Emancipation & Liberation

A contribution to the debate at The Global Commune event of 22nd May, 2010, in Edinburgh

1. Three Left approaches to building a new world order

The Republican Communist Network (RCN) has mainly applied an ‘internationalism from below’ approach as a way to unite communists, socialists and revolutionary democrats throughout these islands around an immediate programme (1). This stems from our political opposition to the UK state, which acts as a junior partner to US imperialism and as a ‘licensed’ enforcer for corporate capitalist interests in the North East Atlantic, aided and abetted by its own junior partner, the ‘26 Counties’ Irish state. (Of course, there are many other reasons why we oppose this and other capitalist states) In this context, we have argued for an ‘internationalism form below’ approach to counter two other approaches offered by the Left – the Left unionism of the British Left, and the Left nationalism mainly found in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

The purpose of this contribution, however, is to show that ‘internationalism from below’ flows from a global and specifically communist understanding of the best way to advance the struggle for ‘another possible world’ – a viable alternative to capitalism. We could call this ‘world communism’ or ‘the global commune’ – a less politically loaded term, given that the majority of people in the world equate communism with bureaucratic one-party states, such as the old USSR and China.

In making the communist case for ‘internationalism from below’ on a global scale, we have to recognise that there are another two major approaches to the National Question found on the Left. Some look to a future world with a classless confederation of nations, regions or communities; whilst others look to a future classless, single, planned global order but, in the meantime, largely accept the territorial frameworks already bequeathed by capitalism (with exceptions permitted, by some, for countries where there is significant political repression).

What is interesting, though, is that the division between these two approaches is not one between old-style Social Democrats/Communists on one side and Anarchists on the other. Social Democrats/Communists and Anarchists are themselves divided in giving their support to these approaches, each having advocates in both camps.

2. The confederalist approach

In one camp can be found most official, and some dissident Communists, along with some Anarchists. They share an opposition to a future single planned world system. Instead, they advocate a world of nation-states, or smaller non-state communities, hopefully living in harmony.  We could call their approach confederalist.

Supporters of the world of nation-states approach amongst the old official Communists, openly declared their support for ‘socialism in one country’. Their ultimate vision was still global, looking forward eventually to a worldwide confederation of independent socialist nation-states.  Certain federations, providing a greater degree of political and economic unity, might be supported, but the historical experience of the federal USSR and Yugoslavia, shows that these came to be dominated by their largest constituent republic – Russia and Serbia respectively.  However, some old official Communists might have still entertained the idea of an eventual world federation without dominant nation-states, where certain functions were performed by an overall federal state.

Some other socialists have adopted a nuanced version of the federal solution by advocating various regional socialist federations, e.g. the Trotskyist CWI. Despite coming from a tradition opposed to the old official Communism (which they style Stalinism), their future ideal world system remains somewhat nebulous, perhaps federal, perhaps after a long period, eventually unitary.

Hostility to a future integrated planned world order can also be found amongst some Anarchists. Works such as Schumacher’s book, Small is Beautiful, have influenced their thinking. These Anarchists emphasise the need for small-scale local communities, with an economy based on local renewable resources, but with some economic exchange between otherwise autonomous communities. Unlike, the official and dissident communists though, there would be no intermediate democratic or socialist states, just the slow expansion of non-state communities or communes. There are no doubt also differences amongst such Anarchists adhering to such an approach, especially over the organisational methods to be used to bring about greater territorial cooperation. But whether local, regional, national or worldwide organisation is envisaged, Anarchists tend to see confederal relations as the best way to bring about greater cooperation.

3. The cosmopolitan approach

Another camp holds up its own ideal for a future world order, which would be united territorially and have global planning.  This approach could be termed cosmopolitan. It can claim the support of the early Marx and Engels, especially in the lead-up to the 1847-9 International Revolutionary Wave. Michael Lowy has shown this in his chapter Cosmopolites in Fatherland or Mother Earth. It was only later, as will be shown, that Marx and Engels moved to a more ‘internationalism from below’ approach, and a possible multi-linear path towards the formation of a new world order.

The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, shows Marx and Engels then believed that as capital brought more and more of the world under its sway, it eliminated the outdated classes associated with the past – the aristocracy, peasants and artisans – leaving only capital and labour, or the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in contention.

Furthermore, the Communist Manifesto also argued that capitalism was already doing away with the material basis for separate nations. “National differences and antagonisms are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity of the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto” (2). “The nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free {wage} slavery, self-huckstering {selling oneself}.  His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital.  His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air” (3).

Marx and Engels did acknowledge the existence of ‘historic nations’, as opposed to what they termed ‘unhistoric peoples’. However, they thought that these too would soon give way in the new cosmopolitan world order being prepared by the capitalist advances the ‘historic nations’ were busy promoting. “After industry in England, politics in France, philosophy in Germany have been developed, they have been developed for the world, and their world-historic significance, as also that of these nations, has thereby come to an end” (4). Furthermore, whatever other differences the Anarchist, Proudhon had with Marx and Engels, they still shared a cosmopolitan approach to revolution.

Today, a cosmopolitan approach, partly based on Marx and Engels’ earlier writings, is to be found amongst Luxemburgists, some dissident Trotskyists, the SPGB, and the Autonomists – most obviously Negri and Hardt in their book, Empire. Cosmopolitan thinking, drawing on a number of sources, can also be found amongst some Anarchists. David Broder’s review, The Earth is not flat (5), of the Anarchist Federation’s Against Nationalism, highlights such thinking in this regard.

Whatever differences still remain (and this isn’t to underestimate their importance), these Marxists and Anarchists share a belief that capitalism has already largely created a world of two classes, in which other classes either have no future, or have, at best, limited walk-on parts in the struggle for a better world.

Of course, most cosmopolitans do acknowledge the existence of continued divisions, including amongst the working class – e.g. sexual, ethno-religious and national. However, they claim these come about largely through false consciousness, as a result of ideologies actively promoted on behalf of the capitalist class, e.g. by the state machine, male chauvinists and feminists, competing nationalists and religious leaders, or by socialists who fail to adhere to their cosmopolitan approach.

Cosmopolitans tend to believe that such false consciousness and ideologies can be effectively countered by means of persistent propaganda and a shared involvement of workers in economic struggles. This will bring about a true class consciousness, which sees all struggles of the exploited and oppressed in terms of capital versus labour.  Many such cosmopolitans will acknowledge that this ideological battle is a labour of Sisyphus, but say that communists and workers should not be deflected into struggles over ‘secondary’ oppressions, since the Revolution will bring these to an end.

4. Historical antecedents of confederalism and cosmopolitanism

It is worth going deeper into the roots of these approaches and see how another approach, ‘internationalism from below’, has attempted to break free from the limitations of those who advocate confederalism (which either ends up tailing nationalism, or contents itself with purely localist initiatives) and those who advocate cosmopolitanism (which downplays, or even opposes, current democratic struggles against oppression and tends to fall back on propagandism, when economic struggles fail to lead to the hoped for class consciousness).

If we look to those broadly upholding a more con/federalist approach, we can see their antecedents in the American revolutionary, Benjamin Franklin, who believed that the original states, constituting the USA, were just the first in a new federal republican world order, which would be brought about by Enlightened leaders. Revolutionary democratic Jacobins believed that their new French republic was the first building block in a new European federation of republican nation-states. The Italian revolutionary democrat, Mazzini, and his supporters in Young Europe, envisaged something similar, only with the ‘historic’ European nation-states taking joint responsibility for building a new worldwide republican federation.

Mazzini also argued that his proposed republican federation would be based on “principles of national freedom and progress… in favour of the right of every people to self-government and the maintenance of their own nationality” (6).  Mazzini, though, supported the idea of ‘historical nations’ or, as he called them ‘nations with a mission’, so there was still scope for argument as to who constituted a ‘people’ or nation. The Anarchist, Bakunin, however, clearly declared that, “I demand only one thing: that to each people, to each large or small tribe or race should be accorded the right to act according to its wishes” (7).

5. The beginnings of an ‘internationalism from below’ approach

In contrast, an early example of an ‘internationalism from below’ approach can be seen amongst the Fraternal Democrats, who were part of the Chartist Left. In 1847, the English Chartist, Julian Harney, protested against joint British, French and Spanish suppression of a revolt in Portugal.  “A blow against freedom on the Tagus is a blow against all friends of freedom on the Thames” (8).  Marx, a cosmopolitan at that time, would likely have seen the Portuguese people as historically redundant and destined to be absorbed into a larger ‘historic’ Spanish/Iberian nation.  It was Harney and the London-based Society of Fraternal Democrats who endeavoured to place Mazzini’s ‘internationalism from below’ on a proletarian footing, “giving life to a new Young Europe” (9).

It took Marx and Engels a considerable time before they arrived at an ‘internationalism from below’ approach. After the defeat of the 1847-9 International Revolutionary Wave, Marx and Engels had to back-pedal from their previous belief in the immediate prospect of a cosmopolitan ‘revolution in permanence’. ‘Historic nations’ were now given a more extended lifetime to perform their ‘historic duty’ of preparing the capitalist grounding for a future communist world order.

In the meantime, tactical support could also be given to those stateless ‘historical nations’ – Poland and Hungary – in the front line of the battle against that lynchpin of Reaction – Tsarist Russia and its Habsburg Austrian ally. Elsewhere, they argued that, whether in Ireland, Mexico, Algeria, India, China and Turkestan, the ‘historic nations’ of ‘England/Britain’, the USA, France, and even Russia when facing East, still had their ‘progressive’ role to perform in eliminating antiquated pre-capitalist societies, including bringing about the end of ‘historyless peoples’.

Events in India (the Indian Mutiny of 1857) and China (The Second Opium War of 1856-60) led to the first modifications in Marx and Engels’ earlier perspectives. They now switched their support to those fighting for political independence. New struggles in Poland and Ireland, reflected in the debates of the First International, pushed Marx and Engels towards a more definite ‘internationalism from below’ approach.

6. The distinction between nations and nationalities; and chauvinist superiority disguised as cosmopolitanism

When the debate over Poland came up in the First International, Proudhon-influenced Anarchists accused Engels of, in effect, abandoning their previously shared cosmopolitan principles, when he argued for solidarity with the Polish struggle. He was criticised for giving his support to the ‘nationalities principle’. He replied in the following manner. “Poland, like most other European countries, is inhabited by people of different nationalities” (10).  He identified four nationalities within the Polish nation – the Poles, Lithuanians, White Russians and Ukrainians. The Poles (meaning all the inhabitants of Poland) were a multi-ethnic nation not a nationality.

Thus Engels made a distinction between nations, which were territorial and tended to incorporate several peoples or nationalities; and nationalities, which were, in effect, ethnic (sometimes ethno-religious) groups. Ethnic groups could often be found widely dispersed and living mixed amongst others, particularly in cities. Marx and Engels would have been unhappy to concede an exclusive territorial state to “each small tribe or race”, as envisaged by Bakunin.  Their focus was upon nations.

This distinction between nations and nationalities was a clear step forward. Furthermore, Marx and Engels no longer limited their reason for supporting the Polish national democratic struggle to tactical considerations in relation to Tsarist Russia. This is why they didn’t oppose the Mazzini/Harney-type principle adopted by the First International. It declared for ‘the right of every people to dispose of itself’ (11) (an earlier version of the 1896 Second International congress policy of support for ‘the right of national self-determination’). As in Mazzini’s earlier case, there was still ambiguity and argument over who constituted a ‘people’ – although, clearly for Marx and Engels, it was nations not nationalities, which enjoyed this territorial right.

Indeed, Marx soon found himself up against Proudhon-influenced Anarchists in the First International. When “the question of ‘nationality’ in general and the attitude we should take towards it”, was brought up, “… the representatives of Young France (non-workers) came out with the argument that all nationalities and even nations were ‘antiquated prejudices’…  The English laughed very much when I began my speech by saying that our friend Lafargue…  who had done away with nationalities, had spoken ‘French’ to us, i.e. a language which nine-tenths of the audience did not understand.  I also suggested that by the negation of nationalities he appeared, quite unconsciously, to understand their absorption into the model French nation” (12).

As Marx and Engels moved away from the cosmopolitan camp, which they originally shared with Proudhon, they did not move over into the confederalist communist camp. Certainly, Marx and Engels did envisage a developing world of multi-nationality nation-states, not nationality or ethnic states. They also sometimes advocated confederal or federal state arrangements. However, these state forms were only meant to be a transitional democratic phase in the development from capitalism to the lower phase of communism. In the upper phase of communism, however, such transitional political forms of state would be transcended as existing nation-states, confederations and federations themselves disappeared as part of ‘the withering way of the state’.

7. ‘Internationalism from below’ and secularism compared to cosmopolitanism and state-atheism, and to state-promoted multi-ethnicity and religious toleration.

A useful parallel for understanding Marx and Engels’ approach to the ending of nation-states and nationalism can be seen in their attitude to religions. They supported secular states. Within these, adherents of particular religions would enjoy the right to practice their religion, but no privileges were to be conceded to any religion by the state.

As a consequence of arguing for secularism, Marx and Engels were opposed to two other methods of dealing with religion. They opposed campaigns for atheist states on one hand, and states with established or recognised religions on the other (whatever degree of religious ‘toleration’ these states might also permit).

Official atheist states, such as the former USSR, Albania and China, have led to a growth of religious support amongst the oppressed and alienated, which has consequently acted as a focus for political opposition. Furthermore, such states have sometimes adopted their own personality cults as a substitute for religious beliefs, e.g. around Stalin, Hoxha or Mao.

Marx and Engels opposed the formation of nationality (ethnic) states, the equivalent of earlier pre-capitalist states with established religions (although some capitalist states, including the UK in England still maintain a Church establishment). The reactionary racist nature of nationality-states can be seen in the old pre-1972 ‘Six Counties’, in former apartheid South Africa, and in current apartheid Israel, which have favoured Protestant Ulster-British, Whites and Jews respectively.

