmost participation of the working class in decision-making at all levels of society, to introduce election of the top Civil Servants with full recallability, and to restrict their wages to the average workers wages, and to make the politicians truly accountable to those who send them to do the job they subcontract to that bureaucracy. Ultimately, it means a root and branch reduction in the power and influence of that State in the affairs of society, and for real control to be passed down into the working class acting to look after its own interests, via an alternative system of democracy and administration that meets its needs rather than those of Capital.

“The treaty also contains a so-called ‘Paseralle clause’ which would allow the EU to give itself more powers as it sees fit without the need for any more treaties.”

But, of course, if the EU proto state is to become what is rational for it to become a real state then that is natural. It means that the labour Movement needs to act to democratise the institutions to send socialist MEP’s into the European Parliament etc. to control that process and to drive in a direction favourable to workers. But, “No2EU” can’t do that because they have said that if any of their candidates are elected they will not take up their seats!!!!!

No to EU directives that privatise our public services

Fine, but it has not been the EU that over the last 30 years has driven the privatisation programme in Britain, it has been our own home grown BRITISH politicians that led the way on that when in the rest of Europe there has been much greater reluctance to go down that route. Marxists should oppose privatisation as a retrograde step, but not because we have any faith in state capitalist enterprises or provision of services, and nor should we give any suggestion that such state capitalist solutions can provide any progressive answer to workers problems. On the contrary, these state capitalist industries and services are invariably bureaucratic, inefficient, run to provide for the interests of the top bureaucrats within them and to provide profits to the private capitalist enterprises that leach off them, not to mention usually as or more oppressive to the workers within them, and provide a poor product to the workers that rely on them. Marxists only defend them against privatisation on the basis of arguing for their democratisation, for the introduction of some form of workers control, and recognising that under normal circumstances the Capitalist State will not agree to that, their transfer into the hands of the workers themselves to be run as Co-operatives.

In fact, with an integrated European Labour Movement, the transfer of such Public Services and industries directly into the hands of workers themselves to run as Co-operatives would open up the possibility of such Co-operatives operating at an EU wide level, thereby facilitating the introduction of common standards across Europe for such provision, of common wage rates and conditions for workers in those industries across Europe, and for the economies of scale that would accrue to such a European wide Co-operative enterprise to be passed on to all workers across Europe further undermining the power of Capital.

Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain

This demand was originally formulated in an even more nationalistic and reactionary form than it now has, which is bad enough. It originally talked about defending “British” industry and agriculture, as though these industries and this agriculture belonged to us the “BRITISH” workers rather than to our class enemies! A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the BNP by-election campaign in Ravenscliffe. The nationalistic demands they raised included:

· Protect our core/strategic economic interests by the selective exclusion of certain foreign manufactured goods from the British Market

· We will ensure that wherever possible our manufactured goods will be produced in British factories, employing British workers. This will bring unemployment to an end , and give well-paid employment to many.

· We will unite the ingenuity of the British People with their hard work. We envisage a manufacturing base of factories producing super high-tech products that will be traded around the world.

· We will instantly power up the British economy by opening up dozens of deep coal mines across our nation. There is 300 years worth of coal beneath our feet, an independent source of energy for our people.

· We see a strong, healthy agricultural sector as vital to the country. Britain’s farms will produce a much greater part of the nation’s food needs.

Can anybody see any difference in the National Socialist policies put forward here by the BNP, and the National Socialist politics put forward by No2EU? I certainly can’t, yet they claim that one reason they are standing is to combat the ideas of the BNP!!!! It’s a strange way of combating ideas when you advocate them yourself!

There is nothing new in these ideas as I have said before. See: Ravenscliffe , for example. These kind of National Socialist politics were put forward by the Communist Party and its fellow travellers in the Labour left during the 1970’s in the form of the Alternative Economic Strategy. It was a thoroughly scurrilous document which called on British workers to make common cause with British bosses to defend “British” businesses against those nasty foreigners whose cheap goods were undercutting the inefficient British bosses profits. Its no step at all from there to arguing that British workers are likewise being put out of jobs by foreign workers coming to this country, and hence the fact that the CPB failed to criticise the “British Jobs for British Workers” demands during the refinery strikes, or that the “Left” Stalinoid Trade Union leaders collapsed into support of those reactionary demands at the time.

As socialists, and therefore internationalists we have no truck with demands for developing Capitalism in one country at the expense of others as No2EU suggest. We recognise the development of the productive forces as progressive wherever it takes place, and in so far as the development of the productive forces within a larger area such as the EU rather than the limited confines of the nation state is more rational we welcome that, but our task is more importantly to defend and advance the interests of the working class within that process, to point out the limitations of that process whilst confined within bourgeois limits, and thereby to push through it towards the idea of development of those productive forces on the basis of European wide Co-operative production.

