Early views on internationalism: Marxist socialists vsliberals

(in: Magaly Rodríguez García, “Labour Internationalism: Different Times,Different Faces”, in Special issue of Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie enGeschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, vol. 84, 2006, no. 4, p. 1049-1073)

Magaly Rodríguez GarcíaResearch Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research –FlandersVrije Universiteit Brussel

Recent decades have witnessed a significant increase in

studies on labour internationalism, focusing mainly on

socialist internationalism. There are good reasons for such

attention to this subject. Certainly, the main international

labour organizations of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, prior to 1945, were largely influenced by Marxist

or other socialist ideologies. It is the aim of this paper

to demonstrate that an exclusive interest in the impact of

socialist internationalism on the international labour

movement is, however, not justified, and that there are

other forms of internationalism, such as liberal

internationalism, which also merit attention.

First of all, one needs to take account of the commonalities

between the socialist and liberal ideologies present in the

labour movement. International organizations such as the

International Working Men’s Association (IWMA or First

International, 1864-1876) and the International Federation

I am indebted to my PhD supervisors Guy Vanthemsche and Marcel van derLinden, and to Bruno Coppieters, Nick Deschacht, Danielle Helbig, MichelHuysseune, Jeroen Roppe, Rik Röttger, Augustín Santella, PatrickStouthuysen, Wayne Thorpe and Joost Vaesen for their critical remarks andsuggestions and the interesting discussions on this subject.

of Trade Unions (IFTU, 1901-1945) believed in the

international class struggle and in the long-term need to

overthrow the capitalist system, but they were also

convinced, as were many liberals, that the struggle for

political and social reforms needed first to be a national

struggle, and they shared with liberal internationalist

thinkers the Enlightenment’s belief in historical progress.

Furthermore, liberal beliefs concerning internationalism

played a key role in the creation of organizations of great

importance to the working class, such as, in 1919 the

International Labour Organization (ILO). During the

twentieth century, international non-Communist trade-union

organizations were also influenced by liberal values in

their defence of free trade, economic integration and

capital-labour co-operation within a system of collective

bargaining. These were all seen as good tools for raising

the living standards of workers at the national level, and

preserving peace at the international level. These trade-

union organizations also tried to strengthen liberal forms

of democracy, and, along with many liberals, they believed

that progress, modernity and development could best be

guaranteed by supranational structures (such as those set up

for European unification), in close co-operation with

national and international labour organizations.

This article attempts to answer the following question: how

did Marxist socialists and liberals view internationalism

and the role of the working class within this process? The

paper makes a distinction between Marxist-socialist and

2

liberal internationalism – elaborating on Eric Hobsbawm’s

study on working-class internationalism1 – and focuses on

the period between the eighteenth and early twentieth

centuries, when the main tenets of both schools of thought

were laid down. In examining this question, I treat Marxist

socialism and liberalism as the dominant schools of thought

with regard to pre-WWII internationalism2. I also use the

nineteenth-century terms ‘liberal’ and ‘Marxist socialist’

for thinkers who did not necessarily define themselves as

such, but who could be regarded as the forerunners of the

liberal and Marxist-socialist schools of thought.

A precise definition of the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘Marxist

socialist’ does not exist. As Michael Doyle writes, “[t]here

1 Eric HOBSBAWM, “Working-class internationalism”, in Frits VAN HOLTHOON& Marcel VAN DER LINDEN, eds, Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830-1940,Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1988, p. 3-16. The importance of ‘bourgeois-liberal’ forms of internationalism was alsoacknowledged by socialist theoreticians and militants. See for example:Karl MARX & Frederick ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, London,Penguin Books, 2004, 81 p.; Vladimir LENIN, “Draft and explanation of aprogramme for the Social-Democratic Party”, in Marxism-Leninism on ProletarianInternationalism, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1972, p. 44-45. See alsoJosé Carlos MARIÁTEGUI, “Internationalism and Nationalism”, in Newsletterof International Labour Studies, 1986, nrs. 30-31, p. 3-8; Perry ANDERSON,“Internationalism: A Breviary”, in New Left Review, vol. 14, March-April2002, 14 p., available online at www.newleftreview.net/NLR24801.shtmlSome parallels between liberal and socialist internationalism are alsooutlined in Gregory CLAEYS, “Reciprocal dependence, virtue and progress:some sources of early socialist cosmopolitanism and internationalism inBritain, 1750-1850”, in F. VAN HOLTHOON & M. VAN DER LINDEN,Internationalism in the Labour Movement, op. cit., p. 235-258.2 Christian-democracy, anarchism, syndicalism and Islam also developedtheir own views on internationalism, but they were less influential inpre-WWII international politics and the establishment of internationalinstitutions such as the League of Nations and the ILO.For the anarchist and syndicalist positions on internationalism, see thearticles by Constance Bantman, Ralph Darlington and Wayne Thorpe in thisvolume.

3

is no canonical description of Liberalism”3. This also

applies to Marxist socialism. Nonetheless, those who we tend

to call ‘liberal’ or ‘Marxist socialist’ share certain

characteristics that could be considered typical of liberals

or Marxist socialists: the defence of “individual freedom,

political participation, private property, and equality of

opportunity”4 in the first case, and the emphasis on the

materialist conception of history (historical materialism),

an analysis of the relations of production within a

capitalist society and the inevitable replacement of the

latter by a classless society, in the second5. As for the

term ‘internationalism’, I use it here in a broad sense,

meaning all types of initiatives (both formal and informal)

that transcended (or aimed to transcend) national borders,

for example the promotion of ‘universal’ values and calls

for free trade, conferences involving individuals of

different nationalities for the promotion of international

law and peace, and the establishment of international

organizations.

Liberal and Marxist-socialist theories emerged in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were a period of

radical political and socio-economic change in European

society. Continuous wars until 1871; revolutions in3 Michael W. DOYLE, Ways of War and Peace, New York, W.W. Norton & Company,1997, p. 206.4 Ibid, p. 206-207.5 Rodrigo BORJA, “Marxismo”, in Rodrigo BORJA, Enciclopedia de la política,Mexico City, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998, p. 624-628; RodrigoBORJA, “Liberalismo”, idem, p. 586-589.For an authoritative account of the evolution of the terms ‘Marxist’ and‘Marxism’, see: George HAUPT, “From Marx to Marxism”, in Georges HAUPT,Aspects of International Socialism 1871-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1986, p. 1-22.

4

industry, trade, communications, technology and science;

state-building; strong economic fluctuations; demographic

explosion; urbanization, and violent uprisings: all had far-

reaching effects on the development of liberal and Marxist-

socialist theories and practices. Indeed, these events

“inspired democratic and revolutionary hopes across the

European continent”6. Here my focus be on the liberal and

Marxist-socialist theoretical constructions with regard to

internationalism, touching only briefly on the historical

context in which they developed and the difficulties

encountered by liberal and Marxist activists when trying to

put their ideals into practice.

The article unfolds in two sections. The first examines

the commonalities between the internationalist views of

Marxist socialists and liberals (i.e., the principles for

achieving successful international co-operation), while the

second section focuses on the divergent development of

Marxist-socialist and liberal internationalist thought, and

the differences between socialist and liberal objectives,

views on the capital-labour relationship and views on the

role of the working class in the process of transcending

national boundaries. Given the vast quantity of original

material produced by socialist and liberal thinkers, I will

confine myself in this paper to discussing the main tenets

of Marxist-socialist and liberal views on internationalism

as found in the works of some of the most prominent figures

of these schools of thought (Karl Marx, Frederick Engels,

6 Lise VOGEL, Marxism and the Oppression of Women. Toward a Unitary Theory, NewBrunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1983, p. 56.

5

Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky for the socialist current

and Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Lujo

Brentano, John A. Hobson and Woodrow Wilson for the

liberals), and in current scientific literature.

Commonalities between the Marxist-socialist and liberal

internationalist approaches

Heirs of the Enlightenment

Both the Marxist-socialist and the liberal schools of

thought are products of the eighteenth-century

Enlightenment. On the philosophical level, Marxist theory

and its Leninist interpretation were influenced by Hegel’s

dialectical philosophy and Feuerbach’s materialism, while

liberal internationalist thought was strongly indebted to

Kant’s moral philosophy and Bentham’s utilitarianism. A

belief in progress, science, and the ability of human beings

to transform the world according to the dictates of reason

was prominent among these thinkers. They had a high opinion

of philosophy. According to the French republican, Jules

Barni, “the soul of the philosopher reflects that of

humanity; however, what was vague and obscure in the latter

has come clear and precise in the former”7. Similarly, Karl

Marx, in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), referred

7 Jules BARNI, Discours prononcé à la distribution des prix du Collège Royal deCharlemagne par M. Barni, professeur agregé de philosophie, Paris, 1842, quoted inSudhir HAZAREESINGH, “Neo-Kantian Moralist and Activist: Jules Barni andthe Establishment of the Municipalist Republic”, in Sudhir HAZAREESINGH,Intellectual Founders of the Republic. Five Studies in Nineteenth-Century French PoliticalThought, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 233.