However many today, including some on the Left, look little further in their minimum programmes or policies than offering support for the nation-state equivalent of religiously ‘tolerant’ states – only with ‘toleration’ extended to a number of ethnic groups instead. This can be found in constitutionally recognised and ethnically shared administrations, e.g. the post-Good Friday Agreement ‘Six Counties’. Another variation of this ‘tolerant’ approach can be found in state promoted multi-ethnic measures, e.g. those developed in the UK after the Brixton Riots of 1981. These tend to lead to the creation of privileged and unaccountable, state-recognised ‘representatives’ of ethno-religious ‘communities’.  Such approaches leave the state in position of broker, able to play one community off against the other, and when necessary, divide the working class and oppressed.

In contrast, communists should recognise the right of any members of a particular ethnic group to voluntarily pursue their own chosen cultural activities, whilst seeking to maximise the opportunities for wider mixing with others at work, school, college or in the community. We should oppose policies that lead to physical separation of ethnic groups, and instead support integration, voluntary assimilation and mixed relationships within nations. Such an approach could be called ‘multi-culturalism from below’.

‘Internationalism from below’ is the wider political manifestation of such an approach, helping to bring about greater unity between nations, without any one group having to subordinate itself to another – particularly to those from culturally dominant ethnic groups.

8. Engels opposes an early British Left upholder of the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle

It was the growing struggle in Ireland, which pushed Marx and Engels further towards ‘internationalism from below’ as an organisational principle in the First International.  Here Engels came up against, not Proudhonist Anarchists, but an early trade unionist adherent of a ‘British road to socialism’ – John Hales. When Engels argued for Irish independence and a distinct Irish section, Hales contended, “that the International had nothing to do with liberating Ireland” (13). He tried to bring the Irish sections of the International under the control of the London/British Federal Council.  In reply Engels stated that: -

“The position of Ireland with regard to England was not that of an equal, but that of Poland with regard to Russia… What would be said if the Council called upon Polish sections to acknowledge the supremacy of a Council sitting in Petersburg, or upon Prussian Polish, North Schleswig {Danish} and Alsatian sections to submit to a Federal Council in Berlin… that was not Internationalism, but simply preaching to them submission to the yoke… and attempting to justify and perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism.  It was sanctioning the belief, only too common amongst English {British} working men, that they were superior beings compared to the Irish, and as much an aristocracy as the mean whites of the Slave States considered themselves to be with regard to the Negroes.”

“In a case like the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinctly national organization: the Irish, as well as other oppressed nationalities, could enter the Association {the IWMA} only as equals with members of the conquering nation, and under protest at the conquest” (14).

There was a further reason for Marx and Engels wanting to maintain independent Irish organisations.  “They were more advanced, being placed in more favourable circumstances, and the movement in Ireland could be propagated and organised only though their instrumentality” (15).

Hales countered that,  “The formation of Irish branches in England could only keep alive that national antagonism which had unfortunately so long existed between the people of the two countries” (16).  He was arguing from a position, which maintained that, as far as advanced socialists were concerned, workers of all nationalities had already achieved equality in their British organisations.  Hales thought that English/British socialism was the model that the Irish should aspire to. Such an attitude is today deeply engrained amongst the British Left.

Engels, in contrast, appreciated the different position of Irish migrant workers and their descendants, who formed a significant part of the unskilled working class in Britain. Engels’ political stance was linked to attempts to maintain the unity of the politically advanced sections of the working class, and win the support of the unskilled, particularly Irish migrant workers.

In other words, where minority nationalities suffered from oppression within a dominant nation, they too had the right to form their own independent organisations there.  This has continuing relevance today, particularly for recent migrants, who still remain subject to various forms of discrimination within the imperialist countries. One current example stands out in relation to activities of the commune – the Latin American Workers’ Association.

9. ‘One-state/one-party’ – a cover for social chauvinism; separatist parties a cover for social patriotism

Marx and Engels’ ‘internationalism from below’ organisational principles, of course, fly in the face of later Second International, Luxemburgist and Bolshevik orthodoxy – the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle.  Kautsky (the Second International’s ‘Pope of Marxism’), Luxemburg and Lenin were assiduous collectors of Marx and Engels’ quotes since they wished above all else to appear ultra-orthodox in debates with other Marxists.  Yet, they studiously ignored Marx and Engels’ writings and practice on this matter.

Marx and Engels legacy of ‘internationalism from below’ as an organisational principle was to be lost in both the Second and Third Internationals.  Instead these organisations’ support for the principle of ‘one-state/one-party’ led to real political degeneracy.  In the hands of many Second Internationalists it became a thinly disguised cover for dominant nationality chauvinism and imperialism.  Later, Stalinists, Maoists and some Trotskyists even ended up duplicating the fascist principle – ‘one state, one party, one leader’!

Supporters of the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle have pointed to the social patriotism, which undoubtedly did emerge whenever some parties, drawing their support from workers amongst the oppressed nationalities (e.g. the Polish Socialist Party), departed from this organisational principle. What supporters of the ‘one-state/one-party’ approach fail to appreciate is that much of the openly displayed social patriotism found in some of the parties rebelling against this principle was a response to the thinly disguised social chauvinism (and sometimes social imperialism) found in dominant nationality parties, e.g., the SPD, RSDLP and SDF.

Thus the social chauvinism encapsulated in ‘one-state/one-party’ organisations and the social patriotism involved in separatist parties are not really opposites, but mutually reinforcing dead-end forms of organisation. What is needed is an International, or, until that is achieved, more limited federations based on the principle of ‘internationalism from below’.

Supporters of ‘internationalism from below’ are just as opposed to separatism, and as just as keen to unite with others. However, we realise that the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle goes hand in hand with accepting subordination to social chauvinism.  Indeed, as the majority of the British unionist Left has shown – from the Labour Party, old (and new) CPGB, the SWP, CWI to the AWL – their hard-wired sectarianism seem to mimic the anti-democratic, bureaucratic practices of the UK state. Therefore, coming together on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’ is a much better way of bringing about meaningful unity.

10. The contradictions of the Second International, Luxemburg and Lenin in their pursuit of the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle

The majority in both the Second and Third Internationals claimed that the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle was the best way to confront existing states by uniting the members of the various nations and nationalities forming the working class within a particular state.

Those who adopted this principle in the Second International usually ended up as apologists for the actions of the leaders of the dominant nationality in, or as subservient agents of, the states they sought to reform – the collapse of the social imperialist Social Democratic leadership of the Second International, in the face of the First World War, being the most obvious example.

However, some who still fought strenuously against the Second International’s capitulation to imperialism, such as Luxemburg, also helped to undermine ‘internationalism from below’, through their relentless pursuit of the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle. Luxemburg allied herself with the Right in the SPD to break the influence of the party’s ‘autonomous’ Polish section, thus aiding a thinly disguised German chauvinism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks also doggedly pursued a ‘one-state/one-party’ principle, claiming it created the centralised political instrument needed for the overthrow of existing states.

In relation to the National Question, there was a political difference between Luxemburg and Lenin. Luxemburg, particularly after 1905-6 Revolution, vehemently opposed the Second International’s policy of ‘the right of nations to self-determination’, whilst Lenin insisted that Social Democrats (and later official Communists) should give this policy their support in party programmes. Before the 1905-6 Revolution, Lenin held to a more ‘Luxemburgist’ approach over this issue.

However, the apparent difference between Luxemburg and Lenin, after 1905, hides an underlying shared assumption. Both agreed with Kautsky that capitalism was continually undermining the basis for the continued relevance of the National Question.  The more ‘advanced’ the capitalism, the less relevant the issue of national self-determination. They fell back on the sort of arguments Marx had utilised in his cosmopolitan phase, especially in The Communist Manifesto.

Thus, Lenin initially argued that the National Question no longer had any relevance in the advanced capitalist West, but only in Central and Eastern Europe (particularly Tsarist Russia and Hapsburg Austria-Hungary), and the Balkans and Asia, where feudal and other despotic relics had not yet been eliminated. Luxemburg disagreed with Lenin over the significance of the National Question in Central and Eastern Europe, but agreed with him about its irrelevance in the West and its importance in the Balkans and Asia.  She supported the struggles of the Greeks (in Crete) and the Armenians against the Ottoman Empire.  It was only in the First World War, that Bukharin and others in the Radical Left arrived at a neo-Luxemburgist position, which opposed the struggle for national self-determination everywhere.

However, like Luxemburg, Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not want to see the territorial break-up of existing states, even in Central and Eastern Europe.  They thought that that any wish by workers (and peasants) to exercise a ‘right of national self-determination’ would no longer be necessary when outdated, anti-democratic dynastic rule was overthrown. So, in the meantime, workers (and others) should concentrate their efforts on fighting for all-state wide revolution.  In practice this led to an abstentionist attitude towards participation in the actual national democratic struggles that did emerge.

This could clearly be seen in Lenin’s pre-First World War attitude to the exercise of national self-determination in Poland, where there was a longstanding national movement. Lenin agreed with Luxemburg that Social Democrats in Poland should oppose such a course, whilst disagreeing with her opposition to the RSDLP in Russia adopting the right of Poland to national self-determination. Nevertheless, Lenin still hoped that such a right would never be exercised. If there were to be any future referendum, Poles should vote ‘No’ and Russians should vote ‘Yes’. Such ‘zero-sum internationalism’ provided no basis for socialists/communists taking the lead in the actual national democratic struggles, which developed against the Tsarist and Hapsburg Empires. The effect was to leave the leadership of national democratic struggles to others, either bourgeois nationalists or social patriots, with dire consequences.

The majority of the Polish Left’s failure to champion the exercise of national self-determination left the issue in the hands of the social patriot, Pilsudski and the bourgeois nationalist, Damowski. Neither of these characters wanted to break external imperial control by Russia, Austria or Prussia-Germany through the mass action of workers and peasants. Instead they mainly looked for alternative imperial backers for Poland’s independence. Soon after state independence was achieved, with imperial backing, particularly from France, the infant Polish Communists mounted a challenge to the new state. However, having played little part in the previous national democratic struggle against imperial rule, they were soon isolated, repressed and marginalised.

In contrast, the Finnish Social Democrats made a more serious attempt to exercise Finnish self-determination. They became involved in a revolutionary war in late 1917 to early 1918. They faced the utterly brutal White Counter-revolution of the Finnish Right and the invading German forces. This was much worse than anything experienced by the Polish Left at the time.  Nevertheless, by the early 1920’s the Finnish Left was able to make a stronger recovery than the Polish Left. This was largely because of their recognised role in attempting to break away from the Russian imperialist state.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks failed to adopt an ‘internationalism from below’ approach, which actively championed the break-up of the Russian imperialist state.  He preferred to hide behind a promise to uphold the right of self-determination, but only to be exercised after a successfully completed workers’ and peasant revolution. This led to lost opportunities in Finland in July 1917, and in Ukraine in December 1917.  Perhaps, not surprisingly, no referenda on national self-determination were ever held, once the Bolsheviks had consolidated their control.

When the USSR was first constituted in 1922, there was no national designation in the state’s name, since the new government claimed that its initial few constituent soviet republics were merely the first building blocks in a future worldwide soviet federation. They also claimed that this new federation would eventually give way to a united, planned, world communist order, without nation-states, just as Marx and Engels had originally envisaged.

However, Marx and Engels, as adherents of an ‘internationalism from below’ approach, would not have been surprised to see the unfolding of a very different outcome. The ‘one-state/one party’ soon gave way to the one-party State. The glue for this new USSR was provided, not by the soviets (or communes) under workers’ control. They had already been crushed in 1921. Nor was the infant USSR under the direction of the Third International.

Instead, the ‘one-state/one-party’ CPSU, which controlled the USSR, increasingly acted as a threadbare cover for the specifically Russian nationalism, which lay not far beneath an official superficial ‘internationalism’.  The Chinese Communist Party under Mao, arguing from the same organisational principle, developed an even stronger nationalist character. Thus, it can be seen that parties based on the ‘one-state/one-party’ principle readily became transmission belts for the dominant nationality chauvinism and imperialism.

11. Marx and Engels abandon their unilinear model of progress

So, what would an ‘internationalism from below’ approach look like in today’s conditions? The case for a single unified world system – a global commune – is much stronger today than in the days of Marx and Engels, or even of Luxemburg and Lenin. However, this need doesn’t stem from any belief that capitalism has already performed a necessary progressive service for humankind in developing the productive forces to their present level. There never was a fore-ordained, progressive, capitalist course of necessary world development. Peasants, artisans, workers have always fought for ‘other possible worlds’ and the development of capitalism was contested at every stage, by people seeking other outcomes – not only by those looking back to some ‘lost golden era’, but also by those who struggled for a universal republic or for social republics.

Marx and Engels, themselves, departed from their earlier view of a necessary unilinear path of capitalist progress, when they first made a distinction between two paths of capitalist transition in Volume 3 of Capital “The transition from the feudal mode of production is twofold.  The producer becomes the merchant and capitalist, in contrast to the natural agricultural economy and the guild bound handicrafts of the medieval urban industries.  This is the really revolutionizing path.  Or else, the merchant establishes direct sway over production.  However much this serves historically as a stepping stone… it can not by itself contribute to the overthrow of the old mode of production, but rather tends to preserve and retain it as its precondition” (17).

This new understanding paved the way for Marx and Engels’ later dropping of their earlier support for ‘free trade’. They had originally argued in support of ‘free trade’ because it helped to create a worldwide market, and promote the capitalist socio-economic relations they saw as the necessary grounding for a future communist society. However, they later appreciated that British-promoted ‘free trade’ tended to reduce all other states to primary producing economic dependencies of ‘the workshop of the world’ (in an analogous fashion to the effect of US promoted ‘free markets’ today).  This insight also allowed them to see the regressive effects of externally imposed capitalism, i.e. imperialism, particularly in Ireland and India.

Indeed, they went further, and thought that it might be possible for some countries, which hadn’t yet fully committed themselves to the capitalist path, e.g. Russia (until 1894 in Engels’ case), and then the wider East, to be able to build upon the communal forms of agricultural production still existing, in cooperation with a socialist West.  In 1892, Engels even turned to Germany, now well and truly committed to the industrial capitalist path.  He called for “reviving the mark, not in its old outdated form, but in a rejuvenated form; by rejuvenating communal land ownership under which the latter would not only provide the small-peasant commune with all the prerogatives of big farming and the use of agricultural machinery, but it would also give them the means to organise, along with agriculture, major industries using steam and water power, and to organise them without capitalists by the community itself” (18).

12. ‘Internationalism from below’ in today’s conditions

Today, we have witnessed growing resistance to capitalist imposed modernisation, particularly amongst the indigenous Native Americans. It was the revolt of the Zapatistas in 1994, against the new North American Free Trade Agreement, which heralded the beginnings of today’s wider anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist movements. As it becomes even clearer that continued capitalist expansion threatens us with wholesale environmental degradation and the undermining of the very conditions for human survival, communists should see the real significance of such resistance. Also included in our vision, should be the present-day ‘Maroons’, those drop-outs from wage slavery.

This isn’t to argue for a return to some lost pre-capitalist utopia, in the manner of Zerzan and others. We live in a world largely moulded by capitalism, particularly under today’s conditions of corporate imperialism.  As well as the already mentioned environmental degradation, we also suffer from intensified exploitation and oppression (with short-term contract work, increasingly meaningless and boring labour punctuated by periods of unemployment and short-time working, declining real wages, and a rapidly diminishing social wage), and from wholesale alienation bringing about escalating mental health problems and anti-social crimes.

Yet, despite the capitalist imposed conditions of current production, (including the relentless and ultimately self-destructive drive for profit) most people in the world would want to continue with and improve upon the existing infrastructure of water supply, housing, power provision, transport connections, the wide range of essential products and cultural activities, bequeathed by capitalism, which all now depend on continued international linkages for their provision. Certainly, in many cases there is scope for major reform of this pattern of development, with huge cutbacks in the arms industry, the provision of free public transport and the downgrading of private transport, the lowering of dependence on fossil fuels, and the ending of the media and advertising industry’s promotion of a ‘shop till you drop’ philosophy with its monumentally wasteful production of superfluous commodities.

However, workers, peasants and artisans have created all the existing wealth, not already provided by nature.  We can either turn our backs on this legacy, and ‘retreat into the jungles’, or we can finally claim this wealth on behalf of the descendants of all these exploited people. And, just think of all the as yet unutilised opportunities provided by the new information technology. This would appear to be as a ‘natural’ a technology for a global commune, as steam power was for the national capitalism of the Industrial Revolution.

Such a global society would also have room for those peoples who, quite understandably, have no wish to be brought under corporate capitalism control, such as the Zapatistas.  The speed with which such resistance movements have adopted technologies such as the Internet demonstrates that they too would wish to be part of a new world order, only they would wish to enter it on their own terms, not those imposed by others. The same goes for many current ‘Maroons’ or drop-outs from wage slavery.

An ‘internationalism from below’ strategy is committed to the creation of a new unified and planned global commune. Dealing with the growing environmental degradation, and possible major catastrophes, demands nothing less. The only ‘alternative’ to global planning in such circumstances would appear to be a retreat to more local communities or regional federations with an accompanying neo-Malthusian population cull. This might lead to a world of less resource-demanding, smaller scale communities, but the resulting social disorientation would most likely produce ‘dog-eat-dog’ violent confrontations between the competing communities and mini-states.

By 2050, the world will already have probably reached ‘Peak Population’, but of course, if we remain subject to the ceaseless expansion of capitalist production for profit, this would still add to cumulative environmental degradation. It could still very likely lead the world to a catastrophic environmental tipping point.

One positive outcome which could lead to reaching ‘Peak Population’ before then, would be a massive expansion of women’s rights, especially with more effective control over their bodies, and an ending to male supremacism, currently reinforced by misogynistic religious beliefs. Today’s women’s struggles for more effective control over their lives may presently only constitute a partial fightback against the impact of capitalist oppression, but should be wholeheartedly supported by communists seeking support for a new humanised global commune.

13. Resistance in the here and now

An ‘internationalism from below’ strategy recognises that the exploited and oppressed are mainly brought into struggle by the immediate conditions we confront. Communists fight for increased wages, not because we want to bolster our conditions as wage slaves, but because we want an improvement in our living standards to undermine those in control of our labour who stultify of our full human potential. We fight for an increased social wage, not because we want a bureaucratic welfare state presiding over our lives, but because we need better housing, education, health and transport now, which meets our immediate needs, and which points the way to more extensive communally-controlled social provision in the future.  We fight for access to improved artistic and cultural provision, not because we want to become passive consumers of ‘reality TV’, lose ourselves in the ‘virtual world’ of the Internet, or follow lads’ (and ladettes’) lifestyles, but because we want active involvement in artistic and cultural creation to help us to overcome existing alienation and boredom, and to allow us to imagine alternative futures, which enhance our social and individual self-determination. We fight for increased democratic rights, not because we want to reinforce parliamentarianism or ‘representative’ democracy, or to create new oppressive states, but because we want to undermine those capitalist politicians who would set us against each other, and deny us the ability to bring about greater unity from below to more effectively challenge their rule.

We, in the RCN, fight for the democratic exercise of self-determination in Scotland, not because we think Scotland is ‘better’ or ‘lefter’, nor because we want to turn our backs on those in England, Wales and Ireland, but because we see this as an effective way to undermine the British state and its ruling class, the main buttress for US imperialism and corporate capital in the world today. Due to the fault lines in the UK state’s make-up – its bureaucratic unionism and its anti-democratic Crown Powers – the National Question has continued relevance here (as it does in Ireland and Wales).  We seek to extend this struggle to and unite with our neighbours through the active promotion of ‘internationalism from below’.

Abstaining from democratic struggles and leaving the opposition to the nationalist SNP won’t help our class. Most of the SNP leadership would settle for Devolution-Max but, whether or not they achieve formal political independence, would still act as local loyal agents for corporate capital in Scotland. They want to woo global capital to Scotland by making the country a low-tax haven.  However, ignoring or denying the importance of the National Question, just leaves its ‘solution’ once more in the hands of bourgeois nationalists and their social patriotic cheerleaders (Left nationalists).

Furthermore, historically there have been specific local democratic and socialist/communist manifestations in Scotland of the universal human struggle for another possible world  – e.g. the radical wing of the Covenanters, the United Scotsmen, the Chartists, the Highland Land League, the Scottish Socialist Federation, and the legacy of John Maclean. We want to develop this further in alliance with those from other countries. They too have their own local manifestations of the universal struggle – the Levellers, the United Irishmen and London Corresponding Society, the Chartists (especially their most advanced contingent in Wales) the Irish Land League, and the infant Socialist movement (which also included Anarchists).  ‘Internationalism from below’ is the best way to achieve this alliance.

There is a common thread, through all the initial and still partial forms of resistance to exploitation and oppression we find today. This is the need to create and support independent organisations of our class. Social Democratic/Labour and official Communist Parties (as well as their dissident emulators) have long passed over to the side of capital, and those few ‘last Mohicans’ still fighting within their ranks, want to rebuild something that, with the benefit of bitter experience and hindsight, was always flawed. Many trade unions, wedded to ‘social partnership’, have become little more than a free personnel management service for the employers. However, the building of independent trade union organisation – within or outside existing unions, or through a combination of the two – still looks possible.  The commune has become a focus of debates on how we organise in the workplace, and how we can best develop a strategy of worker’s control or management, in the here and now.

Communists have the role of uniting the independent organisations of our class around a clear vision of a future global commune, which can develop out of the conditions and the struggles of today. After recognising the futility of trying to build a world with many still isolated or competing units (confederalism) when our very existence depends on global solutions; and after experiencing the brutal rule of those imposing their  ‘one-state/one party’ principle (cosmopolitans), it is time to return to the once marginalised, but now increasingly relevant ‘internationalism from below’ approach.

Allan Armstrong, Republican Communist Network, 23.5.10

References

• 1. Allan Armstrong, contributions dated 26.2.10 and 16.4.10, on http://republicancommunist.org/blog/
• 2. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (TCM) in Penguin Classics, edited by Gareth Stedman Jones, p. 241 (Penguin Books, 2002, London)
• 3. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 4, p. 280, cited in Michael Lowy, Marx and Engels Cosmopolites in Fatherland or Mother Earth? pp. 5-15 (Pluto Press, 1998, London)
• 4. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, CW4, quoted in Roman Szporluk, in Communism & Nationalism, Karl Marx versus Freidrich List, p. 32 (Oxford University Press, 1988, New York)op. 32.
• 5. David Broder, The Earth Is Not Flat
• 6. Salvo Mastellone, Mazzini’s International League and the Politics of the London Democratic Manifestoes, 1838-50 (MIL) in Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism, 1830-1920, edited by C. B. Bayly and Eugenio F. Biazini, p. 33 (The British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2008, Oxford)
• 7. Harold B. Davis, Nationalism and Socialism – Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917 (MTN), p.40 (Monthly Review Press, 1973, New York)
• 8. Ian Cummins, Marx and Engels on Nationalism, (MEN) p. 84 (Crook Helm, 1980, London)
• 9. Salvo Mastellone, MIL, op. cit., p. 98.
• 10. Frederick Engels in Marx and Engels, Collected Works Volume 20, 1864-68, p. 158.
• 11. Ian Cummins, MEN, op. cit., p. 94.
• 12. Karl Marx, letter to Frederick Engels, 20.6.1866, in CW 21, pp. 288-9.
• 13. Sean Daly, Ireland and the First International (IatFI) p. 142 (Tower Books of Cork, 1984, Cork)
• 14. Frederick Engels, Relations between the Irish Sections and the British Federal Council in Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 419 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1978, London)
• 15. ibid., p. 420.
• 16. ibid., p. 420.
• 17. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 3, p. 334 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1972, London)
• 18. Frederick Engels, The Mark in The Peasant War in Germany, p. 181 (Progress Publishers, 1969, Moscow)

The contribution by Allan Armstrong (SSP International Committee) at the Republican Socialist Convention in London on 13 02 2010

Allan Armstrong (SSP) welcomed the participation of the veteran campaigner, Peter Tatchell, a ‘republican in spirit’, to the Republican Socialist Convention. However, there was a formalism about the republican principles Peter advocated. This was because Peter had not analysed the real nature of the British unionist and imperialist state we were up against, and the anti-democratic Crown Powers it had its disposal to crush any serious opposition. Nor did Peter outline where the social and political forces existed to bring about his new republic.

Back in the late 1960’s, socialists (e.g. Desmond Greaves of the CP and those involved in Peoples Democracy) had been to the forefront of the campaign for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland – equal access to housing and jobs, and a reformed Stormont. The particular Unionist/Loyalist nature of this local statelet, and its relationship with the UK state, was largely ignored or downplayed, in an otherwise militant and vibrant campaign. Every repressive institution used by the UK state is prefixed by ‘royal’, e.g. the RUC, ‘her majesty’s, e.g. the prisons, whilst ‘loyalists’ is the name given to those prepared to undertake the more unsavoury tasks the UK state doesn’t want to own up to in public.

Socialists paid a high price for this negligence, when 14 people were gunned down in Derry by British paratroopers on January 30th, 1972. The socialist republicanism, which should have informed the struggle had been absent, and the Civil Rights Movement gave way to the combined physical force and political republicanism of the Provisionals. When Irish socialist republicanism did emerge, the leadership of the struggle had already largely passed to others.

Some of those earlier socialists, such as Bernadette Devlin/McAliskey, recognised the need for a new socialist republican approach. However, the Provisionals were adroitly able to widen their political base, and keep genuine socialist republicanism marginalised by a resort to populism, through addressing some social and economic issues. Now that the Provisional leadership has made its deal with the UK state, under the Good Friday and St. Andrews Agreements, these populist social and economic policies are being jettisoned.

There is a strong lesson in this for socialists in Scotland and the UK today. Scotland, with its valuable oil resources, and key British military bases, is far more central to British ruling class interests, than Northern Ireland was in the 1960’s. There is a growing National Movement in Scotland. Many supporters link the idea of an independent Scotland to an anti-imperialist vision (opposition to participation in British wars and to NATO) and to defence of social provision in the face of ongoing privatisation. This National Movement is wider than the SNP. Meanwhile, the SNP is taking the road of parties like Catalan Convergence, PNV (Euskadi) and Parti Quebecois. Its leadership is seeking a privileged role for the Scottish business within the existing corporate imperialist order. The SNP is tied both to the ‘Scottish’ banks and to cowboy capitalists like Donald Trump.

The SNP’s election manifesto pledged support for an ‘independence referendum’ to address the issue of Scottish self-determination. Although, the SNP leadership has been in full retreat over this issue, it will not go away, since there is a wider National Movement, and the probable election of the Tories at Westminster will once more raise the political stakes.

The SNP has no way of achieving Scottish independence. It is too tied to Scottish business interests, which want no more than increased powers for themselves – Devolution-Max. Recently, Salmond has come out in favour of the British monarchy. What this means is that the SNP accepts that any future referendum will be played by Westminster rules.

In the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, when the British ruling class was split over the best strategy to maintain their Union, the non-political Queen was wheeled out to make an anti-nationalist Christmas speech, civil servants were told to bury inconvenient documents, mock military exercises were launched against putative nationalist forces, whilst the intelligence services conducted agent provocateur work on the nationalist fringe. Compared to the role of the British state against Irish republicans, this was small beer. However, given the timid constitutionalism of the SNP, a further resort to Crown Powers was not needed at this time.
Furthermore, the taming of the once much more militant Provisional Republican Movement, so that it now acts as key partner in British rule in Ireland, shows that the British ruling class has little to fear in the SNP.

Today, the British, American and EU ruling classes are united against any move towards Scottish independence, so will be even more determined in their opposition than in 1979. This is why any movement to win Scottish self-determination must be republican from the start. It must be prepared, in advance, to confront the Crown Powers that will be inevitably utilised against us. Because genuine and democratic Scottish independence represents such a challenge to British imperialism and the UK state, we need allies in England, Ireland and Wales too. We need to be committed to a strategy of ‘internationalism from below’. We are socialist republicans and link our political demands with social and economic campaigns. This was the course advocated by two great Scottish socialist republicans – James Connolly and John Maclean. This is why the SSP is in London today seeking wider support.

A reply to Allan Armstrong’s arguments from Nick Rogers, CPGB (Weekly Worker 805, 18 02 2010)

Allan Armstrong of the Republican Communist Network and the SSP turned to the national question in Scotland. He thought Peter Tatchell’s rather abstract republicanism was exactly what was not needed.
The Scottish National Party had shown that it was prepared to play the parliamentary game to prove that it did not pose a disruptive challenge to the corporate status quo. It was now in favour of retaining the monarchy – not even offering a referendum to the Scottish people on the issue.

A Scottish republic, on the other hand, would ditch the monarchy, throw out USA and British military bases, and reverse the cuts and privatisation. The British state would use all the resources at its disposal to resist the loss of North Sea oil and the Trident bases. Scottish republicanism was a strategy to strike a blow against the imperialist UK state, break the link with the US and build internationalism from below.

Toby Abse declared he took a Luxemburgist position on the national question. Far from believing the break-up of existing national states to be progressive, he thought the creation of a European state would provide better opportunities for socialists.

I said… we should encourage a class-based identity that encompassed migrants and the working class internationally.

However, in Scotland and Wales there clearly was a strong sense of national identity and national questions existed. The demand for a federal republic was the way to relate to the question, both in England and in Scotland and Wales.

The English must make clear that they had no wish to retain either nation within a broader state against the will of their people, but neither would they force them to separate. As for socialists in Scotland, comrade Armstrong’s argument hardly provided a ringing endorsement of the case for independence, since it would be precisely the conciliatory SNP that would lead moves to split Scotland from Britain, making every attempt in the process to avoid rocking the establishment boat.

The strongest possible challenge to the British state was to be made by the working class across Britain – and preferably across Europe, raising the demand for a European republic.

David Broder and Chris Ford of Commune spoke after me and expressed support for the RCN’s internationalism from below and the perspective of breaking up the UK. Comrade Broder did not see why unity with Europeans was more important than, say, with Bolivia, where British multinationals were just as involved as in many European countries.

Comrade Ford spoke about the opportunities the national question created for socialists. The break-up of the UK would strike a blow against a major imperialist state. For his part, comrade Healey thought that the break-up of the UK was as inevitable as the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Time was now fast running out and in a short reply comrade Armstrong commended the arguments of the Commune comrades, while telling comrade Abse and me that our arguments were typical of the “Brit left”, without actually replying to them…

Comrades Colin Fox (SSP Co-convenor) and Allan Armstrong attended as representatives of the SSP’s international committee. Treating England as a foreign country is bad working class politics and fails to recognise the reality of the British state.

A reply from Allan Armstrong (24 02 2010)

As Nick points out in his reply, I believe his comments are indeed typical of the ‘Brit Left’. The reason I didn’t reply to him at the second Republican Socialist Convention, but stated that Chris Ford and David Broder of The Commune had made some of the points I would have used, was that I wasn’t given the time.

The preference of the SSP International Committee would have been for the second Republican Socialist Convention to have devoted far more time to the discussion of the relationship between the National Question and Republican Socialism.

The non-attendance of many from the British Left, invited by Steve Freeman of the Socialist Alliance (Convention organiser), still did not create anything like enough time for this debate. The first session contributions by Peter Tatchell and Colin Fox usefully highlighted the debate between bourgeois and socialist republicanism, whilst Mehdi Kia (Middle East Left Forum and HOPI) was most informative about the current situation in Iran.

However, personally, I thought the last session could have been sacrificed in order to enable the broader discussion on the National Question to be aired. The ignorance and lack of comprehension of much of the British Left over this issue needs to be addressed.

If, as I had hoped, there were also to be speakers from Ireland and Wales, then time for discussion would have been even more curtailed. Neither Dan Finn of the Irish Socialist Network, nor Marc Jones of Plaid Cymru/Celyn were able to make it. I thought that any republican socialists in England would have made contacts amongst the quite extensive Irish republican and socialist republican community in London, but this turned out not to be the case. I then suggested to Steve that Ann McShane (Ireland) and Bob Davies (Wales), both of the CPGB, be invited instead to fill the gap and enable the debate between Left Unionism and Internationalism from Below to be more fully aired.

So, let’s examine Nick’s points. I’ll start at the end of his contribution. Treating England as a foreign country is bad working class politics and fails to recognise the reality of the British state.

The first point I would make is that Nick must hardly have been listening. The whole thrust of my contribution (see above), taking on Peter Tatchell’s abstract republicanism, was exactly to highlight the imperial and unionist nature of the British state, and the formidable anti-democratic powers the British ruling class has under the UK’s Crown Powers.

Nick, somewhat revealingly, talks of me treating England as a foreign country. Now England certainly is another country. This is even recognised under the terms of the Union – which recognizes England, Scotland, Wales and part of Ireland (officially Northern Ireland, but colloquially and wrongly, Ulster) as separate entities. However, I have never used the word foreign to describe England. Is that how Nick describes Ireland, France, or any other country in the world? There are some words and phrases, such as social dumping and foreign which I think form part of the language of hostile nationalist forces and should be rejected in socialist discourse.

Now, the CPGB takes some pride in the solidarity work of HOPI, a united front organisation it initiated. Do CPGB members consider Iranian socialists to be foreign? Does the CPGB secretly think that joint work can not be effective because British and Iranian socialists don’t live in the same state? Nick invokes a mythical international unity provided by the British Left. However, a great deal of the CPGB’s work has been trying to combat the opposition of the largest ‘Brit Left’ organisation, the SWP, to HOPI. The largest socialist organisation in Scotland, the SSP, voted to support HOPI at its 2008 Conference.

The SSP is more than willing to go to meetings in England, Wales and Ireland, organised by others, to argue the case for united action across these islands. Internationalism from below is a hallmark of how the SSP tries to organise. Our International Committee organised the first Republican Socialist Convention in Edinburgh, with socialists from all four nations. The SSP has subsequently sent speakers to both England and Ireland.
Whatever reservations we may have had about the limited time for discussion of the National Question, Socialist Republicanism and Internationalism from Below, provided by Steve at this Convention, we engaged fully, providing two platform speakers and another three members in the audience.

So let’s now look at the second largest ‘Brit Left’ organization, which was invited to participate, the Socialist Party. I will quote Nick’s explanation for their failure to turn up at a meeting with representatives of the largest socialist organisation in Scotland. Quite possibly SPEW deliberately avoided a potentially embarrassing meeting. Embarrassing for who? Certainly not the SSP.

Nick also says, We should encourage a class-based identity that encompassed migrants and the working class internationally. So how does the British Left, which Nick champions, match up to this? Last year we saw the EU electoral challenge by the Left British chauvinist ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ campaign (with its notorious opposition to ‘social dumping’), bureaucratically cobbled together by trade union officials, the SPEW and CPB. It also had the somewhat incongruous Left Scottish nationalist bolt-on provided by Solidarity (although to their credit, many of its members refused to engage, and one prominent member advised people to vote SSP).

In contrast the SSP stood as part of the European Anti-Capitalist Alliance EU-wide electoral challenge, bringing Joaquim Roland, a car worker member of the New Anti-Capitalist Party to address meetings in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

So, given the choice of ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ and the EACA, where did the CPGB stand? Quite frankly it made itself look foolish. It never raised the idea that ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ should form part of the EACA’s international campaign. It placed nearly all emphasis on demanding that ‘No2EU/Yes2D’ put support for citizen militias in its manifesto (support for migrant workers facing combined state, employer and union official attacks would have been far more appropriate). Then, failing to get support for citizen militias, told people to vote instead for the Labour Party and hence the very non-citizen militia, British imperial troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere! Even the SWP and SPEW didn’t stoop this low.

When Nick mentions his support for a class-based identity that encompassed migrants, he also fails to mention the woeful record of the ‘Brit Left’, in Respect or the Campaign for a New Workers Party over this issue. The SSP voted at its 2008 Conference to give its support to ‘No One Is Illegal’.

Chris Ford made the valuable point that the UK state, far from uniting the working class on these islands, divides it. The ongoing partition of Ireland is only the most striking case. The bureaucratic institutions of the British Labour Party, and the trade unions (TUC, STUC, WTUC, and the Northern Committee of the ICTU) frequently divide workers and play one national group against another.

Nick takes up the argument made by Toby Abse, to elaborate his own position. Toby had argued that the successive acts of Union {1535-42, 1707 and 1801} had had the effect of creating a united British nation, and that the British working class and its institutions were now organized on an all-British basis. Therefore, following Luxemburg, he believed that attempts to address the National Question in Scotland or Wales were either irrelevant or divisive. To be consistent, Toby should have argued that all UK state institutions, currently devolved on a ‘national’ basis, should be abolished, since they must, from his viewpoint, promote disunity.

However, Nick, who has certainly also called himself a Luxemburgist in the past, is now a member of the CPGB, so in opposing Toby, he has to make some contorted arguments. The CPGB believes there is a British nation and a British-Irish nation (the Protestants of the ‘Six Counties’) but only Scottish and Welsh nationalities. So Nick goes on to say that. In Scotland and Wales there clearly was a strong sense of national identity and national questions existed. First, you would wonder, if the historical thrust of the creation of the UK has been to bring about a united British nation (for most of the ‘Brit Left’, Ireland quickly drops from view!) and a united British working class, why you should consider it at all worthwhile to make any concessions to what could only then be reactionary national identities.

The reality, however, is that the UK state was formed as part of a wider British imperial project, which tried to subsume Welsh, Scots and Irish as subordinate identities. Whilst the British Empire ruled the roost, there was a definite thrust towards a British nation, but this was partly thwarted by the unionist form of the UK state. Once, the British Empire went into decline, those still remaining hybrid imperial identities, Irish-British, Scottish-British and Welsh-British have gone into decline too, as more people have asserted their Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities. This decline in British identification has been most rapid amongst workers and small farmers, whilst support has been clung to most fiercely by the ruling class and sections of the upper middle class.

Only amongst in the Unionist and Loyalist section of the people living in the Six Counties has a more widespread British identity been retained (although this has moved from Irish-British to Ulster-British). Indeed, it is in the Six Counties that the true nature of British ‘national’ identity is shown most starkly. It is here, amongst the Loyalists, that fascist death squads and other forms of coercion have created the worst repression, way beyond anything achieved by their ‘mainland’ British admirers, in the National Front or British National Party. The British Conservatives have just linked up with those more ‘genteel’ Ulster Unionists, but still sectarian and reactionary.

The moves to break-up the UK have their origins in wider ‘lower orders’ movements, such as the Land League in Michael Davitt’s days, the independent Irish trade union movement of James Connolly (founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party) and Jim Larkin’s days. It was John Maclean (founder of the Scottish Workers Republican Party), with his support, particularly amongst Clydeside workers, who offered the most consistent challenge, from 1919 onwards, based upon active campaigning for the ‘Russian Revolution’ and the ongoing Irish republican struggle. He adopted a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire’ strategy (was sharply marginalized as the post-war international revolutionary wave came to an end between 1921-3, allowing a Left British and reformist perspective to strongly reassert itself.)

In other words it has been the National Question, which has been to the forefront of the democratic and republican struggle in these islands. Without seeing this, you are left, like Peter Tatchell, supporting a rather formal republic, with no real idea where the support is coming from. Nick conjures up The demand for a federal republic… both in England and in Scotland and Wales. This is but a left cover for the last-ditch mechanism used by the British ruling class, from the American to the Irish War of Independence, to hold their Empire and Union together. The Lib-Dems keep the Federal option in their locker, to be dragged out whenever other mechanisms such as Home Rule or Devolution fail to hold the line.

Colin Fox also made clear in his contribution that the British ruling class could even accommodate a formal republic, if it felt it was necessary. So Nick’s republican suffix to his proposed federalism provides another paper cover. We saw the nature of such republicanism in the Rupert Murdoch-backed campaign for a republic in Australia. What it amounted to was a repatriation of the current Crown Powers, and their investiture in the Presidency. Not surprisingly, this proved not to be a winning formula!

Middle class nationalist attempts to renegotiate the Union have also emerged as the British Empire went into decline. The Irish Home Rule Party, Cumann na nGaedhael, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, and (I would argue) the post-Good Friday Sinn Fein have all fitted this mould. Whatever, their formal political position (e.g. an independent Scotland, or a united Ireland), as these parties have become the vehicles for local business and middle class interests, this has been matched by a retreat from their original stated goals, and new compromises with the UK state.

Just as I would argue that the CPGB’s blanket support for the British unionist and imperialist Labour Party candidates, at the last Euro-election, provides a classic example of left British nationalism in action, I would also argue that any socialists pursuing a strategy which tail ends their local nationalist party, e.g, the SNP, act as Left nationalists.

The strategy behind the SSP’s republican socialism, exemplified in the Calton Hill Declaration, is to take the leadership of the National Movement here from the SNP. To counter the SNP’s own ‘international’ strategy – support for the global corporate order, for the use of Scottish troops in imperial ventures, for the British queen, and acceptance of a Privy Councillorship (Alex Salmond), the SSP’s International Committee counters with a genuinely international strategy based on anti-imperialism, anti-unionism, and internationalism from below.

