On "No Room for Patriotism in Capitalism Imperialism Colonialism" by the YCL

This position piece was originally published by the Young Communists League of Southern California on its site. As the YCL was dissolved by the CPUSA [and re-instituted in the recent 31st Convention], the site no longer exists, but the article has been posted on a few other sites and discussed widely. Today being the supposed "Independence Day," and this occupied land from which I write being the site of a US overthrow of a sovereign nation, it seems relevant to re-post it here. The thesis of the piece was highly contested at the time, and is highly contested today. The YCL, drawing from Marx, Lenin, and a bit of Mao and Frederick Douglas who reinforce the Marxist point, write " ... the U.S. is distinct in its nation-statehood for its nature in being an oppressor nation with oppressed nations within it, such as African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans/Chicana/os, Puerto Ricans, other people of Latin American descent (which really just means indigenous/native people of non-U.S. territory) and indigenous people to both the territory of the U.S. and also below its border." The question being: are Africans in the diaspora, Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiians], the Lakota or Couer d'Alene merely ingredients in a melting pot or distinct nations deserving self-determination, language, and cultural integrity like Georgia, Kazakhstan, or Uzbekistan were to those Marxist Bolsheviks? Since the YCL opines to the former - that is, we are oppressed NATIONS within an oppressor, it is our self-determination, liberation, and collective overthrow of imperialism that must be endorsed and fought for. Joseph Stalin, in his Marxism and the National Question [1913] states among his prerequisites "common language," but this would not only exclude the Native Hawaiians, who were prohibited for generations for speaking their language, and the African diaspora who are several hundred years away from their native tongue only due to the exploit of capitalism, but this qualification must exclude the Jewish diaspora who were millennia away from their native language and region - but yet above almost any other despised and harassed minority have nonetheless been afforded this Special Question. So, why not the Africa diaspora, Hawaiians, Chamorros of Guam, et al? The push for patriotism and squeezing the shroud of it around radical archetypes - "communism is as American as apple pie" - in order to make a proof that these disparate and conquered peoples somehow share a role in white-settler colonial independence is profane. This nation-state was founded on genocide and enslavement, and it is its fuel for existence. This is why the liberation of these peoples, the collective upending of capitalism, must necessarily make the United States disappear. As the Lakota American Indian Movement co-founder famously stated: "for America to live Europe must die." As an aside, this YCL chapter shows unusual astuteness noting that people of "Latin American descent" are really indigenous. This also shows a consistency in their argument. The fact that the Otomi people became "Latino" because their civilization lays south of the Rio Grande, while the Choctaw or Navajo are not, is a function of European colonialism and nothing else. The great masses of people fleeing to El Norte are the descendants of those indigenous peoples, not of Spain, whose descendants make up the ruling class of Mexico. So calling them Latin American as distinct from First Nation or Native American is at best problematic. "Patriotism for the U.S. as the world’s leading oppressor nation is irreconcilable with promoting proletarian internationalism," the Southern California YCL writes here. Subsequent to this publication, heated exchanges followed, YCL members were expelled by the CPUSA, and, en mass, the YCL chapter quit the Party altogether. But the debate, like a Donna Summer melody, lingers on ...