¹ Marx, Karl, On the First International, ed. Padover, Saul (New York: McGraw-Hill Co., 1973), 171Google Scholar. An earlier, little-known, small collection of letters, Marx, Engels and Lenin on Ireland, ed. Ralph Fox (New York: International Publishers, 1940), has been out of print since the 1940s. See also Bloom, Solomon F., The World of Nations (New York: AMS Press, Inc. 1967), 202Google Scholar.

² On the First International, 172.

³ Marx, Karl, letter to Sigfried Meyer and August Vogt, 9 April 1870, collected in Ireland and the Irish Question, ed. Golman, L. I. and Kunina, Valeria (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 293Google Scholar.

⁴ Ibid., 292–93.

⁵ Ibid., 284. Marx acknowledges in an 1867 letter to Engels:

For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working-class ascendancy. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite…The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.

⁶ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, 290.

⁷ See his introduction to Ireland and the Irish Question, 20.

⁸ See his foreword to Ireland and the Irish Question, 15.

⁹ This dialectical maneuver in Marxist revolutionary strategy proved enormously attractive to Irish socialists such as James Connolly, who taught himself German, interacted (during a lengthy sojourn in Edinburgh in the 1890s) with many of Engels's followers, and championed Ireland's struggle for national independence. Connolly promoted the doctrine as a key element in the appeal of Marxism to his Irish countrymen.

¹⁰ As that phrase suggests, Marx and Engels clearly struggled to integrate Ireland into their theory of revolution. But their human sympathies, aroused by their Irish connections, led them to see Ireland as the lever of revolution in Britain.

¹¹ Marx and Engels had many disagreements with the Narodniks (Populists) in the International Workingman's Association on this point. Both the disputes and Marx's apparent lack of confidence in the Russian peasant may, in part, have arisen from his open dislike of Russians and his thinly veiled hatred of Michael Bakunin, an outspoken anarchist adversary during the period of the First International.

¹² All this invests the radical slogan of the 1980s, “the personal is political,” with a new, ironic accent in the lives of the fathers of revolutionary radicalism – and, no less, a century before its coinage.

¹³ See Kostick, Connor, “Marxism in Ireland,” Rethinking Marxism 9 (3) (1996): 85–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁵ Mansergh, Nicholas, The Irish Question, 1840–1921 (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1965), 131Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Quoted in Mansergh, 127.

¹⁷ Engels, Frederick, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, [1845] 1958), 309Google Scholar. Despite its limitations, it warrants emphasis that Engels's study deserves a notable place in Irish historiography, as it is arguably the first full-length book to publicize effectively the mass poverty of the Irish peasantry (and, by implication, the approaching specter of the Great Famine) and to offer a radical socioeconomic analysis of the causes. (It also goes without saying that this work is a most impressive achievement for a twenty-three-year-old exile.) During Engels's lifetime, one obvious reason for why his study was overlooked (and dismissed as a work of journalism) was simply that it probably went unread by the English-language public. Published in Germany by a Leipzig press in 1845, it was not translated into English until more than four decades later. (The first American edition appeared in 1887; the first English edition was not printed until 1892.)

¹⁸ On this point, see Werly, John M., “The Irish in Manchester, 1832–49,” Irish Historical Studies 18 (1) (1973): 345–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ But his observations applied to mid-nineteenth-century Britain and urban Ireland – and even to Dublin, which remained “pre-industrial” well into the nineteenth century. See O'Connell, Maurice R., “Class Conflict in a Pre-industrial Society: Dublin in 1780,” Duquesne Review 9 (1) (1963): 43–55Google Scholar. For an analysis of Dublin's transition to an “industrial” city and the industrial labor unrest precipitated by this development, see Newsinger, John, Rebel City: Larkin, Connolly, and the Dublin Labour Movement (London: Macmillan, 2005)Google Scholar.

For three contrasting case studies that shed interesting light on the situations both in England and Ireland, see McCready, Richard B., “Irish Catholicism and Nationalism in Scotland: The Dundee Experience, 1850–1922,” Irish Studies Review 6 (3) (1998): 245–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dye, Ryan, “Catholic Protectionism or Irish Nationalism? Religion and Politics in Liverpool, 1829–1845,” Journal of British Studies 40 (3) (2001): 357–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and O'Connell, Bernard, “Irish Nationalism in Liverpool, 1873–1923,” Éire-Ireland 1 (10) (1975): 24–37Google Scholar.

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²² Brown, “Nationalism and the Irish Peasant, 1800–1848,” 423–24. For an excellent example of reconstruction of Irish society at all levels toward the end of the eighteenth century that portrays the hostility toward England in the Irish countryside, see novel, Thomas Flanagan'sYear of the French (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979)Google Scholar.

²³ Engels, The Condition of the Working Class, 141.