The British Left tries to mirror the UK state in its organisational set-up. This attempt to apply an old Second and Third International orthodoxy was always contradictory. Applied to the UK it just seems to confuse the ‘Brit Left’. Occasionally debates emerge within the CPGB about, whether to be a consistent Leninist, it should not reconstitute itself as the CPUK, and in the process, add its own twist to Irish partition. Both the SWP and SPEW operate essentially partitionist organisations in Ireland, highlighted by their failure to raise the issue of continued British rule (with its southern Irish government support) in elections there.

The UK currently acts as a junior partner to USA imperialism. It has been awarded the USA license to police the corporate imperial order in the North East Atlantic, and to ensure that the EU fails to emerge as an imperial challenger. Apart from its membership of NATO, the provision of military bases, and such ‘police’ actions as bringing the ‘terrorist state’(!) of Iceland into line to bail-out the banks, the UK performs this wider role, with the 26 county Irish state acting as its own junior partner.

Politically, the ‘Peace Process’ (with the Good Friday, St. Andrews and now the latest Hillsborough agreements) and Devolution-all-round (Scotland, Wales and ‘the Six Counties’) represents the British and Irish ruling class strategy to provide the political framework to most effectively maintain profitability for corporate capital in these islands. In this, these two states can draw upon the support of the EU and the USA, as well of course, their ‘social partnerships’ with the official trade union leaders.

The SSP has realized that the British and Irish ruling classes have a political strategy, which covers the whole of these islands. You could be forgiven for thinking that much of the ‘Brit Left’ finds it difficult to see beyond Potters Bar, or where its members do live further afield, thinking their politics just depends on the latest dispatches sent out from their London office.

Nick somewhat condescendingly says that, The English must make clear that they had no wish to retain either nation {Scotland, or Wales} within a broader state against the will of their people (that’s very good of you Nick!), but then bizarrely adds neither would they force them to separate. Well Nick, we all know the ‘Brit Left’ have no intention of forcing us out of the British unionist and imperial state and its alliance with USA imperialism. That is the problem.

The SSP, though, is quite prepared to take the lead in making this decision ourselves. However, we will continue to insist that the break-up of the UK and ending of British imperialism are something that workers throughout these islands have an immediate interest in achieving, and will continue to argue our case to socialists in England, Wales and Ireland. We do want unity, but not the ‘Brit Left’ imposed bureaucratic unity from above, rather a democratic ‘internationalism from below’.

Nick Clarke analyses the latest stages of Israel’s war on the Palestinians and the role of the solidarity movement

As the media spotlight on Israel’s latest re-invasion and brutal bombardment of Gaza begins to dim, the Israeli state’s punishment of the Palestinian people continues. The explicit aims of the new year invasion were to stop the sporadic missile launches against the southern Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon and to close the tunnels from Egypt that bring much needed supplies into Gaza. The primitive weaponry available to Palestinian forces in Gaza is no match for the high-tech, state-of-the-art hardware deployed by the Israeli state, supplied by their own weapons manufacturers or provided on generous terms by the US and Britain.

However, there was another agenda underlying these overt aims. Firstly, in October 2008, the ruling coalition government led by Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party had unravelled, hastened by the corruption charges facing the Prime Minister. A general election had been called and Tzipi Livni, replacing Olmert as leader of Kadima, found her party trailing Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the opinion polls, by some distance.

To give themselves a chance of beating Likud, Kadima turned to the Israeli state’s favoured scapegoats, the Palestinians. By launching the attack on Gaza, Kadima and its Labour Party partners pandered to the right by adopting Likud’s open hostility to the Palestinians and making it their own.

The fronting of this cynical offensive by Livni almost brought success as by polling day Kadima had eliminated Likud’s lead. However, it was not enough. While they won the most seats, Kadima’s electoral tactics backfired on them spectacularly. The IDF’s onslaught also increased the votes for the ultra right, in particular, Avigdor Lieberman’s party – Yisraeli Beiteinu. Lieberman’s party favours Israel abandoning territory on the West Bank inhabited by Arab families and annexing blocs of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. He is also proposing a new loyalty test for Arab citizens of Israel. In other words, he is an open supporter of ethnic cleansing.

Whatever the differences between these Zionist parties as to tactics and policy, they are all committed to their fundamental support for Israel as a ‘Jewish state for a Jewish people’. Again the Palestinians are used and abused at the whim of Israeli electoral politics.

The second, unspoken agenda item was to clear the decks before the Obama presidency began in the US. Using the hiatus following his election but before his inauguration on 20th January, Israel knew that the final days of the Bush presidency would cause them little trouble over the Gaza bombardment and they were not disappointed. Bush’s response, or lack of it, was predictable. Israel wanted the crushing of Hamas and the pacification of Gaza to be complete before Bush left office. This would enable them to negotiate with the US from a position of strength just in case Obama had different ideas about how to handle the Israel/Palestine situation from his presidential predecessors.

Predictable response

They need not have worried. Obama’s response was as predictable as all the others. During June 2008 he made some very friendly noises to the Zionist American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), describing himself as a true friend of Israel and stating

Let me be clear. Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

So the Palestinians should not expect any equitable treatment from the Obama presidency.

And what of the Middle East envoy of the EU, US, UN and Russia – a certain Tony Blair? He was appointed to this role 2 years ago due to his ‘success’ in ‘resolving’ the Irish War, no doubt accompanied by a healthy remuneration. How could he ever be seen as a credible negotiator in the Middle East following his illegal and enthusiastic part in bloodbath of Arabs that was the Iraqi invasion? This was further compounded by his refusal to condemn Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, while he was still Prime Minister.

In recent weeks Blair has been awarded the Dan David Prize, through Tel Aviv University for his leadership on the world stage and having shown exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership. Did it not occur to him how acceptance of this award might compromise his nominal role as ‘honest broker’? Presumably his vanity and the $1m prize outweighed this consideration.

Despite having his role as envoy for 2 years, it took Blair until 1st March 2009 to actually visit Gaza. On inspecting the devastation caused by the Israelis, his response was that it was shocking and enormous. That was obvious from the limited footage that came out of Gaza, despite Israeli censorship, during the bombardment in early January. As envoy for the EU, should he not be condemning the destruction by the IDF of projects funded by EU donations? It has taken him almost two months to call for the end of the blockade of Gaza. As with Obama, his silence in early January spoke volumes as to where his allegiance lies.

No imperialist solutions

So while the IDF’s military assault on Gaza has ceased for the time being, the siege being waged by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people has not. Gaza is a concentration camp. Israel still controls what goes in and out by land, sea and air (apart from that smuggled through the tunnels). They allow a drip of humanitarian aid to pass into Gaza. Convoys of food, medical supplies and other essentials such as fuel, including that being supplied by NGOs and the UN, are prevented from reaching the Palestinians who desperately need it.

The blockade, the Wall, the intimidation, the terror and deprivations imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza amount to an attempt to crush all resistance, eradicate all historical memory of Palestinian settlement and prevent a Palestinian nation from emerging. The continued second class status, the denial of equal political rights and the continued removal of Palestinians and Bedouin people living within Israel itself, highlights the apartheid nature of the Israeli state. This is reinforced by the banning, in the run up to the general election, of political parties traditionally supported by Arabs in Israel.

Political solutions to the conflict must not be based
on the interests of British/US imperialism or Israeli
expansionism. All bids at imperialist ‘peace’ settlements (Camp David, Oslo and the Road Map) have all failed because they have not addressed the aspirations of the Palestinian people for genuine self-determination, and accept the continuation of Israel as an apartheid-type state, with Jewish people remaining as the economically and socially privileged, dominant political force.

Likewise any attempts made to broker agreements made by the corrupt rulers of the undemocratic Arab police states have been designed to buttress their own positions and privileges. The only meaningful wider support in the Middle East will come from the oppressed peoples in these lands.

All Palestinian refugees who have been displaced since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 must have the right of return to their homeland. All forms of ethnic cleansing must be opposed and the only truly democratic solution is for a singular, secular, democratic state for all the people of historic Palestine. Such a state needs to guarantee the democratic rights of all minority groups, irrespective of religious beliefs, including the right to practice their religion of choice.

A few on the Left have opposed any effective support for the Palestinians in Gaza. They argue that Palestinians have given their electoral support to Hamas, an Islamicist party. Ironically, it was Netanyahu, who originally gave Israeli state backing to Hamas in Palestine, to undermine the then politically dominant, secular nationalist PLO. However, since the PLO has fallen in behind an imperially imposed two-state ‘solution’, it has become more and more mired in corruption, accepting political backing and money from Israel, the US and the EU. Many now see the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority as acting in much the same manner as those Judenrat officials who ran the Jewish ghettoes on behalf of the Nazis. It was the failure of the formerly politically dominant socialists in the Bund and communists in East European countries, to successfully defend Jews in the face of the Nazi onslaught, that led to the political victory of the Zionist Jewish supremacists amongst the surviving European Jews.

Hamas can, in some ways, be considered as Moslem ‘Zionists’, who want to create a state in which Moslems dominate. They can provide no just and democratic solution for the peoples of Palestine. However, just as the most committed socialists tried to defend all Jews persecuted by the Nazis, so today, we should provide active solidarity with the people of Palestine. As socialists we have to establish our political credentials amongst the Palestinians and other people in the Middle East. This means showing that the international solidarity we offer can be, not only more effective than any pan-Islamicist support, but also offer all the peoples living in historic Palestine an escape from the many forms of exploitation and oppression they face. Socialists also give their support to those Israeli Jews who defend Palestinian rights, especially those who refuse to perform military service.

Practical action, including occupations, has already been taken by students in some of Scotland’s universities, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Dundee. Students have demanded that the universities boycott Israeli goods, as well as get rid of any investment in weapons manufacturers, such as BAE Systems.

The political atmosphere must be created in which workers also have the confidence to directly implement solidarity actions. The Viva Palestina convoy, which left London in February, with more than 100 vehicles driven by volunteers, is one action which shows the potential to raise wider support, including trade unions. This convoy eventually crossed into Gaza at Rafah on 9th March with £1.5m worth of aid including medical supplies, clothes, food and toys as well as 20 ambulances, two buses, a fire engine and a fishing boat.

The campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Israeli state must be supported. The instruments and methods of oppression used against the Palestinians, by Israel today, have echoes of those used against the black population in apartheid-era South Africa. This comparison was picked up by South African dock workers in Durban who in February refused to off-load an Israeli ship in solidarity with the Palestinians as part of a week of action against apartheid Israel.

We have a special duty, living as we do in the UK, given successive British governments’ support for the Israeli state. The role of socialists in Scotland must be to provide practical solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and to support an international campaign to isolate Israel – economically, politically, socially and culturally.

The following statement is not authored by the RCN, but our motion to SSP conference in 2009 references it.

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We are experiencing, in the world and in Europe, the worst crisis capitalism has known since 1929; a crisis which is hitting head-on the banks and all the financial companies, but whose roots lie in the economic system itself. Capitalist globalisation has accelerated and concentrated the extortion of wealth and its introduction into the Stock Exchange, with the ceaseless search for ever greater financial profits. These profits are being made at the cost of increased exploitation of the populations of the countries dominated by imperialism, who have seen their natural wealth plundered by the imperialist trusts; and of increased exploitation of the workers of the entire world, driven to compete with each other so that the price of labour is the lowest possible. Today, one again, it is the workers and the poorest populations who are being expropriated and strangled by the credit crisis, laid off in their hundreds of thousands in order to restore the shareholders’ profits.

These profits are also being made with contempt for the need to safeguard the environment and the planet. Global warming is bearing witness to deforestation, dangerous industrial processes and the explosive growth of the circulation of goods which use forms of transport that pollute.

The crisis is revealing to the light of day that the thousands of billions extorted from wage-earners are being squandered on the Stock Exchanges of New York, London, Paris or Frankfurt. It is also showing that states can find in a few days hundreds of billions to save the banks and the capitalist system, while they refuse to give more money for public services, jobs and social protection, the protection of the environment or the cancellation of the debt of the countries dominated by imperialism: 20 billion dollars per year for 15 years would be enough to put an end to food insecurity in the world…

The responses of each of the European states converge: socialisation of losses and privatisation of profits, injection of public money to save finance, cutting back on funds for public services, increased pressure on the unemployed and those in work, mass lay-offs in order to safeguard profits. Their Europe is not our Europe! It is at the service of the trusts and of finance. It is this Europe that the peoples of the Netherlands and France, in 2005, and then of Ireland in 2008 have rejected, by massively voting no to the projected constitutional treaty.

We propose an emergency plan for Europe, which we will defend in struggles and in the 2009 elections. This crisis makes it more necessary than ever to put an end in Europe to policies that are opposed to the needs of the workers, policies that are dictated by the shareholders and those who own capital. The European Union was built by the capitalists and bankers precisely to aid this increasing circulation of goods and capital in the search for maximum profit.

We denounce the capitalist system and the policies of the European Union, and we put forward a series of proposals for a social and democratic Europe, which would impose a different sharing out of the wealth that exists, a Europe in the service of the workers and the peoples. The policies of the European Union, decided by the governments of the 27 Member States, constitute the framework for a series of social and democratic attacks against the interests of the popular classes.

The treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon are so many documents which aim to accentuate the pressure on the people, to adapt each country in Europe to the maximum search for profits for the capitalists and to disengagement from all public policies in the service of the population.

In the current phase of capitalist globalisation, competition is leading the ruling classes and the governments to call into question a whole series of previous social gains.

Labour laws, wage levels, working hours, public services, health and pensions systems are all today being deregulated.

One of the other dimensions of these neo-liberal policies leads to the building of a Fortress Europe against immigrants and the people of the global South. Their rights are swept aside in a general climate of security policies of which they are the prime target. Worse, the Schengen agreement leads the European police forces to pursue them and to expel them from the EU countries. The far Right wages increasingly xenophobic campaigns.

