Arguments against "right-wing socialism"

[Tim Cornelis]

There are various means by which the working class and international socialist revolution can be pacified, including social-democracy, right-wing authoritarianism, and co-option of elements of socialism.

For example, Videla's regime advocated, to some degree, worker cooperatives. Contemporary "autonomous nationalists" and "national anarchists" have adopted an economic point of view similar to revolutionary socialism, but insist that socialism can be organised nationally.

More commonly, I've met many ordinary working class members who have some anti-capitalist sentiment and, after explaining workers' self-management, find it mildly appealing, but still have a national-based view (not nationalist per se, but think primarily of national politics).

What are some strong arguments in favour of internationalism that show the necessity of a global, or at least continental, revolution? Arguments that show that you can't just have some cooperatives and at the same time close the border to immigrants so to speak. (as to not have socialism co-opted by xenophobes).

Note that these arguments must be convincing to an average, ordinary person, not really a politically zealous ideologue.

[Lynx]

Mondragon operates internationally. Borders are less of a challenge for them, than the actual recruitment of workers.

[homegrown terror]

anything that uses a concept as absurn as "national anarchism" is doomed to idiocy from the start.

[Gman]

There really isn't a catch all argument for internationalism that can be expounded quickly. Especially like the people you mentioned. (More close minded average folk, with a tinge of nationalism)

I think you could point out how a worker in two different countries is a part of the same class, and perhaps has more in common with one another than their boss. And that is true, I mean my family has to work pretty hard and I can relate to say Mexican Immigrant workers a lot better than the big CEO. That's sort of a simple argument.

I mean, if this person is interested in you and you have some time on your hands you could begin to question the concept of the Nation State itself. Who it serves, how it is an engine of class rule for the owners, stuff like that. Explain to them that Nationalism is really needless, because the working class HAS NO COUNTRY of it's own.

Or you could go to the simple practicality route. As in we would get more done working together throughout all the nations in a global revolution. How it is necessary that the ruling classes be unseated in all nations so as to protect the accomplishments of the proletariat from outside intervention.

Like I said though, I live in the United States for example which is a very nationalist state and has very nationalistic people. It's difficult to show them the ridiculousness of such ideas. Good luck man!

[JPSartre12]

There are various means by which the working class and international socialist revolution can be pacified, including social-democracy, right-wing authoritarianism, and co-option of elements of socialism.

What are some strong arguments in favour of internationalism that show the necessity of a global, or at least continental, revolution? Arguments that show that you can't just have some cooperatives and at the same time close the border to immigrants so to speak. (as to not have socialism co-opted by xenophobes.)

I would say that it is important that we point out to people that the capitalism-to-socialism reformist view, historically, has not led to socialism. It's important that we point out that the only way to have fundamental, system-wide, economic change is through a proletarian revolution, not through gradual democratic reform. I think if we can explain that the system is not geared towards working class interests and that it can't be changed from within, we can convert a few more proletarians to our cause.

I think that it's also important for us to teach people what socialism is and isn't.

[islandmilitia]

There are various means by which the working class and international socialist revolution can be pacified, including social-democracy, right-wing authoritarianism, and co-option of elements of socialism.

These political forces are actually quite different, in terms of the class forces from which they arise. On the issue of social democracy, though, whilst reformism still has an important role in the consciousness of the class in Western societies, the actual trajectory of social democracy has been one of decline, because social democracy was itself made possible by a highly specific set of political and social conditions - on the one hand, there was the political threat from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which necessitated high levels of welfare spending to prevent the Soviet bloc from becoming a viable alternative, and on the other hand, during the "golden age" of social democracy there was still sufficient separation between national blocs of capital (i.e. national economies) that social democratic policies were feasible in economic terms. The past two or three decades have seen a rapid shift in those conditions, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the reconfiguration of capital in a neoliberal direction, the acceleration of world economic integration, the decline of the unionized industries which formed the major electoral bases of social democratic parties, the emergence of much more precarious labour regimes - all these changes have contributed towards the self-evident decline of social democracy as an electoral force and the closure of the ideological gaps between social democracy and the liberal right. So to that extent and in that sense, social democracy is no longer capable of co-opting the working class.

[ckaihatsu]

I'd say make comparisons between the modern-day and the unthinkable-past -- *no one* would imagine constraining workers to plantations or manorial estates these days, so by extension we don't want to be hemmed-in anymore by mere *national* borders, either.

Also, the range of political-mode "options" is actually quite limited, as proven by history:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

http://postimage.org/image/35tmoycro/

[Yuppie Grinder]

I love giving the "A factory worker in the U.S. has more in common with a factory worker in China then he does his boss." argument. I've used it several times when making successful converts to the Anti-American school of thought.

[Crux]

There are various means by which the working class and international socialist revolution can be pacified, including social-democracy, right-wing authoritarianism, and co-option of elements of socialism.

