@SaddamHusein24 I think you have a small misunderstanding. The patriotism of actual Marxists, dare I say even in America, should be upheld - and I mean the patriotism of wanting your country to be destroyed and reborn as Lenin said, and to flourish for all the American people. The genuine belief that the American worker should be supported and treated fairly, regardless of minority grouping, and that they deserve better is a great thing!
The “patriotism” of “PatSocs” is vastly different. PatSocs are a very specific reactionary group with specific views here in the west. They believe that we should all hunker down and throw away the “liberal wokeness that is internationalism” and put trans people in gulgas since they’re “lib degenerates” and that’s what Stalin would have wanted. It’s reactionary position not based on any real material analysis, and as such, should be combated.
The “patriotism” of “PatSocs” is vastly different. PatSocs are a very specific reactionary group with specific views here in the west.
But thy the fuck everything the anti-“patsocs” did up to date was to make the word “patriotism” haram in almost every communist space despite knowing what you said in the first paragraph yourself?
At best it’s american exceptionalism in the wild ride, and at worst an op to sow mistrust between american communists and all others. And Lemmy is still infinite better than reddit where even Genzedong banned people for even attemping to discuss it.
Idk about those “specific reactionary group” “patsoc” guys, but if they are socialchauvinists, call them what they are. Will you start to call nazis “socialists” too, because it’s in the name?
The particular group of internet dweebs being critiqued call themselves patriotic socialists or socialist patriots. That’s just kinda how language works. You can’t change it any more than you can stop libs from calling MLs tankies.
Plus there’s more than one kind of chauvinism.
So i was right at first and it’s just an youtube circlejerk… No wonder nobody could answer me when i asked for something concrete, where are the names or the organizations. And to think i was banned for that from GenZedong (at that point it was not much loss but still).
Wait. Wait wait wait wait. Does this mean the most of internet spaces for english speaking ML’s abandon one of the most successful weapons in the arsenal of proletariat, weapon which has been used with great effect since Lenin first formulated the theory of socialism in one country, because of a fucking kneejerk reaction to an YOUTUBE CIRCLEJERK?!?
I mean the problem is a bit bigger than that, as these things always find a way to leak into real life once money gets involved. Their “movement” magnetically attracts reactionary (often white) guys who think converting MAGA chuds by acting like conservatives counts as “organizing” (they’re trying to get something going irl but who knows where it will go), and is more important than reigning in syndicalists and trade unionists to a communist party platform that won’t immediately split on gender/race/religion/sexuality lines (which itself is difficult, but that is how activism in the US tends to manifest). They also really hate queer people and complain about us constantly, which honestly just feels like punching down.
So at this point in time, patsoc is linguistically equivalent to “reactionary white ML” to most socialists. Within the sphere of regular ML communities and organizing, the reaction to this reaction are attempts to learn from theories ultimately based in Gramsci’s work on Hegemony — such that we don’t repeat the mistakes of past movements by ignoring the needs of sections of the proletariat some might consider ‘inconvenient’. Arguments about patsocs seem to bring this topic to the forefront of discussion (so I think it might have a positive effect in the end). We really don’t want to alienate comrades of any walk of life, but patsocs don’t really care who they alienate as long as you’re using the correct “anti-imperialist” language that somehow includes American patriotism, and your strategy centers the needs of middle class white traditionalists. They talk a good game about internationalism but I’ve seen people with less staunchly purist views making more attempts at communicating with global socialist movements.
Will you start to call nazis “socialists” too, because it’s in the name?
Doesn’t the word Nazi come from their name Nationalsozialist?
Yes it does. Were they socialist? No. That’s why we aren’t calling them that. “Patsoc” used for a socialchauvinist is a wretched word, entirely giving away very important concept and castrating yourself.
It’s fine if american communist don’t want to use that word, even if a little misguided, as Lenin explained, but don’t push that as general rule, it’s american exceptionalism and it’s defeatism.
Again, “national socialism” is excellent example in yet another way. Just look at the history of the world after WW2. how many systems that could be easily name “national socialism” were there, but we can’t name them like this, because this term is forever lost, even despite it means something completely unrelated to socialism. Don’t lose more ground, class war is going here too.
I’m just being pedantic, I think you have a good point with “social chauvinist”.
