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Written: 1992.
First Published: October 1992.
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This short article first appeared in Workers Fight, the paper of the Revolutionary Workers League in November 1939. Given the present crisis surrounding the Maastricht Treaty, the ERM and European integration, the central point of the article, that a united capitalist Europe would not overcome the contradictions between nation states, is highly topical.
The RWL led a brief existence between 1939 and 1941. The result of a split by supporters of ‘open work’ from the official British section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Socialist League, a majority of its members joined the Workers International League in 1940 while most of the remaining members rejoined the RSL in 1941. (see Sam Bornstein & Al Richardson, War and the International, Socialist Platform 1986, pp35-9).
The widespread use of this slogan has made it necessary for us to make our attitude to this question quite clear. The slogan in itself means very little unless we consider by whom it is put forward, and with what purpose. As with the slogan ‘Against the War’, many political groups use it and all mean something different by it.
The idea of a United States of Europe is not by any means a new one. Already Lenin had found it necessary to discuss it at great length following its use at the 1915 conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Today certain Labour MPs, pacifists, liberals and even some ‘popular magazines’ have found a use for it.
First let us see what the latter group of individuals mean when they use it, always remembering that they only started using it as a possible link up for Britain’s war aims. Briefly, their idea is to unite the main European powers with the various puppet states under a central government. They view it as a peaceful reform under capitalism. This, they say, will not only solve the problems of frontiers, currencies etc. but, as world wars seem to spring from troubles between European states, it will also abolish wars. Pointing to the USA, they argue that a war between Kentucky and Ohio is hardly likely.
In order to examine this argument, we have to answer two questions: Is such an idea at all possible? If possible, would it solve all the problems as they claim?
With reference to the first question, we reply: Yes, a United States of Europe is possible even under capitalism. But what would this really mean? It would mean, in the first place, that the unity so created could only be temporary and very unstable because the irreconcilable antagonism between the participating capitalist states would remain as intense as ever. Those contradictions, which in peacetime are so explosive as to cause periodic wars for the rights of oppression and exploitation, would reach an even more highly concentrated form if forced into an unnatural coalition and would merely descend into a struggle for supremacy amongst the ‘national capitalists’. While it may be argued that this has been overcome by the internationalism of finance, obviously this argument is false, as the fight for markets and profits still goes on amongst nations – trade agreements, tariffs, protection, currency manipulations and, of course, wars. The United States of Europe is merely the idea of the League of Nations resurrected in a new guise and, as Lenin pointed out, the League was a Thieves’ Kitchen. In a similar manner, a federation of capitalist states would be but another thieves’ kitchen. Such a federation could only end in the supremacy of the larger states over the smaller and the control being assumed by the most powerful coalition.
Secondly, the United States of Europe could have only a reactionary significance because it would be essentially an attempt by the European bourgeoisie to preserve their collective predominance throughout the world against the growing economic superiority of the USA, leading once again to a new world conflict on an even more terrible scale.
Frontiers alone do not cause wars. Wars are caused by the conflict of aims between individual or groups of imperialist powers. This has apparently been ‘overlooked’ by these petty agents of the bourgeoisie. They tremble at the thought that it may be imperialism which breeds war and so prefer to invent a ‘peace plan’ which does not involve the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Do we then desire the continuation of the present status quo in Europe? No! On the contrary, it is the revolutionary duty of the proletariat to abolish capitalist frontiers. From this basis we propose the only unambiguous alternative, a slogan which sees not the continuation of capitalism, but its overthrow. This slogan is:
FOR A UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF EUROPE!
In defence of Marxism Index (1992-1996)
Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive