GenZhouArchive

u/Means-of-production - originally from r/GenZhou
Edit: part 2 here.

I left a comment on r/GenZedong regarding the question of "Patriotic Socialism", in particular, the decision by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) to exclude those that choose to parrot this particular talking point. Discussing the decision of the CPUSA is not worth conversation. But talking about the wider question of how Patriotism fits into the Socialist movement as a whole is. I am an Australian Communist, and consider myself to be something of a "Left-Nationalist".

First, a breakdown of the basic theory of "Patriotic Socialism":

In their video, "Socialist Patriotism: America vs. America", the webcast Infrared makes the following points:

• The tendency of some socialists to call for the destruction of America as a whole - the "Burn it all down" approach - is a non-Marxist one, and, in fact, serves the position of alienating the working class from Communism.
• The reason for this is that working class people are deeply patriotic and by denouncing something they hold dear they are in effect denouncing the working class.
• Patriotism has been apart of Socialist nations and movements since their inception - in particular, they cite the Warsaw pact and Lenin's "Revolutionary Defeatism" in the first world war to rally the working class to revolution.
• The United States of America began as a bold and just project as one of the first democracies in the world, and, carrying the legacy of the working class that built the USA, has deep and longstanding democratic and revolutionary proletarian national traditions that must be protected and encouraged.
• To denounce the US, therefore, and call for its destruction, is not only detrimental to the Communist movement in America, but it serves the forces of reaction and anti-communism as a liberal stance.

These positions somehow reach the conclusion that to be patriotic in the USA is to be revolutionary. This seems like a contradiction at face value, ^((because it is),) seeing as the USA is a bourgeois country, perhaps the most bourgeois and imperialist nation on earth. It oppresses the most people, it holds the most nations hostage, it brutalises and slaughters the most people. The individual points by themselves are not completely unsound, though the conclusion flies directly in the face of the historical and current material realities faced by the United States.

The main problem with this take is that it is dogmatic, it takes Marxist theory at face value and slaps it straight on to the USA and expects it to translate well - it does not.

1.

Their first point is that the "Burn it all down" approach is counter-revolutionary as it alienates the working class. This point is not entirely incorrect. To denounce nationalism completely is indeed counterrevolutionary and goes against why we fight for Communism in the first place - because we wish to see our communities, our families, friends and nation as a whole to succeed and prosper. We want our homelands to be free and enriched the fruits of its labour, we want to have a home to fight for and defend - be it the whole national population or even just our hometown. We are attached to these things naturally. To be detached from such things is to detach yourself from human society as a whole. Nationalism is a tool that can be used for oppression or liberation, we as Communists use it for the latter - the movements in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos; Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia and many others carried a fundamentally Nationalist character. The Soviet Union encouraged socialist nationalism and pride in its country, during the great patriotic war nationalism was used as a rallying cry to unite the people against an external invader.

It is not worth speaking of the patriotism of the warsaw pact as mentioned in the video. Such tactics were used to unite the people in defending socialism that had already been established. The USA is not a socialist country. Therefore, attempting to apply warsaw pact-style patriotism to the USA is futile.

This is the first instance where Infrared discard Historical Materialism to make their theory fit to the USA. All examples I have listed used Patriotism as a rallying cry to unite the people in the face of an opposing invader, agents of foreign capital seeking to plunder nations and export capital from any such place. The Bolsheviks united the USSR in various ways, the most prominent method was destroying the people's will to fight the Germans and recognising the Tsar as their real enemy - this strategy of Revolutionary defeatism was incredibly specific to the material conditions at the time - a point we will return to later. Hoxha united Albania against the Italians and the Nazis, Tito united Yugoslavia against the Nazi invaders as well; in Bulgaria, the fatherland front - perhaps the most patriotic possible name for Communist organisation - was rallying against first the pro-Axis Tsar Boris III, seen as a weak figure who served Hitler rather than Bulgaria, and then the blatantly Axis-controlled government of Dobri Bozhilov, and the Chinese struggle against Japan and then the US-controlled Kuomintang, and the many anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and so on. Anti-Imperialism is a core part of the Marxist-Leninist struggle, as Imperialism is the highest stage of Capitalism, and as such Anti-Imperialism is the highest stage of class struggle. However, the United States is not subject to the whims of any foreign power, nor is it locked in a devastating and unpopular bourgeois war against a country similar to it - the USA is not fighting another liberal-bourgeois democratic republic, like France or the Russian Federation. There is no widescale hunger or extrajudicial law in place because of a war. The USA is decaying and collapsing as we speak due to its own internal contradictions and Capitalism itself, not because of imperialist or colonial subjugation. Material conditions in the USA and its position as a world imperialist power make this point of attempting to apply 20th century Revolutionary and Socialist Russian tactics to 21st century Capitalist America incoherent and wrong.

