I don’t suspect it is very true for modern socialist parties/ govt’s.
It’s at the forefront of socialists in the USA who are categorically opposed to ‘sweatshop labor’. Take it from Chomsky whose criticism of Mondragon is “it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America.”
Something like Yanis Varoufakis’s Diem25 project for example.
Socialist? It looks like they are just a political movement. Reform the EU to be more democratic. That’s not socialism. Granted I am not familiar with this.
I will also point out that restricting trade to poor nations is not unique to socialists. Under Trump, the US has reinstated sanctions on Cuba on pretty dubious grounds. It does also preferentially trades with countries with govt’s in line with US’s broader national ambitions (for e.g. Saudi Arabia because they listed aramco)
Some of that is political moves which happen under any kind of government and are not about anyone being rich or poor. USSR put an embargo on West Berlin. Cuba used to refuse to buy food from the US because they didn’t want to legitimize the embargo.
Otherwise, capitalist countries also engage in protectionism per se. That hits wealthier countries too. Notice how Trump’s main focus is China which is a middle income country. And there have been trade scuffles with the EU recently. I’m not sure because I haven’t seen anyone really investigate this, but I don’t think it hits the poorest countries very hard, because most industries in these countries are not competitors to US industries.
The anti-globalization thing is an additional phenomenon on top of these things.
This sort of socialism with international aims was abandoned quite early on in the Russian Revolution with Stalin in favour of socialism in one country, marking a significant break with orthodox socialist thought. I say that as a sort of defence against comparisons of international socialist movement to individual socialist states past and present. But it is also a scathing criticism of the international socialist movement that one section of it in Russia (the most successful section) did go the way of nationalism—and inspired a whole swathe of countries like China and Cuba to adopt its nationalistic model.
In this context, it looks like ‘international socialism’ means spreading socialism throughout the entire world. Which is very different from openness to trade.
Socialist states have traded with each other. E.g. the Soviets bought lots of sugar from Cuba and exported energy. They’re not going to think it’s exploitation if the other country is socialist. But if the other state is capitalist then it’s not going to happen. It all depends on the context. Here I’m mainly talking about the US or UK going socialist while the developing world presumably doesn’t change very much.
Co-ordination within a socialist system will be difficult in having to accommodate different perspectives and interests in much the way it is difficult under the current system. But… by definition an international socialist movement is about minimising and compromising on conflicting national/ individual/religious interests/perspectives to a act in the international interest, so I think it would be better at co-ordination. But the point I make is semantics.
It’s one thing to talk about theoretical comparisons but a key issue for the short and medium term (and possibly long term) future is the existence of stable, credible institutions. Liberal capitalist states have a decent framework for international trade and monetary agreements, we have G7 and G20 and so on. If you sweep these norms and institutions aside to build something better, you can face a lot of new problems from the power vacuum. It would take time and work to build things up again.
It’s at the forefront of socialists in the USA who are categorically opposed to ‘sweatshop labor’. Take it from Chomsky whose criticism of Mondragon is “it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America.”
Socialist? It looks like they are just a political movement. Reform the EU to be more democratic. That’s not socialism. Granted I am not familiar with this.
Some of that is political moves which happen under any kind of government and are not about anyone being rich or poor. USSR put an embargo on West Berlin. Cuba used to refuse to buy food from the US because they didn’t want to legitimize the embargo.
Otherwise, capitalist countries also engage in protectionism per se. That hits wealthier countries too. Notice how Trump’s main focus is China which is a middle income country. And there have been trade scuffles with the EU recently. I’m not sure because I haven’t seen anyone really investigate this, but I don’t think it hits the poorest countries very hard, because most industries in these countries are not competitors to US industries.
The anti-globalization thing is an additional phenomenon on top of these things.
In this context, it looks like ‘international socialism’ means spreading socialism throughout the entire world. Which is very different from openness to trade.
Socialist states have traded with each other. E.g. the Soviets bought lots of sugar from Cuba and exported energy. They’re not going to think it’s exploitation if the other country is socialist. But if the other state is capitalist then it’s not going to happen. It all depends on the context. Here I’m mainly talking about the US or UK going socialist while the developing world presumably doesn’t change very much.
It’s one thing to talk about theoretical comparisons but a key issue for the short and medium term (and possibly long term) future is the existence of stable, credible institutions. Liberal capitalist states have a decent framework for international trade and monetary agreements, we have G7 and G20 and so on. If you sweep these norms and institutions aside to build something better, you can face a lot of new problems from the power vacuum. It would take time and work to build things up again.