V. I.

Lenin

Editorial Comment by Sotsial-Demokrat on the Manifesto on War Issued by the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.

The demand for a United States of Europe, as advanced by the
Central Committee’s Manifesto, which accompanied it with a call for
the overthrow of the monarchies in Russia, Austria, and Germany, is distinct
from the pacifist interpretation of this slogan by Kautsky and others.

Issue No. 44 of Sotsial-Demokrat, our Party’s Central
Organ, carries an editorial proving the economic erroneousness of the
United States of Europe slogan. [1]

Either this is a demand that cannot be implemented under capitalism, inasmuch as it presupposes the establishment
of a planned world economy, with a partition of colonies, spheres of
influence, etc., among the individual countries, or else it is a reactionary
slogan, one that signifies a temporary union of the Great Powers of Europe
with the aim of enhancing the oppression of colonies and of plundering the
more rapidly developing countries-Japan and America.

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Notes:
[1]
See pp. 339–43 of this volume.— Ed .