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This article was first published in Le Monde's November 11, 1969 issue along with another article by Charles Bettelheim. Monthly Review Press then received the uncut original manuscripts of both articles. They were translated by Brian Pearce and then published in the 1970 Vol.22 June issue of MRP, with the title "International Solidarity of Workers: Two Views".

I've transcribed here Arghiri's article (as I didn't have access to Bettelheim's, just pictures of Arghiri's which I then combined in a pdf).

THE DELUSIONS OF INTERNATIONALISM By Arghiri Emmanuel

The most bitter fruits of my work on L′Echange inégale were the negative conclusions arrived at regarding the international solidarity of the working people. It is not, of course, merely a matter of acknowledging that manifestations of this solidarity are becoming feebler and feebler throughout the world—this is a fact of life which it would be hard for anyone to deny. What is at issue here is the question whether the objective basis itself for this solidarity has gone or whether it is only a passing wave of opportunism that is preventing the peoples of the rich countries from becoming conscious of their long-term interests.

The criticism to which my book has been subjected has proceeded from the latter standpoint. That economic imperialism has made it possible for certain social reforms to be put into effect in the big industrial countries is not denied, though it is played down. However, my critics object, these "immediate" advantages which, for the moment, differentiate the position of the workers in the rich countries from that of the workers in the poor ones are as nothing compared with the long-term advantages that the destruction of capitalist relations on the world plane will bring to both groups in common. Their short-term divergence of interest provides no objective basis for any disappearance of international solidarity of the working people, but only for nationalist opportunism.

It seems to me that by inserting the word "opportunist" between a primary cause and an ultimate effect, nothing of what it is aimed to save is in fact saved. If the objective situation gives rise to opportunism, which in turn gives rise to the lack of international solidarity, one may just as well eliminate the middle term and say that the objective situation gives rise to the lack of solidarity.

Apparently, however, in the reasoning process under consideration, "opportunism" consists precisely in the lack of awareness of the other "objective basis," namely, the convergence of long-term interests. A world-wide socialist revolution will, it is said, increase production in all countries to such a degree as to make it possible, in the long run, not merely to wipe out the inequalities between nations, but also to more than compensate the rich nations for the effects of a redivision of the present wealth in the world. The lack of awareness of it does not mean that this reality is non-existent.

No, indeed. But it does not mean, either, that this reality exists. After all, if awareness of a certain reality is historically impossible or inoperative, we have a situation which differs in no way from the opposite reality. Awareness also forms part of reality. In other words, if the working people of today decline to take account of the long run, this is perhaps because this long run is longer than ordinary people can look ahead. And that constitutes an objective obstacle to internationalism. In the long run we are all dead, as someone has already observed.*

*The saying is usually attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes. -Ed.

One cannot identify class consciousness with a revolution of a particular type. There are unconscious revolutions, just as there are conscious counter-revolutions. Awareness on the part of the proletariat does not necessarily mean its adhesion to a revolutionary ideal which we lay down a priori and independently of it; this awareness means its grasp of its own interests as a class, as they transcend those of the individual proletarian. These class interests may, at one particular stage of history, call for internationalism, and at another stage lead to the formation of a common national front. Awareness is not concerned with choice between the short run and the long; it is concerned with the primacy of structure over conjuncture. Now, the fact that the majority of mankind is suffering from hunger whereas in certain countries the workers are struggling to acquire washing machines is certainly not a result of the conjuncture but of the structure.

From "Aristocracy of Labor" to Aristocratic Nations

This is not the first time that international reality has faced Marxists with torturing dilemmas. In the past, generally speaking, they got out of this awkward situation by means of the notion of an "aristocracy of labor." The gains of "imperialism" did not make possible the corruption of more than a narrow stratum of the proletariat in the advanced countries. It was this stratum that formed the social basis of opportunism. The great mass of the proletariat still had "nothing to lose and a world to gain." The Communist Manifesto's noble call for unity remained valid for all but a few "white-collar" workers.

This simple and reassuring theory did actually correspond to a certain historical reality. It was indeed with certain privileged strata of the workers that the national bourgeoisies began sharing the cake of international exploitation. The difference in standard of living between a "white-collar" and a "blue-collar" within a given country was bigger than that which separated the "blue-collars" of the various countries. In the second part of the nineteenth century, however, things began to change. Trade-union struggles in the big industrial countries led not only to an increase in the extent to which external profits were shared between the classes, but to the redistribution, as between different strata of the working class, of the share obtained by that class as a whole. Sooner or later, depending on the particular country, a situation was reached in which the difference between "white-collars" and "blue-collars" within each of the rich countries was negligible compared with the gulf separating the "blue-collars" of the advanced countries from those of the underdeveloped ones. Unless we transpose it to the international plane, the category of "aristocracy of labor" is now an obsolete one.

