Nationalism and Internationalism (1924) by José Carlos Mariátegui
On nationalism, internationalism, capitalism, proletarian revolution, and relativism.
Published in Mundial: Lima, 10 October 1924. Available online in Spanish at <https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/oc/el_alma_matinal/paginas/nacionalismo%20e%20internacionalismo.htm>
The delimitations between nationalism and internationalism are still not cleared up very much by the weight of the already old coexistence of both ideas. The nationalists integrally condemn the internationalist tendency. But in practice they make some concessions which are at times underhanded, and at times explicit. Fascism, for example, collaborates in the League of Nations. At the very least they have not deserted this society that has promoted pacifism and Wilsonian liberalism.
It happens, in truth, that neither nationalism nor internationalism follow either an orthodox or intransigent line. What is more, one cannot point mathematically to where nationalism concludes and where internationalism begins. Elements of an idea walk, at times, into a mixture of elements from the other.
The cause of this obscure theoretical and practical demarcation turns out to be very clear. Contemporary history teaches us at every step that the nation is not an abstraction, it is not a myth; but civilization, humanity, neither are they. The evidence of national reality does not contradict, does not confute the evidence of international reality. The incapacity of comprehending and admitting this second and superior reality is a simple myopia, it is an organic limitation. Aged intellects, mechanized in the contemplation of the old national perspective, do not know how to distinguish the new, vast, complex international perspective. They repudiate it and deny it because they cannot adapt to it. The mechanism of this attitude is the same that automatically and a priori rejects Einsteinian physics.
Internationalists—except some ultraists, some romantics, eccentric and inoffensive—comport themselves with less intransigence. Like the relativists in the face of the physics of Galileo, the internationalists do not contradict all of the nationalist theory. They recognize that it corresponds to reality, but only in first approximation. Nationalism apprehends a part of reality; but nothing more than a part. Reality is much more expansive, less finite. In a word, nationalism is valid as affirmation, but not as negation. In the current chapter of history it has the same value as provincialism, of regionalism in past chapters. It is a regionalism of a new style.
But why is it exacerbated, why is it hyperesthetic, in our era, this sentiment that because of its old age has to become a bit more passive and less ardent? The response is easy. Nationalism is a face, a side of the extensive reactionary phenomenon. Reaction is called, successively or simultaneously, chauvinism, fascism, imperialism, etc. It is not by chance that the monarchists of L’Action Française are, at the same time, aggressively jingoistic and militarist. They actually operate, in a complicated process of adjustment, for the adaptation of the nations and their interests to a solidaric coexistence. It is not possible that this process can be carried out without an extreme resistance from thousands of centrifugal passions and thousands of secessionist interests. The will to give the people an international discipline has to provoke an exasperated erection of nationalist sentiment that, romantically and anachronistically, would like to isolate and differentiate the interests of its own nation from those of the rest of the world.
The proponents of this reaction describe internationalism as utopia. But, evidently, the internationalists are more realistic and less romantic than they seem. Internationalism is not merely an idea, a sentiment; it is, above all, a historical work. Western civilization has internationalized, has solidarized the life of the major part of humanity. Ideas, passions, propagate themselves rapidly, fluidly, universally.
Each day the speed is greater with which the currents of thought and of culture spread. Civilization has given the world a new nervous system.
Transmitted by cable, the Herzian waves, the press, etc. all the great human emotion instantly traverses the world. The regional habit declines little by little. Life stretches out to uniformity, to unity. The same style, the same type is acquired in all of the great urban centers. Buenos Aires, Quebec, Lima copy the fashion of Paris. Their tailors and fashionistas imitate the models of Paquin. This solidarity, this uniformity is not exclusively Western. European civilization attracts, gradually, to its orbit and its customs all the peoples and all the races. It is a dominating civilization that does not tolerate the existence of any concurrent or rival civilization. One of its essential characteristics is its power of expansion. No culture conquered such a vast extent of the Earth. The English that have installed themselves in the corner of Africa bring the telephone, the automobile, polo with them there. Together with the machines and merchandise they spread Western ideas and emotions. They seem strange and unusually bound together to the history and thought of the most diverse peoples.
All of these phenomena are absolutely and unmistakably new. They pertain exclusively to our civilization which, from this point of view, does not look like any of the previous civilizations. And with these doings it coordinates others. The European states finish confirming and recognizing, in the conference of London, the impossibility of restoring their respective economy and production without a pact of mutual assistance. Because of their economic interdependence, the peoples cannot, as before, attack each other and tear each other apart with impunity. Not because of sentimentalism, but because it is required by their own interests, the victors have to renounce the pleasure of sacrificing the defeated.
Internationalism is not a brand new current. Since a century ago, approximately, it has been noted that in European civilization there is a tendency to prepare an international organization of humanity. Neither is internationalism an exclusively revolutionary current. There is a socialist internationalism and a bourgeois internationalism, that does not have anything about it that is absurd or contradictory. When it finds its historical origin, internationalism proves to be an emanation, a consequence of the liberal idea. The first great incubation of internationalist germs was in the Manchester School. The liberal state emancipated industry and commerce from feudal and absolutist shackles. The capitalist interests independently developed the growth of the nation. The nation, finally, already cannot contain them within its borders. Capital de-nationalizes itself; industry launches out to the conquest of foreign markets; merchandise will not know confines and strives for free circulation through all countries. The bourgeoisie then becomes a free-trader. Free trade, as an idea and as a practice, was a step towards internationalism, in which the proletariat can recognize one of its aims, one of its ideals. Economic borders debilitate it. And this event strengthened the hope of one day annulling political borders.
Only England—the only country which has fully realized the liberal and democratic idea, understood and classified as a bourgeois idea—has arrived at free trade. Production, because of its anarchy, has suffered from a grave crisis, which provoked a reaction against the free trade policies. The states have returned to closing their ports to foreign production to defend their own production. It has come, a protectionist period, during which they have reorganized production on new bases. The dispute of the markets and the primary materials acquired a bitterly nationalist character. But the international function of the new economy has returned to find its expression. It developed gigantically the new form of capital, finance capital, international finance. Their banks and consortiums converge savings from different countries to be internationally invested. The world war partially tore apart this fabric of economic interests. Later, the postbelic crisis revealed the economic solidarity of the nations, the moral and organic unity of civilization.
The liberal bourgeoisie, today as yesterday, works to adapt its political forms to the new human reality. The League of Nations is an effort, certainly vain, to resolve the contradiction between the internationalist economics and the nationalist politics of bourgeois society. Civilization does not resign to die from this collision, this contradiction. It creates, from this, every day, organizations of international communication and coordination. After the two laboring Internationals, there exist other internationalisms of diverse ranks. Switzerland houses the “centers” of more than eighty international associations. Paris was, not much time ago, the seat of an international congress of dance teachers. The ballerinas discussed there, largely, their problems, in multiple languages. They forged, above the borders, an internationalism of the fox-trot and of the tango.