Leon Trotsky

“ From Marx on, we have been constantly repeating that capitalism cannot cope with the spirit of new technology to which it has given rise and which tears asunder not only the integument of bourgeois private property rights but, as the war of 1914 has shown, also the national hoops of the bourgeois state. Socialism, however, must not only take over from capitalism the most highly developed productive forces but must immediately carry them onward, raise them to a higher level and give them a state of development such as has been unknown under capitalism. ”

“ To fight for the preservation of a national basis of revolution by such methods as undermine the international ties of the proletariat, actually means to undermine the revolution itself, which can begin on a national basis but which cannot be completed on that basis under the present economic, military, and political interdependence of the European states, which was never before revealed so forcefully as during the present war. ”

“ Revolutionary patriotism can only have a class character. It begins as patriotism to the party organization, to the trade union, and rises to state patriotism when the proletariat seizes power. Whenever the power is in the hands of the workers, patriotism is a revolutionary duty. But this patriotism must be, an inseparable part of revolutionary internationalism. Marxism has always taught the workers that even their struggle for higher wages and shorter hours cannot be successful unless waged as an international struggle. ”

“ Instead of telling them fibs about having realized 90% socialism, we must say to them that our economic level, our social and cultural conditions, approximate today much closer to capitalism, and a backward and uncultured capitalism at that, than to socialism. We must tell them that we will enter on the path of real socialist construction only when the proletariat of the most advanced countries will have captured power ”

“ Guesde, Vaillant, and thousands of the best rank and file party members with them, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary workers believed that precisely France with her revolutionary traditions, her heroic proletariat, her highly cultured, flexible, and talented people, was the promised land of socialism. Old Guesde and the Communard Vaillant, and with them hundreds of thousands of sincere workers, did not fight to protect the bankers or the rentiers. They sincerely believed that they were defending the soil and the creative power of the future socialist society. ”

“ To approach the prospects of a social revolution within national boundaries is to fall victim to the same national narrowness which constitutes the substance of social-patriotism. Vaillant to his dying day considered France the promised land of social revolution ”

“ The question arises: how then can socialism drive the productive forces back into the boundaries of a national state which they have violently sought to break through under capitalism? Or, perhaps, we ought to abandon the idea of “unbridled” productive forces for which the national boundaries, and consequently also the boundaries of the theory of socialism in one country, are too narrow, and limit ourselves, let us say, to the curbed and domesticated productive forces, that is, to the technology of economic backwardness? ”

“ In general it should not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is, along-side of the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary Messianism which deems that its own national state, whether because of its industrial level or because of its 'democratic' form and revolutionary conquests, is called upon to lead humanity towards socialism or towards 'democracy.' If the victorious revolution mere really conceivable within the boundaries of a single more developed nation, this Messianism together with the program of national defense would have some relative historical justification. ”

“ As a matter of fact, world socialist economy will not at all be a sum total of national socialist economies. It can take shape in its fundamental aspects only on the soil of the worldwide division of labor which has been created by the entire preceding development of capitalism. In its essentials, it will be constituted and built not after the building of “complete socialism” in a number of individual countries, but in the storms and tempests of the world proletarian revolution which will require a number of decades. ”

“ The European bourgeoisie can find a lasting way out its grave contradictions only through the defeats of the proletariat and the mistakes of the revolutionary leadership. But the converse is equally true. There will be no new boom of world capitalism (of course, with the prospect of a new epoch of great upheavals) only in the event that the proletariat will be able to find a way out of the present unstable equilibrium on the revolutionary road. ”

“ This means that we have only the right to place assurance on the scanty resources of national economy but that we must not dare to place any assurance upon the inexhaustible resources of the international proletariat. ”

“ The economic successes of the first countries of the proletarian dictatorship will be measured not by the degree of their approximation to a self-sufficing “complete socialism” but by the political stability of the dictatorship itself and by the successes achieved in preparing the elements of the future world socialist economy. ”

