Morning Comrades.
Proletarian Internationalism, or International Socialism as it used to be called is a fascinating subject, especially in our times as we are witnessing the rapidly increasing decay of our international reality that has shaped the generations post WW2, those, who so clearly influenced much of our collective narrative. Whilst much of the groundwork of this idea was created in text, the idea had existed beforehand, in the Communist Manifesto with one of the most powerful sentences of the modern world “Workers of the world, unite”, furthermore cemented in the First International and the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in 1846, it was Rosa Luxemburg that still stands as the pillar of this core principle of Communist thought and action.
Proletarian Internationalism subconsciously and unknown to me for the first half of life played a massive role and since learning about it, increasingly so. I grew up as an English person on a military base here in Germany, spent my teens in Poland, then went back to England and work took me from the US, to Japan and most of Europe. Whilst I can easily perform participation in most of these national ideas none of them truly have ever felt real, nor do I feel at home in any of these places. The sheer idea, feeling rather of belonging anywhere, to identify with an idea of belonging to any national narrative, most of which solely exist to pamper the capitalists in any case, is utterly alien to me. Sure, if one were to rank them in my case, I feel most aligned to the south east of London, but after having been gone for over 16 years, I know that most of that is romantic notion and far from real. I cannot say that this trajectory made me an Internationalist, but, the philosophical idea and its subsequent necessary actions involved in this school of thought feel most relatable to me.
That is how we come to Luxemburg. Few Marxist thinkers were more committed to socialism’s internationalist programme than Rosa Luxemburg. She was Jewish, Polish, and German, but her one and only “motherland” was the Socialist International. It is true, however, that this radical internationalism led her to take questionable positions on the national question. For instance, concerning her native country, Poland, she not only opposed the call for Polish national independence raised by the “social-patriots” of Piłsudski’s Polish Socialist Party (PPS), but even rejected Bolshevik support for Poland’s right to self-determination (including the right to separate from Russia). Until 1914 she would base her views on “economistic” arguments: Poland was already integrated into the Russian economy, and therefore Polish independence was a purely utopian demand shared only by reactionary aristocratic or petty-bourgeois layers. She also conceived of nations as essentially “cultural” phenomena, proposing “cultural autonomy” as the solution for national demands. Missing in her approach is precisely the political dimension of the national question as emphasized in Lenin’s writings on the topic: the democratic right to self-determination.
As always, we have to ask what the relevance of all this is today.
Of course, historical conditions in the early twenty-first century are very different from those of the early twentieth, when she wrote most of her texts. Yet in some decisive aspects, her internationalist message is as—or perhaps even more —relevant today as in her time.
In the twenty-first century, capitalist globalization has imposed its power to a historically unprecedented degree, promoting obscene levels of inequality and leading to catastrophic environmental consequences. According to the 2017 Oxfam Report, eight billionaires and owners of multinational enterprises have a fortune equivalent to that of the poorest half of humanity (3.8 billion people). Through its institutions—the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), and the G7—capital has consolidated a united bloc of capitalist ruling classes around neoliberalism and de-regulation. There are of course contradictions between various imperialist interests, but they all share a common agenda: erasing all partial conquests of the labour movement, eliminating public services, privatizing profits and socializing losses, and thus intensifying exploitation. This planetary process is hegemonized by parasitical finance capital, whose despotic rule through the blind and reified mechanisms of “financial markets” is now imposed on the populations of all countries.
Local and national resistance is necessary but insufficient: such a perverse planetary system must be fought on a planetary scale. In other words, anti-capitalist resistance must be globalized. The Communist and Socialist Internationals of Rosa Luxemburg’s days hardly exist in this form. There are some regional organizations, such as the Party of the European Left or the Latin American São Paulo Conference, but no equivalent international body.
The main cause for hope is the new international movement for global justice, which is sowing the seeds of a new internationalist culture. The form taken by this planetary resistance to capitalist globalization is that of the “movement of movements”, a loose federation of social movements whose main expression is the World Social Forum founded in 2001. This convergence of trade unionists, feminists, environmentalists, workers, peasants, indigenous communities, youth networks, as well as socialist or communist groups in the common struggle against corporate—i.e., capitalist—globalization is an important step forward. Of course, it is mainly a space for exchanging experiences and taking scattered common initiatives, and lacks the ambition to define a common strategy or program.
Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy can be important for this movement in many respects. She makes clear that the enemy is not “globalization” or just “neoliberalism”, but the global capitalist system itself. The alternative to global capitalist hegemony is not “national sovereignty”, the defence of the national against the global, but rather globalizing, i.e. internationalizing, resistance. The alternative to the Empire is not a “regulated”, “humanized” form of capitalism, but a new, socialist and democratic world civilization. Of course, in our times we have to deal with new challenges unknown to Rosa Luxemburg: ecological catastrophe and global warming. They result from the destructive dynamic of capitalists’ unlimited urge for expansion and growth and must be confronted on a global scale. In other words, the ecological crisis is a new argument for the relevance of Luxemburg’s internationalist ethos.
Rosa Luxemburg’s warning against the poison of nationalism has never been so relevant. In the world today—and particularly in Europe and the United States—nationalism, xenophobia, and racism under various “patriotic”, reactionary, fascist, or semi-fascist guises are on the rise and constitute a mortal danger for democracy and freedom. Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anti-Roma racism are rampant, enjoying open or discrete government support. Above all, xenophobic hatred of migrants—desperate populations fleeing persecution, war, and famine—is cynically promoted by neo-fascist parties and/or authoritarian governments. Right-Wing and Centrists politicians and media mouthpieces are only the most blatant and nauseating representatives of policies that scapegoat migrants—whether Muslim, African, or Mexican—and denounce them as a threat to national, racial, or religious identity. Thousands of migrants were condemned to death in the waters of the Mediterranean by the hermetic closure of Europe’s borders. One can treat this as a new form of the brutal colonialist behaviour Rosa Luxemburg so harshly denounced.
Her socialist internationalism remains an invaluable moral and political compass in the midst of this xenophobic tempest. Fortunately, Marxist internationalists are not the only ones to stubbornly oppose the racist and nationalist wave: many people all around the world, moved by humanist, religious, or moral values, are demonstrating solidarity with persecuted minorities and migrants. Trade unionists, feminists, and other social movements are busy organizing people of all races and nationalities in a common struggle against exploitation and oppression.
Is reactionary xenophobia the only form of nationalism in the world today? One cannot deny that there are still movements of national liberation with legitimate demands for self-determination—a concept to which, as we know, Rosa Luxemburg did not subscribe. The Palestinians and the Kurds are two obvious examples. Yet it is interesting to observe that the main Kurdish left-nationalist force, the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party), decided to abandon the call for a separate nation-state. Criticizing nation-statism as an oppressive form, it adopted a new perspective influenced by the anarchist ideas of Murray Bookchin: “Democratic Confederalism”.
The internationalist ideas of Rosa Luxemburg, but also of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, José Carlos Mariategui, W.E.B. Dubois, Frantz Fanon, and many others are precious instruments to understand and transform our reality. They are necessary and indispensable weapons for the struggles of our times. Nevertheless, Marxism is an open method, constantly in movement, which must cultivate new ideas and concepts to confront the new challenges of each epoch.
If anyone is interested in this topic and would like some reading material, please feel free to reach out and I will do my best to point in the right directions.
Thank you for your time, attention and support.
Yours, warmly,
Steven.
Hey there! Reading from Argentina and celebrating this form of expanding ideas.
I recommend the reading of The Transitional Programme and the Foundation of the IV International, by Leon Trotsky. Also, the workers' funded newspaper "Left Voice", part of an international party with members in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Perú, Mexico, United States, Italy, France, Germany, Spain.
That's to add 'cause I see it nowhere in your post any reference to leftist theorist after Stalin's counter revolutionary action against the revolutionary policies of Russia, together with Lenin and Trotsky
Good one. Your call for a new kind of globalization is important as in internationalizing resistance, but resisting takes energy, energy that would be better used in building. But building needs a plan. I think Bookchin/Ocalan have that plan. I think Democratic Confederalism is what should be globalized. I believe it is what frightens the muftas of the Islamic Republic of Iran.