Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 11:43:57 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: Marx on Ireland


In the various discussions on Marx and the national question I argued
that the National Independence of oppressed nations was not Marx's final
goal, but only an intermediate aim in the overcoming of national
divisions. I had in mind this point of Marx's on Ireland, which I found
again, quoted in the Connolly-Walker Controversy, published by the Cork
Workers Club.

Connolly quotes Marx' letter of 1869

I have more and more arrived at teh conviction - though this conviction
has not entered the mind of the English working class - that we shall
never be able to do in England anything decisive if we do not resolutely
separate its policy in all that concerns Ireland from the policy of the
dominant classes, sothat she will never be able to make a common cause
with the Irish, but will even be able to take the initiative in
dissolving the Union founded in 1801, and replacing it by an independent
Federative bond ....

The point being that Marx favoured the separation of Ireland not as an
end in itself, but as the precondition to a more equitable federation
between these two peoples.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---