Morocco V The Western Sahara

The Western Sahara is a country on the Atlantic Ocean coast of North Africa with the dubious distinction of being the “Last Colony” in Africa. Morocco invaded Western Sahara in 1975 following the withdrawal of the then colonial ruler, Spain. That military invasion was followed by Morocco’s sending of hundreds of thousands of settlers into the country.

The Saharawi people, the indigenous population of the Western Sahara, want an independent nation, while Morocco has offered the Saharawi only autonomy under Moroccan control. It sparked a war with the Saharawi which wound down to a stalemate with Morocco controlling 80 percent of the country, including its fishing rich coast line, vast mineral deposits and major cities. The remainder of the country has been controlled by the Polisario Front, the main political force in the struggle for independence.

“Morocco confiscated our land. Built a wall dividing our country. It violates human rights while plundering our natural resources,” Mohammed Abdelaziz, the President of the Western Sahara.

The United Nations approved a referendum on the future status of the Western Sahara in the early 1990s but Morocco has balked, refusing to permit the U.N. to conduct a vote. Morocco’s occupation is strongly backed by France, and has the tacit support of the United States. While the U.S. does not formally recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over what Morocco calls it’s “Southern Provinces,” it has not forcefully demanded that its ally comply with international law. Morocco enjoys support on Capitol Hill, ranging from conservatives to members of the liberal-leaning Black Congressional Caucus. American human rights activist Susan Scholte, who has worked on the Western Sahara issue since 1993, said most American supporters of Morocco’s position on the Western Sahara either don’t know the facts or are getting paid by Morocco. Morocco spent $3.5-million on lobbying inside the U.S., in 2013 alone.  Morocco contends its claim on the Western Sahara predates Spanish colonization, a position rejected by the International Court of Justice in 1975, months before Morocco’s invasion.

Morocco officially denies brutality in the Western Sahara but a U.S. State Department human rights report released in February 2014 listed violations including “physical/verbal abuses” of Saharawi people “during arrest and imprisonment.” That report also listed a lack of democracy, corruption and “widespread disregard of the rule of law” by Moroccan security forces — violations that report stated also occur inside Morocco — a monarchy ruled by a king. Saharawi people described arbitrary beatings, arrests and torture suffered while they were imprisoned for terms ranging from few months to years.

Separatism or Socialism

 When the colonial powers divided Africa among themselves they did so with scant regard for the variety of language, religion or ethnicity that already existed. When independence came to most African countries in the 1960s, the continent's new leaders agreed to stick to these borders. Maintaining the status quo would have been in their interest for many reasons but mostly because it provided a way to prevent potentially damaging conflicts from erupting among themselves.

Since then, Africa's borders have remained largely unchanged. Aside from Namibia and South Sudan, the only other country in Africa that has won legal autonomy since colonial independence is Eritrea, which after a long and bloody war seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. During the same period, in other parts of the world, many apparently immutable boundaries have been challenged and changed. Since 1990 especially, more than 30 new countries have been created around the world, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Balkan conflict led to the formation of new states that reflect ethnic, linguistic and nationalist divisions. Yet the map of Africa remains one drawn up by foreigners, ignorant of ethnic and religious realities. One example is Nigeria, a nation that is divided between religiously distinct Muslim and Christian populations along a clear north-south fault line.

The insistence on sticking to colonial borders is facing growing popular challenge. It is now argued that in  some of the countries, their current boundaries, just don't make sense and much of the dissatisfaction stems from lack of economic opportunity among populations seeking greater control over their natural resources. Across the continent, dozens of governments are struggling against rebel groups demanding either greater autonomy or full independence, movements, which span the continent from the Casamance region in southern Senegal to the Uamsho Islamists (the Association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation) fighting for independence on the already semi-autonomous Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. Somalia is now divided up among the autonomous regions of Puntland (which considers itself an autonomous state) and Somaliland (a self-declared but unrecognized sovereign state). In central Somalia, Galmudug is another regional entity that emerged.

Annette Weber, head of Middle East and Africa research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs explains "What we have seen in Africa is a lot of centralised states where the leader is running the capital but not really reaching out to the periphery. The state is so distant that it doesn't feature in the life of those populations." These marginalised people, she explains, often feel that they would be better off with "one identity-based territory that binds them. Independence becomes a hope or an expectation for them."

