Internationalism: "More and more people are saying no.'

Internationalism: “More and more people are saying no”

Peter Mertens has made Belgium's PTB one of the most successful left-wing parties in Europe. His latest book is entitled “Meuterei” (Mutiny). A conversation about class quotas, right-wing workers, and the uprising against US hegemony.

[This interview posted on 1/16/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.woz.ch.]


“We in the North need to understand what is happening in the South”: Peter Mertens is also referring to the strike by 250 million farmers in India in 2020.

WOZ: Peter Mertens, your Labor Party (PTB) is one of the most successful left-wing parties in Europe: in 2007, it received less than one percent of the vote in the Belgian parliamentary elections, but in last June's election, it achieved almost ten percent. What can the left learn from this success?

Peter Mertens: In the local elections in the largest cities—Brussels, Antwerp, and Charleroi—we even achieved twenty percent. However, these successes did not come about suddenly, but step by step. At the beginning of the 2000s, we had an intensive discussion about what kind of party we wanted to be. We define ourselves as a modern Marxist party that stands for socialism—a party of the working class. We are proud to have reestablished the concept of “class” in Belgium.

What does that mean in concrete terms?

We have introduced a class quota for party offices: one-third of the seats go to people without a university degree, especially those in manufacturing or logistics. We want to represent those who do physical work. Who still talks about the heroes of the coronavirus pandemic who kept things running? These people are completely underrepresented, they don't appear in the media, they are not part of the public sphere. We are not among those on the left who say that talking about identity is wrong, that these issues are unimportant – on the contrary: they are very important. But the central question is: do you sell your labor? This can be answered objectively. It is a very inclusive definition of the working class, which also includes nurses and teachers.
Publicist and politician

Peter Mertens (55) was president of the Belgian Labor Party (PTB/PVDA) from 2008 to 2021. Today, he is its secretary general and a member of parliament. In October 2024, Mertens published the book “Meuterei. Wie unsere Weltordnung ins Wanken gerät” (Brumaire-Verlag, Berlin). In it, he describes the new balance of power on the geopolitical world stage and its implications.

The working class often votes for right-wing parties – in Belgium, for example, the far-right Vlaams Belang. Is the working class really a good basis for left-wing politics?

It is still the workers who create the world's prosperity. The table we are sitting at – made by workers. The phone you are using to record our conversation – made by workers. When Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto—here in Brussels, by the way—according to today's estimates, only one percent of the world's population could be classified as working class due to the early stages of industrialization. By 1950, that figure had risen to 15 percent, and today it is as high as 33 percent. So there are more workers than ever before in history. The petty bourgeoisie have their theories about why workers vote for Vlaams Belang. But much of it is uninformed blabber. They have no idea about the reality of life for people who work shifts, who toil with their bodies, who are 63 years old and have bad knees. Simply standing there with a raised index finger achieves nothing. It's just elitist. We have to be right in the middle of the working class. There is so much anger there. We have to harness that anger for a socialist project, otherwise it will lead them to the far right.

How do you react when you talk to a worker on the assembly line who rails against migrants?

The most important thing is for another worker to talk to him! From there, you can build trust.

And once that trust is there, you can really get into discussions. For example, if someone complains that they've been on the waiting list for social housing for five years because Syrian families who only arrived yesterday are supposedly given apartments immediately, you first ask: Is the Syrian family really the problem? Or is it rather that you don't have a decent apartment because there are too few social housing units? We have to solve that. We win some people over to our side, we lose others. And there is a limit. If someone has the number 88, a right-wing extremist symbol, tattooed on their body, there's no point in talking to them.

But now you've written a book that goes beyond the national level and focuses on international politics: “Mutiny: How Our World Order Is Being Shaken.” Why are you focusing on this topic right now?

Look around the world—there's so much going on! Thirty years of neoliberalism should have crushed people and destroyed all forms of collective resistance. But in Europe, the US, and the Global South, so much is in flux. Last summer, there were more strike days in the UK than in the 1980s. In France, the strikes against pension reform saw more strike days than in the famous year of 1968. And in India, 2020 saw the largest strike in human history: 250 million farmers protested against privatization in the agricultural sector. But it's crazy that no one sees this. None of this is in the collective consciousness; it is not politicized. Hence the metaphor of mutiny. These are uprisings that are not embedded in a larger whole. We are not yet seeing a new class consciousness, only that more and more people are saying no.

You have talked about strikes and social movements, but your book also deals with a second mutiny: the one on the international stage.

Yes. When a third of the countries in the United Nations voted against sanctions against Russia in 2022, Fiona Hill, who formerly sat on the US Security Council, called it a mutiny. We are currently witnessing an uprising against US hegemony. We have reached a series of tipping points that are leading to a new balance of power. The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a turning point for the Global South. And in 2007, with the collapse of the US financial institutions that dominated the industry, the idea that the global economy was guaranteed by their stability also collapsed. The formation of the BRICS countries in 2009 was a direct response to this.

The BRICS countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and today also include Iran and Egypt, among others. To a large extent, this is a club of dictatorships. Can one really support a mutiny from this side?

It is a double mutiny. Within these countries, there is growing resistance to the governments. So on the lower decks, the crew is mutinying against their captain. On the upper deck, the captains are mutinying against the fleet commander. We must support the mutinies within these countries, but these governments can still oppose US hegemony. Analyzing this does not mean that we have to approve of these regimes.

In the past, you have criticized the sanctions against Russia in response to the attack on Ukraine. How should we deal with dictatorships that invade their neighboring countries?

I am fundamentally an advocate of the principles that led to the founding of the UN after World War II. One of these principles is not to interfere in the internal affairs of another country.

Narendra Modi in India, for example, is a right-wing extremist politician who pursues racist, sexist, and neoliberal policies. I find that appalling, but it is not up to me to change that, nor is it up to the Belgian or US armies, but to the people of India themselves.

But now Russia has illegally attacked Ukraine. Of course, this must be condemned and sanctioned. My concern is the nature of the sanctions. They are supposed to hit the oligarchs and the arms industry. But in fact, it is the ordinary population that suffers much more from them. The West also has a credibility problem: it claims moral superiority. But ultimately, you can be a good friend of Washington and still be a dictator.

International solidarity is a motto of the left. But how exactly to organize it effectively often remains unclear. How should we support rebellions elsewhere?

We in the North need to understand what is happening in the Global South. It's about exchanging ideas, comparing strategies, and launching global campaigns such as “Make Amazon Pay.” This way, people in the Global South will realize that we in the North are not a monolithic bloc: not everyone supports neocolonialism. And we need to understand what is important to these governments and why, instead of falling back into a neocolonial mindset in which those who are pro-Europe are good and everyone else is bad.

Many people in Europe show solidarity with the Palestinians, and there are huge demonstrations every week. But so far, this has had no impact on the war in Gaza. How can international solidarity be made more effective?

I think it's important that a movement on the streets repeatedly voices the political demand for an end to arms deliveries to Israel. The International Criminal Court is also calling for this – and we must remind our governments of this. A few months ago, workers at Brussels Airport saw a container that was supposed to go to Tel Aviv. They wondered what was inside and opened the box: it was a shipment of weapons. That same evening, the Belgian logistics union decided to stop transporting weapons to Israel. They take the position that this would be illegal according to the ruling of the Criminal Court. In Greece and elsewhere, dockworkers are also refusing to transship military equipment destined for Israel. This is a weak point in the deadly machinery. All of this together can make a difference. Ultimately, however, we can put pressure on Israel and its supporters, but it is the Palestinians themselves who will liberate themselves.