Plausible as the idea of the United States of Europe as a peace arrangement may seem to some at first glance, it has on closer examination not the least thing in common with the method of thought and the standpoint of social democracy.
As adherents of the materialist conception of history, we have always adopted the standpoint that the modern States as political structures are not artificial products of a creative phantasy, like, for instance, the Duchy of Warsaw of Napoleonic memory, but historical products of economic development. But what economic foundation lies at the bottom of the idea of a European State Federation? Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist within Europe among the capitalist States – and will so long as these exist – the most violent struggles of competition and antagonisms, and secondly the European States can no longer get along economically without the non-European countries. As suppliers of foodstuffs, raw materials and wares, also as consumers of the same, the other parts of the world are linked in a thousand ways with Europe. At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. Europe no more forms a special unit within world economy than does Asia or America.
And if the idea of a European union in the economic sense has long been outstripped, this is no less the case in the political sense.
The times when the centre of gravity of political development and the crystallising agent of capitalist contradictions lay on the European continent, are long gone by. To-day Europe is only a link in the tangled chain of international connections and contradictions. And what is of decisive significance – European antagonisms themselves no longer play their role on the European continent but in all parts of the world and on all the seas.
Only were one suddenly to lose sight of all these happenings and manoeuvres, and to transfer oneself back to the blissful times of the European concert of powers, could one say, for instance, that for forty years we have had uninterrupted peace. This conception, which considers only events on the European continent, does not notice that the very reason why we have had no war in Europe for decades is the fact that international antagonisms have grown infinitely beyond the narrow confines of the European continent, and that European problems and interests are now fought out on the world seas and in the by-corners of Europe.
Hence the “United States of Europe” is an idea which runs directly counter both economically and politically to the course of development, and which takes absolutely no account of the events of the last quarter of a century.
That an idea so little in accord with the tendency of development can fundamentally offer no progressive solution in spite of all radical disguises is confirmed also by the fate of the slogan of the “United States of Europe.” Every time that bourgeois politicians have championed the idea of Europeanism, of the union of European States, it has been with an open or concealed point directed against the “yellow peril,” the “dark continent,” against the “inferior races,” in short, it has always been an imperialist abortion.
One neat thing I learned from Dana Mills' entertaining, intellectual biography of Rosa Luxemburg is the existence of a 1911 debate between Luxemburg and Kautsky over the possibility of a federated Europe. Kautsky's piece, in particular, pleased me because it corrects my intuition that the idea of a federated Europe is primarily liberal, even neo-liberal, in character inspired by Kant and Adam Smith, Mazzini, (and going back to Rousseau, Spinoza, and More). But before I turn to Kautsky's positive argument, it is useful to look at Luxemburg's reservations. These are especially useful because Luxemburg's criticism of the European project is not offered from a narrow nationalist perspective (she is, as Mills describes, a critic of the very idea of national self-determination), but from a cosmopolitan one (with due attention to imperialism and colonialism).
Moreover, Luxemburg acknowledges that some (geographical and historical) conditions for European federation already exist. What she rejects is a federation that understands itself as an "isolated economic unit." In an imperial age and a globalizing economy such a self-conception is indeed fantasy. It cannot simply de-couple from the world.
I doubt Kautsky really imagines an autarkic Europe. Kautsky seems to me far closer to Kant than Luxemburg allows. He proposes a "confederation with a universal trade policy, a federal Parliament, a federal Government and a federal arm." Since Luxemburg seems to be attacking a straw-man I leave that aside.
The other, more interesting and perhaps still pertinent argument is that she argues that in virtue of the antagonisms generated by capitalism, peaceful cohabitation is impossible within the would-be-federation and with the outside world, where the Federation either continues to dominate colonial subjects or gets trapped in zero-sum trade wars with other would be imperial, capitalist powers.
