National pride can be a dead end in liberation or, when, as Otto Bauer argued, applied rationally towards the end of liberation, a means by which the proletariat of the nation can gain access to and ownership of the national wealth.

“Scholarship is able to explain to us the emergence of the national sentiment from national consciousness, the emergence of the curious national form of evaluation from the national sentiment. But it is also able to criticize this national evaluation. And this is a task of no little significance. For it is only the critique of national ideology that can produce the atmosphere of sobriety that alone makes a fruitful examination of national politics possible.”

A national consciousness emerges when we meet people from other nations. We then become aware of that feature and gain a national sentiment or pride. An evaluation of the national form creates a good member of the national. This can, without critically or rationally evaluating it, lead to racist thinking or blaming certain groups for the nation’s ills. However, a class evaluation can prevent this and a rational critique of the nation can give the proletariat access to the full cultural wealth of the nation which had only been previously reserved for the elites.