“ If it is at all possible to realize socialism in one country, then one can believe in that theory not only after but also before the conquest of power. If socialism can be realized within the national boundaries of backward Russia, then there is all the more reason to believe that it can be realized in advanced Germany. Tomorrow the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany will undertake to propound this theory. The draft program empowers them to do so. ”

“ The impossibility of building an isolated socialist society, not in a Utopia or an Atlantis but in the concrete geographical and historical conditions of our terrestrial economy, is determined for various countries in different ways—by the insufficient development of some branches as well as by the “excessive” development of others. On the whole, this means that the modern productive forces are incompatible with national boundaries. ”

“ On a world scale, says Bukharin, the correlation between the proletariat and the peasantry is not any more favorable than that existing in the U.S.S.R. Consequently, if due to reasons of backwardness it is impossible to build socialism in the U.S.S.R., then it would be equally impossible of realization on the scale of world economy. ”

“ It is possible to lead the proletariat to the position of defeatism in relation to the bourgeois state only by means of an international orientation in the program on this central question and by means of a ruthless rejection of the social-patriotic contraband which is masked as yet but which seeks to build a theoretical nest for itself in the program of Lenin's International. ”

“ The invincible conviction that the fundamental class aim, even more so than the partial objectives, cannot be realized by national means or within national boundaries, constitutes the very heart of revolutionary internationalism. ”

“ The productive forces of capitalist countries have long since broken through the national boundaries. Socialist society, however, can be built only on the most advanced productive forces, on the application of electricity and chemistry to the processes of production including agriculture; on combining, generalizing, and bringing to maximum development the highest elements of modern technology. ”

“ One could not find a more anti-socialist and anti-revolutionary assertion than Stalin's statement to the effect that “socialism has already been 90 percent realized in the U.S.S.R.” This statement seems to be especially meant for a smug bureaucrat. In this way one can hopelessly discredit the idea of a socialist society in the eyes of the toiling masses. ”

“ Our party has passed through its heroic period with a program which was entirely oriented on the international revolution and not on socialism in one country. Under a programmatic banner on which was inscribed that backward Russia alone, with her own forces, will not build socialism, the Y.C.L. has passed through the most strenuous years of civil war, hunger, cold, hard Saturday-ings and Sunday-ings, epidemics, studies on hunger rations, and the numberless sacrifices which were paid for every forward step taken. ”

“ Being no doubt a highly developed capitalist country, it has precisely because of that no chance for successful socialist construction within the limits of its own island. Great Britain, if blockaded, would simply be strangled in the course of a few months. ”

“ It is they who think that the ignorant people need the “good tidings,” and that there is no dealing with the people without consoling doctrines. It is they who catch up the false words about “90% socialism,” for this formula sanctions their privileged position, their right to dominate and command, their need to be rid of criticisms on the part of “skeptics” and men of “little faith.” ”

“ Even if we were to add that the proletariat of the other countries must protect our construction from military interventions, the International according to this schema must play the role of a pacifist instrument. Its main role, the role of an instrument of world revolution, is then inevitably relegated to the background. ”

“ If we were to accept this interpretation then we would obtain not a world socialist economy based on an international division of labor but a federation of self-sufficing socialist communes in the spirit of blissful anarchism, the only difference being that these communes would be enlarged to the size of the present national states. ”

“ Hence flow not only foreign trade, the export of men and capital, the seizure of territories, the colonial policy, and the last imperialist war, but also the economic impossibility of a self-sufficient socialist society. ”

“ It was the revolt of the productive forces not only against the bourgeois forms of property, but also against the boundaries of capitalist states. The imperialist war expressed the fact that the productive forces are unbearably constrained within the confines of national states. ”

“ Unfortunate Britain does not possess this advantage because of the excessive development of her productive forces which require almost the whole world to furnish the necessary raw materials and to dispose of her products. ”