In fact, it can be seen that this National Socialist politics dovetails in, and flows naturally from the statist ideology of much of the left. As Trotsky argued the leaders of the Second International in arguing their case started from the position that Germany had to be defended because the German Social Democrats were going to drive forward from their position of power within the German Parliament to the establishment of socialism, and that process could not be threatened by allowing French Capital to prevent it. In similar vein the French Socialists arguing on the basis of the revolutionary traditions of the French Revolution put forward a similar argument. Nationalists will always come up with reasons as to why THEIR nation represents the progressive future, and has to be defended. In fact, a few weeks ago during the by-election campaign I was arguing with a member of my local anti-fascist group who was standing precisely on that ground in defending Britain’s colonial past, and of defending Winston Churchill and Britain’s role in defeating those nasty Germans in WWII!!!!!

Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping

You would not think that Britain had adopted a wide ranging set of anti-union laws under Thatcher in the 1980’s, or that in the main those laws remain on the statute book. You would not think that Tony Blair bragged that Britain had the most restrictive union laws in Europe!!!! But, after all those are BRITISH anti-union laws not EU anti-union laws, so the CPB and Bob Crow remain silent on them in order to concentrate their firepower on the foreigners. Those same foreigners who in Europe have introduced the Working Time Directive to restrict workers hours, and which Britain opted out of, has adopted a 35 hour week and so on.

And what does the opposition to social dumping actually amount to. It amounts to support for those demands of “British Jobs for British Workers”! Of course, Marxists do not acquiesce in the bosses using cheap imported labour to undermine wages and conditions, but the answer to that is to build a European wide workers movement that is capable of enforcing Trade Union rates of pay and conditions for all workers in any job wherever that worker has come from. The solution is not to divide workers on the basis of Nationality as the No2EU programme does, but to build a European wide workers movement, and a Workers party across Europe that fights for common wage rates, benefits and conditions in the whole of the EU. If anything a single EU state facilitates such a campaign, along with the necessary introduction of a single fiscal and monetary system to finance it.

No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people

Fine, except that the whole of the No2EU platform is based on the kind of Nationalism that feeds racism and fascism! And the kind of statist politics of emphasis on state capitalist enterprise combined with Nationalism IS a fundamental aspect of fascism! If they really wanted to undermine racism and fascism they would not adopt the same kind of Nationalistic programme of economic demands that the BNP put forward, they would not oppose elements of the EU as being reactionary essentially for no other reason that they are not British – demonstrated by the fact that the same reactionary institutions and laws etc. are present in Britain, yet they don’t say “No2Britain”. If they really wanted to oppose racism and fascism they would promote the idea of a European wide campaign to build a European workers movement to represent workers interests throughout Europe rather than trying to hive off British workers into their own small reactionary enclave.

No to EU militarisation

Why specifically no to EU militarisation? Is British militarisation which is the largest in Europe okay then because after all it is “our” British militarisation???? Of course, socialists should be opposed to militarisation, but as Trotsky pointed out, in the end workers cannot control the foreign policy of the bourgeois state, and the use of armed force is the logical extension of that foreign policy. You can only control the military and the foreign policy if you control the state. In the meantime, until that date Marxists have to do everything in their power to use militarisation to our ends. Just as work in the capitalists factories trains us how to run those factories for ourselves, so training in the Capitalists military trains us to use weapons to defend ourselves when those Capitalists eventually try to use force against us. We should have democratic rights for all soldiers, sailors and airmen, we should build cells of socialists within the armed forces to propagandise for the troops not to be used to oppress other nations, other workers or to be used as strikebreakers. We should use the lessons those troops learn to help build a train a civilian militia as a replacement for the standing armies as is enshrined even in the Constitution of the USA, and which can be used in the future to protect the working class against the onslaught of the bourgeoisie.

Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states

This is a reactionary demand, because it suggests that the Nation State is some totem that Marxists want to defend. It isn’t. Marxists are by nature centralists, we are in favour of the replacement of the restrictions of small states with the opportunities presented by a larger political structure. Rather than repatriating democratic powers to the member states, we should insist that the opt-outs that currently exist, and which enable Britain to escape the requirements of the Working Time Directive, for instance, to be abolished, and instead we should demand a thoroughgoing democratisation of EU structures. A starting point would be the organisation by the Labour Movement throughout Europe of a series of local discussions of Trade Unions, Co-operatives, Workers parties and all other workers organisations on the nature of the EU, leading towards a series of Constituent Assemblies for the purpose of voting on documents that could form the basis of a new EU Constitution, and Parliamentary bodies.

Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations

Sounds good, but what does it mean? What is “fair trade”? It sounds like the old bourgeois notion of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”! But, if No2EU mean what they say on the can, how do they intend to introduce these “fair trade” deals? How can you insist on that from the standpoint of the British Nation State? Especially, how can you fight for that if as No2EU say they aren’t going to take their seats in the European Parliament from where they could raise such a demand??? Moreover, what about all those unfair BRITISH trade arrangements? Are they okay because they are British? To demand that Capitalism whether it is based in the EU, in Britain or anywhere else establish fair trade deals is effectively to demand it stops being Capital. Only a workers state could ensure that, and then such a state would ask the question who are we doing these trade deals with. Part of the problem with “Fair Trade” is that even if it pays “fair” prices to farmers, it doesn’t mean those farmers pay decent wages to their workers!

