– N. Ribar –
One of the common ways of referring to the nation and the actions committed in its name by the citizens who constitute that nation is to use the pronoun “we.” This does not necessarily discriminate; very often, people who are in opposition to whatever action they are discussing will ask: “Why are we doing this?” And of course, those who either support the ruling order or are ambivalent refer to what “we” did at some point, or refer to another nation’s interactions with our own nation to be them doing something to us.
Recently a progressive person I have known for a long time posed a question to me like this: “Why are we funding Zelensky? This man is responsible for mass deaths of his own people, refuses to come to a peace Russia has offered since day one, has effectively proclaimed himself indefinite Tsar by suspending elections unless the West gives him more money and threatens the people in the Western countries if they do not maintain a sufficient level of ‘aid.’ Yet we are sending billions.” The essence here is very fair, despite the hysterical reaction the state and the monopoly press would have. The point is one I, along with increasingly growing numbers of people, happen to share. But for our purposes, what is important is the use of “we.”
I often think about how many people have sat down and thought about what they are saying. It is not so trivial or benign that it does not warrant being thought through. But perhaps this is the issue — it is taken as a given. To use “we” to refer to the actions of the state and ruling class is actually a very meaningful choice of language. It is the language of associating oneself not with these actions necessarily but certainly with the state and ruling class. In other words, it is identifying with the state. Using “we” signifies that there is some sort of common interest between the action you are describing on the one hand, and those partaking in the action on the other. To use an everyday example, a student would use “we” to refer to a group of students who are working on a project — “this is what we have to do,” and so on. This group has a common interest in finishing the project because it will benefit their final mark.
But what common interests do the vast majority of people who use this language have with the state? The Canadian state is one of the ruling capitalist class, the bourgeoisie. Its interest is in plundering the maximum amount of people for the maximum amount of time in order to reap superprofits. Its interest is to keep the people marginalized and the political process anachronistic. Its interest is to destroy human productive powers which are beyond the limits of what the private appropriation of its products can harness, throwing back society to medievalism in a vain attempt to halt the wheel of progress. Internationally, this interest manifests itself in capital controlling what it can, and what it cannot control it destroys.
The language of “we” in this sense is most prominently used in the U.S. Constitution, which begins with the words “we the people.” Today, these words are recited by both left and right in more than one country to speak in the name of the entire society. Even in studying history, these words are split from their meaning and their purpose in that document. What is omitted here is that the founding fathers of the U.S. were not referring to the entire society. When they wrote “we the people” they actually meant “we men of property” — this use of “we” was to defend private property, and specifically its ruling organ, the state. It is often repeated that the only people who could vote were men of property, but what is stated less is that this was the founding principle of the United States, and all of its founding documents referred to the interests of that group of people. At that time, it was not even referring to all men who opposed British colonial rule. However, in today’s age of universal franchise, it gives a tiny sliver of legitimacy to self-serving cartel parties to act as if “we” in this sense is referring to the entire society, all of us are “we the people.” To show how far this fiction goes, it only needs to be stated that there is a Netflix children’s program about Obama’s presidency entitled We the People. One must ask the question: Is this “we the people” that is being taught to children the one that wiped Libya off the map, or is it the “we the people” who carried out colonial occupation and terror against Afghanistan? The absurdity of the U.S. “we” reveals itself — it serves as disinformation to disorient the people and identify themselves with the rulers.
It could also be interpreted that “we” means only common action — that is, that even though individuals and collectives have different interests, what is being described is a joint action of the two parties. But neither does this bring us any closer to the truth. Using “we” in this sense is very different. To illustrate using another everyday example, say you are getting exercise in the park with friends — if one friend doesn’t want to because of poor health but still goes anyway, you could say “we” including those who didn’t want to go. That is, those who didn’t want to go still decided to go, even though it was not in their interests. What we are dealing with here is very different because to use “we” to describe common action necessitates that all parties committed the act. If a few people within a group decide to commit a theft in the name of the entire group, you cannot reasonably use this “we” for all members of the group, even if it was done in their name.
The point I am making is that “we” is decision-making power. To speak as a “we” means that you are recognizing that this “we” has decided on what you are going to say. In present society, decision-making power is not vested in the people but almost exclusively at the executive level. Even the monarchy plays its role in deciding matters of concern but the people are left out of the equation. The rulers select who can run in the political parties which get all the funding and media coverage, and then once elected not even those members of parliament can meaningfully take action because everything has already been decided behind closed doors by the executive. It is well-known in bourgeois countries that the parliament is a talk-shop, a rubber stamp, and not a place for any meaningful political discussion. So never mind your role as citizens, which is to be nothing more than mere voting cattle every four years — your outlook marginalized, your interests stepped on and your society depoliticized.
To speak as a “we” in regards to a matter in which you were allowed no input in the first place, is nonsensical, a contradiction in terms. How can you say “we” are funding Zelensky and the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine? Who made those decisions? Nobody was even asked it as a question, it was simply imposed. The rulers, in their naivety, simply took it for granted. There was no politics of any sort, only dictate in following what the U.S. was doing. And the argument they have made up after the fact is that if you don’t agree, you’re “silencing Ukrainian voices,” are a “Putin propagandist” and need to “check your privilege.”
This “we” has nothing in common with the above assertions that we are undertaking a common action because nothing was decided by the people. However, if “we” is powerful in that sense, so are “we,” “us” and “our” powerful in terms of the people laying our claims on society. Of course, for the opposite reason. “We,” “us” and “our” are in fact points of struggle through which to wage the battle of democracy. These words are how we make demands both as collectives, and how individuals make demands as social beings. For example, when it was a big scandal with U.S. border police putting children in cages several years ago, it was nurses in El Paso who said “Do Not Do This in Our Name, Do Not Do This in Our Community.” They did not simply say “what we are doing is so wrong, the community should oppose it.” They were using “our” in asserting their right to be, making demands for the entire society. It did not matter to them that what was being done was in their name, i.e. “we the people” of the United States. They were using “we,” “us” and “our” to actually refer to the people, not the rulers and what they had imposed on that community.
That is how the people, the oppressed masses, assert “we” — not in some aclass or amorphous sense but by speaking in our own name and not letting anyone else speak for us. The problem we take up for solution is one of vesting sovereignty in ourselves, with the working class constituting itself the nation. Until such a time, the people will remain marginalized from decisions and there can be no “we” to speak of in relation to these decisions.