Irish republicanism thread [Archive]

Leo

5th June 2010, 01:46

The original thread was trashed while I was writing a post about it and I didn't want my post to go to waste. For the original thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/statement-irish-republicanism-t136420/index.html

I suspect being a middle class kid with nice Irish Times reading parents you havent known to many Republicans...

Do you actually know him, so that you say something about his parents and all?

Outside of a few small to medium size businessmen motitivated basically by Romanticism there is no "patriotic" or "progressive" capitalists in Ireland.

I'm sure there are no "progressive" capitalists in Ireland (are capitalists progressive anywhere nowadays?), but I am sure there are many, many patriotic capitalists in Ireland.

I doubt very much that the "nationalist" capitalists and middle class (excluding small farmers in certain places) experiance much national oppression.

This is undoubtedly true. However, the economic interests of the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation is rather mixed on the question of national oppression. Abstractly, on the one hand the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation benefits from it due to the reflection of the actual situation one the wages of the workers, that is the labor being cheaper, and on the other hand, the subordinate role of the bourgeoisie in the face of the dominant rule has its own reflection on the economic arena. The ultimate abstract optimum for the bourgeoisie is thus to not be in the same situation itself, while maintaining the situation the workers are in. In reality, of course, things are never as simple as they are abstractly, and the bourgeoisie itself is often split between those more integrated into the dominant rule (some people have named capitalists like this the comprador bourgeoisie), and those who aren't who want to benefit from the situation by using it politically, either by inciting it or by taking over marginal and insignificant groups with potential (often referred as the national bourgeoisie, the patriotic bourgeoisie, the "anti-imperialist" bourgeoisie and so on). And making things even more complicated, the interests of those two tendencies within the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation can evolve so much due to their successes and failures, possibly even resulting in the roles being swapped. Both, of course, are completely anti-working class

Outside of a few small to medium size businessmen motitivated basically by Romanticism there is no "patriotic" or "progressive" capitalists in Ireland. Even in the occupied six counties post the GFA I doubt very much that the "nationalist" capitalists and middle class (excluding small farmers in certain places) experiance much national oppression. The fight for national liberation is part of the fight for socialism...

There is a serious theoretical fallacy here with your argument I'm afraid. Nation itself is a term defined by the fact that it describes a group of people from all classes, thus accordingly national liberation means the liberation of the nation, of all classes of the nation, and thus is something which can be achieved by the united struggle of all classes in the nation. The nation being both the historical and the ideological means of social unity of the bourgeoisie, national liberation struggles have always been regarded as bourgeois revolutions by marxists, from Marx to Lenin. The emphasis of the old Communist International on this saw the national liberation movements like that, and their position on theory was to support it while maintaining the independence of the working class within the national liberation struggle, in order to start struggling for social revolution after the struggle for national liberation was over. Of course some people, like MN Roy for example, were disturbed by this position, and tried to argue that the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations weren't progressive, and that the national revolution had to take place without them - however mostly all these people ended up simply painting nationalism red, and ignoring or downplaying the influence of the bourgeoisie within nationalist movements. Still, even those who argued for such positions didn't go so far to say national liberation and socialist revolution were the same thing. The line put forward by Lenin, on the other hand, at least had the advantage of being based on solidly developed marxist theoretical conceptions, and being coherent and honest.

Regardless of whether you "differentiate between progressive nationalism, i.e, nationalism of the oppressed, and reactionary nationalism, i.e, nationalism of the oppressor" or not, if you are to claim that you are at least speaking with marxist terms, you have to acknowledge that nationalism is and has always been the ideology of the bourgeoisie. There is no proletarian nationalism, there never was and won't ever be. National liberation struggles are bourgeois struggles, when Marx supported some of them, he did so because he thought these bourgeois struggles were historically progressive, when Lenin supported some of them, he also did so because he thought these bourgeois struggles were historically progressive.

