“The writings here collected show how thoroughly Marx and Engels studied Irish history. They confuted many a biased notion traceable to the chauvinist prejudices of English bourgeois historians, economists and geographers, and brought down to earth the romanticism of Irish nationalist historians. Bias, often disguised as objectivism, and distortions of history to suit the class interest of privileged social groups, infuriated Marx and Engels. In one of his sketches, Engels wrote: “The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie” (see p. 211). The treatment by Marx and Engels of some of the key problems of Irish history is a credit to their scholarship. They created an essentially new conception of Irish history based on the analytical method of historical materialism. Regrettably, neither published a complete study, elucidating the results of their investigation. We are compelled to glean their conclusions from handwritten notes and fragments, some of which first saw light only recently, and from their references to Ireland in articles and letters. Taken as a whole, however, these provide the basis of a scientific interpretation of the history of Ireland, defining its main periods and explaining at least the most important from antiquity to modern times.” [Introduzione di L.I. Golman] [(in) Friedrich Engels Karl Marx, a cura di R. Dixon, Ireland and the Irish Question. A Collection of Writings by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1972]
- Categoria dell'articolo:Nuove Accessioni
- Articolo pubblicato:5 Agosto 2013