Here it is necessary to consider the question in somewhat greater detail.
First of all, what is our fatherland? What is the real meaning of this word? Does it mean, people who all speak the same language; is it the same as “nation”? No, it is not. Let us consider, for example, tsarist Russia. When the Russian bourgeoisie clamoured for the defence of the fatherland, it was not thinking of the area in which people of one nationality were living, of the area, say, inhabited by the White Russians; it was referring to the peoples of various nationalities who are settled in Russia. What, in fact, did the bourgeoisie mean? Nothing else than the State authority of the Russian bourgeoisie and the landlords. This is what the capitalists wanted the Russian workers to defend. Really, of course, they were not thinking simply of defending it, but of extending its frontiers to include Constantinople and Cracow. When the German bourgeoisie sang the defence of the fatherland, what was the meaning in that case? Here the reference was to the authority of the German bourgeoisie, to an extension of the boundaries of the robber State ruled by William II.
We have, then, to enquire whether, under capitalism, the working class has any fatherland at all. Marx, in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, replied to this question by saying: “The workers have no country.” What he said was true. Why? The answer is very simple. Because under capitalism the workers have no power; because under capitalism everything is in the hands of the bourgeoisie; because under capitalism the State is merely an instrument for the suppression and oppression of the working class. We have already seen that the task of the proletariat is to destroy the bourgeois State, not to defend it. Then only will the proletariat have a country, when it has seized the State authority and has become master of the country. Then, and only then, will it be the duty of the proletariat to defend its fatherland; for then it will be defending its own authority and its own cause; it will not be defending the authority of its enemies, and will not be defending the robber policy of its oppressors.