Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation between nations for the benefit of all. Partisans of this movement, such as supporters of the World Federalist Movement, claim that nations should cooperate because their long-term mutual interests are of greater value than their own individual short-term needs.

Internationalism is by nature opposed to National socialism, ultranationalism, jingoism and national chauvinism as well as to strictly economic globalization movements which deny the value of other nations' culture and differences. Internationalism presupposes the recognition of other nations as equal, in spite of all their differences, in total respect of each other's nationalism.

The various trends of internationalism

The left vs right balance

International socialism was one of the original ideals of the communist movement, but internationalism is not restricted to the left. The right-wing desire for economic globalization uses similar notions of economic integration, but with different political goals and a different economic system. More and more, the left speaks of a globalization of solidarities.

The sovereign nations vs supranational powers balance

Internationalism, in the strict meaning of the word, is still based on the existence of sovereign nations. Its aims are to:

• encourage multilateralism (world leadership is not held by any single country),
• create some formal and informal interdependence between countries, with some limited supranational powers given to international organizations controled by those nations via intergovernmental treaties and institutions.

The ideal of many internationalists is to go further towards democratic globalization by creating a World Government. Some seeds of this possible evolution might be seen in certain international organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. However, this ideal is opposed by other internationalists who wish for the harmonious coexistence of many linguistically and culturally distinct human communities. A world citizenship, by eliminating all existing political boundaries, could accelerate the linguistic and cultural unification of large geographical areas, at the expense of the smaller communities. To address this concern, some consider that world federalism would be the appropriate solution.

External links

• Pop Internationalism by Paul Krugman

Other Uses of the Term

In a less restricted sense, internationalism is a word describing the impetus and motivation for the creation of international organizations. By this originally was meant those global organizations other than the more recent trade blocs or even the World Court, the League of Nations, and the United Nations. The earliest such would be the drive to replace feudal systems of measurement with the metric system.

In linguistics, internationalism is a loanword that, originating in one language, has been borrowed by most (ideally all) other languages. Other examples of such borrowings include "OK", "microscope", and "tokamak".