Internationalism today
Almost a century after the foundation of the Second International (1889), seventy years after the founding of the Third (1919) and fifty years after the founding of the Fourth International (1938), where is internationalism at today? What are the conditions for the possibility of a new rise in internationalist unity of the exploited and oppressed of all countries? Under what forms is possible, in our epoch, the renaissance of international socialism as it was dreamed of by Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxembourg, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara?
Three significant obstacles have arisen on the path to internationalism, which it would be foolish to underestimate: • The discrediting of internationalism through authoritarian and bureaucratic caricatures. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in the name of 'proletarian internationalism' is just one of the most blatant examples of this. Today, the very idea of internationalism has become suspect in the eyes of large sections of the workers' and popular movements — a distrust aggravated by the tragic disappointments of the revolutions of the Third World: the war between China and Vietnam, the massacres of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, the flight of the boat people, etc. • The cold war spirit - the subordination of the interests of workers in states or blocs of states supposed to represent the 'free world' or the "socialist camp' . In many countries the workers' movement is still divided on the basis of these two blocs, and socialist internationalism is replaced by a more or less direct lining up with the USSR or, worse, imperialism. • Nationalism, chauvinism and xenophobia, which are still taking their toll (including within the popular layers) whether in Europe - with the rise of racist and anti-immigrant movements — or in the Third World where we see in the Iran-Iraq war one of the most bloody and absurd massacres of this end of the 20th century.
The essence of nationalism is the affirmation of the nation as the supreme value, to which all other social or political interests should be nationalism insofar as a) its supreme value is the whole of humanity; b)
its political and social objectives — classless society, and an end to exploitation and oppression — can only be realised worldwide and c) the historical protagonist of the struggle for emancipation
That being said, the classical Leninist distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and that of the oppressors remains in force: internationalism means equality of rights between nations and therefore support for the liberation struggles of the oppressed nations, who today are the
Basques, the Irish, the Kanaks of New Caledonia, the Armenians, the
Kurds, the Eritreans, and in general all the people of the Third World struggling against imperialist domination. This support does not in the least imply that Marxists are rallying to nationalism: on the contrary, this is the precondition for the development within these struggles of a socialist
While internationalism categorically rejects nationalist ideology, this does not mean that it is opposed to national culture and identity. Its objective is not the assimilation and homogenisation of national languages and cultures, or their replacement by an abstract international culture, but rather the interaction, the 'mixing', between the universal message of the revolutionary socialist movement and the cultural forms specific to each people. Marx and Engels themselves always insisted, as Ernest Mandel correctly reminds us, that their supporters should take on the traditions of local struggles. (See Ernest Mandel, 'The Place of Marxism in History'
Marxist internationalism cannot become a mass force — particularly in the countries of the Third World and the oppressed nations - if it cannot root itself in the culture, the tradition, the history of the nation, and in the emancipatory, subversive, democratic and revolutionary aspects of this history. Marxism must be translated not ony into the language but also into the culture of each nation, by drawing on the historical references and the
A movement without a past does not have a future. In every country we have to find the tradition of the oppressed (Walter Benjamin) and make the memory of the fighters and victims of the past a powerful spiritual source of the current liberation struggles. I will take some Latin American
The Nicaraguan revolutionaries would have had difficulty in successfully overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship if they had not had an intuitive grasp of the need (thanks to the initiative of Carlos Fonseca) to claim the banner of Sandinism, thus fusing their international Marxist culture with the tradition and example of the General of Free Men, whose anti-
130 International Marxist Review subordinated. Marxist internationalism international.
and internationalist current.
Notebooks for Study and Research No 1).
collective memory of the mass of the people.
illustrations of this idea.
is irreconcilably opposed to is itself
Internationalism today 131 imperialist fight remained alive in the memory, imagination and consciousness of the people. The same goes for José Marti in Cuba and Farabundo Marti in El Salvador, and, in the future, will hold for Mariategui in Peru, Tupac-Amaru in different Andean and South American countries, Camilo Torres in Colombia, Emilio Zapata in Mexico. These indigenous, Christian, democratic, anti-imperialist or communist figures, with their message of rebellion and their martyrdom in the cause of the liberation of the oppressed, represent their own national and popular culture at its most advanced point. An abstract internationalism which ignores this culture, whose only references are European (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky ...) runs the risk of being isolated and remaining incomprehensible to the broad masses of Latin America. We should be able, through a broad politico-cultural mix, to combine, associate, articulate and integrate the internationalist scope, the internationalist programme and the internationalist culture of Marxism with this national tradition. And not only for tactical or pedagogic reasons, but because each of these traditions contributres to enriching the international proletarian culture: as we understand dialectics, the totality is not simply the negation but the integration of all the richness of specificities.
