What Is a Peace Program?
What is a peace program? From the viewpoint of the ruling classes or of the parties subservient to them, it is the totality of the demands, the ultimate realization of which must be ensured by the power of militarism. Hence, for the realization of Miliukov’s 1 “peace program” Constantinople must be conquered by force of arms. Vandervelde’s “peace program” requires the expulsion of the Germans from Belgium as an antecedent condition? Bethmanll-Holweg’s plan were founded on the geographical war map. From this stand point the peace clauses reflect but the advantages achieved by force of arms. In other words, the peace program is the war program.
Such is the case prior to the intervention of the third power, the Socialist International. For the revolutionary proletariat, the peace program does not mean the demands which national militarism must fulfill, but those demands which the international proletariat intends to enforce by dint of its revolutionary fight against militarism in all countries. The more the international revolutionary movement expands, the less will the peace questions depend on the purely military position of the antagonists.4
This is rendered most clear to us by the question of the fate of small nations and weak states.
The war began with a devastating invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg by the German armies. In the echo created by the violation of the small country, beside the false and egotistic anger of the ruling classes of the enemy, there reverberated also the genuine indignation of the common masses whose sympathy was attracted by the fate of a small people.
crushed only because they happened to lie between two warring giants. At that first stage of the war the fate of Belgium attracted attention and sympathy, owing to its extraordinarily tragic nature. But thirty-four months of warfare have proved that the Belgian episode constituted only the first step towards the solution of the fundamental problem of the imperialist war, namely, the suppression of the weak by the strong.
Capitalism in its international relations pursues the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. Competition is the means of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of Big Capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and the greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital, and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the Great Powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.
Belgium still groans under the yoke of German militarism. This, however, is but the visible and dramatic expression of the collapse of her independence. The “deliverance” of Belgium does not at all constitute the fundamental aim of the Allied governments. Both in the further progress of the war and after its conclusion, Belgium will become but a pawn in the great game of the capitalist giants. Failing the intervention of the third power, Revolution, Belgium may as a result of the war either remain in German bondage, or fall under the yoke of Great Britain, or be divided between the powerful robbers of the two coalitions.
The same applies to Serbia, whose national energy served as a weight in the imperialist world scales whose fluctuations to one side or the other are least of all influenced by the independent interests of the Serbian people.
The Central Powers drew Turkey and Bulgaria into the whirlpool of the war. Whether both these countries will remain as the southeastern organ of the Austro-German imperialist bloc ("Central Europe") or will serve as small change when the balance sheet is drawn up, the fact remains that the war is writing a final chapter of the history of their independence.
Before the Russian revolution, the independence of Persia was most obviously liquidated as a direct result of the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907.
Rumania and Greece furnish us with a sufficiently clear example of how limited a “freedom of choice” is given to small-state firms by the struggle of the imperialist trust companies. Rumania preferred the gesture of an apparently free choice, when she sacrificed her neutrality. Greece tried by means of passive opposition to “remain at home.” Just as if to show most tangibly the futility of the whole “neutralist” struggle for self-preservation, the whole European war, represented by the armies of Bulgaria, Turkey, France, England. Russia and Italy shifted on to Greek territory. Freedom of choice is at best reflected in the form of self-suppression. In the end, both Rumania and Greece will share the same fate: they will be the stakes in the hands of the great gamblers.
At the other end of Europe, little Portugal deemed it necessary to enter the war on the side of the Allies. Such a decision might remain inexplicable if, in the question of participation in the dog fight, Portugal, which is under English protection, had had greater freedom than the government of Tver or Ireland.
The capitalist captains of Holland and of the three Scandinavian countries are accumulating mountains of gold, thanks to the war. However, these four neutral states of northwestern Europe are the more aware of the illusory character of their “sovereignty,” which, even if it survives the war, will nevertheless be subject to the settlement of the bills advanced by the peace conditions of the Great Powers.
"Independent” Poland will be able, in the midst of imperialist Europe, to keep a semblance of independence only by submitting to a slavish financial and military dependence on one of the great groups of the ruling powers?
The extent of the independence of Switzerland clearly appeared in the compulsory and restrictive measures adopted regulating her imports and exports. The representatives of this small federative republic who, cap in hand, go begging at the entrances of the two warring camps, can well understand the limited measure of independence and neutrality possible for a nation which cannot command some millions of bayonets.
