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‘The working class has no country’: What do Marxists mean by this?

Originally published: Counterfire on July 15, 2025 by Alex Snowden (more by Counterfire)  | (Posted Jul 19, 2025)

Marxism is a worldview with class at its centre. History, as Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto, has been a succession of class societies. Struggle between the main classes has been a constant feature and also a driving force of change.

Capitalism is a system that depends on a capitalist ruling class exploiting workers. Capitalists and workers are divided against each other – this division is the fundamental antagonism in capitalist society. It follows that, according to Marx, workers across borders are united by common interests.

The Communist Manifesto ends with a short chapter that offers a brief overview of the class struggles in several European countries and reiterates this internationalist outlook. It insists that communists ‘labour everywhere for the union and political agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.’ It ends by saying that working-class people everywhere have ‘a world to win’ and urges: ‘Working men of all countries, unite!’

Marx’s vision of internationalism, then, is an internationalism from below: it is about linking up the struggles of working-class and oppressed people across different countries, not about elite cooperation. Nor is it a matter of a woolly ‘human brotherhood’: this is a matter of class solidarity in conflict with a ruling class that is utterly indifferent to the needs of working-class people.

During the 1860s, when Marx lived in London, a series of international causes galvanised popular support among working-class people in Britain. The revolutionary struggle for a unified and independent Italy drew significant support. It was viewed as a progressive struggle for liberation and its greatest leader, Garibaldi, was greeted as a hero by working-class crowds when he visited Britain in 1864.

In January 1863, an insurrection in Poland, seeking national independence from the autocratic and highly repressive Russian Empire, sparked a mood of solidarity among the more politically conscious British workers. Marx wrote a proclamation on Poland for the German Workers’ Educational Association in London, which was linked to efforts to collect funds for the Polish movement. There were rallies organised by working-class bodies.

The central issue generating workers’ support for the Polish struggle, as with the mood of solidarity with Italy, was recognition that it was a democratic struggle. This dovetailed with the desire for greater democracy at home. These solidarity movements fuelled a resurgence of popular pro-suffrage protest.

Marx’s proclamation also refers to the most important international solidarity movement of the period:

The English working class has reaped everlasting historic honour by its enthusiastic mass meetings held to crush the repeated attempts of the ruling classes to intervene on the side of the American slave-holders.

There was a nationwide movement of working-class solidarity with the struggle of the North to win the American Civil War. President Lincoln’s declaration of the abolition of slavery on New Year’s Day 1863 was the turning point.

After that, a movement of solidarity mushroomed, with overwhelmingly working-class mass meetings demanding that the British government should not intervene to support the South. There were close economic links between the British ruling class and the Southern slave-owners (which materially underpinned widespread racist attitudes).

A high point in the solidarity movement was in March 1863 when a mass meeting, organised by the London trades council, was packed out. With the British government seriously considering sending the navy to attack Northern forces, this was a mass anti-war rally.

The resolution put before this mass meeting contained the line: ‘The cause of labour is the same all over the world.’ It was a distinctively working-class slogan and, in such a context, one that encompassed black American slaves and ex-slaves. This working-class internationalism undermined racism among British workers.

All of these currents fed into the launch, in September 1864, of the International Working Men’s Association. Marx was commissioned to write the association’s Inaugural Address, combining class politics with internationalism. Marx played a central role in the association, which became a crucial vehicle for developing links between labour movements across borders, as well as a step forward for independent working-class organisation in Britain.

International solidarity has a long tradition in the working class. This has been especially significant in Britain when we consider Britain’s historic imperial role and the centrality of nationalism and racism to ruling ideology.

Internationalist sentiments were often widespread among workers in Marx’s time and, with the aid of socialists, these were the basis for important solidarity movements that undercut nationalism and racism. This remains a crucial lesson for today.

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