2.

Second, they make the point that denouncing the USA means alienating the workers, since a vast majority of the working class is not caught up in all the up-to-date goings on of breadtube and identity politics, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and so on. This is partially correct, but again, erroneous in nature.

Infrared appears to forget that much of the people who denounce the US are people targeted by the US. Indigenous Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian-Americans, and the like; all of whom have been targeted and actively attacked by the United States of America and its institutions. Is it not correct for them to denounce the United States? Is it not justified for them to hate their oppressor? Not to mention the question of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, American territories in the pacific and Alaska as well, all of which are occupied territories the US has no business in being - and most blatantly of all, the question of Indigenous Americans, who are perhaps the first victims of US aggression and Imperialism. Are these individuals meant to simply roll over, betray the interests of their communities and groups, and simply accept the United States as their Government? According to Infrared, yes!

They justify their argument with this: that the cultural traditions and institutions of the United States, the traditions of the founding fathers laid out in the constitution of the United States, that of Liberty, Democracy and Freedom, justify this and place the United States as a head above all other nations as an exceptional nation with cultural traditions that go beyond racial and national boundaries. They also justify the occupation of indigenous land with the point that programs such as landback are not in the primary concern or interest of the indigenous populations of America, and that Communists should instead focus on Land Reform, and other such programs aimed at aiding the material needs of the Indigenous population.

This should reveal itself as nothing short of National Chauvinism. It asks imperialised groups and communities to forget the struggles they fought so hard to win, to ignore past atrocities and simply accept the United States and look to its glamorous side of Freedom and Democracy, arguing that the modern American worker has nothing to do with the struggles of the past, that no modern American worker is a coloniser, or segregationist, or the like. This take could not be any more tone deaf to the conditions of the present USA! It blatantly ignores the fact that racism, de facto segregation and colonialism are still very much alive and present in the USA today! More than that, the American Revolution, while indeed for a time a source of inspiration for revolutionaries around the world, and was indeed a democratic revolution, was nonetheless a Bourgeois revolution carried out by the Bourgeoisie for their own class interests, and has by no accounts any influence on modern American revolutionary politics. It was a liberal-bourgeois revolution. Any point made after this is nothing more than American exceptionalism and chauvinism. The United States is not any more special than states such as Italy, Britain, Spain, Mexico, France or any other nation for their "Democracy".

While it is true that the average American worker is by no means a coloniser, that does not discount the fact that colonialism happened and had disastrous and long-reaching effects on the United States and its indigenous peoples. These atrocious crimes cannot be swept under the rug because "it happened x amount of years ago," especially when it is still affecting indigenous communities today. This white-centric viewpoint is wholly un-Marxist and directly opposed to the principle of National self-determination, a principle we as upholders of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin hold dear! What revolution in a colonial state can be made without the participation of colonised peoples? Were they not the first architects of democracy on that continent? Did your sacred Benjamin Franklin not admit the idea for a congress was taken directly from Indigenous American confederation? The impudence!

3.

Finally, the crux of their argument appears to rest on the fact that working class people in the USA are deeply patriotic and to denounce the USA is to denounce them, and that the USA has been distorted into this evil empire rather than the good and wholesome republic it was meant to be.

