Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

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NATIONALISM:
FROM POISON TO PATRIOTISM
Fascism thrives on hate, on nationalism.
-Jim West, 1938 1
The League member believes that true patriotism and true internationalism go hand in
hand.
-YCLGB Constitution, 1943 2
"The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got."
This infamous dictum of Marx and Engels penned in 1848 still befuddled communists
almost one hundred years later. As an internationalist movement that sought to conquer
political and economic power within the nation-state framework, what should be the
"correct" attitude of communists to the phenomenon of nationalism Could nationalism
be channelled to promote international unity and socialism, or did such sentiment inevitably
lead to notions of racism and international conflict The chapter addresses some of
these precarious issues by tracing the evolution of nationalist rhetoric in communist
youth propaganda.
Nationalism is a powerful ideology for mass mobilization that was initially rejected by
Marxian socialism. Marx's aforementioned declaration facilitated a trend of reductionist
thought on the subject of nationalism. Nationalism was simply a tool of class rule to
distract workers from their true international class interests. Marxism claimed that the
bourgeoisie used nationalism to facilitate racism and national chauvinism to divide "the
masses," with the strategic goal of maintaining class rule. According to this view, the
worst excesses of bourgeois nationalism were manifested in imperialist warfare and
colonial expansion. Revolutionary socialists condemned "socialist nationalism" as a
revisionist trend of the Second International that was incompatible with Marxism. The
Comintern rejected nationalism, outside of colonial-liberation struggles, as a poisonous
ideology incompatible with internationalism.
The Leninist Generation of the YCI rejected nationalism as a facilitator of war and
racism. Socialist youth blamed the outbreak of WWI upon the perceived chauvinistic
national defense policies of the Second International. Though most leaders of the SI
were declared internationalists, they nevertheless capitulated to nationalism when WWI
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