This Europe is the Europe of war: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in other countries in the world, the European Union, alongside the US government, backs a policy devoted to the interests of the multinationals, opposed to the rights of the peoples.

In Europe, the everyday life of millions of wage-workers, peasants, young people and unemployed is made worse by the practical consequences of all these neo-liberal capitalist policies and attacks on democratic freedoms. However the people do not accept them. They have been consulted, through referendums, in France, in the Netherlands, and again recently in Ireland. Each time the people said No! No to the antisocial and anti-democratic policies of the European Union. Most recent elections have seen the defeat of outgoing governments, whether of left or right, expressing the peoples’ rejection of all governmental polices.

We want, today, to put forward on the European level an alternative to all these capitalist policies which, in the sole search of profit, destroy employment and lives and make the conditions of the most deprived worse and worse. There is another solution for the workers and the peoples than the policies put into operation by the European social-democrats and their allies. These policies and the left governments which have implemented them, have only been a left version of liberalism, the policies implemented also corresponding to the agenda of European capitalists on questions of social deregulation and dismantling of social protection.

The proposals which we want to put forward start from daily struggles, are based on the criteria of social needs of the greatest number, those who live from their labour power, they go against the dictatorship of the market, against the free competition which crushes millions of people in Europe and throughout the world.

They aim to harmonise upward social rights, wages, working conditions, pensions and social legislation for the workers of the different European countries. Their goal is to defend the popular classes against the rescue plans for banks and financial groups set up by the European governments. Faced with the plans of the different European bourgeoisies and their governments, the workers’ movement must defend its own plan while calling into question the powers of speculative financial capital.

The satisfaction of social needs not only implies a new sharing out of wealth which gives priority to social needs before the law of profit, which is based on funding that taxes capitalist profits, but also poses the problem of a reorganization of the principal sectors of the economy within a public and social framework, under the control and with the participation of the workers and the citizens. Instead of pouring more and more money into a bottomless pit to save the capitalists from bankruptcy, what is needed is the coordination on the European level of a rescue plan for the economy so that it satisfies the needs of the population and not those of the possessing classes.

That means to be opposed to the policy of the European Union, not to turn in on ourselves on nationalist positions, but on the contrary to develop the idea of another Europe, a social and democratic Europe, an internationalist Europe, founded on the solidarity of the peoples of Europe and the whole world.

1. The right for all to stable, guaranteed employment with decent wages.

   Today, in Europe the bosses are closing down hundreds of workplaces, laying of tens of thousands of workers in order to maintain their profits. The right to employment must be guaranteed by the refusal of redundancies. The right to a job must be guaranteed by refusing lay-offs and short-time working. Unemployment must be abolished. The casualisation which manufactures millions of poor workers must be abolished. For equal work, equal wages and identical contracts. Collective bargaining agreements must be aligned on the best that has been won and apply to all companies and all employees in the same sector.

   This right to employment must be ensured by coordinated policies of reduction of working hours, without flexibility, precariousness and with workers’ control over working conditions and over hiring. The European Commission directive which allows flexibility of working hours up to 65 hours must be rejected.

   The fight against unemployment and for the creation of jobs must be based on the setting in motion, under public control and control by citizens, of plans of development of European infrastructures – rail networks, channels, the information society, renewable energies and activities that are socially useful and respectful of the environment and which make it possible to stop production that is useless and harmful to the environment, as well as war industries.

2. For a European minimum wage!

   Everyone, wage-workers, unemployed, pensioners and or young people receiving education and training, has a right to a minimum income that makes it possible to live correctly.

   Whatever the level of activity of the workplace, full wages must be maintained.

   For an increase of 300 euros in all wages, all incomes in Europe. As the workers of Dacia in Romania demand, as many trade unions demand, the immediate demand for a wage increase of 300 euros responds to the urgency of the situation.

   We have to impose in all the countries of Europe the right to a wage and a minimum income which tend towards upward unification of European workers.

   We must also impose the sliding scale of wages, which is the principal weapon of workers against inflation and the fall in purchasing power that it implies.

3. For public services

   Against privatizations. For the return to the public sector of all privatised enterprises. For the defence and the extension of public services within the European framework. That must involve challenging all the treaties and all the directives which opened up to competition all the sectors dealing with fundamental social needs: health, pensions, education, postal services, transport, and telecommunications, energy, water, the pharmaceutical industry. In all these fields, it is necessary to maintain, restore or create national or European public services. The right to housing means considering as an economic priority the creation of a public housing service. The interdependence of all the sectors of the economy must lead the workers and their organizations to defend public and social ownership of the principal sectors of the economy.

4. The population must control the accounts of enterprises and the movements of capital, impose the closing-down of tax havens and the establishment of taxes on the movement of capital invested in financial operations. Economic urgency makes it necessary for the banks to be nationalised, not to socialise the losses, but to place them lastingly under public control and at the service of popular needs, in particular the European Central Bank so that savings can be used to finance socially useful works (housing, public transport).
5. Not to Fortress Europe of racism and discrimination

   Equal rights for all residents in Europe, “nationals” or originating in a foreign country; voting rights for foreigners, access to all social rights, an end to all security policies, in particular in relation to youth and immigrants. To Fortress Europe, we counterpose an open Europe that guarantees people freedom of movement and settlement.

6. For a democratic Europe guaranteeing equal rights between men and women

   For the right to abortion and to free and available contraception, for the right to divorce, for a struggle against sexual and marital violence, for the free choice of sexual orientation, refusal of all forms of discrimination in recruitment and employment because of colour, origin, sex or sexual orientation.

7. For a Europe of ecology

   The questions of global warming and renewable energies, and more generally all the environmental problems, constitute today one of the central dimensions of a social and democratic Europe. The demand for durable development in the service of a balance between humankind and nature conflicts with the logic of all the policies which remain within the framework of the market and the law of profit. The example of the biofuels which are used as a substitute for oil and lead to the aggravation of the food crisis and the impoverishment of millions of peasants is a good example of this market “ecology”. An environmental and development policy must be turned towards new forms of production and consumption which give priority to the public framework

8. No to war! For the right of peoples to decide for themselves!

   The explosive growth of military expenditure, the participation of European armies in Iraq or Afghanistan testifies to the remilitarization of Europe, testifies to the neo-imperialist policy carried out by European government in the interests of the multinationals which dominate the planet. The construction of a European defence integrated into NATO is one of the most dangerous signs of this new European military policy. The only answer to this growing danger of war is a policy of disarmament and peace, for the withdrawal of all Western troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, so that the Iraqi people can exercise full sovereignty, for the withdrawal of Zionist troops and settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories. Peace in the Middle-East involves the recognition of the national rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of the refugees to return and the constitution of a sovereign state.

All these ruptures will not take place without massive intervention by workers and peoples. Struggles co-ordinated at a European level have already taken place. We want to develop convergences between our struggles, to make or consolidate lasting links between social movements, between anti-capitalist parties, establish permanent frameworks for discussion and action so as to help bring to fruition common objectives.

The challenge to the UK state and British Empire from 1879-95

Contents of forthcoming book

1. Introduction
2. The growing conflict between liberal and conservative unionism in the period of New Imperialism
3. Michael Davitt and the launching of the Irish Revolution in 1879
4. Davitt adopts an ‘internationalism from below’ strategy to spread the revolution
5. The struggle against coercion and for land triggers off a new movement in England and Scotland
6. Parnell’s ‘counter-revolution within the revolution’
7. Shifting the main focus of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to Scotland
8. The ending of the liberal consensus in the face of the rise of the New Imperialism
9. Davitt widens his ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, and brings in Wales
10. ‘Internationalism from below’ and the weaknesses of Irish nationalism and British Left radicalism
11. From land and labour struggles to the beginning of independent labour political organisation in Scotland
12. From land nationalisation to the eight hour day
13. Broadening the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance around the political demand for Home Rule
14. 1889-92 – the new industrial and political offensive
15. The rise and wider effects of New Unionism in Ireland
16. The limits of Davitt’s politics reached as the Irish Home Rule Movement splits
17. The thwarted hopes of New Unionism and the Home Rule Movement after the 1892 General Election
18. The employers’ offensive and the retreat of New Unionism
19. The final break-up of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance
20. 1895 – High Imperialism triumphant and the emergence of Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party

1. Introduction

Why should we spend time examining a period of history from over a hundred years ago? Perhaps the best reason is that, between 1879 and 1895, there are striking parallels to the situation we find ourselves in today. This was also a period of increasing inter-imperialist competition, as the previously dominant world power began to lose its leading position. In the late nineteenth century it was the UK that found itself in this new position in the world; today it is the USA, with the UK continuing to fall well down the global pecking order.

Furthermore, when we compare the situation in the UK, over the two periods, we can see the continuing significance of national democratic challenges to the unionist state. The Irish Revolution(1), which began in 1879, led to a questioning of the very existence of the UK, and to profound divisions amongst the British ruling class over how best to maintain its rule over these islands and their wider empire. The demands for national self-determination in Ireland, Scotland and Wales were linked to major social and economic struggles. Clearly, there are significant echoes of this situation today.

From 1875, under the impact of the New Imperialism(2), Disraeli’s Conservative government had begun to pursue increasingly aggressive colonial policies. These reflected the concerns of a British ruling class, now facing global competition from a larger number of European states. From 1879, however, a challenge developed to this recharged British imperialism. The new opposition drew its politics largely from the social republican tradition found in Ireland, and the radical tradition found in England, Scotland and Wales. It formed largely as result of the failure of traditional Gladstonian Liberals to uphold their earlier support for civil rights and opposition to colonial expansion.

Michael Davitt, migrant, former textile worker, Fenian and Irish Land League organiser, was the central figure involved. He attempted to unite land and labour struggles, across the four nations constituting the United Kingdom, and beyond into the British colonies and the USA. Davitt developed an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance to win wider support for the Irish National Land League (INLL), one of the biggest ‘lower orders’ movements in the nineteenth century UK. However, he deepened this alliance in England, Scotland and Wales, by contributing to the development of independent land and labour organisations in each of these nations.

The leader of the INLL, Charles Parnell, though, had other ideas. In 1882, he closed down the INLL in order to form a purely constitutional nationalist party, the National League, with the aim of winning Irish Home Rule. However, the first Irish Home Rule Bill, adopted by Gladstone’s Liberal government, was defeated in 1886, and a new government, led by the Conservative Lord Salisbury, took office.

Davitt now had to confront the thoroughly jingoist, racist and sectarian Unionist alliance. It would countenance no concession over Irish Home Rule, and revelled enthusiastically over every latest imperial exploit. This was the conservative unionist approach to maintaining British ruling class domination at home and abroad. It vehemently opposed the liberal unionist approach(3) with its support for home rule (devolution) for the constituent nations of the UK.

As New Imperialism increased its stranglehold on British politics, the Liberal Party, including many on its Radical wing, were drawn into its slipstream. A section of advanced Radicals, however, reacted against this and made the first tentative steps towards Socialism. Robert Cunningham-Graham and Keir Hardie were just two examples. However, many former Radicals (and Liberal Party members), who became Socialists, retained much of their earlier politics.

Furthermore, the Conservative Party, hitherto seen as a major impediment to any democratic advance, began to develop a Tory Democrat wing. Its supporters made appeals to the newly enfranchised workers. They were offered limited economic reforms in return for giving their support to British ruling class attempts to expand the Empire. Disraeli was one of the first to see the possibilities of harnessing the link between reform and Empire; but it was Randolph Churchill, who attempted to develop this further, by appealing directly to the working class. He also strongly linked expansion of the British Empire with the defence of the existing British Union. He looked to the local dignitary-led, Orange Order in Ulster, for inspiration in forming his pro-imperial, cross class alliance.

Many workers were drawn into Conservative Unionist and further Right populist organisations. They did hope to gain economically from the Empire, or to draw some psychological comfort by celebrating their racial or religious ‘superiority’. The growing number of wars directed against the peoples of the colonies took only a small number of British lives. The real cost was to come later, when the inevitable consequence of growing inter-imperialist competition led to the mass slaughter of the First World War. The leaders of the Conservative Unionists though, were then able to look with smug satisfaction as their Liberal, Irish constitutional nationalist, and some Labour and Socialist ‘opponents’, threw themselves into the promotion of the carnage.

However, back in the 1880’s, a few Tory Democrats, such as Henry Hyndman and Henry Champion, broke with the Conservative Party and became leading figures in the new Socialist movement. Like the former Radical Liberals, these individuals also retained aspects of their old politics, especially their lingering support for English/Anglo-Saxon/British supremacy and racism. Some of the clashes, which took place in the early Socialist movement, reflected this earlier division between Radical Liberals and Tory Democrats.

The infant Social Democratic Federation (SDF), formed in 1885, showed many of the characteristics which have plagued later attempts at Socialist agitation – whether to concentrate on direct action and socialist propaganda or to seek political office; and whether to seek constitutional change or economic reform. Failure to develop a coherent programme and an integrated strategy contributed to many of the setbacks and consequent splits amongst Socialists at the time, just as they continue to do today.

One of these breakaway organisations was the small but quite influential Socialist League (SL). It soon became divided between those who wanted to make propaganda for Socialism, and those, mainly in its affiliated Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL), who wanted to orientate upon trade union, crofter and cottar struggles.

However, it was the launching of the Irish Land War, in 1879, and the formation of the INLL, which had largely inspired the formation of the SDF, as former advanced Radicals turned to Socialism. They joined the wider struggle against those forces, both Conservative and Liberal, either aggressively advancing the Empire and defending the Union, or meekly bowing before this new onslaught.

The social struggle was closely linked to the political battle for greater Irish self-determination. Furthermore, as new Land Leagues were formed in Scotland and Wales, the demand for Home Rule was taken up in these nations too. The majority of the independent Crofter candidates of 1885, and the new Scottish Labour Party, formed in 1888, supported both Irish and Scottish Home Rule.

Many key individuals, from the land and labour struggles of the 1880’s, contributed to the massive wave of ‘New (Trade) Unionism’, which burst out in 1889. They faced a similar situation to that faced by socialists and trade unionists today. Only then, socialists were up against the politics of Lib-Labism. Trade union leaders were still tied to an earlier Radical Liberal vision of a Free Trade Empire and a ‘fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.

Today we are up against the politics of New Labour, with trade union leaders locked into ‘Social Partnership’. Sometimes these misleaders may still hanker back to the disappearing vision of the post-war, Welfare State Empire, when workers in the UK were looked after ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

Furthermore, prior to 1889, the vast majority of unskilled and casual workers lay outside the Old Unions. Today, union membership has shrunk back to a minority, mostly concentrated in the public sector. This has left vast numbers of private sector workers, particularly women, migrant and part-time workers unorganised.

Today, the majority of the British Left is tied to a Broad Left strategy of recapturing the ‘old’ unions by replacing their existing leaders with new Left leaders (many of whom are earlier Broad Left leaders!) In contrast, any contemporary ‘New Unionism’ would aim to thoroughly democratise existing unions and bring them under rank and file workers’ control; or, where necessary, build completely new unions to organise those workers now completely unorganised.

Nor is the Left nationalist notion of breakaway unions much use against the global corporations, which workers confront today. Yes, national (and sectoral) union sections need more autonomy, but unions should be as extensive as possible. The key issue is not the existence of union HQ flying a national flag (e.g. the tricolour or saltire), but the necessity for union sovereignty to reside with workers at the workplace level, not in the union HQs. The independent Scottish teachers’ union, the EIS, is one of the most fervent upholders of the embrace of government and employers, not so much in social partnership, more a morganatic marriage(4).

Today, some may take comfort from the fact that the majority of the British ruling class has opted for the liberal, and not the conservative unionist option, in order to maintain its rule over the UK, and its continued, albeit now indirect, influence over Ireland. New Labour promotes ‘Devolution-all-round’ (i.e. for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and the ‘Peace Process’ in Ireland, backed by the social partnerships of compliant trade union and demanding governments and employers.

Yet, the aims of today’s liberal unionists are the same as those of the conservative unionists of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They both want to create the best political environment for their principal class backers. Today this means allowing corporate capitalists to lower wages, attack working conditions and undermine pensions, through deregulation and privatisation. It means fawning before the requirements of finance capital.

The British ruling class may indeed have learned some political lessons from their one-time support for intransigent conservative unionism. When Conservative and Liberal Unionists tried to face down the rising demand for Irish Home Rule, in the 1880’s, ‘90s and first two decades of the twentieth century, this eventually proved to be a disastrous strategy for them. By 1922, direct rule over ‘the Twenty Six Counties’ had been ended, and the UK state had begun to break-up.

However, the post-1922 UK-Irish ‘settlement’, imposed after the threat of a renewed war on the Irish people, seemed so permanent, that this lesson appeared to be forgotten by the late 1960’s. This was when new national democratic movements confronted the British ruling class. Initially this ruling class did flirt with both liberal centralist(5) and devolution(6) measures to deal with these challenges, which coincided with major working class struggles. However, once the ruling class had reasserted its control, under the two post-1974 Labour governments, it returned to the old failed conservative unionist strategy of defence of the constitutional status quo, backed by threats and coercion. Meanwhile, anti-trade union laws soon tamed most union leaderships. The TUC and the Labour Party leaders left the miners isolated, when they defied these new laws. The NUM faced the full panoply of state power between 1984-5. The Labour/TUC’s acceptance of ‘New Realism’ was but the beginnings of the road back to the Lib-Lab ‘Old Unionism’ of the nineteenth century, and its complete acceptance of capitalist rule.

Thatcher’s British Unionist ‘No, No, No’ intransigence first began under Labour, in the late 70’s in Northern Ireland. The attempt by Labour Irish Secretary, Roy Mason, to criminalise any effective opposition had its parallels in Forster, Gladstone’s Liberal Irish Secretary, and his introduction of coercion to Ireland in 1881, long before Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Irish Secretary, ‘Bloody Balfour’ was given free rein in 1887.

The failure of the UK state to meet the constitutional and economic reform demands raised by the Civil Rights Movement in ‘the Six Counties’, produced another period of constitutional instability, lasting over a quarter of a century. An overt and determined republican challenge emerged within the UK’s frontiers. Thatcher’s later attempt to deny any political self-determination, for either Scotland or Wales, made the ‘National Question’ an even wider and more volatile political issue.

This is one reason why the majority of the British ruling class unceremoniously dumped Thatcher in 1990 and, under John Major’s government adopted The Downing Street Agreement. The Conservatives were now committed to a liberal unionist strategy to defend the Union. When this proved too limited to contain the wider challenge, the ruling class turned instead to New Labour’s policy of ‘Devolution-all-round’. This is, in effect, a return to the old nineteenth century Liberal Home Rule strategy.

However, as with the nineteenth century division between Conservatives and Liberals, there is little difference today in the real aims of the Tories and New Labour. Both are committed to maintaining a British imperial presence in the wider world. Both accept that the British ruling class can now only achieve this as a junior partner to US imperialism. This leads to continuous wars, attacks on civil rights, austerity welfare provision, and the scape-goating of migrant workers. There is now a tension between New Labour and the Tories’ liberal unionism and their increasingly conservative militaristic imperialism. And, under today’s prevailing political conditions it is the liberal unionism which is more likely to give.

New Labour soon falls back on the nastier traits, usually associated with conservative unionism and imperialism. Indeed, as international competition becomes more pronounced, in the wake of the current Credit Crunch and the deepening worldwide recession, New Labour is preparing the ground for even more jingoistic, racist and sectarian forces.

The Immigration Minister, Philip Woolas, has shown that it is not only conservatives, who will stoop to the gutter, when it comes to racist attacks to divert attention from the real causes of the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the rise of the BNP, and the continued presence of malevolent loyalist forces in ‘the Six Counties’, show that even more sinister forces are lurking not far below the surface in the UK. Events in Berlusconi’s Italy demonstrate that it is but a short step to government encouraged racist assaults and murders of migrants and ethnic minorities.

As we try to build a new socialist movement, an appreciation of the Left’s politics, between 1879 and 1895, provides us with useful insights. The Radicals were then the dominant force on the Left, from whom the infant socialist and labour movements inherited much of their politics. The Radicals wanted to return to the mid-century ‘glory days’ of free trade and international peace.

Today’s Left includes those ‘Marxist’ Radicals – the entrants and outriders of the British Labour Party – who hope to re-establish the welfare state and to prolong the long period since 1945 without a world war. This is often tied to their Broad Left strategy for reclaiming the trade unions for ‘real Labour’. However, just as the rise New Imperialism, at the end of the nineteenth century, spelled the end of the old international ‘free trade’ capitalist order, so the development of corporate capitalist imperialism today means that the post-1945 social democratic world has changed irrevocably. New answers and approaches are required.

‘Marxist’ Radicals in the SWP and Socialist Party(7), often defend the formation and continued existence of the UK as a ‘progressive’ achievement. They claim this historical gain needs to be defended against the attacks of the nationalists in Scotland and Wales, completely failing to see the wider democratic issues at stake. They take some consolation in the ‘Peace Process’ in ‘the Six Counties’, which appears, for the time being, to have reopened the road for ‘bread and butter’ issues, i.e. traditional labourist politics.

When ‘Marxist’ Radicals are forced to address the major democratic and constitutional issues, they tend to follow their nineteenth century Radical predecessors. They either see the ‘National Question’ as a diversion form the ‘real struggle’, or give support to liberal unionist options to defend the UK.

Some ‘Marxist’ Radicals go further, but still only end up tailing the more thoughtful sections of the British ruling class, when they call for more powers for the existing devolved assemblies. A few would go so far as to advocate a new federal arrangement between the constituent parts of the UK. This last ditch liberal option has a long pedigree, whenever the British union state is under threat from national democratic movements. Others, however, hide behind the formulation of support for the ‘right of national self-determination’. The political effect of this is to leave it to the various nationalist parties to take the lead formulating the politics of the national democratic movements.

By examining past history, we can see that the politics of those advocating various ‘British roads to socialism’ are but continuations of an older British Radical tradition, which dominated the Left in the UK, in the late nineteenth century. Radicals tended to leave the political initiative to the Liberal Party and their Irish nationalist allies. Today’s ‘Marxist’ Radicals also take their political lead over the UK constitution from the liberal wing of the British ruling class, or sometimes, if unwittingly, from the nationalist parties – Sinn Fein, SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Yet, between 1888 and 1894, an alternative tradition developed, which recognised some of the weaknesses of the ‘Marxist’ Radicals. The Scottish Socialist Federation (SSF) was formed, which brought together SDF and SL/SLLL members, as well as other socialists, to try and go beyond the politics of Radicalism and the subservience of Lib-Labism. In some respects the SSF anticipated the Scottish Socialist Alliance, (SSA) formed in 1996, in the aftermath of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle, along with the continued failure of the Labour Party to meet workers’ needs.

In the end, just as Davitt’s social republicanism collapsed into populist nationalism in Ireland, so the SSF, along with the Scottish Labour Party, it had backed, collapsed into the hybrid Radical/Tory Democrat tradition of ‘the British road to socialism’ found in the Independent Labour Party or the SDF. Today, after a major internal crisis, the SSA’s successor organisation, the Scottish Socialist Party, faces powerful pulls, in the form of Left nationalism and Left unionism.

By 1895, the limitations of Davitt’s politics had become quite apparent, as the British ruling class regained the political initiative and derailed the Home Rule challenge. Furthermore, Socialists, at the time, were unable to take the vigorous post-1889 New (Trade) Unionism challenge forward. It also went into retreat, taking on some of the characteristics of ‘Old Unionism’ once more. A new politics was needed to unite the political and economic wings of a wider working class movement.

However, it was within the SSF milieu that a real alternative began to emerge, in the figure of James Connolly. Like Davitt, he was a member of an Irish migrant family. Connolly’s family had settled in Edinburgh. He received his initial political training within the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. He was to make a quantum leap in his political approach, though, when he moved to Dublin and founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896.

Connolly developed the socialist republican politics needed to take Davitt’s social republican and radical ‘internationalism from below’ alliance on to a higher level, during the heyday of High Imperialism from 1895. Connolly’s consistent anti-unionism and anti-imperialism offered a clear strategy, which opposed both the Irish constitutional nationalism and the ‘British road to socialism’, which was supported by most of the British Left of his day. Instead, Connolly promoted a ‘break-up of the UK and British Empire road to socialism’.

In today’s world, imperialism still calls the shots. The continued existence of the UK provides the British ruling class with a powerful bastion of support. This unionist and monarchist state is fundamentally undemocratic. It gives the British ruling class a whole host of draconian Crown Powers to maintain its rule. Even the formally independent Irish Republic has to bow to British ruling class needs. This was highlighted by Irish leaders’ recent reluctant acceptance of the liabilities of UK-owned banks in Ireland. Nor did the Irish government get many thanks for their pioneering bank rescue plan to save domestic capitalism, much of which Brown and Darling so quickly copied and took credit for.

However, the current financial crisis has also highlighted the close links between leading Scottish nationalists and the British banks. In panic, they have quietly rushed into the arms of the UK government to develop a common approach to address shared capitalist concerns. Meanwhile, in public, the SNP and New Labour continue their political squabbles, jockeying for position to gain relative advantages for their particular capitalist backers.

British politicians, whether they are Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, continue to argue with SNP politicians over the extent of power to be awarded to the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. However, they all agree that the monarchy and the ruling class’s Crown Powers have to remain in place, that the Bank of England will control the economy through the continued use of sterling, and that suitable arrangements have to be made to accommodate NATO and to protect US imperial interests. All these parties are wedded to neo-liberalism and are in hock to corporate capital.

The nationalist parties represented in the various devolved assemblies, in Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, make no attempt to mount a joint challenge to continued British rule, or to the all pervading corporate capitalist power over these islands. Whilst Plaid Cymru leaders may be envious of the powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament, it is pretty clear that, if parity were to be achieved, this would merely signal their intention to compete more effectively for inward corporate investment. When Donald Trump threatened to abandon his golfing complex project in Aberdeenshire, in stepped the then DUP Minister, Ian Paisley Junior, to offer an alternative site on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland.

Just as Davitt and Connolly realised, in their day, that they faced the combined forces of British imperialism (whether it be Conservative or Liberal) and Irish nationalism (whether it be Parnell or his successors), so socialists face a similar combined opposition of Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem unionists and nationalists today. By studying our class’s history, we gain the advantages of hindsight. This is why we need to look once more to rebuild an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance of republican socialists in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.

Footnotes

• (1) ‘The Irish Revolution’ is the term given by Theodore Moody to describe the major period of social and political upheaval between 1879-82, initiated by the Irish National Land League and the ‘Land War’.
• (2) New Imperialism developed in Europe, the USA (and later Japan) in the 1870’s. This followed the defeats of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the overthrow of the Radical Reconstruction (the concerted state-backed attempt to bring about black emancipation in the USA, after the Civil War) by 1877.
• (3) Here, liberal unionism refers to one of the two overall approaches taken by the British ruling class to defend the Union. It is not to be confused with the Liberal Unionists, who were adherents of a conservative unionist strategy.
• (4) A morganatic marriage was an arrangement by which a king had a queen who was entitled to none of his property and whose children had no inheritance rights. In other words she only had the right to be screwed!
• (5) It was one of the ironies of history that Northern Ireland, ended up, in 1922, with the sole devolved parliament in the UK, in the form of Stormont, despite the Ulster Unionists’ earlier vehement opposition to Home Rule. This ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People’, far from being liberal in inspiration, more resembled the old reactionary, pre-1801, Irish Parliament, in its attempt to exclude Catholics (or Irish nationalists) from any share of power. Thus, the Conservatives’ closure of Stormont in 1972 and resort to Direct Rule was initially a very weak liberal centralising political measure. However, responsibility for much of this ‘direct rule’ was undertaken by the British armed and security forces, negating any liberal intentions.
• (6) The proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution enjoyed wider support, both from liberal unionists and constitutional nationalists. However, political support for a liberalised and reformed Stormont was much more narrowly based, and found primarily amongst constitutionalist nationalists.
• (7) Whilst the tradition of the Tory Democrats has virtually no remaining political purchase upon Socialists today in the UK today, it still perhaps enjoys a kind of afterlife in the Labour Unionism still found in the Socialist Party in ‘the Six Counties’. Here the SP has been known to flirt with plebian loyalism, particularly the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force.

