Not is that like was before the nation-state – actually the

state-defined nation – had really appealed to and sunk roots amongst the masses. I do not believe that the Marxists ever really theorised internationalism.^iv They might have preached it and even practiced it – if in ever more specific, temporary, pragmatic or ambiguous ways. But what they endlessly wrote about and energetically theorised was nationalism.^v

OK, that was then. But one would have thought that, by the 21^st century, at least Marxists would have recognised that this is now.^vi

So how is it possible that even in our globalised era, with all its increasingly global threats and promises – with all the talk of ‘global civil society’, and of the necessity for ‘democratic cosmopolitanism’, of ‘global solidarity’, no one raises a cheer or two for the rootless cosmopolitan?^vii Even Sydney Tarrow – a sociologist of social movements, a social historian, an imaginative writer, a humanist and a reformer – seems unable to raise a cheer for the rootless cosmopolitan. Whilst evidently dismissing Stalin, and critiquing a wide range of contemporary literature attempting to name and tame this significant new historical actor, he places all his bets on the ‘rooted cosmopolitans’ (Tarrow 2005: Ch. 3).

Now, let’s see. I began drafting this in Lima, Peru, which is where my partner/colleague/compañera (since November 2012, wife) of more than two decades lives. But where I reside (still have a family, an apartment, a bicycle, health insurance, receive a pension, pay taxes) is in the Netherlands. I am, however, actually English, though I have not lived in the UK on a continuing basis since around 1965. I do not master Dutch or Spanish (I put this politely). And whilst I may feel most at home in England I hardly ever visit this home. I have traveled much and widely. Today, I suppose, I inhabit The Hague, as I have done since 1972. But, beyond my family and a handful of friends and compañer@s, I have limited contact with Dutch social, political and cultural life (or maybe it is the other way round). Where I seem to have most relationships is in that new found land, Cyberia.

Re:Exploring Cyberia

I spent quite some time exploring Cyberia in the 1980s-90s.^viii Today I visit its most familiar parts, travelling in some of its most familiar vehicles, Firefox, Thunderbird or Gmail for email, Google for Web searches, Skype for free or cheap phone calls. Before retirement in 1998 I made two or three Power-Point productions. I have various bits of hard and software on my netbook, and on a PC assembled at a shop round the corner. I am subscribed to 10-20 electronic lists. I am active on maybe four or five of such. I consult Wikipedia frequently whilst writing, thus saving hours of work with paper dictionaries, biographies, libraries and bibliographies. I look for old books and even recent ones on Amazon and Abebooks.^ix I order ‘stuff’ with my credit card or Paypal. I also have certain computer accessories or extensions: a secondhand iPhone (which my grandchildren would not be seen dead with), a separate hard-drive for backup, one or two memory sticks.

I do spend an hour or two every day checking and responding to my email. And Skypeing. Indeed, I cannot imagine having kept my ‘living apart together’ relationship with my partner, Gina ‘No Fear of Flying’ Vargas, going since 1990 without these. Gina herself does not claim any particular computer skills, but she is occasionally involved in collective online chats (conversations) with her own various international networks. I have been so far little infected by chats or, for that matter, conventional ‘social networking’. I am sure these are of value in internationalist labour and social-movement networking, even bearing in mind the manner in which they can be used by capital, state and nefarious social movements.^x

I have, however, been actively involved in an international/ist labour alternative to Facebook, called UnionBook.^xi In so far as UnionBook focuses on, or might create a new international labour community across and beyond the institutionalised union movement, and in so far as webmaster, Eric Lee, continues to resist the temptation to operate also as a ‘webfilter’ or ‘webcensor’ – or even as a modest ‘moderator’ – this pioneering project could develop beyond the confines of the Western-based international trade union organisations with which Eric is identified. Indeed, this seems to be occurring, to the point at which I think we can begin to talk of International Labour Communication by Computer as ‘ILCC 2.0’. This may be initially represented by the Organising Network (ON), created by a relatively new network, Union Solidarity International (USI).^xii Walton Pantland, the UK-based South African behind both initiatives, took a major step forward, I think, in declaring ‘every social network has an ideology’ (Pantland 2014). USI is as union-orientated as Union Book. But in raising the issue of what kind of ghost is in what kind of machine, he makes it possible or even necessary for us to look at implications of the cyber-technology we are ourselves using (and that, inevitably, is using us).^xiii At time of writing, I also hear rumours of a LaborLeaks site!^xiv

