Nationalism

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National characteristics are enforced from the top down. This is because the concept of nation itself is enforced from the top down (ruling class).

Hardly believable. Russians for example, had their cultural traditions and so on, that is to say "national characteristics", long before the Russian nation state was founded.

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This attitude of a "threat" to Russia is exactly what I'm talking about in terms of manipulation by the bourgeoisie. This is what the bourgeoisie do: create an imagined threat to "your" nation and use this climate of fear to make the working classes more acceptable of bourgeois rule.

False. In Russia for example it it the bourgeoisie that is destroying the nation, and the communists (admittedly,most of them are actually soc-dems but regadless) are the ones calling for a stronger army, the reindustrialization of the country and so on.

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you love Russia then you have a preference for Russians over other people. Thus you have a preference for the Russian bourgeoisie over other bourgeoisie.

In fact, i'm almost sure that most Russians would prefer a French or Swedish bourgeoisie over their own.

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Eh? No?
Why would they? As for the "different" part, why wouldn't they see themselves as different? They are obviously living in a socialist country, unlike the rest.

They would see themselves as superior because this is what the concept of nation posits. Every nationality is supposed to see itself as the "best" nation.

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I'm not saying that.

Then you aren't suggesting patriotism (but you say you are). Patriotism implies a love for the "fatherland". Why should people love the nation-state in which they happened to be born?

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They were free (and encouraged) to develop their national cultures (unlike during the Tzar). See: Korenizatsiya.
Of course that doesn't mean that just about everything was allowed.

Bullshit. After the revolution, there was a great expansion in Russian art with new styles such as constructivism emerging. Vkhutemas was established and some very avant-garde art was created. However, Bolsheviks such as Lenin and Stalin were very conservative in their artisitc tastes and expressed disapproval until Stalin finally clamped down on all art he deemed to be "bourgeois" (quite how constructivism is bourgeois is beyond me). Thus people did NOT have freedom to develop "their" culture. The state determined what the national culture could and could not be.

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Hardly believable. Russians for example, had their cultural traditions and so on, that is to say "national characteristics", long before the Russian nation state was founded.

They had customs but these were not national characteristics. That is because not everybody adhered to these customs. Some people did and some people didn't. Some adhered to only some customs. Some adhered to Russian customs and non-Russian customs. There are loads of so-called "British" national customs that I don't adhere to. There is also the factor of class customs. The Russian ruling class had different customs to the Russian peasantry and proletariat. How could they therefore both be "Russian"?

The fact is, national customs are propagated from the top down. Thus, the kilt is the national dress of Scotland because it is propagated as such. People are encouraged to wear this on special occasions. Never mind that it originated in Ireland, is only worn by men, and is never worn as an everyday piece of clothing. This national custom is entirely orchestrated by the state.

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False. In Russia for example it it the bourgeoisie that is destroying the nation, and the communists (admittedly,most of them are actually soc-dems but regadless) are the ones calling for a stronger army, the reindustrialization of the country and so on.

How are they destroying the nation? They utilise the nation for their own political legitimacy. Hence Putin recently said this.

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They would see themselves as superior because this is what the concept of nation posits. Every nationality is supposed to see itself as the "best" nation.

No. Give some proof for this. In what way did the Soviet workers consider them "superior" to all others?
That's not to say that they weren't superior in the sense that they were the most progressive of all workers (evidently). Although that's not what's usually meant in the context of "superior nations".

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Then you aren't suggesting patriotism (but you say you are). Patriotism implies a love for the "fatherland". Why should people love the nation-state in which they happened to be born?

I'm suggesting patriotism but socialist patriotism.
Also, just becuse of that. I've already given a quote by Lenin that addresses that issue. It's not about "being born in xy", it's about living and fighting, first of all, in the context of a specific nation.

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After the revolution, there was a great expansion in Russian art with new styles such as constructivism emerging. Vkhutemas was established and some very avant-garde art was created

I'm aware. All that obviously lost its importance after some time, presumably because most people didn't really care much about all that and had different preferences.

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Thus people did NOT have freedom to develop "their" culture.

Under Tzarism Uzbeks for example didn't really have the freedom to publish in Uzbek, to have folklore societies and so on. That's what i mean by this.

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That is because not everybody adhered to these customs.

No. Not everyone "adhers" to everything. Some Russians became naturalized Tatars and so on ( so did one prince of Moscow).
I don't think that fact is sufficient to deny that there is such a thing as national characteristics.

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The Russian ruling class had different customs to the Russian peasantry and proletariat.

They both had common customs.

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The fact is, national customs are propagated from the top down.

