And, increasingly, in the age of imperialism that is merely an aspect of this mammoth, socialised industrial capital, this must be done on an international scale, with small states being swallowed up by large states, in the same way that small capitals are swallowed by big capitals.
“Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.”
That is the reality, despite all the pleas for the rights of small nations and national-self-determination of the petty-bourgeois nationalists and liberals. It requires the creation of large multinational states, and federations such as the EU, for example, which shows the reactionary and utopian nature of the calls for Brexit, and so on.
These social revolutions may result from internal developments or from wars and conquests. It was European settlement that brought about social revolutions in the Americas, Australasia, Asia and Africa. It was conquest that brought about social revolution in Ireland, dissolving clan property. It was Civil War in the US, which ensured the dominance of Northern industrial capitalism over an, essentially, feudal South, and established a powerful centralised state.
The European wars of 1914-18, and 1939-45, attempted to establish a similar large European state, and, as Trotsky wrote in 1916, in The Program of Peace, if such an attempt had been successful, it would have been historically progressive, such that Marxists would not seek to reverse its achievements, in that regard. Indeed, as he sets out, there, in the age of imperialism, for this very reason, attempts to oppose such integration of small and weak states, under the banner of national self-determination are not just idealist and utopian, but reactionary. For the same reason, if Britain does not voluntarily re-join the EU, it will find itself simply conquered by it, and subordinated to it.
“Conquests may lead to either of three results. The conquering nation may impose its own mode of production upon the conquered people (this was done, for example, by the English in Ireland during this century, and to some extent in India); or it may refrain from interfering in the old mode of production and be content with tribute (e.g., the Turks and Romans); or interaction may take place between the two, giving rise to a new system as a synthesis (this occurred partly in the Germanic conquests). In any case it is the mode of production – whether that of the conquering nation or of the conquered or the new system brought about by a merging of the two – that determines the new mode of distribution employed. Although the latter appears to be a pre-condition of the new period of production, it is in its turn a result of production, a result not simply occasioned by the historical evolution of production in general, but by a specific historical form of production.” (p 202-3)
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