I have co-edited two-three books, with a compañero in India, Jai Sen.^xv Indeed, these must be 90 percent dependent on ICT (information and communication technology). The 10 percent that didn’t benefit from the web proved to be the Achilles heel of the operation. Thus, we were able to edit and print cheaply in India, but were then confronted with the logistics of moving these factory-age products, weighing up to 700 grams, to anywhere else in the world. There are similar problems with the production of the attractive and professional series in Lima, which has published compilations of both myself and Gina.^xvi

So for the last few years I have been surfing the web, looking at possibilities for ‘cutting out the middleman’ in the circulation of ideas – the print publisher, the journal or magazine editor…capitalism.^xvii Almost all my articles go first online, commonly marked ‘Discussion Draft’ or ‘Work in Progress’. I more or less gave up submission of my stuff to the then printed Working Papers series of the Institute of Social Studies, where I worked till 1998, when I was quite arbitrarily informed that these were now being evaluated as ‘final-form’ publications! Some final final-form print-publishers or editors – including those on the Left – object, or reject, when I say that my draft material is online. The overwhelming majority do not. I have also produced online a couple of compilations.^xviii In the continuing absence of one of those familiar personal websites or blogs, these have been vital spaces in my efforts at becoming a ‘nomad of the present’ (Melucci 1989).

Most academics are either disgruntled – or gruntled – slaves to an increasingly competitive, commodified and hierarchical system intended to discipline or punish (grade, promote or ‘let go’). Left academics are often resigned to conditions they reject both in theory and in the world beyond their profession. Many Left journals that sprang up on the periphery of the system in the 1970s-80s modified their radical names and/or went commercial. This does not necessarily mean they lose intellectual or political value. But there is a price attached (commonly a subscription price, beyond reach outside the world’s wealthier universities). How many Left, Critical, Revolutionary or Emancipatory journal articles have I been unable to access because I have been retired for a decade and a half and no longer have unlimited free access to such?

Fortunately, some new academic journals are not only circumventing the print publishing juggernauts but escaping to Cyberia. Others are involved in the expanding cyberspace commons by adopting one or other Creative Commons formula.^xix I was happy to be invited to join the Editorial Board of a new global labour journal,^xx edited by some of my old international labour studies interlocutors from the 1980s-90s, Eddie Webster and Robert O’Brien. My pleasure lay partly in the title but particularly in this being an open-access electronic journal. These features are, of course, no guarantee of the journal becoming either global in authorship (the first issue was heavily Canadian) or radical in content (subsequent issues being rather incremental-reformist in orientation).

So I was more enthusiastic about joining another online journal, of which the main title was the vaguely ecumenical Interface, but sub-titled, more promisingly, A Journal for and about Social Movements.^xxi This one is not so much a traditional academic journal, tele-transported to cyberspace, as it is one thought out in terms of 1) the new global social movements and 2) the possibilities of cyberspace.The first implies that it be seriously international in authorship and readership. It has ‘spokespersons’ (in Old English they would have been called ‘editors’) in a wide spread of world areas, including previously marginalised ones like the Arab world and the ex-Soviet bloc. It also intends, like my Newsletter of International Labour Studies from the 1980s,^xxii to be authored and read by both academics and activists, and activist-academics. It is developing editorial groups for a large number of different world areas, including commonly forgotten ones. The cyberspace aspect implies not only open access but also the possibility for rapid feedback and dialogue, both in the publication and on an editorial email list for ‘spokespersons’.^xxiii I will follow (and contribute to) such new projects. But, although my expertise lies primarily in the area of global labour studies, I feel definitely more at home in that of the new global social movements.

Internationalism at a Slight Angle

I have to recognise that we rootless cosmopolitans – at least those of us with global social emancipatory pretensions or demonstrable activity – are few. I am here clearly distinguishing ‘us’ from not only the jet-set business cosmopolitans, journalists and academics (for whom see Peter van der Veer below), but also from the majority of our rooted cosmopolitan internationalists. To be rootless, to become rootless, one has to have not only the desire to travel (which I had ever since seeing the enormous world map on our sitting room wall, which made the Soviet Union look even bigger than it actually was). One also has to have the material means, skills, and/or languages, to enable one to flourish, live or to even survive abroad. Tom Mann (1856–1941),¹ a skilled engineering worker, inter/national union leader, later a Comintern agent/activist, could so travel, not only to English-speaking countries, could be welcomed by a local community of labour, socialist or Communist activists, and find work – engineering or organising. But he was clearly rooted in the UK, to which he returned and where he died.^xxiv