I don't believe so. How are national customs of Kurds propagated from Ankara?
How were national customs of Sorbs, for example, propagated from the Third Reich during WW2?

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How are they destroying the nation? They utilise the nation for their own political legitimacy. Hence Putin recently said this.

Soviet78 wrote a lot on that. If you listened to what the Russian communists have been saying for years you'd understand that Putin is a demagogue full of shit. He speaks of "patriotism" while selling out the country and its people (indeed, what's going on in Russia today is actually a genocide against all of its peoples) in most shameless ways.

I voted other simply because there are two forms of nationalism: the progressive and the reactionary. The nationalism can be progressive when we talk about self-determination. The nationalism can be also reactionary when we talk about imperialism. The national liberation struggles are related to the class struggle. As a Marxist I see nationalism in this way: it is positive and revolutionary when the nation is fighting for its independence against an oppressor force (self-determination) but it's negative and reactionary once the independence is achieved.

At least this is how I interpret this passage from "Marx-Engels Correspondence: 1882 Nationalism, Internationalism and the Polish Question": "Thus I hold the view that there are two nations in Europe which do not only have the right but the duty to be nationalistic before they become internationalists: the Irish and the Poles. They are internationalists of the best kind if they are very nationalistic".

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No. Give some proof for this. In what way did the Soviet workers consider them "superior" to all others?

Funnily enough, I don't have evidence of what millions of people thought decades ago in Russia. I am working purely on the assumption of the national myth. Each nation is implied to be a "great" nation (which nations aren't "great"?) and people are encouraged to value "their" achievements over other nations. Some Russians may not have bought into the national concept and thus did not think this. Whatever people thought, this is what nationalism wants them to think.

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I'm suggesting patriotism but socialist patriotism.

What's the difference? You think you are better than workers who live in a non-socialist country just because you happened to be born in a socialist one? That's no different from young Americans today thinking they are better than other nationalities because America is a global power. They neglect to mention that they as individuals have made little to no contribution towards achieving that power.

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I'm aware. All that obviously lost its importance after some time, presumably because most people didn't really care much about all that and had different preferences.

No, Stalin didn't like it so he banned it. Many of the Leninists and Stalinist had incredibly conservative tastes in art.

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Under Tzarism Uzbeks for example didn't really have the freedom to publish in Uzbek, to have folklore societies and so on. That's what i mean by this.

Under Bolshevism Russians didn't have permission to publish in Russian (or any language) if it fell foul of the state's literary boundaries.

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No. Not everyone "adhers" to everything. Some Russians became naturalized Tatars and so on ( so did one prince of Moscow).
I don't think that fact is sufficient to deny that there is such a thing as national characteristics.

You are adopting one of "my" national characteristics whenever you write on this forum. Does that make you English? When Scottish people wear a kilt (a supposed Scottish national characteristic), they are in fact wearing something that originates in Ireland. Does that make them Irish? The Soviet Union adopted an ideology that was written by two Germans. Did that make them German?

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They both had common customs.

The Russian aristocracy spoke French. Were they French?

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I don't believe so. How are national customs of Kurds propagated from Ankara?

They aren't, they are propagated from the Kurdish bourgeoisie. Even though they are not the ruling class in a Kurdish state, they still retain a dominance over workers who identify as Kurdish. The first leader of the Kurdish national movement was a landowner. Now if the Kurds have been around for so long, why was it not until the 19th century (and the development of the bourgeoisie) that they finally realised they were a nation? The answer: because this was the first time the bourgeoisie had propagated it amongst them for its own purpose.

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Soviet78 wrote a lot on that. If you listened to what the Russian communists have been saying for years you'd understand that Putin is a demagogue full of shit. He speaks of "patriotism" while selling out the country and its people (indeed, what's going on in Russia today is actually a genocide against all of its peoples) in most shameless ways.

In many ways, this is what they want you to think. If you think "your" treasured customs are under threat, you will actually try and preserve these reactionary customs rather than look to more progressive ones. They usually don't care much about changes in the language etc. They instead just want you to maintain the belief in the nation itself and that they should be the national leaders. This way they maintain their legitimacy and bind you to their will.

I simply voted no. People should learn to not form identities based solely on geographical cultures, but should instead form identities primarily (not solely) on the ideas that can unite them with others.

