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About this quote

What does it mean?
Workers have no nation to lose, so taking from them is impossible.
In plain terms
Workers own nothing to be taken away.
What can you take from it?
Recognize workers' lack of national claim.

Where it applies

  • labor negotiations
  • political rhetoric

Putting it to work

  • advocating workers' rights
  • framing class struggle

Questions to consider

  • What does 'no country' imply for solidarity?
  • How does this affect political claims?

Another view

Workers may still have cultural or community ties.

More from Karl Marx

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  2. Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.

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  3. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created.

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