Capital I, Chapter 25 - Part 8

f) Ireland

In concluding this chapter, Marx looks at Ireland, including the effects of the Famine, which reduced population from 8.2 million in 1841, to 5.5 million in 1866, from death and emigration. Emigration between 1851 and 1866 accounted for 1.5 million people.

The number of inhabited houses fell by 53,000, whilst the size of farms rose.

“From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres —i.e., to their centralisation.” (p 652)

There was an attendant reduction in agricultural output.

Table A

LIVE-STOCK
Year	Horses		Cattle			Sheep			Pigs
	Total Number	Decrease	Total Number	Decrease	Increase	Total Number	Decrease	Increase	Total Number	Decrease	Increase
1860	619,811	—	3,606,374	—	—	3,542,080	—	—	1,271,072	—	—
1861	614,232	5,579	3,471,688	134,686	—	3,556,050	—	13,970	1,102,042	169,030	—
1862	602,894	11,338	3,254,890	216,798	—	3,456,132	99,918	—	1,154,324	—	52,282
1863	579,978	22,916	3,144,231	110,659	—	3,308,204	147,982	—	1,067,458	86,866	—
1864	562,158	17,820	3,262,294	—	118,063	3,366,941	—	58,737	1,058,480	8,978	—
1865	547,867	14,291	3,493,414	—	231,120	3,688,742	—	321,801	1,299,893	—	241,413

“Nevertheless, with the fall in numbers of the population, rents and farmers’ profits rose, although the latter not as steadily as the former. The reason of this is easily comprehensible. On the one hand, with the throwing of small holdings into large ones, and the change of arable into pasture land, a larger part of the whole produce was transformed into surplus-produce. The surplus-produce increased, although the total produce, of which it formed a fraction, decreased. On the other hand, the money value of this surplus-produce increased yet more rapidly than its mass, in consequence of the rise in the English market price of meat, wool, &c., during the last 20, and especially during the last 10, years.” (p 657)


The process also increased the amount of constant capital employed, because previously scattered means of production, owned by peasant producers, passed into the hands of capitalist farmers.

“The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage. The exodus of the next 20 years, an exodus still constantly increasing, did not, as, e.g., the Thirty Years’ War, decimate, along with the human beings, their means of production. Irish genius discovered an altogether new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of miles away from the scene of its misery. The exiles transplanted to the United States, send home sums of money every year as travelling expenses for those left behind. Every troop that emigrates one year, draws another after it the next. Thus, instead of costing Ireland anything, emigration forms one of the most lucrative branches of its export trade. Finally, it is a systematic process, which does not simply make a passing gap in the population, but sucks out of it every year more people than are replaced by the births, so that the absolute level of the population falls year by year.” (p 658-9)

But, the relative surplus population remained as large, and wages just as low, despite this reduction in population.

“The facts are simple. The revolution in agriculture has kept pace with emigration. The production of relative surplus population has more than kept pace with the absolute depopulation.” (p 659)

The process of centralisation continued to crush the small to medium sized farmers who were thereby turned into labourers themselves.

In the meantime, the only significant industry was linen manufacture, which employed an insignificant proportion of the population, and the same laws that created a relative surplus population in English Machine industry did the same in Ireland.

“The misery of the agricultural population forms the pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose armies of labourers are, for the most part, scattered over the country. Here, we encounter again the system described above of domestic industry, which in underpayment and overwork, possesses its own systematic means for creating supernumerary labourers. Finally, although the depopulation has not such destructive consequences as would result in a country with fully developed capitalistic production, it does not go on without constant reaction upon the home-market. The gap which emigration causes here, limits not only the local demand for labour, but also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans, tradespeople generally.” (p 659-60)

Although money wages had risen, real wages had fallen, as food and other prices far outstripped them. The huts the workers lived in were even worse than those of the English agricultural labourers.

The extent to which this misery, however, did not extend to the exploiting classes is shown in the Tax receipts.

“From Table E. we saw that, during 1864, of £4,368,610 of total profits, three surplus-value makers pocketed only £262,819; that in 1865, however, out of £4,669,979 total profits, the same three virtuosi of “abstinence” pocketed £274,528; in 1864, 26 surplus-value makers reached to £646,377; in 1865, 28 surplus-value makers reached to £736,448; in 1864, 121 surplus-value makers, £1,076,912; in 1865, 150 surplus-value makers, £1,320,906; in 1864, 1,131 surplus-value makers £2,150,818, nearly half of the total annual profit; in 1865, 1,194 surplus-value makers, £2,418,833, more than half of the total annual profit. But the lion’s share, which an inconceivably small number of land magnates in England, Scotland and Ireland swallow up of the yearly national rental, is so monstrous that the wisdom of the English State does not think fit to afford the same statistical materials about the distribution of rents as about the distribution of profits.” (p 664)

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