Capitalism both combines nations and drives them asunder. It knits together the peoples of earth by the railroad, the steamboat, the rapid mail, the newspaper. It creates the material basis for the brotherhood of all nations but the methods of its expansion brutally thwart that hope. It advances into the backward lands of earth by plunder and annexation. The “civilized” people rob the “uncivilized” ones and finally war among themselves for the right to rob. Imperialism steadily increases both the economic unity of the earth, and the national hates which tear that unity asunder.

This is so much more relevant today with the Internet and much easier travelling internationally. Distances between all of us have decreased by an insane amount, and have almost become zero in the social sense, yet you still see that every space enabling this international communication is completely filled with racism and fascism. The same people manufacturing hatred back then for capitalist profits are the same ones reviving it today with nonsense like “white genocide” and pogroms against refugees. It’s one of the clearest dialectical relationships to think of, the contradiction between the friendship of the people of the world and the hatred between them, is capitalism’s need for exploitation to sustain itself. Without putting an end to capitalism, there can never be real unity.

Come! Let’s read and discuss This Soviet World.

ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.

The discussion we had last time about the uhh…“outdated” language is on full display here. Still, you can tell she means well and I love how she makes sure to emphasise just how much all of the different cultures and nations of the Soviet union were able to help each other, not just with help from the “Russians” but by all of them coming together to build a better future.

I found this quote interesting though:

If we should claim that the Jews are a chosen people, the best and brainiest in the world, that’s nationalism. It’s dangerous nonsense, the kind of murderous nonsense that leads Turks to attack Armenians or white Americans to lynch Negroes. The assertion of the right of one culture to dominate another, or even to pre-eminence—that is the capitalist wish to exploit, and it leads to war. We have no right to exploit or to claim pre-eminence; but we have the same rights as others to develop our own characteristic culture in peace.

At this time Western Europe was trying to settle Jewish colonists in the middle east, if I remember correctly, so a lot of Jewish people globally could probably see that same sort of fascist nationalism developing within their own societies.

It really is sad how little things have ultimately actively changed in the world from almost a century ago. When she talks about the claims of the fascists, those sections could literally be written today, capital hasn’t changed in the slightest.

I think this chapter, even more so than the previous one, shows how dated the language/prose can get at times. I think there is a better way to get across the immiserating poverty of ethnic minorities living in tsarist Russia without the patronizing tone. I think the late Michael Parenti approach of doing this is best (“Africa is not poor, but over-exploited”). Though in the context of the time, it does well to contrast itself from the colonialist subjugation done by capitalist countries and is nowhere near as bad as the literature created by capitalist authors.

The Soviet Union relinquishing all of its historical colonial claims is something that is never discussed in western schools which must be due to the fact that the corpse of the Soviet Union is used as the scapegoat for 21st century nationalism throughout the former Soviet republics. Without the Soviet Union and the governing communist party, the remaining nations all fell to imperialism, nationalism and stagnation. They did not return to the prison of tsardom but to the international prison of neoliberalism.

as if Congress in Washington contained a score of southern Negroes, half a dozen Mexican farmers from Arizona and California, scattered representatives of the surviving tribes of Indians, an Eskimo, a Hawaiian, an Indian from Porto Rico, a mixed-blood from Panama, all legislating on equal terms with auto-workers from Detroit, steel-workers and miners from the Pittsburgh valley, and American farmers from the great west.

The diversity in representation, which goes beyond outward representation and compartmentalization (thinking of Charles Hale’s “indio permitido” or “polite native”), so thoroughly eclipses every other nation state on Earth makes obvious the propaganda blitz of painting the Soviet Union as its own “prison of nations.”

I appreciate how Strong also takes the time to note that these racial injustices didn’t magically collapse due to the coming of communist power but the steps taken by marxists to tear down racist structures. The most important change being the industrial development that took place all around the Soviet Union which gave a materialist base for futher social recognition to be gained.

Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash which Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him [slur]. The two white men went back to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City Government.

The US capitalist regime did the opposite. To stave off the development of the working class, they created hollow “multicultural” institutions that only gave the resemblance of equal rights and progress. Only through the sacrifices of civil rights activists who had to work outside of the government and alongside the same exploitative economy that basic human rights were legalized (though not always enforced). In comparison, the Soviet Union was a massive success for the expansion of real human rights while the US was a tutorial on how to hoard those rights.

“We distinguish between nationalism and nationality,” he said. “If we should claim that the Jews are a chosen people, the best and brainiest in the world, that’s nationalism. It’s dangerous nonsense, the kind of murderous nonsense that leads Turks to attack Armenians or white Americans to lynch Negroes. The assertion of the right of one culture to dominate another, or even to pre-eminence—that is the capitalist wish to exploit, and it leads to war. We have no right to exploit or to claim pre-eminence; but we have the same rights as others to develop our own characteristic culture in peace.

A succint antizionist message from the 1930s. That nationalism is a source of repression utilized by capitalist countries to divide peoples and justify itself (capital accumulation for the prosperity of the national spirit).

The description of different ethnic minority groups from all around the USSR was absolute bittersweet hopefuel, as is reading about most things in this book. These stories are echoed in socialist states like China and Cuba who bridged racial divides through economic planning and collective ownership. The capitalist/neoliberal ideology of thinking about rights is compromised in its inability to imagine human beings as collective owners.

I’m alive! Just super busy this week. I don’t have much to add other than this does help drive home how the USSR was enormously progressive, even if Strong’s language here is backwards.

Woops! Forgot to read this chapter. Getting busy here. I’ll read it tonight and tomorrow and catch up.

I don’t really have much to say on this chapter. I read it at the start of the week so probably need to do a second read to re-examine what I think of this. And probably also ‘Marxism and the National Question’, I need to read the full length of that work, not just the first chapter.

Obligatory mention of outdated language used by Strong that other commentors have mentioned previously.

This book was written roughly a decade after the USSR was formed, and the progress made to uplift different nations and cultures is just impressive. Even if there are still issues that are left over that need time to develop out of.