Mayday roundtable on internationalism

by Fredag Aften

Mayday roundtable on internationalism, May 1st, 4 pm at BCAB, c/o YNKB Baldersgade 70.

Mayday is the International Day of Workers' Struggle, and in the streets we'll all be shouting that "The Struggle for Liberation is International". We think that this old slogan is an apt reminder for contemporary communist and anti-authoritarian perspectives in times of 'ethno-nationalist' genocide and an upsurging movement for international solidarity. So we would like to invite you to join in a roundtable conversation about the meaning of internationalism today.

We have come to understand that "the national question" has not been abolished, as some might have believed, by the installation of a liberal world order at the turn of the century: supremacist nationalisms are no longer simply "on the rise" but have very much become the order of the day, and with them, a framework of national liberation also seems to be returning in a host of different struggles the world over. We are not convinced that these questions can be easily settled by an abstract stance of anti-nationalism. Yet we still insist on a principled rejection of any horizon of emancipation within the boundaries of the nation.

Likewise we feel an urgency of articulating an understanding of the raging "neo-imperialist", or simply colonialist wars of aggression outside any liberal framework that would reduce these to matters of infringement on an international order of national sovereignty. The continuous comparisons being made between the war on Gaza and the invasion of Ukraine seem most often to be ridiculous, yet we struggle to formulate our own positive position on the connections and causes behind these wars and to find a common path of solidarity.

Some of the questions that we see pose themselves are thus:

– What role, if any, do struggles for national liberation have in a revolutionary internationalism? Are all strategic nationalisms necessarily bound up with the goal of establishing a nation-state, or can they be conducive for a wider struggle for international liberation?
– What is left of the insistence on or even hope in the political agency of an international proletariat?
– What similarities and differences, malign or advantageous, do we see between the concept of the nation and that of nativeness or indigeneity?
– With what perspectives can we understand the raging "neo-imperialist", or simply colonialist wars as something else than an infringement on an international order of national sovereignty?
– What kind of "self" do we envision when we involve ourselves in struggles of self-determination against invasion, resource extraction, colonialist usurpation, settlement, and genocide?

We would like to approach these questions through a concrete understanding of existing struggles. To do so, we invite you all to join us in conversation together. You bring your thoughts, and we bring snacks and drinx.

Greetings
Fredag Aften

Location

BCAB - Bogcaféen almindelig brand
Baldersgade 70
2200 København