The Mombasa Republican Council demands independence from Kenya. The Bakassi Movement for Self-Determination demands separation from Cameroon and re-unification with Nigeria. In Algeria Berber tribes in the northern region of Kabylie demand greater autonomy. In Zambia more than 70 separatists demanding independence for Barotseland state in the impoverished Western Province were recently arrested and are currently on trial for treason. The list of these conflicts goes on and on: from Sudan to Western Sahara, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Mali.

In discussing the newly independent nations Ms Weber explains "What is often overlooked is where these states come from. Where did South Sudan's new government learn the business of statehood? They learned it from Khartoum. And many systemic problems of neglect and exclusion that we see from the government of Khartoum are now replicated in South Sudan. Often separation results in a duplication of another failed elite..." Weber goes on to argue "I think there will be more separatist groups calling for separation because they believe it could solve their problem of neglect...”

Socialist Banner has often cautioned workers to be wary of simplistic nationalistic solutions when the only viable lasting option for peoples prosperity is world socialism.

Adapted from here 

African Migrants Not Welcome In Africa

Entering Botswana from South Africa Wame Molefhe gets into conversation with a fellow Botswanian also on his way back home. The remaining narration is hers, taken from 'Letter from Botswana' in October's New Internationalist.

'I'm going home.' He would never live anywhere else, he adds. He is a true patriot, fiercely proud of the country he calls hom, he tells me. Like him, I am happy to be able to call Botswana my home, but I believe I would feel at home anywhere on African soil. But I have begun to question this idea of patriotism, when the phrase 'my people' is spoken in order to exclude. I belong to this nation not because of any achievement. I was simply born in Botswana. I know no other country as intimately. I do not feel foreign, but I know that there are those who visit Botswana who are made to feel foreign - from the minute they enter this country.
During the days of apartheid, Botswana provided a sanctuary for those fleeing the oppressive racist regime in South Africa. After the South African Defence Force raided Gaberone and killed 13 people in 1985, Botswana became somewhere to run through, rather than to. It was clear that it was no longer a place of safety, but Botswana was still lauded for having done her bit to stand up against apartheid.

Back in Gaberone city I take a walk down the road. There is a police vehicle rounding up foreigners. They are all black . . .African, I assume. And I think of the story I recently read in the newspapers, of a 96 year old man who arrived in Botswana in 1945 and has lived here since. The circumstances of his arrival I do not know. I see a picture of an old man, being wheeled out of hospital in a wheelchair. Another shows him being loaded into the back of a pick-up van, surrounded by men and women in nursing uniforms . . . the old man is being deported. I feel much shame in admitting that I am from Botswana.

(- - - - ) We continue to describe ourselves as a caring and compassionate people  but at the same time we are pulling the noose tighter around the necks of immigrants. We are smoking them out - some of them. In the same breath we call for foreign investors. I do not know who Botswana wants to embrace. It does not seem to be my fellow Africans.

A few days after the old man was expelled I learn from a news report that an ambulance was despatched to fetch him back from Zimbabwe. The reasons for this change are not known. Perhaps someone, somewhere, remembered that we are supposed to be a caring and compassionate people.

Africa, Europe, North America, Australia - what's the difference? It seems that no one wants them - except when they need them and then how are they treated?
Nationality is simply an accident of birth and patriotism a tool of ruling elites to keep sections of the populations divided in order to enhance control.
JS

Algeria's 50 years of independence

5 July 2012 marked Algeria’s 50th anniversary of national independence from 132 years of the French colonial control at the heavy price of a bitter eight-year armed struggle. 300,000-1,000,000 Algerian deaths, large-scale repression, torture and military removal of millions from their homes. Algeria’s liberation from a major Western power was well-publicized by the writings of Franz Fanon.

Yet for most Algerians it is hard to celebrate. What is there to celebrate when only 20 years ago, the military moved from the background to the fore with a coup d’etat cancelling elections and quickly leading to a decade of horrendous civil war between the military and Islamists, causing the deaths of some 200,000. The post-independence regime continues to produce a constant stream of exiles abroad.

