Perceptions of Nationalism and Internationalism

Posted by Bruce Yu

(This article is an extension of Fries's "The Taxonomy of Humanity" and details some of his ideas)

The concept of nation and its origins

The concept of national interests, by its very nature, is a pseudo-concept. We can assert that the so-called concept of national interest is nothing more than a lie woven by the ruling class. The bourgeoisie has always ruled the proletarians, whether or not they are in the same nation, with what is called a "united national interest". However, the nation itself exists objectively. This paradoxical phenomenon naturally derives from certain characteristics of the concept of nation itself. Analyzing the origins and characteristics of the concept of nation can help to understand the connection between bourgeois dictatorship and nationalism.

The concept of nation comes from the concept of family and clan. Humans, because of their own physical characteristics, must combine males and females in order to reproduce the next generation. The long infancy and low reproductive capacity of humans make it necessary for parents to accompany the child so that the child can safely enter adulthood. This forms the original concept of family. At the same time, human beings can only ensure the reproduction of human beings by avoiding intermarriage of close relatives, and the concept of surnames came into being.

Following the birth of surnames, the various families in primitive tribes developed into the concept of clans. With the evolution of time, clans gradually reclaimed land and built ancestral halls in specific locations. After accumulating a certain amount of original capital, they developed into clans, or clans and families. However, this concept of clan is quite different from the modern concept of extended family. Clan, as the final form of patriarchy, can be said to be a collection of all the contradictions that have existed in ancient and modern China and abroad. The author uses clan, the most primitive concept group of private ownership dictatorship, to describe the fallacy of the modern concept of nation and state, and analyze how the bourgeois dictatorship and all other concept groups of private ownership dictatorship use this kind of false concept to defend them. domination and class interests.

How Clan and All Other Conceptual Groups of Private Ownership and Dictatorship Work, Fallacy, and Harm

According to the dialectics of materialism, things generally have related two sides, and the same is true of clans. The two interrelated but contradictory characteristics of the clan since its birth made it the best tool for the ruling class at that time.

On the one hand, the clan, with blood and kinship as the link, perfectly integrates everyone in the clan into a community of interests with the pseudo-concept of clan. There is only a good mother in the world, which is common to all human beings. One hundred kindness and filial piety come first. If a person cannot be kind to his own relatives, he cannot be kind to anyone else.

On the other hand, the clan has forged its internal order with a strict system and class, and even the horrible word class itself refers to the order of the seats of the clan when the clan gathers.

Warm family affection and strict class, these two opposite and seemingly unrelated characteristics are actually very closely related. This connection persists even today in the concept of nation and state, allowing the ruling classes to always use this connection to assert their own rule.

The ruling class within the clan linked the pure pseudo-concept of clan to the perceived pseudo-concept of family. The relationship between a clan and an individual is like a herd of horses and a horse. If the ruling class bluntly declared that the entire herd could only be ruled by one or two of them, no one would accept their rule. The duplicity of the pseudo-concept of clan justifies their rule and, at the same time, gives rulers the best weapon to maintain their rule.

The ruling class takes advantage of the blood and emotional ties between clansmen and equates the deprivation of property, freedom, dignity, and even life of others with the behavior of parents educating their children and children honoring their parents. They also label progressives who are trying to break away from domination and embark on the path of self-emancipation as destroying collective consciousness and harming collective interests, and convincing those they rule that those progressive ideas are destroying the clan—the people who did not s things. The pseudo-concept of clan makes people think that they, the ruled and the ruling classes, belong to the same clan with common interests - a unified conceptual group, just like the concept of nation in today's society. The reality, however, is that this conceptual group is controlled by part of the property owners, or the ruling class. All the means of production and the fruits of labor of this group are owned by the ruling class of this part. This phenomenon has also continued to the current nationalism and statism. The ruling class uses the legal system, the people's representative, and the parliamentary system to link their ruling behavior with the righteousness of the nation and the country, and classifies their actions that harm the interests, freedom, dignity, and life of others with their actions of defending the people and the country. No. They too, like the clan rulers of millennia ago, put a big hat on those who pursued progressive ideas, leading people to equate liberators with robbers.

