Internationalism

Features of internationalism

There are several important features of internationalism; these include humanitarianism, maintenance of peace and security, and economic stability.

An emphasis on humanitarianism - This feature refers to the belief that everyone in the world must help one another, regardless of who the person pleading for assistance is. This is an important feature of internationalism, as it serves as a justification as to why nations should work collaboratively.

Maintenance of peace and security is in the world's best interest if peace and security are maintained; having good relations with other states helps achieve this. Internationalism is forwarded as a way to ensure peace. It is only through internationalism that one can ever seek to achieve peace.

Economic stability - This feature is concerned with maintaining good relations with nations allowing for economic stability, and encouraging international trade and commerce, which improves the world economy.

Types of Internationalism

Two important types of internationalism that you will need to know are liberal and socialist internationalism. Let's take a deeper look into what these are all about.

Liberal Internationalism

Liberal Internationalism is an approach based on the belief that nations can achieve their common goals through increased interaction and cooperation. Liberal internationalism asserts that each nation equally contributes to global peace and no nation is more important than another.

Fig. 2 The UN General Assembly hall

Self-determination and interdependence are amongst the fundamental goals of internationalism, as well as a promotion of liberal democracy as the optimum structure of states.

Liberal internationalism draws heavily on the liberal idea of self-determination; however, this idea is applied on an international and national level as opposed to an individual level. This makes liberal internationalism, compatible with Liberal Nationalism, as they both centre the liberal idea of self-determination. Both liberal internationalism and liberal nationalism call for cooperation between nations without the need to abandon the importance of national identity

Socialist Internationalism

Socialist internationalism is based upon class as the unifying or divisive factor. For socialist internationalists, class is the foundation of everything and any collective actions must be based upon class consciousness. Therefore, the prioritisation of other ideologies (e.g. nationalism or liberalism) and social phenomena (such as religion) are viewed solely as tools of distraction created by the capitalist system of oppression.

In fact, ideologies are used as a tool to distract people from igniting class consciousness by providing people with an alternative focus. Socialist internationalists argue that nationalism is an ideology that has been guilty of this.

The work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels serves as the inspiration for socialist internationalism, in the Communist Manifesto these thinkers expressed the idea working-class people have no country and therefore one can not take from them what they do not possess. Therefore, nationalism must be substituted for class consciousness in the form of socialist internationalism, in which there is an encouragement for the international overthrow of capitalism by the globe's proletariat.

Advantages of internationalism

The advantages of internationalises can be summarised into the following points:

1. Forward-looking/ progressive politics

2. Shared benefits

3. Collaborative efforts

Because the idea of internationalism is concerned with how states relate to each other and advocates for mutually beneficial cooperation amongst states, internationalism is often described as a progressive political concept. This is because it looks forward to make change for the future, unlike regressive politics which look to reinstate the past. Progressive politics relates to solidarity and the use of politics to better society.

Internationalism is an example of this, as within internationalism benefits and advantages are shared amongst nations. These advantages included protection, respect, freedom and social gains as well as collaboration on global issues that affect everyone such as terrorism, global warming and more recently how to tackle the coronavirus. The global battle against coronavirus is a demonstration of progressive politics and the advantages of internationalism.

Fig. 3: Display of unity amongst nation-states.