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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 21, 22 May 1950, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
This issue presents a number of articles in and around the German question. There is a point which is mentioned parenthetically in a couple of places in these columns. This is the double meaning of “German nationalism.” Of course, “nationalism” has always had a dual connotation. In the advanced capitalist countries where national independence and unification had long since been achieved, nationalism became reactionary expansionism and imperialism. In the colonial and semicolonial countries, nationalism still meant the aspiration toward independence and freedom.
In the first, it is counterposed to internationalism. In the second, it is counterposed to imperialist oppression.
Like every other social phenomenon, the meaning of nationalism is not the same in different social contexts, times and places. It boils down to this: the nationalism of the imperialist oppressor cannot be the same as that of the oppressed whose nationhood is denied.
All that is from the ABC of Marxism, but the ABC of Marxism is not exactly familiar to the people who read the daily newspapers. To them, anything which smacks of German nationalism has only one connotation: Nazism and its contemporary forms.
And there is plenty of that burgeoning in corners of German society. What is camouflaged by the press (we must add: deliberately) is that this reactionary nationalism is virulent precisely in the German forces which are supported by U.S. diplomacy.
The victory of Chancellor Adenauer’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, in tire last German elections was hailed by the U.S. as a victory for democracy. They were not referring to any danger of a CP victory, but that of a socialist victory.
But the 53 former Nazis who are now members of the Bonn parliament are not members of the Social-Democratic Party. They are distributed among the government parties and parties even further to the right. Adenauer’s pwn party has stated that 43 per cent of the German officials now dealing with foreign policy are former Nazis.
The socialist job in Germany is to fight for national independence. They are the best bulwark against the reactionary neo-Nazi nationalism of the Right.
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