Essay:American “Patriotic Socialism” — A Reactionary Deviation

Introduction

For as long as Marxism itself has existed, various attempts have been made to degrade its Internationalist foundations, its progressive values, and its revolutionary character. With a critical aspect of bourgeois ideology being that of nationalism, it is not unexpected that certain figures that have

been propagandized by the Capitalist superstructure would be unable to reject reactionary ideology, and be able to fully embrace the progressive character of Marxism, or for that matter, be willing to properly indulge and educate themselves in Marxist works and history.

With these factors, nationalistic and chauvinistic distortions and revisions in Marxist theory have commonly emerged all throughout the history of the Communist movement, and particularly the present.

Among these numerous examples of reactionary revisions of Marxism is that of “Patriotic Socialism”. While taking on a varying degree of bourgeois nationalism and other such reactionary ideas, the American “Patriotic Socialists” (often shorted to “Patsoc”) universally are indicative of a notable and reactionary deviation and revision.

The Patriotic Socialists have established their ideology based upon principles and actions that are commonly understood by educated and genuine Marxists as being those that will result in the weakening and destruction of any Communist movement; tailism, chauvinism, reformism, reaction, and so forth.

Thus, it is of principle concern to the Communist movement in the United States of America to combat this revisionist threat, to note the highly careerist and reactionary traits of the main promoters of “Patriotic Socialism”, to educate those Communists that have been misled by the Patriotic Socialist rhetoricians about the regressive, bourgeois, and reactionary ideas which they are being led towards, and to ensure such a disgraceful movement reaches its reactionary tentacles no further into real Communist organizations; to ensure that it is replaced fully by anti-revisionist, progressive movements.

In doing this, it should be clear that “Patriotic Socialism” has totally no valid place in our movement, that its counter-revolutionary nature is made clear, and that it will inevitably lead to the degeneration of revolutionary movements into reformist, chauvinist, and Fascistic hulks. Revisionism and social-chauvinism are among the greatest allies of the bougeoisie, and both of these things are what defines this particular trend.

The foundational myths of “Patriotic Socialism”

American Patriotic Socialists are, in spite of “patriotism” implying a relatively weaker view of amiability and love towards a nation, American nationalists or even ultranationalists, more particularly, of a white ethnonationalist sort. They view the United States of America in a manner that is utterly lacking in historical education or materialism, but is much more similar to that of a reactionary.

To the Patriotic Socialist, America itself represents an idealized national myth; America itself is “progressive”, its national values liberating, and its existence is infinitely valid. Therefore, it cannot be America that is responsible for Imperialism, genocide, and all other crimes that have been done, but instead, it is always merely an internal, underground collection of degenerates that operate within the idealized nation that is doing such repugnant actions. Therefore, in the view of the Patriotic Socialist, the United States of America does not have to overthrown and replaced, for they regard it to be without any notable problems, it is merely an isolated “deep state” that is composed of “globalists” that must be removed. They view their desired revolution as being a direct continuation of the American bourgeois revolution of 1776, which they greatly distort as being of a progressive nature, despite that bourgeois revolution being merely for the replacement of one small ruling class with another, and with it resulting in further colonialism, slavery, and in the rise of the American empire.

Such a view is encapsulated in a common Patriotic Socialist slogan: “Save the American Republic from the American Empire”. In consideration of such views, along with others expressed, it can be seen that the goals of the Patriotic Socialists are largely not concerned with liberating the international working class, as it is understood in non-revisionist Marxist thought, but instead, “saving” what is effectively an immaterial and historically non-existent ideal of an “American Republic”. In other words, Patriotic Socialists do not care for the international working class, but merely for the betterment of a white, petite-bourgeois, and purely American population, often with a blatant disregard for the well-being and corrections to the injustices and oppression of ethnic minorities.

This view is anti-Marxist, and is formed from a mentality that is fundamentally Fascist. Patriotic Socialists are, in this way, removing the history of the United States of America, for there never has been any distinction between the American “Republic” and “Empire”, in a manner that is similar to how their has never been a distinction between the British “Kingdom” and “Empire”. Similar to how other reactionaries will accuse the issues of today on a “new world order” and so on, instead of a view of class and the mode of production, Patriotic Socialists will blame the horrendous actions that the United States of America has done on a small cabal of “globalists” that are secretly ruling everything. To that extent, the goals of a revolution, as it is understood with Patriotic Socialists (this is of course, assuming they seek a revolution, which many do not, instead seeking a sort of capitalistic reformism), is not to overthrow capitalism for the creation of Socialism, and to install a Proletarian Dictatorship, as true Socialist revolutionaries would understand, but is instead to purge a small conspiracy from society, and to replace the existing people in the government with the “right” people.

