On the Slogan for a United States of Europe (Editorial Comment)
Editorial Comment by Sotsial-Demokrat on the Manifesto on War Issued by the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.
V. I. Lenin
The demand for a United States of Europe, as advanced by the Central Committee's Manifesto, which accompanied it with a call for the overthrow of the monarchies in Russia, Austria, and Germany, is distinct from the pacifist interpretation of this slogan by Kautsky and others.
Issue No. 44 of Sotsial-Demokrat, our Party's Central Organ, carries an editorial proving the economic erroneousness of the United States of Europe slogan[1]. Either this is a demand that cannot be implemented under capitalism, inasmuch as it presupposes the establishment of a planned world economy, with a partition of colonies, spheres of influence, etc., among the individual countries, or else it is a reactionary slogan, one that signifies a temporary union of the Great Powers of Europe with the aim of enhancing the oppression of colonies and of plundering the more rapidly developing countries—Japan and America.
[1]
See pp. 339–43 of this volume.—Ed.
Written: Written late August 1915
Published: Published in the pamphlet Socialism and War, Geneva, 1915. Published according to the pamphlet.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, page 344.
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