As for the struggle for socialism... Without a doubt, the workers' international struggle for socialism has always been, and will always be the struggle against national oppression. It never was and will never be a struggle for the liberation of nations, but one for their abolishment.

You're not only a traitor to your people and country,

The second part I marked in bold I totally agree with it. I really cant stand people sitting in the comfort of Dublin mouthing off about the north.

Your understanding is that of the self-hating post-colonial

horrible fact that they happened to be born Irish.

This is the language of nationalism, this is the language of the bourgeoisie. "You are traitors to the nation!" "You are self-haters!" "You betray your people and your country!" How many times have we all heard of all this being told to those who oppose nationalism? Reminds me of, for example, Zionists who call dissident Jews "self-haters". Ones nationality does not determine ones self - ones class does. Also, claiming that the original poster is a supporter of British imperialism is typical nationalist slander.

Jolly Red Giant

5th June 2010, 18:16

Also a note on "progressive nationlaist struggles" Lenin strongly supported the nationlaist 1916 rising and the irish revolution, despite it being wholly bourgeoisie, founding a nation just as bad as the UK, if not worse, as his peers noted.

This stuff regularly comes up on various internet forums - Marx and his support for nationalism and the Fenians and Lenin's support for the Easter Rising. Unfortunately the selective use of quotes and the dogmatic interpretation of these quotes is a distortion of Marx and Lenin and does nothing to benefit the workers movement in Ireland.

I am going to add a response I made on this topic from a different forum (with some minor editing). It addresses these issues and demonstrates the false nature of the claims being made by those who selectively quote from Marx and Lenin's writing on nationalism and republicanism.

Did Marx support the Fenians?
Yes - Marx supported the Fenian movement and the Fenian uprising. The question to be address is not whether he supported the Fenians, but why?

The writings of Marx show that he changed his position on Ireland on several occasions as his understanding of the national question matured and as the material circumstances changed. Let’s let Marx speak for himself on this issue –

I used to think the separation of Ireland from England impossible.
Here Marx clearly admits that at one point he felt that Irish independence was impossible. However, as he considered the situation more deeply over time he came to the following conclusion –

I now think it inevitable
So from originally regarding it as impossible, his view was that it became inevitable. However, while he regarded it as inevitable he did add a qualification –

although after the separation there may come federation.
Now in addressing the issue of Irish separation from England, Marx was dealing with how to develop society on a capitalist basis in order to change the material conditions on the ground and alter the class basis of Irish society from a rural peasant based society to an urban proletarian based society. He added that what the Irish needed was Home Rule and independence of Britain, an agrarian revolution and tariffs against Britain. Marx was arguing for the need for an agrarian revolution to shift the class nature of rural society from peasantry to small farmers in order to facilitate agricultural reform and expansion of agricultural production. This was necessary to foster the creation of a powerful bourgeois class, the alteration of the material basis of society, the development of industry and consequently a proletariat.

Engels wrote on the attitude adopted by Marx –

At first Marx thought that Ireland would not be liberated by the national movement of the oppressed nation, but by the working-class movement of the oppressor nation. Marx did not make an Absolute of the national movement, knowing, as he did, that only the victory of the working class can bring about the complete liberation of all nationalities. It is impossible to estimate beforehand all the possible relations between the bourgeois liberation movements of the oppressed nations and the proletarian emancipation movement of the oppressor nation
As Engels demonstrated here Marx did not have any illusions in the national liberation movement, but understood that it was solely by victory of the workers movement that national liberation could be completely achieved.

