The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 6/Chapter 5
V.
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE
(Trotzky)
We tried to prove in the foregoing that the economic and political union of Europe appears to be the sine qua non of the possibility of national self-determination. As the slogan of "National independence" of Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and others remains an empty abstraction without the supplementary motto, "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 on the background of a European Federative Republic.
But if on the Balkan peninsula the slogan of a democratic federation has become purely proletarian, this refers all the more to Europe with her incomparably deeper capitalistic antagonisms.
To bourgeois politics the destruction of inner European customs houses appears to be an unsurmountable 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 effort towards 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 capitalistic gentry themselves, 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 the idea of a tariff union with the 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 irreconcilability of capitalistic interests between the Allies themselves is still more visible than in the Central States. Under these circumstances, a half way complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalistic governments is absolutely unattainable. Here the matter can go no farther than partial compromise 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 with Imperialistic protectionism and militarism.
The United States of Europe—without monarchies, standing armies and secret diplomacy, appears as the most important feature of the proletarian peace-program.
The ideologists and politicians of German Imperialism frequently came forward, principally at the banning 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 coalition of Europe is just as characteristic of the tendency of German Imperialism supported by powerful Capitalism, as it is of the tendency of the petty bourgeoisie of France 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 and heaps of every kind of outworn stuff in conformity with the state-structure of present-day Germany. Needless to say, under such circumstances no talk would be possible of an autonomy of the nations, thus forcibly joined together as the caricature of the European United States. Let us for a moment admit that German militarism succeed 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 cardinal formula 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 "automonic" tariffs, "national" coinage, "national" social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The slogan of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The cancellation of the compulsory anti-democratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and zealous furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, and above all 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 formula 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 well 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 evergrowing want for expansion, the European States, hostile against one another but unable to get equal 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 America and by Japan. In the case of an "undecided" issue of the war, Liszt thinks the indispensability of an economic and militaristic understanding of the European Great Powers, would come to the fore against weak and undeveloped 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 imperialistic Trust of European States, a predatory share-holding association. The proletariat will in this case have to fight not for the return to "autonomous" national states, but for the conversion of the imperialistic state trust into a Republican European Federation.
The further, however, 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 from the top down. The question of the imperialistic "United States of Europe" arose out of 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 fortress and for the economic union of Europe.
Now after the so very promising banning 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 all over Europe. It is clear that such a movement can only succeed and develop as a general European one. Isolated within national borders, it would be doomed to failure. Our social patriots point to the danger which threatens the Russian Revolution from the side of German militarism. English, French and Italian Imperialism 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 règime 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 task of the triumphant revolutionary proletariat.
The United States of Europe is the motto of the revolutionary age into which we have emerged. Whatever turn the war operations may take later on, whatever facit diplomacy may draw out of the present war, and at whatever tempo the revolutionary movement will progress in the near future, the formula, the United States of Europe, will in all events retain a colossal meaning as the political formula of the fight of the European proletariat for power. In this program that fact finds its expression, that the national state has outlived itself—as a frame for the development of all creative forces, as a basis for the class struggle, and thereby also as a state form of proletarian dictatorship. Over against the conservative defence of the antiquated national fatherland we place the progressive task, namely the creation of a new, higher "fatherland" of the Revolution, of the republican Europe, whence the proletariat alone will be enabled to revolutionize and to re-organize the whole world.
Of course the United States of Europe will be only one of the two axes of the "World re-organization" 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 defence to the utmost. Lentsch and others, some hypocritically, others conscientiously, 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, 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. 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 emphatically pronounced as in this very war. The motto, the United States of Europe, gives expression to this inter-dependence, 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 fact, the execution of social-reformism to the utmost extent and its adaptation to the imperialistic age, proposes to us in the present world catastrophe to direct the policy of the proletariat in the direction of the "lesser evil" by joining one of the two groups. We reject this method. We say that the war, prepared by antecedent evolution, has on the whole placed on edge the Fundamental Problems of the present capitalist development; furthermore, that the line of direction to be followed by the international proletariat and its national fighting-corps 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 capitalistic règime generally.
The democratic, republican union of Europe, a union really capable of guaranteeing the freedom of national development, is possible only by way of a revolutionary fight against the militaristic, imperialistic, 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.