Airstrip One

Even Lenin hated them - 22nd December 2002, 23.43

On the evocative website, marx2mao.org, Lenin's article, "On the Slogan for a United States of Europe" has been republished, from the journal, Sotsial-Demokrat No. 44, August 23rd 1915. This little oddity is a piece of its time, railing against the imperialists and their "leeches" who have enslaved half the world. Yet, within Lenin's theoretical insults for the highest form of capitalism, certain passages acquire a distant and contemporary echo.

Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists . . . but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America, who have been badly done out of their share by the present partition of colonies, and the increase of whose might during the last fifty years has been immeasurably more rapid than that of backward and monarchist Europe, now turning senile. Compared with the United States of Ameriea, Europe as a whole denotes economic stagnation. On the present economic basis, i.e., under capitalism, a United States of Europe would signify an organisation of reaction to retard America's more rapid development. The times when the cause of democracy and socialism was associated only with Europe alone have gone for ever.

Lenin and his party concluded that the United States of Europe was an "erroneous slogan". Of course, it is the right solution for all of the wrong reasons.