For example, Videla's regime advocated, to some degree, worker cooperatives. Contemporary "autonomous nationalists" and "national anarchists" have adopted an economic point of view similar to revolutionary socialism, but insist that socialism can be organised nationally.

More commonly, I've met many ordinary working class members who have some anti-capitalist sentiment and, after explaining workers' self-management, find it mildly appealing, but still have a national-based view (not nationalist per se, but think primarily of national politics).

What are some strong arguments in favour of internationalism that show the necessity of a global, or at least continental, revolution? Arguments that show that you can't just have some cooperatives and at the same time close the border to immigrants so to speak. (as to not have socialism co-opted by xenophobes).

Note that these arguments must be convincing to an average, ordinary person, not really a politically zealous ideologue.
WELL, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN INTERNATIONALISM. THIS COUNTRY IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
Is that so? Say: Are you taking a share in the Moscow-Windau-Rydinsk Railway?
'No, where is that?'



My dear friend, where that railway runs has nothing to do with you. What you have to do is simply to take a share, and then go and have a good time whilst the Russian railway workers, whom you do not know, working in a country you never saw, speaking a language you don't understand, earn your dividends by the sweat of their brows.
Curious, ain't it?
We Socialists are always talking about the international solidarity of labor, about the oneness of our interests all over the world, and ever and anon working off our heaving chests a peroration on the bonds of fraternal sympathy which should unite the wage slaves of the capitalist system.
But there is another kind of bond - Russian railway bonds - which join, not the workers, but the idlers of the world in fraternal sympathy, and which creates among the members of the capitalist class a feeling of identity of interest, of international solidarity, which they don't perorate about but which is most potent and effective notwithstanding.



You do not fully recognize the fact that the internationality of Socialism is at most but a lame and halting attempt to create a counterpoise to the internationality of capitalism. Yet so it is.
Here is a case in point. The Moscow-Windau-Rydinsk railway is, as its name indicates, a railway running, or proposed to be run, from one part of Russia to another. You would think that that concerned the Russian people only, and that our patriotic capitalist class, always so ready to declare against working class Socialists with international sympathies, would never look at it or touch it.



You would not think that Ireland, for example - whose professional patriots are forever telling the gullible working men that Ireland will be ruined for the lack of capital and enterprise - would be a good country to find money in to finance a Russian railway.



Yet, observe the fact. All the Dublin papers of Monday, June 12, 1899, contained the prospectus of this far away Russian railway, offered for the investment of Irish capitalists, and offered by a firm of London stockbrokers who are astute enough not to waste money in endeavoring to catch fish in waters where they were not in the habit of biting freely.
And in the midst of the Russian revolution the agents of the Czar succeeded in obtaining almost unlimited treasures in the United States to pay the expenses of throttling the infant Liberty.
As the shares in Russian railways were sold in Ireland, as Russian bonds were sold in America, so the shares in American mines, railroads and factories are bought and sold on all the stock exchanges of Europe and Asia by men who never saw America in their lifetime.
Now, let us examine the situation, keeping in mind the fact that this is but a type of what prevails all round; you can satisfy yourself on that head by a daily glance at our capitalist papers.



CAPITAL IS INTERNATIONAL



The shares of Russian railways, African mines, Nicaraguan canals, Chilian gas works, Norwegian timber, Mexican water works, Canadian fur trappings, Australian kanaka slave trade, Indian tea plantations, Japanese linen factories, Chinese cotton mills, European national and municipal debts, United States bonanza farms are bought and sold every day by investors, many of whom never saw any one of the countries in which their money is invested, but who have, by virtue of so investing, a legal right to a share of the plunder extracted under the capitalist system from the wage workers whose bone and sinew earn the dividends upon the bonds they have purchased.



When our investing classes purchase a share in any capitalist concern, in any country whatsoever, they do so, not in order to build up a useful industry, but because the act of purchase endows them with a prospective share of the spoils it is proposed to wring from labor.
Therefore, every member of the investing classes is interested to the extent of his investments, present or prospective, in the subjection of Labor all over the world.



That is the internationality of Capital and Capitalism.
The wage worker is oppressed under this system in the interest of a class of capitalist investors who may be living thousands of miles away and whose very names are unknown to him.
He is, therefore, interested in every revolt of Labor all over the world, for the very individuals against whom that revolt may be directed may - by the wondrous mechanism of the capitalist system - through shares, bonds, national and municipal debts - be the parasites who are sucking his blood also. That is one of the underlying facts inspiring the internationalism of Labor and Socialism.

[Positivist]

I love giving the "A factory worker in the U.S. has more in common with a factory worker in China then he does his boss." argument. I've used it several times when making successful converts to the Anti-American school of thought.

Yes this is one of the best. Don't argue against nationalism, argue for internationalism. Explain that people of the same class, have similar experiences, and similar interests.