Presentation short abstract

Engaging the history of twentieth-century internationalism in its socialist, Afro-Asian, and tricontinental registers, this paper consider the possible role of the International in ecosocialist transition, including its relation with the party, the working class, and the state.

Presentation long abstract

This paper will consider the role of the International in the intellectual and political history of socialist and anticolonial transition. While the role of the party, the working class, and the state have been theorised, debated, and tested, the role of the International, and its relationship to these formations, is less clear. Considering the politics of twentieth-century internationalism in its socialist, Afro-Asian, and tricontinental registers, the paper asks: What lessons can be learned about the dialectic between the national and the international? What were the achievements of and constraints on the militant internationalism of the twentieth century? What kind of 21st-century internationalism is needed to engineer an eco-socialist transition? The paper will pay particular attention to implicit and explicit engagement with the environment in the archives of the Third International and of movements such as the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization and the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Foreshadowing contemporary debates in political ecology and eco-socialism, anticolonial and socialist thinkers and movements engaged in a close examination of the ecological costs of imperialism—including diminished food producing capacities, the wreckage of entire ecosystems, and the metabolic rift with nature—and incorporated these assessments into strategies for both internationalism and sovereign development. An engagement with this intellectual and political tradition promises a reinvigoration of contemporary research on and movements for ecosocialist transition, in which there is an urgent need for an internationalism capable of matching the crisis in scale, organization, and strength.