 First of all, let me cast your minds back to the early months of 2020, back when Corona was just a drink, you know? Corbyn had just, that didn't get the laugh that I expected it to, you never mind. I think everyone was just scarred by Corbyn, never mind. Corbyn had just lost the election in December 2019, and Boris Johnson had taken a sledgehammer to the so-called Red Wall and won a landslide majority. The dreams of the left were really shattered. Corbyn resigned, and a leadership contest opened up. And all of the left's hopes were pinned on a figure called Rebecca Long Bailey. Does anyone remember her? No? Seems like the mists of the past, you know? And yeah, she was really Corbyn's successor candidate. And in an ill-fated Guardian article, Rebecca Long Bailey said that she will champion progressive patriotism. She said, Britain has a long history of patriotism rooted in working life, built on unity and pride in the common interest and the shared life of everyone. To win, we must revive this progressive patriotism and solidarity in a form fit for modern Britain. And this electoral pitch, which had the finger mark to the PR team all over it, wasn't very well received on the left. No one really knew what it meant, probably including Rebecca Long Bailey herself, actually. And it all reminded everyone a bit too much of Ed Miliband's immigration controls. Murgs, do you remember those? And also, you know, Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers as well. And this idea of progressive patriotism was dropped as soon as it was raised, basically. Just like Rebecca Long Bailey herself, actually. I wonder what she's doing now, anyway. And Stammer has in turn taken up this mantle of patriotism. Not only has his leadership plastered the Union Jack on just about every surface that they can lay their hands on, but Stammer never really stops banging on about British values, British institutions, British workers, and so on. And Stammer's nauseating flag waving is really nothing but a signal to the ruling class that Labour is now a respectable party devoted to the interests of British capitalism. And I think this fact alone really should be enough to bury this idea of the left taking up patriotism. But this idea of progressive patriotism, it really seems to keep cropping up again and again on the left, or the so-called left, as Alan would say. And it isn't a new idea, nor is just a British idea. We've seen left-wing groups in places like France and Spain with, you know, La France en Soumise and Podemos take it up as well. For example, Pablo Iglesias of Podemos said that the left should reclaim the concept of the fatherland and portray the capitalists, who he calls Lacaster, as unpatriotic versus the true patriotic people. And in France as well, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has ditched singing the Internationale and flying the red flag at La France en Soumise rallies for singing Le Marseillais's The French National Anthem and waving the tricolor as well. And we even have the spectacle of so-called communists here in Britain, as Jonathan mentioned, groups like the so-called Communist Party of Britain, the Young Communist League as well, championing the idea of progressive patriotism. I'm sure we've all seen the infamous annual St George's Day post from the YCL, you know, with the English flag and blaze and floating in the sky next to a hammer-in-circle. That's really enough to make your stomach turn, but never mind. But to boil it down, I think, the proponents of progressive patriotism say that socialists and patriots say that socialists and communists must do the following to win over the working class. Firstly, we must redefine what it means to be patriotic along progressive lines. We must reclaim national identity and national history. In other words, to wade the flag, as the YCL do. And to portray socialism as being tied to national traditions and to portray the left as being the true patriots. And since this so-called solution for winning over the working class just keeps cropping up, we must be able to answer it. We must be able to understand where this attitude comes from and what we put forward as the genuine communist alternative. So I think I'll start with that, actually. What is the genuine communist position on this? Well, actually, first of all, let's define what patriotism is. That would be helpful, I think. The word comes from the Latin, patria, which means fatherland. You know, like the poem by... I forgot who it was by. It's about World War I or something, isn't it? Dilce et decorum est pro patria morit. It's beautiful to die for your fatherland. And that is basically what patriotism is. Pride in one's fatherland. That feeling that your nation has something that others don't and that it is therefore something worth defending. Now, the first argument, I think, against progressive patriotism is quite simple. The fact that the working class is international, it's an international class. As Marx and Engels famously said in the Communist Manifesto, the working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. And they continue. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, the communists point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. Now, as Marxists, we understand that the fight for communism must be international. This isn't down to some sentimentalism or a vague sense of humanitarianism or solidarity, or just because we love diversity and togetherness for the sake of it. We're scientific socialists. We look at the developments that have already taken place under capitalism. And we can see that capitalism has long overgrown the narrow limits of the nation state, which are a barrier to the development of the further development of the productive forces and therefore of society. And the nation state plays a very reactionary role in that respect. And even the capitalists themselves are sort of aware of this and they try to overcome it with organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union, and so on. We can see that under capitalism, a world market arises, which sucks every country into its vortex. A division of labor occurs on a world stage. Nations become linked together through trade and finance, supply chains, span across countries and continents. And through all of this, a world working class is created, which with common interests that must be fought for collectively. Now, the Stalinists will often try and justify their appeals to patriotism by referring to that line from the Communist Manifesto, which says that the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is national in form. But I'd like to challenge that. Now, as far back as the second international, Marxists have long understood that an international struggle is required even for basic democratic demands, like the eight-hour working day. And it was actually for that reason that the second international set up International Workers Day to have this international struggle, essentially. I think the current issue of Israel-Palestine as well shows that a struggle within the arbitrary national boundaries of Palestine is not going to be enough to achieve national self-determination, let alone socialism. Nothing less than an uprising across the entire Middle East and the overthrow of US and British imperialism can guarantee national freedom for the Palestinians. And if that's the case for democratic demands under capitalism, then it's even more the case for the construction of a new socialist order. And this is why, of course, Lenin and Trotsky created the Communist International because they understood that without extending the Russian revolution across borders, the workers there would be isolated and besieged. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, the degeneration and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reversion of China back to capitalism, this show us that any gains that are made on a national level and kept at a national level can only ever be temporary. So internationalism is an essential part of the scientific program of Marxism, not just an optional extra that can be balanced or switched out for patriotism when we feel like it. And moreover, when workers enter into struggle, they feel these international bonds tying them together. We only have to look at the countless examples of international solidarity with Palestine, this mass demonstration that's taking place just down the road in London and across the world. Workers in places like Kent, Belgium, South Africa as well, there are many other examples, are blocking arms shipments to Israel to stop the slaughter. All we have to look at how quickly, for example, movements like the Black Lives Matter movement occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring spread across borders instantly to the furthest reaches of the globe. Or in fact, to go back to the Russian Revolution, look at how the Russian Revolution inspired revolutionary movements in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Finland and led to the formation of mass communist parties across the world. To go back to Rebekah Long-Bailey, actually, inadvertently, she provided an example of this in her ill-fated Guardian article. She was looking for examples of England's history that we can be proud of as workers. And she pointed to the Lancashire mill workers who supported the blockades of the slave states during the American Civil War. And I think Rebekah Long-Bailey completely misses the point in this because those workers didn't do that because of their Englishness or because they loved their fatherland, they had this abstract sense of pride and loyalty to their country. They did it exactly because they were proletarians, part of an international class who were prepared to sacrifice their own particular short-term gains to support a general revolutionary movement against slavery taking place across the Atlantic. So I think it's clear from this that appeals to patriotism can only really muddy the waters and get in the way of real proletarian internationalism, which is essential for the triumph of communism. Now, I think a second argument against progressive patriotism is that patriotism itself has always played a very negative role in the working class movement. Everywhere we look, patriotism has been used to justify opportunism, national narrowness, and betrayals of the working class. And this goes back all the way to the mid to late 19th century when capitalism went through a protracted period of upswing based on the ruthless exploitation of the colonial peoples. The super-profits that were obtained from colonialism and imperialism allowed the imperialist powers to offer a few more crumbs off of the table to the working class at home. And this raised the standard of living of a privileged layer of skilled workers whom Lenin, of course, called the labor aristocracy. And on the back of this privileged strata, there arose a whole layer of opportunist labor leaders, you know, trade union leaders, party leaders, and so on, who ditched revolution to don the robes of reformism and respectability. Now, the Fabian society, which was, and I think still is, actually, a real bastion of reformism, explicitly appealed to the national character and circumstances of the English people to justify their reformism and their parliamentary cretinism. Right-wing figures, like the Labour leader Ramsay McDonald, for example, also appealed to periodic sentiments to actually attack Marxism. He accused Marxism of being unsuited to British conditions, and the Marxist