Internationalism is the revolutionary and practical expression of humanism. As Che Guevara, one of the most consistent representatives of internationalism in our epoch, said, it is impossible to imagine a revolutionary without love for humanity. For Che, the real communist should always consider the big problems of humanity as personal problems, and feel all aggression, all affronts to the dignity and happiness of human beings anywhere in the world as personal affronts. One of the strongest ideas of Marxism is precisely the perspective of a universal/human revolution, whose world historical subject is the exploited and the oppressed.
But internationalism is also the consciousness of a material entity: the unification of the world by imperialism, the extraordinary growth of the proletariat throughout the planet, and the community of interests of the workers in all countries. Thus there is the dialectic between the three sectors of the world revolution: the socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist metropolises, the permanent revolution in the dependent capitalist countries, the anti-bureaucratic revolution in the post-capitalist countries. Despite the obvious differences in living conditions and forms of struggle, a common historical aim creates the objective possibility for internationalist unity; socialist democracy, workers' power, the abolition of all forms of exploitation and oppression (of class, sex, race or nation).
It is for both these objective and subjective reasons that internationalism is reborn each time despite the great betrayals, disappointments and defeats. Our century has known three great periods of active internationalism: the foundation of the Communist International and its first years; the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War; and the 'Peoples' Spring' in 1968. During the periods of decline in international solidarity - and
132 International Marxist Review the rise of nationalism, warmongering, and chauvinism - only a few handfuls of people have kept alight the spark of socialist internationalism: Zimmerwald, the Left Opposition, the Fourth International.
What is happening to internationalism today? The a-critical stance and the lyrical illusions in the nationalist or 'national-communist' movements of the Third World are no longer credible. And, above all, it is obvious that the old authoritarian 'internationalist' ('Stalinist') culture, orientated above all to the defence of the Soviet Union - and then channeled to other 'socialist fatherlands' (China, Albania etc.) — is in crisis. The international models, the guiding States of the world workers' movement have failed and this crisis encourages a withdrawal into nationalism. But at the same time it also creates the possibility of a new departure, or a renaissance of international solidarity on different bases, in a word, of a new internationalism.
The first elements of a new internationalist culture are beginning to emerge. They are still limited, partial, fragmented, scattered, but they are a promise and possibility for the future. Marxists can act within this culture in formation, encouraging it to advance towards a universal, revolutionary consciousness, that is anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic, humanist and democratic, socialist and libertarian.
Internationalism has remained more alive and active in the Third World than in the Western metropolises. But it is often limited to a regional framework — Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America — or to anti-imperialist solidarity of the peoples of dependent countries. There is frequently the temptation towards 'campism', that is the tendency to idealise in an a-critical fashion the 'socialist camp' . But we also see the rise of revolutionary currents who have a real international sensitivity and who refuse to blindly line up with this or that state 'of actually existing socialism'
This is particularly the case in Latin America, where an internationalist culture is appearing which is drawing inspiration from both the Marxist tradition and Christian socialism linked to liberation theology. The universal humanist dimension (catholic in the original sensę of the world) of Christianity fusing with the proletarian internationalism of Marxists has produced a rather unexpected result, provoking a broad echo in the mass of the people. Sandinism in Nicaragua, Mariateguism in Peru and Camilism in Colombia are the - still limited and partial - expression of this phenomenon; but it is the Workers' Party in Brazil (where the influence of revolutionary Marxists is far from negligible) which is the most advance expression. This is shown by its support for both the struggle of the Polish workers and the Central American revolution, Solidarnosc and the FSLN. While the Cuban revolution remains a fundamental reference for all these currents, this does not lead to an unconditional alignment with the Cuban model for the transition to socialism or to the international policy of the Cuban leadership. A new socialist-democratic (and pluralist)
Internationalism today 133 sensibility inspires the search for an independent international position, in the framework of the necessity solidarity of all the anti-imperialist forces.
