first of all, it should be made clear that what appears on this blog should be considered not as isolated pieces, but in conversation with that which comes in contact with us, so what we develop here and there might not be written with an expository intention in mind, just comments, critiques, reflections.
having said this, here we will comment on some remarks made by Comrade Hassan in his dialectical materialist analysis of US patriotism and the question of nationalism made on Decolonized Buffalo’s podcast titled, "National liberation or US patriotism?"
this might seem like random Twitter beef, but these are actual political lines held by a majority of settlers organizing in the Left. it is important to make these positions known in order to demonstrate how it contradicts revolutionary organizing, so that any serious socialist may avoid falling into these movements which effectively stifle revolutionary momentum.
i. the principal contradiction.
in the podcast, Comrade Hassan discusses the history of US socialist organizing so we leave that discussion to him. here we are highlighting some of the points made and elaborating on them.
first, because we are materialist dialecticians, it should be noted that our categories are not fixed, that is, they are not immutable. at every moment, the contents are changing which is why contradictions arise theoretically, but they are continually sublated by the theoreticians and practitioners, the revolutionaries, as material conditions change.
parenthetically, the way we like to envision this is like so: for example, drawing shapes on a piece of paper without lifting the pen, without crossing lines, or drawing sharp corners, all the shapes that can be drawn with these properties can be “smoothly transformed” into a circle. in mathematics, in a topological setting, we say all these shapes are homeomorphic to the circle. the shape that is invariant under these transformations, the two-dimensional circle in the case of manifolds drawn on (embedded in) a sheet of paper, is the dialectical category: under different conditions, the circle appears differently (as a misshaped closed space) but is topologically still a circle. same for the signifier of the dialectical category.
anyway, we begin with the principal contradictions of our time. the principal contradictions are those contradictions which influence everything else happening in the world.
what is this contradiction today? in the past, during World War I, the principal contradiction was that between the Axis and the Allied powers. later, the principal contradiction became that contradiction between the US and USSR.
today, the principal contradiction is that contradiction between the Imperialist bloc (led by the US and includes Canada, Japan, Europe, and the consumer states of Australia, Isr*el, and Scandinavia) and the Global South, spearheaded by China, Cuba, and Venezuela.
the principal contradiction affects secondary contradictions. today this means that the situation between the Imperialist bloc and the Global South will influence the contradictions of racial struggle, proletarian feminist struggle, as well as the contradiction of neoliberals and their welfare state, and so on.
this is an important starting point because it frames how we, as materialist dialecticians, should analyze US patriotism.
it matters not how it’s identified, since with a dictionary definition, this would mean “love for one’s country,” which leads to reactionary slogans like “love my country but ashamed of my government.”
what matters is the relationship between the idea of US patriotism and its concrete application (i.e. how it is used by the US elites), and the global socialist movement.
ii. function of patriotism
the function of US patriotism is basically to form a wider ideology to get the US working class to support racism, xenophobia, imperialist wars, and erase the neo-colonialism that still happens to this day, externally in other countries like Colombia and Haiti, and internally, along the southern border of the US.
that is, the function of US patriotism is to maintain internal stability. and how is this achieved? through labor concessions: banning child labor, paying higher wages in terms of value-production relative to Global South workers, and women are given more freedom to operate and more upward social mobility, which is a massive concession.
basically, the US relies on this class alliance among domestic workers of various nations because internal stability is crucial to external domination.
and here, among other lines, is where DSA and CPUSA gets it wrong (or perhaps correct, so they hide their true intentions with layers of leftist rhetoric) by claiming we are all equally workers.
this is partially true, but theirs is a workerist line that flattens all people under one banner of workers, effectively erasing the past and current effects of colonialism and racism.
this notion that we are all equally workers is, to be sure, not true at all: labor concessions are not equally distributed across all workers. the white settler descendent class and certain nationalities such as italians and irish settlers as well as the japanese and indian immigrants are welcomed and integrated, while the black, latin, or indigenous workers are segregated.
this is there “we are all equally workers” gets it wrong: we make this point not just to make racial differentiations for no reason or because we think “white worker bad,” it’s nothing like that at all——it’s that there are very real material conditions underlying their existence within this specific settler colonial capitalist state and the class alliances that develop through its maintenance, which influence their particular relationship to Empire.
the difference also holds across genders, especially genders outside the settler colonial binary, but the racial differences are stronger determinant factors in one’s weighted network of connections and resources (socioeconomic privileges). for instance, though this patriarchal society remains transphobic, a white transwoman who is “passing” may find a job with benefits (health care, paid time off, etc), whereas a black transwoman who is also “passing” might not be able to find such a job.
these class alliances and labor concessions assume various forms, of course, and we can go into very specific details about the different concessions and the back-and-forth between Capital and Labor.
what matters for us is that these concessions are made because Capital can only go so fast to maximize profit, it can’t overexploit the labor-power, so they give a little to keep taking: relative to the Global South, workers get to live safe lives, most drive on paved roads, most use the stock market to invest their little surplus, which supports these imperial enterprises in the Global South.