And the problems posed by clans are not just that simple. If a poor clansman thinks about the reasons for their miserable life from the perspective of the clan, there is a high probability that he will not get any results, or come to some ironic conclusions, what God, what the theory of the feeling of heaven and man is this. and live. This idea of clanism (please allow me to create a word without authorization), no, it should be said that it is a short version of nationalism and nationalism, and it will not promote any shreds of social progress; it will only deceive the thinking of the working people , so that the working people label themselves as members of a certain clan, a certain nation, or a certain country. When these poor people think about social problems, they first think of a clan, a nation, and a country as a basic unit, not a class, so they attribute the problem to the mistakes of certain people, clans, nations, and countries, or It comes down to so-called human nature issues. Today we call this kind of impoverished clansmen petty bourgeoisie, and this kind of thinking that thinks about problems from the clan's perspective is called petty bourgeois thinking. It can be seen that the problems brought about by clanism have continued to this day, affecting and clouding people's thinking.

It is precisely because of the influence of the concept of clan on our society today that the ideas of nationalism and statism, whether passive or active, are highly inciting to people in modern society. The concept of nation and country originates from the concept of clan, and the concept of clan is always present in everyone's family, surname. That is, the idea of nationalism and statism, when each person is born, is inscribed on our names. In modern society, people who have been indoctrinated with the ideas of nationalism and statism since childhood will naturally be incited by these ideas. In today's modernized and information-based society, what can be used by the ruling class and has such a powerful incitement from birth is only the concepts of family, clan, and clan that have appeared since the birth of patriarchy, private ownership, and human civilization. , and the concept of nation and state that derives from it.

The development of clanism and trends in groups and family units

"The group [that is, the concept of clan in human society] is the highest social group we can see in animals. It is probably made up of families, but families and groups are in conflict from the beginning, They develop in inverse proportion." - Espinas, On the Society of Animals, 1877

The birth of a clan has a great relationship with the size of the productive forces at that time. The backwardness of productive forces indirectly led to the backwardness of individual thinking, and also facilitated the birth of the concept of clan. In the era of the birth of clans, the productivity of human beings was generally low, so that human beings had to respond to various natural disasters with a more united and centralized social structure than today. In the ancient times when human civilization was just born, tribe, that is, the zoological term "group", overlapped with family, that is, the era of group marriage.

"Morgan, in this examination of past family histories, agrees with most of his colleagues that there existed a primitive state in which unrestricted sexual relations prevailed within the tribe, whereby every woman belonged to every every man, and every man belongs to every woman. This primitive state has been discussed in the last century, but only in general; only Bachofen was the first to take it seriously, and It was one of his great feats to look for traces of this primordial state in historical and religious legends. We now know that the traces he found were by no means traced back to the social stage of promiscuous sexual relations, but It only goes back to a much later form, that of group marriage." - Friedrich Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State

At that time, human productivity was low. On the one hand, the highest social group of human beings could only reach a small-scale social structure such as a single tribe; The structure, because of low productivity, had to become bloated and bulky. That is, the size of productivity is proportional to the size of the "swarm" and inversely proportional to the size of the family.

Therefore, after the productivity of human beings began to develop gradually, the size of "group" gradually changed from tribe to clan, and the size of family gradually developed from group marriage to pair marriage, and even the idea of monogamy came into being. In China, this was the era of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. For example, the Yellow Emperor is an obvious clan with the surname Ji and Xiong. Later, the size of the "group" changed from a clan to a concept of a country. Each kingdom is ruled by a man king and his subordinate clans. Of course, the country at that time was not even as huge as the concept of a nation. In China, that is the Xia Dynasty. During this period, the slave system gradually replaced the original clan system, and human civilization began to develop rapidly. The concept of the descendants of Yan and Huang and Huaxia, or rather the concept of the original Chinese nation, began to appear and replaced everything else in the "group" structure after Qin Shihuang unified China. China began to adopt the feudal system and ideology. The primitive clan gradually evolved into the feudal landlord class, that is, the family in the Han and Tang dynasties. The influence of this feudal system continued until the period of the Republic of China.

At the same time, with the expansion of productivity, the size of the "group" continued to expand, and the size of the family continued to shrink. During the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, the idea of monogamy replaced polygamy, and the concept of a Greater China also replaced the original concept of clan. This large-scale brainwashing spanning a thousand years wiped out all the civilizations in East Asia, leaving only a huge pan-Chinese civilization. In Europe and pan-Islamic regions, Christianity and Islam also create their own pan-civilization "groups". The size of the "group" has grown to unprecedented size; the family has become unprecedentedly small. The feminist movement, the workers' rights movement, and the anti-nationalist movement gradually emerged. The family unit began to be gradually integrated, from the previous three generations living in the same house to the current family of three plus a dog.

In today's post-information revolution era, the changes of the times have led to an unprecedented increase in productivity. A "group" called a "community with a shared future for mankind", a globalized social structure of bourgeois dictatorship, covers all human beings and makes all The people of the world have become part of this huge clan, making the workers of the world become slaves of this clan. The family unit began to coincide with the personal unit; a couple, or even a single person, were capable of doing what a clan had done in the past. The development of information intelligence will gradually promote the integration of this family unit. This trend of integration is in line with objective laws, and will not be stagnant because of some views in human society.

Regrettably, the formation of the concept of a "community with a shared future for mankind" and the integrated development of the family do not mean that the concept of nation and country will gradually disappear. On the contrary, just as the formation of the feudal system promotes the development of clan power, the formation of a "community with a shared future for mankind" will promote competition, contradiction, and development among nations and countries. This means that the nation and the state, the two pseudo-concepts that poison countless proletarians, and the private property that underpins both, will remain for a long time. To eliminate the two pseudo-concepts of nation and state, and even to eliminate bourgeois dictatorship and private ownership, cannot be achieved through the concept of so-called "national autonomy"; only through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can human beings be free from the bourgeoisie escape from the prison of dictatorship. However, the magnitude of the "community with a shared future for mankind" makes the class liberation of a single nation, region, or country unworkable in today's society. Only by following the concept of internationalism that transcends the narrow concept of "group", the proletariat of multiple ethnic groups, regions, and countries unite to eliminate the existing ruling class and establish an international proletarian dictatorship. Abolish bourgeois dictatorship and private ownership, and ultimately eliminate all concepts of nation and state, and realize the unity of the whole nation and the peace and liberation of all mankind.

How internationalism and the concept of nation coexist

Anyone who follows the materialist view of history will admit this: the fusion and unification of various nations and cultures is always going on. From a macro perspective, the idea of internationalism is obviously more progressive than the narrow idea of nationalism, and will definitely replace the idea of nationalism.

However, the secret of materialist dialectics is that it is not only to be right, but also to be right. A materialist cannot identify with a certain idea and speak for a certain organization or movement just because of a vague argument, but must test the correctness of his idea and behavior in practice. In today's society, there are many organizations and movements that are engaged in imperialist affairs under the banner of internationalism. And under the somewhat narrow and reactionary banners of unifying the nation and liberating the nation, there are many organizations and movements that actually serve the people's well-being. In the real world, this phenomenon of selling dog meat is very common. A true socialist should refine their ideas in concrete practice to make them more relevant to reality. Just as Lenin adopted wartime communism during the Russian Civil War, a correct idea must be practiced and adjusted accordingly. The idea of internationalism is no exception. Most of the international organizations in today's society have many problems because they have not changed their concepts according to the actual situation.

