The Socialist Party Against Nationalism

The nationalist argument, as propounded by Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland, is quite simple ― and wrong. The people of Wales and Scotland, they say, suffer because they are misgoverned from England; what they need is an independent State of their own so that they could begin to solve their problems. In fact, the problems faced by wage and salary workers in Wales and Scotland are basically the same as those in Britain or Ireland on any other country; they are caused by international capitalism and can only be cured by world socialism. The setting up of more frontiers in the world would be irrelevant and a waste of time.

The members of the Socialist Party reject allegiance to any State and regard themselves as citizens of the world. We accept the boundaries between States as they are (and as they may change) and work within them to win control of each State with a view to abolishing them all. Our aim is the establishment of a democratic world community without frontiers based on the common ownership of the world’s resources.

“Celtic nationalism” is a misleading phrase as the word Celtic, like Aryan, has no real meaning outside linguistics where six languages (Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Breton and the extinct Manx and Cornish) form a distinct group labelled “Celtic”. What Ireland, Scotland and Wales share is that they are areas where now only a minority of the people speak a Celtic language. This, however, does not justify calling them “Celtic countries” or creating a mythology about “the Celtic nations” or, worse, about “the Celtic races”.

Marx advocated independence for Ireland, a fact which is sometimes used to try to justify supporting nationalist demands. Marx did support Irish independence but he did so primarily because he thought it would hasten the completion of the democratisation of the British State. But the circumstances which led Marx to support Irish independence no longer exist. At this time in history, the bourgeois democratic victory over feudalism was far from complete even in Britain, then the most industrially developed country in the world, and on the continent of Europe what progress had been made was continually threatened by three great feudal powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia. In these circumstances, Marx considered it necessary to support not only direct moves to extend political democracy but also moves which he felt would weaken the feudal powers of Europe. For instance, he supported Polish independence as a means of weakening Tsarist Russia. His support for Irish independence was for the same sort of reason: it would, he thought, weaken the position of the English landed aristocracy, as they still enjoyed considerable political power. By the time Ireland was about to get independence after the first world war, the changes Marx had expected it to bring—land reform in Ireland and a weakening of aristocratic power in England—had already been brought about by other means, making support for Irish nationalism no longer relevant. Marx clearly writes of independence for Ireland helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism not capitalism itself in England. Marx wrote of independence for Ireland helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism not capitalism itself in England.

Engels, in 1888, in an interview to an American German-language paper and answered those left-nationalists who expect a  revolution from separatism:
"A purely socialist movement cannot be expected in Ireland for a considerable time.  People there want first  of all to become peasants owning a plot of land..."

 The whole idea underlying nationalism — that all the people of a particular nation (however defined, and that’s another problem) have some common interest — challenges the socialist analysis which says that the workers have no country and that the “national interest” is a fraud and a trick designed to get them to co-operate on the political field with their rulers.

The task of the Socialist Party is to campaign, along with socialists in other countries, for the establishment of a socialist society all over the world.

As expressed by the First International,
"...The poor have no country, in all lands, they suffer from the same evils, and they, therefore, realise that the barriers put up by the powers that be the more thoroughly to enslave the people must fall. It is the poor, above all the poor, who will realise the dream of the gentle Anacharsis de Cloots, the orator of the human race, who will bring into being the great federation of the peoples. So come, young people, and help us accomplish this lofty task of the nineteenth century..." - To the Paris Students, To the Students and Young People of All Countries From the Workers of All Countries, 1866.

Nor should we neglect to mention the internationalism of the Chartist activist, George Julain Harney, who in an address to the Fraternal Democrats declared:

 ‘Whatever national differences divide Poles, Russians, Prussians, Hungarians, and Italians, these national differences have not prevented the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian despots uniting together to maintain their tyranny; why, then, cannot countries unite for obtainment of their liberty? The cause of the people in all countries is the same – the cause of Labour, enslaved, and plundered… In each country, the tyranny of the few and the slavery of the many are variously developed, but the principle in all is the same. In all countries, the men who grow the wheat live on potatoes. The men who rear the cattle do not taste flesh-food. The men who cultivate the vine have only the dregs of its noble juice. The men who make clothing are in rags. The men who build the houses live in hovels. The men who create every necessary comfort and luxury are steeped in misery. Working men of all nations, are not your grievances, your wrongs, the same? Is not your good cause, then the same also? We may differ as to the means, or different circumstances may render different means necessary but the great end – the veritable emancipation of the human race – must be the one end and aim of all.’