Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/367

 all take a stand against the particular tendency as such, but rather on the contrary, makes the tendency its guiding principle.

From the standpoint of historical development as well as from the point of view of the problems of Socialism, the centralistic tendency of modern industry is fundamental, and it must be guaranteed the amplest possibility of executing its real historical deliverance mission, to construct the united world industry, independent of national frames, state and tariff barriers, subject only to the peculiarities of the soil and its interior, to climate and the requirements of division of labor. Poles, Alsatians, Dalmatians, Belgians, Serbians and other small weak European nations not yet subjugated, may be re-instated or set up in the national borders towards which they strive, only inasmuch as they, remaining in these boundaries and able to freely develop their cultural existence as national groups, will cease to be economic groupings, will not be bound by state borders, will not be separated from or opposed to one another economically. In other words, in order that Poland, Serbia, Roumania and others be able actually to form national units, it is necessary that the state boundaries now splitting them up into parts be cancelled, that the frames of the state be enlarged as an economic but not as a national organization, until it envelop the whole of capitalistic Europe, which is now divided by tariffs and borders and torn by war. The state unification of Europe is clearly a pre-requisite of self-determination of great and small nations. A national culture existence, free of national economic antagonism and based on real self-determination, is possible only under the roof of a democratically united Europe freed from state and tariff barriers.

This direct and immediate independence of national self-determination of weak States from the collective European règime, excludes the possibility of the proletariat's placing questions like the independence of Poland or the uniting of all Serbs outside the European revolution. On the other hand, this signifies that the right of self-determination, as a part of the proletariat peace-program, possesses not a "utopian" but rather a revolutionary character.