Where are the International Brigades?

[IOSTEELE]

Why have there been no International Brigades since the days of the Spanish Civil War?

Should the International Brigades be reforged? How would that be done? Where would it intervene?

[BobKKKindle$]

I think in part the absence of a continuing movement is because there have not been significant revolutionary struggles where the ideological conflict between the forces of Socialism and Capital has been so clear since the Spanish civil war - and when such struggles have occurred, they have either been inaccessible due to geographical location or because of legal impediments preventing the movement of comrades with the intention to engage in armed conflict across international borders.

Furthermore, many struggles have only lasted for a limited period of time due to the disparity in military resources avaliable to the forces of Socialism and the State/Capital, such that an expeditionary force could not be organised, or there was not seen worth organising given the low probability that Socialism could prevail. An example of a struggle characterised by all these countervailing elements is the uprising of 1956 in Hungary.

It would be so inspiring to see the revival of the brigades though - even if they only function as a reserve/standby movement for rapid deployement should the oppurtunity arise.

[Janus]

Why have there been no International Brigades since the days of the Spanish Civil War?
There are still international activists who travel and seek to help various other groups around the world.


Should the International Brigades be reforged?
Sure, if you can find another radical leftist movement these days that really needs international help. However, since most of these groups seem to be holding their own and because of the international and technological character of today's world, a better and less costly endeavor would be to broadcast their struggles and help to make others aware of their movement (similar to what Zapatista supporters are doing). Sometimes, it can have a greater impact than picking up a gun.

[SPK]

The International Brigades subscribed to a genuinely universalist ideology, i.e. socialism, that believed in the political unity of the global proletariat across all differences and divisions. This meant that workers of many nationalities and languages, from all over europe (and, to a lesser degree, other areas of the world) could be mobilized to defend the spanish republic. If we don’t see organizations like the IB’s around today, one reason is that in the west (and certainly in the usa), fewer workers and the oppressed identify as socialists or communists of any stripe.

There is, of course, one highly reactionary ideology that is deeply sectarian and not genuinely universalist, but has nonetheless managed to mobilize millions of people from different countries around the world – across lines of nationality and language, etc. That is islamic fundamentalism, where unity is based in religion, not class and the necessity of overthrowing global capitalism. One key example of this type of “internationalism” is afghanistan: tens of thousands of foreign fighters, from the gulf region, pakistan, and elsewhere, fought the soviets there after the ussr’s 1979 invasion. I suppose it would be worth setting aside the obvious differences – i.e. the antithetical political lines – and assessing this phenomena – military intervention on the ground -- to see if it has any useful lessons for the left, positive or negative, today.

Another reason for the lack of IB-type efforts – at least in terms of participation by the left in the usa -- is that, throughout much of the twentieth century and today, the primary force opposing socialist revolutions was amerikan imperialism. It didn’t make sense to decamp for another country fighting amerikan armed forces, when staying here would have made your opposition ultimately more effective – Janus made a similar point in his post. Ho Chi Minh and representatives of the vietnamese liberation struggle were (frequently) asked during the sixties whether or not revolutionary-minded amerikan youth should go to indochina to fight alongside the NLF. Their response was basically that such youth should remain in the usa (they don’t know how to use weapons, or the vietnamese language or culture; they would be a pain in the ass for the NLF; etc.) and try to convince their parents and older generations that the amerikan aggression was wrong. Much to the chagrin of certain ultraleft forces here. :lol: