The right to self-determination of nations means exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, to free political separation from an oppressing nation. Concretely, this demand of political democracy means complete freedom for agitation in favor of separation and the decision on separation by referendum of the separating nation. Thus this demand is by no means equivalent to the demand for separation, fragmentation, the formation of small states. It signifies only the consistent expression of the struggle against all national oppression. The closer the democratic order of a state approaches complete freedom of separation, the rarer and weaker will be in practice the strivings for separation, for the advantages of large states are beyond question both from the standpoint of economic progress and from the standpoint of the interests of the masses, and these advantages are constantly increasing with the growth of capitalism. Recognition of self-determination is not equivalent to recognition of federation as a principle. One can be a decisive opponent of this principle and an advocate of democratic centralism, but prefer federation to national inequality, as the only path to complete democratic centralism. It is precisely from this standpoint that Marx, being a centralist, even preferred federation of Ireland with England to the violent subjugation of Ireland by the English{93}.

The aim of socialism is not only the elimination of the fragmentation of humanity into small states and all national isolation, not only the rapprochement of nations, but their fusion. And it is precisely in order to achieve this aim that we must, on the one hand, explain to the masses the reactionary character of the idea of Renner and O. Bauer concerning the so-called "cultural-national autonomy"{94}, and on the other hand, demand the liberation of oppressed nations not in general vague phrases, not in empty declamations, not in the form of "postponing" the question until socialism, but in a clearly and precisely formulated political program, specially taking into account the hypocrisy and cowardice of socialists in the oppressing nations. Just as humanity can arrive at the elimination of classes only through a transitional period of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, similarly to the inevitable fusion of nations humanity can arrive only through a transitional period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, that is, their freedom of separation.