Im gonna plant a big gay flag into the skull of one of these clowns that has STFU emblazoned on it.
PatSocs are fucking traumatized by twitter and social media. Absolutely fucking traumatized that the internet enabled FOR ONCE in history the safety of anonymity for non whites to let whites know exactly what they think FOR ONCE.
Im so sick and tired of PatSocs crying that sassy trans folks are the reason the roads are turning to gravel and the fucking power is going out.
Just… Shut the fuck up. My god.
It’s the disrespect of assuming the “wokies” have no idea what the concept of relationships to labor are. It would be a fucking MIRACLE if they stopped presuming that non whites just wanna be non white liberal elites or that they dont know any better because they simply have unique concerns.
America is uniquely evil. End of discussion.
The UK is absolutely right there with America
Idk UK and France also make a strong case, USA is a bigger warhawk today, but in the past, they were even bigger assholes. Actually that’sa pretty tough call depending on what era
The UK, France, and Spain created the US, they killed the indigenous populations and established settler colonies. The current US is merely continuing the settler project that the UK, France, and Spain started. Canada is doing the same sans Spain. The US, after taking its own sovereignty then built its empire on European finance capital, European proletarians, European markets, European jurisprudence, and European slave trade, as well as inheriting the European enslavement of indigenous peoples.
Then the US, being better situated for growth, challenged Europe for the sole right to project power around the world and won, supplanting European war power with a war power projected by a European settler colony. That is to say, it’s not any different whether it’s the UK, France, Spain, or the US doing it, they are literally just passing the same baton around and around.
Just like we shouldn’t play the game of “most oppressed minority”, we also shouldn’t try to play the game of “most oppressive eurocentric hegemon”.
This is true. All of the West acts as bloc. I’d argue that the passing of the baton represents an evolution in form. The Europeans all participated in the greatest crime in history when the colonized the Americas, but the United States was manufactured from that atrocity. Europe existed as an organic people before capitalism and colonialism. The United States has nothing real before it’s conception. It’s a nation manufactured from genocide and slavery.
It’s a continuation of Europe but the very act of continuation is a transformation into something beyond what Europe was.
Think about it this way. The Europeans stated the slavery, but America created the very idea of whiteness. White Supremacy was born with the Birth of the Nation. It came to age in America as Eugenics before it went to infect Germany where it reached it’s adulthood as Nazism. When the Russians defeated it, America protected it. America brought it home. It integrated it into it’s fabric, making the post war American State.
When Europe attempted to flee and move beyond it, America overthrew their attempts. They put the Nazis back in charge. They put them in charge of all of Europe. They made NATO and gave the Nazi’s NATO.
This historical process is the American Historical Dialectic. It is uniquely evil.
America and France both fought the Vietnamese. Which one represented an evil so thourough as to make it unique with regard to the other?
I think that’s a good question. Does France have a My Lai incident or anything comparable to agent orange? Is it just a difference in scale?
Some of it is scale while other aspects hint at a difference in quality. As far as direct differences in quality, America had agent orange because it went out of it’s way to create it. America had operation Phoenix because it went out of it’s way to create an extra-legal arm of the state.
As far as difference in scale, at a certain magnitude difference of scale represents a difference in quality. Quantitative changes lead qualitative outcomes. People have their limits of what evil they are willing to do to each other. When those limits are removed that is a difference in quality. Mass murder of civilians, burning of villages of people alive, raping children in front of their parents. That represents a different kind of thing. I don’t think the French were willing to go there.
at a certain magnitude difference of scale represents a difference in quality.
I really like how you phrased this!
Thank-you!
Just re-saying my position, I personally could never bring myself to be a patriotic socialist, the American flag makes me nauseous, but I understand the pragmatic arguments, unfortunately the working class of America is incredibly reactionary and need to be suckered into communism by many different paths. There are many niches that need to be filled in this global class war, just like how I wouldn’t outright knock Frankfurt-esque communists drowning in academic jargon because their niche is to appeal to nerds. My only question for patsoc is: is it effective? Does it actually work converting conservatives et. al.? If yes, critical support. If not, toss it.
I also think a lot of patsoc characters are treated like dogshit unnecessarily. I think Maupin is unconvincing and uncharismatic in a lot of ways but the guy is not a bigot, his track record is nothing but activism.
