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Here are a collection of quotes which show the need for Socialist Patriotism and how Communists are patriotic.

Part 7 of This Series:

“We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery. From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labour of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?” - Karl Marx

“We are full of a sense of national pride, and for that very reason we particularly hate our slavish past (when the landed nobility led the peasants into war to stifle the freedom of Hungary, Poland, Persia and China), and our slavish present, when these selfsame landed proprietors, aided by the capitalists, are loading us into a war in order to throttle Poland and the Ukraine, crush the democratic movement in Persia and China, and strengthen the gang of Romanovs, Bobrinskys and Purishkeviches, who are a disgrace to our Great-Russian national dignity. Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogises his slavery (eg. calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc. a ‘defence of the fatherland’ of the Great Russians) - such a slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing” - V.I. Lenin

“But people cannot live together, for lengthy periods unless they have a common territory. Englishmen and Americans originally inhabited the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Later, one section of the English emigrated from England to a new territory, America, and there, in the new territory, in the course of time, came to form the new American nation. Difference of territory led to the formation of different nations” - (J.V. Stalin, Marxism and The National Question)

“The government of the United States represents, as its army also does, the finances of the United States. But these finances do not represent the North American people; they represent a small group of financiers, the owners of all the big enterprises… who also exploit the North American people. Clearly they do not exploit them in the same manner that they exploit us, the human beings of inferior races… for we have not had the good fortune of being born from blood, Anglo-Saxon parents. But they do exploit and divide them, they too are divided into black and whites, and they too are divided into men and women, union and non-union, employed and unemployed” - Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

“At first, patriotism, not yet Communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin… By studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people” - Hồ Chí Minh

“All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” - (Hồ Chí Minh, The Vietnamese Constitution, in a direct quote from the American Constitution)

“I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing agression against and menacing the overwhelmingly majority of nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 percent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that with the support of more than 90 percent of the people of the world, the American Negroes will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end” - Mao Zedong

“Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but also must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the ‘patriotism’ of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means is in the interests of the Japanese and the German people, and the more complete the defeat the better. This is what the Japanese and German Communists should be doing and what they are doing. For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming the people at home as well as the people of the world. China’s case, however, is different, because she is the victim of aggression. Chinese Communists must therefore combine patriotism with internationalism. We are at once internationalists and patriots, and our slogan is, ‘Fight to defend the motherland against the aggressors.’ For us defeatism is a crime and to strive for victory in the War of Resistance is an inescapable duty. For only by fighting in defense of the motherland can we defeat the aggressors and achieve national liberation. And only by achieving national liberation will it be possible for the proletariat and other working people to achieve their own emancipation. The victory of China and the defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries. Thus in wars of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism” - Mao Zedong

“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

“The United States, had first fought a progressive war of independence from British imperialism, and then fought a civil war to establish a free labour market. Washington and Lincoln were progressive men of their time. When the United States first established a republic it was hated and dreaded by all the crowned heads of Europe. That showed that the Americans were then revolutionaries. Now the American people need to struggle for liberation from their own monopoly capitalists” - Mao Zedong

“Society pushed us on to the political stage. Who ever thought of indulging in Marxism previously? I hadn’t even heard of it. What I had heard of, and also read of, was Confucius, Napoleon, Washington, Peter the Great, the Meiji Restoration, the three distinguished Italian [patriots] - in other words, all those [heroes] of capitalism. I had also read a biography of Franklin. He came from a poor family; afterwards, he became a writer, and also conducted experiments on electricity” - Mao Zedong

“From the beginning of our policy in regard to the national bourgeoisie was not only to carry out the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution together with them, but also to take them (proletarianisation) along with us to a socialist, Communist society” - Kim Il-sung

“Patriotism is not an empty concept. Education in patriotism cannot be conducted simply by erecting the slogan, ‘Let us arm ourselves with the spirit of socialist patriotism!’ Educating people in the spirit of patriotism must begin with fostering the idea of caring for every tree planted on the road side, for the chairs and desks in the school… There is no doubt that a person who has formed the habit of cherishing common property from childhood will grow up to be a valuable patriot” - Kim Il-sung

“Marxism-Leninism is ultimately deeply internationalist and, at the same time, deeply patriotic” - Fidel Castro

"The U.S. flag is your flag, you cannot allow the U.S. ruling class to own the flag. The working class of the U.S. must fight for the flag and once socialism is established it is up to the workers to decide what they want to do with flag and the U.S. as it exists - (Fidel Castro, Addressing a group of students who did not want to associate with their flag while people from other countries sat next to theirs)

