If Russia wants to occupy and run Britain, they may have it as far as the Socialist Party is concerned. Britain doesn’t belong to the British worker. Why should our fellow workers worry about preserving what belongs to others? If the others want it, let them fight for it.

The only thing that matters is the development of a consciousness of working-class solidarity, born of an appreciation of the common cause of working-class misery and its common remedy. Socialism is the answer to every question of working-class import, and— Socialism knows no frontier. It matters nothing that Britain may be peopled by Russians, or by any other nationality on the capitalist globe. That would make no difference to the movement of the working class towards the world-embracing cooperative commonwealth. The workers of all nations make common causes against the common or capitalist exploiter.  If an invasion is coming, let it come.

This impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But it has lent itself to exploitation. With the development of class rule, it was made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves. 

 Patriotism is usually defined as being devoted to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live in an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other peoples. The nation they call “ours” is the result of conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribespeople, we are hirelings; we possess no country. Nationality covers no real entity other than that of common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixed territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

 Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can social cooperation find its highest and complete expression. Marx did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose, the only loss could be its national-coloured chains.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us today is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many on the left wing have fallen headlong into this trap.

Patriotism and nationalism are artificial restrictions of humanity’s sympathy and mutual aid; obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and cooperation; as shackles that chain men and women to slavery; as incentives that set each against the other. 

If Russia wants to occupy and run Britain, they may have it as far as the Socialist Party is concerned. Britain doesn’t belong to the British worker. Why should our fellow workers worry about preserving what belongs to others? If the others want it, let them fight for it.

The only thing that matters is the development of a consciousness of working-class solidarity, born of an appreciation of the common cause of working-class misery and its common remedy. Socialism is the answer to every question of working-class import, and— Socialism knows no frontier. It matters nothing that Britain may be peopled by Russians, or by any other nationality on the capitalist globe. That would make no difference to the movement of the working class towards the world-embracing cooperative commonwealth. The workers of all nations make common causes against the common or capitalist exploiter.  If an invasion is coming, let it come.

This impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But it has lent itself to exploitation. With the development of class rule, it was made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves. 

 Patriotism is usually defined as being devoted to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live in an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other peoples. The nation they call “ours” is the result of conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribespeople, we are hirelings; we possess no country. Nationality covers no real entity other than that of common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixed territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

 Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can social cooperation find its highest and complete expression. Marx did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose, the only loss could be its national-coloured chains.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us today is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many on the left wing have fallen headlong into this trap.

Patriotism and nationalism are artificial restrictions of humanity’s sympathy and mutual aid; obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and cooperation; as shackles that chain men and women to slavery; as incentives that set each against the other. 

 World Socialist Movement online meetings

 This month’s issue of the Socialist Standard drew attention to the dire conditions being faced by Sri Lankan fellow workers suffering under an economic melt-down. It has seemingly grown worse.

Every day motorists line up at fuel pumps at the break of dawn and wait hours until they open. The military has posted soldiers at hundreds of gas stations on March 22 after complaints of stockpiling and inefficient distribution, and farmers and fishermen have joined a growing wave of protests. While Sri Lanka was in economic trouble even before COVID-19 with struggles to pay foreign debt and slow growth, the series of lockdowns dealt a major blow to the informal sector, which accounts for nearly 60% of the country’s workforce. Job losses and reduced earnings increased poverty in the country of 22 million.

The share of the poor based on a daily income of $3.20 was estimated to have grown to 11.7% in 2020 – or by more than half a million people – from 9.2% a year before, according to the World Bank.

Central bank data shows that the government had identified 5 million families with “fragile financial status of low-income households” and provided them a 5,000 rupee allowance during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Economic crisis forces Sri Lankans to moonlight as prices soar (trust.org)

The word “billionaire” didn’t even exist until 1844. Fifty years later, we got “multibillionaire.” And for the next 127 years, that was enough. 

How disappointing that Reich’s answer is simply redistribution of wealth through taxation, rather than a fundamental change to how wealth is accrued. 

 Brian Martin, the head of technical policy for building regulation, told the public inquiry that he found it hard to express how sorry he was as he could have potentially prevented the Grenfell Tower fire on a number of occasions.

But Martin also pointed to government policies deregulating the industry that left him as “a single point of failure” in an under-resourced department.

The farmworkers who feed us are on the frontlines of climate change, poverty, and the broken immigration system. They shouldn’t be treated as sacrificial or replaceable—especially when they’re nothing short of essential.

There are between 2.5 and 3 million agricultural workers in the United States. Migrant farmworkers account for an estimated 75 percent of these, and 50 percent of migrant farmworkers are undocumented. Many live in this country at risk of deportation, in substandard housing conditions, and in extreme poverty.

Because most farmworkers lack basic working protections and are paid “per piece”—that is, for how much they harvest—they’re often forced to choose between going without pay and working long hours through dangerous conditions. In recent years, they’ve had to work through heat waves, extreme drought, and even wildfires.

In 2021, the United States experienced the hottest summer on record, and some farmworkers died because of these unpredictable circumstances. Heat is now their leading cause of death on the job—in fact, farmworkers are 20 times more likely than other workers to die from heat-related illnesses.

The piece-rate wage forces workers to put in 10- or 12-hour workdays and still leaves many food-insecure and impoverished. And due to their immigration status, farmworkers are often unable to protest dangerous working conditions or poor wages, incentivizing employers to exploit them further.

Opinion | It’s Farmworker Awareness Week. Here’s What Those Who Feed Us Deserve. | Ennedith Lopez (commondreams.org)

A new analysis conducted by Oil Change International, Greenpeace USA, and Global Witness estimates that U.S. oil and gas corporations are poised to rake in windfall profits of up to $126 billion this year as they exploit Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine to raise prices at the pump.