If the war becomes an indeterminate equation in consequence of the ever increasing number of combatants and of fronts, thus rendering it impossible for the different governments to formulate the so-called “war aims,” then the small states still have the doubtful advantage that their historical fate may be reckoned as predetermined. No matter which side proves victorious, and however far-reaching the influence of such a victory may be, the fact remains that there can no longer be a return to independence for the small states. Whether Germany or England wins-in either case the question to be determined is who will be the direct master over the small nations. Only charlatans or hopeless simpletons can believe that the freedom of the small nations can be secured by the victory of one side or the other.
A like result would follow the third solution of the war viz, its ending in a draw. The absence of pronounced preponderance of one of the combatants over the other will only set off all the more clearly both the dominance of the strong over the weak within either one of the camps, and the preponderance of both over the “neutral” victims of imperialism. The issue of the war without conquerors or conquered is no guarantee for anybody: all small and weak states will none the less be conquered, and the same applies to those who bled to death on the battlefield as to those who tried to escape that fate by hiding in the shadows of neutrality.
The independence of the Belgians, Serbians, Poles, Armenians and others is regarded by us not as part of the Allied war program (as treated by Guesde, Plekhanov, Vandervelde. Henderson and others but belongs to the program of the fight of the international proletariat against imperialism.
But the question is: Can the proletariat under the present circumstances advance an independent “peace program,” i.e. solutions of the problems which caused the war of today or which have in the course of this war been brought to light? It has been intimated that the proletariat does not now command sufficient forces to bring about the realization of such a program. Utopian is the hope that the proletariat could carry out its own peace program as to the issue of the present war. What alternative is there say the struggle for the cessation of the war and for a peace without annexations? i.e., a return to the status quo ante bellum, to the state of affairs prior to the war? This, we are told is by far the more realistic program. In what sense, however, may the term realistic be applied to the fight for the close of the war by means of a place without annexation? Under what circumstances, we ask can the end of the war be brought about? Theoretically, three typical possibilities may here be considered: (1) a decisive victory of one of the parties; (2) a general exhaustion of the opponents without decisive sway of one over the other; (3) the intervention of the revolutionary proletariat, which interrupts the “normal” development of military events.
Status Quo Ante Bellum
It is quite obvious that in the first case, if the war is ended by a decisive victory of one side, it would be naive to dream of a peace without annexations. If the Scheidemanns and Landsbergs the staunch supporters of the work of their militarism insist in parliament upon an “annexationless” peace, it is only with the firmest conviction that such protests can hinder no “useful” annexation. On the other hand, one of our former Czarist commanders-in-chief, General Alexeiev, who dubbed the annexationless peace as “a utopian phrase,” thought quite correctly that the offensive is the chief thing, and that in case of successful war operations everything else would come of itself. In order to wrest annexations from the hands of the victorious party, which is armed to the teeth, the proletariat would naturally, regardless of its desires, be in need of a revolutionary force, which it will have to be ready to use openly. In any case, it possesses no other more “economical” means to compel the victorious party to renounce the advantage of the victory gained.
The second possible issue of the war, on which those who seek to promote the narrow program “annexationless peace and nothing more” principally depend, presupposes that the war, exhausting as it does all the resources of the warring nations will, without the revolutionary intervention of the third power, end in general exhaustion without conquerors or conquered. To this very situation, where militarism is too weak for effecting conquests, and the proletariat for making a revolution, the passive internationalists [of the Kautsky type] adopted their lame program of “annexationless peace,” which they frequently denote as a return to the status quo ante bellum i.e., the order of things prior to the war. Here, however, this pseudo-realism lays bare its Achilles heel, for actually an undecided issue of the war, as already shown, does not at all, exclude annexations, but on the contrary presupposes that That neither of the two powerful groups wins, does not mean that Serbia, Greece, Belgium, Poland, Persia. Syria, Armenia and others would be left intact. On the contrary, it is precisely at the expense of these third and weakest parties that annexations will in this case be carried out. In order to prevent these reciprocal “compensations” the international proletariat must need set afoot a direct revolutionary uprising against the ruling classes. Newspaper articles, convention resolutions, parliamentary protests and even public demonstrations have never prevented the rulers from acquiring territories or from oppressing the weak peoples either by way of victory or by means of diplomatic agreements.
As regards the third possible issue of the war, it seems to be the clearest. It presupposes that while the war is still on, the international proletariat rises with a force sufficient to paralyze and finally to stop the war from below. Obviously in this most favorable case, the proletariat, having been powerful enough to stop the war, would not be likely to limit itself to that purely conservative program which goes no further than the renunciation of annexations.
A powerful movement of the proletariat is thus in each case a necessary prerequisite of the actual realization of an annexationless peace. But again, if we assume such a movement, the foregoing program remains quite inadequate in that it acquiesces in the restoration of the order which prevailed prior to the war and which gave birth to the war. ’the European status quo ante bellum, a resultant of wars, robbery, violation, red tape, diplomatic stupidity and weakness of peoples, remains as the only positive content of the slogan “without annexations."
In its fight against imperialism, the proletariat cannot set up as its political aim the return to the old European map; it must set up its own program of state and national relations, harmonizing with the fundamental tendency of economic development, with the revolutionary character of the epoch and with the socialist interests of the proletariat.
By itself the slogan “without annexations” gives no criterion for a political orientation in the several problems brought forth during the course of the war. Assuming that France later on occupies Alsace-Lorraine, is the German Social Democracy together with Scheidemann bound to demand the return of these provinces to Germany? Shall we demand the restitution of the kingdom of Poland to Russia? Shall we insist upon Japan’s giving Chio-Chau back to Germany? Or that Italy yield back to its owners that part of Trentino now occupied by her? That would be nonsense. We should be fanatic of legitimacy, i.e. defenders of dynastic and “historic” rights in the spirit of the most reactionary diplomacy.-Besides; this “program” also lands a revolution for its fulfillment.
In all these enumerated and in other similar cases we, confronted with the concrete reality, shall naturally advance only one principle, viz., consultation of the peoples interested. This is certainly no absolute criterion. The French “Socialists” of the majority reduce the consultation of the population of Alsace-Lorraine to a shameful comedy: first occupying (that is, acquisition by force of arms) and then asking the population’s consent to be annexed. It is quite clear that a real consultation presupposes a state of revolution whereby the population can give their reply without being threatened by a revolver, be it German or French.
The only acceptable content of the slogan “without annexations” is a protest against new violent acquisitions, which only amounts to the negation of the rights of nations to self determination. But we have seen that this democratically unquestionable “right” is being and will necessarily be transformed into the right of strong nations to make acquisitions and impose oppression, whereas for the weak nations it will mean an impotent wish or a “scrap of paper.” Such will be the case as long as the political map of Europe forces nations and their fractions within the framework of states separated by tariff barriers and continually impinging upon one another in their imperialist fights.
It is possible to overcome this regime only by means of a proletarian revolution. There the center of gravity lies in the union of the peace program of the ’proletariat ’ with that of the social revolution.
The Right of Self-Determination
We saw above that socialism, in the solution of concrete questions in the field of national state groups, can make no step without the principle of national self-determination, which latter in its last instance appears as the recognition of the right of every national group to decide its national fate, hence as the right of peoples to sever themselves from a given state (as for instance from Russia or Austria). The only democratic way of getting; to know the “will” of a nation is the referendum. This democratic obligatory reply will, however, in the manner described, remain purely formal. It does not enlighten us with regard to the real possibilities, ways and means of national self-determination under the present conditions of capitalist economy; and yet the crux of the matter lies in this.
For many, if not for the majority of the oppressed nations, national groups and factions, the meaning of self-determination is the cancellation of the existing borders and the dismemberment of present states. In particular, this democratic principle leads to the deliverance of the colonies. Yet the whole policy of imperialism aims at the extension of state borders regardless of the national principle, of the compulsory incorporation of weak states within the customs border, and the acquisition of new colonies. Imperialism is by its very nature both expansive and aggressive and it is this qualification that characterizes imperialism, and not the changeable maneuvers of diplomacy.
From which flows the perennial conflict between the principle of national self-determination, which in many cases leads to state and economic decentralization, and the powerful efforts at centralization on the part of imperialism which has at its disposal the state organization and the military power. True, the national-separatist movement very often finds support in the imperialist intrigue of the neigh boring state. This support, however, becomes decisive only in the application of war might. As soon as there is an armed conflict between two imperialist organizations, the new state boundaries will not be decided on the ground of the national principle, but on the basis of the relative military forces.
