By DANIEL AARÃO REIS*

The Specter That Does Not Haunt: The Crisis of Left-Wing Internationalism in Times of Globalized Right

1.

In the mid-1864th century, workers' and intellectual leaders, with radical criticisms of the capitalist system, concluded that there was a need for international coordination between the various political groups in different European societies. Common convictions, including the rejection of exploitation by private capital and the idea that workers should depend solely on themselves to achieve their emancipation, led to the founding of the International Workingmen's Association in London in September XNUMX.

The International Workingmen's Association quickly became a center for the articulation of social movements and political exchanges. Until the end of the 1860s, annual congresses debated major issues and differences of opinion. For its enemies, the private capitalists and the nation states under their hegemony, the International became a kind of scarecrow: any and all movements of criticism or contestation of the current order were attributed to its “agents”, and xenophobic campaigns aimed at isolating the new organization intensified everywhere. This was enough for workers of various orientations in many cities and industrial centers to come to see the International as their own, and as a result its numbers and the scope of its influence grew.

In 1871, the political and social revolution that took place in Paris, the Paris Commune, had among its leaders many leaders who identified with the International. The defeat of this process led to an unprecedented wave of repression throughout Europe. In the following years, however, international congresses would meet again, but the differences between autonomists and centralists (anarchists and Marxists) would end up weakening the organization, which, moved to New York, was dissolved in 1876. The so-called Autonomist International, led by anarchists, survived, but it too ended up dissolving in 1877.

The International Workingmen's Association, although restricted mainly to Europe, constituted a historical landmark of great relevance. Since capitalism is an international system, the awareness that anti-capitalist and pro-socialist struggles should also seek alliances and have international articulations and organizations spread and consolidated.

Thus, just thirteen years later, in July 1889, as part of the celebrations of the first centenary of the French Revolution, the founding congress of a new international organization, the Socialist International, met in Paris.

Hegemonized by Marxists, and having excluded anarchists, the new organization would bring together socialist and democratic parties, proposing the idea that socialism and democracy constituted an inseparable binomial: a substantive democracy could only be achieved in the context of socialism. Conversely, socialism could only exist within the framework of a radical expansion of people's participation in power, ensuring broad democratic freedoms.

Extending beyond Europe, reaching American societies (United States and Argentina) and Asian societies (Japan), forming distinct organizations of young people, women, trade unionists, journalists, parliamentarians, the Socialist International has established itself, in several countries, particularly in Germany, as a relevant factor of power.

2.

However, throughout the international congresses, held regularly, important differences of opinion were once again evident in relation to several issues, including the issue of political power, giving rise to polarization between reformists – supporters of achieving social transformation through a set of progressive and peaceful reforms – and revolutionaries – supporters of clear and decisive ruptures.

The outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918) weakened the International, as the social-democratic parties, abandoning internationalist criteria, joined the popular nationalist waves, hegemonized by their respective national bourgeoisies in favor of the War. As a result, internationalist references almost disappeared in favor of exclusionary, patriotic and xenophobic nationalism.

However, internationalism would be reborn with the end of the war. Led by the Russian Revolution, in March 1919, in Moscow, the Communist International, also called the Third International, was founded, committed to a violent perspective of social revolution. Heir to the revolutionary tendency existing in the Socialist International, demarcating itself with a new name – communist – from the experience of the International founded in 1889, it maintained and radicalized the internationalist concepts of confrontation with the capitalist system.

Alternatively, the Socialist International was reorganized, now clearly inclined to promote a management of the capitalist order, although referenced in the social demands of the proletariat and other popular classes. Between the two, another proposal was articulated, the Union of Socialist Parties for International Action, the short-lived Vienna International, which disbanded in the context of the polarization between the Second and Third Internationals. In 1938, in France, supporters of Leon Trotsky's theses founded yet another organization, the Fourth International, with the aim of offering a communist alternative to the Soviets.

The Second International has survived to this day with its characteristics of social management of capitalism. The Third International was dissolved in 1943 in Moscow, but the Soviet Union maintained, over the following decades, an international articulation of communist parties that referenced its experiences and model. The Fourth International only survives through small groups and parties that claim its existence. In Asia, the People's Republic of China, led by communists since the victory of the revolution in 1949, also undertook, after the split with the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, an international articulation of allied communist parties.

It is still necessary to mention the organization of another revolutionary International. Although it did not declare itself hostile to any existing socialist state or its international connections, the Organization of Solidarity among the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, OSPAAAL, was founded in Havana in January 1966. Its potential axes were the triumphant revolutions in Cuba and Algeria and, in Asia, the ongoing Vietnam War, and its proposal was the formation of regional solidarity organizations. The following year, in August, also in Havana, the Latin American Solidarity Organization, OLAS, was founded, with the aim of coordinating and encouraging the armed struggle against capitalist regimes and dictatorships on the continent. It tended to decline with the defeat of the guerrillas in Our America, as José Marti said. As for the other regional organizations, they never even came into existence.

This very brief recap shows how, from the mid-19th century (foundation of the International Workingmen's Association) to the mid-20th century (creation of OSPAAAL), the gravitation of the internationalist reference in anti-capitalist struggles was reinforced, based on the recognition, more than a century old, of the international character of capitalism.

3.

Now, considering the growing and overwhelming internationalization of capitalism in the context of the current digital revolution, where this trend (globalization or globalization) acquires unprecedented levels of concreteness and depth, it was to be expected that the movements, parties and leaders that fight against capitalism, although through different conceptions and proposals, would relaunch internationalist initiatives.

