Let’s Not Change the World After All: The Decline of Left Internationalism

On the broad American left, internationalism used to be as common—and as essential—as breathing. Abolitionists, black and white, sailed back and forth across the Atlantic, speaking to large and sympathetic audiences. Feminists met regularly with their European sisters to forge common strategies to win the vote and urge male leaders to stop making war. Followers of Henry George promoted his Single Tax from the streets of San Francisco to the lecture halls of Dublin to Leo Tolstoy’s estate, 120 miles south of Moscow. Pan-Africanists from Martin Delany to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X sought to fuse the black diaspora into a mighty, anticolonial force. Despite their ferocious differences, every species of socialist, anarchist, communist, and syndicalist believed they belonged to a movement of class-conscious proletarians that spanned the globe and was destined, some sunny day, to govern it.