6

to philosophy as “the head of (this) emancipation”8. Reason9

stood, then, against tradition and superstition. To both

Marxists and liberals, the use of reason – by means of

concepts – implied universality: concepts and ideas could be

used to achieve freedom, equality, justice, peace and

democracy: in other words, to achieve progress on a

worldwide scale or to change the world altogether10.

Marxist socialism and liberalism emerged in reaction to

authoritarian regimes and the violation or negation of

individual liberties. Absolutism, colonialism and

imperialism were seen as forms of aggression that needed to

be abolished, for they led to war and impeded the

continuation of liberal or revolutionary reforms which would

otherwise lead to the fulfilment of human potential.

Education played a central role for both socialists and

liberals, as it promoted the use of reason and, thus,

freedom, progress and equality. According to Marxists and

liberals, the negation of these aims would result in violent

conflict11. 8 Karl MARX, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Introduction), 1844,available online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm9 Kant differentiated “pure reason” (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781) from“practical reason” (Kritik der practischen Vernunft, 1788): the first refers tohis theory of knowledge, the second to his system of ethics. What ourtheoretical reason cannot prove can at least – according to Kant – bequestioned by our morality. Justus HARTNACK, Breve historia de la filosofía,Madrid, Ediciones Cátedra, 1994, p. 203-212.10 Herbert MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, Boston,Beacon Press, 1964, p. 254; Mark W. ZACHER & Richard A. MATTHEW,“Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands”, inCharles W. KEGLEY, Controversies in International Relations Theory. Realism and theNeoliberal Challenge, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 111-113.11 Jeremy BENTHAM, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London,The Athlone Press, University of London, 1970, p. 66, 164; John StuartMILL, Utilitarianism, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1882, p. 15, 20-21;

7

The two schools of thought shared an instrumentalist view of

the state. For both of them the state was a finite empirical

reality, and could not in itself be regarded as a

transcending idea, but it served the concretization of

transcending values such as liberty, justice and equality.

Marxist socialists and liberals assigned the state an

important role, although to a different degree and from very

different perspectives. Liberals wanted a state that

enforced a (minimal) set of laws in favour of the individual

– one that provided infrastructure and public services aimed

at the creation of equal opportunities for all individuals

in society. Liberals believed that these objectives could be

achieved at home and abroad by means of economic and moral

progress, and appropriate social reforms within the existing

economic order. The spread of liberal democracy would, in

other words, be a vehicle for the achievement of individual

freedom12.

Marxists regarded the latter as an illusion, as the

antagonism within the class society curtailed individual

freedom and “bred enmity among the peoples”; their aim,

therefore, was the abolition of prevailing conditions, which

guaranteed the existence of class antagonisms, and theH. MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 254-255, 287-288; K. MARX & F.ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 11-12, 32-33; M.A.RIFF, ed., Dictionary of Modern Political Ideologies. Manchester, ManchesterUniversity Press, 1987, p. 151. 12 F. H. HINSLEY, Power and the Pursuit of Peace. Theory and Practice in the History ofRelations Between States, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963, p.108-112; Stanley HOFFMANN, “The crisis of liberal internationalism”, inForeign Policy, vol. 98, 1995, (p. 3 in internet version); Immanuel KANT,Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1917,p. 107-116.

8

creation of a new, universal, classless order. They viewed

the state as an instrument of the ruling class (the

bourgeoisie in a capitalist society) and called for its

progressive abolition through the establishment of a

classless socialist society. Only a socialist state would be

fully capable of providing the necessary services (such as

education, health care, infrastructure, etc.) for all

members of society13. At the highest stage of human

development (communism), when the state “becomes the real

representative of the whole society”, it “renders itself

unnecessary” and “dies out”14.

Universal peace was a central objective for both schools of

thought. Karl Marx described the International Working Men’s

Association as a “peace congress, as the union of the

working classes of the different countries must ultimately

make international wars impossible”15. By the same token,

prominent liberal and republican thinkers such as Jeremy13 H. MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 288-294; Karl MARX, “OnPoland: Speech at the international meeting in London dedicated to theseventeenth anniversary of the Polish uprising of 1830. November 1847”,in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 60; K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of theCommunist Party, op. cit., p. 29-30, 33.14 “As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held insubjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle forexistence based upon our present anarchy in production, with thecollisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing moreremains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is nolonger necessary.” Frederick ENGELS, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”(Chapter Three: Historical Materialism), in Marx-Engels Selected Works, vol.3, available online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-uto/index.htm15 Karl MARX, “On the Attitude of the International Working Men’sAssociation to the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom”, inMarx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 20, available online atwww.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1867/peace-league-speech.htm

9

Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Jules

Barni favoured the organization of international meetings to

discuss the best means for achieving peace16.

Sustainable peace would result from the transformation

of international relations, which would take its departure

from the national level. With this thesis in common, Marxist

socialism and liberalism are variants of the evolutionary

theory of the Enlightenment. As Hobsbawm states, “virtually

all thinkers deriving from the eighteenth-century

Enlightenment took the view that the evolution of human

society proceeded from the smaller to the larger scale”17.

This was a “force in history” which, according to Engels,

could not be stopped: “Since the end of the Middle Ages,

history has been working towards the formation of large

national states in Europe”18.

Indeed, the existence of nation-states was crucial to both

Marxist socialists and liberals, although for different

reasons. For Marxists, the development of nation-states

during the nineteenth century was both an achievement of

modernity and a necessary framework for the development of

modern industry, technology and science. It was, in this

sense, a first step towards internationalism. To them it was

“self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working

class must organize itself at home as a class and that its

16 S. HAZAREESINGH, “Neo-Kantian Moralist and Activist”, op. cit., p. 251-256.17 E. HOBSBAWM, “Working-class internationalism”, op. cit., p. 5.18 Frederick ENGELS, “The role of force in history”, in Marxism-Leninism,op. cit., p. 63.

10

own country is the immediate arena of its struggle”19.

Therefore, “the struggle of the proletariat with the

bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle”20. It was the

task of the members of the First International to “use their

utmost efforts to combine the disconnected working men’s

associations of their respective countries into national

bodies”21. To liberals, the nation-state was the creation of

free citizens for the protection of their liberty by means

of participation in public life. Liberal regimes were seen

as a guarantee of the establishment of constitutional

governments, the emancipation of individuals and peaceful

foreign relations among themselves (Kant’s ‘Pacific

Federation’). Engagement in nation-building was thus seen as

a progressive cause, aimed at ending absolutist regimes:

during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European and

American liberals led revolutionary uprisings in both

continents and strove for citizens’ participation in the

newly established governments22.

From the importance attached to the nation-state there

followed another view shared by Marxist socialists and

liberals: that successful international co-operation was

possible only on the basis of the principle of self-

19 Karl MARX, “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, in Marxism-Leninism, op.cit., p. 131.20 K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 18.21 Karl MARX, “General rules of the International Working Men’sAssociation”, in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 127.22 P. ANDERSON, “Internationalism: A Breviary”, op. cit. (p. 2-3, 5 ininternet version); M.W. DOYLE, Ways of War and Peace, op. cit., p. 253-257; S.HOFFMANN, “The crisis of liberal internationalism”, op. cit. (p. 1-2 ininternet version); I. KANT, Perpetual Peace, op. cit., p. 128-137.

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determination, as this principle guaranteed a relationship

between equals. Engels viewed the formation of nation-states

as “an indispensable precondition for the establishment of

harmonious international co-operation”23. In a letter to

Kautsky, he referred to Ireland and Poland as “two nations

in Europe [that] are not only entitled, but obliged to be

national before they become international”, since “they are

most of all international when they are truly national”24.

According to Marxists, the recognition of the equality of

all nations would remove “every trace of national distrust,

estrangement, suspicion and enmity”25 and would, therefore,

promote solidarity among workers and universal peace.

The position of nineteenth-century Marxist socialists on the

national question was ambiguous, however. Engels, for

instance, distinguished between “historic” and “non-historic

peoples” and claimed that “apart from the Poles, the

Russians, and at most the Turkish Slavs, no Slav people has

a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs

lack the primary historical, geographical, political and

industrial conditions for independence and viability.

Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which

from the time when they achieved the first, most elementary

stage of civilization already came under foreign sway, or

which were forced to attain the first stage of civilization

only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will

23 F. ENGELS, “The role of force in history”, op. cit., p. 63.24 Frederick Engels to Karl Kautsky, 7 February 1882, in Marxism-Leninism,op. cit., p. 62-63. 25 Vladimir LENIN, “Corrupting the workers with refined nationalism”, inMarxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 115.

12

never be able to achieve any kind of independence”26. So

these Marxists did not support all liberation movements, but

only those in nations which, in their view, had already

achieved a certain level of political, economic and cultural

development. It was only during the twentieth century, and

particularly after 1917, that Marxists more systematically

supported independence movements throughout the world. The

Soviet state itself was built according to a federal

pattern, with a constitution claiming to guarantee the

national sovereignty of the Union republics and their formal

right to secession27.

Similarly, nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberals held

to the belief that national self-determination would

contribute to international peace. In Considerations on

Representative Government (1862), John Stuart Mill argued that

“Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies”

and that “on every principle of morality and justice, she

ought to consent to their separation”28. In the first half

of the twentieth century, the best-known liberal defender of

national self-determination as a precondition for successful

international co-operation was US President Woodrow Wilson.

In a speech delivered to the US Senate in 1917, Wilson

26 Frederick ENGELS, “Democratic Pan-Slavism”, in Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung,1849, available online atwww.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm27 Miklós MOLNAR, Marx, Engels et la politique internationale, Paris, Gallimard,1975, p. 72-73.For a comprehensive analysis of Engels’ position on the nationalquestion, see: Roman ROSDOLSKY, “Engels and the ‘Nonhistoric’ Peoples:the National Question in the Revolution of 1848”, in Critique. Journal ofSocialist Theory, vol. 18-19, 1987, 220 p. 28 John Stuart MILL, On Liberty & Considerations on Representative Government,Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1946, p. 311.

13

defended the position that “only a peace between equals can

last”, and that “no peace can last or ought to last, which

does not recognize and accept the principle that governments

derive all their just powers from the consent of the

governed”29.

Nineteenth-century and pre-WWII socialist and liberal

international organizations reflected this principle of

“international co-operation among equals”. The First and

Second Internationals30, and the International Federation of

Trade Unions, were, for the most part, confined to political

parties and trade unions from the industrialized countries

of Europe and the American continent. By the same token,

during the nineteenth century, international meetings for

the promotion of international law (as advocated by

prominent liberals) were limited to the ‘civilized’ (i.e.

industrialized) nations of the world. At its foundation in

1919, the International Labour Organization consisted of

29 Woodrow Wilson’s speech delivered at the US Senate, 22 January 1917,in Woodrow WILSON, Messages, discours, documents diplomatiques relatifs à la Guerremondiale 18 août 1914 – 8 janvier 1918, Paris, Editions Bossard, vol. 1, 1919,p. 106-107. 30 The Socialist International (also called Second International,following the First which existed between 1864 and 1876) was organizedin 1889, with the help of Frederick Engels. Its first congress calledfor concrete measures, such as the international legal enactment of theeight-hour working day, and decided to call for an international day ofaction on May Day, 1890. The first years of the International weredominated by the struggle between Marxists and anarchists. In 1896, theanarchists were excluded from the International. From then on (until itscollapse in 1914), the Second International united social-democratic,reformist and revolutionary political parties and trade-unionorganizations. For an excellent account of the growing disagreements between theradical factions and the “opportunist” and “centrist” members within theSecond International, see: Georges HAUPT, “Lenin, the Bolsheviks and theSecond International”, in HAUPT, Aspects of International Socialism, op. cit., p.101-131.

14

forty-seven member states, most of them from Europe and the

western hemisphere31.

The inevitability of internationalism

Internationalism was seen not only as an ideal of the

future, but also as a necessity. Adam Smith argued, in The

Wealth of Nations (1776), that international trade was both

inevitable and desirable. National wealth – capital – did

not produce for the national market only; increasing

production required new markets abroad for both the export

of products and the import of raw materials. So, by

definition, capitalism was (and still is) internationalist.

Other liberal thinkers, such as Jeremy Bentham, Richard

Cobden and David Ricardo, went further than Smith in that

they saw in the spread of commerce and free trade a means to

promote international co-operation and peace, as trade would

create interdependence among nations and bring mutual gains

to all. Free traders preached peace and disarmament in order

to prevent disruption in industrial production and

consumption. Peace would then be both a product of and a

precondition for free economic development32.

31 F.H. HINSLEY, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, op. cit., p. 94.In 2005, the ILO had 178 members. List of “Admission dates of Statemembers of the ILO”, requested from the ILO Official Relations Branch,at www.ilo.org The League of Nations had forty-eight member states in 1919-1920. At itsfoundation in 1945, the United Nations had fifty-one members, and 191 in2002. Most African and Asian states joined the UN from the 1960sonwards. United Nations, “Growth in United Nations Membership 1945-2005”, available online at www.un.org/Overview/growth.htm32 Jeremy BENTHAM, Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace, London, Sweet &Maxwell Limited, 1927, p. 25, 39; Tim DUNNE, “Liberalism”, in Steve

15

The revolutionary, cosmopolitan character of the capitalist

mode of production was also the driving force behind

socialist internationalism33. Capitalism revolutionized the

mode of production by transforming the individual means of

production into a social means of production34. This,

according to Engels, led to a fundamental contradiction

between “socialized production and capitalist

appropriation”, as “the social product is appropriated bySMITH & John BAYLIS, eds, The Globalization of World Politics. An Introduction toInternational Relations, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 189-190;Adam SMITH, The Wealth of Nations, London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1947, p.397-416; J.C. MARIÁTEGUI, “Internationalism and Nationalism”, op. cit., p.4-5; M.W. ZACHER & R.A. MATTHEW, “Liberal International Theory”, op. cit.,p. 113-114.It is interesting to note the commonalities between late-nineteenth- andtwentieth-century liberals and social democrats in their defence ofgrowing economic interdependence, social reform and free trade asinstruments for raising people’s living standards and promotinguniversal peace. See for example: Jean JAURES, Internationalism and Peace,London, The Clarion Press, 1903, 8 p.; R.A. FLETCHER, “Cobden asEducator: The Free-Trade Internationalism of Eduard Bernstein, 1899-1914”, in The American Historical Review, vol. 88, 1983, nr. 3, p. 561-578;Michael HUBERMAN, A Ticket to Trade: Belgian Labour and Globalization Before 1914,Montreal, Université de Montréal, 2006, 58 p. 33 “The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world marketgiven a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in everycountry… In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.” K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the CommunistParty, op. cit., p. 7-8.34 F. ENGELS, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, op. cit. (p. 2, 14 ininternet version), described this process as follows: “Before capitalistproduction… the instruments of labor – land, agricultural implements,the workshop, the tool – were the instruments of labor of singleindividuals… [T]hey belonged as a rule to the producer himself. Toconcentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlargethem, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the presentday – this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production andof its upholder, the bourgeoisie… But the bourgeoisie… could nottransform these puny means of production into mighty productive forceswithout transforming them, at the same time, from means of production ofthe individual into social means of production only workable by acollectivity of men… Production itself changed from a series ofindividual into a series of social acts, and the production fromindividual to social products.”

16

the individual capitalist”. The revolutionary character of

the capitalist mode of production led to its

internationalization: the development of productive forces

on the national level meant that a wider, international

community would eventually evolve. According to Marx, it

could not be otherwise, for “[t]he need of a constantly

expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie

over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle

everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions

everywhere”35.

To Marxist socialists, therefore, “the unity of the workers

of all countries is a necessity arising out of the fact that

the capitalist class, which rules over the workers, does not

limit its rule to one country”36. The advance of industry

would lead to the organization of workers at the national

and international levels. In the same way as capitalists

shared class interests with other members of the bourgeoisie

at home and abroad, and intended to defend them at all costs

(so went the Marxist-socialist argument), the proletariat of

all countries would organize itself as a class to pursue its35 K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 7.36 V.I. LENIN, “Draft and explanation of a programme for the Social-Democratic Party”, op. cit., p. 44. In his (indeed “powerful and original”, as Perry Anderson calls it)critique of internationalism – “Internationalism: A Critique”, in TomNAIRN, Faces of Nationalism. Janus Revisited, London, Verso, 1997, p. 26-27, 30 –Nairn emphasizes the role played by international capital in thedevelopment of socialist internationalism: “there is, naturally, nothingleft-wing about internationality. It is bourgeois, capitalist Progressincarnate. […] Internationalism is only common sense, for capitalistsand socialists alike. Because of the nature – cumulative, objective,irrefutable – of internationality”. However, Nairn’s conclusions arevery different from those outlined by Marxist socialists. According toNairn, internationalism reduces the power of nationality and remains atheoretical construction that has little to do with the real world.

17

historical mission. Marx and Engels, and later Lenin and

Trotsky, stressed the need for world revolution: the Paris

Commune of 1871 was taken as proof that an isolated workers’

revolution was doomed to fail37. International working-class

solidarity38 therefore grew out of political and economic

necessity.

Marxist socialists and liberals had a similar view of the

relationship between the national and international levels.

The ‘domestic analogy’, which “refers to the extension of

ideas that originated inside the liberal states to the

international realm”39, was typical not only of liberals.