I want also to make a quick point about self-determination. Yesterday, I and comrade Myth had an argument with a nationalist over the Kosovo issue. He was arguing that communism is against self-determination and we showed some Lenin and Marx quotation defending the self-determination. He then showed a list of several Communist Parties that expressed against the Kosovo independence. There is nothing contradictory here as I explained to him:

when Lenin and Marx defended self-determination they were advocating the struggle for independence of some European nations because it implied an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat against the old order and the subsequent overthrowing of the feudal lords. It was correctly interpreted as an advance in the class struggle and nationalism was only a mean to achieve an end. Once the independence is achieved and secured that alliance between bourgeoisie and proletariat breaks, the fight against bourgeoisie turns international and therefore the nationalism is abandoned by the proletariat.

What happen in Kosovo was very different. The independence was not achieved through a struggle for self-determination but rather granted by the imperialist bourgeoisie to the Kosovo bourgeoisie. There was no advance in the class struggle here. The important here was how they achieved the independence and that is why the communist parties expressed against it. So, there is nothing contradictory between Marx and Lenin words and the position adopted by the communist parties. USSR supported national liberation groups (mainly in Africa) throughout the XX Century.

I will also like to address in a a short time a matter that I learned very recently: some nationalist (strasserist crap) groups are trying to take advantage of the fact that Marx never developed deeply his thoughts about nationalism to advocate a strange mixture of Communism with reactionary Nationalism and promote this crap under the banner of communism to disassociate themselves from the nazi bad reputation although we communists have a clear idea of what Marx thought about the subject and Lenin later clarified in this words:

"The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them."

Stalin reinforced this:

"The period of the victory of socialism on a world scale differs from the period of the victory of socialism in one country primarily in the fact that it will abolish imperialism in all countries, will abolish both the striving to subjugate other nations and the fear inspired by the menace of national enslavement, will radically undermine national distrust and national enmity, will unite the nations into one world socialist economic system, and will thus create the real conditions necessary for the gradual merging of all nations into one."

One of this groups tried to establish itself in a well-known far-right forum unsuccessfully since they were banned from there and now they have a forum of their own. This group is insignificant and its few members are a completely joke, nothing to worry about. Nonetheless this is an example (small one though) of how the Marx and Lenin doctrines can be used by the wrong people and since we are talking about nationalism I think it would be appropriate to write it here.

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Funnily enough, I don't have evidence of what millions of people thought decades ago in Russia. I am working purely on the assumption of the national myth. Each nation is implied to be a "great" nation (which nations aren't "great"?) and people are encouraged to value "their" achievements over other nations. Some Russians may not have bought into the national concept and thus did not think this. Whatever people thought, this is what nationalism wants them to think.

All these assumptions go contrary to the fact that the Russian revolutionary working masses fought, among other things, for a revolution in Europe.

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What's the difference? You think you are better than workers who live in a non-socialist country just because you happened to be born in a socialist one? That's no different from young Americans today thinking they are better than other nationalities because America is a global power. They neglect to mention that they as individuals have made little to no contribution towards achieving that power.

No one is talking about "being better" and what not. The thing is that workers in a socialist country should be proud of their motherland and work to strenghten it further.

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No, Stalin didn't like it so he banned it. Many of the Leninists and Stalinist had incredibly conservative tastes in art.

Yep, i totally want to see your proof for this.

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Under Bolshevism Russians didn't have permission to publish in Russian (or any language) if it fell foul of the state's literary boundaries.

I don't feel like playing semantic games. My point was that all peoples got the right to their national culture.
The fact that there were some norms relating to certain tendencies in art (formalism etc.) does in no way change this.

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The Russian aristocracy spoke French. Were they French?

They shared some common customs with all Russian people.

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In many ways, this is what they want you to think. If you think "your" treasured customs are under threat, you will actually try and preserve these reactionary customs rather than look to more progressive ones. They usually don't care much about changes in the language etc. They instead just want you to maintain the belief in the nation itself and that they should be the national leaders. This way they maintain their legitimacy and bind you to their will.

I don't believe this. What are some historical examples for the bolded part?

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All these assumptions go contrary to the fact that the Russian revolutionary working masses fought, among other things, for a revolution in Europe.

You mean the Bolsheviks sought to trigger a revolution in Europe so that they would have a powerful ally. Why wouldn't they do this?

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No one is talking about "being better" and what not. The thing is that workers in a socialist country should be proud of their motherland and work to strenghten it further.

I have no problem of people being proud that the country they live in is socialist and that they have overthrown capitalism. It's when they talk abstractly about a specific country like it were an organic entity (e.g. "proud to be Russian") is when it becomes reactionary. The former is not nationalistic because it is not implying that a nation has achieved something, but a certain class within that so-called nation.

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Yep, i totally want to see your proof for this.

On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations - Stalin's decree in 1932.

This essentially made socialist realism the officially supported artisitic form.

