Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Internationals were associations aimed at promoting, facilitating, and coordinating working-class solidarity beyond national and local attachments. They served as the institutional embodiment of workers' internationalism and as the symbols of the labor movement. They were also the precursors of today's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and of the World Social Forum, under whose banner internationalist globalization activists have gathered annually since 2001. Internationalism, the notion that human solidarity in freedom and equality properly extends beyond the nation, has its roots in the Enlightenment's universalism, which early liberals deployed as a secular alternative to Christian cosmopolitanism. During the French Revolution , for example, “committees of correspondence” emerged across Europe and North America, in solidarity with the French revolutionaries. It was the more radical elements of the labor movement that took up the banner of internationalism in the 1840s, eventually establishing those institutions which would be known as the Internationals. At least a dozen organizations have claimed the name. Among them, three stand out because of their influence and historical importance: the International Workingmen's Association (First International), the Workers' or Socialist International (Second International), and the Communist International (Third International). ... log in or subscribe to read full text