These articles were originally printed in Nashe Slovo on 3 and 9 July 1915. The translation is by Val Graham.
The recognition of the right of every nation to self-determination is part of the programme of Russian Social Democracy. This demand has its origins in the period of the revolutionary struggles of national bourgeois democracy. In the last analysis it means the recognition of the right of every nation to state independence. Following from this flows the duty of Social Democracy to oppose actively all regimes where the forceable cohabitation of nations and national fragments exists, and to support — depending on conditions of place and time — the struggles of nations and national fragments against an alien national yoke. But what is more: Social Democracy by no means casts aside the programme of national democracy as the unbridled social-imperialists would have us do. It cannot and will not be reconciled with foreable retention by a state of national groups within the large state body, ostensibly in the interests of an economic development which is being paralysed by divisions along the national lines. But neither does it make its own aim a multiplication of these divisions, that is to say, it does not turn the national principle into some sort of historic absolute idea.
It is absolutely clear that Social Democracy stands always and everywhere for the interest of economic development and opposes all political measures capable of holding it back. However it understands economic development not as a self-sufficient, extra-social, productive-technical process, but as the basis of the development of human society into its class groupings, with its national-political superstructure, etc. This point of view was, in the last analysis, not to ensure for local or national capitalism success over the capitalism of other places and countries, but to ensure the systematic growth of man's power over nature. Accordingly the class struggle of the proletariat itself is the most important factor ensuring further development of the productive forces by leading them out of the imperialist blind alley onto the broad arena of socialism. A state of nationalities and national groups, which exists through force (Russia and Austria are examples), may without doubt for a certain time develop the productive forces, by creating for them a broader internal market. But by generating the bitter struggles of national groups for influence on the state power or by evoking their 'separatist' tendencies — that is, the struggle for separation from that power — such a state paralyses the class struggle of the proletariat as the most important force of economic and historic progress in general. The proletariat is deeply interested in the elimination of all artificial frontiers and barriers, in the greatest possible extension of a free arena of economic development. But it cannot buy this aim for the kind of price which, above all, disorganises its own historic movement, and thus weakens and lays low the most important productive force in contemporary society. The present day social-imperialists, mainly of the German type, reject the idea of self-determination as a 'sentimental' prejudice of the past, and recommend yielding to the iron necessity of economic development; so they propound as the supreme criterion, above the historically limited claims of nations, not some absolute need of economic progress but its specific historic form, which stands before us in the guise of imperialism. In the present war this is showing itself in contradiction not only with the needs of further economic progress but even with the most elementary conditions of human existence.
Democracy is and remains the condition for the development of the proletariat and the sole form in which it can wield state power. This latter demands first a growth in the political-cultural independence of the masses, their economic and political association on a broad field, their collective intervention in the fate of the country. Thus a national language, the tool of human intercourse, becomes at a certain stage of development the most important instrument of democracy. The desire for national unity has thus comprised an indefeasible aspect of the movement of the period of bourgeois revolution. We see before us in backward regions — not only of Asia and Africa, but of Europe too — the awakening of historically belated nationalities. And this is of necessity assuming the form of a struggle for national unity and national independence, and coming face to face with the imperialist desire to break through the nationally defined framework of capitalist economy and create by means of military violence a world empire.
In this process Social Democracy in no way identifies itself with the internally contradictory imperialist methods of solving its ripening historic tasks. But just as little if not less does it counterpose to imperialism, and more importantly, to the progressive historic needs it is pursuing, the bare national idea. That would be to think with a pitiful vulgar utopianism a la Herve that the fate of Europe will be decisively ensured if the state map of Europe is brought into conformity with its national map, if — ignoring geographic conditions and economic links — Europe is parcelled up into neat squares, each a nation state. France and Germany in the past period approached a type of nation state. This by no means prevented their policy of colonialism, nor their present plans to expand their frontiers — to the Rhine or the Somme. An independent Hungary, Bohemia or Poland will in exactly the same way seek an outlet to the sea by means of a violation of the rights of other nationalities, as Italy is seeking to do at the expense of the Serbs, or the Serbs themselves are at the expense of the Albanians. National democracy is awakened by capitalism, which strives to wield as many elements of nations as possible into one economic unit. But it is this very capitalism which strives everywhere it sets down roots to expand the limits of the internal market as widely as possible, to create as many favourable outlets as possible to the world market, to impose its domination over regions with an agrarian type economy. The national principle is for national capitalism neither an absolute idea nor the final crowning of the edifice. It is only the springboard for a new leap in the direction of world domination. At the present stage of development, the national idea appears as a banner of struggle against feudal-particularist barbarism or foreign military aggression. In the long term, by creating a self-sufficient psychology of national egoism, it becomes itself a tool of imperialist barbarism. The task consists in reconciling the claims of nations to autonomy with the centralised needs of economic development.
