[ p. 175 ]
NONE of the dominant conceptions of political thought is more abused, more discredited, more prostituted, than "internationalism/ 1
Internationalism is such a useless word. It is disliked by the great majority of peoples and compromised by its association with the Catholic church, socialism, big business, Communism, Jewry, cartels, Freemasonry, Fascism, pacifism, armament industry and other movements and organizations opposed one and all by the majority of the human race. Also it is an utterly misleading term.
It may prove a blessing that internationalism has been compromised in so many aspects. From its inception, internationalism has been an entirely erroneous notion. It has retarded political and social progress by half a century.
Rather early in the industrial age, people of various classes and professions within the various nation-states began to feel restrained and hindered by their national barriers. Efforts were made to try to overcome these barriers, by establishing contacts and working out common programs, common movements, common organizations between groups with similar interests [ p. 176 ] in different countries. For a certain time tliese organizations no doubt strengthened the position and influence of those who took part in them. But far from overcoming the difficulties which induced their creation, such international organizations stabilized and perpetuated the conditions responsible for the difficulties.
Internationalism means exactly what it says. It expresses: Inter-Nationalism.
It does not and never has opposed nationalism and the evil effects of the nation-state structure. It merely tries to alleviate particular symptoms of our sick world without treating the disease itself. Paradox it may be—but nothing has added more to the strength of national institutions, nothing has fanned nationalism more than internationalism.
The founders of modern socialism assumed that the working classes—ruthlessly exploited, as they believed, by the capitalist states—could feel no loyalty toward their particular nations. The interests of the laboring masses in every country were thought to lie in opposing and combating capitalist states. Consequently, the proletariat was organized on an international basis, in the belief that the loyalty and allegiance of the workers would be the exclusive appanage of the internationally organized Socialist party.
But neither the First nor the Second nor the Third Internationale saw that allegiance and loyalty to a nation-state has little, if anything, to do with the economic and social position of the individuals in that state. They made no attempt to weaken or destroy the nation-state as such. Their aim was to overthrow the [ p. 177 ] capitalist class and transfer political power to the proletariat within each nation-state. They thought that such independent, heterogeneous national revolutions taking place in many countries through co-ordinated action, either simultaneously or following each other, would solve the social problem, abolish war between nations, create world peace.
It was soon obvious that these “international” working ckss organizations changed nothing in the worldwide trend toward nationalism. All working organs of the Internationales were composed of “delegates” from all the various nations, from socialist parties whose task was to defend the interests of their own national groups and among whom serious differences of opinion existed at all times. The moment organized socialist workers in the various countries had to choose between loyalty to their comrades in the internationally organized class warfare within nations, and loyalty to their compatriots in the nationally organized warfare between nations, they invariably chose the latter. Never in any country did organized labor withdraw its support from the nation-state in waging war against another nation-state, even though the latter had a laboring class with the same resentments, the same ideals and the same aims as its own.
Through a fundamental contradiction in its program, modern socialism is particularly to blame for strengthening nationalism and for the inevitable consequence: international war. The contradiction lies in the discrepancy between the socialist political ideal of internationalism and the socialist economic ideal of nationalization of the means of production.
[ p. 178 ]
It is difficult to understand how, during an entire century, and particularly in the face of the events of the first part of the twentieth century, not one of the socialist or Communist leaders called the attention of his followers to the fact that nationalization of the land and of industries cannot be reconciled with the political ideal they call “internationalism.”
The greater the extent of nationalization, the more power is vested in the nation-state, the more impregnable becomes nationalism. The stronger the nationstates, the more inevitable and the more imminent is the danger of conflict between them. The coexistence of three score and ten odd sovereign nation-states with all economic power in the hands of each nation-state is unthinkable without frequent and violent conflicts. Wars between nations—or the threat of such wars—lead to restrictions of individual rights, to longer working hours, lower living standards, freezing of wages, outlawing of strikes, reduction of consumption, conscription, regimentation—in short, to everything labor is supposed to be fighting.
The socialist and Communist parties must realize that through their program of “nationalization” they have done more to strengthen and buttress the modem totalitarian nation-states than have the aristocracy or any feudal or capitalist ruling class. This tragedy is the result of acting emotionally on first impulses, without thinking the problem through. The workers of the world’ must realize that through their misconception and through their self-deluding ideal of internationalism, they are preventing the realization of their ideals of peace and betterment of economic and social conditions.
[ p. 179 ]
By advocating nationalization, the socialists originally had in mind, of course, collectivization, the transfer of certain property rights from individuals to the community. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the concept of the nation was almost identical with the ideal of the community, and the confusion of the two at that time is understandable. But at the present stage of industrial development, in the middle of the twentieth century, nothing is more remote from the ideal of the community than the nations. They have shrunk into tightly sealed compartments obstructing any community expression. From the point of view of the community, national and private interests differ scarcely at all. Both are particular interests.
“Nationalization” today no longer means collectivism but its opposite. Human collectivity, at the present stage of evolution, is without institutions and consequently without reality.
