The Editorial Board of The Masses is republishing an article by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, originally published in the original The Masses in the March, 1916 edition. Her article, originally published as part of a collection of articles answering the question “do you believe in patriotism?” outlines the necessity of maintaining class-conscious politics in the face of reactionary patriotism, nativism, and ongoing attacks against oppressed nations both domestic and international.
We find many parallels with the time Flynn wrote. The majority of the working class in the US today is either immigrants, descendants of immigrants, or members of oppressed nations within the prisonhouse of nations that is this country. Flynn rejects the “melting-pot” idea of a uniform US, and instead describes how the US holds diverse culture, traditions, and peoples all in one country. With the last several decades of rising migration into the US, this is all the more true today.
The process of fascistization, where society moves towards fascism, with old democratic institutions being worn away bit by bit, is a threat to working people today. In the face of the rising tide of fascism, it is all the more essential that we reject US patriotism for what it really is: the backwards culture of imperialism in decline. In the face of all the ongoing attacks on working and oppressed people, we must reaffirm: it is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class!
Do you believe in patriotism? What an odd question to ask revolutionists! Might it not be better put, “American Socialists, have you the courage of your principles? Shall it be ‘America First’ or ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’”
Count me for Labor First. This country is not “our” country. Then why should the toilers love it or fight for it? Why sanction the title deeds of our masters in the blood of our fellow-slaves? Let those who own the country, who are howling for and profiting by preparedness, fight to defend their property.
I despise the rule of Rockefeller and Morgan as much as that of King or Kaiser, and am as outraged by Ludlow and Calumet as by Belgium. Joe Hill was as cruelly martyred as Edith Cavell, and I cannot work myself into a frenzy of patriotism wherever a contraband ship is sunk and we lose a few prominent citizens.
I save my concern for Quinlan, Lawson, Ford and Suhr, and the innumerable victims of the class war.
The majority of our workers are foreigners, one or two generations removed, and with their European home-ties and American environment, internationalism becomes the logical patriotism of a heterogeneous population.
America—not as a melting-pot, that produces a jingoistic, mercenary, one-mold type, but as a giant loom weaving into a mighty whole the sons, the poetry, the traditions, and the customs of all races, until a beautiful human fabric, with each thread intact, comes forth—would stretch forth a myriad hands of brotherhood to the four quarters of the globe.
The train on which I write rushes by factories where murder instruments are made for gold. I would be ashamed to be patriotic of such a country. In the black smoke belched from their chimneys, I see the ghostly faces of dead workers—our poor, deluded slain brothers. I re-affirm my faith, “It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class!”
