The ....US....
is no different than any other country in that we need a national
identity. As Marxists we already know that our founding fathers were
racist slave owners who disrespected the indigenous people and referred
to them as “savages.”
We know that our standard of living depends on a massive military empire that today rivals even the that of the Romans.
We
know that money is the root of pop culture and anything that can’t be
mass marketed doesn’t really get promoted as US mainstream culture.
While the Italians have the Sistine Chapel, the ....US.... has McDonalds and the golden arches. Our two most important artists are Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol. One painted the ....America.... we wish we were, the other showed us as we really were.
............
But
we need a national identity and we need culture. We need heroes and
examples of individuals who represented progress in our history, not
just the shit that passes for American history in present day US
history books.
It may seem over nationalistic, but ..China.. developed its own flag and over time Mao Zedong decided that it was wrong to just throw away all of ....China....’s
past without giving any credit to those Chinese, including emperors and
past philosophers, who contributed progressive ideas.
He
noticed the Qing Dynasty initiated some public works, and relied on
professionals to design things rather than aristocrats. In his earlier
writings, such as On New Democracy, he often quoted Joseph Stalin. Yet in his later writings, such as Five Essays On Philosophy, by the 1960s, he quoted Lao Tse and Mencius.
Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer, pointed out in Critical Notes On An Attempt At A Popular Presentation Of Marxism By Bukharin
that there are people in the past who contributed progressive ideas to
history, yet would not stack up to being progressive in this time
period. He gave the example of Giordano Bruno (late 1500s) who was an
influence on Karl Marx. He pointed out that people are a product of
their time period and we can’t expect political correctness from
someone who lived in the 1500s or any other long past century.
The ....US....
has a problem of national identity. Our culture is often identified as
consisting of imperialist jingoism and crass commercialism. There is a
lot truth to this. But it is up to the left to look for those
progressive people and people with progressive ideas who contributed to
the better side of ....US.... political culture.
It
was Thomas Jefferson who said; "The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." He and
Thomas Paine opposed letting our founding fathers develop a new ..US.. aristocracy to mimic the feudalists nations of ..Europe.. in the 1700s. He and Paine also supported the French Revolution.
............
Marx wrote Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the ....United States of America....,
in which he said; “We congratulate the American people upon your
re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was
the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry
of your re-election is Death to Slavery. “
It
also helps to remember that this country has had its share of rebels,
such as Chief Pontiac, Nat Turner, Joe Hill, Jack Reed and Emma Goldman.
................
Still there is a lack of long term history and a lack of depth in the culture that passes for mainstream ....USA..... The government only goes back a little over 200 years and most of our fundamental philosophy and values was taken from ..Europe... However, we are not ..Europe...
As for the indigenous people who were here before us, the white men
simply displaced that culture and paid no attention to it at all for
almost 200 years. ....US.... culture is fractured between races, religion and political factionalism. But as leftists, we have our own heroes from the ....US....’s historical past. How many Americans know about the ....Pontiac.... rebellion or the Coal Mine Wars of the last century? How many appreciate the intense struggle of the ....US.... labour movement?
Then there are the arts. The Harlem Renaissance led to jazz becoming a mainstream form of ....US.... mainstream culture. Rock music started in the ....US.... with the help of Afro-American musicians and singers. Even punk rock actually started here.
As
Mao discovered, after a revolution, rather than throwing away its past
history is reinterpreted. Some heroes of the past, such as General
Armstrong Custer, are doomed to be vilified as assholes. Richard Nixon
and George Bush will always be historical scum. The ....US....
revolution of 1776 will always be a white-man’s revolution that
excluded women, blacks and American Indians for the first century. Then
it became an imperialist power with a corrupted government of the rich,
by the rich and for the rich, paid for and maintained by the poor and
middle classes.
We must overthrow the
political system; then promote culture that supports revolution. We
don’t want to become a society that lacks any cultural past.
The ....United States....
was formed by white males, who owned black slaves. The Indians were
treated as a nuisance and their culture was seen as the antithesis of
the new nation state. So we adopted very little, if any, of it.
American Indians were not considered ....US....
citizens until after 1900. Blacks were made citizens after the civil
war and the end of slavery, even though whites continued to mock such
rights clear up until the 1960s.
It is probably too late to integrate Indian culture into the mainstream as had happened in ....Mexico.....
But a new society can bring a new respect to that culture which was
once just tossed aside as something useless or a tourist attraction.
New ideas, from the minority sectors of society can be integrated into
the mainstream.
Until there is a
revolution, we on the left can promote our own culture and bring
awareness of our history. There is a culture to the ....US.... left and we need to celebrate it.
.. ..