To compel a victorious state to refrain from annexing newly conquered lands is as difficult as to force it to grant the freedom of self-determination to previously acquired provinces. Lastly, even if by a miracle Europe were divided by force of arms into fixed national states and small states, the national question would not thereby be in the least decided and, the very next day after the righteous national redistributions, capitalist expansion would resume its work. Conflicts would arise, wars and new acquisitions, in complete violation of the national principle in all cases where its preservation cannot be maintained by a sufficient number of bayonets. It would all give the impression of gamblers being forced to divide the gold justly among themselves in the middle of the game, in order to start the same game all over again with double rage.
From the might of the centralist tendency of imperialism, it does not at all follow that we are obliged passively to submit to it. National unity is a living hearth of culture, as the national language is its living organ, and these will still retain their meaning through indefinitely long historical periods. Socialism will and must safeguard to the national unity its freedom of development (or dissolution) in the interest of material and spiritual culture. It is in this sense that it took over from the revolutionary bourgeoisie the democratic principle of national self-determination as a political obligation.
The right of national self-determination cannot be excluded from the proletarian peace program; neither can it claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is, in our view, limited by deep, progressive, criss-crossing tendencies of historical development. If this “right” is by means of revolutionary power, set over against the imperialist methods of centralization which place weak and backward peoples under the yoke and crush national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the inevitable and deeply progressive tendencies of the present industrial order towards a planned organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe.
Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the stupidity of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its guiding principle.
From the standpoint of historical development as well as from the point of view of the problems of socialism, the centralist tendency of modern economy is fundamental, and it must be guaranteed the ample possibility of executing its real historical deliverance mission, to construct the united world economy, independent of national frames, state and tariff barriers, subject only to the peculiarities of the soil and its interior, to climate and the requirements of division of labor. Poles, Alsatians, Dalmatians, Belgians, Serbians and other small weak European nations may be reinstated or set up in the national borders towards which they strive, only in the case that they, remaining in these boundaries and able to freely develop their cultural existence as national groups, will cease to be economic groupings, will not be bound by state borders, will not be separated from or opposed to one another economically.
In other words, in order that Poland, Serbia, Rumania and others be able actually to form national units, it is necessary that the state boundaries now splitting them up into parts be cancelled, that the frames of the state be enlarged as an economic but not as a national organization, until it envelops the whole of capitalist Europe, which is now divided by tariffs and borders and torn by war. The state unification of Europe is clearly a prerequisite of self-determination of great and small nations of Europe. A national culture existence, free of national economic antagonism and based on real self-determination, is possible only under the roof of a democratically united Europe freed from state and tariff barriers.
This direct and immediate dependence of national self-determination of weak peoples upon the collective European regime excludes the possibility of the proletariat’s placing questions like the independence of Poland or the uniting of all Serbs outside the European revolution. On the other hand, this signifies that the right of self-determination, as a part of the proletarian peace program, possesses not a “utopian” but rather a revolutionary character. 12
The United States of Europe
We tried to prove in the foregoing that the economic and political union of Europe is the necessary prerequisite for the very possibility of national self-determination. As the slogan of national independence of Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and others remains an empty abstraction without the supplementary slogan “Federative Balkan Republic,” which plays such an important role in the whole policy of the Balkan Social Democracy; so on the grand European scale the principle of the “right” to self-determination can be effectively realized only under the conditions of a European Federative Republic.
But if on the Balkan Peninsula the slogan of a democratic federation has become purely proletarian, when this applies all the more to Europe with her incomparably deeper capitalist antagonisms. To bourgeois politics the destruction of inner European customs houses appears to be an insurmountable difficulty; but without this the inter-state courts of arbitration and international law codes will have no firmer duration than, for instance, Belgian neutrality. The urge toward unifying the European market which, like the effort towards the acquisition of non-European backward lands, is caused by the development of capitalism, conflicts with the powerful opposition of the landed and capitalist gentry, in whose hands the tariff apparatus joined with that of militarism constitutes an indispensable weapon for exploitation and enrichment.