Patriotic Socialists will attempt to justify their nationalist distortions by exploiting historical examples of Socialism and claim their chief peculiarity is that of being “deeply rooted in patriotism”, and, in addition to misquoting Communist theorists, will assert that the only conceivable way to attain (their misunderstood view of) Socialism in, and to apply Socialism to the material conditions of, the United States of America, a revolutionary movement will necessarily have to adopt “patriotism” (or rather, ethnonationalism) in order to appeal to the “American masses” (that is, the reactionary petite-bourgeoisie). Due to the frequent insistence by Patriotic Socialists that all Socialist states have entailed a great degree of patriotism, and that Socialism is naturally patriotic (their source commonly being a single heavily abridged quote by Lenin which related to the National question, which is clearly misinterpreted), they may sometimes claim that Patriotic Socialism does not exist, and that they are, in reality, simply “common Marxist-Leninists”. By extension, they often claim that all other Communists who do not adhere to their bourgeois nationalist deviation are “Western Left” or “Synthetic Left” (even if they do not reside in the West). To a clear degree, this can be understood as nothing short of dogmato-revisionism.

This reasoning is, however, a clear abuse and misunderstanding of history, the particularities of those Socialist states, and an omission of the historical foundations and specific conditions of the United States of America.

Patriotism was, if present in Socialist states, subordinate and secondary to the Marxist principle of proletarian internationalism. Furthermore, in the instances when patriotism was present in a Socialist state, it was commonly needed in order to better preserve Socialism in that country. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, patriotism was employed as a means of defending it from Nazi invaders, via its usage in the motivation of the people. In the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, patriotism was employed to better defend the nation and its development of Socialism from the Anglo-American Imperialists and Soviet Social-imperialists. It was a similar case in Vietnam, Cuba, etc. The Soviet Union, before 1953 at least, was itself founded on plurinationalist concepts of a Socialist federation of nationalities.

In the particular context of the United States of America, such “patriotism” (ethnonationalism, as it effectively is) is fundamentally reinforcing the legacy as well as the present effects of the genocide, land-theft, and white supremacy that the United States was founded on. “Patriotism” has been used by the American bourgeoisie since its existence as a means of negating class struggle, and to further American imperialism. Such a “revolutionary” strategy will, and indeed has, resulted in what is undeniably tailism.

Patriotism as understood by Patriotic Socialists, being their one of their most defining concepts, has resulted in all other aspects of Marxism being revised into a horrid distortion or forgotten about entirely. From this foundation of what is largely bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism, Patriotic Socialists have deviated into a Fascistic, revisionist trend.

The dual “theorists” of “Patriotic Socialism”

The primary “theorists” of American Patriotic Socialism are two largely internet-based figures: Haz Al-Din, a YouTuber and Twitch streamer operating within the media collective Infrared, and Caleb Maupin, the founder of the Center for Political Innovation (CPI), propagandist for the Russian bourgeois news outlet RT, and thinker behind the so-called City-Building tendency.

Around these two “ideologists” lies a stream of more humble propaganists and neophytes, yet their ideological peculiarities are minimal and entirely subjugated to their favored “ideologist”. Of these “Patriotic Socialist” trends also lies figures such as Jackson Hinkle, who, despite their relative renown, are of little difference to the common American reactionary.

The majority of the “theory” of Patriotic Socialism can be seen originating from one of these two figures, and indeed, the followers of these two are themselves likely the closest to any sort of Patriotic Socialist organization to exist, with these figures often sharing the same, often theoretically uninformed audience, therefore making American Patriotic Socialism inseparable from them.

With all these figures, the same trends can be seen, with all of them being highly careerist, revisionist, opportunist, etc. In order to provide a fully-informative analysis and refutation of this deviation, it is therefore necessary to reference them.

Infrared, Haz Al-Din, and “MAGA Communism”

Infrared, headed by Haz Al-Din, maintains both among the most belligerent community of followers, and the most reactionary trend of all within Patriotic Socialism. The community of Infrared is that of Fascists, opportunists, and other adherents of bourgeois ideology, with its “theory” attaining of new degree of revisionism never before seen, that being “MAGA Communism”.

The community of Infrared, starting in 2020, has always functioned for little else than to propagate revisionism, petite-bourgeois chauvinism, and settler-colonialism, with the most notable actions of the Infrared media collective being that of concocting content on the internet, with the ambition of destroying the revolutionary theory of the Communist movement in the United States; degenerating it to counter-revolutionism.

