It is not merely the demand for national self-determination, but all the points of our democratic programme-minimum that were already put forward by the petty bourgeoisie back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And the petty bourgeoisie continues to utopianism in their presentation of all these demands, failing to see the class struggle and its intensification under democracy, believing in "peaceful" capitalism. It is precisely this kind of utopia—which deceives the people and is defended by the Kautskyists—of a peaceful alliance of equal nations under imperialism. In contrast to this bourgeois, opportunistic utopia, the programme of social-democracy must advance, as primary, most essential and inevitable under imperialism, the division of nations into oppressing and oppressed.

The proletariat of the oppressing nations cannot limit itself to general, stereotyped, commonplace phrases—the sort repeated by any pacifist bourgeois—against annexations and for the equality of nations in general. The proletariat cannot pass over in silence the question especially "disagreeable" to imperialist bourgeoisie: the question of the boundaries of a state resting upon national oppression. The proletariat cannot but struggle against the forcible retention of oppressed nations within the boundaries of the given state, and this means precisely struggling for the right of self-determination. The proletariat must demand the freedom of political separation of colonies and nations oppressed by "its own" nation. Otherwise, the internationalism of the proletariat will remain empty and verbal; neither trust nor class solidarity between the workers of the oppressed and oppressing nations is possible; the hypocrisy of reformist and Kautskyist defenders of self-determination, who keep silent about nations oppressed by "their own" nation and forcibly retained in "their own" state, remains unexposed.

On the other hand, socialists of oppressed nations must especially uphold and carry into practice complete and unconditional—including organizational—unity of the workers of the oppressed nation with the workers of the oppressing nation. Without this, it is impossible to maintain the independent policy of the proletariat and its class solidarity with the proletariat of other countries in the face of all and every manoeuvre, betrayal, and fraud of the bourgeoisie. For the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations constantly perverts the slogans of national liberation into deception of the workers: in internal politics, it uses these slogans for reactionary agreements with the bourgeoisie of the dominant nations (for example, the Poles in Austria and Russia, entering into deals with reaction for the oppression of Jews and Ukrainians); in external politics, it strives to conclude deals with one of the rival imperialist powers in order to achieve its predatory aims (the policy of small states in the Balkans, etc.).

The fact that the struggle for national freedom against one imperialist power may, under certain conditions, be exploited by another "great" power for its own equally imperialist aims—this can no more cause social-democracy to renounce recognition of the right of nations to self-determination than the repeated instances of the bourgeoisie exploiting republican slogans for purposes of political deception and financial robbery, for example, in the Romance countries, can cause social-democrats to renounce their republicanism[61].