Hello everyone! We are speaking here on behalf of the Partenza group and we would like to share a few thoughts on the motto of this year’s event “Solidarity instead of hate campaign - strong together!”. It’s about solidarity with migrants, who are unfortunately often blamed as scapegoats for many ills in our society. They overburden the social system, steal our jobs and bring crime to an otherwise oh-so-peaceful Switzerland. These people are supposedly responsible for the fact that there is no harmonious coexistence here. In recent years, we have once again seen a rise in nationalist tendencies, not just in Switzerland but all over the world: Nazi demonstrations, right-wing extremist parties and politicians entering parliaments and governments and a tightening of asylum and deportation policies. But that’s not all: xenophobia and nationalism are once again spreading far into the political center of society. And even the political left is prepared in many places to defend their own nation at gunpoint if necessary. All these people have one thing in common: they see “their” nation as a larger whole, a togetherness that is threatened from inside and outside and that must be defended. In this speech, we would like to clarify the question: What is this claimed togetherness all about? 

The whole world is divided into states. Every person who is born automatically receives a nationality. This is not in our genes, but rather depends on where you are born or what nationality your parents have. It can be difficult to change your nationality. Getting rid of it completely is not an option either - anyone who destroys their passport is liable to prosecution. One thing is clear: which nationality you have is not a matter of free will, but pure chance. It is an expression of the fact that you are subordinate to a state power that certifies that you “belong to it”. This state power is territorially limited and defines the rights and obligations to which the citizens of this state must adhere.

Having rights means receiving permission to do something. However, this permission is also clearly limited, so that each right also defines the associated restrictions. The citizens of a state have no choice as to whether or not they want to abide by the applicable laws. This is because the state enforces the law with physical force in the form of the police and military if necessary. It is precisely this, namely legislation and the compulsion to submit to it, that constitutes the relationship of rule between state and citizen.

What do the humans who are subject to this state have in common? It is important to understand that no nationality arises from culture, common language or other customs. It arises solely from the fact that humans are subject to the same rule. Now these humans, who have been made citizens, have to live their lives together and yet against each other in competition established by the state.

This competition arises from the guarantee of private property. People who already have property in the form of money can use it to make other people work for them and thus further increase their property. Those who have no property are dependent on the former employing them in order to get their money to survive. This is how the social characters of employer and employee come into the world. And both pursue fundamentally opposing interests: For the employer, the pay cannot be low enough and the working hours cannot be long enough. For the employee, the reverse is true: his interest is the highest possible wage with the shortest possible working hours. The situation is similar between the tenant and the landlord: The most affordable housing possible on the one hand, against the highest possible return on investment on the other. So worker and capitalist, landlord and tenant, etc. are in a relationship in which the other’s loss is their own gain and at the same time both are dependent on each other. The amount at which the wage or rent is ultimately set is a question of power. It is answered by the extent to which both sides allow themselves to be blackmailed by their dependence on the other. Where should be the togetherness here?

The conflicts of interest are seemingly resolved by various laws, such as tenancy law, labor law, etc. If, for example, too high rents, too low wages or the like arise as a result of the question of power, the state takes on these problems in order to regulate them better. However, it does not do this in order to eliminate them, but only to maintain the prevailing conditions, which produce the problems in the first place, in the long term. We all know which side of the conflict systematically loses out: where the state wants to assert itself as an attractive business location in the international competition between states, it is clear that it wants profitable companies on its territory. And, as we have seen, the profit of the company is always necessarily linked to the harm of the people it employs. It is therefore only logical that the majority of people have to deal with low wages, long working hours and rising rents in the long term.

Despite these conflicting interests, however, many of the individuals subsumed under a sovereign state power actually seek their identity in obeying this power and the law enacted by this power, as if the interests of this state were the same as their own interests. If the state is doing well, according to the appropriate ideology, then I as an individual am also doing well. But there is no causality here. National wealth is created precisely through the exploitation of the working population. If this national wealth does not come about, they certainly do not benefit from it. Either way, they bear the costs of the nation’s success.

Through this achievement of connecting with the interests of the state, this group of people becomes a people. And the state does a lot to make its citizens think of the national whole: be it sporting events where you can cheer on the athletes of “your” country, be it national myths and holidays, be it elections and votes under the slogan “you can have a say” - a “we-feeling” is invoked everywhere. A “we” in which citizens subordinate their interests to those of the nation. This means that, at best, they appear as interchangeable variables and, at worst, as cannon fodder for the good of the nation.

The transition from simple participation in a society organized by the state to love of one’s fatherland is of course no accident. In a society in which people have to compete against each other, opposing interest groups, e.g. employees and employers, need the state to ensure that the hacking and slashing moves along the intended lines. So most people find a superior supervisory power quite useful, which ensures that their interests are not harmed any more than is “just the way it should be”. It is precisely this common ground that allows them to overlook different interests and means and unites them as a people. In the fact that people want this political power together, because they need it as winners and losers (!) in the capitalist long term, they recognize themselves as “people’s comrades”.