Nevertheless, from a different perspective, Algeria has much to celebrate. From 1962 to the present, many grassroots Algerians have steadily resisted, in a variety of ways, the greed, power schemes and repression from above.  In the first year of independence and after, thousands of Algerian workers spontaneously and with the encouragement of the nationalist trade union took over operation of modern farms and units in industrial and other realms abandoned by Europeans fleeing to France and set to work to self-manage the grassroots re-booting of the national economy. Even though opposed and sabotaged by the military, bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie who resented this growing horizontalist sector of hundreds of thousands and the general challenge to elite power and privileges it represented, many self-management workers struggled for several years to maintain and embrace this attempt at "socialism" from below.

In 1980 emerged a largely spontaneous wave of massive protest and resistance among the proud Berbers of Kabylia, based on long-standing grievances against regime authoritarianism, its disdain for rich Berber linguistic and cultural identity as well as its neglect of the region’s economy. This “Berber Spring” was the first large-scale political challenge to the regime since the early 60s. The later Kabyle insurrection of April 2001 was followed by mass demonstrations and a widespread horizontalist “assemblies movement,” also showed a large-scale rejection of the regime. Virtually the entire region of Kabylia rose up in defiant protest, besieging police stations with rocks and fire bombs while also burning government and political party offices. Other Kabyles formed local grassroots councils based on centuries-old Kabyle horizontalist principles and confederated together from the bottom up. This rising massive defiance and spontaneous self-organization threatened to spread elsewhere in Algeria and to mobilize a national uprising against the regime until the regime repressed it. However, the self-organized assemblies movement persisted for several years.

 A similar but larger protest by thousands of young people took place in the capital, Algiers, in October 1988—without an explicit political program, but demonstrating through their choice of targets (government and FLN party offices and opulent retail stores) their contempt for political and economic elites prospering at the expense of most Algerians. This explosion of massive street demonstrations over several days was then repressed by gunfire, arrests and torture and used by the regime to justify and manipulate a partial liberalization of politics and economic policy. In this brief moment like the recent Arab Spring, many hoped for a genuine multiparty pluralist political system with respect for free expression and human rights. A new outspoken human rights league developed in this period along with new media, independent women’s rights groups and autonomous trade unions separate from the regime’s  largely submissive UGTA union federation. In the end, however, the combination of a growing and increasingly confident and demagogic Islamist movement, including a strong radical component, and manipulation by the dominant military to block genuine democratization culminated in a cancelled legislative electoral process (about to be won by Islamists) in January 1992. What followed was a long nightmare decade of repression, massacres, tortures, assassinations, “disappearances” and rapes committed by both sides.

Nevertheless, the human rights league, autonomous trade unions, women’s rights groups and other grassroots organizations continue to survive and to take strong political stands.The rigged lections are boycotted by large numbers, most recently a month ago for the national assembly. The continued habit of boycotts by alienated voters and further appeals for abstention by opposition figures produced another humiliating grassroots rejection of the system. While the regime claimed a 42% participation rate of eligible voters, the lack of transparency in vote-counting and other traditional forms of electoral manipulation led critics to suggest a much lower rate and fraudulent victories. As well, even among those who voted, admitted the government, about 22% of cast ballots were faulty or blank.

Each year sees thousands of more-or-less spontaneous local demonstrations, riots and confrontations, the only way aggrieved people can gain “dialogue” with oppressive officials. Whether at the level of local daily life or in broader social movements large numbers of grassroots Algerians over the past five decades have refused to accept the authoritarian and corrupt regime imposed since independence and continued the “national liberation struggle” against the national bourgeoisie. Chawki Amari suggested two years ago in El Watan, a leading Algiers newspaper, that Algerians are by nature anarchists who Bakunin would have no trouble recognizing. Every substantial political upheaval is rooted in millions of individual rebellious attitudes and behaviors nourished anonymously over generations until the right conjuncture of economic and political factors breaks through existing bonds of oppression.

It is this struggle which is to be celebrated.

