Were we generations ago so naive to think that the global community might be where the future lay:-)?
It's becoming incredible to me, living as I do in a country where the immigrant is seen as suspect or as parasitical and as ultimately unwelcome, to believe that we might some day soon throw in our lot with foreigners. Questions of sovereignty, 'natural' bellicosity, fear of the ex-Soviets and Islam, would all suggest that we are as far away in 2011 from global union as we were in 1911. The increasingly shrill rhetoric behind individual autonomy, libertarianism and choice is discordant with the humanist project, with pejorative socialism, with efficacious charity. Self remains the foremost interest such that, under perceived fiscal pressure, the interests of community and society (global, national or parochial) fall by the wayside. Rather than enjoying the 21st century's promised widened horizons, the pressed family head now scrambles to attain a vista on best defending his or her dependants and, if this government has much to do with it, will soon be resorting to pack imperatives for survival. It is in this climate that national socialism forces its claims to relevancy.
Capitalism runs parallel with all these developments; flexing like a whore with the state, capital is generally unaffected by the convulsions that touch our little communities and with which it toys. Its own crises are resolved because we do not congregate in opposition, don't irritate its otherwise healthy organism. Indeed, our suffering is often part of the physick and its encouraging acquisitiveness and self-interest are effectively divisive to its potential enemies.
It is at this point that I play devil's advocate and ask: Is aggressive nationalism the way forward? If we are to discount communism, which is generally attacked as state capitalism (Stalinist) then how about a kind of national socialism, or Nazism as it was termed in Germany's racialist variation on Italian fascism? Let me hear the arguments because I would like to analyse their bases. The arguments might be based on how you feel about GM foods, immigration, end-of-life decisions, abortion, the Third World? The British as a whole seem full of their own self-importance and have an interesting view of their relative worth. We generally would strip our compatriots of what they've spent generations fighting for if we feel they have an advantage over ourselves. Let's face it, we refuse to believe we are working class and see no solution in a Trotskyist international workers' association that might precipitate revolution. The world is shrinking in relation to its population. Resources are depleting. We're stuck on the planet for the foreseeable future, so where do we go from here? Britain still has some clout in the world and American Tea-partyists and Zionists (in some bizarre blindness to the events of their modern history) would offer little opposition to an extreme right-wing regime here. Capital has fomented two world wars and perpetuated the conflicts of the Cold War. It loves the current aggression in Iran and AfPak. It would certainly fall behind the economy of a country that embraced the full monstrosity that is national socialism.