Trotsky, for example, held that it applied to all nations:

“Foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of

domestic policy, for it is conducted by the same ruling

37 H. MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 288, 291; K. MARX & F.ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 7-8, 11, 19-20, 33;Karl MARX, “The Hague Congress (Speech made at the meeting held inAmsterdam, September 1872)”, in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 39-40.Leon TROTSKY, in The Revolution Betrayed. What is the Soviet Union and where is it going?,New York, Pioneer Publishers, 1945, p. 187, wrote the following withregard to the Soviet Union: “The [Soviet] bureaucracy has not onlybroken with the past, but has deprived itself of the ability tounderstand the most important lessons of that past. The chief of theselessons was that the Soviet power could not have held out for 12 monthswithout the direct help of the international – and especially theEuropean – proletariat, and without a revolutionary movement of thecolonial peoples”.38 According to Richard HYMAN, “Imagined Solidarities: Can Trade UnionsResist Globalization?”, in Peter LEISINK, ed., Globalization and LabourRelations, Cheltenham, Elgar, 1999, p. 94, solidarity is and always wasimaginary. At the same time he recognizes that the concept of solidarity“may historically have provided inspiration and perhaps helped generatea reality approximating to the ideal”. Also Marcel VAN DER LINDEN, “The First International (1864-1876): AReinterpretation”, in Marcel VAN DER LINDEN, Transnational Labour History,Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, p. 20 (footnote 6), draws an analogy betweenthe “(imagined) working-class community” and Benedict Anderson’s“imagined communities”. 39 T. DUNNE, “Liberalism”, op. cit., p. 187.

18

class and pursues the same historic goals”40. For Marxists,

the most important actors in (international) society were

not the public authorities or states, but classes. Political

representatives at all levels of governance were, in their

view, merely instruments of the ruling classes.

It may be concluded from this analysis of commonalities

between the two ideological currents that nationalist and

internationalist ideologies may very well complement each

other41 – confirming the aptness of Hobsbawm’s warning

against too rigid an application of the

nationalist/internationalist dichotomy to historical

material42. This thesis applies to both Marxist socialists

and liberals: there are plenty of examples in both

ideological currents (Thomas Paine, the Marquis de La

Fayette, Simón Bolívar, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Tom Mann,

40 L. TROTSKY, The Revolution Betrayed, op. cit., p. 186.41 Some authors make a distinction between the terms ‘nationalism’ and‘patriotism’. For Maurizio VIROLI, For Love of Country. An Essay on Patriotism andNationalism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 161-163, the term‘nationalism’ has a negative connotation, as it refers to the “politicsof aggrandizement pursued by reactionary regimes”; ‘patriotism’, on theother hand, refers to the “love of country” which safeguards liberty andjustice. Other authors, such as Michael BILLIG, Banal Nationalism, London, Sage,1995, p. 57, prefer not to make such a distinction, for in practicethere is no clear demarcation line between the two. Indeed, “[e]ven themost extreme of nationalists will claim the patriotic motivation forthemselves”. Billig challenges the orthodox conceptions of nationalism and focuses onits everyday forms, which reflects national pride, and not necessarilychauvinism. Here I use this more nuanced definition of ‘nationalism’. 42 E. HOBSBAWM, “Working-class internationalism”, op. cit., p. 3, 13-15.L. VOGEL, Marxism and the Oppression of Women, op. cit., p. 115, makes this‘either/or’ distinction (‘either internationalist or nationalist’):“Most parties in the Second International supported the [First World]war, taking whichever side their national bourgeoisie happened to standon. Working-class internationalism seemed to vanish into thin air, as anarrow patriotism swept through socialist ranks”.

19

Woodrow Wilson and Rosa Luxemburg, to name but a few) who

strove at the same time both for the socialist emancipation

or liberal development of their own countries and for the

establishment of a socialist or liberal international

community.

Differences between the Marxist-socialist and liberal

internationalist approaches

Scientific socialism vs moral values

One of the main features that differentiated Marxist

socialism from liberalism was the use of economic and

historical research for the theoretical analysis of

(capitalist) society. Marxist socialists set out to arrive

at generalizations “not by mere speculations, but by

observing the phenomena of the material world”43. They used

both the deductive and the inductive methods in science to

guide their political action. Marx and Engels emphasized the

fact that their writings were scientific and did not simply

derive from moral principles. They insisted on the need for

an empirically based theory that would serve the cause of

socialism44. Their purpose was to go beyond their

43 Joseph DIETZGEN, “Scientific Socialism”, in Philosophical Essays, 1917,available online atwww.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/works/1870s/scientific-socialism.htm 44 Stephen HOBDEN & Richard Wyn JONES, “Marxist theories ofinternational relations”, in S. SMITH & J. BAYLIS, The Globalization of WorldPolitics, op. cit., p. 230; Eric HOBSBAWM, “Preface”, in G. HAUPT, Aspects ofInternational Socialism, op. cit., p. xii-xiii; G. HAUPT, “From Marx toMarxism”, op. cit., p. 10; K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the CommunistParty, op. cit., p. 22.

20

philosophical godfathers’ speculative approach to freedom

and justice. According to historical materialism, the

achievement of freedom and justice depended on material

conditions, foremost among which was the mode of production.

Under the conditions of capitalism, human emancipation had

to be viewed as something that would result from a

revolutionary class struggle for the abolition of private

property and wage labour45.

Liberal thinking differed from the Marxist school of

thought in its normative approach to social analysis. It

prescribed a set of standards that individuals and rulers

ought to follow in order to avoid conflict at home and

abroad. It emphasized the moral and ethical obligations that

the state and its citizens needed to comply with if their

relationship was to be a rational and peaceful one. The

government was to enforce a set of laws that would guarantee

the basic rights of its citizens, and which for progressive

liberals included, where labour was concerned, the right of

association. In 1824, the prohibition of labour combinations

in Great Britain was repealed. William Gladstone – liberal

statesman and four times British prime minister in the

second half of the nineteenth century – justified the

protection of trade unions on the grounds of equality

For a critical overview of the relationship between Marx (and hisscientific socialism) and the working class (or as the author definesit, “a Marxist biography of Marx”), see: Marcel VAN DER LINDEN, “Over degrenzen van het wetenschappelijke socialisme”, in Marcel VAN DER LINDEN& Ronald COMMERS, Marx en het “wetenschappelijke” socialisme, Antwerpen,Uitgeverij Leon Lesoil, 1982, p. 7-53.45 J. DIETZGEN, “Scientific Socialism”, op. cit. (p. 4, 5 in internetversion); H. MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 260-261, 291-292; K.MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 3.

21

between workers and employers46. Other liberal thinkers from

the Continent reasoned in a similar way. The German Lujo

Brentano, for example, defended the legal protection of

workers and their organizations on the grounds that they

were an indispensable condition for the development of

labour. Moreover these organizations, according to Brentano,

could function perfectly well without the formation of a

new, socialist society47.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called

‘new’, ‘social’ or ‘progressive’ liberals also began to

promote the use of scientific methods – such as the

quantification of prices and wages, demographic data, etc. –

for the analysis of society in general and of social issues

in particular. They did not reject the ethical approach to

society, however, but, as Michael Freeden puts it, linked

“the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’”48. This shift in the liberal

46 S. HOFFMANN, “The crisis of liberal internationalism”, op. cit. (p. 2 ininternet version); M.A. RIFF, Dictionary of Modern Political Ideologies, op. cit., p.145; J.S. MILL, On Liberty & Considerations, op. cit., p. 66-67; J.S. MILL,Utilitarianism, op. cit., p. 79-80, 90; M.W. ZACHER & R.A. MATTHEW, “LiberalInternational Theory”, op. cit., p. 111-112; Hans Joachim STÖRIG,Geschiedenis van de filosofie. De wijsbegeerte in de 19e en 20e eeuw: idealisme, positivisme,materialisme, marxisme, fenomenologie, existentialisme, Utrecht/Antwerpen, HetSpectrum, 1979, p. 56-58; Andrew FIALA, “Terrorism and the Philosophy ofHistory : Liberalism, Realism and the Supreme Emergency Exemption”, inEssays in Philosophy, vol. 3, 2002 (p. 2), available online atwww.humboldt.edu/~essays/fiala.html47 According to Lujo BRENTANO, La Question Ouvrière, Paris, Librairie H. LeSoudier, 1885, p. 4, 5, 115-116, 228, there could be no progress in asocialist society, for it challenged the two main conditions forprogress: property and the right of inheritance. “Sans propriété et sansdroit d’héritage, par conséquent sans inégalités sociales, le progrèsdans la civilisation est impossible.” 48 Michael FREEDEN, The New Liberalism. An Ideology of Social Reform, Oxford,Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 8; 6-10; Stefan Paul DUDINK, Deugdzaamliberalisme: sociaal liberalisme in Nederland 1870-1901, Amsterdam, InternationalInstitute of Social History, 1997, p. 260.

22

tradition had important consequences for the working class

and the (international) working-class movement, which I will

demonstrate later in this text.

Promotion of domestic and international institutions

According to Marxists, the class analysis of the world

capitalist economy required the universal association of

workers as a means to achieve social emancipation and peace.

