There are two themes I want to share with you on this International Workers Day:
“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end.”
“The United States doesn’t have friends; the United States has interests.”
There is no socialism without internationalism. Workers of the world unite!
But it is politically opportunistic nationalism that we are constantly peddled. As one of my students put it, nationalism is a powerful drug with very dangerous side effects.
Don’t tell me about Trump and those nasty Republicans. The Democrats drank the Kool-Aid of nationalism long ago and are now ladling it out of the punch bowl because it feeds capitalism and justifies conquest. Democrats, like all politicians, appeal to it or at the very least fear to challenge it.
Right here in Duluth MN the 148th Air Guard unit is stationed here not to protect truth, freedom, justice or whatever but for nationalist propaganda purposes. We hear endlessly in the local media about its contributions to democracy and the “service” of its members, etc. etc., and any politicians who would dare challenge these myths does so at great peril to their political future. (Militarized Nationalism: Pernicious and Pervasive - CounterPunch.org)
Thus, the most important thing the DSA or lefties of any stripe can do is clearly separate themselves from establishment Democrats so as to unequivocally challenge militarism, challenge the US empire, challenge America.
As Cornel West has written, to the extent that US imperialism expands abroad, democracy dies at home. (Democracy Matters by Cornel West: 9780143035831 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books) We are seeing it on a daily basis.
Let me share a couple brief personal examples. After I was drafted in Chicago, I was put on a huge airplane and sent to Fort Polk LA. Maybe 60% of that plane was Black Americans and the other 40% was white working-class kids like me. We were on our way to get weapons and go to Viet Nam to kill peasants defending their country.
“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end.”
Near the end of my basic training, I got an infection that spread quickly up my arm and could have been very serious. As I looked around that ward, I saw my fellow soldiers, all E-2 to E-5, white, Black, Latino, Native, mostly medevacked from VN, each messed up in his own medical or mental way but all with one thing in common. We were rural or urban working-class kids, all cannon fodder, all lured or forced to serve the empire.
“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end.”
But to learn these things you have to get out of this propagandized la-la land of make believe that is America. Turn off National Pentagon Radio (NPR) and the Pure Bullshit (PBS) News Hour. You have to work hard to learn other people’s languages. Don’t talk to the people who speak English.
For sure there is evil out there in the world that is not of American doing, but propagandizing US citizens or exaggerating the evil of others does not make America good. When it comes to US international relations--Trump-Biden-Pompeo-Blinken—it’s all the same pursuit of empire—the empire of power and profit.
There are always choices whether to deal with underlying problems or exploit them for the sake of the empire.
After the US defeat by Viet Nam there could have been a peace dividend. It was actually talked about, but the US quickly got right back on the horse because…
“The United States doesn’t have friends; the United States has interests.”
After the fall of the USSR, the US could have promoted a demilitarized neutral central Europe as promised to Gorbachev but Bill Clinton, a good Democrat, started the push of NATO all the way to the Russian border and then on to Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan etc. How Gorbachev was misled over assurances against NATO expansion | NATO Watch
“The United States doesn’t have friends; the United States has interests.”
And who’s propagandized to do the killing? Who does the dying? Obama’s kids? Bush’s kids? Hardly.
“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end.”
Am I making you uncomfortable? Do I sound angry? Might I need therapy or counseling? Not interested.
Some years ago, when I worked at the university a south Asian student printed out that saying “If you are not outraged you are not paying attention” and without asking or telling me pasted it on my office door because she knew I was angry, had a right to be angry and indeed a duty to be angry.
So let me close by offering some challenges to the DSA and its allies.
We are not international enough.
We are too close to Democrat/Republican nationalism. As the old saying goes, when Democrats get elected liberals go brain dead. It’s happened again and again.
We are too focused on electoral politics, which changes nothing re US power and empire. Rather we need to focus on the dysfunctional political culture from which the empire springs.
We are too focused on domestic identity politics while forgetting international class politics.
We must recognize the US for what it is—an arrogant, aggressive, violent militarized empire stitched together with the thread of capitalism in manufactured competition with other would-be empires, no different and no better. There’s no better illustration than the current proxy war in Ukraine.
In the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We can see these issues clearly if we always remember that there is no war that is not a lie because…
“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end” and “The United States doesn’t have friends; the United States has interests.”
And those interests are power and profit—interests that are hostile to workers everywhere.
>> May Day Celebration Remarks by Bob Kosuth, Convenor of International Working Group, Twin Ports DSA. Duluth, Minnesota, May 1st 2022
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