I think that’s a fair take. “Does it work?” is a pretty good litmus test.
I’m not really interested enough in what Maupin has to say to look into him deeply, but the “proud patsoc” types like in the screenshot really make me sick.
“I love my country and I’m not ashamed” 🤢🤮
What radicalizes you is coming to terms with the true nature of your government. The patsoc’s are attempting to absorb you and defang domestic Marxism Leninism.
Love of country and national mythology breeds reformism. How will you seek to destroy the bourgeois state if you love it?
I’m not saying that patsoc’s aren’t ML. I’m saying that they aren’t going to be the true ML.
Marxism Leninism is internationalist. The only acceptable nationalism is one centered around the working class. The only acceptable history is a history centered around the working class. They don’t seem to want to address that history. They are more interested in taking the national myth as is.
If attempting to gain control of the bourgeois apparatus is a mistake. How much greater is the mistake of taking within us their national myth.
The United States is uniquely evil. It’s a part of larger context, but it is unique in it’s magnitude. It’s unique in that there is nothing real beyond it’s mythos. Other people existed before capitalism. They existed as an organic people. The United States was manufactured. The real organic people were all killed in a criminal history which is uniquely evil. The absolute whole slaughter genocide, enslavement, and exploitation of the Indians was in uniquely evil. That evil was so great as to change the quality of the West into something truly out of hell.
They say that rather than accepting this and fighting against it in a truly revolutionary act, we should instead whitewash it and attempt to be revolutionary under the superstructure of the bourgeoisie.
How can you be Marxist Leninist while saying that capitalism wasn’t so bad? What is the radicalizing motivation? Was love of country the radicalizing motivation behind the Black Panthers?
America is not a unique situation. France, UK, Germany(parts) and Belgium are all imperialist places that are also bullshit if you support them and their history. Notice that Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, Korea, these are places where Imperialists were putting the boot to the native populations. These people weren’t permitted patriotism because the Western imperialists whitewashed and erased the native culture over time. When these countries were able to finally liberate themselves, OF COURSE they were proud of their people and their country. They finally had a good reason to. You can’t have a legit reason to like the US unless you exploit people. There is some acceptance of LGBT people and minorities. But none of it makes a difference when you ally with Nazis and nations that are awful to LGBT. Any era in history, we were doing awful things that nobody should repeat. Slavery, internment camps, killing Union leaders and members, COINTELPRO, Literally anything the CIA has ever done or thought about doing.
Patsoc be like: Celebrates Independence Day🇺🇸🦅🗽
Is not independent
On Instagram my account was just fuck patsocs for a while because really fuck them, such a good example of dogmatism. They have never read a bit of theory. “We’re oppressed and have been as a nation lets liberate ourselves.” is not the same as “Our nation was the opresser and is built on white supremacy, lets ignore the national question.” READ FUCKING STALIN, unless you literally want a white only nation with some rights of racial minorities. “Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists,** social-patriots** and social-pacifists.” - Foundations of Leninism
Misconception going on in the comments: the U.S. is not ultra-conservative, its state is and its petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie and intelligentsia are. The working class is comprised mostly of progressive non-voters, it’s simply that they’re not represented whatsoever in the political goings-on in the nation, through suppression, gerrymandering, or a state-instilled nihilism. Most U.S. civilians support abortion, yet the state just made it illegal in many states. Most U.S. civilians support healthcare for all, yet we may never see it here, etc. etc. Most U.S. civilians are against war.
Idk, I sure see a fuck ton of people wearing Gruntwear type clothes, “infidel” t-shirts with Amerikkkan flag skulls, thin blue line prop, and people talking about turning whoever the convenient enemy at the time into a glass parking lot or whatever.
Remember that Trump, who openly said he would bring back torture, still got nearly half the votes cast. There are a fuck ton of reactionaries in this hellscape.
Idk where you are, but in the south and vast majority of rural areas, people openly physically attack poc like my spouse for simply being around.
I’ve spent a vast majority of my life in what could be considered the rural deep south (a town of about 300 people), and the rest of it in the rural midwest. I cannot pretend to speak for everywhere, obviously, it’s just my understanding of the U.S. in totality from things I’ve read and from uber-rurality from what I’ve experienced.