If workers really want to address this problem the solution lies not in such utopian demands, but in establishing and developing Co-operative production across Europe, and using such production to encourage and develop Co-operative production in other parts of the world, so that those producers can be paid decent wages, can utilise resources effectively, and invest in further development. There can be no fair trade without co-operative production.

Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies

All of these states are BOURGEOIS states. Workers can have no control over the policies they adopt and this demand raises the illusions that they can. We should accept no responsibility for the policies these states adopt as a means of trying to overcome the current crisis. Our job as Marxists is rather to defend the interests of workers against the effects of those policies, which sooner or later those states will try to use to throw the burden of the crisis on to the backs of workers. Rather than sowing illusions in the potential for any individual capitalist state to take progressive measures Marxists should be explaining why they won’t, why they will try to make the workers pay, and why, therefore, a European wide struggle by workers against that is required.

And to argue that at some point a Workers’ Government might be in place that WOULD introduce such measures is facile. Where is this Government to come from in the foreseeable future? Were such a Government to materialise at some time it is inconceivable that it would not be part of a wider European revival in workers consciousness and militancy, the least problem such a Government would face would be EU laws restricting its actions, far more of concern would be the actions of its own bourgeoisie, and permanent state.

Keep Britain out of the Eurozone

Its not Marxists job to instruct Capitalists how best to manage their system, our task is to represent the interests of workers, and to argue for the replacement of the current system with socialism. But, in like manner its not our job to tell the capitalists not to adopt some specific measure related to the way they organise their affairs, again only to defend the interests of workers against any consequences of it. In fact, its hard to see what ill-effects workers COULD face as a result of Britain joining the Euro! On the contrary, a single currency which is the inevitable consequence of the establishment of a single market, facilitates the free movement of workers within that market in search of the best jobs. It facilitates common wages and conditions within that economy. It certainly facilitates British workers going on holiday in Europe, and being free of the costs of converting currency, not to mention the vagaries of rapidly varying exchange rates. It is in the interests of all those British workers who have retired to Spain and other EU countries whose pensions are paid in a rapidly sinking pound against the Euro, and whose living standards are being slashed as a consequence. Marxists should leave such demands to the BNP, to William Hague and all the other reactionary nationalists.

They say,

“Nation states with the right to self-determination and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks. This means democratic control of the major banks, including the Bank of England, and full public ownership and democratic accountability of railways, postal services, NHS, and the energy industry.”

But, the current crisis has demonstrated the very opposite is true. Capitalism exists as a global system, and the economies outside the big trading blocs and currency areas have been the worst affected – just look at Iceland, or the way the pound has tanked. Nation states have shown that they CANNOT control globalised Capital – remember Black Wednesday when George Soros made a billion betting against Sterling even while the UK was forced to increase interest rates to 15% - only larger economic units can do that. And having complained about nation states being hampered by EU rules to take measures to enhance their economies they are forced to admit that the EU rules on budget deficits have been scrapped for the duration. Moreover, completely contradicting their argument they point to the experience of the countries of Eastern Europe, but those countries would have been decimated outside the EU, and without the assistance the EU has given them in recent weeks to keep their banks and other institutions afloat.

As I said, this is just a reflection of that cancer of nationalism that infects the Labour Movement. That it should come from the National Socialists of the CPB and their hangers on is to be expected and true to form. That the SP should lend its support ot it is regrettable. This is not like the experience of the refinery strikes where the SP comrades did the right thing and stuck with the workers whilst intervening to get the reactionary nationalist demands dropped. This is not a spontaneous organisation or movement of workers this is a thought out stunt by a reactionary political organisation – the CPB. All Marxists should not only treat it like the plague, but do all in their power to criticise the reactionary nationalist basis of its politics.

A look at other discussions here, for example, my discussions with BVFG over Gaza and Israel, shows how far this cancer of Nationalism affects the Labour Movement. In his case, not a British Nationalism, but a nationalism dressed up as “anti-imperialism”, a willingness to drop all of the necessary elements of socialist politics based on the fundamental principle of at all times putting the interests of he international working class first, above all other considerations, and instead to call on the working class to fall in behind some reactionary nationalist force, for the sake of achieving some limited bourgeois goal.

Unless, we can defeat Nationalism in all its guises, unless we can mobilise the working class around those basic ideas summed up in the phrase “Workers of the World Unite” then the cause of socialism is lost, forever to be put off whilst some limited bourgeois nationalist demand is fulfilled. But, if we are to do that, if we are to win workers away from Nationalist ideology we have to provide them with the kind of immediate answers to their problems, which the appeal to Nation itself offers. WE cannot win workers away with offers of jam tomorrow, less still with the offer of tears and suffering some time in the future accompanying some big bang revolution, only after which will all their problems be resolved. We have to offer workers practical solutions to their immediate problems here and now. Those solutions can only be built around the perspective of showing workers how they can here and now begin to take control of their life, how they can work collectively and co-operatively to provide those solutions under their own ownership and control.