Workers have no country and patriotism is a delusion and nationalism is a snare. Working people have no country of their own. Their land is the property of a master class and the worker rarely owns enough for his or her coffin. What matters is the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill another father, mother, brother, or sister.
When hands clasp across national boundaries in solidarity the workers will know that borders and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international socialism (and there can be no socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or socialism will evaporate. The socialist patriot is an impossibility. If any is loyal to those in the class that exploits, he or she is a traitor to our own class. Workers own no country, so why should we care which section of the class of thieves owns which national portion? Workers have a world to win, not nations to fight for.
Patriotism groups men and women according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism, in contrast, groups all people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers determined by the fortunes and misfortunes of history.
The Socialist Party are anti-patriots but let it be clearly understood that that love of one’s native village or familiarity with a town is not the type of patriotism to be condemned. What we denounce are jingoism and nationalism, that is not natural sentiments, but prejudices very firmly implanted into the heads of people. We, who hate the existing nation-states, retain a soft little spot for where we were born and raised. Neither have we ever maintained that there are not, throughout the existing nations, some noticeable differences of character and temperament such as have been caused by history and culture. Countries have had their raison d'être at a time and the best proof of it is that they were born and that they have endured; we even think that their existence, at certain periods and in certain circumstances, may even have contributed to the general improvement of our species. True patriotism seeks the welfare of each in the happiness of all. One time in the past the term patriot meant to be opposed to the governing class of your country in the interests of the people of your country. Patriotism consisted in opposing the powers that were against the interests of the people. Patriotism has now lost that meaning in small communities where once the cohesive principle of all for each and each for all had significance. When workers are primarily concerned with the direction of their own affairs, managing their own work-place and running their own communities and neighbourhoods, independent for practical purposes, distant territorial claims for allegiance will not easily find a “patriotic” echo
Patriotism assumes that our planet is divided into little regions, each one surrounded by a wall and an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born inside these walls consider themselves better than those living outside. Such a belief poison the minds of the children and if need be the sacrifice of children in wars. The Socialist Party finds nothing reasonable to inspire any of our fellow-workers in the thought that they are slaves of one governmental system run by their masters rather than another and a rival one. Hence our adoption of the slogan “Proletarians of all lands unite.”
Let us do away with nationalism, patriotism and national chauvinism altogether and substitute in its place the “ internationalism” of the class-conscious worker. It is not a question of fighting for the political independence of one nation, but for a new society for all lands – for the socialist commonwealth.
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