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I don't feel like playing semantic games.

I.e. you don't want to address my point.

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My point was that all peoples got the right to their national culture.

No they didn't. The state determined what elements of "their" national culture they could express.

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They shared some common customs with all Russian people.

They shared some common customs with people all over the world. To imply that someone is nationality X is to imply they are eternally different from everyone else on the planet apart from the rest of nationality X to whom they are eternally similar. This is bullshit because anyone can adopt the customs of nation X. People are just people, there is no need to create artifical divisions between them.

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I don't believe this. What are some historical examples for the bolded part?

US conservatives implying that gay marriage and abortion are a threat to the American way of life. By creating this sense of threat to the 'American way of life' in general, it encourages people to develop homophobic and patriarchal attitudes.

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You mean the Bolsheviks sought to trigger a revolution in Europe so that they would have a powerful ally. Why wouldn't they do this?

Indeed, why wouldn't they want a world revolution?

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I have no problem of people being proud that the country they live in is socialist and that they have overthrown capitalism. It's when they talk abstractly about a specific country like it were an organic entity (e.g. "proud to be Russian") is when it becomes reactionary. The former is not nationalistic because it is not implying that a nation has achieved something, but a certain class within that so-called nation.

Fair enough.

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On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations - Stalin's decree in 1932.
This essentially made socialist realism the officially supported artisitic form.

I haven't been able to find the text of that decree on the Internet, so you'll have to forgive me for asking you again to prove that "avangarde art" was banned because "Stalin didn't like it".

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I.e. you don't want to address my point.

What point? Literature which wasn't in accordance with certain norms was banned, regardless of what language it was written in.

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No they didn't. The state determined what elements of "their" national culture they could express.

Doesn't change anything about the fact that peoples got the freedom to practice their culture for the first time. Of course that some "traditions" like head-veils in Muslim or shamanism in Siberian cultures had to be dealt with, but why would anyone be against that?
Also i'd love you to give me some examples of Kazakh or Uyghur or Chukchi futurists or avangarde.

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They shared some common customs with people all over the world. To imply that someone is nationality X is to imply they are eternally different from everyone else on the planet apart from the rest of nationality X to whom they are eternally similar.

No. Internationalism is about the international brotherhood and friendship between peoples. Of course that the Russian nation is different from the Chinese one. What's the point in going against that?

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US conservatives implying that gay marriage and abortion are a threat to the American way of life. By creating this sense of threat to the 'American way of life' in general, it encourages people to develop homophobic and patriarchal attitudes.

Only a part of the American public is conservative.
Certain elements within the big US bourgeoisie have been pushing for "diversity" for quite some time now.

Loz wrote:

Only a part of the American public is conservative.
Certain elements within the big US bourgeoisie have been pushing for "diversity" for quite some time now.

You asked for a historical example of the technique whereby the powers-that-be encourage a siege mentality to stir up their base. He gave you one. How was the above quote a relevant response? It would be polite to formally concede the point, rather than skip blithely along down another tangent. It's just good manners. After all, he did go to the trouble of satisfying your request for an example.

It isn't clear what you meant by the bunny-ears, but I'm sure I don't like it. We should strive for a society that is accepting of alternative lifestyles.

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You asked for a historical example of the technique whereby the powers-that-be encourage a siege mentality to stir up their base.

No.
I asked for an example for "...In many ways, this is what they want you to think. If you think "your" treasured customs are under threat, you will actually try and preserve these reactionary customs rather than look to more progressive ones. They usually don't care much about changes in the language etc. They instead just want you to maintain the belief in the nation itself and that they should be the national leaders. This way they maintain their legitimacy and bind you to their will...."

It seems to me that gRed was talking on a more general scale so to speak. I already mentioned how Muslims in Soviet Asia fought against veils and so on.
Also, even if a part of the (American) bourgeoisie is "conservative" and does what gRed said it does (although he, for some reason, used "you" as in "you will actually try", which i don't see the point of but whatever), there is also the fact that certain elements among the ruling classes indeed push for "diversity" and multiculturalism and so on.

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It isn't clear what you meant by the bunny-ears, but I'm sure I don't like it.

What does that mean?

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We should strive for a society that is accepting of alternative lifestyles.

Says who?




Also, a related quote:

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It may seem strange that we who stand for the future merging of national cultures into one common (both in form and content) culture, with one common language, should at the same time stand for the flowering of national cultures at the present moment. . . . But there is nothing strange about it. The national cultures must be allowed to develop and unfold, . . in order to create the conditions for merging them into one common culture.

J. Stalin: Political Report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the CPSU