As children raised in the United States of America, we were expected every morning to recite the pledge of allegiance to our country. In grade school, we were taught that our first president,...
Link to the article it's responding to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-american-58299798
I mean, it's just bad on every level. It ignores the tensions created in the USSR by needing to implement socialism in one country (a problem that no revolutionary movement within the US should be concerned with, because revolution in the United States would be cognate to revolution in Germany, not Russia) and completely disregards the harms that came from mixing Russian nationalism with Marxism-Leninism (namely that Russian nationalism survived. ML government, not so much), regardless of the necessity. Moreover, it makes no answer to the question of socialist internationalism or the artificiality of the nation-state. Instead, it presumes that to care for one's neighbor means one must care for the construct of their nationality, instead of caring for their humanity. Nothing could be less Marxist than the embrace of national identity over humanism. Worse, it embraces the liberal delusion that "patriotism" is different from nationalism.
There is no such thing as patriotism. Patriotism is nationalism with better PR. It is the thin film of "but not like those guys!" on top of the same philosophy that makes a nation-state identity into the earliest and most toxic form of fandom. It comes in no form that is not a reinforcement of nationhood over class. It substitutes national-chauvinism for international solidarity.
I mean, it's just bad on every level. It ignores the tensions created in the USSR by needing to implement socialism in one country (a problem that no revolutionary movement within the US should be concerned with, because revolution in the United States would be cognate to revolution in Germany, not Russia) and completely disregards the harms that came from mixing Russian nationalism with Marxism-Leninism (namely that Russian nationalism survived. ML government, not so much), regardless of the necessity. Moreover, it makes no answer to the question of socialist internationalism or the artificiality of the nation-state. Instead, it presumes that to care for one's neighbor means one must care for the construct of their nationality, instead of caring for their humanity. Nothing could be less Marxist than the embrace of national identity over humanism. Worse, it embraces the liberal delusion that "patriotism" is different from nationalism.
There is no such thing as patriotism. Patriotism is nationalism with better PR. It is the thin film of "but not like those guys!" on top of the same philosophy that makes a nation-state identity into the earliest and most toxic form of fandom. It comes in no form that is not a reinforcement of nationhood over class. It substitutes national-chauvinism for international solidarity.