International Socialists

From the cradle to the grave we're encouraged to think of ourselves as members of a nation. Whether it's the America's Cup, a cricket test against Australia, the school history lesson or the latest export figures, the pressure is the same - identify with New Zealand, back New Zealand, believe New Zealand is best. And of course the same thing is going on in every other country. Every good little American, Japanese or Russian is meant to grow up identifying with and believing in the superiority of America, Japan, Russia or wherever. It's all rather absurd when you stop to think about it.

 

But for our rulers it's also very necessary. They want it to be so all-pervasive, so obvious, that we never stop to think about it. Patriotism reinforces the idea that there is an overriding common interest uniting boss and worker, exploiter and exploited, in this little patch of the world against bosses and workers elsewhere. And secondly it strengthens the power and authority of the state, which is the main force maintaining the rule of the exploiter over the exploited. That's why Marxists are not nationalists, but internationalists. We see the world in class terms, not national terms.

 

This issue marks one of the clear dividing lines between reformists and revolutionaries, between those who accept the framework of the nation state and those who want to overthrow it. Listen to any speech by any reformist politician, left or right. You will find it full of phrases such as "saving our industry" or "getting our country going again." But it's not "our" industry or "our" country: both are owned lock, stock and barrel by the ruling class. Every time the reformists talk this way they show themselves to be prisoners of ruling-class ideology. At the same time they strengthen such ideas within the working class.

 

Just as our rulers need nationalism to bind the working class to itself, so the working class needs internationalism to establish its political independence as a class. Internationalism is also a necessity for the working class because, as the example of Russia shows, the revolution can succeed in one country for a time but if it remains isolated it cannot survive indefinitely. Either international capitalism will overthrow it directly or, as in Russia, military and economic pressure will compel the revolutionary country to compete with capitalism on the latter's terms. That means the restoration of exploitation, class divisions and the subordination of labour to capital.

 

Internationalism is increasingly a necessity even in everyday trade union struggles. Faced with multinational companies playing off workers in different countries against each other, the best defence is international links between rank-and-file trade unionists. "Workers of the World Unite" isn't just a fine-sounding phrase.

 

Marxist internationalism also means rejecting the policy of import controls. Again apart from the fact that they would be an economic disaster because of retaliation from other countries, they replace a struggle to defend jobs against the attacks of the New Zealand ruling class with an attempt to solve unemployment by lining up with "our" bosses against the workers of Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, the US or wherever.

 

Genuine internationalism involves much more than abandoning the cruder forms of national and racial prejudice and adopting a benevolent attitude to the peoples of the world. Nor is it a matter of an idealistic belief in the "brotherhood of man" or the "sisterhood of women." Indeed it is a fundamental element of Marxist internationalism that not all men are brothers and not all women are sisters because society is divided into classes with antagonistic interests.

 

Instead of viewing the world from the standpoint of one national state competing with other nation states, Marxist internationalism takes as its starting point the struggle of the world working class against world capitalism. In this struggle we regard the interests of the working class as a whole, internationally, as taking precedence over the temporary, short-term interests of any local or national section of workers. This kind of internationalism constitutes a very sharp break with policies declared to be "in the national interest" by the media and labour movement leaders alike.