Connolly and Cascadia

[Die Neue Zeit]

[Preamble: This is a short break from my work-in-progress. This is an article posted by a Connollyist in the Cascadian region (northwest US plus Canada's BC), who also happens to be the Current Events moderator on Soviet-Empire.com. I don't have a hard stance on the Cascadian position (since there is no real nationality in the region to speak of), but I certainly sympathize with it on a "socio-national liberation"/"republican-socialist" basis.]

Connolly and Cascadia



By The Immortal Goon


One may ask why the Cascadian needs independence. The hard and fast self-interest answer is not to be sought here, but in various other works that are being published and ideas that are being currently contemplated more and more every day. The purpose of this work is not to appeal to those currently engaged in the first dabbling of the idea of Cascadian independence but instead as a compass to those who have already accepted the logic, indeed the necessity, of an autonomous Cascadian republic. Nor should this work be taken as a biblical narrative to be accepted in fear of excommunication. It is, as stated, a compass that shows a general direction but does not take in to account the obstacles in the way of the direction to which it points. It is, in short, a start.

There are several great events in the history of independence from current forms of tyranny. Of those there are three to be considered in connection with Cascadia. The first is the Russian Revolution. This is important so that we can forget it for all present in-depth discussions. Indeed, when anything remotely connected with the struggle against current forms of oppression and alienation is touched upon it seems inevitable that the Russian Revolution is brought up. However, in the context of Cascadia, the Russian Revolution is nothing more than a loose structure of abstract ideas no more important than Roman rebellions or the French Revolution. Though all of these can be instructive, the Russian Revolution is fresh upon the revolutionary’s mind, and thus it lends to division more than unity. When discussing the future and present policies of Cascadia there is little good to have our fraternal walls broken down by emotional arguments about who would have been best suited for the role of the exile and who should have dictated policy. The world has changed in the passing of a second world war, a cold war, and various other events that skew the perception of the past’s great powers – no matter how great or mediocre they may or may not have been in retrospect. For our ends Cascadia is a small nationality of advanced sectors and sophisticated class relations. Russia, on the eve and through the revolution, was an imperialist power with a sluggish and reluctant bourgeois and feudal structure that was still very much intact. Our cases could not be more different, so let us not dwell upon Russia any more and continue.

The second great event that must be remembered is the American Revolution. It must be remembered that at one point a reluctant and unsure worker held hands with the employer and land owner who were rapidly growing in power. It also must be kept in mind that at the War for Liberty’s end, the employer and land owner betrayed the worker. Hamilton mercilessly smothered the new worker who had first opened his eyes. It should never be forgotten that the newly emancipated citizen attempted to exercise his liberty, he was found bound by the dollar in every direction he went. A valiant effort was made for the workers, growing in to full scale revolt in Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

However, Hamilton’s hand was firmly over the worker’s throat, and the only way to escape his dollar’s power was to leave it behind and move west; something that they half-heartedly tried to stop on account of keeping a reserve army of labor to be exploited (though they claimed it was in respect to the natives, the same natives that they had helped pass pox infested blankets to and mercilessly slaughtered earlier in their own generation). And so the revolutionary fervor cooled from a flame to smoldering but ever present ashes.

Today, those of us in Cascadia must remember the American Revolution and how we were betrayed and driven to the end of the continent. Even here Hamilton’s invisible hand has found us and squeezes tighter and tighter. To remember this is to remember that almost three hundred years later the same problem exists for us, the same betrayal is still breathing, and the same solution the landlords and mangers used against their masters is the only escape.

The third event to remember is Ireland’s struggle against England that finally liberated most of their countrymen. Though it is far from a perfect example, Ireland’s conception from 1913-1916 is the missing link between what can be usefully drawn from Russia, America, France, India, and every other revolution and movement that had its finger on the Irish pulse or, conversely, found green fingers checking the life in their own wrists.

