desires separation from Soviet Germany, but the Bavarian proletariat desires union. What should the communists do? It is obvious that the communists of Germany should help the Bavarian workers, and should offer armed resistance to the separatist endeavours of the Bavarian bourgeoisie. This would not be the oppression of Bavaria, but the oppression of the Bavarian bourgeoisie.
Again, the soviet power has been proclaimed both in England and in Ireland, both in the land of the oppressors and in the land of the oppressed. Furthermore, the Irish workers will not trust the English workers, who belong to a country which has oppressed Ireland for centuries. From the economic point of view, the separation will be harmful. What course should the English communists pursue in these circumstances? Whatever happens, they must not use force, as the English bourgeoisie has done, to maintain the union with Ireland. They must grant the Irish absolute freedom to separate. Why must they do this?
First of all, because it is necessary to convince the Irish workers that the oppression of Ireland has been the work of the English bourgeoisie and not of the English proletariat. The English workers have to win the Irish workers’ confidence.
Secondly, because the Irish workers will have to learn by experience that it is disadvantageous for them to form a small independent State. They will have to learn by experience that production in Ireland cannot be properly organised unless Ireland is in close political and economic union with proletarian England and other proletarian lands.
Finally, take the case of a nation with a bourgeois government which wishes to separate from a nation with a proletarian regime, and let us suppose that, in the nation which desires to separate, the majority of the workers or a notable proportion of them are in favour of the separation.