Leslie has posted a few words about the Internationale, an anthem of the socialist movement.

The Internationale is truly a song of the left; a song that social-democrats, communists, and those in-between rally around on congresses as well as Labour Day. Since its creation in 1871 by Eugène Pottier, the song has been translated into almost all languages known to man and interpreted by countless artists over the decades; I’ve heard but a fraction of the different variants.

Speaking for myself, I find the idealism of the Internationale quite inspiring. At its heart is the recognition that there is only one world (that we know of) and only one race. It is interesting that the science fiction that I grew up took it for granted that at some point in the future the idea of the nation-state would be abandoned and that there would be a single government for the whole world. That always seemed eminently sensible to me, and I'm not sure when 'One World Government' became the fetish of right-wing movements globally. Achieving a genuinely democratic government worldwide would be a formidable task, but the idea has enormous appeal to me in principle.