Imperialist myths and Westminster’s two houses: a critical realist Marxist analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This analysis is informed by the notion that there is a real world ‘out there’ existing independently of our representations of it. This allows us to identify misrepresentations; we cannot simply construct the world as we would like it to be. Modelled on a critical realist explanatory critique, the study briefly and critically investigates four aspects of British imperialism – in Ireland, Russia, India, and China – concentrating on salient episodes thereof, and subsequently compares and contrasts such with contemporaneous representations of them in the Houses of Westminster. In the spirit of Marx and Engels, the focus is on identifying contradictions between the ‘evidence’ and the ‘representations’, and I designate the latter as myths when they serve the imperialist interest, and mask inconvenient truths.