International

International (pronounced in-ter-nash-uh-nl)

(1) Between or among nations; involving two or more nations.

(2) Of or relating to two or more nations or their citizens.

(3) Pertaining to the relations between nations.

(4) Any of the four international socialist or communist organizations formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with initial capital letter).

(5) A labor union having locals in two or more countries.

(6) An organization, enterprise, or group, especially a major business concern, having branches, dealings, or members in several countries (often styled as multi-national or multinational).

(7) An employee, especially an executive, assigned to work in a foreign country or countries by a business or organization that has branches or dealings in several countries.

(8) A casual term for sporting matches played between national teams in many sports (rugby, cricket, football eta al) and applied also to individuals selected for those contests.

1780: A compound word, inter + national, coined apparently by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham  (1748-1832) in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1870) and appears also in A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace (1786–1789) which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.  Inter was from the Latin inter (between, amid), a form of prepositional inter (between).  Nation existed in Middle English as nacioun and nacion, borrowed from Old French nation, nacion and nasion (nation), from the Latin nātiōnem, accusative of nātiō and gnātiō (nation, race, birth) from natus & gnatus, past participle stem of nasci & gnasci (to be born).  In displaced the native Middle English when it emerged as theode, thede (nation), from the Old English þēod, the Middle English burthe (birth, nation, race, nature) and the Middle English leod, leode, lede (people, race), all ultimately from the Old English root lēod.  Variations of nation exist in most European languages including the Saterland Frisian nation, the West Frisian naasje, the Dutch natie, the Middle Low German nacie and the German, Danish and Swedish nation.

The socialist hymn The Internationale was written in 1871 by French anarchist (and confessed freemason) Eugène Pottier (1816-1887) and the International Date Line (IDL) was first standardized in 1884 (although it's since been tinkered with for reasons reasons both administrative and opportunistic).  Multinational, in the sense of trans-national corporations was first noted in 1921 and is often used in a derogatory manner; when CEO of Ford Motor Company in the mid-1970s, Lee Iacocca (1924-2019) was sensitive to this and said he preferred the term internationalism.  That never caught on, probably because it had traditionally been a word associated with the left and fellow travelers with faith first in the League of Nations (LN; 1920-1946) and subsequently the United Nations (UN; 1945). 

The Internationals

The International Workingmen's Association (later known as the First International) was an international structure intended to unite a myriad of anarchist, socialist and communist political groups with the still embryonic trade union movements.  Essentially, it was meant to be a broad, left-wing, working-class organization devoted to bringing the class struggle to fruition.  Founded in 1864, it quickly gained a membership of millions but, by 1872, communist and anarchist factions had split the movement; it was dissolved in 1876.

The Second International was formed in 1889 as a grouping of the newly-created socialist and labour political parties.  Although emblematic of the utopian spirit in the workers’ parties of the pre-1914 world, the Second International did attempt to construct coherent platforms and was in some way a precursor of the march through the institutions approach three generations later.  They attempted to exclude from their councils the anarcho-syndicalists and unionists who had splintered the First International but in this had limited success.  The Second International was dissolved in 1916 amid much rancor, both about (1) the way leaders of labour parties seemed anxious to collaborate with the capitalists becoming, in effect, a stratum above the working class and (2) the way, on nationalist grounds, they supported their own bourgeois in the bloody slaughter of the First World War.

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International was formed in 1919 as an outgrowth of the creation of the Soviet Union and, in its original formation, advocated world communism.  This was to be achieved by “…all available means, including armed force” and aimed to overthrow the international bourgeoisie to be replaced by an international soviet republic as a transitional phase before the “…complete abolition of the state".  The vicissitudes of history gradually wore this down to the point where Soviet practice, if not orthodoxy, had become “socialism in one state”.  Ostensibly to improve relations with London and Washington (although his motives were influenced more by a desire to weaken parts of the communist movement), Comrade Stalin unexpectedly dissolved the Third International in 1943.

Comrade Stalin & Comrade Trotsky.

The Fourth International was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), directly to oppose what Soviet communism had become under Comrade Stalin (1878-1953) which Comrade Trotsky considered counter-revolutionary and essentially a fascist state under the control of a bureaucratic elite directed by Stalin.  The Fourth International suffered its own splits and, despite attempts at re-unification, no longer exists as a single trans-national grouping.  However, with its inherently anti-authoritarian core, the doctrines of the Fourth International retain a popular, almost romantic following and around the planet there exist Trotskyite groups for those attracted by the defense of workers' internationalism.  Comrade Stalin had Comrade Trotsky assassinated in 1940; the murder weapon an ice-axe.  In the way of these things, calls for a fifth international were heard only months after the formation of the Fourth.  Indeed, in response to the increasingly plaintive cries, over the decades, several were announced but all soon withered away.  Still longed for by a handful, the movements seem never to have progressed beyond the stage of running lamington drives.

Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), 2008.