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Workers Vanguard No. 1113 |
2 June 2017 |
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TROTSKY |
LENIN |
Karl Marx on Irish Self-Determination
(Quote of the Week)
Writing when all of Ireland was under British rule, Karl Marx underlined that the fight for Irish independence could deal a heavy blow to the British capitalist order. Based on the understanding that the Irish struggle could act as a motor force to unlocking proletarian struggle in England, Marx stressed that the English proletariat must champion the cause of Irish self-determination as part of fighting for its own interests.
All industrial and commercial centres in England now have a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who forces down the standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker, he feels himself to be a member of the ruling nation and, therefore, makes himself a tool of his aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself....
England, as the metropolis of capital, as the power that has hitherto ruled the world market, is for the present the most important country for the workers’ revolution and, in addition, the only country where the material conditions for this revolution have developed to a certain state of maturity. Thus, to hasten the social revolution in England is the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association. The sole means of doing so is to make Ireland independent. It is, therefore, the task of the “International” to bring the conflict between England and Ireland to the forefront everywhere, and to side with Ireland publicly everywhere. The special task of the Central Council in London is to awaken the consciousness of the English working class that, for them, the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition of their own social emancipation.
—Karl Marx, “Letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt” (April 1870)
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