V. I.

Lenin

In No. 40 of Sotsial-Demokrat we reported that a conference of our-Party’s groups abroad had decided to defer the
question of the “United States of Europe” slogan pending a
discussion, in the press, on the economic aspect of the
matter. [1]

At our conference the debate on this question assumed a purely political
character. Perhaps this was partly caused by the Central Committee’s
Manifesto having formulated this slogan as a forthright political one
(“the immediate political slogan...”, as it says there); not only did it advance the slogan of a republican United States of
Europe, but expressly emphasised that this slogan is meaningless and false
“without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, Austrian and
Russian monarchies”.

It would be quite wrong to object to such a presentation of the question
within the limits of a political appraisal of this slogan—e.g., to argue that it obscures or weakens, etc., the slogan of
a socialist revolution. Political changes of a truly democratic nature, and
especially political revolutions, can under no circumstances whatsoever
either obscure or weaken the slogan of a socialist revolution. On the
contrary, they always bring it closer, extend its basis, and draw new
sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the semi-proletarian masses into the
socialist struggle. On the other hand, political revolutions are inevitable
in the course of the socialist revolution, which should not be regarded as a
single act, but as a period of turbulent political and economic upheavals,
the most intense class struggle, civil war, revolutions, and
counter-revolutions.

But while the slogan of a republican United States of Europe—if
accompanied by the revolutionary overthrow of the three most reactionary
monarchies in Europe, headed by the Russian—is quite invulnerable as a
political slogan, there still remains the highly important question of its
economic content and significance. From the standpoint of the economic
conditions of imperialism—i.e., the export of capital and the
division of the world by the “advanced” and “civilised” colonial powers—a United States of Europe,
under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary.

Capital has become international and monopolist. The world has been
carved up by a handful of Great Powers, i.e., powers successful in the great
plunder and oppression of nations. The four Great Powers of
Europe—Britain, France, Russia and Germany, with an aggregate
population of between 250,000,000 and 300,000,000, and an area of about
7,000,000 square kilometres—possess colonies with a population of
almost 500 million (494,500,000) and an area of 64,600,000 square
kilometres, i.e., almost half the surface of the globe (133,000,000 square
kilometres, exclusive of Arctic and Antarctic regions). Add to this the
three Asian states—China, Turkey and Persia, now being rent piecemeal
by thugs that are waging a war of “liberation”, namely, Japan,
Russia, Britain and France. Those three Asian states, which may be called
semi-colonies (in reality they are now 90 per cent colonies), have a total
population of 360,000,000 and an area of 14,500,000 square kilometres
(almost one and a half times the area of all Europe).

Furthermore, Britain, France and Germany have invested capital abroad to
the value of no less than 70,000 million rubles. The business of securing
“legitimate” profits from this tidy sum—these exceed 3,000
million rubles annually—committees of the millionaires, known as
governments, which are equipped with armies and navies and which provide the
sons and brothers of the millionaires with jobs in the colonies and
semi-colonies as viceroys, consuls, ambassadors, officials of all kinds,
clergymen, and other leeches.

That is how the plunder of about a thousand million of the earth’s
population by a handful of Great Powers is organised in the epoch of the
highest development of capitalism. No other organisation is possible under
capitalism. Renounce colonies, “spheres of influence”, and the
export of capital? To think that it is possible means coming down to the
level of some snivelling parson who every Sunday preaches to the rich on the
lofty principles of Christianity and advises them to give the poor, well, if
not millions, at least several hundred rubles yearly.

A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement
on the partition of colonies. Under capitalism, however, no other basis and
no other principle of division are possible except force. A
multi-millionaire cannot share the “national income” of a
capitalist country with anyone otherwise than “in proportion to the
capital invested” (with a bonus thrown in, so that the biggest capital
may receive more than its share). Capitalism is private ownership of the
means of production, and anarchy in production. To advocate a
“just” division of income on such a basis is sheer Proudhonism,
stupid philistinism. No division can be effected otherwise than in
“proportion to strength”, and strength changes with the course
of economic development. Following 1871, the rate of Germany’s
accession of strength was three or four times as rapid as that of Britain
and France, and of Japan about ten times as rapid as Russia’s. There
is and there can be no other way of testing the real might of a capitalist
state than by war. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private
property—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of
those fundamentals. Under capitalism the smooth economic growth of
individual enterprises or individual states is impossible. Under capitalism,
there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium
than crises in industry and wars in politics.

Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists
and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as
an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end?
Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly
protecting colonial booty against Japan and America, who have been
badly done out of their share by the present partition of colonies, and the
increase of whose might during the last fifty years has been immeasurably
more rapid than that of backward and monarchist Europe, now turning
senile. Compared with the United States of America, Europe as a whole
denotes economic stagnation. On the present economic basis, i.e., under
capitalism, a United States of Europe would signify an organisation of
reaction to retard America’s more rapid development. The times when
the cause of democracy and socialism was associated only with Europe alone
have gone for ever.

A United States of the World (not of Europe alone) is the state form of
the unification and freedom of nations which we associate with
socialism—about the total disappearance of the state, including the
democratic. As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of
the World would hardly be a correct one, first, because it merges with
socialism; second, because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the
victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also
create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the
others.

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of
capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or
even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists
and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of
that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist
world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other
countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists,
and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes
and their states. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is
victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic,
which will more and more concentrate the forces of the proletariat of a
given nation or nations, in the struggle against states that have not yet
gone over to socialism. The abolition of classes is impossible without a
dictatorship of the oppressed class, of the proletariat. A free union of
nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and
stubborn struggle of the socialist republics against the backward
states.

It is for these reasons and after repeated discussions at the conference
of R,S.D.L.P. groups abroad, and following that conference, that the Central
Organ’s editors have come to the conclusion that the slogan for a
United States of Europe is an erroneous one.

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Notes:
[1]
See page 158 of this volume.— Ed .