the apparatus for the repression of
the exploited masses.
So they are parties that
interpret in a nationalist sense the
freetrade policy (national-free-
trade policy), with a clear tendency
to economic protectionism, to the
cuts to social expenditure, to
institutional conservatism and to
the war policy abroad.
The nefarious role of social-
democracy
A particular role in the spread
of nationalist ideas and in the
clouding of the workers’ conscience
is played by the socialdemocratic
leaders, genuine specialists in the
spreading of confusion and
division in the ranks of the working
class.
For many decades the social-
democratic leaders covered their
nationalism with talk about “our
common western values” and
Europeanism, spreading concepts
and programs better fitting the
requirements of monopoly capital.
In the last years the music has
changed and their nationalist
policy has revealed itself,
especially towards foreign workers.
Gradually the social-democrats
have opened the way to the
fascists and racists, stating that
they were no longer dangerous.
Today the social-democrats enter
into direct competition with the
nationalist and fascist right-wing
forces that are acting openly and
are spreading their delirious
chauvinist and xenophobic
discourses.
The social-democratic and
reformist ministers have even
managed to criminalize altruism
and solidarity, as with the NGOs
that save the lives of migrants in
the Mediterranean Sea.
In all countries the leaders of
the social-democratic parties
support the measures of the
exploiting classes and apply them
directly when they are in the
government. They demand great
sacrifices from the workers in the
April, May - 2019
name of “national unity”, “sense of
duty”, etc.
In every country they share
with the right-wing parties the policy
of keeping the migrants far from
their boundaries, at the cost
ofhavoc of the sea and crimes in
the detention camps.
In all countries they cover the
imperialist wars of aggression with
their sugary rhetoric, presenting
them as “humanitarian” actions or
“struggles against terrorism”.
Without the aid of the social-
democratic and reformist parties,
the bourgeoisie could not conduct
its anti-workers, reactionary and
warmongering policy. Social-
democracy is based on nationa-
lism, not on proletarian inter-
nationalism.
This
political
movement has always adopted
nationalism to instill bourgeois
patriotic sentiments into the minds
of the working class, celebrating
the victories in the imperialist wars,
exalting the values of the
bourgeois armed forces, spreading
the cult of love for the imperialist
fatherland, etc. Therefore there is
no essential difference between
the demagogy of the social-
democratic leaders and that of the
bourgeois nationalists.
They both strive with every
means to keep the working masses
away from the class struggle
against the capitalists, divide and
corrupt the workers and poison the
popular masses with their
reactionary ideology. Both
undermine the class conscience of
the exploited with their demagogy
about “common national interests”.
Both try to present the interests of
the capitalists and those of the
workers as one and the same.
The rise of bourgeois
nationalism is parallel to the
sharpening of the crisis of old
social-democracy (as in France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.). This
crisis, started in the 1980s and
destined to last a long time, is the
result of the end of the “Golden
Age of capitalism” and of the
predominance of the free-trade
policy, to which social democracy
has adjusted itself with a policy of
submission to the financial
oligarchy, with the liquidation of the
Welfare State, with a series of
counter-reforms, with the weaken-
ing of the mass tradeunions.
This has led substantial
sectors of the workers and the
working masses to lose confidence
in the social-democratic parties, to
criticize them harshly and to
abandon them on the electoral and
organisational level.
Today the mass discontent is
captured by the populist and fascist
right-wing parties, which use
aggressive nationalism as one of
the major vehicles of their policy.
Also from this point of view we must
denounce the fact that the social-
democrats have opened the door
to the rising wave of bourgeois
nationalism. The two phenomena
are interlinked.
It is foreseeable that the more
unprejudiced social-democratic
sectors will move to a further right-
wing position, establishing their
own nationalism and fascistisation
(in the form of a “left”, “radical”
nationalism, etc.), manipulating
some backward sectors of the
proletariat and co-operating with
the forces of the more extreme
reaction.
The “defence of national unity”
with the imperialists
As we have already said,
nationalism is one of the methods
preferred by the ruling classes in
order to divide and immobilize the
workers and take them out of the
revolutionary struggle against the
bourgeoisie, through the spreading
of ideas and doctrines aimed at
weakening and denying the
struggles of the exploited and
oppressed classes against
capitalism, and replacing them with
the struggle among the exploited
and oppressed people.
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