It was this early call for international organization that

differentiated Marxist socialists from liberals. The

forerunners of the First International were organized

internationally between the 1830s and the 1850s, while no

national labour organizations in Europe and the American

continent were founded before the end of the 1860s49. In

1836, the Working Men’s Association (WMA) was formed in

London; its manifestos were addressed to the working classes

(though they appealed mainly to skilled craftsmen, rather

than unskilled factory workers) in different European

countries, stressing the need “to unite to teach our

brethren a knowledge [sic] of their rights and duties”50.

Workers from different European countries addressed each

other to express their solidarity and emphasize their common

49 E.g.: the Trades Union Congress, 1868; the Canadian Labour Union,1873; the American Federation of Labor, 1886; the German GeneralCommission of Trade Unions, 1890; the Belgian Commission syndicale and theSwedish Trade Union Confederation, 1898; the Argentinian Workers’Federation, 1901. 50 “The Working Men’s Association to the Working Classes of Europe, andespecially to the Polish People”, quoted in Arthur LEHNING, FromBuonarroti to Bakunin. Studies in International Socialism, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1970,p. 306.

23

struggle. Journals, pamphlets and manifestos circulated

throughout Europe, promoting the international organization

of workers and the international regulation of labour

issues. This contributed to the foundation, in the following

years, of various international workers’ societies such as –

among others – the Arbeiterbildungsverein (Association for the

Education of Working Men), the Brussels-based Association

démocratique (Democratic Association) and the London-based

Democratic Friends of All Nations, Fraternal Democrats, and

International Association51.

Whereas Marxist socialists envisaged the organization of

workers as being an international movement from the start,

the leading liberal thinkers of the time focused mainly on

the development of domestic institutions. A legal framework

was needed to protect individuals from tyranny and despotic

rule. The right to participate in public life and to

introduce legal regulations would guarantee liberty, justice

and order at home. The same principles ought to apply at the

international level: individual states, as much as

individuals within a given state, needed to be protected

from other, bellicose states52. The ‘domestic analogy’ was

therefore crucial to the liberal school of thought.

Furthermore, in the promotion of internationalist values,

liberals tended to emphasize the significance of particular51 Christine LATTEK, “The beginnings of socialist internationalism inthe 1840s: the ‘Democratic Friends of all Nations’ in London”, in F. VANHOLTHOON & M. VAN DER LINDEN, Internationalism in the Labour Movement, op. cit., p.259-261; E. HOBSBAWM, “Working-class internationalism”, op. cit., p. 10; A.LEHNING, From Buonarroti to Bakunin, op. cit., p. 151-168; M. VAN DER LINDEN,“The First International”, op. cit., p. 14. 52 I. KANT, Perpetual Peace, op. cit., p. 120-125, 128; J.S. MILL, On Liberty &Considerations, op. cit., p. 1-5.

24

nations (often France or Great Britain) as models of

emancipation and progress, whereas, where the realization of

their emancipatory ideals was concerned, Marxist socialists

viewed the national level as being subordinate to the

international.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal thinkers were,

like socialists, strong advocates of ‘international

brotherhood’, and actively promoted the organization of

international meetings to further universal peace. In the

second half of the nineteenth century, a series of

conferences and congresses was organized for the promotion

of international law, free trade and disarmament as a means

to achieve peace. But liberals relied on the spontaneous

pacifying power of trade and democracy and regarded the

establishment of permanent international organizations as

unnecessary. Kantian liberals, in particular, believed in

the ability of liberal republics to achieve universal peace

through regulation; likewise, the followers of Bentham and

Mill regarded international law as a necessary tool for

successful co-operation among states. Several nineteenth-

century (secular and religious) peace societies in Europe

and the American continent were strongly influenced by the

ideas of Bentham and Mill which favoured arbitration between

nations53.

53 Jules BARNI, Manuel Républicain, Paris, Librairie Germer Baillière, 1872,p. 116-117; J. BENTHAM, Plan for An Universal and Perpetual Peace, op. cit., p. 26;S. HAZAREESINGH, “Neo-Kantian Moralist and Activist”, op. cit., p. 251-256;F.H. HINSLEY, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, op. cit., p. 92-94, 97-98, 101-103,117-121.

25

Particularly from the second half of the nineteenth

century onwards, liberal statesmen, jurists and

intellectuals displayed a growing interest in international

problems and in the codification of international law for

settling disputes among nations without recourse to war.

These developments stimulated those (liberal and socialist

thinkers) who argued for the international regulation of

labour matters as a category of international law. There

were also liberal arguments for some kind of system of

collective security, such as those promoted by the Belgian

economist Gustave de Molinari and the Swiss jurist and

political scientist Johann Kaspar Bluntschli54. But their

ideas remained marginal among nineteenth-century liberals.

Class struggle vs capital-labour co-operation

‘Struggle’ characterizes the Marxist socialist and ‘co-

operation’ the liberal view of the relationship between

capital and labour. According to Marxists, capitalist

society had reduced class antagonisms, which existed since

the beginning of history, to the camps of the bourgeoisie

and the proletariat. The capitalist class owned the means of

production (i.e., all the elements in the production

process: raw materials, machines and labour force) and used

the surplus value from the employment of labour power to

54 T. DUNNE, “Liberalism”, op. cit., p. 189; F.H. HINSLEY, Power and the Pursuitof Peace, op. cit., p. 133-135; S. HOFFMANN, “The crisis of liberalinternationalism”, op. cit. (p. 2 in internet version); I. KANT, PerpetualPeace, op. cit., p. 136; ILO Bureau for Workers’ Activities, “InternationalLabour Law”, available online atwww.itcilo.it/english/actrav/telearn/global/ilo/law/lablaw.htm

26

accumulate or expand their capital. Workers, on the other

hand, having no property of their own, were forced to sell

their labour to the capitalist employers in order to

survive. Competition among workers allowed the bourgeoisie

to keep wages at a low level. This relationship between

employers and workers had to be defined as antagonistic

because it could not be resolved within the capitalist

society. The two classes necessarily defended opposing

interests within the existing mode of production: whereas

the bourgeoisie tried to maintain its hegemonic position

through capital accumulation, the proletariat had an

interest in altering the status quo for the betterment of

its working and living conditions55.

The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist labour

organizations defined their objectives within this class

analysis of society. The First and Second Internationals and

the more radical members of international trade-union

organizations such as the IFTU envisaged a dual

confrontation: a short-term struggle for higher wages and

the legal enactment of the eight-hour working day, and a

long-term struggle for the establishment of a new kind of

society. Marxist socialists supported the codification of

(international) labour regulations, but only as an “interim

measure”56 which was no substitute for the final objective55 Rodrigo BORJA, “Lucha de clases”, in R. BORJA, Enciclopedia de la política,op. cit., p. 599; John A. MOSES, Trade Union Theory from Marx to Walesa, NewYork/Oxford/Munich, Berg, 1990, p. 8, 16-17; K. MARX & F. ENGELS, TheManifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit., p. 3-4.56 This, according to K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party,op. cit., p. 18, could not be otherwise, for all laws and institutions ofthe prevailing society were instruments of the ruling class. “Law,morality, religion, are to him [the proletarian] so many bourgeois

27

of creating a communist society, where all forms of wage

labour would be abolished. Their organizations dealt, in

other words, with economic as much as with political

questions, and insisted on the importance of the

international dimension of this struggle57. Indeed, as Lex

Heerma van Voss notes, the internationality of the eight-

hour demand was necessary to prevent employers from using

“the important argument that foreign competition worked

longer hours”58.

Liberals, on the contrary, saw no antagonism in the

capital-labour relationship and did not view modern society

in terms of class. The employer-worker relationship was

defined as both a legal relationship, based on equality, and

a social relationship, which could include inequality.

Classical (laissez-faire) liberals viewed the existence of

economic inequality as an incentive to perfect human

development and as a result of free competition; while

other, more social-minded liberals emphasized the fact that

inequality also arose from unequal bargaining positions due

to deficiencies in the provision of basic necessities (such

prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeoisinterests.” 57 Knud KNUDSEN, “The strike history of the First International”, in F.VAN HOLTHOON & M. VAN DER LINDEN, Internationalism in the Labour Movement, op.cit., p. 309, 320-321; Frederick ENGELS, “Preface to the German editionof 1890”, in K. MARX & F. ENGELS, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit.,p. 75; H. MARCUSE, Reason and Revolution, op. cit., p. 292; Markku RUOTSILA,“The Great Charter for the Liberty of the Workingman: Labour, Liberalsand the Creation of the ILO”, in Labour History Review, vol. 67, 2002, nr.1, p. 34.58 Lex Heerma VAN VOSS, “The International Federation of Trade Unionsand the attempt to maintain the eight-hour working day (1919-1929)”, inF. VAN HOLTHOON & M. VAN DER LINDEN, Internationalism in the Labour Movement,op. cit., p. 518-519.

28

as education, medical care, adequate housing and decent

working conditions). Progressive liberal thinkers thus

viewed social ills largely as imperfections of the system.

And an imperfect system, like all situations deriving from

human action, was perfectible59.

