Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/61

 Rh But the weakening of Austria, which would signify the final liquidation of Turkey, with a consequent strengthening of Russia, the Balkan States, and England, would probably accomplish the national unification of Germany, but would, at the same time, wipe out, forever, its imperialistic aspirations. The safety of the Hapsburg monarchy has therefore logically become a necessary complement to German imperialism, the preservation of Turkey its chief problem.

But Austria means a constant latent state of war in the Balkans. For Turkish disintegration has promoted the existence and growth of the Balkan States in the immediate neighborhood of the Hapsburg monarchy, and the resulting state of chronic incipient warfare. Obviously the existence of virile and independent national states on the border of a monarchy that is made up of fragments of these same nationalities, which it can rule only by the whip-lash of dictatorship must hasten its downfall. Austrian Balkan politics and particularly its Serbian relations have plainly revealed its inner decay. Although its imperialistic appetites wavered between Saloniki and Durazzo, Austria was not in a position to annex Servia, even before the latter had grown in strength and size through the two Balkan wars, For the forcible annexation of Servia would have dangerously strengthened in its interior one of the most refractory South Slavic nationalities, a people that even now, because of Austria's stupid regime of reaction, can scarcely be held in check. But neither can Austria tolerate the normal independent development of Servia or profit from it by normal commercial relations. For the Habsburg monarchy is not the political expression of a capitalist state, but a loose syndicate of a few parasitic cliques, striving to grasp everything within reach, utilizing the political powers of the nation so long as this weak edifice still stands. For the benefit of Hungarian agrarians, and for the purpose of increasing the prices of agricultural products, Austria has forbidden