In Europe, the new internationalist culture which is in formation is the product of different components which developing in an uneven and parallel fashion, and which sometimes fuse or combine: societid adition, despiletarian yerna remains ale among tate socialists, critical communists, anarchists and certain currents of the far left — of which the only one which attempts to translate internationalism into an organised and centralised practice is the Fourth International. • What remains of the spirit of May 68 among those - more numerous than we think — who have not renounced the ideals of their youth and who are trying to make them relevant today in new forms. It is not by chance that we find many activists from 1968 in contemporary social movements — particularly in Germany and Britain, but sometimes also in France (and elsewhere). • Pacifism and concern for ecology, whose growth in both Western and Eastern Europe testifies to a common struggle going beyond national borders or military blocs, against the nuclear threat, militaristic nationalism, the logic of cold war and destruction of nature. Going beyond the framework of the workers' movement, these currents enrich socialist internationalism, introducing into it new dimensions (defence of the environment), or reformulating differently some of its traditional concerns (peace). They also contribute to the radicalisation of new social layers and their involvement in an internationalist struggle against the established order. However, these movements - which find an organised expression on a European scale in structures like END (European Nuclear Disarmament), the Green grouping in the European parliament etc - remain still quite heterogeneous from a social and political point of view (see for example the extraordinary difference between the French and German Greens). • Anti-racism, the broad movement of solidarity with immigrants (Arabs, Africans, Asians, Turks, Kurds, etc.) and of an active fight against nationalist, xenophobic and racist tendencies. Motivated above all by a moral and humanist sentiment, this movement has nonetheless been - particularly in France, with SOS Racisme - the principal practical expression of internationalism for a whole new generation of young school students, students and workers. This is all the more important because the opposition in each country between 'nationals' and "immigrants' (or 'foreigners') has always been one of the main causes of division among the exploited and dominated - from the time of Marx until now - and of their powerlessness to wage a common fight against the ruling classes. • Workers' solidarity on a European level. Even if this rest :: - =embryonic stage, the common fight for the 35-hour working weed. 12-s redundancies and unemployment, is beginning to take shape. arrang ==
134 International Marxist Review most advanced trade-union currents at least, if not at a mass level. It is probable that the economic unification of Europe over the next five years is going to contribute to intensifying the coordination, the convergence and the unification of struggles. • Defence of human rights. While it is true that this sentiment has too often been manipulated by the 'Westernist' ideologues of the cold war, it nevertheless constitutes, in its most authentic forms - Amnesty International for example — an effective demonstration of international solidarity. Despite its obvious limits, it contributes an important dimension which should be incorporated into the revolutionary internationalist struggle. • Feminism which subverts the traditional, patriarchal culture of aggressive nationalism, the 'virile' cult of violence and patriotic militarism. Breaking national barriers, the feminist movements — of socialist, pacifist or radical orientation — are beginning to be coordinated on a European and even world scale in a fight for eminently international aims. • Solidarity with the Third World, that is with the struggle of the people of the dependent countries to free themselves from imperialist oppression, local dictatorships, hunger and poverty. If we leave aside the purely 'charitable' institutions — or those which only deign to interest themselves in the victims of 'totalitarianism' - there exists a vast network of internationalist solidarity, which goes from certain religious non-governmental organisations — World Council of Churches, the CIMADE, Terre des Hommes etc. — to solidarity committees with people in struggle (Central America, Philippines, South Africa etc.). Despite the difference between the more humanitarian approach of the first and the strictly political approach of the second, they share the same commitment to the side of the nihire shall and oppressed of the Third World and recruit largely among the same radicalised Christian layers. One of the most important expressions of these solidarity movements are the brigades of volunteers which go every year from Europe and the whole world to help the Nicaraguan people defend their revolution and develop their economy.
Revolutionary Marxists are present in most of these movements and often play a central role as organisers and activists. It is obvious that these fragmented, partial, dispersed forms of internationalism, humanism and solidarity are worlds away from the mass revolutionary international which is necessary to confront the offensives of imperialism (or the manoeuvres of bureaucracy), to coordinate and unify the combat of the workers and the whole of humanity against the nuclear threat, ecological disaster, class exploitation, military dictatorships, bureaucratic regimes, racial or national discrimination and women's oppression. But it is from the convergence between revolutionary Marxist heritage and this internationalist culture in formation (as well as the liberation of internationalist energies still imprisoned in what remains of the 'world communist movement) that the next step forward could come...