groups that were around in his day were foreign and outlook phrases and criticism. He also said that if German socialism, i.e. Marxism, would not suit, then English socialism had to be formulated in its place. And just what was this English socialism that McDonald had in mind? It was based on England's traditions of parliamentaryism and gradual progress. He said, the nation has a common life. Parliament expresses something deeper than class conflict. It is the way in which the expanding life of the community creates new social states. Isn't that nice? And McDonald, you know, he used this very same parliament of class harmony rooted in Britain's democratic traditions no less to form a national government with the Tories to carry out austerity and attacks on the working class in defense of the boss's interests. Funny that, isn't it? The idea, I think, of a particular national variety of socialism has always been used as a cudgel to attack the scientific internationalist socialism of Marx and Engels. Now this same national reformist generation took place all over the European workers movement. In the run-up to World War I, as I'm sure we know, almost all of the parties of the second international fell in line with their own national bourgeoisie in backing the imperialist war. And again, patriotic sentiment was whipped up not just by the capitalists and the militarist establishment, but also by the labour leaders as well. And according to these left patriots, these progressive patriots, if you will, it was the working class's duty to defend the fatherland by going to the slaughter. But the key thing is, these labour leaders weren't just putting forward the same crap as the right wing about supporting the Kaiser or the King or the Czar, defending a superior national and so on, because such outright chauvinism would fall on deaf ears for the majority of the working class, in particular the advanced working class. For their appeals to work, they had to call for something different. So they whipped up patriotic sentiment based on what the work has genuinely valued, things like democratic rights and freedoms, their revolutionary traditions, their workers' organisations and so on. Their advanced industry and culture and things like that. For example, a popular socialist figure in Britain, a guy called Robert Blatchford, he justified his calls for increased armament spending in order to defend Britain's freedoms against Germany's tyranny. He said, there is no nation in the world so free is Britain. Tell that to the people that are getting arrested and for going to Palestine demonstrations and so on, but never mind. There is no nation where the subject has an equal liberty of speech and action. And Trotsky, as well, once explained that the German workers and the rank and file social democrats, they didn't really support the war because they wanted to defend the Kaiser or the prophets of the bourgeoisie, quite the opposite in fact. He explained that they wanted to defend the German industry, the German railways and highways, German technique and culture and especially the organisations of the German working class. And similarly, he explained that the French workers were defending France's revolutionary traditions, her heroic proletariat, her high culture, her flexible and talented people. In effect, they saw France as the promised land of socialism and that's why they wanted to defend it. Now, the point is that these all sound like pretty progressive things to be patriotic about. And this is why Lenin Trotsky labelled this kind of patriotism social patriotism. It was a seemingly progressive left-wing patriotism which appealed directly to the sincere concerns and instincts of the working class. And for this, it was all the more dangerous in fact. Now, communists are of course in favour of defending democratic rights, defending working class organisations and upholding revolutionary traditions, of course. But when these things are opposed as being attached to the fatherland and the nation, they can be readily used to throw dust in the eyes of the working class, drum up support for imperialism and so on regardless of the intention. And for Lenin Trotsky, these so-called progressive or social patriots were especially guilty because they had a special role to play in disarming the working class politically, leading them to the slaughter and upholding the rule of capitalism. I think if you fast forward to today, you can see certain left figures doing exactly the same thing, you know. People like Paul Mason drumming up support for the Ukraine War and, you know, basically the NATO's intervention into Ukraine on the basis of defending freedom, defending national self-determination and so on. It is effectively the same thing that was in a different form. Now, there's a reason why reformists always lean on patriotism and national sentiment. The strategy of reformism is to carry out gradual reforms using a parliamentary majority or something like that. And the reformists' ability to win gradual reforms therefore relies on the strength of the national economy and their ability to wield the state relies on the security of the nation as well. And conversely, there's a reason why patriots within the working class movement always end up being reformists and opportunists. What else is the nation but a community which spans different opposing classes? The very idea, in fact, of a national community with shared interests blurs the lines between the classes. National unity is merely the unity of the slave and the master. And the idea that class interests can be reconciled in any way is the starting point of all reformism. Now, the Stalinists also have a track record of using patriotism to justify their opportunism. The Communist International, when it