Struggle on the basis of national conflict demands a total surrender of class conflict. It is the support of one section of the world bourgeoisie in bartering better terms for itself in the world market, and it will inevitably be toilers who suffer and die to liberate the new nation-state, only to be shoved right back in chains the moment the peace accords are signed.
This has been the history of all national-liberation struggles no matter how much they talked Soviet. And the moment the political winds changed, these national liberation regimes switched right from talking Soviet to talking the Washington consensus, trading one bourgeois patron for another.
...
This should not have to be said to communists, but I guess here we go: pre-colonization ideologies are not liberatory. Beyond the futility of turning back the wheel of history, to return to a pre-Lapsarian idyll before the arrival of settlers (as likely as Dear Leader successfully commanding the tides to turn back), the process of colonization was the change in the form of one subjugation to another.
n this matter, I will at least critically defend the utopians. Their mirages are in the future, and unconnected to Arcadian myths, and they might have some critical role to play for the workers' movement. Looking backwards for salvation leads to no where. And before someone jumps in here and accuses me of defending imperialism, the legacy of imperialism is one of despotism, mass murder, haughty cruelty, and White messianic complexes. But it cannot be ended by nationalism, mediated capitalism, or mythologizing your ancient connection to a particular piece of land.
