/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Despite what most baizuo think, there is no contradiction between being both a socialist and a patriot in America, regardless of its origin as a settler-colonialist venture, and its current status as the leading imperialist power. Many baizuo have incorrectly gone so far as to equate patriotism and nationalism, claiming that for socialists, patriotism represents an affront to the principles of internationalism and that socialists that speak in patriotic terms are both inconsistent and on the road to red-brownism.
This can't be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that for all we can say of its founding, America has a mighty and authentically progressive tradition that has been present from the beginning. The war for independence threw off the imperial yoke and founded a republic that for the first time, based itself on the same enlightenment ideals that would be weaponized in the forthcoming anti-slavery crusade, and the struggle against European colonialism worldwide. The baizou anarcho-gonzaloist burn-it-all-down approach, on the other hand, has done nothing but isolate and alienate the left from the people of America since the 1960s.

In spite of these autistic brain worms parroted by the baizuo, the reality of the American people is not going anywhere. The actual relationship between patriotism and socialism historically becomes clear once the track record of the 19th and 20th centuries are examined, showing that socialists and communists have consistently been patriotic and deeply attuned to the national realities of the countries they hail from. The only reason why the question why patriotism has now come to the fore is because up until recently it has been a given. It is still a given in the vast majority of countries today.
It is only in America, and those under the influence of it's empire, where those under the sway of American exceptionalism remain dominant on the left, that baizuo imagine they can elevate themselves above national realities, and speak on the behalf of an abstract working class, uprooted and estranged from it's particular national reality. Historically speaking, it is a plain and obvious fact that communists were always patriotic, rooted in the national traditions of their respective countries.

Socialism in America will have American characteristics. By assuming that only the third world proletariat is capable of attaining a revolutionary character, so-called Maoists (read: Ma-autists) in America commit the inverse error of western social democrats of the early 20th century. Both share a lack of dialectical thinking, because they assume that America and her people are an "exception". They might label socialism with American characteristics "Browderism", but it is in fact they who are the Browderists, if only inversely.
Marx, who spoke of the unity of working people from all countries in The Communist Manifesto, states in the same work that:
>Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.
Twenty-seven years later in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx stated:
>It is altogether self-evident that […] the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle.
Mao stated:
>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.

I love my country, I love my people. I am a patriot.