Social-nationalism amazed everyone, itself above all, by its strength. Almost without opposition, in the first period of the war, it took hold of the strongest parties and organisations of [illegible] ideological bankruptcy. Not one serious attempt to think things through theoretically, from beginning to end! Decisions and actions, on which socialism depends for its life or death, are explained and justified with contradictory and haphazard reasoning, in which political intuition freed from [illegible] underpinning the social-nationalist policy of a workers party is the idea of 'defence of the fatherland'. But none of the patriots has yet troubled himself with the sense to explain [illegible] the republic and revolutionary traditions — he is defending the past. The German patriot quotes his powerful national industry, as the basis of socialism — he is defending the interest of future economic development of Russia, repeating [illegible] defending the future. Each of them with more or less resolution is making the attempt to proclaim his own 'national' interest as the higher internationalist interest of mankind. But each such attempt only introduces into the world affair a more hopeless confusion. It is one of two things: either the international interest demands the defeat of Germany (or Russia) — in which case it is pointless talking about defence of the fatherland, since after all there are people in the world for whom Germany or Russia is the fatherland. Or on the other hand defence of the fatherland is an independent principle of proletarian policy — and then it is useless to attempt to reconcile this aim with a generally obligatory line of conduct for the international proletariat. For the defence of one fatherland demands the utmost destruction of another fatherland. At the beginning of the war, Kautsky tried to determine that basic good in the name of which the proletariat bears its class independence to the bloody altar of defence of the fatherland. This good is the nation state. In the first article we spoke of what a powerful factor of historical development national-cultural unity is. It would be necessary to add that a state (that is, the fatherland) is the more subject to defence, the more it approaches a type of nation state. It is exactly thus that Kautsky poses the question. But then the question arises as to what extent the proletariat of Austro-Hungary, and more importantly of Russia also, can and must defend its fatherland? From the point of view of Kautsky, the multi-national proletariat of a monarchy near the Danube has obviously no obligations in relation to the state of the Hapsburgs. Kautsky himself arrived at this conclusion. But with the available international combinations the defence of Germany demands the defence of Austro-Hungary and Turkey, just as, on the other side, the struggle of France for national unity demands the perpetuation of a powerful block of nationalities called Russia, or of a world colonial power, Great Britain. Together with the states of nationalities and national fragments stand the states where a far from complete national unity is nullified on one side by union with states of nationalities and on the other by violation of the national independence of colonies. The substitution of fatherland or state for the meaning of nation is the most widespread argument in favour of the social-patriotic policy of the proletarian party. The present war, through the tendencies exposed by it, threatens not nations as such but that state which is the historic home of the nation. Capitalism as little brings about national unity as it does democracy. It awakens the need for national unity but it also called to life tendencies which do not allow the fulfilment of this need. However the nation is a powerful and extremely stable factor in human culture. The nation will outlive not only the present war but capitalism itself. And in the social structure, free from the path of state-economic dependence, the nation will remain for a long time the most important seat of intellectual culture, for at the disposal of the nation is the most important organ of this culture — language. The state is another matter. It developed as a result of the intersection of dynastic, imperialist and nationalist interests and of a temporary correlation of material forces. The state is an incomparably less stable factor in historic development than the nation. For the past period [illegible] in this state-fatherland, cultural development found a home almost always as a divided nation exploiting or seeking to [illegible] capitalist development got bound up in the framework of the state, this was fulfilled by annexations and colonial conquests. The struggle for colonies — that is, the violation [illegible] countries — was the most important concern in the foreign policy of the so-called nation states. Competition for colonies led to the struggle of capitalist states amongst themselves. The productive forces became decisively bound up in the framework of the state. If the present day 'nation' state finds itself in danger, then this danger flows from inside, from the very economic development, which in the language of the world war is telling us that the 'nation' state has become a [illegible] sense the idea of the defence of the fatherland — that is, of the reactionary ideology. The more social patriots link the fate of the nation — which by itself in no sense paralyses economic development nor hampers it from taking an all European and world dimension — with the fates of restrictive state-military organisations, the more it is necessary for us internationalists to take upon ourselves the defence of the historic rights of nations to independence and development, against these reactionary 'patriot defencists'.
Capitalism strives to weld both the nation and the economy into the framework of the state. It created a powerful formation which for a whole period served as the arena of development for the nation just as for the economy. But both the nation and the economy came into contradiction — as with the state, so with each other. The state became too restrictive for the economy. By striving to broaden its base, it violates the nation. On the other side the economy refuses to subjugate the natural movement of its forces and means to division of ethnic groups on the earth's surface. The state is essentially an economic unit, it will be forced to adapt itself to the needs of economic development. The place of the closed nation-state must inevitably be occupied by a broad, democratic federation of leading states on the basis of the removal of all customs barriers. National unity, flowing from the needs of cultural development, not only will not be destroyed by this but, on the contrary, only on the basis of a republican federation of leading countries will it be able to find its full consummation. An indispensable condition for this is the freeing of the framework of the nation from the framework of the economy and vice versa. The economy is organised on a broad arena of European united states, as the pivot of a world organisation. The political form can only be a republican federation in the flexible and elastic framework of which every nation will be able to develop its cultural forces with the greatest of freedom. Contrary to the German and other social-annexationists, we are not prepared to throw aside the recognition of the right to self-determination. Just the opposite — we think that the time is approaching when this right can finally be realised. On the other hand, we are very far from counterposing to the centralised needs of the economy 'the sovereign rights of every national group and grouplet'. For in the very process of historic development, we discover the dialectical reconciliation of both 'elements': the national and the economic. The recognition of the right of every nation to self-determination is for us of necessity fulfilled by the slogan of a democratic federation of all the leading nations, by the slogan of a United States of Europe.