Definition of internationalism

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Definition of internationalism: What is internationalism?

Internationalism is the ethical belief or scientific approach in which peoples of different nations are held to be or assumed to be equal. Internationalism is opposed to racism and national chauvinism.

We Maoists believe the nationalism of nations experiencing oppression of imperialism is "applied internationalism." We oppose nationalism of oppressed nations directed at other oppressed nations, because the economic content of such nationalism is intra-proletarian conflict. We seek a united front of oppressed nations led by the international proletariat against imperialism.

Today, there are two kinds of internationalism, bourgeois internationalism and proletarian internationalism. In the bourgeois internationalist view, peoples of all countries should have a chance to become exploiters. In the proletarian internationalist view, exploitation inevitably leads to violent conflict, so peace amongst nations depends on a global view not defending private property.

"I must argue, not from the point of view of 'my' country (for that is the argument of a wretched, stupid, petty-bourgeois nationalist who does not realize that he is only a plaything in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie), but from the point of view of my share in the preparation, in the propaganda, and in the acceleration of the world proletarian revolution. That is what internationalism means, and that is the duty of the internationalist, of the revolutionary worker, of the genuine Socialist."

V. I. Lenin, "What Is Internationalism?" The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), p. 80.

"The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeiosie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."

Karl Marx, "Communist Manifesto," section II "Proletarians and Communists"

There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working whole- heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception.

V.I. Lenin, about World War I in "The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution"