Fw: Republican Movement & GFA

George: Karl never denied that you "dont promote imperialist oppression by fighting against it". However the point he made is that the Provos did not fight against imperialist oppression. Instead they have been promoting imperialism in both disguised undisguised forms.

Philip: But it is *not true* to say this is not a defeat. Indeed a major defeat.

The point is that the opposition to British imperialism has been massively
weakened and demoralised by the republican leadership's betrayal.

George: The reverse is the case: What you call "the republican leadership's betrayal" is a result of the weakened and demoralised nature of the "Catholic" masses. However their weakened and demoralised state is principally a product of the combined role of the British state, Ulster "Unionist" forces, the SDLP and the Provos.

Philip; But because republicanism has been the form through which the resistance
was manifested, the new course of Adams and co. serves to confuse and
demoralise large numbers of activists and much of the radical section of
the nationalist population in the north.

George: The opposite has been the case: The Provos have been the form through which the popular opposition to the British state has been obstructed and undermined as manifested, in concentrated form, in the Good Friday Agreement.

Evidence of this is the degree of popularity enjoyed by the Provos as manifested in a variety of ways including the relatively strong electoral support they enjoy. The "new course of Adams and co." equally serves to confuse the Catholic masses as did the old form of their politics. If the politics of the Provos do not perform the bourgeois tasks of confusion, demoralisation and illusion then the conditions for their political existence would be absent.

Philip: Funny, then, that the imperialists didn't recognise that the armed struggle
waged by republicans was actually in the interests of imperialism! How
odd, that the imperialists murdered, tortured and imprisoned all these
republicans who were, after all, 'subverting' the resistance in the service
of imperialism. I think Karl has lost the plot a bit. . .

George: The very opposite has been the case: Imperialism has been rewarding the pro-imperialist role of the Provos in a variety of forms --the release of Provo prisoners; the promotion of Provo leaders as popular high profile media figures; a guaranteed place for them in the enforcement and administration of partition by the British state.

There is no evidence to suggest, as you put it, that "the imperialists didn't recognise that the armed struggle waged by republican was actually in the interests of imperialism". The very fact that you purport to provide as evidence of the anti-imperialist nature of the Provos the fact that "the imperialists murdered, tortured and imprisoned all these republicans" is, if anything, evidence as to how effectively these attacks on the Provos disguised the pro-imperialist character of their politics. Merely because the British and Irish bourgeoisie repressed the Provos and subjected them to attack does not necessarily mean that the latter's politics are not pro-imperialist. The deValera government cracked down on the Blueshirts yet that did not mean that the latter were not a right wing pro-imperialist political force. The Allied "imperialists murdered, tortured and imprisoned" German soldiers during the second world war and did much more (bombed Dresden) yet that did not mean that the German state was not imperialist.

Philip: The elitism is also not very accurate.

George: The Provos are elitist in the sense that they and not the masses are armed. There did not exist in any enduring way a democratically structured popular armed militia. Indeed the Provos actively prevented any such development from establishing itself. The arms, instead, were controlled from above by a private secret organisation accountable to no one but itself. In that way they were able to determine the character of any armed action from above --they were able to contain and even prevent the development of a popular armed struggle. This suited the interests of the British and Irish bourgeoisie --which leads directly to the arms crisis and Charles Haughey.

Philip: It is true in the sense that the actions of the republicans on the military
level tended to leave the masses on the sideline. But it is false in the
sense that the IRA was comprised of the most oppressed people in Ireland.
It wasn't some petty-bourgeois conspiracy a la the red brigades or Bader
Meinhof. Young working class people flocked into the IRA in droves in the
north in the early 1970s in order to defend their communities. The
republicans emerged as the dominant political force in the nationalist
ghettos because they were the ones who did the putting up when it was
required.

George: Young working class people joined the Irish and British armies too. So what? Young oppressed people, some would say lumpen elements, joined fascists parties too. Indeed much of the young working class people that have joined the Provos were very often lumpen in character or what some would call an under-class. Marx and Engels would hardly describe the lumpenproletariat as working class. It is this element that tends to gravitate towards fascist organisations. The political character of an organisation is not necessarily determined by the composition of its membership. It is the politics of the organisation that essentially determines its class character --whether it is revolutionary communist, petty bourgeois or bourgeois.

You misunderstand the use of the term petty bourgeois. The Provos are petty bourgeois not because they exclusively consist of, say, shopkeepers. They are petty bourgeois because of the character of their politics. They are petty bourgeois because their politics is premised upon the utopian assumption that the conditions exist for the establishment of an independent native Irish bourgeois republic. As you yourself intimated even the southern bourgeoisie dont share this illusion. They know that they cannot exist independently of imperialism. They are aware of their weakness as a class and of their inability to seriously challenge the imperialist bourgeoisie. But petty bourgeois politics conceive the world in a more utopian context --a shopkeeper's mentality. They are under the illusion that native Irish capitalism can establish itself on an independent basis and thereby create an independent bourgeois republic --they mistakenly believe that the Irish bourgeoisie can successfully challenge the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Baked into this is the mistaken view that under the conditions of the existence of an indigenous independent capitalist economy housed --if you like-- in a thirty two county republic, small petty capital can thrive and transform itself into bigger and more independent forms of capital --the petty bourgeoisie have a tendency to seek to develop themselves, even if often only in imagination, into independent capitalists.