It may be that I am today, despite our ever more globalised times, talking about those who can afford to be, and have the portable skills to be, rootless. Maybe. But one doesn’t have to be Western or Jewish to be such. Consider this on Edward Said, born in Palestine, who lived most of his life in the US, of Christian origin but identified with the struggles of the overwhelmingly Muslim Palestinians and who

was…always at a slight tangent to his affinities. In this age of displaced persons he was not even a typical exile, since most men and women forced to leave their country in our time have a place to which they can look back (or forward): a remembered–more often misremembered–homeland that anchors the transported individual or community in time if not in space. Palestinians don’t even have this. There never was a formally constituted Palestine. Palestinian identity thus lacks that conventional anterior reference. […] In consequence, as Said tellingly observed … “I still have not been able to understand what it means to love a country.” That, of course, is the characteristic condition of the rootless cosmopolitan. It is not very comfortable or safe to be without a country to love: It can bring down upon your head the anxious hostility of those for whom such rootlessness suggests a corrosive independence of spirit. But it is liberating: The world you look out upon may not be as reassuring as the vista enjoyed by patriots and nationalists, but you see further. As Said wrote in 1993, “I have no patience with the position that ‘we’ should only or mainly be concerned with what is ‘ours.’” (Judt 2004)

I clearly do not share Said’s countrylessness. And have never had to suffer the violent hostility that Said did. I may not love the ‘Yookay’, but there are many things about it that I certainly do love. I therefore recognise Said as a fellow-spirit in the wide pantheon of rootless cosmopolitans. And hope I am also ‘always at a slight angle’ to my affinities.

At an academic-cum-activist conference on internationalism in Dublin, 2013, I was reminded that as global solidarity thought and action become more necessary and ever more widespread, they do not actually become simpler. The simpler days were those of national industrial imperialist capitalism, and then that of two or three blocs. And many internationalists still think of solidarity in simple terms – North v. South, West v. Rest, Capital v. Labour, Capitalism v. Socialism. But capitalism has now become not only global (having penetrated and converted Communist China) but infinitely more complex, undermining Manichean oppositions, simple or simplified identities and affinities. And whilst, on the one hand, we can recognise that, ‘Capitalism is not in Crisis, Capitalism is the Crisis’,^xxv capital and empire are also in very considerable disarray. So are those challenging these. And in times of such disarray, people(s) are as likely to turn to re-imagined and exclusionary communities – religious, ethnic, patriarchal, national, authoritarian – as they are to recognise a common and general global condition of alienation and to search for common or compatible alternatives to such. Much of this disarray reveals itself in the area from which Edward Said stemmed. And the Dublin conference showed awareness of the problem that Libya, Syria and Palestine createfor principled and effective solidarity activity.

At the conference was a UK-based scholar of Turkish background, Ayça Çubukçu, who spoke on the disarray amongst the anti-imperialist Left internationally, over Libya. She is also involved with a research group on ‘Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Solidarity’ at the London School of Economics. The description of the group runs in part as follows:

Given the frequent overlap, in theory and practice, between visions of internationalism and cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and the remarkable internal variation—to the extent that two different and coherent bodies of thought can be said to exist in the first place—within internationalism and cosmopolitanism on the other, how should we think about the divergences and convergences between these two visions? When different versions of internationalism and cosmopolitanism as expounded and practiced by various theological traditions are added to the matrix along with their feminist, anarchist, regionalist, Third-Worldist, nationalist and militarist articulations, the nature of the two-headed monster proves too complicated to grasp in a single breath. Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Solidarity … aims to explore the politics of transnational solidarity by addressing the complications that arise in attempts to define, critique, and practice various strands of internationalism and cosmopolitanism.^xxvi

Whilst recognising that what I have previously called ‘First World Thirdworldism’, is only one axis and one direction of or for internationalism, I obviously welcome this initiative at a moment that dramatically such challenges for it. My own address to the conference ended with a citation from John Holloway on ‘Zapatismo Urbano’. Holloway is clearly interested in drawing, critically, lessons from the Zapatista experience and solidarity with this. Here we are talking again of solidarity on the North-South axis but this time with the flow running South-North direction, or actually in both directions; or is this the author actually reflecting on the possible lessons of his ‘Zapatismo Urbano’ for the Zapatistas?

