The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 10 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism Donald Trump’s political agenda has been dictated by the tempo of the dozens of executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations he has signed, challenging international partners abroad, and Congress, the States of the Union, and the bureaucracy at home. The execution of some orders has already been temporarily suspended by federal judges, while the chaos caused by a memorandum led the administration itself to withdraw it. Other rulings are expected from the courts at the request of citizens, NGOs, and States. Furthermore, as James Politi of the Financial Times notes, “the result of his political success” in the elections is that Trump will have to satisfy “a much more diverse political coalition” than in his first term. Ross Douthat, a conservative commentator for The New York Times , also believes that “at least until the Democratic Party gets up off th...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 9 In January 2017, as soon as he took office in the White House, Donald Trump signalled the new trade policy of the United States with two immediate moves: the exit from the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and the project for a wall on the border with Mexico. These were accompanied by the threat to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That thunderous debut now seems almost moderate, compared to the flurry of arrogant announcements and orders with which his second presidency has begun. Multiple fronts In just a few weeks, Trump has deployed an impressive and omni-directional arsenal of tariffs, making no distinction between allies and adversaries. The first targets were imports from Canada and Mexico, the US’s biggest trading partners. These 25% tariffs were immediately put on hold for a month, in exchange for symbolic concessions from the two neighbouring governments, aimed at countering the suppos...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 8 Douglas Irwin, economist and historian of American trade policy, writes for the Peterson Institute that the tariffs announced by Donald Trump, if implemented, would constitute a “historic event in the annals of US trade policy” and “one of the largest increases in trade taxes in US history. One has to go back almost a century to find tariff increases comparable”. Irwin limits himself to providing us with a historical dimension to the planned duties. But the bewilderment and turmoil created, especially among Washington’s allies, derives from the fact that the tariffs being brandished are accompanied by a hail of presidential decrees and declarations that mark a profound political discontinuity, both in the balance of internal institutional powers and in the balance of power between nations. The watershed was expected, but the speed and vehemence of the White House’s assaults are setting the scene for a change of era i...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 7 From the series Principles of Marxism The method of exposition in Marx’s economic analysis, which he summarised on various occasions, adopts the progression from the simplest to the most complex concepts. It is a method that, at first glance, appears to correspond to common sense — from easy to difficult — but which Marx explains by contradicting common sense. Common sense distorts knowledge, starting right from the elementary building blocks of the representation of reality, which requires scientific abstraction to understand. Opportunism will always set the prejudices of common sense against the science-party . Marx writes, introducing Volume I of Capital : “The value-form , whose fully developed shape is the money-form , is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of ...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 6 From the series Pages from the history of the worker’s movement The mystification of the First World War as a defensive war was accompanied by a misunderstanding of political forms, i.e., the illusion that the struggle for a democratic national shell was already a struggle against the imperialist content of German power, as if a democracy could exist outside of or above classes. Arrigo Cervetto, in The Political Shell, spoke of “the illusion of the primacy of politics”. At the same time, however, he emphasised the dialectic between structure and superstructure: “The basic view that political power relations depend on economic relations enables the revolutionary movement to overcome the obstacle of self-delusion; on the other hand, this view remains only a general idea if it does not inspire a restless and specific analysis of the situation, and if it does not demand an attitude consequent upon this analysis”. Mar...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 5 When, in 2015, Moscow initiated direct military intervention in Syria against ISIS bases and in support of Bashar al-As-sad's regime, this was seen as a signal of Russia’s resurgence as a great power: it was its first deployment in a war zone outside the territory of the former USSR since its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Singers of the resurrection Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and currently one of the most fervent supporters of the war in Ukraine, wrote that this action “has strengthened Russia’s international position”, to the point of making 2015 “one of the most successful years in the history of Russian foreign policy” [Russia in Global Affairs, February 23, 2016). Dmitri Trenin, then head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, which was later closed by the authorities in 2022, revisited this in his 2018 book What is Russia up to in the Middle East?, ...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 4 “By punishing his longtime allies with tariffs, Donald Trump is encouraging other nations to form trading blocs and networks that exclude the United States”. Whilst the New York Times treats the issue polemically, it constitutes an important strand of reflection in European and Asian assessments. The duties are a “declaration of economic war”, according to Le Monde. A rapid, temporary negotiating truce followed, with tariffs suspended in exchange for tactical concessions from Canada and Mexico. Whilst the “bluff” may have yielded some transitory results, a “permanent instability” is settling at the heart of American affairs. Unpredictability as a weapon is the strategy with which the new presidency intends to tackle, and perhaps even temporarily reverse, American decline. This, though, comes at the cost of compromising the United States” credibility as the guarantor of the old order and the network of alliances which...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 3 From the series European news On February 3rd, the new president of the European Council, António Costa, organised his first summit of the heads of State and government. It was an informal meeting dedicated to defence, with the aim of reaching a consensus on a synthesis that will be included in the new White Paper in April, and that will provide a basis for possible decisions at the official European Council in June. In the current context, however, it was also about “sending a signal to the president of the United States that the Europeans are prepared to increase military spending” [Handelsblatt, February 3rd]. British “reset” One unusual feature of the summit was the presence of Keir Starmer. For the first time since Brexit, a British prime minister was present at a meeting of the European Council. According to Le Monde, this could signal “the start of concrete negotiations on the topic of defence, against t...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 2 In the past we used to say that anything that is exaggerated is irrelevant, and this was especially true for the hard facts of international politics. Now, with the rise of television and social media democracy and their misdeeds, one must accept that they inherently favour provocation and exaggeration as a communication style. This combines with the technical capability of the world wide web to give an immediate and universal audience to every narcissistic impulse to draw attention to oneself through provocative theatrical shows. If “the medium is the message” — as Marshall McLuhan argued about television, which transformed communication into the town square of a “global village” then we must consider how the combination of television with social media transforms interventions, impromptu or not, into global political facts. These interventions are carried out through a process of disintermediation — bypassing the fil...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 1 Thirty years after the death of Arrigo Cervetto , we are publishing here the concluding passages of the introduction to his Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”) for the series Biblioteca Giovani (“Publications for young people”), soon to be published in Italian. The 1944-45 partisan war in Italy. The political battle within libertarian communism. The Korean War, and the watchword of “neither Washington nor Moscow”. The layoffs at the Ilva and Ansaldo factories, the political battle and trade union defence in the struggles of post-war restructuring. From 1953 onwards, the crisis of Stalinism, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the 1957 Theses and the challenge of theory and strategy vis-à-vis the tendencies of unitary imperialism. The political struggle within Azione Comunista (“Communist Action”) and the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista (“Movement of the Communist Left”). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, t...