Who would be against the “Fraternity of Peoples”?
The answer to above question by itself is quite clear; only the
imperialists, bourgeoise, and their puppets who benefit from the animosity
between peoples would be against the “Fraternity of peoples”.
However when it comes to the cry for, slogan of “fraternity of peoples”
the response to the question totally depends on the additional questions and
responses to those questions. Who is calling for it, under
what type of system and for what purpose? To generalize without responding to these
questions and label the slogan as “bourgeois liberal deception” only serves the
interests of bourgeoisie in their plots to create animosity between the
peoples, especially between the laboring masses from the different
nationalities. In this sense the "fraternity” called for by the Marxist Leninists
has no resemblance whatsoever with the bourgeois and the
“intellectual” call for fraternity.
The call of “fraternity of peoples” by the bourgeoisie is a call for the “fraternity of the bourgeoisie” and thus it is a deception. Because the “fraternity of peoples” cannot be realized under capitalist system other than appearance. As Gorky puts it; “It would seem time, that all thinking and honest men should take cognizance of the fact that capitalism has lost its creative faculty, is an ugly relic of the past and an obstacle to the development of the world’s culture, that it incites enmity and hatred between individuals, families, classes and nations, and that the noble dream of fraternity amongst peoples cannot achieve reality.” Maxim Gorky, An Appeal to the World, February 1919
The call of “fraternity of
peoples” by Marxist Leninists is a call for the united struggle of the
peoples, especially that of laboring people for the creation of the
conditions for genuine “fraternity of peoples”. It is a call for the united struggle
to capture the political power for socialism.
Not to make any distinction between the two and label the call for “fraternity of people”
as bourgeois liberal deception is nothing but a Bundist opportunist tactic
to divide the laboring masses and strengthen their bourgeois nationalist
movement and as a consequence serve the interests of bourgeoisie in their divide
and conquer politics.
Based on the Bundist claim that "fraternity of peoples" slogan is nothing but a “bourgeois liberal deception”;
According to these Bundists Stalin, who uses the slogan Long
Live Socialism and the Fraternity of Peoples! was a
bourgeois Liberal. Stalin, To all the Toilers, to all the
Workers and Soldiers of Petrograd, July
24, 1917
Or when he said; a Bolshevik policy - a policy of friendship, a policy
of brotherhood between the peoples of our country. Stalin, Speech at a
Conference of the Foremost Collective Farmers of Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan
Or he was a bourgeois liberal when he said;
“Citizens! The revolutionary proletarian
movement is growing—and national barriers are collapsing! The proletarians
of the different nationalities in Russia are uniting in a single
international army, the individual streams of the proletarian movement are
merging in one general revolutionary flood. The waves of this flood are rising
higher and higher and dashing against the tsarist throne with increasing
force—and the decrepit tsarist government is tottering. Neither prisons nor
penal servitude, nor gallows—nothing can stop the proletarian movement: it is
continuously growing!
And so, to bolster up its throne the tsarist
government is inventing "new" methods. It is sowing enmity among
the nationalities of Russia, it is inciting them against one another;
it is trying to break up the general proletarian movement into petty movements and
to incite them against one another; it is organising pogroms against the Jews,
Armenians, etc. And the purpose of all this is to separate the nationalities of
Russia from one another by means of fratricidal war and, by enfeebling them, to
vanquish them one by one without difficulty!
Divide and rule — such is the policy of the tsarist
government.
Stretch out your hands to one another and, having united, rally around the
proletariat, the real gravedigger of the tsarist government which is the sole
culprit in the Baku massacres.
Let your cry be: Long Live the Fraternity of the Peoples!
Stalin, Long Live International Fraternity !, February
13 , 1905
Or he was a bourgeois Liberal when on another May day speech he
said;
“And this holiday we are celebrating today,
this May Day, is it not a sign that in the welter of blood new ties of
fraternity among the peoples are being forged?...Over the heads of the
capitalist robbers, over the heads of their predatory governments, we extend a
hand to the workers of all countries, and cry: Hail the Brotherhood of
Nations!” Stalin, May Day, April 18 (May 1), 1917
Or more related to the Bundists, he was a bourgeois liberal when in his Reply to Meshkov, Kovalchuk, and Others he said;
To attempt to bring about the merging of
nations by decree from above,
by compulsion, would be playing into the hands of the imperialists, it would
spell disaster to the cause of the liberation of nations, and be fatal to
the cause of organising co-operation and fraternity among nations.
