50 Years Ago: Federal Europe or Internationalism

One direction in which change is likely after the war is in the relationship of the small and big Powers in Europe—indeed in the whole world. While the American Federal Union propagandists are urging the immediate Union of USA and the British Empire, another group favour the idea of Anglo-French Union (already offered to France by the British Government just before the French collapse), and still a third group are attracted by the old idea of a United States of Europe. Last of all it is stated by the Manchester Guardian (July 19th) that Nazi propaganda in France is popularising the idea of a Continental Union under German domination on the plea that “Europe is too small to be divided into small nations” . . .

The true line of development is the international one. on a Socialist basis. Then there would no longer be the choice, blandly placed before us by Mussolini’s mouthpiece in a recent article, of the vanquished being “reduced to the state of Chinese coolies compelled to toil for others” (Observer, July 21st). Socialists intend to build a world in which there will be neither exploiters nor exploited. Like Signor Ansaldo, we are interested in the “resources of the whole world”, but unlike him. we want them to be used for the benefit of all mankind “without distinction of race”.

[From an editorial, Socialist Standard, August 1940]