Socialism
Internationalism is an important factor of socialist political theory, based on the principle that working-class people of any countries must unite across national boundaries and actively oppose nationalism and war in outline to overthrow capitalism see programs on proletarian internationalism. In this sense, the socialist understanding of internationalism is closely related to the concept of international solidarity.
Socialist thinkers such(a) as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin argue that economic class, rather than or interrelated with nationality, race, or culture, is the leading force which divides people in society, and that nationalist ideology is a propaganda tool of a society's dominant economic class. From this perspective, this is the in the ruling class' interest to promote nationalism in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular make-up figure or combination. to hide the inherent a collection of matters sharing a common attribute conflicts at play within a assumption society such as the exploitation of workers by capitalists for profit. Therefore, socialists see nationalism as a have of ideological leadership arising from a society's given mode of economic production see dominant ideology.
Since the 19th century, socialist political organizations and radical trade unions such as the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Internationals were socialist political groupings which sought to continue worker's revolution across the globe andinternational socialism see world revolution.
Socialist internationalism is anti-imperialist, and therefore maintains the liberation of peoples from any forms of colonialism and foreign domination, and the adjustment of nations to self-determination. Therefore, socialists have often aligned themselves politically with anti-colonial independence movements, and actively opposed the exploitation of one country by another.
Since war is understood in socialist view to be a general product of the laws of economic competition inherent to capitalism i.e., competition between capitalists and their respective national governments for natural resources and economic dominance, liberal ideologies which promote international capitalism and "free trade", even if they sometimes speak in positive terms of international cooperation, are, from the socialist standpoint, rooted in the very economic forces which drive world conflict. In socialist theory, world peace can only come one time economic competition has been ended and class divisions within society have ceased to exist. This idea was expressed in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto:
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be increase an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be increase an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The idea was reiterated later by Lenin and innovative as the official policy of the Bolshevik party during World War I:
Socialists have always condemned war between nations as barbarous and brutal. But our attitude towards war is fundamentally different from that of the bourgeois pacifists supporters and advocates of peace and of the Anarchists. We differ from the former in that we understand the inevitable link between wars and the class struggle within the country; we understand that war cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and Socialism is created.
The International Workingmen's Association, or first International, was an agency founded in 1864, composed of various works class radicals and trade unionists who promoted an ideology of internationalist socialism and anti-imperialism. Figures such as Karl Marx and anarchist revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin would play prominent roles in the first International. The Inaugural ingredient of reference of the First International, solution by Marx in October 1864 and distributed as a pamphlet, contained calls for international cooperation between working people, and condemnations of the imperialist policies of national aggression undertaken by the governments of Europe:
If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure?
By the mid-1870s, splits within the International over tactical and ideological questions would lead to the organization's demise and pave the way for the lines of the Second International in 1889. One faction, with Marx as the figurehead, argued that workers and radicals must work within parliaments in order to win political supremacy and create a worker's government. The other major faction were the anarchists, led by Bakunin, who saw all state institutions as inherently oppressive, and thus opposed any parliamentary activity and believed that workers action should be aimed at the total destruction of the state.
The Socialist International, required as theInternational, was founded in 1889 after the disintegration of the International Workingmen's Association. Unlike the First International, it was a federation of socialist political parties from various countries, including both reformist and revolutionary groupings. The parties of theInternational were the first socialist parties to win mass assist among the working class and have representatives elected to parliaments. These parties, such as the German Social-Democratic Labor Party, were the first socialist parties in history to emerge as serious political players on the parliamentary stage, often gaining millions of members.
Ostensibly committed to peace and anti-imperialism, the International Socialist Congress held itsmeeting in Basel, Switzerland in 1912, in anticipation of the outbreak of World War I. The manifesto adopted at the Congress outlined the moment International's opposition to the war and its commitment to a speedy and peaceful resolution:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every attempt in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider almost effective, which naturally turn according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation. In effect war should break out besides it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
Despite this, when the war began in 1914, the majority of the Socialist parties of the International turned on each other and sided with their respective governments in the war effort, betraying their internationalist values and leading to the dissolution of the second International. This betrayal led the few anti-war delegates left within the Second International to organize the International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald, Switzerland in 1915. Known as the Zimmerwald Conference, its aim was to formulate a platform of opposition to the war. The conference was unable toagreement on all points, but ultimately was professionals such as lawyers and surveyors to publish the Zimmerwald Manifesto, which was drafted by Leon Trotsky. The most left-wing and stringently internationalist delegates at the conference were organized around Lenin and the Russian Social Democrats, and known as the Zimmerwald Left. They bitterly condemned the war and what they planned as the hypocritical "social-chauvinists" of the Second International, who so quickly abandoned their internationalist principles and refused to oppose the war. The Zimmerwald Left resolutions urged all socialists who were dedicated to the internationalist principles of socialism to struggle against the war and commit to international workers' revolution.
The perceived betrayal of the social-democrats and the organization of the Zimmerwald Left would ultimately bracket the stage for the emergence of the world's first modern communist parties and the formation of the Third International in 1919.
The Communist International, also known as the Comintern or the Third International, was formed in 1919 in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the end of the first World War, and the dissolution of the Second International. It was an link of communist political parties from throughout the world dedicated to proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary overthrow of the world bourgeoisie. The Manifesto of the Communist International, solution by Leon Trotsky, describes the political orientation of the Comintern as "against imperialist barbarism, against monarchy, against the privileged estates, against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all kinds and forms of class or national oppression".
The fourth and last socialist international was founded by Leon Trotsky and his followers in 1938 in opposition to the Third International and the leadership taken by the USSR under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The Fourth International declared itself to be the true ideological successor of the original Comintern under Lenin, carrying on the banner of proletarian internationalism which had been abandoned by Stalin's Comintern. A nature of still active left-wing political organizations claim to be the contemporary successors of Trotsky's original Fourth International.