Now it is pretty clear that Luxemburg thinks capitalism just is what Smithians (recall) prefer to call the mercantile version of capitalism with its (zero-sum) spirit of war distinct from a more pacific, liberal capitalism. And even if Luxemburg were to grant that there is a compelling liberal critique of such mercantile capitalism -- while, perhaps, sarcastically noting that a lot of nineteenth century liberals cheered on colonial and civilizational imperialism --, she may also claim (and I will be quoting from the recent criticism by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Liam Kofi Bright of Walzer in Dissent magazine) that "theorists" of "capitalism are not interested in the characteristics capitalism could have had in some conceivable world," but on "the features it does, in fact, have."
As Luxemburg correctly notes, then existing European peace was in some sense illusory. There had been non-stop small wars, and after each war some great power engaged in "military reorganisation" of a sort that made a Great War more likely. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can argue that she was quite prophetic in noting that the European state-system was hurtling toward military conflagration.**
At the same, the question is what alternative future is possible/feasible.* Kautsky's proposal is, in part, designed to change and shift the incentive structure of European politics. On his view, to simplify (again I return to his piece some time), the cause of war is (I) a competitive great power arms race. And he thinks that peace can be secured when the arms race is thwarted/reversed and (II) a peace dividend can be used to secure economic prosperity for all.
So, from Luxemburg's perspective Kautsky denies that war is inevitable given bourgeois society. And this entails Luxemburg must discount the very possibility of a liberal, pacific form of capitalism; indeed in the first half her essay,+ belittles any evidence of the pacific tendency within bourgeois society and its capacity to redirect capitalism to liberal, pacific ends. She thinks that capitalism is essentially antagonistic ("For the international antagonisms of the capitalist states are but the complement of class antagonisms, and the world political anarchy but the reverse side of the anarchic system of production of capitalism.")
Luxemburg is alert to the fact that European world dominance cannot be taken for granted anymore (even a century ago). But she does not foresee the possibility that European bourgeois society could engage in systematic, pacification strategies of domestic conflicts and, with the existence of non-European hegemons, embrace the potentialities of federation. To what degree the underlying capitalist antagonisms remain untamed, and can never be tamed short of socialist revolution, is the question for theorists of the European Union to tackle...(to be continued).
+I am unsure if the piece published on the marxist.org website is a complete version.
*Even among imperial Europe some remained neutral in WWI.
** Luxemburg was by no means unique: it follows naturally, as Lenin recognized in his study of imperialism, from the analysis of a liberal like Hobson's whose analysis of then existing capitalism is not far removed from what I call the Smithian position above.
The thing that has made reading people like Luxemburg and Lenin so unpleasant to me is that the rhetoric is always turned up so high, and there is so little effort made to just slow down, look at the arguments, see what's right, and so on. There are real insights in both Luxemburg and Lenin, but picking them out is hard among all the trash-throwing and unwillingness to engage. (To this extent I think that one of Luxemburg's big rivals, Eduard Bernstein, is a nice alternative. While it certainly has its faults, his _Preconditions of Socialism_ is just much more careful, considers arguments in more detail, has many fewer straw-men, and so on. It's also much closer to being right, I think. It's hard for me to not think those two things might be related!)
Posted by: Matt | 08/18/2020 at 08:55 AM
The other thing with Rosa L's argument is the utopian revolutionary approach she embodies. The argument is that you have a system that because of its nature and internal logic is incapable of reform or alteration - it's like the scorpion in the parable. So the only thing to go for is complete systemic revolutionary transformation. In terms of its nature and ultimate origins this is Christian thinking of a certain kind - it's the idea of the apocalypse and the utterly fallen nature of humanity given a secular reading. In the words of another of her pieces it is "Socialism or Barbarism". That means that once you conclude the transformative revolution is impossible you have only despair as an option. Just as well for her she died when and how she did.
Posted by: Steve | 08/18/2020 at 06:30 PM
Her assassination was not just immoral, but also foolish.
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 08/18/2020 at 06:43 PM