Liberals at the turn of the century became increasingly

preoccupied with the ‘social question’ and were committed

(on moral and economic grounds) to finding solutions to it

within the existing industrial society. They reasoned that

the welfare of all individuals in society was a guarantee of

achieving the goals prized by liberal thought: liberty,

equality, brotherhood and progress. Unlike earlier liberal

thinkers, who had wished to avoid too interventionist a

state, they accorded the government a key role in the

provision of basic services and the redistribution of

wealth. Gradual social reform would improve the material and

intellectual condition of underprivileged citizens, and this

in turn would stimulate them to co-operate with the state

and with their employers for the positive development of the

economy and of liberal democracy. The implementation of

social policy might then contribute to the integration of

labour in society. Appropriate social reforms – safeguarded

through legislation and financed by taxation – were, in

other words, viewed as a useful instrument for achieving two

(preventative and/or humanitarian) goals: on the one hand,

the avoidance of (violent) social uprisings and advancement

of radical socialism, and on the other, the betterment of

the working and living conditions of the working population.59 L. BRENTANO, La Question Ouvrière, op. cit., p. 4-5, 115-116, 146-147, 300.

29

Moreover these measures would not be detrimental to

industry: on the contrary, they would benefit and motivate

workers and, in the long run, would be profitable for

employers60.

Co-operation was a central theme in John Hobson’s

liberal theory. Human (material and moral) welfare and peace

would be brought about through capital-labour co-operation

which, according to Hobson, was the creator of surplus

value. This contrasted with the Marxist view of labour as

the only producer of surplus value. “Organized co-

operation”, co-ordinated by the state in order to mitigate

the social ills of industrial society, would maximize this

surplus which would, in turn, make possible the investment

in social services needed for individual development.

Adopting the evolutionary approach of earlier liberal

thinkers, Hobson and his followers thought that the forms of

national and international co-operation would increase,

prefiguring the post-war functional (institutionalist)

approach to international relations61.

60 Ibid, p. 167-171; David LONG, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism. TheInternational Theory of J.A. Hobson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996,p. 29, 47, 132, 135; Guido RUGGIERO, The History of European Liberalism, London,Beacon Press, 1959, p. 267; Marcel VAN DER LINDEN, “The NationalIntegration of European Working Classes (1871-1914): Exploring theCausal Configuration”, in M. VAN DER LINDEN, Transnational Labour History, op.cit., p. 37-38; Guy VANTHEMSCHE, “Les mutualités et la protection socialeen Belgique (milieu du XIXe-fin du XXe siècle)”, Revue européenne d’histoiresociale, vol. 16, 2005, nr. 4, p. 21-22; M. FREEDEN, The New Liberalism, op.cit., p. 4, 14-15, 52-55, 118, 128-130; S.P. DUDINK, Deugdzaam liberalisme,op. cit., p. 10-13, 41-44, 90-92, 257-260, 265-266; J.S. MILL, Utilitarianism,op. cit., p. 15, 21, 23-24, 66-67; M.W. ZACHER & R.A. MATTHEW, “LiberalInternational Theory”, op. cit., p. 111-112.61 D. LONG, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism, op. cit., p. 28-34, 172; M.W.ZACHER & R.A. MATTHEW, “Liberal International Theory”, op. cit., p. 117.

30

The logic applied to the national level was projected

onto the international realm (cf. ‘domestic analogy’):

industrial conciliation was required in every modern nation,

for “national legislation on labour matters could not be

solidly established in individual countries if it was not

supported by parallel standards adopted internationally”62.

In fact, the calls for national and international labour law

appeared almost simultaneously. From the beginning of the

nineteenth century onwards, a number of progressive

intellectuals, civil servants, political and trade-union

leaders and employers tried to promote the idea of

regulating labour matters internationally. Domestic law

would serve as a model for international law. No concrete

efforts were made to develop international labour

regulations, however, until the second half of the

nineteenth century, when first private associations and

later government institutions began to introduce

standards63. Up until the First World War, the arguments

used for the promotion of international labour standards

were primarily of a humanitarian and economic nature. The

great hardship caused by industrial development had led to a

growing awareness of the plight of workers and the acute

need for social reform. Two main economic arguments (linked

to humanitarian concerns) prompted industrialists and

statesmen to call for the implementation of national and

international labour legislation: first was their concern

62 N. VALTICOS, International Labour Law, Deventer, Kluwer, 1979, p. 17.63 Jasmien VAN DAELE, “Engineering Social Peace: Networks, Ideas and theFoundation of the International Labour Organization”, in InternationalReview of Social History, vol. 50, 2005, nr. 3, p. 435-466.

31

about unfair international competition (cheap labour), and

secondly, the deteriorating physical condition of the

working population, which could affect industrial

production64.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century,

international (labour) law won the support of reformist and

revisionist political and trade-union leaders within the

Second International. Their position, however, contrasted

with the more radical voices within the socialist movement.

For Marxist socialists, institutions and laws in all class

societies were primarily instruments of the ruling class.

But they did support the introduction of labour regulation,

because it could be used to improve the immediate material

conditions of the working class, strengthen the working-

class movement and increase the possibility of a more

radical transformation of society. Forms of “bourgeois

legality”, as Lenin put it, had only limited value in

serving the purpose of socialism65.

Socialist revolution vs liberal democracy

64 Ibid, p. 20-21; D. LONG, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism, op. cit., p. 177;Jean-Michel SERVAIS, International Labour Law, The Hague, Kluwer LawInternational, 2005, p. 21. 65 Vladimir LENIN, “The position and tasks of the SocialistInternational”, in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 117; Bill KEACH,“International law: Illusion and reality”, in International Socialist Review,2003, Issue 23, p. 8-9, available online atwww.isreview.org/issues/27/international_law.shtmlFor a Marxist approach to current international relations andinternational law in particular, see: B.S. CHIMNI, Marxism and InternationalLaw: A Contemporary Analysis, New Delhi, Centre for Studies in Diplomacy,International Law and Economics – Jawaharlal Nehru University, n.d., 11p., available online at www.swaraj.org/multiversity/chimni_law.htm

32

As mentioned earlier, the concept of co-operation played a

key role in the general liberal approach to domestic and

international issues. It was the nature and strength of co-

operation, however, that marked the difference between

classical and new liberals, for “cooperation can include an

acceptance of moral norms, adherence to international law,

or collaboration through international organizations”66. The

liberal school of thought is itself an example of the

evolutionary approach applied by liberal thinkers to all

aspects of society: liberal thought evolved from advocacy of

the spread of reason, ethical values, rights and

obligations, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to

calls for free trade, disarmament and national and

international regulation during the eighteenth and

nineteenth, and calls for increased (albeit controlled)

state intervention, and the establishment of international

organizations, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of

the twentieth centuries. These different approaches to co-

operation complemented rather than contradicted each other.

In this sense, liberal thinkers secured continuity in the

liberal tradition, despite the different emphasis laid on

this or that form of collaboration.

The many networks of progressive industrialists,

intellectuals and political and trade-union leaders formed

in Europe and the United States in the second half of the

nineteenth century, for the promotion of international

(labour) law, heralded the further development and

66 M.W. ZACHER & R.A. MATTHEW, “Liberal International Theory”, op. cit., p.117.

33

strengthening of liberal internationalist thought. The

growing tension within and between industrial societies at

the end of the nineteenth century intensified the feeling –

among both private and governmental and diplomatic circles –

that appeals for international law alone were “dangerously

vague”, and that practical forms of international co-

operation were required in order to establish lasting peace.

Some internationalists, in other words, were more and more

inclined to think that neither arbitration nor increased

commercial activity were enough to achieve the desirable

domestic and international (social) peace. Progressive

intellectuals, statesmen and industrialists who envisaged

the establishment of an international organization (whether

in a federal or a confederal form) therefore became more

numerous at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the

twentieth centuries67.

Of particular importance to the working class were two

international conferences which were held in 1897 on

international labour legislation and the possible creation

of an international labour office: one in Zurich, attended

by socialist and catholic workers’ representatives, and the

other in Brussels, attended by intellectuals, business

representatives and public officials. The latter paved the

way for the establishment of the Basle-based International

Association for Labour Legislation (IALL), in 1900. The

IALL’s main task – the organization of an international

labour agency for the study and publicizing of labour issues

67 Ibid, p. 115; F.H. HINSLEY, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, op. cit., p. 127-128,138-141.

34

– reflected the shift in the liberal tradition from calls

for the establishment of international social policy to

calls for institutionalized forms of international co-

operation. Scientific knowledge as such, and the demands for

the introduction of international labour law as a new

scientific discipline in the academic world, represented a

strong functional tool in the struggle for the

implementation of social reforms. Increased governmental

assistance was also reflected in the functioning of the

IALL: although the association was established as a private

initiative, it received technical and financial support from

various European states68.

