Internationalism mass organisation. class struggic. over the working class inside the impe- In two world wars, contending impe- rialist powers tried to modify the distribu- fion of territory, world markeis and zones of influence in their own favour. These were wars for new fields of investment; wars for sources of raw materials, cheap labour or potential markets — but the not defence of democracy or opposition to up large-scale industry. Once established, motives of the capitalists were certainly PROTECTIONISM was used at first to build tariff barriers served only to push up production costs and restrict trade, so were abandoned. Today, social democra- tic reformists, allied with weaker sections of capitalists in flagging industries, pro- pose import controls in a chauvinist defence of 'our jobs at the expense of Meanwhile capitalism imports labour to encourage mobility and foster racism inside the working class. Huge migrations of labour have occurred since the indias- will hold back the development of real trial revolution. Capitalists count on the passivity and lower wage expectations of "imported" labour, and on differences in customs and traditions compared with the working class, hoping this 'when the war broke out in International capitulated 1914 most parties of the before the wave of chauvinism' class solidarity and unity: rialist countrics. 'indigenous' This lites tie interests of the bour- gecisir internationally, so that the various struggles by the working class in different countries also affect all capitalist coun- trics. To maintain their system of interna- tional exploitation and oppression, the capitalists organise politically at an inter- national level through military and econo- LENIN described the capitalism since the which he summed up as the highest stage capitalist had played a dynamic role of • as a means of struggle for defence of mic alliances (such as NATO and the EEC) and intervene to destabilise governments and attack movements which they see as a - an cpoch of wars, crises and revolutions. On the level of ccone- mis, imperialism is characterised by the domination of monopolics, the develop- ment of finance capital, and a tendency to stagnation. Gone was the period in which developing the means of production: now the capitalist system of production for profit had become an obstacle to further The imperialist powers sought to escape from this and increase profits by expand- ing into new fields of invesiment through colonial and ex-colonial countries and Rosa Luxemburg identified two fea- tures of this capitalist crisis — militarism and protectionism. Indeed war has been an indispensible feature of capitalist deve- 'national' interests in competition 30 • as an instrument of class domination: • as a profitable method of placement for turn of the 20th century as 'imperialisn" porations — dominate rational markets. against rival national capitalists; zones of influence. Imperialism of capitalisni development.
where, while actively preparing to make a abandon the first task in the name of the second is to abandon the banner of prole- tarian internationalism, to retreat to na- counters the tendency towards bureaucra- International working class support is a powerful tool in a workers" state's defence against imperialism. Supporting the deve- lopments of the world revolution helps break the isolation of a workers" state and International solidarity with the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions were material factors in detcating US imperialism and coullry: revolution in their own' tional communism. UNDER LENIN, revolutionaries — now pro- fatherland' in the imperialist countries. However from the mid-1920s onwards the revolution under Stalin was marked also revolutionary wing of the working class internationally and led to the creation of a new, revolutionary Third (communist) International in opposition to the discre- claiming themscives communists — were educated in a principled rejection of the icea of 'national defence' or defence of the burcaucratic degeneration of the Russian THE OR Y by a retreat on internationalism. Socialism in one country" dited Second International. International — especially its mass parties, from the workers and colonised peoples of the world. Unfortunately such rhetoric which had begun to succumb to parlia- most of the national parties of the Interna- tional capitulated before the wave of chau- It fought to educate and mobilise the Workers of all countries were reminded that they had common interests and should stay out of ruling class quarrels over the distribution of profit snatched was not cnough to protect the Sccond degencration. When war broke out in 1914 working class against the threat of war. mentarist illusions. International- thiss parties.
only the first step towards the liberation of leaders that the Cuban revolution was The call to create two, three, many March 1968 a million people marched in ensuring their victory and survival. The insistence by Fidel Castro and other Latin America underlined their belief in the international character of the revolu- fionary struggle and ran counter to the traditional lines of stalinism and reform- Vietnams" found a real resonance. In Europe in solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution: in West Berlin they carried The struggles of the working class in any one country must never be subordi- portraits of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Marx's methods, held that "socialism" could be built on the basis of a single timed at the Soviet Union. This led to The stalinist leadership, breaking from national state — even one as economically In pursuit of this goal, the Third Inter- national was transformed by Stalin increasingly into an instrument of foreign policy for the Kremlin ratlier than a revo- lutionary leadership for the international The task it allotted to the communist partics was not to struggle direcily for power but to help pressurise the world bourgeoisie against military intervention various zig-zags of policy, leading to the backward as Russia. working class. social patriotism, dragooning workers into. Each social democratic party under pressure of an actual war lined up behind The chauvinistic collapse into national The search for reforms within capital- ism had led from social democracy to the ranks of the bosses armed forces along with acceptance of worsened living stan- dards and working conditions for workers and a fresh boost in profits for the capital- Only a handful of revolutionary social- defence of the imperialist "fatherland' spelled the end of anti-militarist and the war effort of its own' capitalist class. viruss unleashed by the bourgcoisie. socialist propaganda. ist warmongers.
based on the carly methods and tests of FIFTY YEARS ago this year Trostky fought crushed by stalinism. A new, Fourth In- nated to some supposed higher' Interest: For revolutionaries and marxists there is no contradiction in supporting both the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Solidarnose to rebuild the international movement whose revolutionary spirit had been tornational was formed, rallying the minority forces of proletarian internation- alism around a transitional programme Lenin's Communist International. The Fourth International building socialism in one country, insist- theory of the popular front — an alliance between communist parties and pro- which brought disaster to the Spanish TROTSKY'S THEORY of permanent revolu- tion, derived from Mart's analysis of the 1848 revolutions, was argued as a direct "The socidist revolution begins on the national arena; it unfolds in the interna- cional arena, and is completed in the gressive', anti-fascist bourgeois parties opposition to the stalinist revolution in the late 1930%. Permanent revolution ists rejected this social patriotism and remained faithtul to proletarian interna- nonalism, refusing to take up common cause with their own bourgeonsit —among MacLean and Lenin, the key figure of the and open up the possibility of a large-scale revolutionary crisis. While he opposed the armed struggle of the oppressor and the Lenin based his analysis on the certain- ty that the war would intensify all of the contradictions of the imperialist system capitalist war effort, he was no pacifist, and rigorously distinguished between the them Luxemburg, Tiebknecht, Trostky internationalist left.
This current has remained a focal point movement. Among the basic principles ofinternationalism ever since, combatting reasserted was that: An uncompromising stalinist and social democracy, and off cring a marxist banner to the workers disclosure of the roots of race prejudice and all forms and shades of national arro- gance and chauvinism, particularly anti- seritism, should become part of the daily work of all sections of the Fouth Interna- fional, as the most important part of the struggle against imperialism and war. Our