Considerable ink has already been spilled concerning Comrade Franzblau’s report on her participation in the DSA International Committee delegation to Cuba, published in Reform & Revolution on the 17th of February. Most recently, Comrades of the Red Star Caucus have issued a condemnation of Franzblau’s activity as disorganizing, anti-democratic, and chauvinistic. It is not within the scope of my letter to comment on the content of either article, or the several other reports and rebuttals issued by several comrades. I do not entirely agree with Comrade Franzblau’s views on the character of the Cuban Revolution or the Cuban state. However, I do defend her fundamental right to join in discussions with all perspectives within the Cuban socialist movement.
What I do wish to comment on is the broad outlines of the debate to clarifying an important distinction – for as is often the case in our movement, discussions of this or that detail of the case is serving to obscure the real political difference at play.
It seems to me that the real political distinction here is between two very different conceptions of internationalism. The first is methodologically nationalist, and understands the question of internationalism as being about establishing diplomatic and solidaristic links between distinct national movements for socialism. This is the perspective represented by the comrades at Red Star. The American and Cuban socialist movements, in this conception, are two distinct movements with the same aspiration of a socialist world – that is, their connection is essentially sentimental. This romantic internationalism is common in today’s socialist movement, and (I would argue) has more in common with the romantic pan-nationalism of the radical petit-bourgeois revolutionaries of the nineteenth century than it does with proletarian internationalism.
It should be noted that many “Third Campist” socialists share this conception of internationalism – they simply have a different conception of which sections of the socialist movement, or which potential allied states, etc., best represent their values.
The alternative to this romantic internationalism is the concrete internationalism offered by revolutionary Marxism. With the birth of an international proletariat, internationalism becomes not a lofty ideal but a practical reality. The working class is an international class, bound by the international system of capitalist production. The movement for the emancipation of the working class, that is the socialist workers movement, emerges in uneven ways, but this does not change its ultimate character – it is an international movement. Even though nationality (alongside sex, language, religion, race) divides our class, it is the role of communists to point always to the maximal unity of the workers – international unity.
If we accept that the socialist movement is international, and that all socialists are members of the same movement, then comradely criticism combined with principled defense is not only the right of all socialists, in all countries, but a revolutionary duty. The Cuban socialists, both in power and in the socialist opposition, are not outsiders that must be handled with diplomacy and tact. They are members of our movement. We should engage with them as we would members of our own local!
Lenin and his comrades understood this conception of internationalism. They were unafraid to comment on the affairs of the British, German, French, or Italian communists, even when their movement was relatively underdeveloped in comparison. For them, socialism was an international brotherhood that stood above any national limitations.
The question comrades must ask is whether we are nationally-bound socialist movements with international connections, or an international socialist movement with national sections. That is the distinction between their internationalism, and ours.
Forward to the World October,
Roxy Hall
