Socialist Patriotism: Difference between revisions

“''Real patriots advocate a freedom of speech and freedom of ideas in the major media that would include dissident Left views as well as the usual right-wing and conventional opinions we are constantly exposed to. Real patriots want some relief from the evasive, fatuous, mealymouthed, knowit-all empire-boosting pundits and conservative or otherwise insipid commentators. They want major media debates on the basic assumptions behind U.S. foreign policy and free-market globalism. They want to reclaim the nation’s airwaves, which belong not to the network bosses but to the people of the United States. Some real patriots want a government that will go directly into not-for-profit production. They want a fair chance given to worker-controlled enterprises and public ownership. If private industry cannot provide for the needs of the people, cannot build homes and hospitals enough for all, then the public sector should do so - not by contracting it out to private profiteers but by direct production as during the New Deal when public workers made tents, cots, and shoes, and canned foods for the destitute - a not-for-profit production that created jobs, served human needs, and expanded individual spending power and the tax base, all done without the parasitic private investors making a penny on it. Real patriots want to open up our political system to new political parties, not just two capitalist globalistic empire-building parties, not just one party that Red-baits and liberal-baits and the other that lives in fear of being Red-baited and liberal-baited. We need to do what numerous other democracies have done and institute proportional representation, ready ballot access to dissident parties, convenient voter-registration conditions, public campaign funding for all candidates, and free TV time for all political parties. Real patriots are not afraid of dramatic changes - if they are in a democratic direction. They want the fundamental democratisation of the political process and the economy of this country. As Mark Twain put it more than a century ago, his loyalty was not to his countries institutions and officeholders as such. His loyalty was to its basic principles of democracy, to the understanding that ‘all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient’. In sum, real patriots are not enamoured by the trappings of superpatriotism but are interested in the substance of social justice.” - Michael Parenti''  

“''Finally, real patriots are internationalists. They feel a special attachment to their own country but not in some competitive way that pits the United States against other powers. They regard the people of all nations as different members of the same human family. In 1936, individuals from many countries and all walks of life joined together to form the International Brigade, which fought in Spain to protect democracy from the fascist forces of Generalissimo Franco. Charles Nusser, a veteran of that great struggle, relates this incident of international patriotism: ‘Sam Gonshak and I, both Spanish Civil war veterans were in Guernica on June 1, 1985 [to commemorate the Spanish Civil War]… I will never forget the speech of the organiser of the gathering. He referred to Sam and me as ‘Patriots of the World’. There have always been too many patriots in various countries straining to get at the throats of patriots in other countries.’ ‘Patriots of the World’ who happen to live in the United States want to stop destroying others with jet bombers and missiles and US-financed death squads and start healing this nation. This is not just a good and noble ideal, it is a historical necessity. It is the best kind of security. Sooner or later Americans rediscover that they cannot live on flag-waving alone. They begin to drift off into reality, confronted by the economic irrationalities and injustices of a system that provides them with the endless circuses and extravaganzas of superpatriotism, heavy tax burdens, a crushing national debt and military budget, repeated bloodletting in foreign lands, and sad neglect of domestic needs, denying them the bread of prosperity and their birthright as democratic citizens. We need a return to reality. We need to unveil the lies and subterfuges that so advantage the wealthy plutocracy. We need to pursue policies at home and abroad that serve the real needs of humanity. Then we can love our country - and peace and justice too.'” - Michael Parenti''  

“''I dream that someday the United States will be on the side of the peasants in some civil war. I dream that we will be the ones who will help the poor overthrow the rich, who will talk about land reform and education and health facilities for everyone, and that when the Red Cross or Amnesty International comes to count the bodies and take the testimony of women raped, that our side wont be the heavies.” - Michael Parenti''</blockquote>

</blockquote>''To all the people who retort the affirmation of 'true patriotism' by pulling out the Oxford dictionary: Even by liberal standards patriotism does not mean just following whatever your government does. It has always been distinguished from nationalism as true love of the people.''  

''Even in cases of people who are not (explicitly) Communist can there be found a sense of patriotism - a critical and genuine patriotism:'' <blockquote>“''Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” - George Washington''

''“In fighting for the right of nations to self-determination, the aim of Social-Democracy is to put an end to the policy of national oppression, to render it impossible, and thereby to remove the grounds of strife between nations, to take the edge off that strife and reduce it to a minimum. This is what essentially distinguishes the policy of the class-conscious proletariat from the policy of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to aggravate and fan the national struggle and to prolong and sharpen the national movement. And that is why the class-conscious proletariat cannot rally under the ‘national’ flag of the bourgeoisie. That is why the so-called ‘evolutionary national’ policy advocated by Bauer cannot become the policy of the proletariat. Bauer’s attempt to identify his ‘evolutionary national’ policy with the policy of the ‘modern working class’ is an attempt to adapt the class struggle of the workers to the struggle of the nations. The fate of a national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie. The final disappearance of a national movement is possible only with the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of socialism can peace be fully established. But even within the framework of capitalism it is possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum, to undermine it at the root, to render it as harmless as possible to the proletariat. This is borne out, for example, by Switzerland and America. It requires that the country should be democratised and the nations be given the opportunity of free development.” - J.V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question''

''“The biggest things that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown and, on the other, the movement of the serfs in Russia.” - Karl Marx, letter to Friedrich Engels, October 30th 1859''  ''“The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition [which] is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the civil war in the nineteenth century. In some respects, if we only take into consideration the ‘destruction’ of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!” - V.I. Lenin, The International and the National Question''