The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-09-22

followed
the Italians Hungarians Poles Irsh ETC., with the
greatest attention and the warmest sympathy In many
articles and in many letters to their friends there
can be found abundant material disclosing the attitude
of Marx and Engels toward these national currents
They understood how to explain every of these
from hstorcal-maerialist standpoint, how to
reveal their socal-economc Marx followed with
particular eagerness, the movement In Ireland, While
he lived in England And during the time of the list
International and thereafter he tried to support the
Irish movement with all his power, always stressing
to the English workers. that the independence of Ireland
be their first thought and that this unthink
able without proletarian revolution IN England.
In his letter to Siegfried Mayer on April g. $780, Marx
wrote: ireland is the bulwark of the English land
owning arstocracy The exploitation of this country
only the chief of Engands national riches
but it is her greatest moral power 1t represents in
fact the hegemony of England Ireland Ireland
is therefore the powerful whereby English arts
tocracy maintains its rule England itself On the
other hand if the English army and police should evac-
uate Ireland tomorrow you would Immediately have an
agraran revolution in Ireland The overthrow of the
English aristocracy in Ireland makes necessary, and
will be the result of its overthrow in England Thereby
the preparatory conditions for proetarian revolution
in England would be fulfilled. :"
GAS far as the English bourgeose is concerned, its
interests are fully in accord with those of the English
aristocracy, to turn Ireland into pasture land
in order to furnish the English market with meat and
wool at the lowest possible price But the English
bourgeoisie has a still important interest in the
OF per-
petually increasing concentration of easehods, fur
nishes continual surplus for the English labor
ket and thereby depresses the wages as well as the
material and moral position of the English working
class And most important! All industrial and COM
n1ercal centers of England possess personnel,
which is split into two opposing camps English proe-
tarians and Irish proetarians The ordinary English
worker hates the Irish worker rival who depresses
his standard of life He looks upon the Irish worker
as does member of the ruling nation and therefore
he makes himself the tool of the arstocrats and capt.
tasts against Ireland and thereby strengthens their
rule himself He nurses religious, social and ma
tional prejudices against him. He conducts himself
toward the Irish worker in about the way did
the whites to the Negroes in the former slave states
of the union The rishman pays him with interest in
his own coin. He in the English worker, stimuli
aneousy the accomplice and the stupid tool of the
English rule Ireland These antagonsms clev
ery kept alive through the press, the pulpit the hum
magazines, in short through all the means at
the command of the ruling class. This antagonsm is
the secret of the weakness of the English working class
in spite of it's organization. It is the secret of the
power of the capitalist class Of England. OF
this fact the ruling class is fully aware.
This evil does not stop here but is carried across
the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and
the Irish, the secret foundation of the antagonsm
between England and the United States. It makes every
earnest and honest cooperation between the working
class of the two countries impossible 1t permits the
government of the two countries they deem
it necessary to break the edge Of the social conflict
by raising these antagonisms, and in of necessity
through war between these two nations
England the metropolis of capital as the power
which until now has ruled the world market is for the
time being the most important country for the work
ers revolution and in addition the only country where
the material conditions of the revolution have devel
oped to a certain rpeness To accelerate the social
revolution England therefore the most important
task of the international workers association. The only
means of acceerating it, is make Ireland independent
1t is therefore the task of all inernatonaists every
where to place in the foreground the conflict between
England and Ireland openly to take the side of Ire
land 1t is the special task of the General Council in
London to awaken the consciousness Of the English
working class to the fact that the national emancpa-
ton Of Ireland is abstract question Of justice
humanitarian feeling but that it is the first condition
of its social emancipation"
These wonderful words of Marx have deep historical