^(Bitch your country was literally founded by slaveowner colonisers get the fuck outta here-)

This take, again, ignores historical materialism. The USA was not founded by good and wholly firm believers in democracy, it was founded by slaveowners. There is no other path of development it could have taken. It is built on stolen land and upon the blood of millions of murdered souls, at home and abroad. The USA is host to the most comprehensive propaganda and indoctrination apparatus in history, it is no wonder that millions of Americans blindly believe whatever history they are taught and fervently oppose and attempt to teach the truth. Opposition to Critical Race Theory is extremely telling, that the United States has a history so pathologically evil that its' leaders attempt to ban its teaching. There is no easy way around this, and Infrared's refusal to acknowledge the full scope of US imperialism and genocide, refusal to associate the US's criminality with the US itself speaks of either ignorance, apathy for the international proletariat, or a defeatism in their refusal to confront these crimes. Rather than reveal the truth, they would rather continue to peddle a dead lie not even the workers themselves believe in anymore. There is no American Dream. There was never Liberty or Democracy, nor freedom and justice for all. Of course, there will always be hardliners who follow such fantastic tales to the end, but the fundamental error of Infrared's theory that denouncing the US will alienate the workers brainwashed by the US propaganda machine is their inability to detach the United States from America.

When the Russian empire was retreating on all fronts in a bloody Bourgeois war that was wholly unpopular with the people, Lenin offered an alternative, a new "Russia" that served the workers - but, importantly, as we Communists should note - a "Russia" that wasn't even Russia!

Was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at all comparable to the Russian Empire? not in the slightest! We have a tendency to view the USSR as "Soviet Russia," but this is incorrect. Russia composed only one part of the Soviet Union. It was fifteen seperate republics and countless oblasts and autonomous regions that gave voice to the hundreds, thousands of different cultures within the former Russian empire. Its most famous leader was not even Russian!

This is an incredibly important fact that Infrared seems to completely disregard. The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were not the same, in more ways than just economically. The USSR gave for the first time self-governance for the people of Belarus and the Caucasus, Central Asia and the far-east, which for centuries had been oppressed under the jackboot of the Tsardom in Moscow. Now, they had a say in not only how their lands were governed, but in how the entire Union was run, too! The entire system and institutions of the old Russian Empire were bulldozed and cast into the fire, the state machinery seized and converted for proletarian use. From the outside, it appeared only the flag and the Tsar had changed, but this could not be farther from the truth.

When a revolution occurs in America, it must take on this character. Lenin did not salute the soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army, he did not acknowledge Peter the Great or Alexander I as grand Russian heroes to be emulated. He educated workers to denounce the Tsar themselves, and to dream and fight for a new and equal society in Russia, not a new form of Russia itself!

American communists must now understand that the United States of America, as a grand project in Bourgeois democracy, has run its course, and must be swept aside to make way for a Socialist replacement. They must think beyond the USA and think back to the core of America, to its people, and to its land. Nations rise and fall but land remains, and so does history. Honour blair mountain and mourn the trail of tears, but denounce the bastards that did it. I do not believe that the United States of America would ever survive a Communist revolution - the national question, asked and answered by our great Comrade Stalin, forbids it. Too much has been done to ever redeem the cult of washington. It is another phase in history, and American Communists must think beyond the United States and aim to create a new Socialist land in North America. The Confederates were capable of creating a nation in America that was not the USA. Communists should be able to do better than that. It is pointless to hypothesise about what a socialist America would look like, whether it would hold the same territorial reach as the current USA, or be split into different pieces. That question depends entirely on the revolutionary situation that occurs when the class war takes on a civil character.

In Summary:

Infrared is wrong because they ignore the historical materialist conditions of America's past and present, and frequently ignore or brush over the struggles of the oppressed peoples within its borders that have been directly oppressed and persecuted by Washington. They are chauvinistic in this belief that those who have been oppressed by Washington should betray the interests of themselves and their people in favour of some long-dead American Dream.

They refuse to attempt to educate the working class of the potential for a newer, better America beyond the USA. They would rather roll over and play along with the current bourgeois beliefs of the working class.

While Nationalism is an important part in the Communist revolution, even in colonial states, "Socialist Patriotism" is nothing but national chauvinism and American exceptionalism disguised as the patriotism of the old.

Commissar

Sydney, Australia, 2021