The same period (latter part of the nineteenth and beginning

of the twentieth centuries) witnessed the bifurcation of the

Marxist-socialist movement. The Second International

discussed two opposing strategies: a moderate trend,

represented by (reformist and revisionist) political and

trade-union leaders who were increasingly committed to the

gradual legislative reform of the capitalist system and to

co-operation with progressive elements within the national

parliaments and governments, and a radical (Marxist) trend

striving for the revolutionary overthrow of ‘bourgeois

democracy’ and its replacement by socialism69. The rift

between the two trends within the Second International was

reflected in their attitudes towards the introduction of

national labour regulations. Certainly, when the first

68 M. RUOTSILA, “The Great Charter for the Liberty of the Workingman”,op. cit., p. 30; J-M. SERVAIS, International Labour Law, op. cit., p. 23; J. VANDAELE, “Engineering Social Peace”, op. cit., p. 443-444, 446-448.69 L. VOGEL, Marxism and the Oppression of Women, op. cit., p. 106.

35

social laws were passed in the final decades of the

nineteenth century, a general feeling of mistrust prevailed

among workers. As Marcel van der Linden notes, “in all

countries there was a deep-rooted working-class suspicion

against the new form of state intervention”70. And, despite

their interest in the creation of an international labour

office (cf. Zurich conference of 1897), “the great trade-

union organizations, with the exception of the British trade

unions, which sent a delegate from time to time, held aloof

from the Association [IALL]”71. Yet it was in particular the

radical socialists such as Lenin, Trotsky, Karl Liebknecht

and Rosa Luxemburg who became increasingly wary of social

laws for better wages, the reduction of the working day/week

and other benefits, viewing them as instruments in the hands

of the capitalists – in Lenin’s words, to “bribe” the

working class72.

The outbreak of the First World War led to the

radicalization of Marxist-socialist and liberal

70 M. VAN DER LINDEN, “The National Integration of European WorkingClasses”, op. cit., p. 38.71 Ernest MAHAIM, “The Historical and Social Importance of InternationalLabor Legislation”, in James T. SHOTWELL, ed., The Origins of the InternationalLabor Organization, New York, Columbia University Press, 1934, p. 8.The Belgian jurist and sociologist Ernest Mahaim was one of thestrongest advocates of international labour law and one of the leadingfigures in the IALL. For a comprehensive analysis of the role played by‘epistemic communities’ (IALL) and political networks (SecondInternational) in the institutionalization of international socialpolicy, see: J. VAN DAELE, “Engineering Social Peace”, op. cit., p. 435-466. 72 R.A. FLETCHER, “Cobden as Educator”, op. cit., p. 572-573; E. HOBSBAWM,“Preface”, op. cit., p. xiv; V. LENIN, “The position and tasks of theSocialist International”, op. cit., p. 116-117, 121; Vladimir LENIN, “Thetasks of the proletariat in our revolution”, in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit.,p. 145-147; Karl LIEBKNECHT, “The International will embrace the wholeof humanity”, in Marxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 287.

36

internationalists. Marxists – foremost among them the

leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Spartacus League –

were strongly opposed to the “imperialist war”, and called

on workers and soldiers to “turn their guns against their

own governments”. The “war of the nations” needed to be

turned “into civil war”, “for the triumph of socialism”73,

because only revolutionary struggle was capable of bringing

about lasting peace. The Russian revolution of 1917 gave a

much-needed boost to the Marxist-socialist movement, which

had felt intensely disillusioned with the position taken by

most European socialist parties in 1914, when they sided

with their governments and “threw themselves into the mutual

carnage of their peoples”74. On the one hand these events

strengthened the radical-left parties, but on the other they

intensified their disagreement with the more moderate

socialist parties in Western Europe. For Lenin,

collaboration with bourgeois governments and parties was

“social treason”. The social-democratic parties and workers’

organizations, in their turn, became more steadily anti-

revolutionary and more firmly in favour of the

implementation of socio-economic reforms using legal

methods, a position that drove them closer to the new

liberals75.73 V. LENIN, “The position and tasks of the Socialist International”, op.cit., p. 120-122; V. LENIN, “The tasks of the proletariat in ourrevolution”, op. cit., p. 147.See also Ralph Darlington’s and Wayne Thorpe’s contributions to thisissue. 74 P. ANDERSON, “Internationalism: A Breviary”, op. cit. (p. 6 in internetversion). 75 Vladimir LENIN, “Letter to the workers of Europe and America”, inMarxism-Leninism, op. cit., p. 163-165; M. RUOTSILA, “The Great Charter forthe Liberty of the Workingman”, op. cit., p. 36.

37

The war also contributed to the advancement of new

arguments for the establishment of an international set of

rules. The nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century calls for

international law were grounded primarily in political

arguments for the protection of the interests of individual

states in the international realm. International labour law,

on the other hand, was called for on humanitarian and

economic grounds, to protect workers from the degradation of

industrial life, which could endanger labour productivity.

The implementation of universal labour standards was also

meant to protect employers from unfair international

competition. The deteriorating relationships between the

Great Powers prompted the prescription of standards of

conduct in the security sphere, through international law,

which would serve the purpose not only of ending armed

conflicts but also, and more importantly, of preserving

peace. Universal peace, according to Woodrow Wilson, needed

to be organized. A political (preventative) motive was

likewise advanced during the second decade of the twentieth

century by those liberal internationalists who favoured the

formalization of international labour law: the consolidation

of peace. Social and industrial injustice would spark

violent uprisings and jeopardize the plan for universal and

lasting peace. Measures to further social justice – which

was “in its own right, an objective of international labour

law”76 – would strengthen liberal democratic regimes, which,

76 N. VALTICOS, International Labour Law, op. cit., p. 23.Indeed, E. MAHAIM, “The Historical and Social Importance ofInternational Labor Legislation”, op. cit., p. 5, emphasized that“humanitarian ideals are given precedence over considerations of

38

according to Kantian liberals, exercise peaceful restraint

on each other. It goes without saying that this political

argument was of particular importance after the events of

1917 in Russia77.

From this it followed that international organizations were

viewed as a necessity for promoting and guaranteeing the

observance of future standards of conduct, and for the first

time in history concrete plans were made for the

construction of a strong collective security system. Such

international organizations were intended to preserve or

promote liberal values (peace, liberty, the rule of law) and

institutions (constitutional governments, democratic

parliaments, arbitration courts, welfare services) which

were destroyed during the war years, or which had not yet

been implemented78. Following the ‘domestic analogy’,

economic profit”. 77 M.W. DOYLE, Ways of War and Peace, op. cit., p. 253-257; F.H. HINSLEY, Powerand the Pursuit of Peace, op. cit., p. 139; M. RUOTSILA, “The Great Charter forthe Liberty of the Workingman”, op. cit., p. 37, 41-42; W. WILSON, Speech17 Jan. 1917, op. cit., p. 105.78 Steven L. LAMY, “Contemporary mainstream approaches: neo-realism andneo-liberalism”, in S. SMITH & J. BAYLIS, The Globalization of World Politics, op.cit., p. 207, 220-221, treats neo-realism and neo-liberalism as directheirs of the realist and liberal schools of thought. Borrowing fromRobert Cox’s analysis of “world order”, he describes these approaches as“problem-solving theories” (in stark contrast to Marxist “criticaltheory”) or “system maintainer theories” (contrary to those thatchallenge the prevailing order), which therefore “represent status-quoperspectives”. I see some truth in this description when it applies to the post-WWIIneo-liberal approach to world politics. In my view, the earlier liberalvision of international relations cannot, however, be so described.Late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal republicans who foughtin the wars of independence on the European and American continents werecertainly revolutionary, and even dreamed of founding communities thatwent beyond national borders (e.g. Simón Bolívar’s Gran Colombia). Late-nineteenth- and (pre-WWI) twentieth-century liberal internationalistsenvisioned a world order that was indeed not as revolutionary as theMarxist approach but which, seen in the context of the prevailing

39

liberal thinkers and statesmen arrived at the conclusion

that “just as peace had to be enforced in domestic society,

the international domain had to have a system of

regulation”79. Also, a large majority of the organized

workers of the allied and neutral countries insisted on

their right to play a substantive role in the peace talks,

in recognition of their contribution to victory in the war

(both on the battlefield and in industry). This trade-union

attitude contrasted with its pre-WWI wariness vis-à-vis the

IALL: during the war years, most European and North American

trade unions were determined to collaborate actively in the

creation of organizations to regulate international

political, military and labour matters. The rapprochement

during the war years between the liberal and social-

democratic elites, the working class and employers led to

the foundation in 1919 of the League of Nations and the

International Labour Organization80.

societies, did imply a radical transformation of the national andinternational environments, and thus a transformation of the status quo,in order to achieve higher goals. Theirs was, then, a normativeapproach, and certainly more than a problem-solving theory. This is alsothe reason why these thinkers were named ‘Idealists’. 79 T. DUNNE, “Liberalism”, op. cit., p. 191.80 E. MAHAIM, “The Historical and Social Importance of InternationalLabor Legislation”, op. cit., p. 17-18; M. RUOTSILA, “The Great Charter forthe Liberty of the Workingman”, op. cit., p. 33; M.W. ZACHER & R.A.MATTHEW, “Liberal International Theory”, op. cit., p. 115; “ILO History”,available online at www.ilo.org/public/english/about/history.htmIn his analysis of the process leading to the foundation of the ILO,Reiner TOSSTORFF, “The International Trade-Union Movement and theFounding of the International Labour Organization”, in International Reviewof Social History, vol. 50, 2005, nr. 3, p. 400, emphasizes the role playedin it by the international labour movement, and describes the WesternEuropean and North American trade unions gathered in the IFTU as “thereal driving force that pressured governments to include a social-policyprogramme in the peace treaty after the war”.