Needless to say about pseudo-internationalist organizations such as NATO, the European Union, the WTO, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These pseudo-internationalist organizations are all reactionary bourgeois transnational organizations formed by bourgeois dictatorship governments with the idea of neoliberalism and imperialism, and it is impossible for them to benefit the proletariat. And the real international organizations with internationalism and socialism as the core, such as the First, Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, often do bad things with good intentions, and laypeople give advice to experts. The most well-known should be the phenomenon of the Third International's blind command in the early period of World War II, which was not based on the actual situation. Another typical example is the contradiction between the Second International and the new Soviet regime. The same problem also arises in other international movements, large and small, and national liberation movements. And most of these problems are attributed to two situations:

1. International organizations have exerted too much influence on the local liberation movement. The laymen gave advice to the experts, and the proposed policies were inconsistent with the conditions and conditions, which were out of the will of the people, resulting in the failure of the movement;

2. The original liberation movement was influenced by the bourgeoisie. International organizations failed to accumulate enough public opinion support in other countries and failed to donate enough materials to support local movements. The victory of the movement was stolen by the reactionary bourgeoisie.

These two situations represent the two problems of the current international organizations: one is that they manage too much, they are too arrogant, they are full of petty-bourgeois romanticism, and they are unwilling to personally go to the working people to participate in productive labor; Too few, too lazy, the internal staff organization structure is free and loose, when participating in sports, they are timid and fearful, and they are not aware of their poor abilities. These two problems are common in today's socialist international organizations and are not accidental. It can be seen that the concept of internationalism held by existing international organizations is seriously flawed, and has not solved the problem of compromise between internationalism and nationalism. Socialists generally do not support the current national liberation movement, and are confused about how class struggle coexists with national liberation; some even think that the concept of nation and national autonomy is nothing more than a means of domination by the bourgeoisie. The need for national autonomy.

This is a poor statement. The current social situation is not as clear as some socialists imagined, and class contradictions have not intensified. The bourgeois dictatorship regime has continuously shifted class contradictions through various imperialist means, such as launching wars, squeezing overseas labor, and actively causing energy crises. This means that the economic crisis has not yet erupted; the petty bourgeoisie in most countries has not yet gone bankrupt and has unrealistic illusions about the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Through their own eyes blinded by capital interests, they believe that the main problems in society are ethnic conflicts and national conflicts, wrong policies formulated by some people in the government, global warming, international refugees, and environmental crises. , the energy crisis is a military conflict launched by some dictatorial and uncivilized countries. They ignore the existence of class contradictions as the main contradiction, and attribute social contradictions to some people in a large class, or contradictions that have existed since ancient times and continue to the present —such as ethnic contradictions, national contradictions; more interesting What’s more, some people are aware of the existence of class contradictions, but stubbornly divide class contradictions into ethnic contradictions, believing that differences and contradictions between ethnic groups are the real contradictions, and that ethnic autonomy is more important than overthrowing the ruling class. Important matter.

As absurd and naive as these ideas and insights may seem, petty bourgeois are often a major force in today's progressive movements. The socialists cannot leave them alone, but should expose them to more progressive ideas, teach the petty bourgeoisie that their illusions about the bourgeoisie are unrealistic, and lead them to understand the importance of class issues. Under the current social situation, ignoring the objective existence of the nation and the state, insisting on bookishness and dogmatism, overemphasizing the importance of class contradictions that have not been aroused in today's social environment, rigidly demanding that local comrades act in accordance with internationalism, Not advisable. In the current stage of socialist construction, socialists should encourage all ethnic groups to launch liberation movements, launch socialist revolutions, and establish their own dictatorship of the proletariat on the basis of international cooperation according to their own conditions; at the same time, socialists should We should let the masses of different ethnic groups recognize the nature of ethnic contradictions and state contradictions, and encourage mutual exchanges between different groups, so as to eliminate these concepts of ethnicity and state. Just as geocentric theory is vulnerable to heliocentric theory, wrong and reactionary nationalist ideas are equally vulnerable to more progressive internationalist ideas. While organizing movements, each socialist international organization should also improve its own concept of internationalism, avoid the conflict between the concept of nationality and internationalism, and try to take into account the wishes of specific groups, while implementing the concept of internationalism, so that the international ideology and group concepts such as the nation coexist.