[an]other aspect of the Zapatismo of Chiapas that has found little resonance in the [world’s?] cities is their use of national symbols – the national flag, the…national anthem. The urban-Zapatista movement tends not to be nationalist and in many cases is profoundly anti-nationalist. It has been not so much an inter-national movement as a global movement, a movement of struggle for which global capitalism and not the nation-state has been the principle point of reference. (Holloway 2013)

Bearing in mind the nationalist/zenophobic/fascist fervours displayed, differentially, not only in cities of the Arab world but also in the Ukraine, South Africa, Catalonia and even in the (previously) laid-back Netherlands, the John Holloway argument looks limited to particular world areas, or movements, or moments, or even to a global future for which we can must hope…or work.

Hic Sunt Vulpes?

I understand that ancient map-makers confronted by cold northern territories of which they knew nothing, would write, ‘Hic Sunt Vulpes’ (Here Are Wolves).^xxvii Cyberia, like Siberia, is far from paradise. It is an ever-expanding universe in which the forces for commerce and control on the one hand, the commons and emancipation on the other, are involved in a complex and often violent conflict. But Cyberia is surely the privileged space for emancipation that free-thinkers and revolutionaries 1) projected onto the press – or at least the ‘free press’, then 2) with Marx and Engels onto the railways or telegraph, 3) Lenin on cinema, 4) Brecht on radio, and, eventually, 5) Enzensberger on the modern media…of 1968! Which is why I do tend to repeat the phrase of Manuel Castells about ‘real virtuality’ and those of Mariátegui to the effect that communication is the nervous system of internationalism and solidarity (Waterman 2006, 2008).^xxviii

I note that in his essay about contemporary internationalism Perry Anderson (2002) says nothing about Cyberia. But, then, he also has nothing to say about communication in connection with internationalism. And, for that matter, not too much about internationalism itself! Sydney Tarrow (2005:136-8) does allow the internet two or three pages, but then qualifies its value, referring to the internet’s possible subversion of the organisations/institutions seen by him as necessary for effective long-term international campaigning. Both of them, it seems to me, are still enclosed within a world of nation-states, of organisations and institutions. Both use a language – for the ideology (Anderson) or activists (Tarrow) – that makes the nation, nationality, nationalism the point of departure. And, possibly, in both cases, of arrival. Neither, in any case seems to imagine a meaningful community beyond or without the state-defined-nation.

I clearly do. Or, rather, I see multiple possible meaningful and radically-democratic communities, some more local than the nation-state, others indeed international (the European Union, various competing or complementary Latin American ones, the Maghreb and/or Mashraq),^xxix and yet others of interest, of identity, of ideology for which the nation-state and state-nationalism are either problematic, obstacles to be surpassed or irrelevant. Emancipatory challenges to such state-like entities can also be found.^xxx

The Oh-Too-Rooted Cosmopolitans

Tarrow starts his book with the story of his father, Moishke/Morris, an East-European Jewish immigrant to the US of the 1920s, who – like so many small-town emigrants and international immigrants, before and since – transferred remittances for good works to his home place. Later, he was involved in unionism, with rescuing Jews from war-torn Europe, and then in creating a homeland for them in Israel. His father is, for Tarrow, the very model of a ‘rooted cosmopolitan’. My own father, Alek Naszibirski/Alec Waterman,^xxxi who had a similar background, came, around the same time, to Britain, and became a Communist internationalist (with its then increasingly Russian roots). I mention both because these are recognisable and significant historical types. But whatever their roots and rootedness, we have to note the limits of their cosmopolitanism/ internationalism. In the Moishke/Morris case, the transplanted Jewish settlement was created, with the help of foreign powers, in someone else’s homeland, and has become an increasingly nationalist, militarist and racist state. In the Alek/Alec case his Soviet Jewish Communist friend and comrade, Solomon Mikhoels, was killed and Soviet Jewish cultural life ended by diktat. This was the fate of rooted cosmopolitanism and leftist internationalism in the world of nation states.

Without going further into the writing of either Anderson or Tarrow, I do not actually consider that either ‘cosmopolitanism’ or ‘rootedness’ are of themselves adequate terms for the understanding – and advance – of a radical-democratic global movement of solidarity that I fancy both of them would actually like to see. Despite its Greek roots, the ‘ism’ was a construction of the European bourgeois and liberal enlightenment. And – to caricature lightly – what it meant was that we would have a world of peace and justice if everyone spoke French, later English/American, but certainly not Mandarin or Quechua. Is ‘cosmopolitanism’ an adequate term for what I have been doing, or believe I have been engaged in, for most of my life. I hope not:

Cosmopolitanism is the western engagement with the rest of the world and that engagement is a colonial one, which simultaneously transcends the national boundaries and is tied to it. Instead of perceiving cosmopolitanism and nationalism as alternatives, one should perhaps recognise them as the poles in a dialectical relationship. (van der Veer 2002:11).

