ABSTRACT
This chapter discovers that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels not only wanted Germany to turn to communism despite its backwardness, as German patriots they hoped that the introduction of communism would help their country to overcome its backward condition. With Marx and Engels the focus of communist patriotism shifted from military prowess and world power to national development. Marxist communism promised liberation to all of humanity. But the communist revolution would also serve to put an end to the state of shameful degradation of Marx’s fatherland and to bring about its resurrection. All this, however, begs the question of why the development and resurrection of the fatherland - German, French or any other- would have had any significance for devoted communists in the first place. The reason why they wanted communism to breathe new life into the great, historic nations is, then, that they regarded these nations as indispensable building blocks of the new world.
