Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/369

 than in the Central States. Under these circumstances, a half way complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalistic governments is absolutely unattainable. Here the matter can go no farther than partial compromise and half measures. Hence it is that the economic union of Europe, which offers colossal advantages to producer and consumer alike, and in general to the whole cultural development, becomes the revolutionary task of the European proletariat in its fight with Imperialistic protectionism and militarism.

The United States of Europe—without monarchies, standing armies and secret diplomacy, appears as the most important feature of the proletarian peace-program.

The ideologists and politicians of German Imperialism frequently came forward, principally at the banning of the war, with their program of a European or at least a Central European United States (without France, England and Russia). The program of a violent coalition of Europe is just as characteristic of the tendency of German Imperialism supported by powerful Capitalism, as it is of the tendency of the petty bourgeoisie of France whose program is the forcible dismemberment of Germany.

If the German armies achieved the decisive victory reckoned upon in Germany at the outset of the war, then German Imperialism would doubtless make the gigantic attempt of a compulsory war-tariff union of European States, which would be constructed completely of preferences, compromises and heaps of every kind of outworn stuff in conformity with the state-structure of present-day Germany. Needless to say, under such circumstances no talk would be possible of an autonomy of the nations, thus forcibly joined together as the caricature of the European United States. Let us for a moment admit that German militarism succeed in actually carrying out the compulsory half-union of Europe, just as Prussian militarism once achieved the half-union of Germany, what would then be the cardinal formula of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all peoples under the roof of isolated national states? Or the restoration of "automonic" tariffs, "national" coinage, "national" social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The slogan of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The cancellation of the compulsory anti-democratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and zealous furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, and above all of labor laws, etc. In other words, the slogan