Lenin also considered the developments occurring at this time and spoke of the changing outlook adopted by Marx. –

the English working class fell under the influence of the liberals for a fairly long time, became an appendage to the liberals, and by adopting a liberal-labour policy left itself leaderless. The bourgeois liberation movement in Ireland grew stronger and assumed revolutionary forms. Marx reconsidered his view and corrected it.
The impact of Liberal policies on the British working class forced a re-think on the part of Marx towards the Irish question, leading to him advocating the ‘separation’ from Britain as outlined above. Lenin continues –

What were the theoretical grounds for Marx’s conclusion? In England the bourgeois revolution had been consummated long ago. But it had not yet been consummated in Ireland; it is being consummated only now, after the lapse of half a century, by the reforms of the English Liberals. If capitalism had been overthrown in England as quickly as Marx had at first expected, there would have been no room for a bourgeois-democratic and general national movement in Ireland. But since it had arisen, Marx advised the English workers to support it, give it a revolutionary impetus and see it through in the interests of their own liberty.
The economic ties between Ireland and England in the 1860s were of course, even closer than Russia’s present ties with Poland, the Ukraine, etc. The “unpracticality” and “impracticability” of the separation of Ireland (if only owing to geographical conditions and England’s immense colonial power) were quite obvious. Though, in principle, an enemy of federalism, Marx in this instance granted the possibility of federation, as well, if only the emancipation of Ireland was achieved in a revolutionary, not reformist way, through a movement of the mass of the people of Ireland supported by the working class of England. There can be no doubt that only such a solution of the historical problem would have been in the best interests of the proletariat and most conducive to rapid social progress.
What must be kept in mind at all times when looking at the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin in relation to the Irish question in the nineteenth century is that because of the nature of Irish society Marx regarded it as an absolute necessity for a bourgeois revolution in Ireland, that would bring about an agrarian revolution with the creation of a class of small landowners as distinct from peasantry, impose tariffs and develop industry thereby creating a working class capable of achieving a socialist revolution, while at all times recognizing that complete national liberation could only be achieved by a successful socialist revolution. It was on this basis that Marx supported the Fenians. His intention was to support a bourgeois national liberation movement, with all its limitations, in opposition to domination by Britain (and the impact this was having on the British working class) in order to create the material conditions for socialist revolution which in consequence would deliver complete national liberation that the native bourgeois class would be incapable of delivering for Ireland.

Engels also addressed the relationship between the Irish emigrants and British workers and how it impacted on the attitude of the British working class towards national liberation in Ireland. The British capitalist class consciously used Irish peasant immigrants to undermine the wages, conditions and union organisation of British workers. In much the same way that the Irish landless labourers attacked itinerant landless labourers that ventured into their locality, British workers reacted against the influx (of several hundred thousand) Irish immigrant workers. Engels spoke of –
the hatred towards the Irish found among the English workers borne from the material conditions of the time and the influence and impact of the liberal-labour policies in existence, something that was to inhibit the ability of the British working class to struggle for its own emancipation.

Lenin considered the support offered by Marx and Engels to the liberation movement of the nineteenth century –
Both the Irish people and the English proletariat proved weak… Does it follow that Marx and Engels were “utopians”, that they put forward “impracticable” national demands, or that they allowed themselves to be influenced by the Irish petty-bourgeois nationalists (for there is no doubt about the petty-bourgeois nature of the Fenian movement), etc.?
No. In the Irish question, too, Marx and Engels pursued a consistently proletarian policy, which really educated the masses in a spirit of democracy and socialism. Only such a policy could have saved both Ireland and England half a century of delay in introducing the necessary reforms, and prevented these reforms from being mutilated by the Liberals to please the reactionaries. Note that Lenin refers to a ‘consistently proletarian policy’. The objective for Marx and Engels at all times was not simply the right of self-determination but what was in the material interests of the proletariat. If a bourgeois national liberation movement was unnecessary for the development of a working class then Marx and Engels would have rejected its necessity out of hand and moved to propagandise on the basis of socialist revolution.

So taking the basis on which Marx supported the Fenian movement (a bourgeois nationalist movement he hoped would bring about a limited bourgeois revolution in Ireland leading to the creation of a proletariat) can Marx’s support for the Fenians be automatically extended to the 1916 Rising and the national liberation movement of 1919-1922?