was first formed, had a very good track record, in fact, on, you know, the question of patriotism, opposition to patriotism and chauvinism in all of its forms. For example, they had a very good track record on, you know, supporting struggles against colonialism and things like that. But all this changed when the Stalinists got in charge with their mantra of socialism in one country, which I haven't got too much time to get into, but there are other talks on that. At the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935, the common-turns-leader, a guy called Georgi Dmitrov, put forward the needs to fight fascism in a general democratic anti-fascist front. And of course, Dmitrov was really laying the groundwork for the popular front tactic, which would see the Communist forces being dissolved into bourgeois formations and holding back the struggle for socialism in the name of fighting fascism. This policy would ultimately lead to the defeat of the French workers and the Spanish workers, and so on. And the key thing is, as part of this opportunistic turn, Dmitrov emphasized that the Communists must essentially ditch internationalism. He called internationalism, actually, national nihilism. That was the term that he used for it. And he said that instead, effectively, they must take up a progressive patriotism. Here's what he said. He said, communists must not sneer at all of the national sentiments of the masses of working people, but rather, they should seek to defend to the very end the national freedoms of their own country and expose the reactionary bourgeoisie, as opposed to the progressive bourgeoisie, I assume, for betraying the national interests. He said, proletarian internationalism must, so to speak, acclimatize itself in each country in order to strike deep roots in its native land. So you've got it right there. You need to defend national interests and acclimatize our internationalism, whatever that means. So in other words, yeah, that the Communist Party must defend the nation's interests and betray themselves as the true patriots in order to win over the working class. And there's a little detail here, actually. The common turn, even made the British Communist Party change the slogan on their newspaper's mass-head from workers of the world unite to workers of all countries unite because the former sounded a little bit too internationalist, a bit too cosmopolitan for their liking. And what was the result of this patriotic turn? Of defending national freedom and acclimatizing their internationalism. Well, during World War II, the British Communist Party supported the national government, the war government, with Churchill and the Tories at its head in the name of supporting the war effort. Not only did they fly the Union jacket demonstrations and even sing God Save the King, I think it was at the time. Was it the King? Yeah, God Save the King. I've got Queen in my notes. She's just died. It's so tragic. So tragic. I'll wipe it here for that, never mind. But yeah, for this, they won the name, His Majesty's Loyal Communist Party, actually, by our comrades back in the RCP, the Revolutionary Communist Party. But not only this, they also became the most fierce strike breakers within the labor movement. They actually broke strikes in the name of supporting the war effort. That is where patriotism leads you, I would say. And after the war, things didn't improve either. Their program, the British Road to Socialism, and notice as well, the British Road to Socialism, every Communist Party at that point, ditched having an international perspective but had their own particular national road to socialism. This program was completely national and character. Now don't take my word for it. They said, our call is for the unity of all true patriots to defend Britain's national interest, and independence. And they said this at a time when Britain was still clinging on to the remains of her colonial empire, that we need to defend Britain's national interest and independence. And as with the Fabians and Ramsey MacDonald before them, the Stalinists made these patriotic appeals to Britain's democratic traditions in order to justify national particularism, uphold reformism, and attack genuine communism. They said, that Britain will reach socialism by her own roads, just as the Russian people realized political power by the Soviet road, which was dictated by their own historical conditions and the background of Tsarist rule. So the British Communists declared that the people of Britain can transform capitalist democracy into a real people's democracy, transforming parliament, the product of Britain's historic struggle for democracy. It's so inspiring. Into the democratic instrument of the will of the vast majority of her people. So as you can see right there, blatant reformism, blatant Kautzkyism in fact, is what it is. And unfortunately, this national reformism is still present in the Communist Party's program today. And I think all of this should really serve as a warning to those who seek a progressive patriotism. History provides a clear notice to everyone that patriotism and opportunism go hand in hand. Once you accept one, you must accept the other. And I think the more recent cases of La France-en-Semise and Podemos also confirm this. It was exactly at the time when Podemos began calling for progressive patriotism that it began sliding to the right and abandoning its original radical left-wing program in favour of chasing after electoral gains and so on. And a coalition with the right-wing parties. And ironically, this actually lost them a lot of support. And La France-en-Semise and their flag waving also coincided with a shift to the right in terms of Melanchon's chauvinistic support for French imperialism. Melanchon even