Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/372

 ously, believed that the defeat of Germany means above all the destruction of the very foundation of the Social Revolution. Lastly, our Tseretellis and Chernovs who, in our national conditions, repeated the very sad experiment of French ministerialism, swear that their policy serves the purpose of the revolution and therefore has nothing in common with the policy of Guesde and Sembat. Generally speaking, it must not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is active, besides the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary messianism, which regards its national state as chosen for introducing to humanity "Socialism" or "democracy", be it on the ground of its industrial or of its democratic form and revolutionary conquests. Defending the national basis of the revolution with such methods as damage the international connections of the proletariat, really amounts to undermining the revolution, which cannot begin otherwise than on the national basis, but which cannot be completed on that basis in view of the present economic and military-political interdependence of the European States which has never been so emphatically pronounced as in this very war. The motto, the United States of Europe, gives expression to this inter-dependence, which will directly and immediately determine the concerted action of the European proletariat in the revolution.

Social-patriotism which is in principle, if not always in fact, the execution of social-reformism to the utmost extent and its adaptation to the imperialistic age, proposes to us in the present world catastrophe to direct the policy of the proletariat in the direction of the "lesser evil" by joining one of the two groups. We reject this method. We say that the war, prepared by antecedent evolution, has on the whole placed on edge the Fundamental Problems of the present capitalist development; furthermore, that the line of direction to be followed by the international proletariat and its national fighting-corps must not be determined by secondary political and national features nor by problematical advantages of militaristic preponderance of one side over the other (whereby these problematical advantages must be paid for in advance with absolute renunciation of the independent policy of the proletariat), but by the fundamental antagonism existing between the international proletariat and the capitalistic règime generally.

The democratic, republican union of Europe, a union really capable of guaranteeing the freedom of national development, is possible only by way of a revolutionary fight against the militaristic, imperialistic, dynastic Centralism, by means of revolts in individual countries, with the subsequent confluence of these upheavals into a gen-