Boris Ziherl
Communism and Fatherland
II.
The fatherland is first of all a "definite
political, cultural and social community" (Lenin).
By a community called the fatherland, we understand today a definite country with a nation
that inhabits it, a country with monuments of
national labour and struggle, a nation with a
common national language, national traditions
and national culture.
This identification of the fatherland with the
national community did not always exist. In the
old times, for instance under feudalism, the concept of fatherland was much narrower, it was
limited to provinces, principalities, duchies etc.
The identification of the fatherland with the
national, political, cultural and social community
appeared in the days when the classical bourgeois national states were formed in Western
Europe (on the basis of the development of
capitalist production relationships, on the basis
of ever-closer economic, political and cultural
connections between provinces, through the
struggle that the third estate — the "nation" —
was leading for the overthrow of feudalism), the
slate territories of the said states coinciding
almost entirely with the national territories.
Such a concurrence of the state and the national in the concept of the fatherland did not
exist in the multi-national states of Central and
Eastern Europe, e. g. in Austria and Russia,
which were founded on national oppression. The
ruling classes of the oppressing nation were
endeavouring to force upon the oppressed nations the foster-state as their "common fatherland". The oppressed nations identified (heir
fatherland with their national community, longing to liberate it and form a national state,
either by seceding from the old state, or by
creating federal relationships, based on national
equality with the other nations of the said state.
All attempts at transforming the bourgeois
multi-national state, based on national oppression
and inequality, into a "common fatherland" of
all its peoples met with utter failure.
When the classical bourgeois national states
of the West were transformed, at the end of the
19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, into
multi-national colonial empires, into imperialistic states, then the contradictions between the
"fatherland" of the oppressors and the fatherland of the oppressed peoples broke out with
great violence in these states also.
The struggle of the disunited and oppressed
peoples for their fatherland and for the free
development of all creative forces of the nation
into an independent national state was considered by the classics of Marxism-Leninism as a
progressive struggle, even more so when this
struggle in the epoch of imperialism was objectively linked more and more closely with the
struggle of the proletariat and other working
masses for the overthrow of the capitalist social
system, and for the building of socialism. Pointing out that the slogan calling for the defense
of an imperialist "fatherland" is nothing but a
call for the defense of the right to oppress other
nations and amounts to a deception of the
working masses, Lenin stressed:
"In a genuinely national war the words 'defense of the fatherland' are not a deceit and
we are by no means against such a
defense."1
The wars for the liberation and unity of
European peoples from 1789 to 1871 and the
anti-imperialist wars in the colonies and dependent countries were considered by Lenin its
progressive wars for the overthrow of foreign
yokes.
"War (e. g. of the colonial peoples) against
the imperialists, i. e. Oppressor states, is a genuinely national
war."2
However, a long time before the classical
bourgeois states of the West became multi-national
imperialist powers, there were deep contradictions in them as
to the concept of the
fatherland, as to the relationship to the fatherland. Each class
force participating in the fight
against feudalism injected its own social ideals
into the concept of fatherland.
For the bourgeoisie the fatherland was,
above all, the undisturbed right to exploit the
nation, i.e. its huge majority — the working
class and other working strata, the right to
dispose with the land, i.e. to appropriate its
natural resources in the name of unrestricted
private ownership, the right to undisturbed
manipulation of the nation and country in the
fight against other nations and countries in the
struggle for the domination of others.
In the West and in the East, wherever the
bourgeoisie alone, or in the company of the
landed aristocracy, established its class rule, it
established, in the state, its own "ideal" of the
fatherland.
Lenin wrote that "in each contemporary
nation there are two nations". Opposed to the
bourgeois "nation" and its fatherland is the
"nation" and fatherland of the working people,
headed by the proletariat, the most progressive
class of contemporary society. For the working
people the concept of the fatherland as an object
of patriotism is quite different from the concept
of the bourgeoisie.
The patriotism of the working people is not
merely love for the native land, for its natural
beauties and riches; the patriotism of the working people
includes the idea and aspiration that
the natural beauties and riches should cease to
he a source of enrichment and pleasure for a
handful of capitalists and big landowners, and
become a material source of the well-being and
progress of all the working people of the country.
The love of the working people for their
national past is the attitude of the creator towards his own creation, the intimate attitude of
the people towards the accumulated results of
their own physical and intellectual work, the
heritage of their own struggle for freedom and
progress.
The love of the people for their national
language is love for a mighty means for the
education and enlightenment of the working
masses, enabling them to carry on the struggle
for freedom and progress more successfully.
Speaking about the significance of the struggle
for the free development of the national language, Comrade
Stalin stressed in 1913:
"...obstruction of the use of
language, reduction of the number of schools and other
repressive measures hit the workers not less, if
not more, than the bourgeoisie. Such conditions
cannot but paralyse the free development of the
spiritual forces of the proletariat of the subjugated
nations."3
The love of the working people for their
fatherland is love for its future which is to
emerge from the revolutionary struggle of the
working masses themselves. The great Slovene
proletarian writer, Cankar, expressed this idea
with the following words:
"Our fatherland is struggle and future; this
fatherland is worthy of the sacrifice of the most
noble blood and best lives. From the sufferings
and slavery of countless millions a new fatherland shall emerge: the whole of this beautiful
land with all of its boundless riches. This present fatherland of the prosperous, built on slavery, fertilized by blood and tears, a shame for
mankind and a mockery of justice, shall be
only a bitter and ugly memory…The song
about 'our beautiful fatherland' shall sound differently then!"4
These words contain the idea of the inseparable interdependence of revolutionary patriotism
and internationalism.
The patriotism of the working people has
nothing in common with the nationalism of the
bourgeoisie. Bourgeois nationalism means one's
"own" nation above all others, underestimating, belittling and negating the social-economic, political and cultural achievements of other peoples
and the international significance of these achievements, praising one's own achievements and
their international significance to the heavens,
most often by means of ordinary forgery, falsification and inflation of historical facts.
As far back as 1841 Engels, in his article on
the German poet Arnt, referred to bourgeois
nationalism as negative patriotism. The
bourgeoisie conceives of love for its fatherland as a
struggle for the exceptional privileges of its
"own" people, i. e. for itself as the ruling class
of that people. However, as the privileges for its
"own" people can be obtained only at the expense of other peoples, bourgeois negative patriotism inevitably includes chauvinism, hatred
of other peoples, and in its development passes
through various stages until it reaches the bestial
racism of contemporary bourgeois reaction.
The positive patriotism of the working
masses embodies genuine internationalism. This
connection between patriotism and internationalism is
conditioned by two circumstances:
1) insofar as the nations with their national,
ethnical and political-economic territories, national traditions
and national cultures are "historically formed, stable
communities of people"
(Stalin), the universal, international, can be concretely,
practically accomplished only through
the national, in national forms;
2) the working masses of a country, led by
the most progressive class of contemporary society, the
working class, whose social aim is the
abolition of all exploitation and all oppression.
by their social, non-exploitive, non-oppressive
character, tend towards peaceful collaboration
with other peoples.
The great Russian democrat and thinker,
Byelinsky, wrote the following as early as 1840:
"Love for the fatherland must issue from
love for humanity, as the particular emerges
from the general. To love one's fatherland means
ardently to wish for the achievement of the
ideals of mankind in it and to contribute with
all one's forces towards their achievement.''5
The patriotism of the working masses represents, consequently, a unity of the national
and international, and the correctly understood
national interests of one's own country as
stressed by Lenin in his well-known article on
the national pride of Great-Russians, written
in 1914, which cannot be opposed to the socialist
interests of the international proletariat, but
must be concurrent with them.
The revolutionary patriotism and internationalism of the working people cannot be imagined
without national equality.
Even before the establishment of the fatherland of the working people, i. e. before the
overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and
big landowners, before the liquidation of their
"fatherland", the international revolutionary
proletariat must, in its own ranks, give the
masses of various nationalities and countries an
example of national equality.
The underestimation, belittling and even
denial of the actual significance of a revolutionary movement in a country for the common
cause, or the unjust and baseless emphasis of
"merits" which, in fact, do not exist, or the
exaggerated praise of one's own actual merits, —
all this is grist for the mill of bourgeois nationalistic prejudices, creates distrust and weakens
the international solidarity of the working people.
In his letter to Kautsky of February 7/15,
1882, Engels pointed out the importance of national equality in the international working class
movement:
"The international movement of the proletariat is possible only among independent nations.
The little republican internationalism that existed from 1830-1848 was centered in France,
which was to liberate Europe, and it increased
French chauvinism to such an extent that this
all-liberating mission of France and her inherent
right to be the leader still represents a block
in our way… It was events that showed them —
and many others — and must show them every
day that international cooperation is possible only
among equals and that even on primus inter
pares does not come into consideration, except in
direct action."6
In the time of Engels, French chauvinism in
the working class movement was harmful for the
development of the movement in Germany and
other countries. The harm later caused to the
development of the revolutionary movement
among Austrian Slays by German chauvinism in
social-democracy is well known. The words of
Engels are even more important today when,
apart from the capitalist world, where the communists, heading the masses of the people are
still fighting for the establishment of a genuine
fatherland of the working people, there are a
series of socialist countries, gathered around the
Soviet Union, whose mutual relations should be
an example and incentive for the peoples in the
capitalist countries.
Notes
1. Lenin: Works, III Edition, Vol. XIX, page 197.
2. Idem. page 200.
3. Stalin: "Marxism and the National-Colonial Question", p. 20, published by "Kultura", Belgrade, 1947.
4. Cankar: Collected Works, Ljubljana, 1930, Vol.
XI, 299--300.
5. Byelinsky: Selected Works (in one volume).
Moscow 1947, p. 131.
6. Marx-Engels "Letters to Bebel, Liehknecht,
Kautsky and others", Moscow-Leningrad, 1935. Vol. 1,
p. 251 (in German).