In this conception, the first in Ireland that would not result in a full miscarriage, the name of Connolly stands above all others. The confidence was built in 1913, when every month saw a strike take place. Flirtation decided upon when Larkin and Connolly founded and began to train the Irish Citizen’s Army, even before MacNeill was to take action with the idea of his Volunteers. A hesitant touch started when the Irish Citizen’s Army and the Irish Volunteers marched on Howth and armed. The positive response to the touching was the horrified public seeing running blood at Bachelor’s Walk. The first kiss was the separation of radicals from those who had confidence that everything would simply work itself out. And as the kiss and touches progressed, one thing would led to another, and soon radicals were rushing to their target at the General Post Office in Dublin, where the Irish Republic was conceived, but not yet born.

Connolly was the libido whispering to the impregnator that if each step of action were not taken, then the chance would be lost and the would be impregnator would remain nothing more than a forty year old virgin forever dependent upon his slavish and shameful reluctance to sit at the adult’s table at Thanksgiving.

As for the maor parties, like Connolly, we reject them both outright. If we support a hostile capitalist party’s policy, it is not because we support the party; it is only because we support the policy as a foundation for our own, and nothing further. The second that they come back to us and ask for a favor, we should turn our backs and let them beg and finally, hopefully die.

Let us agree with these parties for as long as we are fighting for the same immediate goal, but let us always remember that:

…the control of the means of life by private individuals is the root of all tyranny, national, political, militaristic, and that therefore they who control the jobs control the world. Fighting at the front to-day there are many thousands whose whole soul revolts against what they are doing, but who must nevertheless continue fighting and murdering because they were deprived of a living at home, and compelled to enlist that those dear to them may not starve.

-Connolly, “Economic Conscription I,” December 8, 1915

It is our responsibility not to kneel to this control in Cascadia, but ferret out and destroy the root of all tyranny. The only way to truly find liberation is not to replace one flag with another, but to build a distinct and equitable economic and political system as different from our former lord’s is from the feudal structure we helped them smash. Or, as Connolly put it himself when charged with just such a question in Ireland:

Do we find fault with the employer for following his own interests? We do not. But neither are we under any illusion as to his motives. In the same manner we take our stand with our own class, nakedly upon our class interests, but believing that these interests are the highest interests of the race.

We cannot conceive of a free Ireland with a subject working class; we cannot conceive of a subject Ireland with a free working class. But we can conceive of a free Ireland with a working class guaranteed the power of freely and peacefully working out its own salvation.

-Connolly, “Economic Conscription I,” December 8, 1915

Of course, it will not be forgotten by our readers that such a task, even with careful and calculated alliances in policies, will not be easy. Connolly himself often felt alienated from the political process as a result of his inability to compromise with the actions of tyranny, even among those who, in theory, would take his side. However, because of the integrity of such action, people would rally to his point of view when crisis was on the horizon and the powers that be tipped their hand:

We of the Irish Transport Workers’ Union are so often Ishmaels in public life, with every man’s hand against us and our hand against every man, that it is a rare treat to be able to acknowledge that on a question of supreme importance such as this we are but one among many agreeing voices.

-Connolly, “The National Danger”

The current interests that we face are twofold; on the one hand we have the fact that the working people, in general, are reluctant to spill blood. The worker, and especially the Cascadian worker of our era, has not ever been in a position where such a thing has needed to be done for our survival. The Great Plains and Pacific Ocean have been our protection from conquering armies. Thus the Connolly axiom:

We believe in constitutional action in normal times; we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times. These are exceptional times.

-Connolly “Trust Your Leaders!”

seems not to particularly apply to the Cascadian as it would an Ireland with four armed and major paramilitary groups dictating political policy while the greatest war in history is being waged just off shore. Certainly, the reader will say, Cascadia is not going through an exceptional time. This assertion, however, is wrong. The crisis of capitalism is gathering strength again; Cascadians are being ordered to die in the sand; and long protracted legal battles are eroding the status and power of our constitutional power by undermining the Oregon system in the south of Cascadia and nixing reforms and advances in BC and Washington. These times are exceptional in that they are on the verge of taking away Cascadian constitutional action while waging an imperialist war with the Orwellian pretense of fighting a feeling.

