The following is an excerpt from Unjust Justice by Chantal Delsol, translated by Paul Seaton (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008), 175 pages, $28.

The idea of establishing a unified, universal political order capable of bringing peoples together under the reign of justice and thus putting an end to war emerged long ago with Alexander the Great and later Caracalla; it resurfaced at the time of Christian Europe. Both Dante’s idea of a universal monarchy and the reality of the Germanic Holy Roman empire corresponded to Christendom’s desire to embody its spiritual universality in a political form. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the empire, and Christendom as a whole, had to renounce their claims to universality because of the rise of national states and the emergence of the modern concept of sovereignty. The church retreated into spiritual universality, while the idea of political universality disappeared. The universal forms desired first by the ancients and then by Christians were very different from what appeared in modern times during the French Revolution. The difference consisted in two things.

Among the ancients the universal empire did not embrace the entirety of the planet, but only that portion occupied by the Greeks and later by the Romans. In their eyes it was vast, but it was quite small compared to the entire world, which was incompletely known by them. They considered the outsiders they knew to be barbarians. But the existence of these countless vaguely known peoples located beyond the limits of the civilized world relativized the idea of the universal and allowed for a distinction between us and them. The ancient empire did not encompass the globe. It left diversity in place. Because it was not monopolistic, because an outside perspective could judge it, it hardly resembled the world government proposed by moderns. As long as Tacitus could write a Germania, there was no cosmopolis.

Among the Christians, on the other hand, the universality was truly global. It ideally included all peoples, even the most barbarous, because all are called to enter into the kingdom of God. However, Christians distinguished that kingdom from worldly ones. The goal was neither to establish worldwide laws nor a single state but to spiritually convince peoples and cultures, which would otherwise retain their differences.

Until the eighteenth century, therefore, the idea of a thoroughly universal unity was limited on one hand by the relative modesty of the actual imperial territory and the great extent of the surrounding world, and on the other by the restriction of its rule to spiritual ends by the Christian community.

With the French Revolution, we see the two ideas combined for the first time. What emerged was the notion of a world government deployed throughout the entire earth with all the prerogatives of what Christians called “temporal government.”

The French revolutionaries demanded the abolition of borders and their replacement by a universal republic: “The division of the human race into different peoples is like feudal anarchy . . . and two sovereigns on the earth are as absurd as two gods in heaven” wrote Anacharsis Cloots, who also spoke of his “aversion to the fragmentation of the world.” As we will see, the denial of diversity is rooted in the absolute certainty that only one right way of life exists.

Marxists looked forward to the first truly universal state, one that would cover the entire globe. The purpose of its unity was the realization of homogeneity. The universal state encompassing the entire world was to be “socially homogenous,” that is, without classes. Established in London in 1864, the First International called itself the International Workingmen’s Association. And despite events—especially wars—to the contrary (because they continued to place issues in the context of outdated nationalisms), the constant effort of the various Internationals until the 1960s was to abolish borders. When national exigencies were imposed upon socialism, Trotskyite movements took up the torch of internationalism. The dream of a worldwide proletarian revolution leading to a world government and classless society still appears in French neo-Trotskyite literature.