Yeah but this isnt the centre of Belfast, its a political discussion board...Its 2010 and the Republic seems further away now than at any other time I can think of. So it might be a good idea to explore the question why here rather than endless speculation about when and how Gerry Adams stabbed the IRA in the back, MI5 took over the Provos, etc, etc.Originally Posted by Robo
Red Plough Socialist Flouts Science*
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Recently, (1) the Red Plough featured an article by Gerry Ruddy attempting to refute a Maoist-Third Worldist perspective on Ireland. The Red Plough “criticism” contains no substantial analysis, rather Ruddy simply repeats the same clapped out dogmas and bald assertions our movement has dealt with many times.
Ruddy criticizes our correct position on the deportation of die-hard loyalists. We hold that once Ireland is liberated and reunified, loyalists that keep fighting to restore the old colonial order should be imprisoned or deported. It could hardly be otherwise. We certainly won’t be found “to embrace” loyalism as one of “the traditions on the island”. Talk about liberalism! This politically correct nonsense papers over important national issues and seeks an impossible “unity” such as that attempted–predictably without success–by the ANC in Azania. We will not apologize for our hardline against imperialists and class enemies.
Ruddy criticizes Monkey Smashes Heaven, the journal of the Maoist-Third Worldist movement, for having a position on Ireland. Supposedly Maoism has had little if any influence on Irish politics, but neither does the ragbag of Trotskyism, Luxembourgism, Guevarism, etc that “Republican socialism” embraces. In any case, one would expect Maoism–at its core, Marxism as applied to Third World countries under the imperialist bootheel–to have limited relevance to Ireland. After all, Maoism (in its time), and its most advanced form, Maoism-Third Worldism, are proletarian ideologies. Naturally, the impact of proletarian science will mainly be felt in countries that contain revolutionary classes, i.e. Third World countries.
We are then chastized for questioning whether Ireland is indeed an oppressed nation because the majority of its people have endorsed British rule and repression has declined. Ruddy points to figures showing serious pig repression of Irish nationalists. We never said that no one was resisting the pacification process or that the Brutish pigs were no longer vamping on Irish nationalists. The data quoted in no way gainsay our claim that “the majority” have accepted Brutish rule. That there is resistance to Brutish rule in Ireland was never in dispute. The question is how significant that resistance is. Has it a mass base? No. It’s the work of a small number of activists generally opposed by the public.
The Red Plough article asks: “Do the Maoists only want us to show solidarity with 3rd world struggles and ignore the continuing exploitation of our class and the natural resources within the island?” Did this author even read what we said? His class IS NOT exploited. Then, again, Ruddy writes: “Are we to forget the “bourgeoisified” “parasitic” workers on the picket line here in Ireland while lauding the struggling peasants in foreign fields?” The short answer: yes. Moreover, First World workers are not simply neutral in the struggle between the popular classes of the Third World and imperialism; First World workers comprise one of the most reactionary, ugly, fascistic strata that the First World has to offer. As communists, we not only write-off the class enemy, we oppose First World workers and other enemies outright.
Ruddy scolds us with the example of Wolfe Tone’s internationalism, ignoring that that in Wolfe Tone’s day, and even much more recently, exploitation was very real in Ireland. Today it is not. The internationalism that the Irish republican movement should embrace starts with recognising that Ireland has become a parasite in the global economy. This is not 1845 or 1798. Get real.
There is no contradiction in our position that the Irish have a national but not a material interest in fighting imperialism. The national struggle is essentially dead because the parasitic Irish have subordinated it to their material interests. The statistics provided by our critic on instances of persons harassed by the pigs are mainly an aspect of national, not class oppression.
Contrary to our critics, real Marxists understand class scientifically. A key in understanding class today is understanding exploitation. And, there simply is no meaningful sense in which the Irish and other First World workers are exploited. For Marx, a key aspect of the proletariat, the revolutionary class, is that it has nothing to lose but its chains. The proletariat exists in a state of misery, barely surviving, driven into the ground by the competition between capitalists. This hardly describes the Irish or other First World workers. Rather, it describes Third World workers exactly. In fact, some First World workers have more access to capital than some Third World capitalists. Under a global, socialist distribution of the world’s wealth, all Irish workers and nearly all First World peoples will get substantially poorer. First World workers, just like the First World bourgeoisie, will have to own-up for their exploitation and oppression of the world’s vast majority living on less than €1.70 per day ($ 2.50 per day day). Also, according to Marx, the proletariat has a certain relation to the means of production. Well, less and less production even goes on in the First World. More and More First World workers are employed in non-value-creating enterprises. They do not bear the relation to the means of production that Marx described. The fact is that whole economies in the First World produce very little, yet the First World, the world’s richest 20%, accounted for 76.6% of private consumption in 2005. Like the bourgeoisie, First World workers, including the Irish, are net-exploiters of the proletariat in the Third World. Such workers make far more than the value of their labor. (2) (3) (4)
It is very wrong to advance the interests of the Irish working class which is a collection of petty exploiters living off surplus value generated in the Third World. Irish people have no objective class interest in socialism, but merely in redistributing the proceeds of imperialism, that is, in social-imperialism. “Class struggle” on behalf of bourgeois Irish workers, flattered by demagogues with the term “working class”, is reactionary. So long as this point is not understood, then Republicanism in the Irish context is just a pipe-dream.
