Socialist Patriotism: Difference between revisions

“''The reason that I am here today, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa… That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia… The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here… I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America… My mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today...'' ''The demand of Africa and Asia for independence from alien domination and exploitation finds warm support among democratic-minded peoples everywhere. Although the calling of the Bandung Conference evoked bitter words of displeasure from high circles in Washington, the common people of America have not forgotten that our own country was founded in a revolution of colonies against a foreign tyranny - a revolution proclaiming that all nations have a right to independence under a government of their own choice. To the Negro people of the United States and the Caribbean Islands it was good news… Typical of the Negro people’s sentiments are these words from one of our leading weekly newspapers: ‘Negro Americans should be interested in the proceedings at Bandung. We have fought this kind of fight for more than 300 years and have a vested interest in the outcome...'' ''In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No colour prejudice like in Mississippi, no colour prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of colour as I feel [it] in this Committee today. [Why do you not stay in Russia?] Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people...'' ''I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the non-patriots, and you are the Un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” - Paul Robeson, in his testimony against the HUAC, June 12th 1956''

“''We, Negro Communists, do not accept the status of ‘aliens’ to which the Negro Resolution relegates us. We are an integral part of the Negro movement, embodying the great revolutionary traditions of Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, etc. We do not become ‘foreigners’ when we become Communists. It is, therefore, not only the right, but the duty of Negro Communists to project forms and methods of struggle consistent with the great revolutionary traditions of the Negro people. As true patriots, we call for a consistent fight against U.S. imperialism as the main enemy of the Negro people. We call for an alliance with the white working class based upon common revolutionary aims. We call for international solidarity with the heroic struggles for national liberation, peace and Socialism which embrace the vast majority of mankind.” - Harry Haywood, The Black Revolution''

<blockquote>“''The party which represents the working class has a right to fight. By all standards, that’s a legitimate American concept - part of our colonial heritage.” - Samuel A. Darcy, who was expelled from the CPUSA for protesting Earl Browder’s leadership''

<blockquote>''“To love your country, and be willing to sacrifice and battle for it, that is patriotism. To have no home, to be unable to provide self and loved ones with food, clothing and shelter, that is poverty. At first sight it would appear that a man afflicted with poverty could not possibly be a patriot. He owns no part of any country, and patriotism means love of one’s own country, not love of a country owned by others. What matters it to the poor devil who is starving whether the country in which he is hungry is owned by this ruler or that ruler, if his miserable status changes not? But we see that poverty, instead of crushing patriotism. actually appears to produce it. The troops who left New York yesterday to fight the Chinese were mostly men who own nothing in the way of property in this country. They are not going to fight for love of their country. That have none. Their very poverty gave birth to the bastard patriotism of the Hessian. Here is a sample of the leave-takings between the soldiers and their wives: 'Oh, why did you go and enlist, Charlie? And now you have to go and leave me and the child all alone,” said a weeping young wife, as she held her strapping soldier husband about the neck. ‘It had to be done, Lizzie.’ he replied. ‘You know I could not find any work.’ The capitalist papers which contain the above item also contain the usual silly talk about the ‘patriotism of our volunteers,’ and thus furnish proof for the socialist contention that the capitalist class is at once ignorant and corrupt. Ignorant in not knowing that this paid-for bastard patriotism portends the doom of their class, and corrupt in attempting to pass this counterfeit for the genuine article. Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred. Instead of the American freeman bidding his wife be of good cheer that he was going to fight for his country, we have the wage-slave driven by hunger to fight for a hireling’s pittance. Instead of repelling a foreign foe, he goes to loot and ravage a peaceful race, so as to swell the coffers of his own capitalist masters. The patriotism which poverty produces is as yellow as the gold which buys it.” - Daniel De Leon, The Patriotism of the Wage Slave''