said, actually quite recently and this links to a talk that was in the previous session, that he wants to keep France's overseas territories and he opposes the withdrawal of French troops from West Africa. He did, of course, say that their tanks should be electric tanks because it's good for the environment. So, you know, it's not all bad, you know. You've got to give him his credit by credit stew. Now, moving on, I think a third argument against progressive patriotism is that ultimately, you can't subjectively define what patriotism means. Adherents of progressive patriotism would have us believe that you can simply redefine what it means to be patriotic. If we use patriotic language but give it a progressive content, workers will be drawn to a socialist program. And sometimes as evidence for this, the Stalinists will in particular point to the progressive national movements against colonialism which swept the globe in the 20th century, including those which went on to abolish capitalism like Cuba. And they'll say, you know, since patriotism and national sentiment played a progressive role here, then why can't workers in the imperial country be patriotic too? Can't that be progressive? Now, no one can deny that these national movements across Asia and across Africa and so on against colonialism played a very progressive role. These movements dealt heavy blows to imperialism and raised literally hundreds of millions of people out of conditions of slavery and barbarism. And in this sense, one could say that their patriotism and national feeling that the patriotism and the national feeling of the oppressed has a certain progressive character. But to point to this is a justification for patriotism in Europe or the US is absolutely ludicrous. For Marxists, nations and national movements always have to be understood in their context and viewed in their historical context. Not all nations are the same. You know, national movements can indeed play a very progressive role but within specific conditions. When dealing with the national question, Lenin used to always pose the simple question of what role does a given national movement play in the class struggle at home and abroad? Does it advance the interests of the world working class or does it hold them back? For example, the national movements of the oppressed nations do have a progressive character because they are aimed at securing national equality in an independent nation state and thereby securing the best conditions for the class struggle of the proletariat. In the same way, back in the 19th century, Marx and Engels supported national movements in Europe in places like Poland, Hungary, and Germany as well because this was key to the triumph of modern capitalist relations over feudalism with all of its particularism and so on. And in such conditions, of course, communists must support national movements even if they aren't explicitly socialist as a step on the road to revolution. And there are also cases as well when national movements flare up as a constant as a consequence of the crisis of capitalism where class anger can be channeled through nationalism and this can give a national movement a clear, more or less clear, working class character an anti-establishment character. I think to provide an example of this, you can look at Scottish nationalism. In such cases, communists must be sensitive to these moods and aspirations and intervene in the movement with a clear internationalist class program. But it is one thing to respond to a national movement that has been spontaneously by the working class and it's another thing to try and whip up a phantom progressive patriotism where it doesn't exist and base your entire strategy on it. And even in these cases when national movements do play a progressive role, it's not a communist's job to passively fly the national flag. As Lenin used to warn, don't paint nationalism red. It's not our job to do that. We must always be on guard against any expressions of national privilege or exclusivity and bring to the fore the interests of the working class as a whole, as Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto. But clearly, there is no progressive content whatsoever to a national movement based on an impressive imperialist country like the UK or France or the US or something like that where independent nation states and capitalist relations have been secured for century. In fact, the only content that such nationalism and patriotism can have is a reactionary one because these nations both in the past and in the present subjugate and oppress the rest of the world and hold back the struggle for socialism. And for the most part, actually, the consolidation of independent nation states has been carried out across the world to the point where even the nationalisms of formerly oppressed countries becomes reactionary. You don't have to point to places like China or India or Pakistan where you can really see the reactionary role that nationalism and patriotic sentiment can play. And how could it be otherwise when the bourgeoisie is in power who are by their nature rapacious towards rival powers and rely upon whipping up national hatred and xenophobia to distract from the class struggle. So no amount of subjective rewriting of what it means to be British or French can undo the fact that these nations objectively play an imperialist and a reactionary role and that the people from the oppressed nations are strongly aware of this. So yeah, the symbolism and the language of nationhood can't simply be rewritten and given a progressive content at a whim. National culture has a class content which corresponds to which class dominates in society. As Hegel said, you can't change the essence of a thing by changing its labels. Now as an aside, it's