The Hungarian financial and industrial bourgeoisie is hostile to economic unification with capitalistically more developed Austria. The Austro-Hungarian bourgeoisie is hostile to the idea of a tariff union with more powerful Germany. On the other hand, the German landowners will never willingly consent to the cancellation of grain duties. Furthermore, the economic interests of the propertied classes of the Central Empires cannot be so easily made to coincide with the interests of the English, French, Russian capitalists and landed gentry.
The present war speaks eloquently enough on this score. Lastly, the disharmony and irreconcilability of capitalist interests between the Allies themselves is still more visible than in the Central States. Under these circumstances, a halfway complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalist governments is sheer utopia. Here the matter can go no further than partial compromises and half-measures. Hence it is that the economic union of Europe, which offers colossal advantages to producer and consumer alike, and in general to the whole cultural development, becomes the revolutionary task of the European proletariat in its fight against imperialist protectionism and its instrument-militarism.
The United States of Europe-without monarchies, standing armies and secret diplomacy is therefore the most important integral part of the proletarian peace program.
The ideologists and politicians of German imperialism frequently came forward, especially at the beginning of the war, with their program of a European or at least a Central European United States (without France, England and Russia). The program of a violent unification of Europe is just as characteristic of the tendencies of German imperialism as is the tendency of French imperialism whose program is the forcible dismemberment of Germany.
If the German armies achieved the decisive victory reckoned upon in Germany at the outset of the war, then German imperialism would doubtless make the gigantic attempt of a compulsory war tariff union of European states, which would be constructed completely of preferences, compromises, etc. which would reduce to a minimum the progressive meaning of the unification of the European market. Needless to say, under such circumstances no talk would be possible of autonomy of the nations, thus forcibly joined together as the caricature of the European United States 3. Let us for a moment admit that German militarism succeeds in actually carrying out the compulsory half-union of Europe, just as Prussian militarism once achieved the half-union of Germany, what would then be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all peoples under the roof of isolated national states? Or the restoration of tariffs, “national” coinage, “national” social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The program of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The destruction of the compulsory anti-democratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, above alt of labor laws, etc. In other words, the slogan of the United States of Europe-without monarchy and standing armies-would under the foregoing circumstances become the unifying and guiding slogan of the European revolution.
Let us assume the second possibility, namely, an “undecided” issue of the war. At the very beginning of the war, the welt-known professor Liszt, an advocate of “United Europe,” proved that should the Germans fail to conquer their opponents, the European Union would nevertheless be accomplished, and in Liszt’s opinion it would be even more complete than in the case of a German victory. By the ever growing want for expansion, the European states, hostile against one another but unable to cope with one another, would continue to hinder one another in the execution of their “mission” in the Near East, Africa and Asia, and they would everywhere be forced back by the United States of North America and by Japan. In the case of an “undecided” issue of the war, Liszt thinks the indispensability of an economic and military understanding of the European Great Powers would come to the fore against weak and backward peoples, but above all, of course, against their own working masses. We pointed out above the colossal hindrances that lie in the way of realizing this program. The even partial overcoming of these hindrances would mean the establishment of an imperialist Trust of European States, a predatory share-holding association. 4
The proletariat will in this case have to fight not for the return to “autonomous” national states, but for the conversion of the imperialist state trust into a Republican European Federation.
However, the further the war progresses and reveals the absolute incapacity of militarism to cope with the question brought forward by the war, the less is spoken about these great plans for the uniting of Europe at the top. The question of the imperialist “United States of Europe” has given way to the plans, on the one side, of an economic union of Austria-Germany and on the other side of the quadruple alliance with its war tariffs and duties supplemented with militarism directed against one another. After the foregoing it is needless to enlarge on the great importance which, in the execution of these plans, the policy of the proletariat of both state trusts will assume in fighting against the established tariff and military-diplomatic fortifications and for the economic union of Europe.
Now after the so very promising beginning of the Russian revolution, we have every reason to hope that during the course of this present war a powerful revolutionary movement will be launched alt over Europe. It is clear that such a movement can succeed and develop and gain victory only as a general European one. Isolated within national border, it would be doomed to disaster. Our social-patriots point to the danger which threatens the Russian revolution from the side of German militarism. This danger is indubitable, but it is not the only one. English, French, Italian militarism is no less a dreadful enemy of the Russian revolution than the war machine of the Hohenzollerns.