Anyone with any understanding of Marxism knows that this is not the case and is not possible. As Marx demonstrated himself by altering his position himself in the light of a better understanding and of changing circumstances each movement has to be addressed on its own merits, using the method of Marxism and understanding the material basis on which the movement is taking place. Lenin continues –
The policy of Marx and Engels on the Irish question serves as a splendid example of the attitude the proletariat of the oppressor nations should adopt towards national movements, an example which has lost none of its immense practical importance. Note here that Lenin Is talking about the method adopted by Marx, not simply the arguments put forward at a particular time and under particular conditions.

I will address the Easter Rising shortly but first it is necessary to go back a few years to look at Lenin’s comments on the 1913 lock-out.
In Dublin, the capital of Ireland…the class struggle, which permeates the whole life of capitalist society everywhere, has become accentuated to the point of class war… What has happened? How could such a war have flared up in a peaceable, cultured, civilised free state? Lenin of course is being facetious, but is clearly demonstrating that a class war was underway in Dublin in 1913 and it is necessary to see how this situation had developed since the time of the Fenian rising and what impact it would have on the political outlook for national liberation and socialist revolution. Lenin states -
National oppression and Catholic reaction have turned the proletarians of this unhappy country into paupers, the peasants into toilworn, ignorant and dull slaves of the priesthood, and the bourgeoisie into a phalanx, masked by nationalist phrases, of capitalists, of despots over the workers; finally, the administration has been turned into a gang accustomed to every kind of violence.
At the present moment the Irish nationalists (i.e., the Irish bourgeoisie) are the victors. They are buying up the lands of the English landlords; they are getting national self-government (the famous Home Rule for which such a long and stubborn struggle has been going on between Ireland and England); they will freely govern “their own” country jointly with “their own” Irish priests.
Well, this Irish nationalist bourgeoisie is celebrating its “national” victory, its maturity in “affairs of state” by declaring a war to the death on the Irish labour movement. In this quote Lenin is outlining the changing nature of the Irish bourgeoisie and how it has affected their political outlook. Lenin is scathing of the native bourgeois class and the attitude they have adopted to Irish workers, demonstrating their inability to recognise and carry out their historical role. It is this inability of the native bourgeoisie that has altered the material basis in Ireland for a national liberation movement.

Talking about the emergence of the Irish trade union movement onto the centre stage of the historical process Lenin states –
And these unions have begun to develop magnificently. The Irish proletariat, awakening to class-consciousness, is pressing the Irish bourgeois scoundrels engaged in celebrating their “national” victory… A new spirit bas been aroused in the Irish workers’ unions. The unskilled workers have brought unparralleled animation into the trade unions. Even the women have begun to organise—a thing hitherto unknown in Catholic Ireland. So far as organisation of the workers is concerned Dublin looks like becoming one of the foremost towns in the whole of Great Britain. The country that used to be typified by the fat, well-fed Catholic priest and the poor, starving, ragged worker who wore his rags even on Sunday because he could not afford Sunday clothes, that country, though it bears a double and triple national yoke, has begun to turn into a country with an organised army of the proletariat. Lenin is stating that the Irish proletariat now has the material ability to concretely influence the political direction of any movement that would take place. It is center stage in the political battle between coloniser and colonized, between bourgeois and proletariat, between capitalism and socialism. To confirm Lenin outlines the changed nature of Irish rural society –
We would arrive at the state of affairs which exists in Ireland, where the present peasant reform was required, which is turning the tenant farmers into small owners. Lenin understood and outlined how the nature of Irish rural society had changed rapidly in a very short space of time thereby fundamentally altering the basis for Marx’s support for the Fenians. In other words the basis on which Marx argued for the support of socialists for the Fenian movement was no longer valid, the new situation needed to be analysed using the method of Marxism and a new attitude adopted based on the changed circumstances.

How did Lenin view the impact of the 1913 lock-out? –
The Dublin events mark a turning-point in the history of the labour movement and of socialism in Ireland. Murphy has threatened to destroy the Irish trade unions. He has succeeded only in destroying the last remnants of the influence of the Irish nationalist bourgeoisie over, the Irish proletariat. He has helped to steel the independent revolutionary working-class movement in Ireland, which is free of nationalist prejudices. Lenin is unequivocal, the Irish labour movement has emerged on a new plane, it has found its feet and it has achieved its independence from the nationalist bourgeoisie.

