[Princip]

I've been thinking about this for a while now. First of all, I want to declare that I'm most certainly biased regarding this topic; for I am irrevocably cosmopolitan and a staunch internationalist. Because of that, among many things I see nationalism as one of the primary reasons while a considerable amount of communist states became alienated from their revolutionary roots and became something different. (And of course there was the choking bureucracy, oppression of dissent, and such things, but this is off topic now.)

The most obvious example is of course the Soviet Union. While the first generation of revolutionaries were internationalist, Stalin's socialism in one country (as I see it) slowly drove the USSR to nationalism. Replacing The Internationale with the State Anthem of the Soviet Union is for example was one symbolic step, but also the fact that the propaganda during the war against Hitler was more about defending the Motherland than about defending socialism. (The term Great Patriotic War summarizes this very good.) The rise of nationalism and Russian imperialist ethos in the late days of the USSR was clearly and inspiration for Alexander Dugin and the National Bolsheviks, which I think clearly marks how these tendencies corrupt the left.

But there are other examples how nationalism distorts socialism. Consider Romania. The government of Gheorghiu-Dej granted autonomy to the Hungarian minority in the country. That was the only time in history when Transylvanian Hungarians had autonomy in Romania. Later, the more nationalistic Ceaușescu persecuted them, autonomy became a phenomenon of the past and even the use of Hungarian language was not advised if one wanted to get along with official bodies. Later, after 1989, it became obvious that this chauvinist attitude only strengthened both Hungarian and Romanian nationalism and tensions between them.

However, the most spectacular example is probably Yugoslavia. Under Tito, despite all of its flaws, the Yugoslav state was a token of peace in the Balkans, but when Milosevic came to power, and nationalist voices became more popular, the country, an example of relatively successful cooperation between different nations was torn apart so swiftly and violently that it shocked the international community.

And all these examples are just of communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. There are plenty of other, related examples of how nationalistic tendencies corrupt socialist ideas and (while it is a matter of debate if this is good or bad) turn them into something else. Perón, the Strasserites, the aforementioned Nazbol ideology, National Anarchists, while all being a different kind of mixture of nationalism and socialism (or social policies mimicking socialism) they are all corrupting the radical left.

This is my opinion, but let me know what do you think.

[The Immortal Goon]

I think that you're correct. But, like all Marxists, I'm an internationalist too.

[Harmattan]

First of all the left movements have always been an ad hoc alliance between elements attracted by parts of the intellectual program, usually bourgeois, and other more numerous elements mostly attracted by the promise of better material conditions and social status, usually proletarians. The second ones usually did not care about internationalism, which is a typically bourgeois trait since blue collars are rarely fluent in foreign languages and have few opportunities to bath in cosmopolitan environments, and are typically more often conservative, nationalists and traditionalists than white collars.

And looking at history blue collars were right to reject internationalization as it has always been an excuse to justify even more colonization and imperialism at their expenses, whether it was the USSR yesterday or the EU today. Internationalism and soviet allegiance is probably what cost the French communist party national victories in the 60's, and the EU and Islam are what are currently causing the demise of the French left in favor of the far-right (50% of French blue collars now vote for the far-right - the only party against the European unification).


Second of all dictatorial powers (and others to some extent) have to create themselves enemies to fuel political repression in order to maintain their grip over their countries. Foreign enemies are natural candidates and this spontaneously leads to nationalism as a reaction. This is the direct consequence of dictatorship, including the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. of the party's leaders). In other words nationalism may not be the cause but the consequence and the medium.


Third of all my experience is that supporters of a global citizenship are either ignorant or hypocrite. For the start the inevitable consequence of common citizenship and borders removal will be the destruction/marginalization of the concerned languages and cultures in favor of the dominant regional language (English in the EU for example). This is paradoxical with the fact that many left supporters are middle intellectual classes who are fondly attached to their culture and would hate to see it marginalized or eradicated. We are currently seeing the most massive cultural and linguistic destruction since the dawn of mankind.

