To resist imperialism is to resist Great Power Chauvinism
Zachary Kam, a U.S. Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, sets fire to an American flag during a rally outside Chicago City Hall to protest U.S. support for Israel and to call for the cancellation of the Democratic National Convention. (Photo: Matthew Kaplan)
“What a lot of talk, argument and vociferation there is nowadays about nationality and the fatherland! Liberal and radical cabinet ministers in Britain, a host of ‘forward-looking’ journalists in France (who have proved in full agreement with their reactionary colleagues), and a swarm of official Cadet and progressive scribblers in Russia (including several Narodniks and ‘Marxists’)—all have effusive praise for the liberty and independence of their respective countries, the grandeur of the principle of national independence. Here one cannot tell where the venal eulogist of the butcher Nicholas Romanov or of the brutal oppressors of Negroes and Indians ends, and where the common philistine begins, who from sheer stupidity or spinelessness drifts with the streams, begins. Nor is that distinction important. We see before us an extensive and very deep ideological trend, whose origins are closely interwoven with the interests of the landowners and the capitalists of the dominant nations. Scores and hundreds of millions are being spent every year for the propaganda of ideas advantageous to those classes: it is a pretty big mill-race that takes its waters from all sources—from Menshikov, a chauvinist by conviction, to chauvinists for reason of opportunism or spinelessness such as Plekhanov and Maslov, Rubanovich and Smirnov, Kropotkin and Burtsev.”
— V. I. Lenin, "On the National Pride of the Great Russians," 1914.
There has of late been a disturbing tendency in some circles calling themselves “anti-imperialists” to couch their supposed opposition to imperialism using the rhetoric and iconography of imperialism itself. Individuals such as Caleb Maupin have hailed American patriotism as “progressive,” even “socialist;” while groups such as the Party of Communists, USA (PCUSA) have issued statements commemorating the Fourth of July using images such as the POW/MIA flag and a bayonet-sporting M-16 sticking out of ground with the helmet of supposedly dead American soldier covering the weapon’s stock. One is tempted to remind Mr. Maupin of what American patriotism has meant to the indigenous peoples of this continent, and the PCUSA stalwarts that their cherished Vietnam-era graphics came out of one the most brutal imperialist wars of the past century. But such would be a waste of breath.
What needs to be said, loudly and clearly, is that the language and optics of imperialism is just that – imperialist – and that the attempt to color anti-imperialism in shades of red, white, and blue is at best wrong-headed, and at worst vicious hypocrisy; ignorant, hypocritical, and perhaps a cover for something far more sinister. Namely, this is an attempt by elements hostile to the Left and everything it stands for, to infiltrate and usurp Left spaces and progressive movements.
Bluntly stated, in the current age there is nothing, absolutely nothing, progressive, liberatory, or revolutionary in the image of the American flag and the canon of reactionary “Americanisms.” Quite the contrary, to attempt to “rescue” the aesthetics of American imperialism in the name of some putative “anti-imperialism” is to spit on the past, present, and future struggles of oppressed and marginalized peoples both at home and abroad. It is, quite simply, Great Power Chauvinism.
Dissecting what the motives and goals of these groups and individuals may be in dressing up their Great Power Chauvinism in the garb of socialism and communism may be, while clear to anyone willing to take a closer look, is beyond the scope of this piece. Instead, let’s focus on the very concept of a “progressive Americanism” and a “patriotic socialism.”
Right from the first, a line of demarcation needs to be drawn between the nationalism of the oppressed and the nationalism of the oppressor. Nationalism itself began, in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, as a revolutionary force that championed the aspirations of a people, a nation, against the privileges and tyranny of hereditary aristocracy and Divine Right monarchy. And it was seen as a dangerous idea by the entrenched and embattled “Old Regime” for much of the 19th century – the age of the bourgeois revolution. However, by the end of that century, figures such as Bismarck co-opted nationalism and harnessed it to serve conservative and counter-revolutionary ends. Reactionary nationalism, or Great Power Chauvinism, became a defining feature of the Radical Right of the 1890s and early 1900s. And the Radical Right was the forerunner of fascism, which inherited its nationalism, militarism, and ethnocentrism.
The nationalism of the great powers has nothing in common with the original nationalism of the French and early 19th century revolutionaries; and absolutely nothing in common with the nationalism of oppressed and colonized peoples who are themselves struggling against that self-same Great Power Chauvinism. That a people whose history, culture, traditions, even their very language has been suppressed seek to rediscover and revive what was taken from them is a revolutionary act. By the same token, the attempt to erase that history, culture, and tradition by imperial and colonizing powers and replace it with their own is the very definition of counter-revolution. That imperialism sought to disguise its rapine with claims of the “civilizing mission” and “Manifest Destiny” has long been unmasked and discredited. So much so that even imperialist apologists such as the proto-fascist Hilaire Belloc admitted the sham when he wrote, “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not.” (Belloc, "The Modern Traveller," 1898)
And yet, here we see it again.
Within the American context, this is not entirely new. Earl Browder’s “Communism is 20th Century Americanism” sought to accomplish much the same in the 1940s. One of the hallmarks of Browderism was the attempt to retroactively tie the American national myth to the modern American communist movement. Browder sought to claim figures such as Washington and Jackson for “socialism,” asserting that there was something unique, something “exceptional” about American imperialism that distinguished it from the old European colonialism and contemporary imperialism. That it was a kinder, gentler, even “progressive” imperialism.
Indeed, there was something different about US imperialism, just not what Browderism claimed. What was different is that, for much of its history up to 1900, US imperialism, unlike the European powers, did not need to go overseas to seek colonies because its colonies were “just a little farther West.” Westward expansion was imperial expansion. The American Empire was within its own borders, as Native peoples learned to their cost. It’s worth noting that American imperialism began the search for investments, markets, and the export of capital at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Just at the time when the American Census Bureau and historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared that the “frontier was closed.” (Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," 1893)
While in no way denying the historical advance of bourgeois liberal democracy over Divine Right Monarchy and feudalism, or the significance of the American Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, the history of the United States is the history of imperialism. It is a history of genocide, plunder, racism, and exploitation. This cannot be denied, ignored, or covered over. To attempt as much, as the modern Browderites do, is the rankest, foulest reaction.
To resist imperialism is to resist Great Power Chauvinism. To challenge imperialism is to challenge the culture, symbols, emblems, and myths of the oppressor. To defeat imperialism is to uphold proletarian internationalism, the right of nations to self-determination, and to champion the cause of all oppressed, exploited, colonized, and marginalized peoples.
This is the communist way. This is the only way.
Camilo Lazo
National Chair of the American Party of Labor
July 4, 2024