Adapted from here

ANC Nationalism

....While there were times, throughout the 20th century struggle against the apartheid system (and state), when the movements of African nationalism imbibed certain progressive elements and ideas (e.g. common struggles of all oppressed peoples against colonialism/imperialism), it remained what it was (nationalism) and within what gave it any meaning (the nation state). Given also that such (black) ‘African nationalism’ was in constant ideological and practical ‘competition’ with (white) ‘Afrikaner nationalism’ (in control of the state), South African nationalism was further constructed by the realities of that competition/struggle. This created an even deeper sense of national ‘uniqueness’ and thrust towards a reclaiming of a differentially applied, ‘true’ nationalism.

When the dominant African nationalist force, the ANC, won the 1994 elections, it took political control of an existent national state that had been built to secure the dominant interests of a (white) national bourgeoisie. There was a changing of the nationalist ‘guard’. The only difference was that now, the state was in the hands of a movement whose main aim was to build, and secure, the interests of a black nationalist (as opposed to white nationalist) bourgeoisie, notwithstanding the ANC’s constant claims of the leading role of the working class. In this sense then, the democratic victory of 1994 represented, above all else, the triumph of a majority (black) nationalism over a minority (white) nationalism.

This politically, state-centred ‘changing of the nationalist guard’ was overlaid by the ANC’s acceptance (indeed, embracement) of South Africa’s capitalist political economy, within the context of a dominant, global capitalist neo-liberalism. The two went hand-in-hand. What was thus demanded was the creation of a dominant discourse of ‘nation-building’ as a means to politically legitimise the role and character of the ‘new’ state and the ‘place’ of those under its command. The majority black population who had, historically, been denied any meaningful national or international ‘belonging’, were told that they could achieve both because they were now the ‘real’ owners of a nation state dedicated to securing their national identity, interests as well as their (nationally-located) international status and position.

Over the last several years, what has been consciously, politically constructed then is a ‘new’ kind of nationalist popular hegemony (ideology), congruent with a ‘new’ national identity and politics but within the same historical framework of capitalist development. This macro-design creates the illusion (and the accompanying politics) that the struggle for political and socio-economic liberation by the black majority was, and remains, defined by the active and loyal participation of an ‘authentic national subject’ bounded by the ‘new’ nation state and a ‘new’ nationalism. 

To a large extent, this South Africa specific example of the ‘naturalising’ of nationalism, alongside its capitalist twin, has worked.  Despite regular and even increasing shows of dissatisfaction with the performance of the state and the maldistribution of socio-economic benefit, there is no sign that the majority has jettisoned the ‘national popular project’. Nor is there any sustained sign of the same at the global level.

 The reality is that the capitalist system, at a global political and institutional level, fundamentally remains a constellation of various nationalisms. While such nationalisms might be differentially ‘practiced’ in tandem with the changing nature of the capitalist system of production, accumulation and distribution, they are fundamentally grounded in a common ideology, which, over time, always ‘returns’ to the source. Even the presence of "socialists/communists" in the management and leadership of the nation state and/or the nationalist movement has proven time and again to make little difference in this regard, although it might make a difference in relation to how the national cake is cut.

As can be so plainly seen as a result of the latest capitalist crisis, the role of the nation and nationalism has done anything but engage in a disappearing act. Indeed, that role has taken on greater importance/centrality. This is the case not only in reproducing the conceptual/spiritual power of the ‘nation’ and the politics of nationalism which allows varying degrees of popular support/impetus (whether as applied to ‘opposition’ and/or acquiescence) but in resurrecting the specific role of the national state in ‘rescuing’ and/or managing the key component parts of the capitalist system itself – and thus temporarily ‘addressing’ the crisis.

Not surprisingly, it is the billions of poor and working class people that have borne, and will continue to bear, the dominant burden of these acts of systemic reproduction. It is when this majority of humanity, of whatever national ‘identity’ or place, no longer accepts and embraces the janus-faced ideology of nationalism that there will emerge the real possibility for breaking the back of a capitalist system whose trump card always has been, and always will be, the cul-de-sac of nationalism.



extract from Dr. McKinley article
Link

Free at Last?

The Republic of South Sudan was declared an independent nation in the capital, Juba. The new national flag was raised, the church bells rang out and the countdown clock flashed "free at last."

