“Once Marx and Engels had become committed to the philosophy of proletarian internationalism, they seldom referred to nationalism without some deprecatory adjective, usually “narrow”. Thus, Engels in 1848 complained that the Belgian Government had appealed to the “narrow sentiment of nationalism” prevalent among a certain class of the population in order to arouse the people against the German rebels, such as Marx, and secure their expulsion (39). Marx reproached the German philosophers for being narrowly national without realizing it: “If national narrow-mindedness is everywhere repulsive, it becomes actually loathesome in Germany, for there it is coupled with the illusion that the Germans are above nationalism and practical interests, in contrast to those nations that have the frankness to admit their national narrow-mindedness and their dependence on practical interests” (40). But while the proletariat might be credited with an “honorable national spirit”, its mission in history, as seen by Marx and Engels, was to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish proletarian internationalism. Thus the long-run sentiment of the proletarian internationalist, and this was the point of view that Marx and Engels and their associates consciously sought to profess. They thus easily slipped into the position of attributing internationalist sentiment to the proletariat as something natural to it, in contrast to transitory nationalist sentiment or “prejudice”. Thus Engels wrote in 1845: “The proletarians are in the great majority already by nature without national prejudices, and their whole education and movement is essentially humanitarian, anti-national” (41). And Marx wrote about the same time: “It is, of course, true of every nation that insistence upon nationality is now to be found only among the bourgeoisie and their writers” (42). Marx and Engels seized on any evidence which might show that the proletariat was more international-minded than the bourgeoisie. Marx cited fraternal statements from both sides of the border in 1870 as evidence that the workers of France and Germany showed less nationalistic sentiment than the respective upper classes. This sentiment of the proletariat he attributed to the advanced state of their class consciousness. Concerning the nationalist demonstrations in Germany, he wrote to Engels in July, 1870: “Fortunately this whole demonstration stems from the middle class. The working class, with the exception of Schweitzer’s immediate followers, are taking no part in it. Fortunately the ‘war of classes’ [English in original] in both countries, France and Germany, is far enough advanced so that no war ‘abroad’ [English] can seriously turn back the clock of history” (43)” [Horace B. Davis, Nationalism and Socialism. Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917, Delhi, 2011] [(39) Engels, letter to the editor of the ‘Northern Star’ (published March 25, 1848); in ‘Werke’, IV, 532; (40) ‘The German Ideology’, p. 518; (41) Engels, “Das Fest der Nationen in London” (written 1845 and published in ‘Rheinische Jahrbücher zur gesellschaftlichen Reform’, 1846); in ‘Werke, II, 614; (42) ‘The German Ideology’, p. 518; (43) Marx to Engels, July 28, 1870]