Bringing back National pride with Class consciousness
Every nation has its own identity, and every identity must have been imbues with a unique feature that classified as its own. And that feature is National pride.
However, that pride comes from a profound sense of National consciousness, that likely to have conquered and survived in a hostile environment set upon to us by nature and fate. And though this, it survived the wave of time, though progressive means and through the acceptance of what the person is, to uplift and to reach what is supposed to. Unlike those whom accept-only to become extinct or in the verge of destruction.
National pride, in this person's view does not mean superiority as what other people used to think of but rather as consciousness as a part of a nation, a recognition since that one has uphold its tradition, faith, and honour to the land; and thus, to serve the aspirations of the people, both local or from its foreign brethren.
However, in a country wherein repression and disenfranchisement has been rampant for generations from both foreign masters and its domestic stooges, of maldevelopment and social injustice towards the labouring class, comes consciousness that is, proletarian. Proletarian in a sense that the country's majority are those coming from the ill-paid laborers, the unjustly-shared peasantry, the debt-stricken lower petitbourgeoisie, these masses, repressed by a semifeudal-semicolonial order has yearned to resolve internal as well as external class struggle, being one of the proletarian "third world" nations surrounded by the developed nations of the first world.
Sounds radical isn't it? Perhaps in this person's observation, in a reality wherein semifeudal-semicolonial repression has made National consciousness includes class consciousness, as means to liberate both as a nation and from its class.
For sure one would think “why a nation have achieve independence and yet the system remains as it is in its colonial past?” some may attained progression and perhaps even further, but third world nations be like much repressive as in its colonial days, with its once colonial masters be like indirectly ruling over. Domestic despots may have intensified further internal repression and injustice as in the past, enough to justify the need for national liberation even more.
And from these unsung masses, along with their leaders whom used to get killed for their beliefs, gave inspiration to the coming generations on why they wanted “freedom”. And contrary to an established view, that Freedom doesn’t mean “freedom as a nation” but also “freedom” from its class as they build a just society, through national consciousness, merit, and of hope towards one another.
And in it Filipinos can be classified as an example of this. After centuries of subjection by its coloniser and its domestic stooge, of their efforts to degrade and enslave the inhabitants, Filipinos, especially those of the oppressed masses in both urban and rural areas tried and failed but their heart of being a “free” man and its identity as a “Filipino” prevail (for before "Filipino" was meant to be the Spanish Insulare as well as a privileged principalia loyal to the Spanish crown), and so its class consciousness as a working class, be it a laborer or a farmer. Also to think that in spite of hardships given, their deaths or banishments, still their identity and their hope remain as they continue fighting, knowing that their desire for a just society has to realise.
And even today it continues to carry over. Knowing that in spite of being independent, or what the others called as “sham” independence, the remnants of the old system prevailed, and so are the classes. Being a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country always carries a large strain of this rotten system in which weakens the nation and makes further vulnerable to foreign and domestic oppression.
The struggle to destroy the old order remained still as in the past, for as the oppressed, imbued with hope and faith as a part of the nation, as makers of history wanted to destroy every piece in order to set a new society under them, as what Karl Marx said a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” must have take place of the old. Also to think that a third world nation nearly lost its identity because of that rotten system prevailing, with all its occidentosis becoming the culture itself, then it is the duty of the aware to revive national consciousness that is, based from the aspirations of the people than those of the ruling order. After all, of what is independence if the ones who rule still clings to its colonial master? It makes independence "sham" than true.
For sure one would notice that National pride seemed to be but a façade, a cosmetic in a face a puppet state. Through meaningless slogans to the "fashionalistic" sentiments that carried little or no patriotism, I really think that Nationalism as of now becomes worth nothing-especially to nations wherein opened much to free trade and lessening its patriotic, working class appeal to accumulate more foreign aid and support-in other words, sacrificing its own dignity for a few bucks.
Imagine, everyone has encountered the mercenary traditions of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the curtailment of civil rights and freedom of thought especially amongst activists and other progressive leaning persons who advocate genuine national pride and class consciousness, of several scandals wherein corrupts the country and of life itself, and even the "rise" of false "patriots" who are in fact mere puppets of a foreign oppressor, who utilizes a "washed-out" patriotism and blaming the genuine patriots who supported a dignified state and a progressive community of peoples imbued with patriotic sentiment and of class consciousness as members of the working class.
Noticing about these facts, it seems that "a need for genuine national pride through working class patriotism" is encouraged as a means to counter the growing effects of wholesale westernization, of globalization also encouraged by vested western interests, as well as of bourgeois-chauvinist "nationalism" that is limited to buying goods and watching boxing matches and of the like, including those of its own contemporary culture which in fact emulates too much from the west. Sorry for the words but to see such occidentosis would say that is there any patriotism left? The so-called "Pinoy pride" of the present is a mere aesthetic as everyone has their minds embedded with those of the west and its materialistic illusions.
But in spite of all the façade of "pride", the laboring class has still demands peace, land, bread, and justice knowing that the country known for that "pride" is still backward thanks to an unjust order that makes a nation "proletarian" as any third world nation.
People somehow may ought to understand the fact in order to break off ties from it, it needs modern-day Bonifacios not Aguinaldos, of needing De Los Reyeses, of Evangelistas not those of collaborationists a la Paterno, Roxas, and others including those who bannered buying Filipino goods yet kissing the shoes of the imperialist.
Patriots of the working class type, true to its idea that they wanted a real, dignified homeland within the international community of peoples, also wanted to realize what the late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's statement:
"In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we had one. But now that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hand, in the hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you don't want this, you must put an end to its backwardness in the shortest time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up its socialist economy. There is no other way... "
And in it somehow it is true for as workers of every nations, living in a nation in fact a nation of profiteers wanted genuine national pride, but this time imbued with class consciousness to counter, destroy the age-old chauvinist "nationalistic" appeal of the profiteers and of the like, as well as to build a real homeland wherein it genuinely uphold its independence whilst cooperating with all nations in building a community of peoples: just, peaceful, prosperous.
Due to the fact that nationalism, in a proletarian sense, is more national than those from the ruling class, of the present system itself, since they (the proletariat) have showed its real contribution to the country; however they remained poor since their fruits of hard work are destined to those whom are greed in nature.