Besides when they think of cosmopolitanism they usually think of funny clothes and exotic literature and other arts, or enjoyable discussions with westernized foreign elites around a cup of coffee. They do not mean accepting the majority of those countries as they really are, as disgusting as they may look to us. That is, they do not mean a federalism where cities or villages could freely adopt stoning, judiciary mutilations, sexual and ritual mutilations, dearth sentences for homosexuals and atheists, forced weddings, isolationism, slavery, racist instruction, etc. They usually deny the world's diversity and simply unrealistically hope that everyone will become like themselves. In the end those ones are nothing more than good old imperialists, and people who actually unconsciously work to sabotage the liberal values they believe in through immigration, since the cultures they integrate lean on conservatism, and even hard religious conservatism for many Muslims.

[quetzalcoatl]

Nations are the basic political units, and will continue to be for a long time. The only entities now benefiting from internationalism are the transnational capitalists. A Marxist socialist state might in theory benefit from internationalism, but only after some indefinite period of groundwork. Certainly none of the twentieth century socialist states evolved to this point.

Thus, for the foreseeable future, any internationalist approach strengthens capitalism and harms workers. There is no longer any functioning state that might in fairness be described a Marxist style socialist state. Even the socialism in one place argument is defunct. How do you apply internationalism to a 'socialism in no place' doctrine.

The extant international institutions (IMF, EU, WTO, ad nauseum) are structured and operated exclusively to consolidate capitalist hegemony. Part of their long term strategy is the dismantling of national control of labor standards, environmental protection, immigration control and trade protectionism. Freedom of movement for capital, goods, and labor are the weapons of choice to further these ends. Read the party platform of the Libertarian Party - it explicitly calls for freedom of movement of labor across international borders. The reason for this is painfully obvious. Internationalism, under current conditions, does not benefit workers in any way but simply pits them against each other.

I would strongly limit trade, capital movement, and immigration to benefit the workers within the national political unit. This has two benefits: it constrains capital's drive towards hegemony by placing a national counterweight against it, and strongly pressures the export model of growth (which has traditionally been a substitute for internal economic development). The left's abandonment of workers within their own countries for a non-existent international solidarity is loathsome.

Nationalism is not an ideal in itself. It is simply that national power is the only tool left in the woodshed and should be used without apology.

[The Immortal Goon]

That's pissing into the wind though. Capitalism is an international system that uses nationalism to its benefit.

Embracing nationalism does nothing but protect capitalism. It ties the revolution down in one place and makes the workers, government deal with capitalist powers with legitimacy.

[AFAIK]

Trade unions need to become international and to integrate throughout the supply chain. Currently is a factory in USA stops operating due to strike action; the corporation can increase production at its factories in Brazil, Germany and China in order to maintain output. If the retail and delivery workers aren't involved in the strike then the rest of the corporation continues operating normally.

[Heinie]

I think that you're correct. But, like all Marxists, I'm an internationalist too.

I concur that Princip is right about Marxism being philosophically internationalist. The Great Patriotic War certainly appealed to Russians to fight for Mother Russia and yet the nationalities of the Soviet Union remained remarkably cohesive. Stalin was a Georgian, Khrushchev who fought in Stalingrad was Ukrainian, and so on. Nationalism was curtailed in Warsaw Pact countries at the same time. Officially, internationalism was favored throughout the Eastern socialist states while the pull of nationalism was a constant threat.

[layman]

Stalin was a Georgian, Khrushchev who fought in Stalingrad was Ukrainian

Its one thing being ukranian but would the 'soviet' people have accepted a south african or an australian? These places were russianized anyway.

Socialist regimes often fall back on to nationalism to prop themselves up, just like others do. Marxism is clearly internationalist in theory, just like chistianity, but identity usually trumps ideology. Even Goon cant help himself with the anti English bias and would surely feel closer to an irish capitalist than and english working class.

[Heinie]

Its one thing being ukranian but would the 'soviet' people have accepted a south african or an australian? These places were russianized anyway.

Your question is peculiar. How could a South African have become General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?
As for all the Soviet Socialist Republics being "Russianized", such a comment would need a lot of qualification. The Russians were the largest population by far and their language and culture was, understandably dominant but it was never necessary to be Russian to make your mark. Even in East European states, Russian became the second language in schools but this was not at a cost of repudiating their own cultures, traditions, and languages. The National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic remained distinctly German in defense of the socialist Fatherland.

