‘The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries.’
The Bolsheviki and World Peace was written in the early months of World War I to analyse the stiuation in Europe and to give a Marxist analysis of the reasons for the war. For Trotsky, none of the combatants in the war was good and the war itself was a result of the contradiction in capitalism. Under Marxist analysis, capitalist control of the means of production will outgrow national borders near the final stage of capitalism. Trotsky believed World War I was the event that will bring about the end of nations and be the first step towards world peace under communism.
Leon Trotsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist, and politician. He was a leader in Russia’s October Revolution and was a major figure in the founding of the Soviet Union.