no surprise that the progressive patriotism of parties like La France en Soumise and Podemos is actually an outgrowth of postmodernism. The leaders of both of these parties are actually followers and personal friends with academic postmodern theorists like Chantal Mouff whose main idea is that the left should abandon class politics to focus on creating new left narratives. And this isn't actually too far from what the Stalinists put forward either. Here is what was written in one article in the Morning Star a few years ago. They said, nationalist sentiment relies on stories and symbols and a progressive vision needs to rely on the people's counter-narrative to the official story of Britain. That's just postmodernism. That's exactly what postmodernism is, right? Changing the discourse and that's all that this talk of progressive patriotism really amounts to. So we can expect this kind of idealist nonsense from the reformists but, you know, from the communists it's something else. So yeah, genuine communists should ditch any talk of stories and narratives. We won't change the world by thinking about things differently. Our starting point is understanding the real world in order to change it. Now as part of this strategy of redefining patriotism the YCL in particular say that we must reclaim Britain's revolutionary history and traditions. We should celebrate the Chartists, the English Revolution and the Peasants' Revolt and so on. Now I'm sure no one in this room will deny that it's the duty of communists to uncover Britain's revolutionary history and traditions. We should celebrate the Chartists and so on. Especially in a country like Britain where it's been buried so deep that most people aren't even aware of it. That's why we publish books like the Chartist Revolution in the cause of Labour and Trotsky's Writings on Britain as well. Available from wellreadbooks.co.uk Hope you got commissioned for that one, you know. Get a bit of money on the site. But the reason that we do this is to use these lessons to raise the political level of our class and prepare it for the tasks posed by history. We aren't doing this to appeal to some vague sense of national pride. And for this reason the lessons of Britain's history don't have some special importance to the British working class. In fact, the lessons of the Russian Revolution the Spanish Revolution the Chilean Revolution in the 70s and particularly the German Revolution are in many ways more relevant to our current struggle. And ironically actually one of the main lessons of Britain's history is that the class struggle here is always impacted by events across the world and particularly on the European continent from the influence of the Great French Revolution on the British radicals to the Russian Revolution itself which had an enormous effect on Britain. You know, it led to the Labour Party a mass party of the working class adopting clause four which was essentially like you know the semi-revolutionary clause in its constitution and it led to the founding of the Communist Party as well. So from all this, you know I think we can tell that we aren't interested in constructing national histories. All of these lessons belong to the world working class. Now it could be argued that there's nothing incompatible between national pride and national traditions on one hand and internationalism on the other hand. But I think this misses a key point that Marxists have always emphasized that national differences and peculiarities are constantly being eroded and becoming less relevant. Again, to bring it back to the Communist Manifesto which is an excellent text I think it's got a lot of key insights in there. You know Marx and Engels declare in no uncertain terms national differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing. Capitalism has stripped the proletarian of every trace of national character. And as Lenin wrote in 1913 the world working class movement is creating and daily developing more and more of an international proletarian culture. And I think this clearly spells out the tasks of Communists not to provide a left wing version of national traditions but to contribute to the development of an international proletarian culture which is already developing all around us. Now the fourth and final argument that I'll give against progressive patriotism is that we shouldn't bend to the temporary moods and prejudices of sections of the working class. Adherents of progressive patriotism will point to the fact that the majority of workers feel patriotic about their country and that therefore we must meet them where they're at by repurposing patriotism and speaking a language that they understand. Now you know there is some truth to this claim. You know data from you go polls does suggest that the majority of Britons are at least fairly or very patriotic and it's the same for the United States as well but of course you know polls are only a snapshot of reality and of course you know large numbers of people did vote for the Tories in 2019 drawn to Johnson's promise to get Brexit done and so on and this can all feed to the impression that the working class were inevitably patriotic that there's nothing we can do about it. And it's no coincidence that a lot of talk about progressive patriotism came out in the aftermath of Corbyn's defeat. After every big defeat of the working class and of the left sections of the left will try and search for all kinds of magic formulas and shortcuts to win over the working class. But all that this tells us the fact that you know a certain number of workers feel patriotic all that it tells us is that surrounded on all sides by the ideas of the ruling class which are propagated through the press through the education system popular culture the