I think this is a good example for a starting point.
The case of the 1300 VWSA workers who were dismissed for going against a productivity agreement and their own union NUMSA was helped by supporters from Brazil and Germany. The Uitenhage VW plant is part of a global assembly line, producing finished vehicles for Europe. VWSA management is newly imported from Germany, bringing with them new production methods. This kind of international solidarity is encouraging, but it is hardly new. Many people have made the point that the international extension of capitalist infrastructure creates giant network along with worker counter-power can spread.
There seems to be a gap though, in the map of modern discussions on internationalism. On the one hand, you have the model of workers solidarity across globalised capitalism - the old 'Workers of the world unite!' idea. Characteristic to this kind of internationalism is solidarity linked in common identity as workers (e.g. at Volkswagen) - a common identity articulated in relation to the point of production (factory, office, etc.). Also important to note here is that this is an internationalism which grows at the pace, and alongside, the internationalisation of capital. While I'm certainly a supporter of international workers solidarity (after all, we *do* have a world to win!), I am also sympathetic to the accusation that traditional 'proletarian internationalism' often remains blind to the operation and contestation of capital outside (and against) the factory.
On the other hand, networks like the Oilwatch network, various ecological networks, operate with a substantially different idea of internationalism. Here internationalism operates with difference is maintained. Multiple reasons for cooperation exist - for instance Oilwatch networks together communities affected by oil exploration in Ecuador, those affected by refineries in Durban and activists in the US. It is quite an open question what the aims of such a network are - Oilwatch is a network against the exploitative and destructive effects of the international oil industry. But what do to about this - indigenous communities in Ecuador might want to keep Texaco out of their lands, while oil workers in Mossel Bay might want better working conditions. (Terisa Turner's documentation of Nigerian oil workers' 1995 support for Niger Delta communities is an interest example of these differences being bridged) It is exactly the difference which operates within this kind of internationalism which has made it an easy target for accusations of paternalism - which are sometimes justified. Sometimes what is operating is less solidarity and more 'support', which is not always entirely honest about its motives.
I think Massimo de Angelis' essay on internationalism [1] and the Zapatistas provides a possibility of bridging these perspectives. De Angelis points to the existence of oppressions as "one oppression among many, as one voice among many, as one struggle among many, as one assertion of dignity among many." It is particularly this last statement which I'd like to draw attention to. De Angelis' understanding of the 'assertion of dignity' seems to be similar to John Holloway's. In Holloway's vocabulary, to assert dignity is to assert that at present we exist in our negation. A demand for a life fit for a human being becomes not in invocation of (positive) humanism - not a prescription - but a call to examine our "real historical existence as an existence-in-negation, an existence-in-tension, the tension being towards humanity, self-determining practice.". [2]
Solidarity as support for 'one assertion of dignity amongst many' for me takes one of the best aspects of 'traditional' internationalism - the idea that solidarity is reciprical relation between humans, the assertion of a social relation (in contrast to the fetishised form of that relation - the real relation between international movements of things) - but it broadens traditional solidarity both outside the factory and beyond 'solidarity through homogeneity'.
The answer to the question 'what does it mean to "unravel" exploitative economic relations?' is surely going to be different things depending on who is being exploited, and how. The options being offered to me as a starting point are vastly different from those being offered to a peasant in Zimbabwe, for instance. I might want more free time and more control over where the products of my work end up (I don't particularly like contributing to the productive capacity of Nestle', even in an indirect fashion). A Zim peasant might want more land, more free time, a tractor, water supply, electricity, etc. I don't want anyone telling me to get back to nature (hah!), but the hypothetical Zim peasant might well not want to integrate into a capitalist economy (which would mean something pretty dire in modern Zim). Sometimes opposition to integration in the international chain of production is not just localism.
Peter
[1] de Angelis's essay is at: http://www.acephale.org/encuentro/globintr.html the bits I quote are from: http://www.acephale.org/encuentro/globpt32.html
[2] John Holloway's response to Wildcat's critique of his writing on dignity, from which I got that quote, is at: http://www.ainfos.ca/98/oct/ainfos00202.html -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B