Quotes On The Need For Socialist Patriotism - Lemmygrad
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Here are a collection of quotes which show the need for Socialist Patriotism and how Communists are patriotic. …

Part of This Series of Posts:

Recently we have seen anti-patriotic ‘socialists’ refer to ‘patriotic socialism’ as if it is a separate distinct ideology. However this is a farce, the truth is that there is no socialism that is not patriotic. Just as in the same way we see people identify as ‘democratic socialists’ despite there being no socialism that is anti-democratic. What is real is socialist patriotism, which is a core socialist value.

It is obvious to Communists all over the world throughout history and to this day that to be a Communist is inextricably linked with Patriotism for one’s people, one’s country, one’s culture and the progressive history of those who have come before them and struggled for a better world.

With this compilation of quotes I have very decisively shown this.

Here is a general outline of other resources on this topic.

To any self-declared ‘Communist’ who sees this and still holds an anti-patriotic line you either are oblivious to reality and our history or else you are a federal agent. Either way you should be treated as a subverter who does not want us to win. The feds spent almost the entire 20th Century trying to smear us Communists as Un-American with McCarthyism and now you want to fall in line with and pigeon-hole yourself into their caricature of us? Taking a national nihilist stance would effectively snooker us from having any chance at reaching the masses.

It is clear that the pro-patriotism side of the argument are right to any Communist outside of America and the anti-patriots have no ground to stand on except with strawmen such as patriots supporting imperialism despite Communists being the most anti-imperialist or it not being compatible with the national question when Communists have always advocated for the self-determination of native peoples.

From an outside perspective it reflects very badly on American Communists that this was even a debate. It shows the infantile nature and petty bourgeois radicalism present within Communist circles in the United States and shows that a lot of work has to be done towards building a mass party which can win over the working masses and take power. The rest of the world needs American Communists to take power, the boot of American imperialism can only be freed from the neck of the world when the Communist party wins the hearts and minds of the masses and from there victory can only be assured. However this can never happen while you dismiss the masses as ‘reactionary’ and ‘settlers’ or refer to the landmass that is materially known to millions of people as America, as ‘Turtle Island’.

If you are not patriotic for something you are not a Communist. You are liberal with a red mask who has a calvinistic depraved moralistic worldview. Now it is understandable if Native American or Black people don’t support the American flag, but the vast vast majority of Americans identify strongly with the American flag and Communists support the self determination of Native American tribes as per the National Question as well as for the Black Belt if they so please.

There is no contradiction between patriotism and support of the national question and the nationalism of the oppressed. There is no contradiction between patriotism and internationalism. There is no contradiction between patriotism and anti-imperialism in fact anti-imperialists are the only real patriots. Revolutionary defeatism is the manifestation of patriotism Communists must take in America as the wars of aggression are hurting the people of the world and neither are they helping the American people, they are enriching a few parasites at the expense of the rest of the world. Us Marxist-Leninists want our paper tiger, reactionary, imperialist government to lose and we want its enemies to win, we also do anti-war action (and expose the truth) in the imperial core better than the so called Third-Worldists (who out of infantilism reject American workers). We do this while building up a revolutionary movement as we are actually genuine. Finally to state the obvious there is no contradiction between Communists and patriotism, in fact Communism is the most true expression of Patriotism and love for one’s own people.

The reason the patriotism debate is so important is because we defend China and other anti-imperialist states.

The U.S. is doing everything it can to demonise these states to the public because they know they are losing, it is because of this that in the coming years as we get out to the masses more and more that they will call Communists ‘Un-American’ for supporting anti-imperialist states. This is the reason that the feds are working overtime to make sure that the anti-patriotism side of the debate gets pushed as much as possible and it is because of this that we must distinguish ourselves from the slime and show how we are patriotic for the people and want to improve things and show how this is in no way contradictory to supporting anti-imperialist states. We cannot let the ruling class own the flag and let super-patriotism (jingoism and chauvinism, as opposed to proletarian patriotism), as Michael Parenti called it, dominate. We must desire to improve the conditions of the working masses and we must not let the ruling class control the narratives whether it be on what patriotism is or whether it is lies about anti-imperialist states.

To conclude, it is clear this should never have been a debate in the first place and now that this line has convincely won out it is clear that Americans must join the CPUSA and work towards improving it and building it into a mass party which can win over the masses. This is what the world needs the most!

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.mlM
    68·
    3 years ago

    There is no equating the “nationalism”/ patriotism of oppressed nations, and that of imperial core nations. Countries like the US, germany, and England all had “left” nationalists who supported their empires because of the benefits that imperialism brings to core-nation workers.

    As an ML, I can say without hesitation that Marx was 100% wrong on the american revolution as being a “anti-imperialist” movement. The key issue was westward expansion / conquest of Indian territories, which the US founding fathers wanted to continue, while the brits at that time opposed.

    From zak cope

    For Lenin, superprofits derived from imperialism allow the globally predominant bourgeoisie to pay inflated wages to sections of the (international) proletariat, who thus derive a material stake in preserving the capitalist system:

    In all the civilised, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob—either by colonial oppression or by financially extracting “gain” from formally independent weak countries—they rob a population many times larger than that of “their own” country. This is the economic factor that enables the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain super-profits, part of which is used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution.

    There are several pressing reasons why the haute bourgeoisie in command of the heights of the global capitalist economy pays its domestic working class super-wages, even where it is not forced to by militant trade-union struggle within the metropolis. Economically, the embourgeoisement of First World workers has provided oligopolies with the secure and thriving consumer markets necessary to capital’s expanded reproduction. Politically, the stability of pro-imperialist polities with a working-class majority is of paramount concern to cautious investors and their representatives in government. Militarily, a pliant and/or quiescent workforce furnishes both the national chauvinist personnel required to enforce global hegemony and a secure base from which to launch the subjugation of Third World territories. Finally, ideologically, the lifestyles and cultural mores enjoyed by most First World workers signifies to the Third World not what benefits imperialism brings, but what capitalist industrial development and parliamentary democracy alone can achieve.

    In receiving a share of superprofits, a sometimes fraught alliance is forged between workers and capitalists in the advanced nations. As far back as 1919, the First Congress of the Communist International (COMINTERN) adopted a resolution, agreed on by all of the major leaders of the world Communist movement of the time, which read:

    At the expense of the plundered colonial peoples capital corrupted its wage slaves, created a community of interest between the exploited and the exploiters as against the oppressed colonies—the yellow, black, and red colonial people—and chained the European and American working class to the imperialist “fatherland.”

    Advocates of imperialism understood very early on that imperialism would and could provide substantial and socially pacifying benefits to the working classes in imperialist countries. Cecil Rhodes, arch-racist mining magnate, industrialist and founder of the white-settler state of Rhodesia, famously understood British democracy as equaling imperialism plus social reform:

    I was in the West End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for “bread!” “bread!” and on the way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism … My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and the mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.