This change did not fail to find reflection in the thinking of the classical Marxist writers. In the last important article he wrote, "Better Fewer But Better," Lenin expressed in these words his profound disappointment with the advanced countries: "Shall we be able to hold on . . . while the West European capitalist countries are consummating their development towards socialism? But they are consummating it not as we formerly expected. They are not consummating it by the gradual 'maturing' of socialism but by the exploitation of some countries by others. . . . In the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe."

Lenin knew well what he was talking about, having, as head of the first workers' state during the previous five years, risked disaster by refusing to bargain with the capitalist states, in order, instead, to stake all on the international solidarity of the proletariat; having rejected the annexationist separate peace, appealed to the peoples over the heads of their governments by publishing the secret treaties, and sent his ambassadors in London and Berlin to address meetings of the local working class, while their diplomatic bags brought in revolutionary pamphlets. Workers' solidarity had not prevented the German General Staff from launching the offensive of 1918; the separate peace had had to be signed at Brest-Litovsk; the Soviet ambassadors had been expelled, one after another; the international strike in support of Soviet Russia, in July 1919, had failed. Lenin then agreed to bargain: "Men live in states, and each state is part of a system of states between which there is a certain political equilibrium," he was to say in 1920. The Soviet diplomats soberly put on their dress suits. (It is not at all certain that the Chinese today would refuse to do the same if they were given the chance.)

It has been all very well for the internationalists subsequently to denounce Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. When, decades later, revolutionary Marxism took power over a thousand million people, this was still not "socialism in several countries" but several "socialisms in one country." Socialism itself has become an internal affair. As such, it does not necessarily rule out exploitation and antagonisms between rich nations and poor ones.

Marx and Engels had already had their share of "lost illusions." In the 1840s they expected socialism to be established in the most advanced countries, especially Britain, this to be followed by the emancipation of the more backward nations. The national problem was a subordinate one. The independence of Ireland would be achieved through the victory of socialism in Britain. The revolution would move from the center to the periphery. When Britain remained adept from the revolutionary tornado of 1848; when Charism entered into decline; when British capitalism overcame without too much difficulty the economic crises of 1857, 1864-1866, and 1873 and continued to develop, integrating its proletariat in this development; when, in 1870, 104,000 London workers signed a petition to the Queen protesting against the allegedly anti-imperialist policy of Gladstone—then Marx and Engels turned their eyes towards the periphery, to Poland and Russia in the East, and to Ireland and the United States in the West.* "Nothing can be done with the British workers," Engels was to say, in his letter to Marx of August 11, 1881, "so long as Britain's monopoly position lasts."

*See S. Bloom, A World of Nations (New York, 1941)

External Super-Profits and National Cohesion

From the moment when the sharing out of the product of international exploitation assumes an important, if not preponderant, place in what is at stake in the class struggle within the nation, this struggle ceases to be a genuine class struggle in the Marxist sense of the term, and becomes a settlement of accounts between partners around a jointly-owned cake. National unity is no longer questioned, in essentials, and loyalty to the nation transcends internal conflicts of interest, on the one hand, while, on the other, it grows stronger in consequence of international antagonisms. National integration has been made possible in the big industrial countries at the cost of international disintegration of the proletariat.

Colonialism has given rise both to super-wages and to superprofits, but its long-term effect in the metropolitan countries, whether intended or not, has been to benefit the proletarians more than the capitalists. This is because, owing to the tendency to equalization of the rate of profit on a world scale, superprofits can only be temporary. Super-wages, however, become automatically, in the long run, the normal level of wages, since they eventually come to form that "moral and historical element" in the value of labor power of which Marx spoke.

As I said in my book, when the relative importance of the exploitation which a working class suffers through belonging to the "proletariat" continually decreases as compared with that which it benefits from through belonging to a privileged nation, a moment comes when the aim of increasing the national income in absolute terms takes precedence over that of improving each section's share relatively to that of the others. This is what the workers of the advanced countries have well understood, becoming, over the last half-century, increasingly "social-democratized"—either by supporting the social democratic parties already in being or by "social-democratizing" the Communist Parties themselves.

It is vain, and contrary to historical materialism, to blame the bureaucrats of the working class parties and the masses' lack of awareness. After a century of social and political struggles, the masses have had time to give themselves the leaders and the parties they deserve.

And, after all, is not this the salvation of revolutionary Marxism? For, if capitalism were capable of giving every working-class family a little house and a car, while deducting beforehand from the amount paid in wages a surplus value sufficient to ensure expanded reproduction and no major crises, as it is in a fair way to doing in the richest countries, certain Marxist propositions would need serious revision. Capitalism in itself, however, is incapable of such a feat. What it has shown itself capable of is the shifting of impoverishment and unemployment from the national framework to that of the planet as a whole. This achievement, however, profoundly alters the nature and make-up of the revolutionary battle fronts.

66 notes · View notes