But that is not what has been happening. Increasingly, the forces that oppose capitalism are retreating within national borders, as if it were possible to confront nationally a system that has always been and is becoming increasingly international. The initiative of the São Paulo Forum, created in 1990, a ersatz or a substitute for an authentic international, it never went beyond the timid limits of meetings, marked more by chatter than by the articulation of indispensable actions.

It is almost unbelievable to realize that the most notable initiatives against the current communications mega-monopolies are the result of the action of non-governmental organizations, such as, among others, ATTAC/Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions, created in 1998, or of non-partisan or supra-partisan social movements, or even by prosecutors or judges who rise up against the abuses of the immense companies that happily trample on national control legislation.

In contrast to this picture of suicidal apathy, and paradoxically, it is the right that is organizing itself internationally.

Benjamin Cowan, in a recent study, showed how conservative Christianity multiplies its international organizations in a frenetic activism that knows no borders. Overcoming or circumventing old differences, within the framework of an anti-ecumenical ecumenism, in the author's happy and ironic expression, they created, among others, ALADIC/American Alliance of Christian Churches, the CAL/Latin America Anti-Communist Confederation and the WACL/World Anti-Communist League. Benjamin Cowan identifies a dynamic axis constituted by conservative Christians in Brazil and the USA, strongly supported by generous financing provided by liberal capitalists.

At the end of last March, Nicolas Truong, in a long article published in the newspaper Le Monde: L'Internationale réactionnaire/The reactionary International investigated and analyzed practical actions undertaken by the right on a global scale, in addition to their theoretical and philosophical references.

The author distinguished three tendencies. The first, already mentioned above, constituted by right-wing Christians, would involve fundamentalist Catholics, evangelicals and Orthodox (Russian Christianity). Reactionaries in the true sense, they claim a fundamentalist Christianity and condemn the Enlightenment tradition founded in the context of the American and French revolutions. They consider the family to be under threat, execrate the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, abhor the struggles and achievements made in recent decades by women, gays and LGBTs and distrust scientific advances, including vaccines and global warming. Although they register continuous advances, they cultivate an atmosphere of siege and conspiracies that urgently need to be unmasked and denounced, since their values ​​and references would be in imminent danger of destruction.

The second trend articulates right-wing nationalisms, particularly strong in Europe, whose greatest, but not only, political expressions are Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Marine Le Pen (France) and Giorgia Meloni (Italy). They question the standards assumed by European integration and advocate a Europe of nations, in which national states would regain powers and controls lost in the process of building the European Union. They advocate an illiberal democracy, with strong restrictions on democratic freedoms.

This trend has been stimulated and encouraged by Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, whose ideologues, such as Alexandr Dugin, among others, do not hesitate to consider the existing democratic regime as an enemy to be defeated, and democratic freedoms as dissolving, divisive and even anti-human. The election of Donald Trump and his first months in office have contributed to reinforcing this trend. Direct talks between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the tentative outline of a partnership between them, and their common ultra-nationalist goals are all adding to the nationalist culture that is spreading throughout the world (Turkey and India, among others).

There is also a third trend, emerging especially, but not only, in the United States, bringing together major capitalists (Elon Musk) and his entourage of engineers and technocrats. They control large monopolistic companies, which have cutting-edge technology and immense power in the media, leading the ongoing digital revolution in various sectors. They identify themselves as techno-libertarians or techno-futurists. The historian David Bell has nicknamed them techno-Caesarists, because of their affinity with a government of geniuses, their aristocratic references and propensities, and their explicit contempt for ordinary people and democratic values.

4.

The intentions and projects of international articulation of the right are gaining momentum and are underway. Among fundamentalist Christians, this is a real movement that is expanding. As for European far-right nationalists, often sponsored by Vladimir Putin's Russia, they meet regularly to exchange ideas, coordinate agendas and make commitments.

At the end of February 2025, in Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual meeting of American right-wing conservatives, provided, as always, an opportunity to exchange ideas with like-minded leaders from different geographic backgrounds. The digital aristocrats, such as Elon Musk and the so-called PayPal mafia (David Bell), united under Donald Trump’s government and instrumentalizing their global monopolies, allow themselves to intervene everywhere, always reinforcing far-right proposals and ideas. In 2018, Steve Bannon, a well-known far-right ideologue, launched the idea of ​​an organization that could federate all radical right-wing forces. The idea, as Nicolas Truong reports, did not come to fruition, but it remains on the agenda.

In short: the right is becoming international. This is such clear evidence that it is almost blinding. It is the new specter that is haunting the world.

Faced with this process, the left is challenged and even condemned to deal with its identity crisis, to reinvent itself and to rediscover its internationalist vocation. It is a basic question of survival. If they do not do so, they will be heading towards political suicide, to the museum of history, where they will become mere objects of curiosity for future generations.

*Daniel Aaron Reis is a professor of contemporary history at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF). Author, among other books, of The Revolution that Changed the World: Russia, 1917 (Company of Letters). [https://amzn.to/3QBroUD]

References

Bell, David. Cult of chefs. Charisme et pouvoir à l'âge des révolutions. Fayard, Paris, 2022

Cowan, Benjamin. Moral Majorities across the Americas. Brazil, the United States and the creation of the religious right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021

Feher, Michel. Producers and parasites. L'imaginaire si désirable du Rassemblement National. The Discovery, Paris, 2024.

Truong, Nicolas. L'internationale réactionnaire. Le Monde, March 29, 2025.

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