Shortly after the birth of this reactionary media outlet, they had, in 2022, openly revealed their true allegiance and views, declaring themselves to be in ideological unity with the Fascistic “Make American Great Again” (MAGA) movement, which is headed by the billionaire-capitalist Donald Trump. In their folly and open treachery to Marxism, they have further named themselves “MAGA Communists”.

Despite these renegades, in their endless demagoguery, still identifying themselves as “Marxists”, “Communists”, “Stalinists”, etc., they have all but removed themselves from all aspects of Marxism and Stalinism, with them being in a state of total capitulation to the regressive forces of tailism and fascism. The propagandists of “MAGA Communism” do little more than combat all true Communists and other progressive and revolutionary forces, while at the same time, pledging their support for bourgeois figures such as Donald Trump. They tail the petite-bourgeoisie at any instance, with them spreading the most backwards, barbaric ideas ever known in a moribund attempt to attract support from larger reactionary forces; racism, anti-semitism, anti-intellectualism, homophobia, transphobia, and similar reactionary ideas.

The effective leader of the Infrared collective and chief “ideologist” of “MAGA Communism”, Haz Al-Din, roots his rhetoric in esotericism, mysticism, and demagoguery. In truth, he is not cognizant of what the aspects of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and other core features of Marxism are, yet he employs these term extensively to fool his followers into Fascistic ideology and deeds.

Haz Al-Din will, in a manner similar to Mao Zedong’s “Three Worlds Theory”, attempt to use his unthinkably warped understanding of dialectics as a means to provide justification for his open collaboration with terrorist, Fascist militias, petite-bourgeois and anti-Communist Libertarians, and other sections of the Neofascist camp.

“MAGA Communists” and other followers of Haz Al-Din take their “ideologist’s” words to a vacuous extreme. For “MAGA Communists,” reading the works of Marx or Lenin is trivial, and thus their sole source for “theory” is Haz Al-Din himself.

The goals of the “MAGA Communist” group is clear: attempt to form a reactionary, impotent “Marxist” movement in the United States, to bombard non-revistionist Marxists in the United States with their propaganda and intimidate them into adherence to “MAGA Communism”, and to fall into ranks with the other Neofascists once they make a dedicated effort to seize power and destroy the existing bourgeois democracy, in a manner similar to that of the Strasserists a century ago.

Caleb Maupin, the Center for Political Innovation, and the “City-Building Tendency”

Among the most vocal “Patriotic Socialists” beyond the influence of the “MAGA Communists” is Caleb Maupin. Caleb Maupin maintains, above all, the vast majority of the careerist and reactionary traits as seen with the other trends in “Patriotic Socialism”, yet he and his community nonetheless have a notable degree of idiosyncratic ideological views so as to separate them from the “MAGA Communists”.

Caleb Maupin and his followers, prototypically being Trotskyists (an anticipated source for theoretical deviationism and opportunism), removed themselves from their previous ideological stance and went on to pollute their existing Marxian understanding with chauvinism, right-wing populism, tailism, and bourgeois nationalism.

Soon, their ambitions to provide to the people a dictatorship of the proletariat, to collectivize the means of production and remove bourgeois ownership, and to otherwise liquidate capitalism and its cultural superstructure deteriorated and then sputtered out entirely. From this gradual deviation from Marxism, and now total abandonment of it, came “Maupin Thought” or the “City-Building Tendency”.

No longer is it the case that Maupin and his followers seek to bring about an end to capitalism, and creation of socialism, but now they merely seek to create a petite-bourgeois and anti-proletarian “government of action for the working families of the United States”, one that will not cease the current barbarous acts by the current American bourgeois democracy onto ethnic minorities, or end extreme militarism and nationalism which the present American capitalist superstructure encourages, or any other task with which a revolutionary and proletarian government would take upon itself once gaining power, but one that will only remove a small "clique” from power, a fictional gang of “globalists”, “bankers”, and “malthusians”, from power. Recently, Maupin and his followers have gone so far as to openly declare the need for an alliance on the part of the proletariat with “industrial capitalists” and other such bourgeois forces so as to combat this imaged conspiracy - such class-collaborationist ideology is found only with Fascism itself.

To this day, Caleb Maupin and his clique have proved themselves to be the unquestionable stalwarts of the Russo-Chinese bourgeoisie, with Maupin himself visably and literally on the payroll of the Russian bourgeois-imperialist state.

