A core part of the socialist program is that oppressed nations have the right to self-determination—that is, to have separation and genuine independence from those that have historically oppressed them. That reflects the fact that capitalism has split the world not only between the owners and the workers, but also divided it between oppressor and oppressed nations—either in their own borders or colonized abroad.
The socialist recognition of the right of self-determination is not to increase divisions or separations among the working class. On the contrary, socialists declare the right to separate, should oppressed people choose to, as a step toward building unity and winning the trust of the oppressed. That way, unity comes from a genuine place and cannot be confused with forced “unity.”
Working-class internationalism does not reject the existence of nationhood or the political importance of nations. What socialists reject entirely is the concept of foreignness, the narrow mentality that one group’s needs and struggles are more important or deserving than another based on their national origin. Socialists fight all laws or practices that privilege one language or culture over another, along with the very division between “citizen” and “foreigner.” The capitalist rulers promote such ideas to maintain the allegiance of their working class.
The working class is international
In reality, the working class draws its strength and potential from its international character.
In every single country in the world, there are individuals who survive and live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor can generate a profit for someone else. These individuals, regardless of what language they speak or what their nationality is, sell their labor power on the “free market”—in this case known as the “labor market.” They are part of the working class, and constitute a global group of people whose day-to-day experiences as workers and shared interest in the overthrow of capital form the basis for unity in struggle against exploitation.
The globalization of capitalism has brought the international working class closer together than ever before. Every technological development throughout history, whether of the train, the telephone, the airplane, the computer or the Internet, has increased opportunities for global communication and interaction.
The global economic process—in which workers of all nations are participating, but from different places—has been driven by the needs and interests of big business and capital. While workers have grown closer together physically and socially as a result of globalization, politically the working class remains largely scattered over the world and broken up by competition.
Internationalism and immigration
In the United States, the debate over the fate of millions of undocumented workers clearly highlights the problems that can arise when our class is infected with the ruling class’ ideas of national chauvinism and bigotry, instead of the revolutionary ideas of the working class.
Instead of seeing those born outside U.S. borders as other members of the working class, we are taught to view them as “foreigners” and therefore an “alien” element that is dangerous, threatening or even inferior.
A socialist, internationalist position on the immigration debate forces us to look at the undocumented worker, no matter if she is from Malaysia or Mexico, as “one of our own.” Based on this thinking, socialists struggle for full equality and dignity for all immigrants, starting minimally with legalization. It does not matter if someone is a factory worker in India, a miner in South Africa, an anti-occupation fighter in Afghanistan or a Bolivarian revolutionary in Venezuela—the success of every one of them is a success for the other.
Working-class internationalism in practice
The task of revolutionary Marxism is to seize the objective potential for international working-class unity and turn it into reality with independent action and coordination. It was a task that the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association, an organization that Karl Marx helped lead, took up, as did subsequent “internationals.”
The Communist (Third) International was founded in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. Revolutionary parties in every country pledged their allegiance not to narrow national interests, but to international working-class unity, the overthrow of colonialism and the cause of communism. Communists brought an international perspective into even the smallest labor or community struggles. In their literature, speeches and cultural activities, the fighters of the working class became trained, and educated others, in a thoroughly internationalist outlook.
For example, when the world was suffering through the crisis of the Great Depression, the Communist International organized a global day of action of the unemployed in March 1930. Millions took part, from small cities in the United States to Europe, Asia and Latin America. When nine Black teenagers faced the death penalty in a Jim Crow court in Scottsboro, Ala., there were Communist-organized marches all over the world demanding their freedom.
In the 1930s, when civil war broke out in Spain between the forces of fascism and the democratically elected left-wing government, socialist and communist parties from across the world sent troops to fight alongside the democratic forces. Internationalist women and men from more than 50 countries, including thousands of volunteers from the United States, joined the efforts of the Spanish working class as if it was their own, because, in fact, it was.
Eventually, the Communist International became subordinated to the national interests of the Soviet Union, and was disbanded in 1943.
No comparable revolutionary center exists today, but there are glimpses of the power of internationalism.
Internationalism today
Cuba has been a model of working-class internationalism in practice since the triumph of the revolution in 1959. Cuba’s foreign policy since that time has been based on international working-class unity and anti-imperialist resistance.
Cuba has provided thousands of doctors and teachers to nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa, winning the admiration and trust of working people all over the world. The socialist government of Cuba has sent troops to fight alongside nations trying to liberate themselves from colonialism and imperialism, especially in Africa. Cuba’s support for Angola, for example, heroically pushed back and defeated the racist apartheid South African military. Cuba correctly viewed the defeat of apartheid in Africa as a step forward for their own working class.
Today, the pro-socialist government of Venezuela is another leading example of internationalism in practice on a world scale. As U.S. imperialism turned its attention to the domination of the Middle East after the Sept. 11 attacks, it would have been easy for the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to remain silent about the horrors being inflicted on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan so as to not anger the United States.
Instead, Chavez and the Venezuelan people passionately denounced the U.S. wars of aggression and used Venezuela’s full diplomatic and political weight to expose the crimes of the occupations.
When Israel began its murderous invasion of Gaza in 2009, code-named Operation Cast Lead, Venezuela ended diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime and expelled its ambassador. Palestinian flags were waved at major rallies in Caracas, while Chávez and then-Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro proudly addressed crowds while wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.
When the United States and its NATO allies provoked a civil war and unleashed a brutal bombing campaign against the people of Libya, Venezuela worked tirelessly to broker a settlement that preserved Libyan sovereignty. Venezuela-based news network Telesur was one of the few media outlets with reporters in Tripoli trying to counter the misinformation campaign of the corporate press.
These expressions of solidarity, and many others, were not done as acts of charity. They were displays of internationalism—both a strategy for liberation and a firm political conviction that borders should not divide the struggle of the working class.