“Trump… got nearly half the votes cast.” Indeed he did. By a large margin from the petit bourgeoisie and big bourgeoisie, from small and large business owners, not from your average working joe or whatever like the media (liberal and conservative) likes to present. Remember as well, that he got half the votes cast. Most U.S. Americans do not vote. If the vote were between Clinton, Trump, and no-one by result of absentia, the result would have been no-one. Most U.S. Americans do not vote because they do not see any meaningful difference between the two parties, because they’ve been excluded from voting vis a vi draconian voting repression laws, or have been precluded by structural issues related to voting such as voting not being a national holiday, voting taking too long etc.
In my experience, and not to discount yours comrade, the uber-rural proletariat are ignorant and racist insofar as they like to use racial profanities in a non-directed way (as in to be edgy, to say things like “there are white n-words too” etc), and can be potentially swayed into acts of racist violence by locals with more power than them, like shop-owners and local officials; and these town officials and shop-owners, small landlords and well-off NEETS/retired elders are the ones you’ll likely see strutting about with AR-15s, tacticool gear, decked out F150s with confedo/U.S./don’t tread on me/Nazi flags billowing out the back, ready to assault anyone marginally different at a protest or assault a minority person on the street. Rural proletarians usually can’t afford these things, or afford the time to go out and harass people. In my experience, you’re way more likely to find the rural proletarian burdened by a crisis of meaning and one or two crippling drug addictions than overcome with a violently racist ideology, whereas for those with power within rural areas it’s likely to be vice versa.
This thread raises some interesting questions and offers some good answers. But there is a lot of confusion and it is not clear that people are arguing about the same thing.
The Problem
There is clearly no consensus definition of the following words:
- patriotism
- nationalism
- PatSoc
- patriotic socialism The clearest definitions for these words have come from those comments defending patriotism as Marxist.
I do not think we are arguing over nationalism as that question was answered a long time ago by e.g. Stalin and Lenin. Okay, their work may need updating, but updating means building on their legacy, which nobody is really trying to do here. The main references to nationalism are trying to:
- a. Argue that Marxists have an agreed notion of nationalism, which can be good in the periphery, and that this is what patriotism means (because e.g. in ex-colonies, it means liberation, etc); or
- b. Argue that Marxists have an agreed notion of nationalism, which may be bad in the imperial core, and that this is what patriotism means (e.g. because there it means homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, etc).
So the question is not:
- i. What do Marxists think of nationalism?
The question is:
- ii. Are patriotism, patriotic socialists, and PatSocs the same as nationalism and nationalists?
And
- iii. To what extent do these terms relate to sexuality, gender, race, colonialism, etc?
Only by answering (ii) can we reach common ground and engage with the same idea. We may then disagree about each others’ conclusions, but at least those conclusions will refer to the same idea.
Therefore it seems necessary to identify agreed definitions for these words. For example: Is PatSoc only relevant to the internet? If so, who gets to claim the label? People who identify by it? Or people who use it to classify their enemies?
Regardless, there is a more important question to answer first:
- iv. What is the class character of patriotism, PatSoc, patriotic socialism, and nationalism?
These words will have an abstract class character and a class character that is unique to each country. If we take an intersectional view of class and avoid class reductionism, we may partially answer (iii) at the same time.
Marx and Engels wrote of the class character of socialism in the Communist Manifesto. We must do the same for our subject.
What is the class character of US patriotism?
Zac Cope argues in The Wealth of (Some) Nations that the majority of workers in the global north are labour aristocrats – paid well enough to look the other way on the imperial question, whether petite bourgeois or ‘proletariat’. There’s a lot to say about whether this is true or whether it was true but is now changing.
J Sakai argues in Settlers that the ‘white proletariat’ in the Settler Colony is a myth. Again, we could argue over whether a white proletariat’ has since grown.
Michael Parenti, at least, argues the ruling class has long sought the ‘third worldisation’ of the global north. This statement accepts classes are fluid.
It is difficult to classify the US as mainly this it mainly that. It’s class composition is constantly changing. It also comprises many states with reasonably independent legislatures and different demographics.
The important point for our discussion is that any presentation of the US as mainly labour aristocratic or petite bourgeois seems to accept the vision of the US that is shown in the entertainment and news media – created by the US ruling class.
