On the fourth of July, the day celebrating the birth of U.S. imperialism, we organized an “Anti-fourth of July” BBQ to educate our base about the dangers of nationalism and to win them to a more international view. The BBQ brought out a significant group of families, friends, and neighbors. It was organized around ideas that came from our base about how to organize events that involve more participation from everyone.
To kick off the BBQ a comrade expressed how nationalism is a threat to all working people because it’s an ideological tool of control. She explained that patriotism gives working people a false sense of identity and belonging to a group that includes their oppressors. U.S. patriotism is always divisive because it promotes racism against the people who are not considered to be “real Americans.” She also mentioned the U.S. is bombing seven different countries, more Americans are incarcerated than anywhere else in the world, and three million immigrants have been deported. Due to the bosses’ propaganda, the working class falsely believes that “their” country is looking out for their best interests, but in fact the bosses’ aims and ambitions drive this system.
What About the Working Class?
We read a short one-page excerpt from historian Howard Zinn that explains how independence from the English meant nothing for slaves, the indigenous, and poor white farmers. It explains how the ruling class uses nationalism to make poor working people fight and die in wars they do not benefit from. The article puts the history in a class perspective and argues that no slave, indigenous or poor person benefited from the victory of the American Revolution—only rich white male property owners did. Slavery continued to exist post-revolution, the indigenous continued to be beaten off their land, and poor white farmers were promised land but got very little or none at all. Today, working people must understand how nationalism is used by the bosses to justify racist attacks and drum up support for imperialist wars.
Need No Borders
In the following small group discussions, we talked about why borders exist, and how only the ruling class benefits from borders. We discussed how nationalism plays into the attacks on immigrants and refugees, who are fleeing countries destroyed by U.S. imperialism. We then talked about the solution to capitalist nationalism—working class internationalism. For their survival, the ruling classes of the world needs the working class divided, so that we are weakened. Organizing the working class on the job and in the factories—breaking the bosses’ racist, sexist, and nationalist divisions—is the only true way to fight the capitalist system and establish power for the working class.
Many in our base added constructive ideas to the discussion. Whenever the working class starts to understand these ideas, it’s one more qualitative step towards a communist future. More participation from our friends and coworkers is key to getting everyone to understand and think about these ideas more critically. Workers can organize to understand this system and smash it.