The strategic role of internationalism and the need for an international. Penny. 18.
7th December 2024
The strategic role of internationalism and the need for an international
1. World capitalism and the need for internationalism
- today's situation - wars in Palestine and Ukraine, multi polarity,
- the class nature, the imperialist and oppressive nature of the global system
- resistances: US autoworkers, women’s movements, Palestinians, Sudan, movements for democracy
What is internationalism?
- international solidarity, national to national - “weak” internationalism?
- cross-border organization, “an injury to one is an injury to all” (IWW) - “strong” internationalism?
Different moments of organized international solidarity “social forums” 2001, our initiative
2. History of the Internationals
1st International 1864 London - 1876 Philadelphia
- 1863 Polish uprising,
Prevent import of foreign workers to break strikes - very simple basis of organizing workers to refuse to strike break in another country, an organization for sharing labour information across borders
- 1868 Bakunin joins
- 1871 Paris Commune - Marx, lessons
- 1872 Hague conference/expulsion Bakunin, move to US
2nd International 1889 Brussels -1914 (officially Geneva 1920)
Complicated process to foundation - German social democracy Karl Kautsky, French SFIO, Belgians, British, Russians Plekhanov, later Lenin, Trotsky (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks)
- 1889 1 May,
- 1910 International Women’s Day
- 8-hour working day campaign
- 1914 First World War: Vote war credits Germany, assassination Jean Jaurès Francea
3rd International 1919 Moscow - 1943 Moscow
- 1917 Russian Revolution
- 1919, 1920, 1921, 22 Annual conferences
- 1924 death of Lenin
- 1924-1927 rise of Stalinism - battle within Bolshevik party
- 1943 - dissolution by declaration of IEC - manoeuvre by Stalin?
4th International 1938 Paris – today – 18th World Congress planned for 2025
- 1927-1933 Left opposition to Stalinist degeneration
- opposition to rising fascism
- political revolution USSR
- 1938 founding conference
- 1939 Second World War
- 1940 Assassination Trotsky
- 1945 post war period: Continuing prestige of CPs: Russian Revolution, defence of USSR , growth of CPs, resistance in WW2 (as USSR and CPs in occupied countries), Chinese revolution,
postwar boom – increased TU influence, Cuba, South Africa
- 1953 split
- 1963 reunification - Cuban revolution, solidarity Algerian revolution “3 sectors of the world revolution"
3. The Fourth International post 1968
• 1968
- world wide student radicalization
- Vietnam solidarity - > anti-imperialism
- FI sections
- turn to youth and workers
• 1970s
- Chile
- Portugal
- Nicaragua
- USSR invasion Afghanistan
• Collapse of Soviet bloc 1989
=> “broad anti-capitalist” or new parties (1995)
• what did this mean?
looking beyond Trotskyist tradition
currents in movement
transitional form
• what sort of parties
The points we have highlighted are:
• participation in the social movements and struggles of the oppressed and exploited. learn from these movement to deepen and enrich our own programme.
• building active, radical and class-struggle trade-unions,
• independent attitude to the state, institutions; to elections as a support to the activity in the mass movement,
• the importance of an active international and internationalist understanding of the world political situation
• the necessity for democratic and transparent functioning with broad democracy including tendency rights, and combatting expression of specific oppressions
• the importance of addressing the questions thrown up in the struggles and fightbacks of the oppressed and exploited (notably feminism, ecology, LGBTQI, and others);
• an unremitting fight against all forms of racism - including against indigenous populations, anti-Semitism, islamophobia and for free movement of migrants, on the basis of solidarity and unity;
• the importance of renewal of organisations through an open and dynamic attitude to recruiting radicalizing youth
• the need for continuing educational programmes including on strategic questions such as the state or the question of power, and international questions.
Conclusion
- Our organizations are putting this orientation into practice in the particular national situation, not a dictate from a centre
- the World Congress as synthesis
Reading material
Dan La Botz The World Up in Arms Against Austerity and Authoritarianism
September 1938 - the founding of the Fourth International
Role and party-building tasks of the Fourth International
Additional reading: Daniel Bensaïd: The formative years of the Fourth International (1933-1938)
Gus Massiah: The new world struggles to be born
Michael Löwy: The Fourth International is 80 years old!
Pierre Rousset: Reflections on the “party question” (expanded version) – an overview