As we enter the weekend, in the Irish Republic, celebrations begin to commemorate the 1916 Dublin Uprising, adding even more to the romantic myth of the futile sacrifice of working class lives.
Nationalism separates. It does not integrate. Nationalism is
a tool to divide and rule. Throughout modern history and across the world,
nationalism has reared its ugly head again and again. Many on the left will
argue that Irish nationalism has been somehow progressive. As socialists, we
say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by the left.
When the British withdrew from the greater part of Ireland,
henceforth to be called the Irish Free State, the IRA split on the terms of the
settlement with Britain, and a bloody civil war ensued. Under these warring
conditions administrative structures had to be developed. The war with Britain
was for faith and motherland; those who were killing one another in an
internecine war over the nature of Mother Ireland were at least united in faith
and there was no discernable concern about the Catholic Church becoming almost
wholly responsible for the general ‘education’ of the young, including places
of care and security like orphanages and juvenile penal institutions. The
approximately 27 percent of the population of Ireland who were not Catholics
and might have acted as a counterweight to the arrogant authoritarianism of the
Catholic bishops were now largely concentrated in Northern Ireland. Only some 9
percent of the population of the Free State was non-Catholic, mainly
Protestant. These latter had been identified with the enemy during the three
years of fierce guerrilla war that preceded the new constitutional arrangements
and they were not anxious to be involved in controversy, especially controversy
pertaining to the power of the church. In 1926 the republican rebels who had
been defeated in the civil war reformed politically under the aegis of Fianna
Fail and achieved control of government in 1932. The new Taoiseach (Prime
Minister) was Eamon De Valera, the main architect of the civil war; an austere,
well-informed Catholic. In 1937 his government changed the name of the state to
Eire and introduced a new constitution in which was mentioned the favoured
place of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Eamon De Valera had more republicans
hanged than the Ulster Unionists.
Does Irish 'heritage' do anything to help us to overcome our
shared working class heritage of poverty, insecurity and social degradation –
the real actual factual and painful heritage that is common to all workers in
every country of the world? The Irish dramatist, Sean O'Casey, who was one-time
secretary to the Irish Citizen’s Army saw Connolly as renouncing the cause of
the international working class for an aspiring native capitalism.
Before man or woman can be anything, Catholic, Protestant,
English, Irish, black or white, freeman or slave, he or she must be LIVING—not
dead. In order to live one needs food,
clothing, shelter and in order to live in freedom, a person needs free and
equal access to these things. Will a rifle create the conditions of abundance
for freedom? Workers, North and South, because they mistakenly associated their
interests with the fortunes of their masters, line up behind the capitalists in
their respective areas. The Southern capitalists rallied the people there
behind them by appeals to patriotism and the notion that if they had their own
government they would be free. The Northern gentlemen achieved their end by
exploiting historical fictions and blatantly promoting religious bigotry.
National boundaries may be altered—may even disappear—but
such re-arrangements of things geographical can in no way abolish, or even
lessen, the poverty of the many. The goal of the socialist movement is to
establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they
currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns
and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel
an attachment to places that are real and tangible. The solution will not be
found by struggling for Irish independence (whether of the 26- or 32-County variety),
but by striving for a world socialist co-operative commonwealth.
Totally agree. Personally, I think that Connolly should have known better than to participate in the nationalist adventurism which saw him lose his life 100 years ago. In many fundamental respects, he was a well grounded socialist lost, like so many others, in the illusion of national liberation.
ReplyDeleteAs Marx critically observed about reification in The Holy Family Chapter VI
"Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only 'Criticism' can invent new categories and transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories, as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that has remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims."
Nationalism is the political movement of the capitalist class (aka the bourgeoisie) to achieve domination of the producing classes through the establishment of its own political State. The conception of national sovereignty for the capitalist class develops within and emerges from the womb of feudalism, the system the bourgeoisie sublates via political revolution. Under feudalism, political power is held by the aristocratic class and sovereignty is in the hands of a monarch, aka the sovereign. Thus, the 'right of national self-determination' is the political program of those rulers in waiting who wish to impose the wage system on the majority, the working class.
Many thanks for your comment. You see, we don't have to agree 100% on every issue to still be comrades ;-p
ReplyDeleteThere are speculations about Connolly's motives. I tend to think it was disillusionment and despair with the failure of the 2nd International to oppose the First World War that made Connolly desperate to do something...anything. (We should also vigourously criticise his mounting apologies for German imperialism). The blood sacrifice was more a Pearse thing.
It is rarely gone into but there is an argument that the Rising wouldn't have failed if the rest of the IRB had been mobilised nationally. But that is a "what-if". Regardless, as you say the big picture that socialists look at is whether such "national liberation" would mean a step closer towards socialism. I think we concur that it is rather a step backwards from reaching our goal.