cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/297928

As you have all noticed, this seems to be a point of contention here. This is a good thing, since it means someone will learn something.

Now we seem to be all over the place, with this general area of thought, provoking many questions. Whether or not PatSocs are socially conservative, what is position on social conservatism? Many of us are very young, both in age and ML experience, so an online discussion would be a great learning tool.

  1. Are socially conservative individuals allowed to be apart of the leftist movement?
  • A. Are socially conservative individuals victims of bourgeois propaganda? -B. If socially conservative people are turned away by the left, where do they go? -C. How high of a position would a social conservative be allowed in a ML party? -D. How has or will MLs educate socially conservative folk? -E. &tc, &tc.

  1. What exactly is Patriotism? -A. Does patriotism depend on culture? -B Is possible for a distinction between patriotism for a country and wanting to abolish the state? -C. Is patriotism corrupted in the Core? -D How have post imperialist countries with Communist experiments built patriotism? -E. &Tc &TC

  2. Who even are the PatSocs? -A. If the label is too convuluted, should we make a distinction between Maupin and American exceptionalists? -B. Who of the leaders do we consider MLs? -C. Should patriotic socialist be distinct from socialism or is inherent in socialism? -D. How much do WE even know if PatSocs? -E. &Tc, &tc

We can look at the USSR and GDR for these questions. Remember the Hammer and Sickel came from somewhere.

Things to look out for about the US: -It is the imperialist power, AND a settler state. -Low levels of cultural development -The culture that is there is taken from marginalized groups. -Americas are the most propagandized people in the World. -It is huge and incredibly diverse

More questions about the US could follow: -Should the US be balkanized? If so how does patriotism be built in balkanized regions? -How does land back go about? Will indigenous countries emerge, and if so should we reconsider American MLs as different MLs for the Regions in North America. -If see different nations and regions in North America how does that affect culture? Is the question of how we view the land a prerequisite to discussing patriotism, is it contradictory to call yourself an American Patriot if you decide to divide up the land until regions?

There is so much potential for deep political for North American based Comrades, this is a rabbit hole I do want to delve into. I’ll cross post this to GZD but I want it mainly on Leftist Infighting.

  • TheConquestOfBed
    174·
    2 years ago

    These sorts of patriotic splits are dangerous to workers parties (esp in western countries) and can weaken them to the often simultaneous rise of fascist movements. From Fascism in Germany: How Hitler Destroyed the World’s Most Powerful Labour Movement by Robert Black:

    The transition from what Trotsky called the SPD’s ‘legitimate patriotism to their own party’ to a conception of ‘national’ socialism and finally, after 4 August 1914, to a position of national defence, was a complex process which had its roots not only in the treachery of leaders, but the evolution of an entire stratum of the German working class:

    “If we leave aside the hardened bureaucrats, careerists, parliamentary sharpers, and political crooks in general, the social patriotism of the rank-and-file Social Democrat was derived precisely from the belief in building German socialism. It is impossible to think that hundreds of thousands of rank and file Social Democrats… wanted to defend the Hohenzollerns or the bourgeoisie. No. They wanted to protect German industry, the German railways and highways, German technology and culture, and especially the organisations of the German working class, as the necessary and sufficient national prerequisite for socialism.”

    The great tragedy was that their devotion to the goal of a future socialist Germany was cruelly and cynically exploited by both their class enemies and their own leaders to serve the ends of an all too real imperialist present.

    Thus workers read in the German trade union journal Correspondenzblatt that:

    “…the policy of 4 August accords with the most vital interests of the trade unions; it keeps all foreign invasion at bay, it protects us against the dismemberment of the German lands, against the destruction of flourishing branches of the German economy, and against an adverse outcome of the war, which would saddle us with reparations for decades to come.”

