ABSTRACT
Karl Marx’s reference to the ‘Fenian’ in Capital hints at revolutionary possibilities not only in Ireland, but also in Britain, and to their intertwining, especially if one links that reference to his longer discussion in the Confidential Communication. The Civil War was a revolution from, enacted by the Federal Government during the war itself and then afterwards in the occupied South, as seen in the attempt at radical land reform by the Congress. In Capital, Volume I, Marx wrote of the revolutionary possibilities that awaited the US that slavery was abolished: ‘In the United States of America, every independent worker’s movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Marx added a twist to his argument to the effect that some roadblocks held back a working-class uprising. In the 1872–1875 French edition of Capital, Marx widens the dialectic of primitive accumulation, capital, and labour.
