Politicians want us to get behind the national interest (Pic: Wikimedia commons)
“You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, ok? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist. Nothing wrong. Use that word.”
Donald Trump’s appeals to nationalism are one of the few consistent things about United States president.
Trump’s tariff wars have intensified nationalist rhetoric across the globe. Right wing leaders promise they will protect workers from the neoliberal globalisation that has wrecked their lives.
They promise to crusade against the “woke” establishment that is contemptuous of national pride. Keir Starmer and the political centre also appealed to the “national interest” to justify the latest welfare cuts. Union leaders use the same rhetoric when talking about protecting jobs in “their” country.
All this means that nationalism can feel like an inevitable part of society.
Some commentators say the enduring nature of nationalism is a serious challenge to Marxism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that solidarity between workers across national borders was the motor of historical change. They hoped that nationalism would wither away as capitalism spread across the globe.
But in the 20th century, the internationalisation of production, trade and finance went hand in hand with the intensification of nationalism—and with wars and genocides.
Nationalism is not just a ploy used by our rulers to keep us divided and weak—it is rooted in the organisation of capitalism itself. Capitalism is a global system, but it also requires the nation state. The emerging capitalist class needed a politically unified economic zone within which people, commodities and money could move freely.
These economic developments depended on military campaigns abroad. The British state spent millions building up the Royal Navy which forced open markets and investment opportunities for British capitalists.
The British national identity developed during the long era of wars with France between 1689 and 1815. The state bureaucracy, the education system and the mass media helped create a unified national language and culture.
The British ruling class used nationalism to manufacture consent to its rule. School children saluted the flag and sang the national anthem.
Nationalism left working people vulnerable to the idea that fighting wars could be a noble way to defend civilisation from barbarism.
There was nothing “natural” about the nations that emerged from this process. The formation of national identity involved forcible incorporation and assimilation.
The first capitalist powers were concentrated in Western Europe and North America. They were able to dominate the rest of the world.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries Africa, Asia and Latin America were forcibly incorporated into the European colonial empires.
A wave of decolonisation after 1945 did not end the economic and military domination of Western capitalism. Inter-imperialist rivalries reinforced nationalist loyalties.
Imperialism created another sort of nationalism—the revolutionary nationalism of colonised people in countries like Ireland, India and Algeria.
Significant currents in the working class movement of the 19th century campaigned in solidarity with Irish republicans fighting against British rule.
Huge protests in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle against US imperialism rocked the US in the 1960s. Millions of working class people have taken to the streets for Palestine.
Revolutionary nationalism is a world apart from Trump’s nationalism. But it still obscures class differences within a nation state.
When workers lack confidence in their own power, they can be won to the idea that supporting “their” nation will protect their way of life and security.
But workers all experience the grind of exploitation every day. Their managers and bosses push them to work harder for less. They resent the wealth of their own ruling class. This creates the potential for challenging ideas of national unity and winning solidarity with workers fighting back against their own bosses.
Even the most perfect meritocratic society would be unequal
A system that lasted for hundreds of years
Socialism is a broad term, but communism is something different