    The political responsibility for such a line, which undoubtedly found an echo amongst wide layers of trade unionists in the early period of the war at least, lay largely with the Kautsky ‘centre’ which had mis-educated entire generations of workers to believe that patriotism and an evasive attitude towards the struggle for power could coexist with the SPD’s formal adherence to socialist internationalism and the Marxist theory of the state. For as the preceding chapter attempts to show, the seeds which ripened into the fruit of 4 August were sown in the period of party expansion which followed the lapsing of the anti-socialist laws in 1890. When confronted by the magnitude of their betrayal, the more sophisticated party leaders attempted to evade their own responsibility before the German and international movement - one they had solemnly accepted at a succession of Socialist International congresses - by blaming the working class for a situation which they themselves had helped to create.

    • TheConquestOfBed
      194·
      2 years ago

      Adding my own analysis to this: trade unionism is making a comeback in the US (particularly in warehousing and service industries) and it has an anti-racist and pro-lgbt character based on what I’ve read about their efforts. This is both a good place to be in and a very tenuous-to-bad place to be in. We can see the rise of white nationalism in response to local community organizing (often around social democrats or democratic socialists as in the Weimar Republic).

      In this case there are ideological distractions from both the “left” and right. As you’re all aware, pro-NATO “leftists” seek to co-opt the movement through liberal-style idpol and prevent on-the-ground movements from taking on an internationalist character. My opinion is that modern right-wing patsocs are part of a strategy to distance the largely white middle-class marxist leninists (there are ML PoC obviously, even some black/indigenous orgs, but that’s not how MLs are perceived as a subculture) from the lower rungs of the proletariat who know on-the-ground strategy but not history. I think this is so that workers parties get straight to being co-opted and reactionary before the on-the-ground movements even have a chance to organize around them (unlike past movements where the reactionary orgs were platformed out of on-the-ground movements). In this way, on-the-ground organizers will become alienated from a white middle class communism that doesn’t have space for them, and once isolated they will be easier to pick off.

      This is why whenever Patsocs come up, I’m critical of their “MAGA are just misunderstood” takes. MAGA proles are the engine of white supremacy and focusing on them and not the very real organizing happening among poor workers, BIPOC, and LGBT people is putting energy in the wrong place. The revolutionary energy growing in the west is forming around people the MAGA-right wants to exterminate. Look at the conservative list of acceptable targets and you’ll find those people the most active in the streets lighting junk on fire and getting their co-workers into union votes.

      • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
        183·
        2 years ago

        Thank you for this comrade, we can’t let these patsoc opportunists confuse the issue, and think that reactionary “patriots” can bring about socialism. If socialism ever does come to an imperial core country, it will be the mostly non-white, anti racist and unpatriotic city dwellers, for whom the state has done no favors, who bring it about.

        • TheConquestOfBed
          151·
          2 years ago

          I wouldn’t immediately discredit poor countryfolk. Outside of the big coastal cities, they can often tend to inhabit the same spaces as poc both physically and socioeconomically. The challenge is in creating a coalition where they see themselves as being on the same side (for example, if they all work on the same factory line or in the same big box store).

          My main contention is with the middle class, as they tend to have more objections to strategy when it comes down to it, having been bought off by the bourgeoise with a single-family home in a “quiet” neighborhood and two SUVs. A lot of the libs people here shit on every day tend to have a very middle class perspective of civility. And the middle class MAGA are entrenched not just by the aesthetics of conservatives gesturing at them but also by the relatively cushy lifestyle that they feel they’ve “earned.” The poorest whites, by contrast, can feel just as abandoned by the system as poc, but they turn toward conservatism mainly due to the vague gestures as protectionism from further poverty, which still has class aristocratic character, but can be leveraged if they have exposure to cultures outside of tiny monoethnic country towns.

          As far as general strategy for white people, socialists should be focusing on downwardly mobile urban libs and poor suburban conservatives who’ve recently moved from the country looking for work in the city, because both of these groups are currently having their worlds rocked by exposure to people different from them and their own finanical precarity. The first problem is that they both require extremely different emotional skillsets to convince of your position in discussions. The second problem is that getting them to a place where they won’t be reactionary can take months or years, and even after being de-radicalized they can still shift the movement toward themselves rather than the proletariat as a whole. It’s just something that requires attention and consideration.