Marx saw English and Irish workers divided into hostile national camps that strengthened capital.

Evidence

Letter from Marx to Engels, 10 December 1869, in Ireland and the Irish Question, op. cit., p. 284. The depth of the feeling between Irish and English workers clearly disappointed Marx: “Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the ‘poor whites’ to the ‘niggers’ in the former slave states of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rule in Ireland.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1602

Categorization

• XREF: This is the canonical Marx quote on how intra-working-class racial/national division props up capital — direct precursor to the book’s claim that racialized division, not just class, is foundational to capitalism.