Patriotism

Patriotism is love for or devotion to a country. Just like like everything else in dialectical materialism, it has no innate characteristics. It is not innately good nor is it innately bad. Only when couched in material conditions does patriotism become good or bad. Patriotism of imperialist countries is reactionary, especially in settler-colonial states such as the USA, but patriotism can be progressive in the context of national liberation from colonization.

One such example of this progressive character was in China's national united front against Japan. In an effort to rebuff Japanese imperialism, the CPC allied with the Kuomintang and other patriotic classes into a firm Anti-Japanese United Front. With this patriotic strength, the Chinese were able to throw out Japanese imperialists and pave the way for modern China.

“Before the Incident of July 7. 1937, certain comrades did not understand that the contradiction between the Chinese nation and Japanese imperialism had become the principal one while the contradictions among the different classes and political groups within the country had become secondary. As a result, they opposed the Party's policy of forming a national united front against Japan. of uniting all patriotic classes, strata, political parties and social groupings for joint resistance, and especially of uniting with the Kuomintang to fight Japan. Although these comrades thought they were taking a firm proletarian stand in opposing the Party's correct policy, they actually departed from it and plunged into "closed-doorism" and sectarianism. Had we acted in accordance with their wrong views, the proletariat and its political party would have been unable to unite and lead all the patriotic classes, strata, parties and social groupings for the purpose of defeating Japanese imperialism; instead, the forces of the Anti-Japanese National United Front would have been weakened and the proletariat and its political party would have been isolated to the detriment of the struggle to resist Japan and save China. After the July 7th Incident, when our Party had formed the Anti-Japanese National United front with the Kuomintang, certain comrades went to the other extreme, maintaining that since the Kuomintang had joined in the resistance to Japan, there was hardly any distinction between it and the Communist Party. They adopted a policy of capitulation by appeasing the big landlord and big bourgeois classes and the Kuomintang. and opposed the Party's policy of upholding its independence within the united front. While they over estimated the strength of and placed undue trust in the Kuomintang, on which they pinned all their hopes for resisting Japan and saving China, they had no confidence in the strength of the Communist Party and the people, did not place their hopes on the Communist Party and therefore did not dare freely to expand the Party and the anti-Japanese people's revolutionary forces and to resolutely fight against the Kuomintang's policy of opposing and restricting the Communist Party. The comrades with this approach styled themselves as the true representatives of the proletariat, but in essence their policy would have made the proletariat a vassal or an appendage of the bourgeoisie, and would have caused the proletariat to loose the leadership of the Anti-Japanese National United Front. These "Left" and Right mistakes are both striking examples of the failure to take a firm proletarian stand and to identify the correct path for advancing the revolutionary cause when major changes are occurring in the political situation.”

Liu Shaoqi (1939). How To Be a Good Communist: '4. The Unity of Theoretical Study and Ideological Self-Cultivation'. Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi, vol.I. Foreign Languages Press. [MIA]

See also

• Internationalism
• Nationalism
• Patriotic socialism