Amandla Magazine Issue 63

Internationalism : a culture and a commitment

By Gustave Massiah
01 avril 2019

INTERNATIONALISM IS A POLITICAL
movement and a current of thought. It is also part of some conceptions of the “alter-globalist” (in French, “altermondialiste”) movement, also known as the “Global Justice Movement”.

Alter-globalisation / Global Justice

This is a movement based on the idea that an alternative way of organising the world is possible. It promotes global cooperation and engagement, but it is opposed to many aspects of the global economy, insofar as they don’t respect social values of respect for people and the planet.

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL, CREATED IN
1864, played an essential role in defining and structuring the workers movement and in asserting it as a strategic social movement of the period that was opening up. Since the initial workers’ Internationals, internationalism has opposed nationalism’s claim to subordinate all forms of identity to national identity. It poses the common interests of peoples as opposed to confrontations between states, and it naturally extends to different forms of international solidarity. Workers’ or proletarian internationalism seeks primarily to build international solidarity among proletarians (workers, peasants, employees, waged and precarious workers, unemployed, etc). Today it is confronted by new issues that call for its reinvention. In the Global Justice Movement, the culture of this new internationalism rejects the ideology of neoliberal globalisation. It is an intersectional movement, searching for a transition that is at the same time social, ecological and democratic. It seeks to reinvent sovereignty based on the universal rights of the peoples.