Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/366

 armed conflict between two imperialistic organizations, the new state boundaries will not be decided on the ground of the national principle, but on the basis of the relative military forces. To compel a victorious State to refrain from annexing newly-occupied lands is as difficult as to force it to grant the freedom of self-determination to provinces previously acquired. Lastly, even 1f by a miracle Europe was divided by force of arms into fixed national states and small states, the national question would not thereby be 1n the least decided, and the very next day after the righteous national redistributions, capitalistic expansion would resume its work. Conflicts would arise, wars and new acquisitions, in complete disregard of the national principle in all such cases where its assertion can not be maintained by a sufficient number of bayonets. It would all give the impression of gamblers being forced to divide the gold justly among themselves in the middle of the game, in order to start the same game all over again with double rage.

From the might of the centralistic tendency of Imperialism it does not at all follow that we are obliged passively to submit to it. National unity is a living hearth of culture, as the national language is its living organ, and these will still retain their meaning through indefinitely long historical periods. Socialism will and must warrant to the national unity its freedom of development (or dissolution) in the interest of material and spiritual culture. It is in this sense that it took over from the revolutionary bourgeoisie the democratic principle of national self-determination as a political obligation.

The right of national self-determination can not be excluded from the proletarian peace-program. Neither can it claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is, in our view, limited by deep, progressive, antagonistic tendencies of historical evolution. If this "right" is by means of revolutionary power, set over against the imperialistic methods of centralization, which places weak and backward peoples under the yoke and crushes out national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the "national principle" to get in the way of the inevitable and deeply progressive tendencies of the present industrial order towards an orderly organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe.

Imperialism is the capitalistic-thievish expression of this tendency of modern industry to tear itself completely away from the stupidity of national narrowness, as it did on former occasions with regard to local and provincial confinement while fighting against the imperialistic form of economic centralization. Socialism does not at