The more capitalism develops the forces of production, so that it requires ever larger markets into which to sell this output, the more the national economy, and the nation state becomes a constraint on its development, and it must burst out of that constraint by the creation of larger single markets like the EU. Again, these are the economic foundations required for the construction of socialism. The destruction of the nation state, and its constraining borders, and formation of these larger economic units is again the historic mission of capital. The specific capitalistic nature of these larger economic units is not something that Marxists call for, any more than we would call for the formation of a capitalist monopoly or trust, but these forms are certainly more mature, more progressive forms whose development we certainly have no reason to obstruct, and we would certainly oppose any reversion to some more primitive form. As Trotsky put it,
“In its struggle against imperialism, the proletariat cannot set up as its political aim the return to the map of old Europe; it must advance its own program of state and national relations, corresponding to the fundamental tendencies of economic development, corresponding to the revolutionary character of the epoch and the socialist interests of the proletariat...
The right of national self-determination cannot be excluded from the proletarian peace program; but it cannot claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is delimited for us by the converging, profoundly progressive tendencies of historical development. If this “right” must be – through revolutionary force – counterposed to the imperialist methods of centralisation which enslave weak and backward peoples and crush the hearths of national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the irresistible and deeply progressive tendency of modern economic life towards a planned organisation throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe. Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralisation, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle.
From the standpoint of historical development as well as from the point of view of the tasks of the Social Democracy, the tendency of modern economy is fundamental, and it must be guaranteed the fullest opportunity of executing its truly liberationist historical mission: to construct the united world economy, independent of national frames, state and tariff barriers, subject only to the peculiarities of the soil and natural resources, to climate and the requirements of division of labour...In other words, in order that Poles, Serbians, Rumanians and others will be able actually to form untrammelled national unifications, it is necessary that the state boundaries now splitting them up into parts be cancelled, that the framework of the state be enlarged as an economic but not as a national organisation, until it envelops the whole of capitalist Europe, which is now cut asunder by tariffs and borders and torn by war. The state unification of Europe is clearly a prerequisite of self-determination of great and small nations of Europe. A national-cultural existence, free of national economic antagonisms and based on real self-determination, is possible only under the roof of a democratically united Europe freed from state and tariff barriers.”
The demand for self-determination, itself a bourgeois-democratic demand, had, as Trotsky describes, become a demand taken up by the social-democracy from liberal democracy, but it was one that, now, in the vast majority of cases, stood in the way of this requirement to unify the nations of the world into these larger economic units. Capitalism itself was bringing this about, just as it had brought about the destruction of capital as private property, and the creation of socialised capital. It was doing so in a way that was not that which Marxists sought, but it was nevertheless a progressive development that Marxists had no desire to thwart or to reverse.
“If the German armies achieved the decisive victory reckoned upon in Germany during the first phase of the war, the German imperialism would have doubtless made the gigantic attempt of realising a compulsory military-tariff union of European states, which would be constructed completely of exemptions, compromises, etc., which would reduce to a minimum the progressive meaning of the unification of the European market. Needless to say, under such circumstances no talk would be possible of an autonomy of the nations, thus forcibly joined together as the caricature of the European United States. Certain opponents of the program of the United States of Europe have used precisely this perspective as an argument that this idea can, under certain conditions, acquire a “reactionary” monarchist-imperialist content. Yet it is precisely this perspective that provides the most graphic testimony in favour of the revolutionary viability of the slogan of the United States of Europe. Let us for a moment grant that German militarism succeeds in actually carrying out the compulsory half-union of Europe, just as Prussian militarism once achieved the half-union of Germany, what would then be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all peoples under the roof of isolated national states? Or the restoration of “autonomous” tariffs, “national” currencies, “national” social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The program of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The destruction of the compulsory antidemocratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, above all of labour laws, etc. In other words, the slogan of the United States of Europe – without monarchies and standing armies – would under the indicated circumstances become the unifying and guiding slogan of the European revolution.”
(ibid)
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