Why did these things happen, and why do they happen now? Why has the bourgeoisie invariably voiced the demand for national freedom, and why has it never been able to realise such freedom in actual fact?
The explanation is that every bourgeois State which has freed itself from the yoke of another nation inevitably strives to extend its own dominion. In any capitalist country you please to select, you will find that the bourgeoisie is not content with the exploitation of its own proletariat. The capitalists need raw materials from all the ends of the earth. They therefore strive to acquire colonies, whence, after subjugating the natives, they can without hindrance procure the raw materials they need for their factories. They require markets for the sale of their wares, and they endeavour to find such markets in backward lands, being quite unconcerned as to how this may affect the general population or the still immature bourgeoisies of such countries. They need territories to which they can export surplus capital, so that they may extract profits from these distant workers, and they enslave such territories, disposing of them as freely as they do of their own land. If during the conquest of colonies and during the economic enslavement of backward lands, another powerful bourgeoisie is encountered as a competitor, the dispute is settled by war, and this tends to take the form of such a world war as the one which has just been finished in Europe. The great war did not end the enslavement of the colonies and of the backward lands; if any change has taken place for these, it has only been a change of masters. Furthermore, as the outcome of the war, Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria, which were free countries, have been enslaved. In this manner it has come to pass that the development of the bourgeois system, far from leading to a reduction in the number of the countries which are enslaved by other countries and by the bourgeoisies of these, has led to a positive increase in the number of enslaved lands. The bourgeois dominion has culminated in universal national oppression, for the whole world is now enslaved by the victorious group of capitalist States.