Karl Marx

Among the items sent you will also find some copies of the resolutions of the General Council of 30 Nov. on the Irish amnesty, which originated from me, ditto an Irish pamphlet on the treatment of the Fenian convicts.

I had intended to move further resolutions on the necessary transformation of the present Union (i. e. slavery of Ireland) into a free and equal federation with Great Britain. The progress of this matter has been temporarily suspended, as far as public resolutions go, owing to my enforced absence from the General Council. No other member of the same has sufficient knowledge of Irish affairs and sufficient authority with the English members of the General Council to be able to replace me in this.

However, the time has not passed unused, and I request you to pay particular attention to the following:

After many years of studying the Irish question I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the ruling classes in England (and it is decisive for the labour movement all over the world) cannot be struck in England, but only in Ireland.

On 1 January 1870 the General Council issued a secret circular, drawn up by me in French – {for the effect on England the French, not the German papers are the important ones} – on the relation of the Irish national struggle to the emancipation of the working class and hence on the attitude the International Association has to adopt towards the Irish question.

I give you here, quite briefly, only the decisive points.

Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of this country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth. It is their greatest moral power. They represent in fact the domination of England over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the grand moyen by which the English aristocracy maintains its domination in England itself.

On the other hand: withdraw the English army and police from Ireland tomorrow, and you will at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the overthrow of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and necessarily brings about its overthrow in England. This would fulfil the precondition for the proletarian revolution in England. Because in Ireland the land question is up to now the exclusive form of the social question, because it is a question of existence, a question of life or death for the immense majority of the Irish people, because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question, the destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England itself. Quite apart from the more passionate and more revolutionary character of the Irish as compared with the English.

As far as the English bourgeoisie is concerned, it has d’abord a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into a mere grazing land which supplies meat and wool to the English market at the cheapest possible prices. It has the same interest in reducing the Irish population, by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (leasehold capital) can function with ‘security’ in this country. It has the same interest in clearing the estate of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000–10,000 absentee and other Irish revenues which now flow annually to London are to be taken along as well.

But the English bourgeoisie has much more important interests in the present Irish economy. Ireland constantly supplies its surplus to the English labour market through the constantly increasing concentration of tenures, and thereby forces down wages and the material and moral position of the English working class.

And the most important thing! All the industrial and commercial centres of England now possess a working class which is split into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers the standard of life. He feels himself a member of the ruling nation and therefore makes himself a tool of his aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thereby strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against him. He behaves towards him in much the same way as the poor whites towards the niggers in the former slave states of the American Union. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and the stupid tool of English rule in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret of the preservation of the power of the capitalist class. The latter is fully aware of this.

The evil does not stop here. It rolls on across the ocean. The antagonism between English and Irish is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any serious and sincere cooperation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It allows the governments of the two countries, whenever they think fit, to take the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.

England, as the metropolis of capital, as the power which has so far ruled the world market, is for the time being the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country where the material conditions of this revolution have developed to a certain degree of maturity. To accelerate the social revolution in England is therefore the most important object of the International Workingmen’s Association. The sole means of accelerating it is to make Ireland independent. Hence the task of the ‘International’, to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the forefront everywhere, to take sides openly for Ireland everywhere. The special task of the Central Council in London is to awaken the consciousness in the English working class that the national emancipation of Ireland is for them no question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition of their own social emancipation.

These are approximately the main points of the circular, which at the same time thereby gave the raisons d’être of the resolutions of the Central Council on the Irish amnesty. Shortly afterwards I sent an anonymous vehement article on the English treatment of the Fenians etc. against Gladstone etc. to the Internationale (organ of our Belgian Central Committee in Brussels). In it I at the same time accused the French Republicans – (the Marseillaise had printed nonsense about Ireland from the wretched Tallandier here) – of saving all their colères for the Empire in their national egoism.

This hit home. My daughter Jenny wrote as J. Williams (she called herself Jenny Williams in the private letter to the editors) a series of articles for the Marseillaise, and published, among other things, the letter of O’Donovan Rossa. Hence immense noise. Gladstone, after many years of cynical refusal, finally compelled by this to grant a parliamentary inquiry into the treatment of the Fenian prisoners. She is now regular correspondent on Irish affairs for the Marseillaise. (This, of course, is a secret among ourselves.) Deadly annoyance of the English government and press that the Irish question is now on the order of the day in France in this way, and that these scoundrels are now being exposed over the entire continent via Paris under surveillance.

Another fly hit with the same swatter. We have thus compelled the Irish leaders, pressmen etc. in Dublin to enter into communication with us, which the General Council had so far failed to do!

You have a large field in America to work in the same sense. Coalition of the German workers with the Irish (naturally also with the English and American who are willing to go along) is the greatest thing you can now set to work. This must be done in the name of the ‘International’. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.