The salvation of the Russian revolution lies in its propagation all over Europe. Should the revolutionary movement unroll itself in Germany, the German proletariat would look for and find a revolutionary echo in the “hostile” lands of the west, and if in one of the European countries the proletariat should snatch the power out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, it would be bound, be it only to retain the power, to place it at once at the service of the revolutionary movement in other lands. In other words, the founding of a stable regime of proletarian dictatorship would only be conceivable throughout Europe in the form of a European Republican Federation. The unification of the states of Europe, to be achieved neither by force of arms nor by industrial and diplomatic agreements, would then be the next unpostponable task of the triumphant revolutionary proletariat.
The United States of Europe is the slogan of the revolutionary epoch into which we have entered. Whatever turn the war operations may take later on, whatever balance-sheet diplomacy may draw out of the present war, and at whatever tempo the revolutionary movement will progress in the near future, the slogan of the United States of Europe will in all cases retain a colossal meaning as the political formula of the struggle of the European proletariat for power. In this program is expressed the fact that the national state has outlived itself as a framework for the development of the productive forces, as a basis for the class struggle, and thereby also as a state form of proletarian dictatorship over against the conservative defense of the antiquated national fatherland we place the progressive task, namely the creation of a ’new, higher “fatherland” of the revolution, of republican Europe, whence the proletariat alone will be enabled to revolutionize and to reorganize the whole world.16
Of course, the United States of Europe will be only one of the two axes of the “world reorganization” of industry. The United States of America will constitute the other.
To view the perspectives of the social revolution within national bounds means to succumb to the same national narrowness that forms the content of social-patriotism. Vaillant, until the close of his life, regarded France as the chosen country of the social revolution, and precisely in this sense he insisted upon its defense to the end. Lentsch and others, some hypocritically, others sincerely, believed that the defeat of Germany means above all the destruction of the very foundation of the social revolution. Lastly, our Tseretellis and Chernovs who, in our national conditions, have repeated the very sad experiment of French ministerialism, swear that their policy serves the purpose of the revolution and therefore has nothing: in common with the policy of Guesde and Sembat. Generally speaking, it must not be forgotten that in social patriotism there is active, besides the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary messianism, which regards its national state as chosen for introducing to humanity “socialism” or “democracy,” be it on the ground of its industrial or of its democratic form and revolutionary conquests! 9
Defending the national basis of the revolution with such methods as damage the international connections of the proletariat, really amounts to undermining the revolution, which cannot begin otherwise than on the national basis, but which cannot be completed on that basis in view of the present economic and military-political interdependence of the European states, which has never been so graphically revealed as in this very war. The slogan, the United States of Europe, gives expression to this interdependence, which will directly and immediately determine the concerted action of the European proletariat in the revolution.
Social-patriotism which is in principle, if not always in tact, the execution of social-reformism to the utmost extent and its adaptation to the imperialist epoch, proposes to us in the present world catastrophe to direct the policy of the proletariat along the lines of the “lesser evil” by joining one of the two warring groups. We reject this method. We say that the war, prepared by antecedent evolution, has on the whole placed point-blank the fundamental problems of the present capitalist development as a. whole; furthermore, that the line of direction to be followed by the international proletariat and its national detachments must not be determined by secondary political and national features nor by problematical advantages of militaristic preponderance of one side over the other (whereby these problematical advantages must be paid for in advance with absolute renunciation of the independent policy of the proletariat), but by the fundamental antagonism existing between the international proletariat and the capitalist regime as a whole. 20
The democratic, republican union of Europe, a union really capable of guaranteeing the freedom of national development, is possible only on the road of a revolutionary struggle against militarist, imperialist, dynastic centralism, by means of revolts in individual countries, with the subsequent confluence of these upheavals into a general European revolution. The victorious European revolution, however, no matter how its course in the sundry countries may be fashioned can, in consequence of the absence of other revolutionary classes, transfer the power only to the proletariat. Thus the United States of Europe represents the only conceivable form of the dictatorship of the European proletariat. 21
Footnotes
1. Miliukov: Foreign Minister in the Russian Provisional Government who declared his commitment to the war aims of the Romanov dynasty including the seizure of Constantinople.
2. Vandervelde: Belgian President of the Second International. After the outbreak of war he refused to convene a meeting of the Executive “as long as German soldiers are billeted in the homes of Belgian workers."