The Party held that the overthrow of the power
of capital and the organisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the
expulsion of the imperialist troops from the colonial and dependent countries
and the securing of the right of these countries to secede and to form their
own national states, the elimination of national enmity and nationalism
and the strengthening of international ties between peoples, the organisation
of a single socialist national economy and the establishment on this basis of
fraternal co-operation among peoples, constituted the best solution
of the national and colonial question under the given conditions.” Stalin, Reply
to Comrades Meshkov, Kovalchuk, and Others
According to these Bundists Clara Zetkin who was a leading
representative of social democrats (socialists) at the International
Socialist Congress at Basel that stated in its manifesto; “It is the duty of
the Socialists of the Balkans, therefore, to fight against every violation of
the rights of these people and to proclaim the fraternity of all Balkans
peoples including the Albanians, the Turks, and the Rumanians, against the
unleashed national chauvinism”, was a bourgeois
Liberal.
According to these Bundists The Paris Commune that used the
slogan “Let us proclaim the Freedom,
Equality, and Fraternity of peoples”, was bourgeois Liberal. To the German
People, To the Social Democracy of the German Nation, 1870
According to these Bundists Lenin on his May 1st speech,
1905 who said; ` On the First of May this union of the workers of all
countries, international Social-Democracy, reviews its forces and gathers its
strength for a further unremitting and unswerving struggle for freedom,
equality, and fraternity” was a
bourgeois Liberal. Lenin, The First of May, April 12 (25), 1905
or in his May day speech in 1904 when he said; “Two worlds stand facing
each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of
labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood
and freedom.
Or when he said at Meeting Of The
All-Russia, Central Executive Committee ; “ We cannot decree a revolution,
but we can help it along. We shall conduct organised fraternization in the
trenches and help the peoples of the West to start an invincible
socialist revolution.” Meeting Of The All-Russia,
Central Executive Committee, November 4 (17), 1917
Or when he said ; The resolution adopted on the point says, in part,
that the Congress regards it as a duty of the working classes to “help to have
working class youth brought up in a spirit of international brotherhood
and socialism and imbued with class consciousness”. Lenin, Anti-Militarist
Propaganda and Young Socialist Workers’ Leagues, October 5, 1907
Or he was a bourgeois liberal when he stressed the importance of fraternity
of peoples; “to use every means to struggle against and to deny appropriations
for the aggressive policy of states, and to act in such a way as to educate
working-class youth in the spirit of socialism and an awareness of the
brotherhood of nations.” Lenin, Notes
to the Resolution of the Stuttgart Congress on “Militarism and International
Conflicts” August 1907
Or when he talks about the manifesto; it states that: “This struggle is
a struggle for freedom, the brotherhood of peoples, and socialism”.
Lenin, The First Step, October 11,
1915
Or when he says ; “We are opposed to national enmity and discord,
to national exclusiveness. “ Lenin, Letter to the Workers and
Peasants of the Ukraine
For Bundists who
usually rely on and borrow the left phrases that fits their needs from
Trotskyite theory manufacturing “facilities”, Lenin and Stalin, and others
were Bourgeois Liberals for defending the “fraternity of peoples”.
Having historically connected to Trotskyism, they have become experts in
taking a subject and sloganizing it in a way that fits their anti-Leninist, bourgeois
nationalist purposes. They have done this skillfully on the subject of “defense
of fatherland”, “anti-imperialist wars” and others. However, this one is a blatant
service to the bourgeoisie especially in countries where there are multi
ethnic nationalities. It builds a wall between the labouring masses of
different nationalities, hinder the unity of workers and a united
struggle, strengthens the “nationalist ideology” , creates animosity among
peoples- a dream come true for the imperialists and bourgeoisie of that
given country.
