In a recent issue of Catalyst, Jacopo Custodi argued that the left should adopt a ‘rooted cosmopolitanism.’

This sounds like an oxymoron (see note at bottom), a feeling Custodi tries to turn into something productive. He argues that not only can the phrase make sense, but also that wrestling with its implications will allow the left to reconcile popular working-class sentiments with the construction of an international socialist movement.

It’s not hard to imagine the appeal of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism.’ Custodi wants the sense of ‘national belonging’ that most of us feel. But he wants it without all the negatives of nationalist politics. He wants real cosmopolitanism while allowing for the fact that most people – especially working-class people – remain attached to their country of origin.

Can Custodi have his cake and eat it, too?

While I see the appeal of the notion of rooted cosmopolitanism, I don’t think he can.

Rooted Cosmopolitanism and the Working Class

Custodi rightly points out that the ‘melting away of nationalism’ predicted by early Marxists (and probably Marx himself) hasn’t panned out. People remain attached to their nation of origin. And working-class people are more attached than most.

For working-class people, we have good explanations for why this happens. People want meaning in their lives. They want to understand themselves as part of a project, especially during times of struggle. National belonging fills this role for lots of working-class people, especially during times of declining working-class power (such as our own times).

From there, we can finish the argument easily enough. Most leftists – certainly including me, as readers surely know – see working-class people as the core of any leftist movement worth having.

And I mean this in two senses. First, we find them in large numbers in the U.S. But also, their structural position within the capitalist system – as the creators of value and the target of alienation, exploitation, and profit generation – uniquely positions them to challenge capitalism at a fundamental level.

Custodi thinks that if working-class people bring national belonging to the table, organizers should work with that.

Tensions and Problems

At a broad level, I find all this plausible. But it gets less plausible the closer we look. Custodi, for example, praises Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s politics as an example of rooted cosmopolitanism. To me, however, Mélenchon often just looks like a nationalist. Any rooted cosmopolitanism worth having shouldn’t include any sort of chauvinistic patriotism.

Custodi also misses the tensions at play. Appealing to national belonging might help the left win elections in the short term. Maybe it even helps us build social democratic programs. But I doubt it helps us build international socialism in the long term. Instead, it risks the basic shortcuts and compromises that ruined earlier waves of social democracy.

Here’s one lesson the left should take from 20th century social democracy. We need to do a much better job aligning our long-term goals and our short-term methods. Building cross-border movements of working people is a key part of that play. Perhaps even the key part.

Instead, the left usually picks the short term over the long term. We see this, for instance, in most of the politics of the ‘Squad.’

Custodi provides some of the ‘pink tide’ Latin American leaders as a counter-example. But it doesn’t quite do the work he wants to do. As those countries became more nationalistic in their politics, their cooperation frayed.

Final Thoughts

We can draw at least one lesson from Custodi’s rooted cosmopolitanism. Namely, we shouldn’t deliberately set ourselves apart from – and tacitly above – the working class as a whole. The left should send the message – in both our words and our actions – that we stand both with one another as working class people and with the working class as a whole. We’re not too good for the country’s people.

Part of this story involves building a socialist movement broadly compatible with ordinary Americans, their traditions, and their concerns.

At the same time, this way of doing politics should never devolve into uncritical love of the nation, particularly its government and military. Nor should it degenerate into ranking U.S. bourgeois interests over those of the working people of any nation – whether ours or others.

N.B.

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has also defended a view he calls ‘rooted cosmopolitanism.’ It’s unclear whether or how Custodi’s view relates to Appiah’s.