40

These developments met with strong opposition from the ranks

of radical Marxist socialists who backed the Russian

Revolution and the regime that emerged from this uprising,

the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). For Trotsky,

the League of Nations and its various bodies were a mere

“combination of imperialists”, which “deceive the workers

with slogans like ‘collective security’ and ‘disarmament’”.

Even worse, according to Trotsky, was the fact that “the

strangulation of the class struggle” could only be ensured

“with the mediation of the leaders of the mass workers’

organizations”81. For the German revolutionary Karl

Liebknecht, “neither Lloyd George nor Poincaré, neither

Sonnino, nor Wilson, nor Erzberger, nor Scheidemann [had]

the right to conclude peace”82. Revolutionary Marxists were

convinced that no lasting compromise was possible with the

prevailing political and economic elites, and that

international socialist revolution alone would be capable of

achieving peace.

While not attempting to underestimate the role played by the tradeunions in this process, I am (following the findings of Markku Ruotsilaand Jasmien Van Daele, mentioned elsewhere in this text) more inclinedto believe that the ILO would not have come about had it not been forthe co-operation between liberal and social-democratic thinkers andactivists and the support of the political elites of the time. 81 L. TROTSKY, The Revolution Betrayed, op. cit., p. 198, 201. The sharp criticism of the League of Nations and the ILO by Marxistsocialists was not unique: criticism and disappointment were widespread,including among their liberal and social-democratic co-founders. Thedifference lay in the instrumentalist perception of these organizations,as Marxists viewed them, from the start, as tools of the capitalistclass. 82 K. LIEBKNECHT, “The International will embrace the whole ofhumanity”, op. cit., p. 289.

41

Conclusion

Early Marxist-socialist and liberal internationalism had far

more in common than is generally acknowledged. They not only

shared a number of Enlightenment principles, but actually

influenced each other’s development. The two ideologies were

strongly interconnected: Marxist socialism would not have

made its appearance without the development of liberalism,

“which includes capitalism as its economic base”83, and

(social) liberalism would not have distanced itself from its

radical atomistic approach had it not been for the socialist

challenge84.

These ideologies did not emerge in a vacuum: the radical

political and socio-economic transformations in modern

society stimulated the work of those thinkers who attempted

to theorize these changes. The birth of nation-states, the

rise of industry and the internationalization of trade led

to the advancement of internationalist views among thinkers

who would later be differentiated as liberals and Marxist

socialists. Both schools of thought viewed internationalism

as an ideal of the future and as a necessity. They also

started out from the assumption that the national political

and socio-economic environment needed to be altered –

83 Leon P. BARADAT, Political Ideologies. Their Origins and Impact, New Jersey,Pearson, 2006, p. 81.84 Many socialist thinkers and activists were originally members ofliberal organizations, but to regard Marxist socialism as a radical formof liberalism, as some commentators suggest, is, in my view, a boldstatement that calls for a much deeper analysis of the two schools ofthought than we can provide in this paper.

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moderately and gradually for liberals, radically for

Marxists socialists – in order to achieve a greater goal.

The main point of divergence between Marxists and liberals

was the role they assigned to the working class and the

working-class movement, at both national and international

level. For Marxist socialists, the capital-labour

relationship was antagonistic. They strove for an

egalitarian (i.e. classless) community which would come into

being after the abolition of private property and wage

labour. This revolution would be brought about by means of

the national and international struggle of organized

workers. Thus, to complete a quotation from Marx used in the

first section of this article: “The head of this

emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat”85.

Liberalism, on the other hand, was a vision of future

harmony. After the period of unrestricted competition and

minimal state intervention (laissez-faire liberalism),

progressive liberal thinkers and statesmen insisted on the

introduction of political and social reforms “to make

citizens out of workers”86. Employers and workers would then

see each other not as rivals, but rather as partners in the

market economy and as members of society having equal rights

and obligations. For liberals, it was a matter not of

creating equality but of creating equal opportunities for

all individuals. Liberalism contemplated a society that

rewarded its citizens according to their work, not according

to their needs (Marxist socialism also aimed at the creation85 K. MARX, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, op. cit. (p. 11 in internetversion).86 S.P. DUDINK, Deugdzaam liberalisme, op. cit., p. 30.

43

of a classless meritocracy, but its final goal was the

establishment of a communist society which would reward each

of its members according to their needs). At the

international level this meant “equality of opportunity for

commerce, for investment of capital, and for participation

in the development of the world’s resources”87 which would

guarantee progress and peace among nations. National

governments, international organizations, workers and

employers would have to collaborate actively in order to

safeguard the rights and interests of citizens and

individual states.

Mutual influence between Marxist socialists and

liberals was particularly strong in the latter part of the

nineteenth century. Liberals adopted certain views and

methods which were also favoured by Marxists – for example,

attention to the ‘social problem’, the use of scientific

research for analysing society, and the establishment of

international organizations. By the same token, Marxist

socialists supported political and social reforms that had

originally been promoted by progressive liberal thinkers

(mainly economists) and politicians, such as, for instance,

the introduction of national and international labour

legislation for the amelioration of working and living

conditions. But their goals were diametrically opposed:

revolutionary for Marxists and reformist for liberals. This

development contributed to the rift between radical and

moderate members within the socialist movement, and to the87 John A. HOBSON, The Morals of Economic Internationalism, New York, Houghton,1920, p. 67, quoted in D. LONG, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism, op. cit.,p. 135.

44

advancement of revisionism. In addition, it contributed to

the rapprochement between progressive liberals and moderate

socialists, as the former sought co-operation with moderate

members of the labour movement, and the latter with

progressive members of the bourgeoisie.

This development also sheds some light on the

internationalist position of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-

century social-democratic leaders. As mentioned in the first

section above, I do not support the argument that makes too

great a distinction between national and international

ideology88. Indeed, both Marxist socialists and liberals

took the national environment as a starting point for their

analysis of society. However, neither Marxist socialists nor

liberals sought to diminish the importance of either level.

On the contrary, for both Marxists and liberals the national

level was the immediate arena of struggle for progress, with

internationalism as the next logical step after the

consolidation of nation-states. As at the end of the Ancien

Régime, during the twentieth century national and

international sentiments complemented one other89. This88 A similar argument is expounded in Kevin CALLAHAN, “‘PerformingInter-Nationalism’ in Stuttgart in 1907: French and German SocialistNationalism and the Political Culture of an International SocialistCongress”, in International Review of Social History, vol. 45, 2000, nr. 1, p. 51-87.And M. BILLIG, Banal nationalism, op. cit., p. 61, shares this opinion:“‘Internationalism’ is not the polar opposite of ‘nationalism’, as if itconstitutes a rival ideological consciousness... An outward-lookingelement of internationalism is part of nationalism and has accompaniedthe rise of nationalism historically”. 89 This statement nuances Perry Anderson’s view, according to which“national and international impulses coexisted without strain” untilmore or less the mid-1800s. After that, the dichotomy betweencapital/national and labour/international ideology grew stronger, andcapsized after 1945: “Nationalism becomes predominantly a popular cause,

45

situation was reflected in the commitment to promote

international institutions, trade and co-operation. The

participation of social democrats such as Emile Vandervelde

in the Belgian government and the Second International was

then perhaps not necessarily proof of “the growing

contradiction between national and international

loyalties”90, but rather a sign of the increased interaction

between liberal and social-democratic ideologies, both of

which view the national and the international levels as “two

sides of the same coin”91.

of exploited and destitute masses […] Internationalism, at the samestroke, starts to change camps – assuming new forms in the ranks ofcapital”. P. ANDERSON, “Internationalism: A Breviary”, op. cit. (p. 7-8 ininternet version).90 J. VAN DAELE, “Engineering Social Peace”, op. cit., p. 441. For an analysis of the national identity of the Belgian Workers’ Partyprior to the First World War, and of its changing attitude to radicalinternationalism, see: Maarten VAN GINDERACHTER, Het rode vaderland. Devergeten geschiedenis van de communautaire spanningen in het Belgische socialisme voor WOI,Tielt, Lannoo, 2005, 494 p. 91 Lester PEARSON, Mike, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, vol. 2,1973, p. 32, quoted in Erika SIMPSON, “The Principles of LiberalInternationalism According to Lester Pearson”, Journal of Canadian Studies,vol. 34, 1999, nr. 1, p. 81.

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