“Under conservative estimates, we find the U.S. upstream oil and gas industry will collect a windfall of $37 to $126 billion in 2022 alone,” the groups’ report states. The higher-end profit estimate is dependent on oil prices spiking to $120 per barrel this summer and remaining elevated as the West moves to restrict Russian oil imports—a major opportunity for U.S. fossil fuel companies, particularly as the Biden administration looks to ramp up gas exports to Europe. If oil prices average $88 per barrel, the new analysis finds, the U.S. oil and gas industry would reap $37 billion in additional profits in 2022.

US Oil Companies Set to Reap Up to $126 Billion in Extra Profits Amid War on Ukraine (commondreams.org)

The two-day national level strike by workers given by 10 central trade unions and other supporting organizations in India drew a strong response by over 200 million (20 crore) workers on March 28 and 29, according to organizers. These workers included those from ports and mines, railways and transport, banking and insurance, refineries and telecom, public as well as private sector (including multinational companies). There was a significant presence of women in the strike, particularly those employed in various development schemes, often at very low wages.

The strike was in addition supported by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella organization of 40 farmers’ organizations that had spearheaded a massive and successful farmers’ protest movement last year.

This strike came at a time of increasing reports of the twin burdens of unemployment and inflation. Rates of urban unemployment have been at high levels, while the price of essential goods has been increasing. In the process, most worker households have faced increasing difficulties in making basic needs. Reports of workers being made to work for longer hours in more difficult conditions have appeared increasingly, resulting in several industrial and construction site accidents.

There are increasing apprehensions of workers losing jobs and rights in the course of policies of relentlessly increasing privatization under different names and schemes. Instead of striving to rapidly increase social security cover for unorganized sector workers who are largely deprived of this, the policies of the government are widely seen to be creating more uncertain and difficult conditions for workers. 

India–Massive Strike Of 200 Million Workers Draws Attention To Increasing Problems And Apprehensions Of Workers| Countercurrents

 “The fraternisation of the workers of the world is for me the highest and most sacred thing on earth; it is my guiding star, my ideal, my fatherland. I would rather forfeit my life than be unfaithful to this ideal!” – Rosa Luxemburg

Capitalism is a dangerous society. We live in a harsh, brutal society. Every day we read on the media about poverty, hunger, war and crime. The Socialist Party is true to itself and the working class and makes its stand staunchly in favour of the class war, the only war that can put an end to all war, and quite as staunchly against every war waged by the ruling class to rob and kill and enslave the working class. Uncompromising socialist opposition against war, against those who caused it, who profit by it, who want to continue to support the war. The first step in the struggle against war is a clear understanding of the nature and causes of war.

Capitalists of every major nation are faced with the following situation: In order to sustain the system which sustains them, they must find continuous outlets for capital investment and re-investment; but the domestic market, provided by the capitalist mode of production within any single nation, is not, sufficient to re-convert into capital values the values of commodities turned out even by existing capital equipment, much less of new. 

Consequently, the capitalists of each nation are forced to seek outlets for capital investment (and likewise consumer markets) beyond the national borders. Since the world is limited in extent, since the areas available for new forms of capital expansion and exploitation are growingly restricted, conflict is not only likely but inevitable. The battles of the capitalists have been fought out on a worldwide scale. Into the satellite states, economic blocs, spheres of influence, flow the surplus capital funds, expecting to be set to work at making profits. capitalist society is continuously at war, first trade wars, later proxy wars, then open hostilities. It is war all the time, changing only in the form it takes, in the degree of violence.

The new war crisis is no longer a matter of prophecy and prediction. It is already here, inaugurated by the launching of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have entered the period of the armed conflict of the imperialist powers for a re-division of the world. This does not, of course, mean that open world war is scheduled to begin immediately. Delay, hesitation, manoeuvering are still, for the moment, possible. What it means is that the approach of the world war has now become the decisive and determining diplomatic factor in international and national developments.

The problem of war is the supreme test for the working class and the party of the working class. Once again it is the war crisis that strips bare the pretenders within the working class, the left-wing patriots. The construction of a new society which will wipe war and the threat of war from the face of the planet can be achieved only by the action of the international working class. A brief study of the nature and causes of modern war is sufficient to prove that war is an essential part of capitalism. The inner conflicts of capitalism lead and must lead to war. War is not the cause of the troubles of society. The opposite is true. War is a symptom and result of the irreconcilable troubles and conflicts of the present form of society, that is to say, of capitalism. The only way to fight against war is to fight against the causes of war.

 Since the causes of war are part of the inner nature of capitalism, it follows that the only way to fight against war is to fight against capitalism. It follows that the only possible struggle against war is the struggle for the workers’ revolution, for a world socialist society.  The capitalist nationalist system breeds wars, and we shall have to build a cooperative commonwealth in order to be secure in peace. On the question of war, every responsible person must be completely serious. No evasions, no half-truths can be accepted. The only answer to war is the full answer, with no sugar-coating. The great aim of the World Socialist Movement is the abolition of war. Modern warfare threatens not merely suffering and death to working people, but if it turns nuclear, the actual destruction of human civilisation, the thrusting of humankind back into barbarism. No one can doubt this to be literally true.

The camouflage that war carries – appearing as due to “national” or “cultural” differences, as follows – must not be allowed to hide the fundamental conflicts which are the true source of modern war. Though these other factors may provide the final push that sets open war going or may modify the character of a war, there is nothing in their own nature that must necessarily lead to war. They are the tools of the forces making for war, not the cause of these forces.