If socialists and Communists believe that took and means of production or indeed anything, should belong to the community, they must first give reality to the ideal of community before the transfer of any kind of authority to that community can have meaning. Confusing the nation-state with the community is a most dangerous error, as today nation-states are the mortal enemies of the ideal of human community, far more than any landowner, industrialist or private corporation.
The same misconception prevails among socialists as to economic planning. They believe that the present anarchic conditions of production guided exclusively by the profit motive can be remedied by economic planning. They would have production [ p. 180 ] guided not by motives of immediate profit, but by the long-range needs of the consuming masses.
That for smoother and more efficient functioning the economic process in its present stage needs a certain amount of guidance and directives emanating from authorities higher than the individual manufacture^ can no longer be disputed if we understand the laws regulating all social activities, including economic activity. But the realization of this necessity is an altogether different thing from the assertion that national governments should control such economic planning.
In theory, it is conceivable that the economic life of each nation might be controlled and planned as minutely as possible by government authorities. But if such planning is regarded as a national problem; if all plans and regulations are undertaken by national governments, applicable only to their own national populations; and if there are seventy-odd independent systems of planning devised by the sovereign nationstates in their own particular interest, the result can only be confusion, clash of interests, conflict, war—the exact opposite of planning.
In the middle of the twentieth century, we see that industrial workers, organized in socialist and Communist parties, are the most intransigent nationalists, the stanchest supporters of their respective nationstates. Without even mentioning Soviet Russia, where identification of the Communist party with the Soviet state explains to some extent the nationalist fervor of Soviet labor, the organized industrial workers in the United States, Great Britain, France and other democratic [ p. 181 ] countries represent forces demanding higher and higher tariff barriers; restriction if not prevention of immigration; racial discrimination and a series of measures that are clearly reactionary, in which they go hand in hand with their national governments. In any relationship between national units, they totally disregard the interests of their fellow workers living in other nation-states.
Internationalism among the capitalist forces was exactly similar in its development.
Industrialists, bankers, traders, also began to feel hampered by the barriers of nation-states and began to form organizations reaching beyond national boundaries. By and large, they succeeded in arriving at agreements which excluded competition in their respective domestic markets, in fixing minimum prices and in regulating competition on the world market.
Most of these measures were naturally detrimental to consumers the world over. But their greatest drawback was that they failed to solve satisfactorily or for any length of time the problems they were supposed to solve. Far from leading to a reconciliation of divergent national interests, such international financial and cartel agreements served only to intensify nationalism among industrialists and bankers, all anxious to strengthen their own positions as national units, against other national units.
The national contingents of these international producing and financing corporate bodies became completely identified with the interests of their nationstate and in every country governments were backing them by economic policies designed to strengthen the [ p. 182 ] national representatives in these international economic organizations. The direct results of these attempts to internationalize big business led to an acceleration of economic nationalism, higher tariffs, irrational subsidies, currency manipulations, and all the other devices of government control repugnant to the principles of free enterprise.
All these attempts by private interests and political forces to overcome the obstacles arising from the rigid framework of the nation-states were utterly futile.
After the ravages of the first World War, the representatives of the nation-states, the national governments themselves, felt that something had to be done to bridge the constantly widening abyss between nations, and to prevent a repetition of such devastating wars between them.
From this necessity, the Covenant of the League of Nations was born, drafted mainly by Woodrow Wilson, Colonel House, Lord Cecil and Léon Bourgeois. According to the Covenant, peace was supposed to be maintained through regular meetings and discussions of representatives of sovereign nationstates having equal rights in an Assembly of all nations and in a Council, comprised of representatives of the great powers, as permanent members, and a limited number of smaller powers elected as temporary members by the Assembly. No decision was possible over the veto of any nation. Unanimity was necessary to apply any effective measure. Any national government could withdraw from the League the moment it did not like the atmosphere.
The spirit of the Covenant was as irreproachable [ p. 183 ] as the bylaws of an exclusive London club, open to gentlemen only. But it was somewhat remote from reality. The League had some success in nonpolitical fields. It did excellent research work, and even settled minor political clashes between small nations. But never in its entire history was the League able to settle a conflict in which one of the major powers was involved. After a few short years, the construction began to totter and crack. When Japan, Germany and Italy withdrew, it was obvious that the political value of the League of Nations, its ability to maintain peace between the nations, was equal to zero.
It is useless to argue what would have happened if . . .
If the United States had joined the League. . . . If Great Britain and the ILS.A. had sent their navies into Japanese waters in 1931. … If France, England and other European powers had marched into Germany when Hitler repudiated the Locarno Pact and occupied the Rhineland. . . . If Britain and France had closed the Suez Canal and had used force to prevent Italian aggression in Ethiopia. … If the members of the League had gone to the defense of Austrian independence. . . . And many more 'if’s. . .