That is, white, middle class (whatever that means), reasonably well-off, suburbian, liberal, content with the idea of a homogenous US if not with the way that it is governed under the Republicans or Democrats, and the world’s defender of democracy. This vision also includes a one sided view of patriotism, which involves a stripey flag, militarism, and pledges of allegiance.
Is this what the US is? It certainly seems so when the US is viewed through the prism of entertainment and news media. It almost certainly seems so to the millions of people who have been in the receiving end of US ‘democracy’. It probably seems so to many in America, who are subjected to the same images as the rest of the world, but from another angle.
Is this what the US is from the inside? Maybe not.
(Apologies in advance for defining people as ‘not white’. I do not think it will come off as any less racist by trying to list and differentiate all the people who are not included in the ruling class white supremacist vision.)
To cite some (problematic) 2020 data (https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/2020-united-states-population-more-racially-ethnically-diverse-than-2010.html):
“The most prevalent racial or ethnic group for the United States was the White alone non-Hispanic population at 57.8%. This decreased from 63.7% in 2010.” “The Hispanic or Latino population was the second-largest racial or ethnic group, comprising 18.7% of the total population.” “The Black or African American alone non-Hispanic population was the third-largest group at 12.1%.”
This data is problematic because in trying to recognise ‘diversity’ it presupposes racial difference along biological lines. Still, the data indicates the US is not white.
Nor has the US ever been white.
It’s ruling class and white petite bourgeois segments think it is white. They are delusioned by white supremacism, and could not and cannot see the toil and suffering of indigenous Americans or slaves as part of the US.
To the ruling white supremacists, those workers are always somehow separate to ‘the US’. Unfortunately, this is a pervasive idea. To paraphrase Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class.
The above census data, showing a ‘decline’ in the white population, gives the impression that whites were once the majority. False.
At the beginning, the indigenous Americans were the majority. Afterwards, Africans and indigenous Americans were the majority, perhaps depending on where one draws state / city lines on old maps. At some point, the proportions turned.
What is the US?
Any revolutionary worth the name must be unified with all ‘minorities’, whether defined by class, race, gender, sexuality, etc. Together these people comprise the majority. The US is these people.
The US is not the cis-het white, males of the ruling class, whether depicted as a banker in a suit, a Proud Boy, a lone adventurer protected in a wagon circle, or a struggling, salt of the earth, and slightly racist rural lumpen.
Thus we have:
- The US defined by the people who live in it, who built it, who feed each other, and care for each other; and
- The US defined by its ruling class.
And there we may have the solution. Patriotism of (1) may be revolutionary. Patriotism of (2) is almost certainly reactionary. I don’t think anyone in this thread would disagree. Reply if you do; I’d like to know what I missed.
If this is correct, it is up to patriotic revolutionaries to decide on appropriate patriotic symbolism. This may mean abandoning the current flag or keeping it.
I imagine that any Marxist would hope the Stars and Stripes eventually go the same way as the Confederate flag. In the meantime, due to the prevalence of the ruling class notion of patriotism, there are likely many people who could be radicalised, but who also respect the flag. It seems a bit self-defeating to exclude these people from the revolution.
Remember, the majority is not cis-het, white, male, and middle class, but to my understanding, all have to praise the flag as children every school day, and must somewhat accept this white supremacist vision of the US. These ‘patriots’ might not lead the revolution, but if the flag brings them along?
Finally: PatSocs
Are PatSocs revolutionary Marxists? It’s beside the point, really, because the label is contested. People identify by it and others use it as a derogatory category. They could be, but they may not be. We would need a class analysis of any given person to decide. And we would first have to ensure that calling a person a PatSoc is not a category error.
Edit: formatting. Edit 2: formatting headings
What is the US?
This is where your analysis fails.
[Our two options are] The US defined by the people who live in it, who built it, who feed each other, and care for each other; [or] the US defined by its ruling class.
You are creating a false dichotomy rooted in an individualistic understanding of what a nation is. A nation is NOT merely a collection of the individuals in it. A nation is a system, it’s a power structure. We cannot analyze what the US is by looking solely at the people inside it. We must see it as a historically situated society. And as a historically situated society, America is a settler colony.
Any revolutionary worth the name must be unified with all ‘minorities’, whether defined by class, race, gender, sexuality, etc. Together these people comprise the majority. The US is these people.