very basically, workers in Empire are sold the assurance of a future by this government and hence will do everything to protect their insurance.
here, the principal contradiction reminds us: the US dominance over the Third World maintains internal stability, while internal stability helps maintain US dominance over the Third World.
so if there was an internal problem within the US, it would weaken its global positioning since it would have to allocate resources internally; and as that happens, revolutionary socialist movements in the Global South could have room to grow stronger.
if enough space is made, these movements could untether their economies from the US/Western (Empire) markets, which would further weaken the global economy as a whole and create more problems internally for the working class of Empire, and that would further weaken US hegemony.
again, how is internal stability created and maintained? Hassan says,
it is created by a class alliance between the imperialists, lower-level bourgeoisie, and many segments of the US working class, through massive labor concessions. they make way more money than the working class of the Global South in terms of value-production; and women in the imperialist core get a lot more room to operate and upward social mobility than women in the Global South—this is a major concession granted that’s often overlooked, [women hold up half the sky and perform the majority of invisible labor necessary for the perpetuation of settler consumerist culture and hence, of ideology].
US workers are given many concessions compared to the Global South, and this is the foundation of this alliance.
the opposite movement also holds true: if the Global South were to untether from US economy, all of that labor would have to go back to US workers. of course, we can’t rely on them precisely because we can’t just rely on ourselves.
but when Empire expends resources to hold position externally, it becomes weakened internally. we should pay very close attention to this. we fundamentally oppose imperial wars, but instead of criticizing the machine which will go on anyway, we should use this fact to organize when internal conditions are weakened as a result of external changes.
iii. the contradiction of US patriotism
this is why we cannot integrate various class relationships within the US into one group i.e. a colonized group against U.S. imperialism: because US imperialism relies on internal stability within the US.
so internal stability, because it has been developed along the lines of class alliances and concessions, depends on a relatively unified working class following non-revolutionary politics. it is easier to meet the demands of one group than five groups, is it not, especially when these various demands might contradict the demands of the other groups.
what isn’t easy to stabilize are political, economic, and militant calls for sovereignty by different colonized nations.
so by bannering (reducing) differences under one identity, that of the worker all equally oppressed, regardless of concrete conditions, internal stability becomes easier to maintain since now Empire only has to address one group and their singular demands, as opposed to a multiplicity of demands for national sovereignty.
the most advanced revolutionary organizers of the US were Huey P. Newton and Kwame Ture, both of who organized on the basis of Black nationalism. what did they, among many others before and after, show us? they demonstrated that African people that exist within US are their own nation and should have the sovereignty to further their own liberation, to self-determine themselves——the same applies to Indigenous nations.
so why does the US settler leftist organizer ignore this? because they might become the enemy. what would this mean for them as a group? they are unsure, perhaps scared, so they adopt an opportunistic line that is easily manageable by Empire: “here, have slightly higher wages. now shut the fuck up and go back to work.”
so we return to the slogan, “i love my country but i am ashamed of my government.” what is this country if not the government which establishes it?
a proletarian revolution fought by different nations against the US would dissolve this country: the borders that legally exist defining states would cease to exist; the specific contracts which US multinationals use to exploit workers of the Third World would cease to exist; individual rights given to corporations to do this or that backed by military power would cease to exist; regulations that ensure private property and accumulation of wealth would cease to exist; and so on.
you might live in what is known today as Ohio, but it wouldn’t be Ohio anymore. that’s the point. you might continue living there depending on agreements between different nations making up the workers post/during revolution, or you might be given land in a separate region because that region might become land of an Indigenous nation or the Black nation who might want to re-indigenize the region by protecting native fauna and flora.
the aforementioned isn’t some prescription, but this general form should be understood and accepted by every committed revolutionary.
it is as if these leftist settlers wish to simply substitute the capitalist government by one of their own which will improve condition of life here, but with the same state divisions, same consumption habits, same companies in power, except then profits wouldn’t be localized to private entities but distributed across the population to support the infrastructure of the country.
which sounds wonderful when one forgets that improving condition of life here is subsidized by deteriorating conditions elsewhere. so by advancing this political line, they are simultaneously establishing themselves as future enemies of other oppressed nations, and this is why is the revolutionary position of the black and indigenous worker is in contradiction with US patriotism.
iv. conclusion.
Communists should still support other oppressed nations sovereignty even if they’re not communists. our task is to raise political consciousness as well as foment the idea of indigenous and black liberation.
and the task of white leftists is to make this understood among their own race and class, lest they develop reactionary stances when we begin seeing more organized militancy and clearer demands by the black and indigenous nations.
a revolution will benefit us all, but it will not look like a transition to a world where we still pick between 17 brands of cereal while still living in “Kansas” where everyone has a goddamn car. Kansas wouldn’t be a thing and that’s the point.
if you are such a leftist reading this, let go of any attachment to this country and everything shiny that comes from it, and instead attach yourself to an international alliance of socialists fighting for a future while we still can.