''“‘We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.’ Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British government had certain laws and rules that the colonised Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonised immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: ‘…whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organising its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness’ Now these same colonised white people, these ex-slaves, robbers and thieves, have denied the colonised black man the right to even speak of abolishing this oppressive system which the white colonised American created. They have carried their madness to the four corners of the earth, and now there is universal rebellion against their continue[d] rule and power.” - Huey P. Newton, from his speech titled, A History of the Black Panther Party''

''“We are going to create an American liberation front to combat the avaricious businessman, the demagogic politician and the fascist cops who brutalise and terrorise the people.” - Bobby Seale, during a speech at the 1970 Black Panther Party's National Convention''

“''The U.S. government still has a veil of democracy, but it has been cut down to a tiny patch by the U.S. reactionaries and become very faded, and is not what it used to be in the days of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. The reason is that the class struggle has become more intense. When the class struggle becomes still more intense, the veil of U.S. democracy will inevitably be flung to the four winds.” - Mao Zedong''

"Instilling hatred for Americans means putting onself on the same level with the most ardent chauvinism, with people whose 'patriotism' and love for their own is invariably associated with hatred for what is 'alien' - whether it be American, Chinese or German." - Suren Tigranovich Kaltakhchyan, The Current Digest of the Soviet Press

''“‘Down with U.S.A.’ means down with the ruling class. It means death to the American politicians currently in power. It means death to the few people running that country; we have nothing against the American nation.” - Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei''</blockquote>

“''American Revolutionary workers have to play an exceptionally important role as uncompromising enemies of American imperialism.” - V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism''

''There is literally nothing in contradiction between native liberation and patriotism. The Bolshevik line has always been to support the liberation of the oppressed nations. There is nothing anywhere to suggest that America is an exception and that Communists can't be patriots.''<blockquote>''“All Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivelaged nations (for example Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies.” - V.I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination''

“''The tendency of the Capitalist system towards the ultimate splitting-up of society into two classes, a few millionaires on the one hand, and a great mass of mere wage-workers on the other, this tendency, though constantly crossed and counteracted by other social agencies, works nowhere with greater force than in America; and the result has been the production of a class of native American wage-workers, who form, indeed, the aristocracy of the wage-working class as compared with the immigrants, but who become conscious more and more every day of their solidarity with the latter and who feel all the more acutely their present condemnation of life-long wage-toil, because they still remember the bygone days, when it was comparatively easy to rise to a higher social level. Accordingly the working class movement, in America, has started with truly American vigor, and as on that side of the Atlantic things march with at least double the European speed, we may yet live to see America take the lead in this respect too.” - Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England''

“''After studying the Irish question for many years I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes (and it will be decisive for the workers’ movement all over the world) cannot be delivered in England but only in Ireland (- Karl Marx); We are told that the English people contributed to help our enslavement. It is true. It is also true that the Irish people have contributed soldiers to duly crush every democratic movement of the English people from the deportation of Irish soldiers to serve the cause of political despotism under Charles to the days of Featherstone under Asquith. Slaves themselves the English people helped to enslave others; slaves themselves the Irish people helped to enslave others. There is no room for recrimination. We are only concerned now with the fact - daily, becoming more obvious - that the English workers who have reached the moral stature of rebels are now willing to assist the working class rebels of Ireland, and that those Irish rebels will in their turn help the rebels of Ireland, and that those Irish rebels will in their turn help the rebels of England to break their chains and attain the dignity of freedom. There are still a majority of slaves in England - there are still a majority of slaves in Ireland. We are under no illusions as to either country. But we do not intend to confound the geographical spot on which the rebels lie with the political government upheld by the slave. For us and ours the path is clear. The first duty of the working class of the word is to settle accounts with the master class of the world - that of their own country at the head of the list. To that point this struggle, as all such struggles, is converging.” - James Connolly, speech during a discussion titled The Irish Working Class and the Irish Revolution''

</blockquote>Bonus Quotes:<blockquote>“''The unity of the nation was not to be broken; but, on the contrary, to be organised by the Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence; that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production; if the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men’s government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labour, emphatically international. Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world.” - Karl Marx, The Civil War in France''