Tuck and Yang in their piece “Decolonization is not a Metaphor” help us to understand how settler systems absorb “minorities” and integrate them into the colonial project. They explicitly analyze people who are kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in the US, as well their descendants, and show how these people, while certainly not white European bourgeois are never the less engaged in the colonial project because they have to be. Settlerism creates a system of pressures that, once an individual becomes a participant in that system, drive that individual’s interests. Settlers, therefore, represent an entire historical body politic that, regardless of minority status, have systemic interests that are in opposition to the national sovereignty of the indigenous people whose oppression is renewed every single moment the settler colony continues to exist.
A revolutionary socialist state must, of necessity, repress any factions that are opposed to the existence of that state. Therefore, a revolutionary socialist state driven by patriotism for a settler nation, must of necessity repress indigenous movements for national self-direction. This is a clear contradiction and I cannot state this emphatically enough:
THIS IS A CLEAR CONTRADICTION IN THE FORMULATION OF PATRIOTIC SOCIALISM IN AND OF SETTLER COLONIES
If we do not address this contradiction, it is clear that Patriotic Socialism in settler colonies are building a system with an internal contradiction that requires it to maintain the violent oppression of indigenous peoples. It is clear that Patriotic Socialism in settler colonies legitimize the settler colonial form of imperialism as a basis for national self-direction.
The implications of this are that a PatSoc revolutionary state in a settler colony will have the following potential outcomes:
- the complete eradication of indigenous peoples
- a failure of the state to counter-revolutionaries leveraging the contradiction of oppressed indigenous peoples
- a peaceful coexistence with oppressed indigenous peoples
The problem with number 3 is that there is so far no analysis that shows this is possible. Settler colonists have no recognized legitimate claim to national sovereignty. The power of settler colonists to engage in collaboration with indigenous peoples is based entirely on their power to oppress those indigenous peoples, the historical extermination of those peoples and their material society, and a centuries long unbroken chain of systemic oppression.
All analyses of this question have determined that the only non-contradictory path forward is full inversion of the power dynamic - national self-direction must be stripped from settler colonists, including ADOS, “minorities”, and other “non-white Europeans” and handed over entirely to indigenous peoples.
The PatSoc movements within settler colonies simply chooses to ignore this contradiction by assuming they can resolve it after they have power, that the most important thing is to get critical mass of the largest group of people (the settler working class) and establish the revolutionary state. Given the above 2 outcomes, this is clearly factually incorrect and the decision to ignore the contradiction is idealism.
There’s at least one more major error in your analysis.
The important point for our discussion is that any presentation of the US as mainly labour aristocratic or petite bourgeois seems to accept the vision of the US that is shown in the entertainment and news media – created by the US ruling class.
This is an absolute non-sequitur. It is not the case that the entertainment and news media is the cause of the analysis that leads to the understanding of the US as mainly labor aristocrats. You are incorrect that labor aristocracy is equivalent with the upper middle class PMC. Literally every worker in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, and the EU can be described as labor aristocracy. The reason for this is that every single person in these countries, regardless of class, benefits immensely from US hegemony, imperialism, and power projection.
Infrastructure, medicine, fuel, rare earth metals, pollution displacement (from minor to life threatening), plastics, cheap commodities, hot water… literally every aspect of everyday life, from public transportation to private car service, from McDonald’s meals to Michelin Star restaurants, from plastic food wrap to hypodermic needles to Funko Pops to cell phones… ALL of it, including their quantity, variety, availability, cost, utility, and relations between and among it all, ALL of it is predicated on global hegemony through power projection, currently channeled through the European settler colonial nation of the USA, a hegemony that was historically developed by European imperial powers like France, Spain, England, Portugal, and The Netherlands.
The analysis is not based on propaganda. The analysis is based on interests. And the interests of the labor aristocracy are in opposition to the interests of the proletariat of the Global South. When the US loses its hegemony over the world, the price of fuel will increase for Americans almost immediately. Literally every single person the US, regardless of class, will find that this is against their own material interests. And there’s nothing that can be done about it in less than 30 years, because every single residential community is built for cars and every single home is under-insulated and not constructed for passive temperature management. Converting everything to electric will take decades, and even then, doing so still requires access to cheap rare earth materials. When American global hegemony ends, the price of rare earth materials will immediately increase.
