Engels regarded national states as necessary prerequisites for proletarian rule

Evidence

Since the end of the Middle Ages, history had been moving towards a Europe made up of large, national states. Only such national states constitute the normal political framework for the dominant European bourgeois class …, and, in addition, they are the indispensable prerequisite for the establishment of the harmonious international collaboration of nations without which the rule of the proletariat cannot exist. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1661

In 1887/88, Engels would write: “Since the end of the Middle Ages, history had been moving towards a Europe made up of large, national states. Only such national states constitute the normal political framework for the dominant European bourgeois class …, and, in addition, they are the indispensable prerequisite for the establishment of the harmonious international collaboration of nations without which the rule of the proletariat cannot exist.” Engels, The Role of Force in History, International Publishers, New York, 1972, pp. 29–30. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1661

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to central Black Marxism claim that European socialism was rooted in national-bourgeois frameworks that excluded colonized peoples. — connects to: Engels held that capitalism favored some nations’ boundaries and not others’.; Marx and Engels judged nationalism by its service to industrial capital — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 353
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1661