As for ‘rootedness’, it would seem to me that this is also something of a floating signifier,^xxxii value-empty and ready for capture by marginalised claimants, religious or ethnic fundamentalists, ideological localists, and therefore for application in the most varied and problematic of manners. So I think that rather than qualifying, or joining together, ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘rootedness’, I would still rather see us work out the possible meanings of a post-nationalist internationalism – ‘a new global solidarity’. This would be one which surpasses internationalism and is free of debts to cosmopolitanism. What we need is to re-imagine solidarity (here, in relation to labour, see Hyman 1999).

With respect to the World Social Forum and the wider global justice and solidarity movement, I have long argued the necessity for a shift of focus – a de-centering – from its place-based events, and in two directions, the cyberspatial and the local (‘local’ here signifying both a locale and the subject-specific). This is because of the danger of either the Forum or the general GJ&SM remaining events or processes in the hands of the university-educated middle classes, requiring long-distance air-travel and hotel accommodation. I have obviously been one of these middle-class nomads/tourists over a decade or more – and am not about to become a Self-Hating Middle-Class Jet-set Leftist (Sub-Category, Secular, Jewish, White, Hetero, etc, etc). But I am also in favour of the closest possible articulation of, and feedback between, the cyberspatial on the one hand and the local/specific on the other. Indeed, I believe promoters of the intercontinental WSF events should be required to justify each of these in terms of their functionality to the local/specific in grounded places, and to the universal/cyberspatial that surrounds us. Oh, and also, obviously in terms of climatological and other ecological friendliness.

Roots in Space?

If Cyberia is an increasingly real virtuality, then I wonder why it should not be possible to have roots (also) here. I am attached to this space and to such a degree that the idea of losing access to it fills me with the kind of frustration, anxiety and grief that others might feel at having to migrate, or being exiled. I like it here … there? … wherever cyberspace might conceivably be. Yet, I dedicated my globalisation and solidarity book to four local martyrs of social movements that are today major parts of the GJ&SM. They were: Maria Elena Moyano, popular feminist of Villa El Salvador, Lima, Peru; Chico Mendes of the rural labour and ecological movement in Amazonia, Brazil; Shankar Guha Niyogi, leader of a mineworkers and tribals movement in Dalli-Rajhara, India; and Ken Saro-Wiwa, leader of the minority rights and ecological movement in the Niger Delta (Waterman 1998/2002). I dedicated the book to them because I thought that with more effective solidarity globally, they might not have been killed. I am not, therefore, proposing the rootless cosmopolitan or the radical-democratic cyberspace communicator as the very model of the 21st century internationalist. I am just asking whether s/he is not one significant type of such. And suggesting there is no necessary contradiction, in a cyberspatial world, between being a somewhat rootless global solidarity activist and the protection, promotion and projection of more local ones.

If this all sounds a little pathetic or apologetic then maybe I need to reconceptualise both rootlessness and cosmopolitanism. Perhaps I have already established that rootlessness does not mean a lack of earthly attachments. In any case, the ability to detach (to rise above, to see beyond) oneself from the parochial, the local, the national, the regional, the bloc, the faith would seem to be a condition for any contemporary universalism with emancipatory pretensions. But that still leaves the enlightenment’s – and Stalin’s – ‘cosmopolitan’ in the title of this chapter.

I have previously argued for a new kind of internationalism, that of communications and culture:

Like the other alternative social movements operating under the conditions of an informatised and globalised capitalism, that of women is, at least implicitly, a communications internationalism. This has several different but interconnected meanings. The first is that it operates on the terrain of ideas, information and images, revealing that which is globally concealed, suggesting new meanings for that which is revealed. The second and consequent one is that, like other such, it is particularly active and effective on the terrain of communication, media, culture. The third is that, again like other such, its basic relational principle is that of the network rather than the organisation. The fourth, and consequent, one is that the movement needs to be primarily understood in communicational/cultural rather than in the traditional political/organisational terms. (Waterman 2001:215-6)

This implies, at least for me, the possibility of seeing myself as a ‘global solidarity communicator’ and, hopefully, as one whose taking flight does not – as in the famous painting of Icarus by Pieter Breughel – take him too close to the sun, nor so far from the ploughman, the herdsman and the fisherman on the earth, that they are unaware of his flight, his fall, or even his existence.^xxxiii