There is no escape from this analysis. ALL Americans, Canadians, and Europeans will suffer from the end of US hegemony. Every single one from top to bottom. And this is why the working class in America has been deemed to be Labor Aristocracy. Not because of sitcoms and TV dramas, but because of the material analysis of their interests and how those interests materially incentivize their collective action against the interests of the global proletariat.
Given this analysis, a Patriotic Socialist movement in the US runs the very real risk of becoming a National Socialist movement:
- It ignores the contradiction of oppression of indigenous peoples
- It ignores the contradiction of the integration of oppressed peoples into the settler project
- It ignores the contradiction between the interests of the labor aristocracy and the global proletariat
And given these three contradictions, the clear risk is that of the formation of a reactionary state, driven by the interests of the labor aristocracy, with local and global oppression rationalized by patriotism, armed with history’s largest military distributed in over 800 locations around the globe, with the entirety of Europe and NATO sharing in the interests of the Labor Aristocracy to maintain coercive hegemony.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. I appreciate that you have responded to my question. I don’t disagree with your conclusion, although you seem to have phrased this as if we are not on the same side, which is unfortunate.
Given the threats of bans and purges, there is not much room left to discuss and criticise. I feel that I can safely add and must add, before I am accused of being a ‘PatSoc’:
- Any movement that tries to erase Indigenous Americans or other colonised peoples in any sense must be resisted;
- On the one hand you assert the right of Indigenous Americans to sovereignty, and on the other hand you reject any form of patriotism within the US. Is this not a contradiction?
- There remains no agreed definition of ‘PatSoc’;
- I am not from the US;
- I was not trying to define ‘nation’;
- I was trying to synthesise the discussion in this thread to make sense of the arguments;
- There seems to be a real problem of US-centrism in the criticisms of patriotism – again, centred on the view of the US presented in the media as an homogenous bloc, which seems to deny that Indigenous Americans live within the US jurisdiction;
- I did not say that class is determined by media representation;
- I did not say that labour aristocracy = upper middle class;
- It seems impossible for people outside the US to comment on some issues without being pulled into a US-centric framework and criticised (impliedly or explicitly) for falling into one side or the other of a framework they are not necessarily part of; and
- Without agreed definitions most of us are still talking past one another.
On the one hand you assert the right of Indigenous Americans to sovereignty, and on the other hand you reject any form of patriotism within the US. Is this not a contradiction?
This is not a contradiction. America is derived from the name of an Italian explorer. The concept of indigenous peoples exists only in contrast to settler. For indigenous people to have sovereignty is not patriotism. There is no civic or cultural nationalism involved here. It is about power, not about ideology. Patriotism is an ideology, that is, it is a set of beliefs instantiated in the minds of a group of people such these beliefs guide their behavior. That is not what decolonization requires, decolonization only requires transference of power.
There remains no agreed definition of ‘PatSoc’
The definition I’m working with - socialism that uses cultural and civic nationalism as an aesthetic and as a framework for prioritizing and deprioritizing aspects of intersectionality.
There seems to be a real problem of US-centrism in the criticisms of patriotism
There’s a lot of reasons for this, but it’s not a problem of analysis but of the mechanics discourse. Patriotic Socialism is a problem everywhere. In settler colonies, especially USA, Canada, Australia, but also inclusive of ALL states that exist on “The Americas”, the problem of Patriotic Socialism runs into the problem of colonization. But the problem of Patriotic Socialism in non-colonial states shows up constantly because it deprioritizes intersectionality to the point of dismissing it as bourgeois ideology. When those types of claims are made, it’s a very clear step in the progression to violent repression of minorities. PatSocs the world over make the argument that we must not demand tolerance, but rather build a big tent and bring into the movement people who would vote in favor of violently oppressing marginalized communities. If it was just aesthetics, no one would have a problem with PatSocs. It’s not just aesthetics. It’s tactics. PatSocs consistently prioritize populist tactics that threaten the safety of marginalized communities because they put forth a theory of action that says larger numbers are more important than ending oppression of marginalized groups.
It’s not just US-centric crticisms, PatSocs are simply arguing that anti-patsoc arguments don’t apply to them if they don’t exist in a settler-colonial state. You can tell they’re disingenuous because they then turn around and argue in another debate that Israeli settlers in Palestine aren’t a problem because the settler colony will eventually dissolve from its own contradictions so in the meantime it’s fine for Palestinians to get mass murdered in the worlds largest open-air prison.