There is natural reluctance, on the part of the working person and especially the Cascadian working person, to taking the trouble to demand real and immediate change for ourselves. The most advanced Cascadian nationalist will shrug his shoulders and say that the system can slowly evolve, but this path of thought ignores the rivers of blood and exploitation that are happening now. We are told that agitation is a bad thing because it benefits the root of tyranny:

The French Reign of Terror is spoken of with horror and execration by the people who talk in joyful praise about the mad adventure of the Dardanelles. And yet in any one day of battle at the Dardanelles there were more lives lost than in all the nine months of the Reign of Terror.

-Connolly, “Conscription.”

In his article “Foreword” Connolly asserts that a more politically sophisticated branch must learn how to break with the conventional “wisdom” of the more moderate nationalists or perish. We have seen this as true in the history of the United States as well as in Ireland. We have seen the lumbering political parties, both once having been revolutionary vanguards for radical thought compromise with the more moderate elements until the only thing that further separates the major parties in any western nation is a vague concept of tradition. We do not expect the Republicans to abolish the criminal and inhumane treatment of man from the world that they were founded to destroy any more than we expect the Democrats to incite and perpetuate Jacobin fervor throughout the world; or Canadian Labour to denounce use of the use of the dollar. Even the Canadian Conservative was once more radical than he is today, for he was at least at one time fighting for the class he inherited from the British Tory instead of salivating over the his piece from a system his party was sworn to fight.

Today we have, in most of the world, parties and organizations that have compromised themselves to the great heights that they themselves are allowed to stand upon. Recently, in the Orwellian War Against an Emotion, there has been talk about conscription. Both parties have assured Cascadians that they will not force people at the end of a bayonet to join the firing line. Both parties have made many promises that they will never keep because they are always willing to compromise so long as their wallets are a little heavier in the end:

Do not be deceived, nor deceive yourself by words. For instance, when you hear that some one will ‘fight conscription,’ push the question until you find out what he means by ‘fighting’ conscription.

The Quakers in England will fight conscription, the Dukhobors of Russia will fight conscription, the ‘No Conscription Fellowship’ is already fighting conscription. But no blows are or will be struck by them – indeed their ‘fighting’ consists in refusing to strike blows. Is that your method, or that of your leaders? Or do you prefer the method of that Catholic priest who recently advised his people to send a deputation of their ten best shots to meet the conscriptors? Words are said to be the medium by which we express our ideas, but in Ireland words are generally the means by which we conceal our ideas. Do not let them be so used in this great game now being played.

-Connolly, “Trust Your Leaders”

The only way to move forward is to do that, to move. If we, as Cascadians fighting for peace, merely sit and wait, exploitation and war will surely find us.

Reforms should be enforced with the same intensity that we would protect our homes. We are told in Cascadia that we are free citizens even when our democratically elected measures and laws are torn in front of us with scorn; instead of protecting the right to govern ourselves, we are told that the measure of our freedom is to go “keep peace” in Afghanistan.

It is poor quibbling to say that the Workers’ Republic stands for reckless fighting and ill-considered action. It does not. The Workers’ Republic holds that at any time since the war broke out the British Government could have been halted in its inroads upon public liberties in Ireland by a flat refusal on the part of the majority of its armed citizens to allow their rights as citizens to be interfered with.

-Connolly, “Conscription.”

Even the celebrated Canadian pacifism is a cruel hoax when examined for more than a second. Our Cascadian brothers who are told they are Canadians have been encouraged to go fight in every world war long before the Americans were willing to do so; and even now, one cannot say that Ottawa has come to its senses. Though it places a mask of scorn over its face, the plutocratic tyrants in Ottawa think nothing of churning Cascadian blood to protect the imperialistic conquests of their fellow North Americans in Afghanistan or anywhere that NATO might order them to. A true British Columbian would be ashamed to be associated with such slavish behaviour; and he should be, just as a true Washingtonian and Oregonian is.

What recourse is left to the Cascadian? We, the working people of Cascadia, know how precious life is and abhor the thought of shedding it. Unfortunately for our instincts, and at some level finer and more civilized desires, our “representatives” don’t represent this same attitude.

