ABSTRACT
Joseph Stalin’s nationalist excesses are commonly understood as one more proof of his sharp deviation from Marxism. However, all too often the internationalism of Marx and Engels is interpreted in a crude, simplistic way. The original Marxism did in fact contain a strong nationalist component. The odd thing is that there is an extensive body of literature to document this, but the respective conclusions have not found their way to researchers of Stalinism, who continue to present us with a caricature of Marxism as a consistently internationalist doctrine. Let me begin my discussion with one of the most famous passages from the 1848 Communist Manifesto, which is routinely quoted to show the committed internationalism of the communists: “The workers have no fatherland. One cannot take from them that which they do not have.” These resounding words were immediately followed by this:
In the sense that the proletariat must first conquer political rule for itself, raise itself to the status of a national class, constitute itself as [the] nation, it is itself still national, although not at all in the sense of the bourgeoisie. Already with the development of the bourgeoisie the national boundaries and conflicts among the peoples vanish more and more…. The rule of the proletariat will make them vanish even more. 1
