Ireland and the Irish Question

Ireland & The Irish Question
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

On Nov. 2, 1867, Marx wrote to Engels: “I used to think the separation of Ireland from England impossible. I now think it inevitable.” Marx also wrote: “The English working class will never accomplish anything until it has got rid of Ireland. . . . English reaction in England had its roots . . . in the subjugation of Ireland.”

Few nineteenth-century formulations of Ireland's suffering under British rule were as explicit as those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in focusing away from essentialist explanations cast in the language of British villainy, and in concentrating instead on material factors, on the conjoined expansion of capitalism in Britain and underdevelopment in Ireland

This book presents a number of writings, correspondence, articles and others representing views and developing analyses by Marx and Engels around the question of Ireland and in particular, its relation to Britain.

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