Going back to the question of “Who
is calling for it, under what type of system and for what purpose?”, it would
be a deception if it was bourgeoisie who is calling for it. And it would be a deception if this fact is generalized and
applied to the call of “fraternity of peoples” by Marxist Leninists. In
other words, they are the real deceivers with a tactic of a thief calling
others thief.
It would be a bourgeois liberal deception if it is used by the bourgeoisie and bourgeois
liberals. Lenin gives a clear example in particular;
the prisons in West-European republics would
cease to be prisons because they had the words “Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity” inscribed on them. If the words “Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity” are written on a factory, as in America, the factory does not
thereby cease to be a hell for the workers but a paradise for the capitalists.
Lenin, First All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Deputies
He takes the subject in general and notes;
Unlike the bourgeois democrats, we call for the brotherhood of workers of
all nationalities, and not the brotherhood of nations, for we do
not trust the bourgeoisie of any country, we regard them as our enemies.
Lenin, Revision of the Party Programme
The fraternity of people is a deceptive phrase when used by the capitalists.
Stalin notes this difference;
Our Party is the only one that wages a resolute
and revolutionary fight for peace and brotherhood among nations. Any citizen of
a dependency or colony has only to come to the Soviet Union and see how the
people run the country, how black and white, Russians and non-Russians, people
of every color of skin, and of every nationality, have joined together in the
work of running a great country, to convince himself that ours is the only
land where the brotherhood of nations is not a phrase, but a reality. `Stalin,
This Election Day, August 20, 1917
As the Bundists resent to be exposed in their generalized approach
to the question, Bourgeois liberals resent the same as the other side of
coin. They blame the Marxist Leninists not defending the (bourgeois) deception of “ fraternity of
peoples”. As an historical example, Lenin in one his speech states;
We Bolsheviks are constantly being accused of
forsaking the slogans of equality and fraternity. Let us now put things straight.
Take America, the freest and most civilised
country. There you have a democratic republic. But what do we find? The brazen
rule of a handful, not even of millionaires, but multimillionaires, while the
people are in slavery and servitude. Where is your much vaunted equality and
fraternity if the mills, factories, banks, and all the country’s wealth
belong to the capitalists, and side by side with the democratic republic you
have feudal servitude for millions of workers and unrelieved
destitution?” Lenin, Speech At A Meeting At The Former Michelson
Works
And Lenin giving example from Marx calls the bourgeois fraternity as “pompous
phrases of bourgeois intellectuals;
In
Capital, Karl Marx ridicules the pompous and grandiloquent bourgeois-democratic
great charter of liberty and the rights of man, ridicules all this
phrase-mongering about liberty equality and fraternity in general, which dazzles
the petty bourgeois and philistines of all countries, including the present
despicable heroes of the despicable Berne International. Marx contrasts
these pompous declarations of rights to the plain, modest, practical, simple
manner in which the question is presented by the proletariat… Less chatter
about "labour democracy", about "liberty, equality and
fraternity", about "government by the people", and all such
stuff; the class-conscious workers and peasants of our day see through
these pompous phrases of the bourgeois intellectual.”
Lenin, A Great Beginning, Heroism of the Workers in the Rear “Communist
Subbotniks”
In conclusion, to generalize the slogan of “Fraternity
of Peoples” as bourgeois liberal deception by disregarding the questions of “
who” and “what purpose” is a deception by itself. It serves the interest of
bourgeoisie, bourgeois nationalists and Bundists. This approach serves building
a wall between the labouring masses of different nationalities, hinders the
unity of workers and their united struggle, strengthens the “nationalist
ideology”, creates animosity among peoples. This “generalizing” approach is
a tactic of bourgeois nationalist and Bundists to create and bolster the
animosity between peoples and thus between the workers of different nationalities.
Here above is another way of discovering and
exposing the Bundist hiding behind left phrases.
Erdogan A
December 12, 2021
Related writings:
Lenin on National question and Bundizm,
The work of organizing a united front and left-Bundist fallacies
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