Once you have accepted this “comradeship” and found an affirmative basic attitude towards the state, it is only logical to direct any criticism of the grievances you encounter in everyday life to the representatives of the nation. After all, they come into office promising to solve the people’s problems. However, if these promises are not fulfilled, as is so often the case, people think that this is due to the person they have elected and not to the big picture. There is no critical examination of the purpose of state rule and the relations of production it establishes. Instead, at the next election, all hope is placed in another party or another politician who is now supposed to better represent the interests of oneself and the nation. So it comes as no surprise when, after so many disappointments, far-right parties gain momentum again, seeing themselves as the best stewards of the nation and now wanting to “make this nation great again” by any means necessary. We are all aware of what this looks like: a strict calculation of how useful a person is for the good of the nation, in which migrants inevitably lose out and have to suffer.

Moreover, the hostile attitude towards everything foreign is merely the logical continuation of love for one’s own nation. Where there is a common “we”, it is clear that everyone outside the national borders does not belong. And because the states are also in competition with each other, the well-behaved Swiss citizen also sees the Chinese or the Eritrean as potential opponents who stand in the way of his own nation’s well-being. And therefore also what he “actually deserves” as a Swiss citizen. He declares the problems and goals of the state to be his own and identifies fully with them. The citizen takes a partisan stance for the success of “his” nation and accepts it as the condition for his own private advantage. And thus commits a serious mistake.

The well-behaved citizen sees himself as a person entitled to participate in the local market economy with a legitimate claim to services provided by the state. And he makes a conscience of every state service for foreigners and asks himself whether they deserve similar treatment from the state as he receives. After all, as a citizen of the state, he is entitled to recognition from the state and “the others” are not. The good nationalist interprets every pathetic concession made by the state to its foreigners as a violation of a privilege to which he is entitled as a representative of statehood here. This is how a consciousness of “I am the master of the house” develops, with which citizens, in addition to public violence, use private violence against all those who “do not belong”.

We don’t find it very convincing to simply find this nationalism a bit silly and just be against it because that’s what you do as a politically “leftist” person. Just as little as simply calling for solidarity with people who experience discrimination on a daily basis without tackling the reasons for it. It can be seen that love of the nation is not “just” a positive reference to the state, which is actually quite good in contrast to the staunch Nazi with his hatred of everything “foreign”. As soon as you discover a “we” in your nation, it is clear that “everyone else” does not belong there. This positive reference to the state as such objectively contradicts one’s own interests: as long as one is excluded from productive property - like most of us - and has to chase after wage labor on a daily basis, one remains a victim in this society. Taking up a position for the nation is a shot in the own knee.

Therefore, the fight does not begin with moral indignation at the rise of neo-Nazis. It is not just racist ideas that are responsible for the thousands of dead refugees in the Mediterranean, but the basic principle of freedom of property and the consequences that follow from it. The same applies to our own predicament. Neither the foreigners nor the Nazis are responsible for this: the cause lies in the market economy, which produces billions of losers every day and causes lasting psychological and physical damage to people! Nationalism does not begin with hatred of foreigners, but much earlier. It is the normal and common way of thinking of every citizen.

If one is seriously disturbed by the fact that racism and xenophobia have “become socially acceptable again” all over the world, that fascists are increasingly roaming the streets and parliaments and advocating the unity of people and state, that there are attacks against all those who are perceived as disturbing in nationalist thinking, then one must take action against this nationalist thinking with the criticism we have listed. If you think about satisfying your own needs and don’t just want to appear as an interchangeable variable of an employer, you are better advised to stand up for a society in which no state authority sorts people in their interests and either throws them into the competition on the domestic labor market or then throws them out of Europe.

Namely, in such a society there is no longer any room for nations and racism. Where the majority of people are no longer excluded from the means of production and thus the goods of their daily needs through private property, there is no need for a state that maintains this relationship by force. To be against racism must therefore mean fighting for a different social order in which the needs of all people are at the center. 

Today is May Day, which many people regard as a public holiday - but we certainly don’t celebrate! The situation of the working population gives us no reason to do so. We don’t want to take a positive stance towards a state that is responsible for us standing here every May Day and saying the same thing. And for the fact that we have to defend ourselves year in, year out against all kinds of harm. Instead, we want to fight for us all to realize that this social order stands and falls with our participation! And that people who happen to have been born on the other side of the border and who are in the same situation as us have much more in common with us than the Swiss entrepreneurs whose profits we have to work for every day. So let’s become aware together of what we have to defend ourselves against. Let’s organize ourselves at work, in the neighbourhood, at school, among friends or elsewhere. Let’s acquire a criticism of the existing conditions, because only if we agree on what is wrong will we know what is worth fighting for. A movement that really wants sustainable improvements must be a united movement of the masses. Let us unite the many dissatisfactions so that we are able to overcome this social order and create a new one. Against exploitation and racism. Against the state and capital. For a better life for all!

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We are at the end and would like to talk quickly about the Partenza group. We are a group of political people from Thun and the surrounding area. We want to make a contribution to connecting people who are bothered by their living conditions and to adopt a common criticism. We currently organize two different events: on the one hand, a monthly jour fixe in which we discuss current events in the world and try to explain and classify them. On the other hand, we devote ourselves to a political, social or economic topic in more detail, also once a month. The basis for this is usually a book, a lecture or something similar.

All our events are open to the public and the topics discussed are determined on an ongoing basis by the participants. We are always happy to see new politically interested people at our events. You can also check out our website. On partenza.org you will find everything else about what is currently going on with us. If you are interested, you can also sign up for the mailing list there and you will receive our newsletter, in which we inform you about our current events. If you have any questions, or if you disagree with the content of our speech, please feel free to contact us now or at one of our events. We are always happy to critically discuss our arguments.

Thank you very much for your attention!