Saturday, November 28, 2015

No socialist will have much patience with bourgeois patriotism - French or American


   No SOCIALIST will have much patience with patriotic Wilsonian blather : sentimental talk about the " French way of living " is as fatuous as the right-wing drivel about the " American Way of Life ". For years - especially during the Cold War Era - our " way of life " - from all ruling class controlled information sources -with the exception of the PUBLIC LIBRARY ( soon to be privatized ) - was threatened by the very IDEA of SOCIALISM -not just the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Just about 100 years ago crackpot French and German " patriotism " culminated in the Madness of Verdun. Wilsonian blather about making the world safe for democracy helped get us into the Great War , the war to end all wars.
Never in history- not even going back to ancient Rome - has CLASS STRUGGLE been snuffed out by enthusiasm for EMPIRE.
How ironic that all the former colonialist powers now daily bombing Syria pretend to be saving the world from Islamic terrorism. Only the international socialists can save the world from THEM, the plutocrats of global capitalism and 21st century imperialism.
The American working and middle class is being ruined by American capitalists - not far away terrorists. An empowered United Nations police force can deal with those idiots.
To be sure , " something is happening here " with the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But Bernie should find inspiration for " socialist " foreign policy in the famous Canton Speech of Eugene V. Debs. Debs would remind the working class voters today that the only just war is class war. For inspiration with a French flavor remember the 1789 Great French Revolution . Question : Was Thomas Jefferson a closet Jacobin ?
As the French writer Albert Camus put it : " I would like to love both my country and justice ". Camus was not impressed with the consequences of French " patriotism " in oppressed and rebellious Algeria.

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Ron