The historical fact remains that never on any occasion was the League of Nations capable of acting when action would have involved the use of force against any of the leading "military powers. To say that this was not the fault of the League, that it was the fault of the powers who would not support the League, makes no sense. The League was, after all, [ p. 184 ] nothing more than the aggregate of the nations that composed it.
The League of Nations failed because it was Based on the false notion of inter-nationalism, on the idea that peace between national units, between sovereign nation-states, can be maintained merely by bringing their representatives together to debate their differences, without making fundamental changes in their relations to each other.
Since the foundation of the League of Nations, events have moved with fatal rapidity into the second phase of the twentieth century world catastrophe, which occurred on September i, 1939, exactly as if the League had not existed. It is not too much to assume that the rhythm of this series of inexorable events was even accelerated by the existence of the League, because the frequent meetings of representatives of the sovereign nation-states served only to intensify their mutual distrust and suspicion.
Besides the functioning of the League, between the two world wars we have witnessed innumerable international conferences, composed of the representatives of national governments, on political, military and economic matters. AH of them failed, although for a short time one or two of them gave the illusion of success. But even these exceptions, widely publicized as successes, were nothing more than pious expressions of vague and unreal hope, like the Kellogg Pact that was certainly not worth the traveling expenses of the national delegates.
In spite of these experiences, in spite of the immeasurable misery and suffering of this universal catastrophe caused by the clash of national units, our [ p. 185 ] governments and political parties, supported by the vast majority of a misled, gullible and unenlightened public, have nothing better to offer than a repetition of what has been proved and proved again a total fallacy: peace and the prevention of war by treaty arrangements between sovereign nation-states.
With the one sole exception—when in a moment of despair in June, 1940, Winston Churchill suggested union between Great Britain and France—all the utterances and declarations of our governments and political leaders of all parties demonstrate that they are incapable or unwilling to contemplate anything except such an inter-national organization.
All the political manifestations during World War II—the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations declaration, the Moscow agreements, the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the Teheran and Yalta communiques, the San Francisco Charter—underline, specify and emphasize that whatever may be done is to be done and will be done between sovereign nation-states.
The world outlook expressed by the word “internationalism” embodies the greatest misconception and the gravest error of our generation.
Inevitably it will continue to fortify the nationstate structure, at a time in history when our only salvation and chance to progress lies in weakening and finally destroying that framework. Any artificial setup to overcome difficulties by “bringing together” by “mutual understanding between” the delegates of nation-states is not only bound to fail but will unnecessarily prolong the agony of our obsolete, moribund political system.
To realize clearly the implications of inter-nationalism, [ p. 186 ] we must bear in mind the meaning of nationalism.
In this our day and generation, nationalism dominates democracy, socialism, liberalism, Christianity, capitalism, Fascism, politics, religion, economics, monarchies and republics. Nationalism is the soda water that mixes with all the other drinks and makes them sparkle.
Nationalism is a herd instinct. It is one of many manifestations of that tribal instinct which is one of the deepest and most constant characteristics of man as a social creature. It is a collective inferiority complex, that gives comforting reactions to individual fear, loneliness, weakness, inability, insecurity, helplessness, seeking refuge in exaggerated consciousness ’ and pride of belonging to a certain group of people.
This urge, today called nationalism, has been virulent at all times and in every civilization, manifesting itself in many different ways. The origin and quality of this transcendental mass emotion are probably unchangeable, but the object toward which it directs itself has undergone manifold and radical transformations throughout history. In the long evolution of human society, the “in-group drive” was transferred from the family to the tribe, village, city, province, religion, dynasty—up to the modern nations.
The object is always different But the emotional herd instinct itself remains the same. And it constantly causes conflict between the various units until the object of the “in-group drive” is integrated into a larger, broader group.
According to the democratic conception, the nation is the totality of the population living within one [ p. 187 ] state bound together by common ideals. The nation is, therefore, an elastic concept. During the past centuries, it has constantly changed and grown and the allegiance of peoples has changed and grown with it
People from Massachusetts and people from Georgia did not feel the same “nationalism” in 1850 that they feel today. Englishmen and Scotsmen owed allegiance to different states and symbols before 1707. So changed the “nationalism” of the Piedmontese and the Tuscans, the Burgundians and the Gascons. The Uzbeks were not always Russian nationalists and the Saxons did not always fight side by side with the Prussians.
Nationalism, like any other group emotion, can be directed toward a different object without changing the quality or intensity of the emotion. But at no time in history and upon no occasion was it possible to reconcile and to maintain peace between distinct and conflicting groups of men driven by the same emotions.
Inter-nationalism countenances nationalism.
It implies that the various nationalisms can be bridged. It recognizes as supreme the sovereign nation-state institutions and prevents the integration of peoples into a supra-national society.
We have played long enough with the toy of internationalism. The problem we are facing is not a problem between nationalisms. It is the problem of a crisis in human society caused by nationalism, and which consequently nationalism or inter-nationalism can never solve.
What is needed is—universalism. A creed and a [ p. 188 ] movement clearly proclaiming that its purpose is to create peace by a legal order between men beyond and above the existing nation-state structure.