²⁴ O'Farrell, Patrick, Ireland's English Question (London: BT Basford, 1971), 114Google Scholar. For a discussion of the lively debate among historians of modern Ireland that O'Farrell's work triggered, see Malcolm, Elizabeth, “Patrick O'Farrell and the Irish History Wars, 1971–1993,” Journal of Religious History 31 (1) (2007): 24–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁶ On the interconnections among the Irish peasantry's Catholic faith and political activism, see MacDonagh, Oliver, “The Politicization of the Irish Catholic Bishops, 1800–1850,” Historical Journal 18 (1) (1975): 37–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Taylor, Lawrence J., “The Priest and the Agent: Social Drama and Class Consciousness in the West of Ireland,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27 (4) (1985): 696–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also S. Clark and J. Donnelly, Irish Peasants; Hill, Jacqueline R., “Nationalism,” Historical Studies 19 (76) (1976): 371–95Google Scholar; and Fintan, Lane, “P.F. Johnson, Nationalism, and Irish Rural Labourers, 1869–82,” Irish Historical Studies 33 (130) (2002): 191–208Google Scholar. The latter pair of specialized studies offer an illuminating contrast to the perspectives of Marx and Engels on Ireland during the two decades of their keenest focus on Irish affairs, the 1840s and the late 1860s to mid-1870s.

²⁷ Ireland and the Irish Question, 85.

²⁸ For a discussion of several economic misconceptions of Marx about Ireland, both in perception and concept, see Hazelkorn, Ellen, “Why Is There No Socialism in Ireland? Theoretical Problems of Irish Marxism,” Science and Society 53 (2) (1989): 136–64Google Scholar. Several pertinent economic and political issues bearing exclusively on contemporary Ulster are addressed in Munck, Ronald, “Marxism and Northern Ireland,” Review of Radical Political Economics 13 (3) (1981): 58–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I also address Marx's economic views of Ireland later in the present essay.

²⁹ On this omission, see Ritter, Harry, “The Remarkable Partnership: Three Recent Interpretations of the Marx-Engels Friendship,” Studies in History and Society 1 (2) (1976): 51–57Google Scholar.

³⁰ Marcus, Steven, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class (New York: Random House, 1974), 100Google Scholar. Marcus only hints at the psychological implications and Engels's unexplored sexual life when he makes the Freudian observation that Engels's favorite sister was named Marie and his mother was named Elizabeth (and referred to as Elise).

³¹ Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class, 101.

³² As had her sister Mary thirteen years earlier, Lizzie Burns accompanied Engels on his second extended visit to Ireland in 1869. The correspondence between Engels and Marx during the First International years makes clear that the former's personal tour of Ireland not only deepened his affection for and commitment to the Irish – even inducing him to start lessons (in 1870) in the notoriously difficult Gaelic language. His sojourns also informed his interpretations of both the causes of Irish nationalism and the Marxist concepts of national liberation and agrarian revolution. Perhaps most importantly, Engels's visits also gave him first-hand knowledge of Irish conditions and thereby heightened his credibility with Marx on the Irish Question. In this unusual case, Engels may be said to have influenced Marx more than the reverse.

³³ Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class, 101.

³⁴ Quoted in Florence, Ronald, Marx's Daughters (New York: Dial Press, 1975), 17Google Scholar.

³⁵ Ibid., 18.

³⁶ Ibid. For a perceptive analysis of the place of Fenianism and the Irish Question in the Marx-Engels revolutionary program, see Newsinger, John, “‘A great blow must be struck in Ireland’: Karl Marx and the Fenians,” Race & Class 24 (2) (1982): 151–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Engels-Marx on Irish History,” Eire 19: A Journal of Irish Life and Letters, 1798–1923, 1 (August 1977): 94–103; and Jackson, T. A., “Marx and Engels on Ireland,” The Labour Monthly (October 1932–January 1933)Google Scholar.

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³⁸ Mayer, Gustav, Frederick Engels (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1936), 293Google Scholar.

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⁴⁰ Two sentences later in his letter to his daughter, Marx clarifies his revolutionary strategy, envisioning a kind of European domino effect that will be triggered by the collapse of the leading bourgeois democracies: “To accelerate the social development in Europe, you must push on the catastrophe in England. To do so, you must attack her in Ireland. That is her weakest point,” Ireland and the Irish Question, 290.

⁴¹ Ibid., 28.

⁴² Ibid., 14.

⁴³ Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, On Colonialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 55Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Engels, The Condition of the Working Class, 306.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 306.

⁴⁶ Most land in England was owned by great landowners, but the land was actually farmed by tenant farmers and their hired laborers. The difference is that the tenancies in England were much larger than in Ireland, and tenant farmers in England were protected by custom and tradition, while tenants in Ireland were not.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 307.

⁴⁸ Brown, “Nationalism and the Irish Peasant, 1800–1848,” 412.