So how does this equate with the claim about Lenin’s intent when he wrote about the Easter Rising? On what basis was Lenin criticising those who claimed the Rising was a ‘putsch’? Lenin was criticising those who he claimed were arguing that
the Irish question was an agrarian one, the peasants had been pacified by reforms, and the nationalist movement remained only a purely urban, petty-bourgeois movement, which, notwithstanding the sensation it caused, had not much social backing.... In other words Lenin was demonstrating that those who declared the Rising to be a putsch lacked the understanding of the changed nature of Irish society and the material basis for revolution. He argued that they ignored the development of the proletariat in Ireland and the class consciousness developed over the previous years which culminated in the 1913 lock-out.

Left republicans like to quote the following –
Whoever calls such a rebellion a putsch is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon

But the question to be asked is the following – what is Lenin referring to here? Is it support for the Rising on the same basis as the support for the Fenians afforded by Marx? Clearly he is not. Lenin is specifically addressing the issue of the nature of revolutionary upheaval. He is not specifically talking about the 1916 Rising but using it as an example in his polemic against those who do not understand the nature of revolutionary upheaval.

Lenin is clearly demonstrating something that all conscious Marxists are aware of – the fact that any revolutionary movement involves
revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semiproletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc What is not take into consideration when quoting from Lenin’s writings is that while all of these elements are involved, the key component is the class conscious proletariat that has drawn revolutionary conclusions. To demonstrate this Lenin states –
The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it—without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and errors.
But objectively they will attack capital, and the class- conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all hate (though for different reasons!), and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately purge itself of petty bourgeois slag. Note the role that Lenin places on the ‘class conscious vanguard of the revolution’.

Let’s look at what Lenin’s assessment was of the Easter Rising –
It is the misfortune of the Irish that they rose prematurely, before the European revolt of the proletariat had had time to mature. Clearly Lenin regarded the Easter Rising as premature, an error in political judgement, one that was made for understandable reasons but one with the benefit of hindsight that can be clearly seen. Lenin’s basis for supporting the Rising (the same as all Marxists) was the following –
the very fact that revolts do break out at different times, in different places, and are of different kinds, guarantees wide scope and depth to the general movement; but it is only in premature, individual, sporadic and therefore unsuccessful, revolutionary movements that the masses gain experience, acquire knowledge, gather strength, and get to know their real leaders, the socialist proletarians, and in this way prepare for the general onslaught, just as certain strikes, demonstrations, local and national, mutinies in the army, outbreaks among the peasantry, etc., prepared the way for the general onslaught in 1905. The key issue for Lenin in relation to the Easter Rising was the lessons to be learnt and the experience gained from a class perspective. The same situation developed during the period from 1917-1922 in Ireland whereby the national rebellion took on a wide and varied character, involving different and often conflicting sections of society. The concrete difference from 1916 was the lessons learnt by the most conscious layers within the workers movement. The reality that the material conditions that existed in Ireland from 1917 onwards had fundamentally altered. While the national liberation movement needed to be supported, the attitude of the advanced workers (leaning on the experience of the lock-out and the shafting of the Easter Rising by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements) dictated that the workers movement would need to operate on an independent basis, that it must strive to supplant the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements and take the leadership of the movement into the hands of the working class, not solely to achieve independence for Ireland but also independence for the working class.

If you consider the nationalist movement what do you get – the compromising of Redmond and his brown-nosing of British Imperialism in 1914. MacNeill and others canceling the orders for the insurrection in 1916. Collins, Griffiths and DeValera caving into British Imperialism, then arguing over whether to swear an oath to the King and plunging the country into civil war (and yes I know it wasn’t as simple as that). And in modern times Adams and McGuinness compromising with Imperialism and hopping into bed with unionism.

