Studying the history of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the one thing that always appeals to me about the Communists is that they seem to have had the only internationalist political movement of any kind going, the only one that was internationalist even in theory. (And yes, I know perfectly well that when Communists got into power they usually seemed to act like nationalists.)
Is there any other such movement, now? I don’t mean the Democratic World Federalists or some such hopeful shit, I mean a movement that matters and is consciously working towards – or even, just talking about – global union. There is none such in the U.S., that I know of. The nearest things would be the neoliberals, with their hopes for economic globalization, and the neoconservatives, with their vision of spreading democracy and capitalism worldwide. We need something better.
Liberal Economists? The EU expansion is probably the most successful internationalist project in history (if you don’t count people whose version of internationalism is just conquering their neighbors or dominating them by force). Add to that various other free-trade projects, and I’d say liberal economists have done more to bring about trans-national political structures then any other group.
So you’d prefer class warfare (and possibly class genocide as seen with Stalin and the Kulaks) to a peaceful, stable, prosperous global democratic capitalist community? Within our lifetimes I believe globalization will cause de facto world government as gradually the major dictatorships fall and the few obscure African or Asian ones follow in the end.
It was a broad coalition of various regional interest groups that were railing against the worst effects of neo-liberal globalization. The majority of activists in the movement weren’t xenophobic but were into regional autonomy, slow food, land rights, environmentalism, labour rights etc.
I don’t think merely being international makes a group internationalist. Anti-globalization protesters may have existed and co-ordinated across multiple countries, but their aims were anti-internationalist.
Are either of these groups pro-internationalism (at least, prior to the apocalypse)? I thought the Catholic Church had more or less given up on being a secular governing body, and while I don’t know much about the Witnesses, I would think that their belief in an imminent apocalypse would kind of limit how much internationalizing they could get done before the whole planet went up in flames anyways.
Those are the only choices? My enthusiasm for the latter depends on whether that “community” has a government I get to vote for. If “global community” just means opening a free field for the multinationals, it’ll turn the whole world into the Third World. Global Stalinism would do the same only worse. But state sovereignty still sux.
That would be a fine thing, but it would not be de facto world government.
Some were anti-internationalist probably, but really they were railing against that particular brand of internationalism. They were talking about the local and the global at the same time. The concerns of Mexican farmers, Colombian workers, sweatshop workers in Asia, and various other local concerns were elucidated amongst many of these groups. They acted for their particular concerns and the general concerns of their allies.
The EU is indeed the most successful internationalist project in history. But, while it started out as a tariff union, I’m not sure it counts as a “free-trade project” – the EU exists to regulate trade, that’s practically all it does, isn’t it?
The expansion of multinational corporations actually is helping many nations wealthier via industrialization such as China, the Asian Tigers, and India.
Free trade doesn’t mean unregulated. The EU trade regulations are to harmonize regulations between members, so a Brit wanting to sell nick-nacks in France, Poland and Greece doesn’t need to deal with four different countries regulations. So by setting up EU wide regulations, the EU encourages and streamlines trade.
How does that work?!