⁴⁹ Engels, The Condition of the Working Class, 307.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Schlesinger, Rudolph, Marx: His Time and Ours (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1950), 53Google Scholar.

⁵² On this point, see Hazelkorn, Ellen, “Some Problems with Marx's Theory of Capitalist Penetration into Agriculture,” Economy and Society 10 (3) (1981): 284–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵⁴ Brown, “Nationalism and the Irish Peasant, 1800–1848,” 416.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 412.

⁵⁶ Marx, Karl, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany,” New York Daily Tribune, 25 October 1852Google Scholar. Quoted in On Colonialism, 113.

⁵⁷ Gottheil, Frederick, Marx's Economic Predictions (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 175Google Scholar. See also Daly, Social and Economic History of Ireland since 1800.

⁵⁸ Quoted in Gottheil, Marx's Economic Predictions, 175.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 175.

⁶⁰ Ireland and the Irish Question, 284.

⁶¹ On the First International, 171.

⁶² Ibid., 172.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 173. See also Hazelkorn, Ellen, “Capital and the Irish Question,” Science and Society 44 (3) (1980): 326–56Google Scholar. For a detailed non-Marxist analysis of Ireland's economic development, in which concrete examples (such as the roles of government debt, railway building, corporate borrowing, and public expenditures from Dublin and London) are addressed, see Thomas, A. W., “The Evolution of a Capital Market: The Case of Ireland,” Journal of European Economic History 16 (3) (1987): 527–60Google Scholar. On the immense acquisition of new property and the considerable overall improvement in the economic position of the Irish Catholic Church following the Great Famine, see Larkin, Emmet, “Economic Growth, Capital Investment, and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the 19^th Century,” American Historical Review 72 (3) (1967): 852–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁵ In Chapter 25 of Capital, Marx illustrates the “general law” of accumulation with five examples of working class conditions in capitalist England, followed by the “variation” on the law represented by the case of agrarian Ireland.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 173.

⁶⁷ Quoted in Gottheil, Marx's Economic Predictions, 174. On the implications of such essentialist formulations about the Irish character and its divergence from its English counterpart, see Martin, Amy E., “Blood Transfusions: Constructions of Irish Racial Difference, the English Working Class, and Revolutionary Possibility in the Work of Carlyle and Engels,” Victorian Literature and Culture 32 (1) (2004): 83–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Ireland and the Irish Question, 99. See also Burns, Emile, A Handbook of Marxism (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935), 379Google Scholar, and Ellen Hazelkorn, “Some Problems with Marx's Theory of Capitalist Penetration into Agriculture: The Case of Ireland.”

⁶⁹ Quoted in Gottheil, Marx's Economic Predictions, 174.

⁷⁰ Ireland and the Irish Question, 141.

⁷¹ Brown, “Nationalism and the Irish Peasant, 1800–1848,” 434.

⁷² O'Farrell, Ireland's English Question, 115.

⁷³ Ireland and the Irish Question, 174.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 283.

⁷⁵ Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 243Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 243.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 244.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 264.

⁷⁹ Engels, , “On Social Relations in Russia,” in Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1972), 597Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Quoted in Lichtheim, George, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” in Karl Marx, ed. Bottomore, Thomas (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973), 152Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Quoted in Lichtheim, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” 151.

⁸² Ibid., 152.

⁸³ On Colonialism, 313.

⁸⁴ Lichtheim, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” 154.

⁸⁵ On Colonialism, 79.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 79.

⁸⁸ Lichtheim, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” 167.

⁸⁹ On Colonialism, 348.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 347.

⁹¹ Ireland and the Irish Question, 334.

⁹² On the similar hopes of Marx for Ireland and Lenin for Russia, see Lichtheim, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” 168.

⁹³ Ireland and the Irish Question, 334. The spirit – if not the movement itself – of the Fenians did, however, endure – and its remnant formed the spark that gave rise to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was central to the 1916 Eastern Rebellion and later to the emergence of the Irish Republican Army.

⁹⁴ See Brown, Thomas N., “The Origins and Character of Irish-American Nationalism,” Review of Politics 18 (1956): 327–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an analysis of the differences between Irish-American nationalism and the situation of the Irish in Britain during the mid-nineteenth century, see Belchem, John, “Nationalism, Republicanism and Exile: Irish Emigrants and the Revolutions of 1848,” Past & Present 146 (1995): 103–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹⁶ Lichtheim, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” 162.

⁹⁷ Brown, “Nationalism and the Irish Peasant, 1800–1848,” 410.

⁹⁸ Ireland and the Irish Question, 279. It would be interesting–and this I have not been able to do–to explore the religious affiliations and degrees of piety, if any, of the Burns sisters, and also of the Fenian revolutionaries whom they befriended. Some of them were undoubtedly devoted Catholics.

⁹⁹ Cited in Curtis, L. P. Jr., Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880–1892 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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