Tories culture wars and so on that some workers do succumb to patriotic and even chauvinistic sentiments. As Marx and Engels explained the ideas of every society are the ideas of the ruling class. The ruling class have a near monopoly on producing and propagating ideas but if we were to simply accept this as a fate to complete where would that leave us? I mean the majority of workers currently on in favor of a socialist revolution either but that doesn't stop revolution from being an objective necessity the only way to advance the interests of the working class nor does it stop the working class from coming to realize this in the course of the class struggle. Consciousness isn't a static and eternal thing it's shaken up by big events revolutionary events in particular the working class learns when it's on the move and we can look to many examples for this just one example the Paris Commune in the month leading up to the in the months leading up to the workers taking power chauvinism ultra chauvinism was whipped up by the ruling class and this intoxicated even the most advanced sections of the workers you know members of the first international were even succumbing to like anti-german chauvinism and patriotic moods and so on but in the course of fighting against the government of national defense and overthrowing the old order and organizing a new workers state there were actually many foreigners and immigrants Poles, Russians, Hungarians and so on who played leading roles in the Paris Commune and were even elected to its leading council and we can see many examples like this of the class struggle melting away the prejudices and the backwards ideas of the past even the experience of a strike a single strike or a mass movement can show aspects of this now the British Social Attitude Survey which I think is run by the Guardian shows us that in the past few years views on social questions like immigration have swung decidedly to the left especially among those who perceive themselves as working class and I think this demonstrates that the growth of class consciousness is melting away reactionary and parochial views despite the Tory hysteric culture war now of course there are you know small segments of people you know those head bangers that are marching down white hall who do still succumb to these moods but the general tendency of the population is towards the left I think in these conditions now I think this really shatters the myth really of this idea of a socially conservative traditional white working class which really has no basis in reality or if it did then it's being eroded away the progressive patriots however would have us bend to the temporary attitudes of the most backward sections of our class to raise their prejudice to an ideal and to lower our program to their level and this is textbook opportunism which Trotsky once described as slavish cringing before the established fact basing your politics and what is immediately palatable or popular is a road to ruin it's a road to reformism with this starting point how long is it until you start providing a left cover for immigration controls or protectionist economic measures in fact it's no coincidence that many adherents of progressive patriotism also do those things as well and I think all of this really betrays a complete lack of faith in the working class to understand a genuinely scientific program and before I sum up let us quickly remind ourselves of why a scientific program is necessary as Marx and Engels understood the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves building a new socialist order means workers planning society themselves consciously workers must take destiny into their own hands and all of this requires that the working class unlike any other class in history has to have a truthful scientific view of the world we can't just cajole or trick the working class into carrying out a revolution with subjectivist pandering and emotional appeals to things like patriotism and the fatherland and so on the job of a revolutionary party is precisely to act as a vanguard to represent the most advanced sections of the working class to put forward the most advanced ideas not to counter to the backwards prejudices and through all of this we can in the course of the class struggle raise the level of the rest of our class to the tasks posed by history and these tasks are international it doesn't matter if everyone is not open to these ideas yet a Bolshevik organization spends most of its time swimming against the stream but we are confident that genuine communist ideas will find a greater audience as events proceed so yeah we won't bend to any narrow nationalism or anything else which dilutes and obscures the clear internationalist program of Marxism events like the conflict in Israel-Palestine the ethnic tensions in the Caucasus and the Russia-Ukraine war as well these all show that the problems facing humanity cannot be solved on the road of narrow nationalism every day we see the working class become more and more integrated and less and less nationally defined through the development of capitalism through things like immigration communication technology and the labour movement itself as well drawing countries closer together or rather drawing the working class of different countries closer and closer together and we see this expressed in many international struggles which will continue as the class struggle deepens so the need for a clear and internationalist program has never been greater our primary task right now as communists is to accelerate and deepen the instinctive internationalism already being shown by the working class and the best way that we can do this is to redouble our efforts to build a revolutionary communist international thank you