3. Bethmann-Holweg: German Chancellor from 1909 to 1913.
4. The less becomes the danger that peace conditions may be understood by the masses as war aims.
5. Rumania proclaimed its neutrality in August 1914, yet concluded a treaty with the Entente powers (Russia, France and Britain) in 1916.
6. Greece joined up with the Entente powers in June, 1917.
7. An “Autonomous Congress Poland” was established in 1916 which depended on the backing of the Central powers.
8. All pro-Entente Socialist International leaders.
9. [Such were, for example, the arguments of Martov, Martynov and the Menshevik-Internationalists generally, who hold on this question as on all others not a revolutionary but a conservative position. (not a social revolution,. but a restoration of the class struggle; not the Third International but the reestablishment of the Second International; not the revolutionary peace program, but a return to status quo ante bellum; not the conquest of power by the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, but preferring the power to bourgeois parties. . . ]
10. That the war must end sooner or later is incontestable. In this anticipatory sense the slogan of ending the war is unquestionably very “realistic,” for it banks on a certainty. But what is it in the revolutionary sense? It may be objected: isn’t it utopian to hope that the European proletariat, with its present forces, will succeed in halting military operations against the will of the ruling classes?
11. German social-chauvinist leaders.
12. [This consideration is directed to two addresses: against the German Davids and Landsbergs who from the heights of their imperialist “realism” traduce the principle of national independence as reactionary romanticism; and against the simplifiers in our revolutionary camp who proclaim this principle to be realizable only under socialism and who thereby rid themselves of the necessity of giving a principled answer to the national questions which have been posed point-blank by the war.
Between our present social condition and socialism there still lies an extended epoch of social revolution that is, the epoch of the open proletarian struggle for power, the conquest and application of this power, with the aim of the complete democratization of social relations and the systematic transformation of capitalist society into the socialist society. This is the epoch not of pacification and tranquility but, on the contrary, of the highest intensification of the class struggle, the epoch of popular uprisings, wars, expanding experiments of proletarian regime, and socialist reforms. This epoch demands of the proletariat that it give a practical, that is, an immediately applicable answer to the question of the further existence of nationalities and their reciprocal relations with the state and the economy.]
13. [Certain opponents of the program of the United States of Europe have used precisely this perspective as an argument that this idea can, under certain conditions, acquire a “reactionary” monarchist imperialist content. Yet it is precisely this perspective that provides the most graphic testimony in favor of the revolutionary viability of the slogan of the United States of Europe. This is an elliptical reference to Lenin’s criticisms of the slogan.
14. And this perspective is on occasion adduced unjustifiably as proof of the “danger” of the slogan of the United States of Europe, whereas in reality this is the most graphic proof of its realistic and revolutionary significance. If the capitalist states of Europe succeeded in merging into an imperialist trust, this would be a step forward as compared with the existing situation, for it would first of all create a unified, all-European material base for the working class movement.]
15. [Our denial of “national defense", as an outlived political program for the proletariat, ceases to be a purely negative act of ideological-political self-defense, and acquires all its revolutionary content only in the event that]
16. [Herein, incidentally, lies the answer to those who ask dogmatically: “Why the unification of Europe and not of the whole world?” Europe is not only a geographic term, but a certain economic and cultural-historic community. The European revolution does not have to wait for the revolutions in Asia and Africa nor even in Australia and America. And yet a completely victorious revolution in Russia or England is unthinkable without a revolution in Germany, and vice versa. The present war is called a world war, but even after the intervention of the United States, it is Europe that is the arena of war. And the revolutionary problems confront first of all the European proletariat.)
17. [The only concrete historical consideration against the slogan of the United States of Europe was formulated by the Swiss Social Democrat as follows: “The unevenness of economic and political development is the unconditional law of capitalism.” From this the Social Democrat draws the conclusion that the victory of socialism is possible in one country and that it is needless therefore to make the dictatorship of the proletariat in each isolated State conditional upon the creation of the United States of Europe. That the capitalist development of various countries is uneven is quite incontestable. But this unevenness is itself extremely uneven. The capitalist levels of England, Austria, Germany or France are not the same. But as compared with Africa and Asia all these countries represent capitalist “Europe", which has matured for the socialist revolution. It is profitable and necessary to reiterate the elementary thought that no single country in its struggle has to wait” for the others, lest the idea of parallel international action be supplanted by the idea of procrastinating international inaction. Without waiting for the others we begin and continue the struggle on our own national soil in complete certainty that our initiative will provide the impulse for the struggle in other countries; and if this were not so, then it would be hopeless to think as is borne out both by historical experience and theoretical considerations – that revolutionary Russia, for example, would be able to maintain herself in the face of conservative Europe, or that Socialist Germany could remain isolated in a capitalist world.)