“Patriotism is not a mere slogan. A patriot is one who closely intertwines his/her own ideals with the future of the country, and his/her life with the fate of the nation” - Xi Jinping

"Everything we Chinese Communists do is to better the lives of the Chinese people, renew the Chinese nation, and promote peace and development for humanity - Xi Jinping

Part 8:

  • enigmaOP
    1•2 years ago

    “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

    “No honest man will consider anything he gives to the socialist movement a sacrifice. It is no sacrifice at all to invest all our time, wealth, knowledge, and all else, so as to leave our children the estate of the socialist or cooperative Commonwealth” - Daniel De Leon

    “We live in the capitalist system, so called because it is dominated by the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers are the subjects. The capitalists are in a decided minority and yet they rule because of the ignorance of the working class” - Eugene V. Debs

    “On this May Day let us stand upright and be counted. We need to be united. We need to get together. We need to feel the common touch. The world will always be against us if we are not for ourselves. You who produce everything, you who really create, you who are conserving civilisation - how can you endure to think that you are the bottom class, the lower order? When you go for a job to the master class you work upon conditions which they prescribe. You depend upon them for tools, you work for their benefits” - Eugene V. Debs

    “They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasise the fact - and it cannot be repeated too often - that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace” - Eugene V. Debs

    “It is ‘patriotism’ of the workers of one nation to fall upon and foully murder the workers of another nation to enlarge the possessions of their masters and increase the piles of their bloodstained riches, and as long as the poor, deluded toiling masses are fired by this brand of ‘patriotism,’ they will serve as cannon fodder and no power on earth can save them from their sodden fate. We socialists are not wanting in genuine patriotism, but we are deadly hostile to the fraudulent species which is ‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’ and which prompts every crook and grafter and every blood -sucking vampire to wrap his reeking carcass in the folds of the national flag that he may carry on his piracy and plunder in the name of ‘patriotism.’ Ours is a wider patriotism - as wide as humanity. We abhor murder in uniform even more than we do in midnight assassination. We stand with Garrison upon the proposition that the world is our country and that all mankind are our countrymen. We stand for peace and for the only system that makes peace possible. They, who support a system that breeds war cannot consistently say they are for peace, and they who prate so much about their ‘patriotism’ have, as a rule, the hearts of poltroons and the souls of cowards. Patriotism, like brotherhood, must be international and all embracing to be at all. Socialism rightly understood is the most profound patriotic movement on the planet” - Eugene V. Debs

    “It seems paradoxical that the recent avalanche of books and articles portraying the Black condition in the U.S. as that of a colony has been issued by the same monopoly-controlled book and newspaper publishers who use most of the rest of their ideological output to deny the imperialist nature of U.S. state monopoly capitalism. It seems paradoxical but it is not. This development marks a new state of sophistication in the ideological offensive of U.S. imperialism. The colony theory is particularly useful to the monopolists because it appears to be so radical; in fact, it contains the admission that the oppression of Black people in the U.S. is comparable to colonial oppression in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This emphasis on the intensity of Black oppression gives the colony theory its ring of authenticity. But this admission of oppression is not as candid (one might even say benign) as it might seem. By promoting the colony theory, the white ruling class aims to define and determine the direction of the Black liberation movement. In yet another form, the monopolists are striving to prevent Black people themselves from defining the specific features that constitute the special oppression they experience. By analogy, this theory directs attention to those aspects of the Black condition in the U.S. which most closely resemble colonial conditions. These similarities are so powerful that one’s attention may be diverted from what is unique in the status of the triply-oppressed Black peoples in colonial or semi-colonial situations, past or present. Via the colony analogy, and variations on this unscientific, anti-Marxist theme, U.S. imperialism’s ideologists are trying to influence the Black liberation movement into adopting a self-defeating strategy. While the U.S. ‘internal Black colony’ theory resembles a winning strategy for an oppressed majority living in a colony, it would mean certain defeat for an oppressed minority - which has indeed been the Black condition for more than 350 years in this part of the world. The supposedly ‘revolutionary’ (even so-called ‘Marxist’!) books on the colony analogy, now in mass circulation, were written by white radicals who have abandoned the struggle against racism, and by Black radicals who seek theoretical short cuts to liberation. By portraying the status of the Black people in the U.S. as a colony, these radicals assist the ruling class’ aim of diverting the Black liberation movement from a winning strategy: one that would advance the self-organisation of the Black liberation movement, and simultaneously combine this independent of strength with that of allies - the working class, Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and white, together with all the poor and exploited - in a new formation. This is the basis for an anti-monopoly coalition, the only strategy that opens the way to a future without racism, exploitation, or oppression” - Henry M. Winston