Almost the size of the state of Texas or of France it has only 100 miles of paved roads. Oil-rich South Sudan has an adult illiteracy rate of 85 percent, and about half of its 8 million people live on less than $1 a day. Nearly one in five people are chronically hungry. Only about a third of the population has access to safe drinking water. As many as nine militia groups operate in active rebellion against th new state. Military tensions with the north have heightened in recent weeks with clashes in the northern border state of Southern Kordofan between Sudan's army and troops loyal to South Sudan's army forcing more than 73,000 people to flee their homes since June 5. Sudan's army seized the main town in the disputed border area of Abyei on May 21, driving more than 100,000 members of the Ngok Dinka ethnic group, who consider themselves southerners, from their homes.

Nhial Bol, owner and editor of the Citizen, a daily newspaper with the motto "Fighting Corruption and Dictatorship Everyday," believes the leadership of South Sudan wasn't prepared for independence when voters overwhelmingly approved it in January. What used to unite the men now running the country was their battle against the north, he said, "but they don't have one vision for the nation."

Independence is unlikely to bring great dividends to most.

Africa is a vast continent comprised of nations which because of their colonial past have different histories, just as they have variegated geographical landmarks that distinguish them. Thus African nations do not share many things in common except the forcible grouping together of tribes regardless of the interaction that existed before colonialisation. In the attempt to create nations, different ethnic groups have been split between boundaries and the expression of nationalism has therefore not been through the medium of cultural or ethnic identity. What is called nationalism comes to emphasise political allegiance to the state. Political states in Africa were mapped out by European imperialist nations under the guise of economic interests and military influence. Thus African kingdoms and empires were brutally decimated and different ethnic groups were forcibly integrated into colonial states and protectorates. Such a situation in which countries find themselves has made nation building and African unity a difficult task.

In the past when Africa didn't have artificial boundaries such as there are today, wars and hatred were not as rife. Making up nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood. America was built on the bodies of the native population. It is a process that continues today in Africa. The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practices that set out a sense of precedent, self and future possibility. Nationalism imposes the idea of the nation, complete with its inherent notions of territorial ownership and property, upon a culture, on the very self-image of the people within that culture. The idea of "the nation" functions as supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the state, to which any cause may appeal. It is a fantasy which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the state's daily life. Its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule, and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideas of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as, and have the same interests as, their masters.

Workers of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. It might appear that workers and employers share a common interest. In fact the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the employer, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper/employer, demands are met, they will not allow the hostage/workers to have what they need to live. The fact that the majority of population owns little but its ability to work is evidence the working class has no common interest with the minority ruling class. When we are robbed and the robbers fight over the booty, that fight is none of our business. Wealth and power under capitalism can only be realised through legalised exploitation of some people by others. This is a complete contradiction of socialism that envisages a future society in which economic and political privileges will not exist because goods will be produced for consumption and not or sale – while racial and ethnic taboos will not prevail because there wouldn’t be political leaders nor class interests to defend.

Socialist Banner see little to celebrate in the creation of a new capitalist state.

Independence for what ?

2010 is the year 17 countries celebrate 50 years of independence since colonial rule. Independence anniversaries in post-colonial countries used to be a time of celebration for those workers who believed they were commemorating their freedom. Africans resisted the colonialists on grounds of segregation, slavery, exploitation and domination. But today African countries still struggle with development and human rights issues and the governments in power have done nothing to change the situation.

Ghana was the first sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence on March 6, 1957. In Ghana 45 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day and 79 percent on less than $2 a day.

The Somali Democratic Republic received its independence from Italy on July 1, 1960 when they joined with their northern neighbour, Somaliland, who had gained independence from the British on June 26, 1960. In Somalia 60% population lives below the $1 per day poverty line. An estimated 40 percent of the population were in need of relief assistance in 2009 - the largest proportion of the population requiring relief of any country in the world. Somalia has the worst health indicators in Africa with less than 0.5 doctors and two nurses per 100,000 people.