I did not say that labour aristocracy = upper middle class;
You said:
The important point for our discussion is that any presentation of the US as mainly labour aristocratic or petite bourgeois seems to accept the vision of the US that is shown in the entertainment and news media – created by the US ruling class.
I don’t think this is important for our discussion at all, because I think its factually incorrect and pure speculative tripe. Any presentation of the US as mainly labor aristocratic does not, in fact, accept the vision of entertainment and news media. If you think you’re arguing in good faith by latching on to my use of the words “upper middle class”, and then using that framing to completely erase how baseless your original claim here was, you need to re-examine how you engage in discourse.
It seems impossible for people outside the US to comment on some issues without being pulled into a US-centric framework and criticised
Decolonization is a euro-centric framework because Europeans did the colonization. Criticisms of European nationalism have deep roots that are connected to US nationalism because the US is a European colony. To say that Patriotic Socialism in Europe is somehow different that Patriotic Socialism in the US because the US is a settler colony is to ignore that fact that it is European patriotism that created and sustained the US. The critiques of US Patriotic Socialism traverse the ocean and come home to European socialists because the contradictions in Patriotic Socialism exist regardless of what continent you’re on. The demand of European PatSocs to never have to contend with the contradictions of Patriotic Socialism if the critique mentions settlerism is merely deflection and a claim to innocence to protect themselves from the very real criticism that Patriotic Socialism is 100% of the time used, in practice, to rationalize exclusion of existing marginalized communities.
Without agreed definitions most of us are still talking past one another.
It’s not merely definitions, it’s analysis. The people who feel like they are disagreeing on the definition of patriotic socialism are either people who have not engaged rigorously with the theory and historical and contemporary practice of Patriotic Socialism, or they are deliberately trying to obfuscate the analysis with a No True Scotsman fallacy.
😻 This is my favorite Lemmy comment.
In another thread I literally just got done quote-mining on the topic of racism inherent to patriotism itself, esp in the West, and how racist or labor aristocratic splits gave 20th century socialist movements the crumbles.
Wonderful comment comrade, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I was going to do my labor aristocracy post, but there’s no need.
I don’t think anyone in this thread would disagree.
Unfortunately, there are many that do. You basically say the same thing as me, that patriotism has class characteristics, and i already gathered a lot of denials of this in Lemmy, and at least 2 bans at reddit and a ban threat here. I don’t see this as a nonissue, since the “antipatriotism” accusation is and always was one of the major tactic of class enemies against us, and it was an effective one. While reversed in AES, served greatly to secure the people’s interests.
Again, i’m not even questioning the USA conditions, since i know it’s more complicated there, but the american exceptionalism being inevitably forced on everyone in such american-dominated internet space like here or especially reddit. That’s why i propose to stop using the word “patsoc” entirely, especially those are apparently just some youtube circlejerk, and start using the good old description of “socialchauvinists” since it’s cleare it what they apparently are (also, few threads later, still nobody could even narrow who are “they”, such nebulous group make it hard to even see entire issue as anything but a hot air)
This is good work.
Might I bring up that amongst the proles; you have those that see the stars and stripes the way most see the nazi flag. I unironically do. Usually when Im out in public, I get a sinister sense of danger when I see the American flag in certain contexts. Protests, rallies, vehicles with the flag flying on them such as pickup trucks, or in people’s yards with varying thin color line bullshit.
But you also have proles that sees the revolutionary potential that we were raised to believe in when seeing the stars and stripes. For many, the flag represents standing up to tyrants and bullies.
Then there is the question of what does it even mean to be patriotic as a revolutionary in America. What is patriotic in the American sense if you hope for and strive for a new society and country that is yet to exist?
Seems like a huge problem of aesthetics. But I honestly can not blame revolutionary folks in America for getting sekf defensive when presented with American trappings and being presented with an American historical narrative of revolution that has been a struggle AGAINST America itself. 🤷
Well put. I am similarly revulsed by ‘my’ flag.
Food for thought.
What was the GDR patriotic of?
Pretty much nothing that the old state stood for, right? They use “German” in a few things, obviously, but they had a different flag and system of state.