18. “Socialist” and “Socialist Revolutionary” members of the Russian Provisional Government.
19. The internationalist Trotsky was ever a firm opponent of the reactionary programme of “Socialism in One Country’. This is powerfully shown by this piece from the 1944 translation:
(Of a completely triumphant revolution were actually conceivable within the limits of a single, better prepared nation, this messianism, bound up with the program of national defense, and would have its relative historical justification. But in reality, it does not have it.)
20. [This is the only principled formulation of the question and, by its very essence; it is socialist-revolutionary in character. It alone provides a theoretical and historical justification for the tactic of revolutionary internationalism.
Denying support to the state – not in the name of a propaganda circle but in the name of the most important class in society – in the period of the greatest catastrophe, internationalism does not simply eschew “sin” passively but affirms that the fate of world development is no longer linked for us with the fate of the national state; more than this, that the latter has become a vise for development and must be overcome, that is, replaced by a higher economic-cultural organization on a broader foundation. If the problem of socialism were compatible with the framework of the national state, then it would thereby become compatible with national defense. But the problem of socialism confronts us on the imperialist foundation that is under conditions in which capitalism itself is force violently to destroy the national-state frameworks it has itself established.
The imperialist half-unification of Europe might be achieved, as we tried to show, as a result of a decisive victory of one group of the great powers as well as a consequence of an inconclusive outcome of the war. In either instance, the unification of Europe would signify the complete trampling underfoot of the principle of self-determination with respect to all weak nations and the preservation and centralization of all the forces and weapons of European reaction: monarchies, standing armies and secret diplomacy.]
21. [A Postscript (1922)
The assertion, repeated several times in the Programme of Peace, to the effect that the proletarian revolution cannot be victoriously consummated within a national framework may perhaps seem to some readers to have been refuted by the five years’ experience of our Soviet Republic. But such a conclusion would be unfounded. The fact that the workers’ state has maintained itself against the entire world in a single and, moreover, backward country testifies to the colossal power of the proletariat, a power which in other more advanced, more civilized countries, will truly be able to achieve miracles. But having defended ourselves as a state in the political and military sense, we have not arrived at, nor even approached socialist society. The struggle for revolutionary-state self-defense resulted in this interval in an extreme decline of productive forces, whereas socialism is conceivable only on the basis of their growth and blossoming. Trade negotiations with bourgeois states, concessions, the Geneva Conference and so on are far too graphic evidence of the impossibility of isolated socialist construction within a national-state framework. So long as the bourgeoisie remains in power in other European states we are compelled, in the struggle against economic isolation, to seek agreements with the capitalist world; at the same time it can be stated with certainty that these agreements, in the best case, will help us heal this or that economic wound, make this or that step forward, but the genuine rise of socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe.
That Europe represents not only a geographic but also an economic political term is graphically evidenced by the events in recent years: The decline of Europe, the growth of the power of the United States, the attempt of Lloyd George to “save” Europe by means of combined imperialist and pacifist methods.
Today the European Labor movement is in a period of defensive actions, of gathering forces and making preparations. A new period of open revolutionary battles for power will inexorably push to the fore the question of the state interrelationships among the peoples of revolutionary Europe. To the extent that the experience in Russia has projected the Soviet State as the most natural form of the proletarian vanguard of other countries has adopted in principle this state form, we may assume that with the resurgence of the direct struggle for power, the European proletariat will advance the program of the Federated European Soviet Republic. The experience of Russia in this connection is very instructive. It testifies to the complete compatibility under a proletarian regime of the broadest national and cultural autonomy and economic centralism. In this sense, the slogan of the United States of Europe, translated into the language of the Soviet State, not only preserves all its meaning but still promises to reveal its colossal significance during the impending epoch of the social revolution.]