And yet, if you keep your ear to the ground and listen closely to the thunders of reason, you will find a very different sound emerging from the rumbling volcano below. It is the sound of people on the move, of borders under strain, of movements on the rise. This eighth issue of ROAR Magazine, our last one to appear in print, sets out to map the contours of these movements as they challenge, subvert and transform the international border regime from within.

In a way, the essays collected on these pages help bring our print run full circle. In March 2016, we marked the 145th anniversary of the Paris Commune by releasing our first issue on the revival of the commune as a revolutionary political form. As we noted then, “the Commune’s commitment to a radical working-class internationalism,” which included the granting of universal citizenship rights to immigrants, “was powerfully expressed in the celebrated slogan that ‘the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic.’” Today, we conclude our series with a reaffirmation of that internationalist horizon as a foundational principle for the emerging anti-capitalist politics of the twenty-first century.

Against the overpowering hypermobility of global capital and the impotent vanity of nations, the left urgently needs to develop a new revolutionary internationalism in the spirit of Eugène Pottier and the Parisian communards. Faced with a catastrophic convergence of thoroughly global challenges, from de-territorialized financial markets to planetary climate change, it is clear that there can be no resort to the false prophets of parochialism. In these tumultuous times, it is our historic responsibility to demonstrate through a combination of political education, direct action and transnational mobilization that the only hope for the wretched of the Earth lies right here, beyond the border.