Chinese Nationalism is a Fascist Imperialist Creation (Part III) here ā¦ Fight for Communism, Not Nationalism here ā¦
Chinese Nationalism is a Fascist Imperialist Creation (Part III)
Capitalism-Imperialism Promotes Nationalist Terror. Communism Promotes Workersā Internationalism.
(See Part I here and Part II here)
On June 24th, 2024, in Suzhou, China, a knife-wielding unemployed Chinese man violently attacked people on a bus used by a Japanese school. He wounded a Japanese woman and her child as they waited for the school bus. A Chinese school bus attendant, Ms. Hu Youping, saw the attack. She tried to intervene and stop it but was stabbed multiple times. She unfortunately passed away in the hospital from severe injuries.
Online Chinese nationalists glorified the attack on our Japanese working-class siblings. They hailed the attacker as a ānational heroā and vilified Ms. Hu as a āmole for Japan.ā They incited more deadly racist violence against Japanese workers.
This isnāt an isolated incident. It is part of a global rise of fascism. With world war looming, the capitalist-imperialists are building fascism worldwide as their system spirals deeper into economic crises.
Capitalism-imperialism needs racism and nationalism to continuing exploiting workers for maximum profits. They also use it to win workers and soldiers to fight loyally in the rulersā genocidal wars to kill other workers and soldiers. They are trying to crush revolutionary and anti-fascist movements, while pushing fascist ideologies.
Following this deadly attack, the Chinese rulers removed some extreme nationalistic posts from social media. They banned some, but not all, nationalist extremists from some platforms. Some banned nationalist extremists accused the Chinese platforms of being āthe enemies of the Chinese.ā
However, the Chinese capitalist class enables nationalism and violence against Japanese, Western, and Jewish workersāand anyone else the Chinese rulers perceive as an enemy. If the Chinese capitalists cared about the nationalist extremistsā dangerous rhetoric, it would have stopped them decades ago!
The Chinese rulers never intended to protect Japanese workers from further nationalist violence. No capitalist protects workers from racist nationalist violence. They removed some nationalist extremists from the Internet only to pacify those who were angry.
The Chinese imperialistsā token crack- down was to give themselves a cover. They want to prevent anti-racists and internationalists from rising up against fascist dictatorship. To suppress revolutionary potential, and to keep the masses loyal to the government so that the government could recruit them during world war.
Communist Revolution, Not Capitalist Reforms, Will End Nationalist Terror
The solution to the violent June 24th fascist attack on Japanese workers and students is not protests for reform or demands for the rulers to ban the fascist nationalists from the Internet. Like the police, the fascist nationalists on social media are the Chinese rulersā defense against the Chinese and international working class. We should never rely on the capitalistsā platforms to protect us!
The Chinese imperialists, along with their nationalist internet armies, will persecute, suspend, ban, and libel anti-nationalists and anti-racists who denounce nationalist extremism.
Small concessions the Chinese imperialists made to the working masses will not end nationalist terror. The only answer to nationalist terror and rising fascism today is a communist revolution to end capitalist-imperialism everywhere.
Together we will build a classless egalitarian communist world without money, wages, borders, nations, genocides, and imperialist wars.
In communism, all workers will be treated as comrades, neighbors, brothers and sisters. No worker will be ostracized or discriminated against because of racial, ethnic, or national backgrounds. Never again will we repeat the fatal mistake of promoting nationalism and all-class unity, like the old communist movement.
Communism will emancipate humanity and allow us to progress as one united family. We will work for and take good care of each other. Learning will be for the common good, not for diplomas or degrees. Everyone will work according to ability and commitment and receive according to need. No one will live better or worse than anyone else. We will rebuild our ancestorsā communist egalitarian relations on a higher level, working together to ensure that class society will never exist again.
We invite workers in China, Japan, and all over the world who are interested in our communist ideas to join the fight against capitalism-imperialism.
No more racism and nationalism. No more sexism, fascism, and genocide. No more nations and borders. No more money and wages.
Workers of the world, unite and fight for communism!
Read Our Pamphlet:
“Mobilize the Masses for Communism” here
Fight for Communism, Not Nationalism
The ICWP calls on the workers of the world and their allies to completely reject all forms of nationalism ā no matter how āradicalā or āprogressiveā or āanti-imperialist.ā
The ICWP stands for communist internationalism, uniting the worldās workers to overthrow the worldās bosses everywhere. Nationalism diverts workers from fighting for communism. It leads them instead to fight together with their bosses for some kind of capitalism. That is, to fight together with their own bosses against other bosses and their workers.
The communist movement has seen its greatest victories when it relied on internationalism, and its greatest defeats when it allowed nationalism into the mix.
The first victory was the uprising that established the 1871 Paris Commune. The leadership of the Commune was international. For example, it included several Russian exiles. Unfortunately, the Communards tried to negotiate with the government that fled to Versailles, in the cause of national unity. The negotiations were just a ruse for Versailles. When the bosses in Versailles were ready, they drowned the Commune in blood.
The main lesson that Marx drew from the Paris Commune is that communists cannot simply take over the national State (government) for their own use. They must smash it and establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to suppress the bosses. There can be no national unity.
The next victory was the 1917 Russian revolution. The biggest obstacle was the large number of ethnic groups. Tsarist Russia was known as the āprison-house of nations.ā Instead of organizing separate parties in Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, and so forth, the Bolsheviks built an inter-ethnic party based on communist internationalism. Unfortunately when they founded the Comintern in 1919, they set it up as a federation of national parties. Federalism is a concession to nationalism.
The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921 by a handful of intellectuals, won the revolution in 1949. It almost didnāt happen. In the early 1920s the Soviets convinced the communists to ally with the murderous nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1927 he double-crossed them and slaughtered 300,000, nearly wiping out the party.
In 1945, French and Italian communist guerrillas took power after driving out the Nazis. The Soviets convinced them to give up their arms and join with the French and Italian bosses in governments of ānational unityā ā from which they were soon expelled. The same thing nearly happened in China, except Chang Kai-Shek would not cooperate
Instead of establishing communism, Maoās revolutionaries set up āNew Democracy,ā in alliance with āprogressiveā capitalists, and then Socialism. China was headed quickly down the road to capitalism.
In the 1960s, millions of workers and others rebelled against the new Chinese capitalism in the Cultural Revolution. They started implementing aspects of communism and resisted pleas for national unity. They believed (incorrectly) that only a minority of the Party were ācapitalist roaders.ā They fought heroically, if ultimately unsuccessfully, and influenced the Left internationally. Many of the ICWPās ideas we owe to the Cultural Revolution.
Sometimes bosses, through cleverness or luck, manage to get international support for their ānational liberationā struggle against other oppressor bosses (imperialists). This happened in Algeria in the war of independence against France (1954-1962). Activists all over the world were horrified by Franceās genocidal policies ā at least a million Algerians died.
Eventually the Algerian bosses made a deal with France ā and promptly cleansed the country ethnically by expelling everyone of European descent.
Similar appeals for national liberation happened in Vietnam and South Africa, with comparable results. The same could happen with Palestine. āNational liberationā is a dead end for workers. The ICWP calls on Israeli and Palestinian workers to fight together for communism.
Workers of the world, reject all forms of nationalism, and join the International Communist Workers Party!
Read our Nationalism Article Series:
Only Communism Can End the Crimes of Nationalism, I
Only Communism Can End the Crimes of Nationalism, II
Crimes of Nationalism–the complete series