In more recent developments, Caleb Maupin and company have attained the attention of even Neonazi elements, with the term “Patriotic Socialist” being employed by figures such as Matthew Heimbach (head of the Traditionalist Workers’ Party) and Shandon Simpson (who is linked with the extremist-terrorist organization Atomwaffen), particularly during and after the “Rage Against the War Machine” protest of 2023 which had a notable Patriotic Socialist section (but was otherwise infested with anti-communist, Libertarian, and right-wing populist forces). However, despite purporting to uphold “anti-fascism”, Maupin and related “Patriotic Socialists” are fully willing to ally with these Neonazis so long as they merely “pretend” to be communists and espouse certain canards in favor of the “anti-imperialist” powers of Russia and others.

With even the most hateful and reactionary of the far-right willing to collaborate (and even join with) the “Patriotic Socialists”, the conclusion from this is all too clear; the Neofascists of the present day understand that “Patriotic Socialism” is an “opening” of sorts to infiltrate and degenerate the revolutionary left-wing with their counter-revolutionist rhetoric and ideology, thus, like the Nazis of a century ago, these “Patriotic Socialists” are present on the side of the bourgeoisie to “throw sand into the eyes of the masses” concerning what socialism truly is. In an ironic manner considering Maupin’s claims of there existing a “synthetic left”, Maupin and company represent the “gateway” for the bourgeoisie to degrade the left with Fascist infiltration.

The “Patriotic Socialist” surrogate to Communism — Petite-bourgeois utopianism

While with true adherents of Marxism, the economic stage of development known as Communism represents the absolute negation of the exploitative economic forces and of capitalism itself, to Patriotic Socialists, Communism is a concept which is radically different than what is correctly understood.

Under abundant influence from both the careless and wasteful consumer culture of American bourgeois society and the reactionary Capitalist economic system of modern China, Patriotic Socialists no longer adhere to any Marxist understanding on this matter, to the extent that even what is perhaps the most trenchant call Marx made - to abolish private property and collectivize the economy - is distorted into a petite-bourgeois pipe-dream of the mere “sublation” (sublate; to take away, they rely on a misunderstanding of the original German lexicon of Marx to replace the meaning of his wording so as to mean “to regulate” instead of the correct meaning of “to abolish”) of the private assests of certain “globalist elites” (note the removal of a society-wide view and class analysis in favor of a purposefully malevolent and cliquish plot, a “theory” analogous to, and perhaps even inspired by, that of the classical Fascists).

Patriotic Socialists, as with other bourgeois ideologists, have developed the misunderstanding that infinite growth on a finite world is not only possible, but highly desirable. To any who disagree with this preposterous and anti-material concept, they are accused by the Patriotic Socialist of being “neo-malthusians", “Neoliberal”, and so forth. This is, however, false due to the sociological theories of Thomas Malthus chiefly relating to agricultural development and population growth.

In spite of what all of the classics of Marxism have attempted to teach, the Patriotic Socialists have done little more than project envy for the bourgeoisie and their extreme extravagance. No longer do they wish to end their exploitation of the proletariat, Patriotic Socialists wish to become one with the bourgeoisie. Patriotic Socialists and particularly “MAGA Communists” maintain that Communism is attained when everybody is a multi-billionaire, who owns the means of production, and so forth. Patriotic Socialists thus do not deserve the title “Communist”, or even for that matter “Socialist”, for they are the supreme followers of the bourgeoisie.

Conclusion

Patriotic Socialism and other trends have shown themselves to be little more than the ultimate examples of reactionary bourgeois nationalism, chauvinism, and reactionism piercing into the Revolutionary Communist movement itself.

The Patriotic Socialist militants must be combatted as all other servants of Fascism and the bourgeoisie, for they have made it clear that is who they serve. While this trend remains humble and is lacking in organization, its future threat remains bitter, should this awful trend in modern revisionism not be fought off by true followers of Marx.

Patriotic Socialists have done perhaps one of the greatest insults to us by the rampant hijacking of the legacy of the classics of Marxism. They claim to be followers of Stalinism, but in truth follow the ideas of Fascism.

All followers of Scientific Socialism will defeat this bourgeois trend. The fact that such an ideology exists is not indicative of the failure of Marxism, but of modern revisionism — particularly Dengism, the progenitor of Patriotic Socialism.

Yet, while this trend represents a threat, even if one that is meager, to our efforts, it is likewise a matter which we confide to show our persistent progress in representing a threat to the bourgeois order and society, for Patriotic Socialism, and Fascism generally, is among the last resorts employed by the bourgeois state.

This further makes clear the need for a new, Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist movement to replace the revisionist organizations in the United States of America and direct us within the path of revolution and socialism. DOWN WITH REVISIONISM! WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!