348
PARTISAN REVIEW
the process must begin somewhere, and I cannot imagine it begin–
ning except through the federation of the western European states,
transformed into socialist republics without colonial dependencies.
Therefore a socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only
worth-while political objective today. Such a federation would contain
about 250 million people, including perhaps half the skilled indus–
trial workers of the world. I do not need to be told that the difficul–
ties of
~ringing
any such thing into being are enormous and terrify–
ing, and I will list some of them in a moment. But we ought not to
feel that it
is
of its nature impossible, or that countries so different
from one another would not voluntarily unite. A western European
union is in itself a less improbable concatenation than the Soviet
Union or the British Empire.
Now as to the difficulties. The greatest difficulty of all is the
apathy and conservatism of people everywhere, their unawareness
of danger, their inability to imagine anything new- in general, as
Bertrand Russell put it recently, the unwillingness of the human race
to acquiesce in its own survival. But there are also active malignant
forces working against European unity, and there are existing economic
relationships on which the European peoples depend for their stan–
dard of life and which are not compatible with true socialism. I list
what seem to me to be the four main obstacles, explaining each of
them as shortly
as
I can manage:
1.
Russian hostility. The Russians cannot but be hostile to
any European union not under their own control. The reasons, both
the pretended and the real ones, are obvious. One has to count,
therefore, with the danger of a preventive war, with the systematic
terrorizing of the smaller nations, and with the sabotage of the Com–
munist parties everywhere. Above all there is the danger that the
European masses will continue to believe in the Russian myth. As
long as they believe it, the idea of a socialist Europe will not be
sufficiently magnetic to call forth the necessary effort.
2 American hostility.
If
the United States remains capitalist,
and especially if it needs markets for exports, it cannot regard a
socialist Europe with a friendly eye. No doubt it is less likely than
the USSR to intervene with brute force, but American pressure
is
an important factor because it can be exerted most easily on Britain,
the one country in Europe which is outside the Russian orbit.
Since 1940 Britain has kept its feet against the European dictators
at the expense of becoming almost a dependency of the USA. Indeed,