On June 30, 2010, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) celebrated 50 years of independence. In Congo 70 percent of the population live in poverty. Congo was ranked 139 out of 177 countries in the 2007 UNDP Human Development Index. Life expectancy is 52.8 years and 49 percent of the population do not have access to an improved water source. Infant mortality rates are estimated at 93.86 deaths per 1,000 live births. In 2003 the adult HIV infection rate was estimated at 4.9%, with 100,000 deaths from the disease in the same year.

Burkina Faso received independence from France in August 1960. Burkina Faso is ranked by the World Bank as the 13th poorest country in the world in 2002. The UNDP's 2005 Human Development Index ranked it at 175 out of 177 countries. Life expectancy is 47.5 years.

Independence solved none of the problems resulting from exploitation. Independence for the vast majority has simply meant the exchange of one set of exploiters for another. Nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery. Poverty in the midst of a potential for plenty remains a running sore, exploitation and massive disparities of wealth continue to exist. Environmental degradation continues virtually unabated. Independence will not solve the peasant or working-class problems, only the establishment of socialism can do that. The festering of tribalist, nationalist and racist sentiment are nurtured and sustained by the capitalist system of production which produces only for profits and not for needs. Religion, secessionist movements and nationalism are generally tools used by the ruling classes to perpetrate the status quo. But the only solution is to uproot the real cause of the problems – the overthrow of the unjust economic system in operation in today's world. Socialism will depend on contribution to society by individuals based on individuals' ability and individuals will take from society according to their self-determined needs. It's time for the people of Africa to discover the truth, that they need to unite and fight for socialism. The struggle remains the same – the class struggle. Masters are uneasy when servants are awake.

See also Financial wizards or great pretenders?

Who Are The Outsiders ?

It is not only in the West that black people are subjected to racism and abusive languages by the host nation's population as "bloody foreigners"."parasites"."aliens"."refugees",etc. but also Africans living in other African countries are grimly accustomed to the same abusive languages. Sometimes matters have been getting out of hand in recent years.


A few years ago, tens of thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians have been expelled against their will when the two countries started war (May, 1998 - June, 2000) The Eritreans and Ethiopians who happen to be respectively living in each other's country have lived there for most of their lives, in some cases many of them don't know their country of origin. And yet Meles and Isaias after having accused each other of human rights violation. This is an irony that when many countries in Africa are busy trying to organise a Union of African States to replace the useless, that the OAU has become.

The reasons for these mass expulsions and violence are almost always the same in each country, "patriotic" citizens are quick to assert, nationalistically, that the "outsiders" have come to take over their resources, their jobs and what have you. Therefore, though the grievances of the masses may be related to economic factors, it is unreasonable to blame it on their fellow poor workers.

In order to ward off unrest various tactics are employed by governments. One of them is creating divisions among the poor workers by, for instance blaming foreigners and whipping up nationalistic feelings. In response to the official propaganda, the masses who are hungry and illiterate are taken in by the government policy.

Since anger is emotional and overpowers reason, the least provocations can result in violence often misdirected. Such violence can be vented against fellow citizens usually manifested in riots. The violence is also invariably be turned loose on the "aliens". This is the real cause of xenophobia the rich pitting the poor against the poor.

In the past when Africa didn't have artificial boundaries such as there are today, wars and hatred were not as rife.

Making up nations have taken a great deal of building. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its boundaries drawn in blood. Its foundation dug out of human flesh. America was built on the bodies of native population. It is a process that continues today in Africa. The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture.

Language become a factor in establishing state power, and thus it became a factor in determining a "nation", it is no coincidence that nationalism is accompanied by mania for classifying, delineating and defining people into categories. These practical considerations were made explicit by the Polish Nationalist Pilusdski, who observed that "it is the State that makes the nation, not the nation the State".

In order to enforce the new system of property over the whole range of its influence, the ruling class needed the state, and its legitimising ideas of nationalism and the nation. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practices that set out a sense of precedent, self and future possibility. By imposing the idea of the nation upon a culture, complete with its inherent notions territorial ownership and property on the very self-image of the people within that culture.