The reality throughout the entire twentieth century is that the leadership that has failed has not been the leadership of the labour movement (despite its weaknesses) it has been the leadership of the nationalist movement. Despite ample opportunities, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leadership of nationalism has compromised with Imperialism. And the reality is that this is inevitable. Lenin pointed it out when he discussed the 1913 lock-out. The native bourgeois class in Ireland arrived on the scene of history too late to carry out its historical tasks, it is incapable of ever being able to complete those tasks and the completion of those tasks – complete national liberation, as Marx outlined, can only be achieved by victory for the working class.

I would also like to address the issue of the rights of nations to self determination, regularly referring to Lenin and Connolly, and something that left republicans use to justify the paramilitary campaign of the Provos prior to the ceasefire. Let’s see what Lenin said about the role of the workers movement and the right to self-determination –
The socialist revolution is not one single act, not one single battle on a single front; but a whole epoch of intensified class conflicts, a long series of battles on all fronts, i.e., battles around all the problems of economics and politics, which can culminate only in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It would be a fundamental mistake to suppose that the struggle for democracy can divert the proletariat from the socialist revolution, or obscure, or overshadow it, etc. On the contrary, just as socialism cannot be victorious unless it introduces complete democracy, so the proletariat will be unable to prepare for victory over the bourgeoisie unless it wages a many-sided, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.
It would be no less mistaken to delete any of the points of the democratic programme, for example, the point of self-determination of nations, on the ground that it is “infeasible,” or that it is “illusory” under imperialism. The assertion that the right of nations to self-determination cannot be achieved within the framework of capitalism may be understood either in its absolute, economic sense, or in the conventional, political sense. Regularly sectarians on the left will use quotations like this one to attack the position of the Socialist Party to the national question and its opposition to the paramilitary campaign of the Provos. Somehow in their minds opposition to individual terror equates to support for imperialism. But what was the attitude of Lenin? he continues –
The Socialists of the oppressed nations, on the other hand, must particularly fight for and maintain complete, absolute unity (also organizational) between the workers of the oppressed nation and the workers of the oppressing nation. Without such unity it will be impossible to maintain an independent proletarian policy and class solidarity with the proletariat of other countries in the face of all the subterfuge, treachery and trickery of the bourgeoisie; for the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations always converts the slogan of national liberation into a means for deceiving the workers So here Lenin clearly outlines the necessity for international class unity between the workers of the oppressed nation and the workers of the oppressing nation. He outlines that the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation uses the slogan of ‘national liberation’ to trick workers.

The CWI has consistently argued that support for the national liberation movement of the Provos led by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements are a blind ally for the working class and that the key to achieving the liberation of the working class (and as a result national liberation) is dependent on the unity of the working class Catholic and Protestant, North and South, here and internationally.

The IRA constantly refer to Connolly’s participation in the 1916 Rising as justification for their campaign of individual terror. Yet Lenin was implacably opposed to individual terror, refusing to follow in the footsteps of his brother, instead dedicating himself to building a revolutionary party.

The IRA for decades have invoked the image of Connolly. Yet did Connolly ever engage in acts of individual terror?. Connolly organized the ICA for the defence of the workers movement. Despite the fact that he had ample means and opportunity to do so between 1914-1916 (when it could have actually been carried out with some possible justification) he didn’t carry out any bombings, shootings or assassinations. Instead he chose to participate in an insurrection. His motivation was to attempt to provide a spark for a revolutionary upheaval on an international (not solely national) basis and unfortunately he was unable to play a leading role (which he would undoubtedly he would have done) in the mushrooming workers movement from 1917 onwards

The material conditions of Ireland between 1867 and 1913 were altered fundamentally as outlined by Lenin and have fundamentally altered again since 1913. The tactics and methods of Marxists must adapt to the prevailing material conditions, while always maintaining the over-riding necessity of workers unity as vital for developing a socialist revolution.