To defeat the state, we in the core of imperialism need to make U.S. hegemony too weakened for our ruling class to be able to use it to hold back revolution. And to cripple the beast by attacking it from within its heart, we need to take away the social base Washington depends on to be able to maintain its global war machine; that social base being the U.S. working class.
Instead of giving me flippant non-answers enlighten me: What has he said that is “patsoc”, what does “patsoc” even mean and why is it bad?
Patriotic socialism is when self proclaimed socialists say they want a socialist US with the current colonial territory and current colonial flag. They think slavery and settler colonization is over so race doesn’t matter and the white “working class” is the vanguard. They think the reactionary US “revolutionary war” should be upheld and idealized by communists. They often even uphold highly problematic figures like Abraham Lincoln and oppose those like John Brown and maybe even the panthers. They spend most of their time throwing out claims of ultra-leftism to everyone that’s not them, and start crying about white genocide the minute you bring up decolonizing or even some sort of reparations for indigenous people for what this empire has inflicted upon them. I know this from personally being involved with PCUSA for a bit, but there also other more overtly reactionary patsocs like Caleb Maupen.
First of all i have seen read little to nothing from Rainer that is anything like the views you described. In fact i have seen more that would indicate that he actually supports decolonization. The only thing i have seen him be critical of is the liberal co-optation of the slogan of “decolonization”. I am also fairly sure he has praised the Black Panthers and held them up as a positive revolutionary example. As for what should be done with the US, i have to always add the caveat that i do not live in the US nor have any connection to it whatsoever so the most i can offer is an outsider’s opinion.
I think pretty much all communists acknowledge that the US’s revolution was a bourgeois one. But so was the French revolution. In today’s context that would be reactionary but it could be argued, and as far as i know Marx himself also held this view, that at the time it served at least to a certain extent a progressive role in history. It did inspire the French revolution which, though it was also a failure from the proletariat’s point of view, in turn had far reaching impacts on later revolutionary developments.
That being said, the state that the American revolution established pretty quickly became undeniably reactionary in character. As for Lincoln, Marx also had a fairly positive view of him, though obviously there were significant contradictions between on the one hand the real revolutionary liberation of the enslaved (which was unfortunately immediately followed by a severe reactionary backlash and the failure of reconstruction) and on the other the ongoing colonial genocide of the indigenous population and the theft of their land.
None of these historical developments and figures should be idealized by communists and we should also in no way be attached to the continued existence of the US, since it is more likely than not that its balkanization will become inevitable at some point. From where i’m standing i would consider it to be a net positive for the world if the US disappeared as a state, and i am sure much of the global south would rejoice over such a development - for good reason! On the other hand i can also understand how US communists may feel differently and may have reasons for wanting to avoid such a scenario since for them it may make their own conditions much worse.
I don’t think it is productive to completely exclude and shut out communists who still have some reactionary prejudices that they need to unlearn, or who think that calling openly for the dissolution of the US would at this point be counterproductive to the struggle since it would alienate the masses. I am not saying they are right, in fact i think they mean well but are misjudging the situation, but i do think it’s ok to have legitimate disagreements about what the right strategy is for building a revolutionary movement inside the imperial core. No group has so far had success, so why not let different groups try different approaches?
I don’t know maybe i am completely off-base here, and maybe i’ll get downvoted to hell again for this, but i just don’t think there is anything to gain from simply dismissing so many potential allies by just labeling them “patsocs”, then acting like merely because they have been given that label they are now taboo and not to be associated with, and lumping them all in the same category as certain online grifters.
I can’t say I’ve seen him explicitly say he’s patriotic, but he does associate with RAtWM whose “communist” strain is led by explicit patsoc PCUSA. He also spends most of his time attacking orgs that have done more than him like PSL and BAR (also patsoc shit) while hating hating on the Lumpen-proles which they also like to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable portion of his audience is patsocs. These Patsocs have symptoms of petit bourgeois ideology reminiscent of the strong labor movement of the 19th century who accomplished mostly just stealing non-white jobs.
This approach is not new, there was once the browderites of CPUSA who is being copied and they helped the party’s decline.
PS lincoln would have led the south back into the union with no slaves freed if he could have, it was the slaves who took liberation into their own hands.
> lincoln would have let the south back into the union with no slaves freed if he could have
MY man #imsayinbro