Protestant workers have absolutely no class interest in breaking with British imperialism. Nor do Catholic workers. Since most Catholics in the occupied six-counties do not bear the brunt of police repression or particularly onerous discrimination policies, they too will be less than enthusiastic about anti-imperialist socialism. This is true except in so far as “anti-imperialist socialism” means higher “wages”, leisure time and the associated decadent imperialist lifestyle. Since the latter is at present perfectly compatible with partition, Republicanism is not its most attractive vehicle.
Incidentally, the claim that real Republicans and Communists do not recognize the national bourgeoisie in Ireland as potentially revolutionary is untrue. Maoists distinguish between the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie. The founder of Irish Republicanism as such was Wolfe Tone, a Protestant businessman from Dublin. The founder of Irish Socialist Republicanism, James Connolly, was executed by the Brutish army after having fought alongside Pádraig Pearse and other non-proletarian, non-socialist Irish patriots in the Easter Rising of 1916. In both cases part of the Irish bourgeoisie stood for national liberation. But that is history. Today, the entire Irish bourgeoisie, including the “working class”, profits from imperialism and cannot, therefore, be expected to oppose it.
Like all of our critics, Ruddy makes no argument of substance. Ruddy merely tosses a bunch of dogmatic rhetoric around. Repeating First Worldist dogma over and over does not make it any more true. We doubt that our critic’s article was even meant as a serious polemic directed at us. The content and tone of the piece was not that of a serious polemic. Rather, we suspect that the polemic was directed, not toward us, but to those youth who may be beginning to realize that the Republicanism, like Communism, is dying unless it can reinvent itself in order to correspond to the real world. There are a growing number of revolutionaries who see First Worldism for the fantasy land that it is. Today, no key is going to unlock proletarian revolution in Ireland because there is no significant proletariat here. Just because Ruddy wants a First Worldist revolution does not mean he’s going to get one. The yellow-brick road is as likely to get us to national liberation and socialism as Red Plough’s road is.
Notes
1. ‘”A Bourgeoisified Reactionary Parasitic Class”?’, e-mail newsletter The Red Plough, vol. 1, no 4, Wednesday, January 20, 2009, h ttp://rsmforum.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3412 . The Starry Plough banner was originally used by the Irish Citizen Army–an armed socialist, Republican movement set up to defend striking workers in 1913 Dublin–and was flown during the 1916 Easter Rising.
2. “Real versus Fake Marxism on Socialist Distribution”, MSH, August 5, 2009, xhttp://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/real-versus-fake-marxism-on-socialist-distribution/
3. “A rough estimate of the value of labor by Serve the People of IRTR”, MSH, July 7, 2008, hxttp://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/blast-of-the-past-from-irtr-a-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor/
4. “On the Social Factory”, MSH, July 7, 2009, xhttp://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/some-tentative-thoughts-on-%E2%80%9Cthe-social-factory%E2%80%9D/
* Originally this article incorrectly associated the Red Plough journal with the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP). The polemic against our movement was published in the Red Plough journal and appeared on a Republican Socialist forum. Our apologies for any misunderstanding.
Just for the record I dont agree with Maoism-Third-Worldism...Im just putting it out there as food for thought.
Dear God in heaven is there no end to this sh1te?
The city center is not a church but still they flog the dead horse, I wonder if that horse pulled the Red Plough at one time?
Never mind I think you have got lost in your own dogma.
"A Bourgeoisified Reactionary Parasitic Class"
Is this a quote from a Gilbert and Sullivan
That actually made me laugh out loud for real....Good one...Im not exactly known for my sense of humourThe city center is not a church but still they flog the dead horse, I wonder if that horse pulled the Red Plough at one time?
.
where there are rank and file there is officers and these officers will continue to rule as long as the rank and file are kept down
Is this a script for an Irish remake of "Monty Python's Life of Brian"?
FFS....these micro groups split and multiply quicker than bacteria...
[COLOR="Red"]Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. [/COLOR]
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote