Sowing the Seeds of an Internationalist Future
The results of the 2022 Brazilian general election brought a bolt of energy to left-wing movements worldwide. The momentous return of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva was both an addition to the new “pink tide” and a blow to Brazilian reactionary and fascistic politics. Lula’s first tenure as president was exemplary in its commitment to tying international left-wing movements and struggles together.
This time around, Lula is calling for the Left to build its own transnational networks to fight for our own economic and political values. Lula’s drive to build an international network of left-wing movements has been complemented by other presidents in the region, such as Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, who seek to build a new international economic order built on sovereignty and economic equality. This, along with their steadfast pro-peace position both in Ukraine and Palestine, has rankled the West and its apologists in media circles, who have been on the offensive against their governments.
At a time when media and political elites continue to embrace the Right and punish the Left for opposing their imperialist aims across the world, questions are raised about what internationalism is, and why we, as socialists, must be internationalists.
Why internationalism?
The Left has often framed issues of internationalism in abstract and moralistic terms. While this framing is understandable, as reactionary and liberal forces’ historical and contemporary brutality against left-wing movements has been extensive, assisting and working with left-wing movements across the world has material and objective implications for our domestic struggles.
One of the principal implications is that we must recognize that capitalism is no longer a national project, but an international web of interconnected hubs of commerce and finance. We can fall back onto borders, but capital will not. Even modest reforms will be impossible if capital can move to another country freely. This easy ability to engage in capital flight has been a nuisance to both insurrectionary and institutional leftist movements who gain power and will continue to be an issue if our ruling class can move assets freely across international borders.
On top of the transnational nature of contemporary capitalism, we must understand that imperialist oppression in the periphery is often imported to the core. Tactics and resources used to oppress the global south are frequently adopted by our police departments, National Guard, and other law enforcement agencies. As such, solidarity and material assistance to working class and liberation movements across the global south is not only a matter of morals but a matter of survival for our movements domestically.
Lastly, it is important to see the value of establishing relations and forming strategic alliances with left-wing movements around the world goes beyond vague and abstract calls for solidarity. These relationships and alliances with left-wing parties and movements allow us to exchange tactics, strategies, and resources with those who have traveled a similar path. We are often conditioned to see our contexts as unique, which in some ways they are, but movements and parties around the world have operated in similar, hostile political spaces while trying similar tactics and strategies to gain power and trust amongst working-class constituencies. Establishing these links is important to making sure we transcend and not repeat the mistakes of movements before.
Aligned with Left-Wing Movements & Organizations, Not Personalities
As people active in left-wing movements, we are often drawn to charismatic personalities who speak to millions of people about the thousands of problems our movements seek to remedy. Figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & Rashida Tlaib frequently occupy this role for DSA and the broad left in the United States. While these figures are representatives trusted by our movement, we must not fall into the trap of personalism and always highlight the role of the movement above the individual personalities who represent it.
This principle must apply to our view of left-wing movements and their leaders abroad. As Democratic Socialists, our focus is, has been, and should always be on mass movements and the organizations that entrust leaders to represent the working class. As such, internationally our concerns are with movements and organizations that are a manifestation of the material struggles of the working class.
While individual leaders, such as Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and others, are inspirations for our organization, we should not be aligned with individual leaders, but with the working-class struggles that they represent and are accountable to. As such, we must also embrace the fact that left-wing movements across the world are, not dissimilar to our organization, diverse in thought and practice. Because of this, we must embrace a “big tent” approach to our internationalism, and seek to work and build relationships with an array of different organizations with distinct ideological convictions.
While this big tent approach to internationalism is key to building relationships with parties like Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT-Brazil) and La France Insoumise (LFI), and cross-national groups such as Foro de Sao Paulo, we must not confuse this with aligning with sectarian groups who operate in a not dissimilar fashion as sectarian groups in the United States. Like in the United States, these groups are often echo chambers with little power outside of their extremely narrow bases, and as such, likely have little to offer in terms of experiences and dialogue to our movement.
Against Sanctions
Although we, as socialists, recognize that leaders are most often manifestations of circumstances and historical processes unique to their countries, we also acknowledge that some leaders are authoritarian and worthy of condemnation. While we may internally, and sometimes externally, condemn the actions of these leaders, our analysis is material, and as such, we have to recognize that sanctions only harm the working-class people of these countries.
Virtually in all instances, leadership and those closest to power have the ability to evade these sanctions, and those who are disproportionately affected are the working-class people of these countries. We have seen this with the disastrous sanction regimes against Venezuela and Iran, whose working-class people have been devastated by decades of U.S. aggression. Because of our commitment to Marxist material analysis, we must reject sanctions.
Of course, blindly adhering to principles without taking material and objective conditions into account is a mistake. The Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement launched a call to target companies, institutions, and organizations complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights and the entrenchment of the occupation, modeled on the movement to end apartheid in South Africa. Because this strategy employs a tactic targeting companies and institutions explicitly complicit in entrenching Israeli apartheid and expanding the occupation of Palestinians, and not blanket sanctions coming from the core, we must firmly endorse the BDS movement.
Anti-War
As Marxists, we understand that virtually all wars are an extension of the capitalist-imperialist project. From wars of extraction to the financing of right-wing elements seeking to overthrow democratically elected leaders, since the 19th century, the core has sought to dominate the periphery and any perceived threat to its ability to expand and consolidate its hold on resources and markets. Because of this, we must oppose all wars of imperialist or capitalist character, along with the expansion of capitalist-imperialist spheres in any and all cases. Two recent examples will immediately come to mind for leftists in DSA and beyond: the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine.
In early 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, quickly gaining thousands of miles and almost taking the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. This came to the dismay of many leftists around the world, including myself, who thought it delirious that Putin would order an invasion of Ukraine. Regardless of our previous thoughts on what would or would not happen, the war has now almost entered its third year, bringing misery to millions of Ukrainians and Russians who’ve had to fight this pointless war.
As soon as Russian tanks entered Ukraine, a chorus, albeit a marginal one, of pro-Russian “leftists” immediately began to stand in solidarity with Russia, and proliferated the narrative that the war was launched to “cleanse Ukraine of Nazis”. Ignoring the fact that Putin’s regime sources its legitimacy from similar sources as the Russian Tsars—Orthodoxy, Autocracy & Nationality—and that one of the key prongs of this war—the Wagner Group—is not named such because of their passion for 19th-century classical music, is an inexplicable oversight by these “leftists”.
While these “leftists” cheering the “Russian Patriotic Crusade Against Nazism” is laughable, the broader domestic and international left has made a point that has much more ground—the role of the United States and NATO in escalating the war. Certainly pretending the war was the sole responsibility of some generals in Brussels is a stretch, but, we must not pretend that NATO’s aggressive posturing since the end of the Cold War has not escalated tensions and that Western capitalist ambitions are a neutral player in the fall of Russo-Imperialist aims in the region.
Amidst the state of confusion caused by the war, DSA released a statement condemning the invasion, demanding de-escalation and peace, and standing in solidarity with anti-war protestors and the working classes of both countries. This represents, what I believe is, the correct position to take in this muddy, confusing, and often contradictory situation. We, as DSA, must continue to hold nuance in international situations, particularly wars between nations, where we commit to our anti-militarism and anti-war stance and recognize that warfare disproportionately hurts the poor and working class of warring nations.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza serves as another glaring example of why we—as Marxists—must stand against wars, while recognizing the complexities of conflicts. On October 7, 2023, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) launched a surprise attack from Gaza in which they killed and imprisoned hundreds of Israelis, soldiers, and civilians alike. This has been followed by a brutal invasion and ethnic cleansing campaign by Israel, which, as of February 2024, has led to the killing of over 30,000 civilians, including around 12,000 children. The Israeli campaign in Gaza falls nothing short of genocide, collectively punishing all Palestinians with the excuse of “eliminating terrorists” from the strip.
DSA, and all socialists alike, must unequivocally condemn all targeting of civilians—Israeli and Palestinian alike. But, we must also reject attempts by the American political establishment to reconstruct a timeline of history that begins with the launching of rockets on October 7th, and does not recognize the more than 70-year brutal settler colonial occupation of Palestinian lands that led to this outburst in violence. Nor should we even moderately accept that this has even a semblance to “self-defense.” On top of the disproportionate, indiscriminate attack on Palestinian civilians, the bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, newsrooms, and U.N. facilities falls far beyond any acceptable idea of self-defense.
In response to the reaction from Israel, we have seen some on the left proclaim Hamas as some sort of “revolutionary vanguard” against the Israeli settler colonial project. While we can, and should, recognize Hamas as a desperate outlet for political representation in an almost century-long brutal occupation, and as a result of the failure of left-wing and moderate forces to fight the occupation and inspire Palestinians, we must be careful not to endorse a right-wing, religious fundamentalist group that targets civilians and who has been propped up by right-wing Israeli forces as a form of controlled resistance. We must be clear, while Palestinians have a right to armed resistance against military targets, the only path to peace will require negotiation, diplomacy (that includes Hamas and the Palestinian Authority), and avoiding civilian casualties at all costs.
The state of affairs in Palestine can leave us feeling hopeless and powerless, but there is a lot we can do as socialists in the “belly of the beast.” In fact, the US’s imperial relationship with Israel, and the millions in bombs and munitions we send to support Israel’s massacre of innocents, strategically places American socialists to build a popular movement that can have a real impact on Palestinian liberation.
As we speak, thousands of comrades have made over 400,000 calls to the constituents of congresspersons urging them to ask their representatives to call for an immediate ceasefire. Since October 7th, we have seen those elected representatives calling for a ceasefire increase from a handful of congresspersons to over 100. Additionally, we’ve seen comrades across the country push their municipalities to pass resolutions divesting from Israeli companies complicit in the occupation and/or calling for an immediate ceasefire, and countless comrades and allies organize some of the largest protests we have seen since the days of Occupy and the Floyd Uprisings. Our role as socialists is to cohere and build an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial coalition committed to ending Israeli war crimes today, and dismantling the occupation tomorrow.
Internationalism: Where do we go from here?
All in all, our organization’s internationalism must be viewed through an objective and materialist lens. At times some of the above-mentioned tenets of our internationalism must be flexible to react to material changes and conditions that circumstances offer. Strict doctrinaire adherence to abstract tenets must give way to flexibility in the way we react to unique circumstances, while still adhering to core anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist principles laid by our socialist predecessors.
In essence, a “big tent” approach to internationalism has to begin with dialogue with left-wing organizations and movements around the world and end with material support based on what these organizations deem necessary, not what we abstractly believe is necessary for their liberation and struggle.
What can we as socialists do now to forward this materialist view on internationalism? The first step is to formalize the establishment of relationships with left-wing organizations and movements around the world, with the explicit intent of sharing experiences with U.S. and global audiences. This includes systematizing the way we sponsor programming and exchanges with international comrades and U.S.-based allies. Building strong, productive links between domestic anti-war, anti-sanction organizations and DSA will be one of the first steps towards putting an end to U.S. imperialist projects.
Fortunately, the foundations for this work has been laid by some of our comrades in DSA’s International Committee. DSA should strive to be a leader and a strong partner in building a network of progressive and socialist groups and movements committed to our democratic socialist vision of an egalitarian, peaceful, post-capitalist, and democratic world. In essence, we must dare to invent the future — a better world is possible, but we must organize to build it.