Philip: When I was in Sinn Fein it used to amuse me to see various left groups call
SF 'petty bourgeois'. SF was by far the most working class organisation on
the 'left' in Ireland. The groups who came out with this stuff, on the
other hand, were usually overwhelmingly petty-bourgeois. The ones who most
strongly attacked 'petty bourgeois' republicans were always the most petty
bourgeois of all.

George: As I have already indicated the composition of the membership of Sinn Fein/IRA does not necessarily define its political character. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were middle class as was much of the leadership of the Bolshevik party.

Philip: The republicans fought a heroic anti-imperialist struggle. They didn't
have the politics to carry it through and, as a result, the leadership
began retreating, as republican leaderships had before, rapidly ending up,
as Adams and Co. now have, as - in political terms - bourgeois or
mainstream nationalists.

George: You hoist yourself with your own petard here: You say the republicans "didn't have the politics to carry it through". If they did not have the politics to carry through their putative "anti-imperialist struggle" then it was their politics that led them to the present position of open collaboration with the imperialist bourgeoisie. This is just what Karl and I have been arguing. Furthermore if the politics of the Provos was such as to prevent them from carrying through this struggle and led to their present more openly collaborationist position then clearly their politics were not anti-imperialist. If their politics were not anti-imperialist then it was impossible for them to be engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle. Accordingly if their "struggle" is not anti-imperialist then it must be pro-imperialist.

George: This is because its politics are petty bourgeois and thereby subject to zigagging.

Philip: The republican leadership was unable to make the break with nationalism and
transform itself into a revolutionary socialist movement. In a period of
defeat and demoralisation, it slid back, right back into plain Irish
nationalism, which has always accommodated itself to British rule in
particular and capitalism in general.

George: Your position is choke full with contradiction: If, as you say above, the Provos are nationalists then how can they have "slid back, right back into plain Irish nationalism". Either the Provos are nationalists or they are not. You, on the other hand, want to have it both ways. In the above remarks you also claim that nationalism has "always accomodated itself to British rule in particular and capitalism in general." Capitalism in general logically includes imperialism which must mean that nationalism, by your own admission, is pro-bourgeois. This is just what Karl has argued in his piece on the IRA. The Provos, as nationalists, are pro-imperialist.

Philip: Karl seems to share the view of SF on this one. Like Karl, the SF leaders
think the 'national bourgeoisie' in the 26 counties really want a united
Ireland. They want no such thing, and have done everything possible for
the past 77 years to prevent a national state being formed.

George: The above is a total misrepresentation of what Karl wrote.

Philip: The mass media have also overwhelmingly *opposed* an all-Ireland state.
The mass media in the south has been virulently hostile to republicanism
and often little more than a propaganda outlet for 26-county statism and
British imperialism.

George: Blatantly false! Adams, McGuinness et al have been regularly and frequently featured on world television and radio, in the big bourgeois newspapers and on the internet. Adams has been able to write relatively large articles in the Irish Times and, I'd say, other papers. They have received relatively massive coverage by the mass media.

Philip: The substance has changed dramatically. Karl vastly underestimates the
significance of what is going on in ireland in general and among
republicans in particular. A movement which fought imperialism to a
standstill for a quarter century is no more. That is *significant*.

George: The Provos never "fought imperialism to a standstill". Indeed the basis of the Good Friday Agreement is the product of the very opposite development: The inability of the Provos to fight imperialism and especially fight it "to a standstill" promoted the conditions for the existence of the Good Friday Agreement.

Philip: The problem was that, in the epoch of imperialism, revolutionary
nationalism itself is unstable: it can take struggles for national
liberation to a certain point but no further. Unfortunately, the lack of
any revolutionary centre globally and the lack of any Marxist vanguard in
Ireland, meant that the best elements of revolutionary nationalism had
nowhere to go when that point was reached. So the weaknesses of
revolutionary nationalism became stronger and stronger, and the retreat
turned into a full flight from all that was best in republicanism.

George: What you call revolutionary nationalism I call nationalism of a more radical variety --more radical than the "Buy Irish" kind of nationalism. In the above piece, in a sense, you get to the heart of the Provos petty bourgeois politics--notwithstanding your dressing it up in fancy rhetoric.

Yes! There is, as the above remarks of yours might suggest, an inherent limiting character to the politics of the Provos. It is this inherent limitation that means they are incapable of actively participating in the class struggle of the Irish people for national self-determination --a communitarian workers' republic.

Fw: Republican Movement & GFA

by George Pennefather

01 August 1999 11:15 UTC