Marxists not only have no reason to want to defend or preserve nation states, or nations, but we, also, recognise the reactionary nature of trying to do so. That does not mean that we are indifferent to the means by which such nation states and nations are dissolved, just as we are not indifferent to the way colonial empires, or capitalism itself is dissolved/negated. As Trotsky put it, in relation to the Balkan Wars, we, of course, seek the ending of colonial oppression as progressive, but that could not justify the intervention of some European imperialist powers to bring it about. The progressive means of achieving that was the action of the revolutionary working-class itself, across the Balkans.
We, similarly, cannot see the progressive task of dissolving the nation state being subcontracted to some other, more powerful, capitalist nation state. We do not support such annexations, as the means of achieving that. That means that the workers, in the latter, oppose the actions of their own nation state, and support the workers in the state being annexed. But, similarly, and precisely because we do not seek to defend the, now reactionary, concepts of nation and and nation state, Marxists in the state being annexed do not seek to oppose that annexation by lining up with their own ruling-class, their own immediate oppressors and exploiters. In both states, the Marxist position is that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, and the solution resides in the unity of the workers of both states in overthrowing their common enemy – the bourgeoisie. As Lenin put it,
“The Social-Democrats will always combat every attempt to influence national self-determination from without by violence or by any injustice. However, our unreserved recognition of the struggle for freedom of self-determination does not in any way commit us to supporting every demand for national self-determination. As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state.”
In the Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx sets out the utopian nature of the demand for a right to free education, and so on. But, what about the right to work, which was a demand raised by the SWP, in the 1980's, when unemployment rose significantly? The fact that many millions had no such right, at that time, itself undermines the claim of such a right. Clearly, so long as capitalism exists, it only recognises such a right so long as those it sets to work increase its profits! It is, then, a demand for workers to continue to be exploited by capital, and, given that it is precisely at times when capital has not been able to employ labour profitably that unemployment rises, it is a demand for wages to be reduced further, conditions worsened, so that those set to work do increase the profits of capital!
Its no coincidence that Starmer's Blue Labour, in its attacks on the poor, sick and disabled have used this same moralistic argument about a right to work, for their own ends. In seeking to force the sick and disabled into work, they claim that they are doing this for the benefit of those same individuals they are attacking. They utilise the same moralistic talk about “the dignity of labour”. Marxists do, indeed, also believe in the dignity of labour, but by “labour” we understand something different to simply “work”. For us, labour is only truly free, and has dignity when the labourer themselves is totally free, not just in terms of being politically free, but free from the need to “work”. There is a big difference in the “free” labour that individuals do, for example, when they engage in gardening, or tinkering in their garden shed, to that they have to do, in order to earn a wage, to live. There is no dignity in being forced into work, as an alternative to losing your sickness or disability benefits, to be exploited by an employer.
In short, rather like the reformist, bourgeois, trades-unionist demand for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, it is a demand for the continuation of the wages system. It, in fact, highlights the difference between work and labour, as set out by Marx. Work is something the labourer does for someone else, whereas labour is what the labourer does freely for themselves. What we seek is a society in which social productivity has been raised to such a degree that the need to work no longer exists, and so individuals engage in labour as a natural expression of their creativity.
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