Should the day ever come when revolutionary leaders are prepared to sacrifice the lives of those under them as recklessly as the ruling class do in every war, there will not be a throne or despotic government left in the world. Our rulers reign by virtue of their readiness to destroy human life in order to reign; their reign will end on the day their discontented subjects care as little for the destruction of human life as they do.

-Connolly, “Conscription”

But what can be done?

On this last point there is little to say, though it is Connolly’s most celebrated lesson to Ireland, and to his followers and admirers in the rest of the world.

Few are unfamiliar with the heroic Dublin Rising in 1916, led, in no small part, by Connolly. Thoroughly unpopular with the Irish of the time, those that loved Ireland – as truly as we love Cascadia – rose to certain defeat against the most powerful nation that the world had ever seen while that nation was fully mobilized for war.

It is remembered that the Irish Volunteers made up the bulk of the men, but what is more often forgotten is that Connolly was brought in to the IRB fold late – with his Irish Citizen’s Army, merely a few hundred strong, he had been preparing to rise virtually alone.

The citizenry, as said, were disgusted at the Rising. They wrote angry letters and cheered on their children who had willingly joined the British Military and crushed the rising. However, Connolly knew his act of defiance would unveil the British plutocrats and their Irish assistants to the public for what they really were.

Earlier Connolly had made a brief study of the Alamo of Texan fame and made the following note:

The defence of the Alamo was one of those defeats which are often more valuable to a cause than many loudly trumpeted victories. It gave spirit and bitterness to the Texan forces, and more important still gave time to their comrades elsewhere. Fortunately for their cause also they had in Houston a General who recognised that the act of keeping an insurgent force in the field was in itself so valuable an establishment of the revolutionary position that it gave all the functions and prestige of government.

-Connolly, “The Alamo”

And so the Irish revolution started with the same hopeless struggle. The public, who had hissed at Connolly and Pearse as they led the Rising, were horrified to see bodies callously piled up by the British through secret trials. Only as the Irish government broke down after the Rising did it become apparent the full scope of a capitalist power in war time – bodies of vocal pacifists like Sheehy-Skeffington were found to be executed by the military for no good reason. Connolly himself was wounded and had to be propped upon a chair to be properly executed by the military – when this was revealed in the House of Commons it was met with cheers.

However, the Irish common working man bares little difference from his Cascadian counterpart or any other man of his world class. As we had seen in the last section, the working man hates nothing more than the pointless loss of life. Connolly took the sheet from the beast; everyone intellectually knew what Ireland’s masters had been capable of, but the intellectual realization came second to the physical and emotional horror that followed. When they objected their masters tried to wash them away in seas of blood – but the working man is nothing if not strong and was able to withstand the deluge and finally stand for himself.

The fate of the Irish Revolution was, like the American, French, Russian, and every other revolution, subjected to counter-revolutionary activity inside of the actual process. Connolly’s mission has been hopelessly bogged down by the compromises that were made for money.

In Cascadia we are in the same situation and subject to the same problems. It is our duty, as workers in Cascadia, to follow Connolly’s example and pull open the curtains so that our class can see and understand the horror to which we are tricked and forced in to supporting. To do this, we have many allies – there are numerous groups, even those sympathetic to Cascadian independence, who would be happy to join with us and expose the truth of this tyranny.

However, as a movement representing the workers in Cascadia, it is our responsibility to remove the “root of tyranny.” We must not stop and compromise with those who help us pull open the curtains. The hard line Cascadian Nationalist shall not, as Hamilton in the American Revolution or more than one figure in Ireland, take the curtain from tyranny and make excuses for using it himself.

Do we ask you to march on a Cascadian capital and begin firing? Certainly not! A true and legitimate working man’s movement in Cascadia could not, at this point, alienate itself at this point by such infantile and pointless action. Any such action would only turn the worker’s disgust at bloodletting against us and with good reason. For now, let us go back to Connolly and content ourselves with the beginning:

AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims.
EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part.
ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the "canting, fed classes" bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic invites you, let the words which the poet puts into the mouth of Mazeppa console you amid the orgies of the tyrants of today:
"But time at last makes all things even,
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient hate and vigil long,
Of those who treasure up a wrong.

-Connolly