[youtube]EUiQgZ7f820[/youtube]

[Rich]

Khrushchev who fought in Stalingrad was Ukrainian,

Khrushchev was a Russian, albeit one who had lived and worker in Ukraine. Brezhnev the second longest leader of the USSR was a Ukrainian although a Russian speaker. Certainly the idea that so called Soviet Communism was Russian oppression of the minorities is a sick joke. Andropov was half Cossack half Finish, I believe.

Yes its high time the national minorities (Jews, Latvians, Georgians etc) of the Tsarist empire apologised for their crimes against the Russian people. And that includes Poland who gave us the creator of the Soviet secret police. It was only German Austrian occupation that saved Poland from becoming a nest bed of Bolshevism.

[layman]

How could a South African have become General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?

It was a hypothetical.

My point was simply that identity is a spectrum and being ukrainian would seem far less foreign to a russian in 1945 than lets say, a german.

[Zamuel]

I see nationalism as one of the primary reasons while a considerable amount of communist states became alienated from their revolutionary roots and became something different. - but let me know what do you think.

I concur ... Nationalism destroys Communist Solidarity ... Divide and Conquer. It's cheaper and faster than educating the proletariat but pollutes the optimistic idealism required of a true communist. Nicaragua is the only revolution I can think of that avoided it (for the most part).

Zam

[Conscript]

We still can't ignore national questions and the fact that the nation-state is the first level of organization and struggle for the proletariat. Internationalism really only becomes relevant after we consider these things, or its just a lofty abstracted idea.

Nationalism of a degenerated revolution is quite different though.

[Vyth]

The underlying principle of socialist internationalism may be conveyed by dividing the term into its constituent components, spelling it as inter-nationalism. This spelling revives some sense of the original and correct meaning of internationalism, which is essentially a global pan-nationalistic movement unifying the peoples of all nationalities in a common struggle for the mutual protection of all nations; it opposes itself to the anti-nationalist globalism of the bourgeois imperialists. Socialist internationalism is an assertion of nationhood against globalist enslavement.

Rootless cosmopolitan ideologies are counter-productive to the inter-nationalist struggle against bourgeois imperialism and constitute a deceptive inversion of the principle of socialist internationalism. This sort of nationless pseudo-"internationalism" was promoted by anti-socialist infiltrators such as Leon Trotsky as a means of undermining the internationalist movement from within its own ranks. It has had a profoundly demoralising effect in the internationalist socialist movement, particularly in Western countries. Trotksyism attempted to deceive socialists by equating the general idea of unity with the notion of unified destruction, thus conflating the union of all nations (i.e., socialist internationalism) with their dismantlement (i.e., globalism). He twisted the concept of socialist inter-nationalism into a kind of pseudo-socialist anti-nationalism.

Many in the West fell for this deception, which is why the socialist movement has met with little success in Western countries. Thankfully, the countries of the Third World understood the great importance of nationalism in the internationalist struggle; these countries therefore met with far greater success.

The dismantlement and abolition of all nations, and their substitution by a generic global identity prohibitive of national consciousness, is the bourgeois-Trotskyite counterfeit of internationalism. Socialist internationalism is violently opposed to anti-nationalist movements (and for the same reason that it is opposed to national chauvinism, which is anti-nationalist in the sense that it undermines the national integrity of other nations). Internationalism is a movement that works between all nations and for all nations: never against nations. It is in essence a pan-nationalist movement involving all nations. It is the antithesis of globalism and of what Stalin correctly identified as the "rootless cosmopolitanism" of parasitic bourgeois imperialists.

Internationalism is for the common welfare of nations; it wants all nations free from the interference of bourgeois imperialism. The union of the family does not imply the abolition of the distinction between mother and son, father and daughter, husband and wife; it entails a sense of common belonging that not only embraces the distinctions between each member of the family, but is complemented and accentuated by those very distinctions. Likewise with internationalism, which embraces national variations as a common benefit to the species.

As socialist internationalists we must be violently opposed to the globalist deconstruction of national identities.