The idea of "the nation", functions as supreme good, beyond the physical and mechanical functionings of the State, to which any cause may appeal. It is a fantasy, which can be used to cover up for problems and contradictions in the practice of the State's daily life, its function is to legitimise both the state and class rule, and sustain a large quantity of support, through workers who identify with the ideas of nationhood and believe themselves to be the same as and have the same interests as, their masters.

Workers of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or even if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. So it appears that workers and employers share a common interest. In fact the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the employer, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper employer, demands are met, they will not allow the hostage workers to have what they need to live.

In the powerful nation's history becomes a means of winning popular emotions to cause of stability. An influential and well funded nostalgia industry has long been used in these nation's to persuade workers that there is something great about being the nation's subject.

The valid definition of a modern nation is a geographical and political area in which goods and services are produced for the sale on the market with a view to profit and with the general class division of ruling and ruled. And the fact that the majority of population owns little but its ability to work is evidence the working class has no common interest with the minority ruling class.

Michael Ghebre

The Nationalist Madness

In September 2005, a Moroccan newspaper compared sub-Saharan African migrants to "black locusts" invading northern Morocco. Frequent round-ups have occurred in immigrant neighborhoods and in improvised ad-hoc camps close to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and larger cities, and unauthorized migrants are regularly deported to the Algerian border.

Events in Morocco have brought to the fore the madness in the nationalist issue. Hundreds of West Africans who tried to enter Spain through Morocco are brutally maltreated by the Moroccan security services apparently at the instigation of the Spanish authorities. They are beaten, put in prison and many driven to the heart of the desert and left there to die.

In the wake of the brutal attacks on these West Africans, many human rights groups in Morocco came out in their numbers to protest against the inhuman act. Unfortunately most of these activists attributed the action of the Moroccan authorities to racism. This however is a gross misrepresentation of the issue.

This misguided hatred of fellow human beings who happen not to have been born (or who have not been officially recognised as ‘citizens’) in certain parts of this world is not just found in Africa but everywhere in the world. This inhuman phenomenon makes nonsense of the oneness of the human race as preached by the UN, Christianity, Islam, etc. But this state of affairs could not have been otherwise in a world that is controlled by vampires whose only concern is profits and who place money on a higher pedestal than human beings.

The unfortunate aspect of this hatred towards the ‘foreigner’ or ‘alien’ is that the champions of nationalism use the working class of their countries against the working class of other countries. The truth however, is that the loyalty felt by many members of the working class to their country is a misplaced loyalty. Their so-called leaders actually hold them in the same measure of contempt as the ‘foreign’ members of the working class. In real terms there is no difference whatsoever between these ‘citizens’ who gleefully inflict the pain and the ‘foreigner’ on whom the pain is inflicted. The two groups are both exploited by the ruling class. In fact these African youth who were trying to enter Spain en route to inner Europe were actually forced to abandon their birthplaces by the actions of the ruling class of this world. No one in this world is unaware of the poverty and misery that is the lot of the African. And the capitalists cause this.

The only real division that exists between human beings is their access to the resources and wealth of the world. In this money-dominated world, the minority ruling class (the capitalists) own and control these resources and wealth – the land, factories, the transport and communication network, etc. The working class has no access to these and has to sell their mental and physical labour power the former in return for peanuts.

Nationalism is therefore an illusion that has no basis in reality. The working class in Morocco has more in common to the working class in sub-Saharan Africa (and indeed the working class of the whole world) than it has with its masters in Morocco and else where. The point, in a gist, is that nationalism is nothing short of an ideology that seeks to enhance the profit-making interests of the capitalist class.

However, the problem of nationalism cannot be wished away. To do away with it will mean to eliminate the present the system that fosters it. This system ensures that a minority owns and controls the means with which wealth is produced and distributed whilst the vast majority who actually does the production owns nothing. The resources and wealth of the world must be owned and controlled by all humanity. Under such an arrangement, no one will care who goes where or who belongs where. Then nationalism and its present brutalities would have been buried.

But this type of system – call it socialism – can only be possible when people make efforts to understand the workings of not just that system but also this capitalist system.

Editorial for the African Socialist , now The Socialist Banner, journal of World Socialism in Africa. Copies can be obtained (price £1.30, including postage and packaging) from 52 Clapham High, London, SW4 7UN.