ABSTRACT
The Marxian corpus, particularly in Karl Marx's early writings, contains a few references, some explicit, some oblique, especially with application to the ultimate goal of communism, that postulate a complete unity of mankind. The "present" for Marx and Friedrich Engels is capitalist society, the last historical form of the antagonism between groups in the productive process. The proletariat--at any rate as seen by Marx and Engels in the heady atmosphere accompanying the mid-nineteenth century social upheavals--is the first truly international, truly human class, without national ties and allegiances. European social democracy, as is well known, became deeply divided over the issue of patriotism, and the breach, of course, has not been healed by the subsequent theoretical concessions of radical, "internationalist" Marxists to national feelings. The Marxian corpus, particularly in Marx's early writings, contains a few references, some explicit, some oblique, especially with application to the ultimate goal of communism, that postulate a complete unity of mankind.