Originally published in Emancipation & Liberation Issue 10, Summer 2005.

1. Israelis have the right to play on both sides of the court, whereas Palestinians can only play on their own side.
2. For security reasons, Palestinians do not have the right to pass the ball between players, the ball could hit an Israeli player.
3. There will be no basket on the Israeli side.
4. Israel is allowed to shoot at any time, even during time-outs.
5. Palestinians are not allowed to have supporters. Only Israelis should be supported.
6. Israel selects the press and what the press reports.
7. Israel encourages Palestinians to shoot into the Palestinian basket. Players who refuse will be nominated as terrorists and will not be allowed to play.
8. Palestinian players are allowed to leave the field but can not return. One exception: A Palestinian can be replaced by an Israeli.
9. Israel selects and instructs the referees, and tells them to look away.
10. Israel selects the captain of the Palestinian team.
11. Israeli faults and Palestinian good plays will not be shown on TV.
12. Israel takes the money sponsors pay to Palestinians.
13. Only Israeli players get refreshments.
14. Palestinians are required to play, when and where designated by Israel.
15. Rules only apply to Palestinians. Israelis may change the rules during the game and are not required to advice the Palestinians of the changes.

Written by Dror Feiler, an ex-Israeli para from kibbutz Yad Hanna, now living in Sweden. He is a member of European Jews for a Just Peace. Published in New Interventions, Volume 12, no.1, Spring 2005.

Originally published in Emancipation & Liberation Issue 8, Autumn 2004.

This wall between us slowly grows
slinking along the dusty earth
like some snake in the desert sands

Once in Jericho it fell down
by those who now do the building
the heirs of the trumpet blowers

Once Belshazzar saw the writing
on the wall, Daniel read the words
Mene, mene, tekel, parsin.

The days of your kingdom will end
for your acts have been found wanting
and your kingdom is divided

Jim Aitken

The Scottish Socialist Party site is carrying a report on the conference here.

As well as an overview of events there are some comments and feedback from attendees. These are reproduced below, visit the report on the conference for more details.

Brian Garvey, Fourthwrite, Independent Workers Union:

The space given to democratic discussion, the planning and facilitation of the event was impressive and I’m fairly confident that it was because people felt valued theat the exchanges were so constructive.

The honesty and will to learn from recent experience and experiences of others is a great example to us. So to is the acknowledgement that it requires our working alongside many other individuals and organisations to create a new society and on the bus home we talked of the inegrity and earnest of our Scottish friends and look forward to welcoming you to Ireland as we get things moving.

go raibh maith agat

Dan Finn, Irish Socialist Network:

Last Saturday’s conference in Edinburgh was an excellent day, well done to the SSP for organising it.

I learned a lot from the discussions as I’m sure everyone there did.

It was very encouraging to see left activists from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England who are all working towards similar goals and facing similar challenges come together to see where our work over-laps, what we can learn from eachother and how we can support each other’s efforts.

I hope this is just the beginning.

Statement from Greece, the posting of which was unfortunately delayed.

Tonight, at 9.30 (Greece time) a 15-16 year old boy was shot twice in the heart and was killed by a policeman in eksarxeia, a neighbourhood which is the basis of plenty left organisations and anarchists’ collectives.

A police car was patroling in Exarchia passing through Mesologgiou cobbled street (considered an alternative place with music, bars etc and lots of youth in the streets and an unofficial asylum for the police, so we can easily assume the police car was sent there to provoke and harass the youth). A few young people started shouting to the policemen to go away. There are a few reports that an empty bottle was thrown to the police car. The cops went out of the car provoking the youth by gestures and words. One policeman shot twice against a 15-16 year old boy, right on the heart, murdering him in cold blood. The name of the boy is Alexandros-Andreas Grigoropoulos. Anarchists (mostly), members of left organisations and residents gathered, but riot police forces circled the area.

The police tried to enter the hospital where the young boy was transferred, but the crowd did not allow it. There are hundreds of policemen in the streets around central Athens, while in every city a place is announced through the internet as meeting points. Left organisations have already organised a manifestation that will take place on Monday.

The mass media announced that a group of 50 anarchists attacked to a police car which was just protecting a building and that the policeman shot in order to defend himself. In the contrary, there were comrades that were there and said that the story is as I described it above.

This is an edited version of a speech by Yassamine Mather delivered to the September 7 London meeting of the Campaign for a Marxist Party

The month of September is known in the Iranian exile calendar as the month to commemorate one of the biggest mass executions of political prisoners in the Islamic republic’s period of power. This year is the 20th anniversary of the massacre in 1988. The figures are very inaccurate, but I think the government admits that probably 15,000 socialists, communists and some from the Mujahedin were killed in prison. This was ayatollah Khomeini taking his revenge on the Iranian left following his defeat in the war against Saddam Hussein.

These were not the only working class partisans killed in the prisons of the Islamic republic, of course: thousands had already been executed since 1980 and many more died in Kurdistan. What is sad about this is not just that so many thousands gave their lives for socialism and Marxism, but there have been very few lessons learned from this whole experience. The commemorations are now almost non-political events – for many doing their duty of paying respect to ‘martyrs’ is the only political activity they now engage in.

Amongst the thousands who died were those who belonged to the Fedayeen, of which I was a member. What I am going to try to do is give a brief history of the Fedayeen, their theory and ideas, and also my own experience in two main areas – in the Kurdistan branch and on the foreign committee, first as a candidate member and later as a member.

Origins

The Fedayeen’s origins go back to 1971, to a forest in the north of Iran, where militants took up arms, having taken over a gendarmerie. They were rebelling not just against the shah’s regime, but also against the Tudeh Party, the traditional ‘official’ communist party in Iran, whose name had become synonymous with compromise and betrayal. It goes without saying that the Soviet Union did not support the Iranian revolutionary movement against the shah, and the Tudeh Party followed the USSR’s line. It was for broad alliances and the peaceful road to socialism. So there was a rebellion against the Tudeh Party amongst the revolutionary youth.

However, to take up arms against the regime in such a way was suicidal, because it was inevitable that a large number of those who did so would be killed – 13 out of the 19 of what is called the original cell of the Fedayeen died in the fighting and a number of members and supporters were executed later.

The Fedayeen was formed through the merging of two groups on the Iranian left, both opposed to Tudeh. One was led by Massoud Ahmadzadeh, who came from a guerilla family and had become very much influenced by Maoism. His politics were a combination of Maoism and guerilla warfare. One of his closest allies was Amir-Parviz Pouyan, again someone influenced by 1968, Maoism and armed struggle. Ahmadzadeh’s book Armed struggle: both strategy and tactics (!) was for many years the bible of the Fedayeen. Amir-Parviz Pouyan also wrote a book called The necessity of armed struggle against the theory of survival. The ‘theory of survival’ referred to the line of the Tudeh Party, against which the Fedayeen were rebelling.

However, Ahmadzadeh also destroyed the illusion that the ‘national bourgeoisie’ could have a revolutionary or progressive role. Describing the democratic character of the revolution, he wrote: Struggle against imperialist domination – ie, world capitalism – has some elements of the struggle with capitalism and therefore some elements of the socialist revolution are born in this struggle. On the role of proletariat he wrote: The proletariat [in Iran] is numerically weak, but its special qualities and capabilities to organise are stronger than any other class.

Bijan Jazani was another leading figure. He came from a different tendency – the youth organisation of the Tudeh Party, but he rebelled against Tudeh and agreed to bring his small forces into the new organisation.

To summarise the politics which  influenced the Fedayeen in that original period, one could say that a unique version of guerrillaism and Maoism dominated, but there was also a very simplistic attitude of ‘anti-revisionism’, which did not have much theory behind it. The founders were against the changes represented by the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and adopted a line claiming to be independent of both Russia and China. However, they remained very much influenced by Stalinism.

In debates, for example, with Communist Unity, which was more of a middle-of-the-road student organisation, the Fedayeen were very clear on where they stood on the Soviet Union. Their position was that until 1962 the USSR was 65% good and 35% bad, which, I think, is a Maoist view. However, as China adopted the theory of social-imperialism, and later the ‘three worlds’ theory, the Fedayeen and other Iranian left-wing groups distanced themselves from Maoism.

The people who lost their lives in the 1971 operation had considerable effect on the youth and student movement in Iran. Not quite what Ahmadzadeh had predicted – that the small motor would make the large motor move and the whole country would rebel. But the student movement became very sympathetic to this new, emerging left and were influenced by it, as were many young workers.

1971-79 shaped the political thought of the generation which came to the Iranian revolution as leaders of the Fedayeen. So it is an important period. We are talking about an organisation that was mainly underground, preparing for armed warfare and organising the occasional bank robberies.

Its activities were sporadic – the Fedayeen killed a couple of American military personnel in Tehran and a number of the shah’s generals. There were losses, particularly because, as an armed organisation, members of the Fedayeen could simply be killed on the street. This denied the Fedayeen a mass base and endangered anyone who supported them, such as university students, because supporters were regarded as part of the armed movement by association. Around 370 leftwingers were executed in this period, of which 60% were Fedayeen.

Many Fedayeen spent this period in prison, where a debate developed over the organisation’s line. Jazani moved away from some of the original positions. For example, in his book United front against dictatorship Jazani was clearly rejecting earlier positions taken by Ahmadzadeh and Pouyan. However, in another book, Capitalism and revolution in Iran, Jazani provided a valuable analysis of the shah’s regime.

Jazani was killed in Evin prison in 1975. It is therefore difficult to assess whether some of the writings and ideas attributed to him were truly his own opinions. The people around him became leaders of the Fedayeen on their release from prison. By 1979 there was a mass revolutionary movement in Iran and members of the Fedayeen were released from prison, some of them during the February uprising, when people broke down the doors of the jails.

During this period the Fedayeen had become a real force among students and young people, gaining popularity as a result of its past actions (although some of it was actually populist myth). However, it was now very divided, with Jazani’s supporters following one political line and Ahmadzadeh supporters another.

There were two debates going on and one was over the armed struggle. Jazani supporters contended that the armed struggle line, as both strategy and tactic, was mistaken, and in that they were right, because it had separated the Fedayeen from its potential mass base. But, on the other hand, some Jazani supporters were now excusing Soviet foreign policy and saw a positive role for the ‘national bourgeoisie’. That was a different issue.

What was quite clear was that throughout this period there was very little done in terms of theoretical work. The book that everyone read and which gave them “everything”, according to one of the Fedayeen elders I know, was Lenin’s What is to be done? That was their bible. It gave the Fedayeen their stance against sectarianism, economism, syndicalism and anarchism – their whole analysis was based on it. But they did not necessarily understand it properly, especially given the problematic translation into Farsi by the USSR Academy of Sciences, which emphasises centralism over democracy.

Throughout this period the Fedayeen had failed to make any headway in the working class or in Iranian society as a whole. In the universities, however, they had a great deal of support, as became obvious at the time of the revolution. Among the intellectuals – especially the poets, including some of the most famous – there was an amazing amount of praise for the Fedayeen. One thing is clear, though – they had no strategy about what to do, now that the revolutionary situation had arrived. That was the problem of February 1979.

While the clergy used the period of economic crisis (1974-79) to build their base, to make propaganda, taking advantage of their position in the mosque to organise and mobilise, the Fedayeen in prison were still debating in very abstract terms such questions as the united front against the dictatorship. In addition, the shah was far more lenient towards the religious groups than he was towards the left, for whom building a mass organisation was much more difficult. They attempted to go to the factories, but all they could do was distribute leaflets and then disappear.

It is not, therefore, a question of the February revolution being hijacked: more the fact that the left was simply not prepared for it. In a way it is a good job that the left did not come to power, because it had no plans, no politics, no strategy and definitely no theory about what to do.

The oil workers were crucial in the February revolution. It was their strikes that broke the back of the shah’s regime. The Fedayeen had some influence among them, but they were hampered by their lack of experience of working with the class. There was no plan about what to do with the strike, how to move it forward. Inevitably, the Tudeh Party, which did have a base in the working class, was better represented among the oil workers.

Nevertheless, the first rally called by the Fedayeen in Tehran in 1979 after the overthrow of the shah attracted 500,000 people. Despite reservations, they stood in the elections to what was a sort of constituent assembly and got a couple of million votes.

Splits

The splits in the Fedayeen started in 1979 and are still going on. I will not bore you with all the details, but the main ones should be mentioned. The first, immediately after the leaders’ release from prison, was between the supporters of armed struggle and those who said that armed struggle could not be both a strategy and a tactic, and that clearly it could not work.

The problem was that the myths surrounding Fedayeen guerilla struggle did influence the uprising of 1979. On the other hand, many Fedayeen were becoming aware of their organisation’s weaknesses – not least its total divorce from the mass movement.

The supporters of the armed struggle as tactic and strategy were in a small minority, but survived and still survive. To this day their slogan is: The shah was the running dog of imperialism and so is the Islamic republic. No theory, no analysis, but they still exist.

The main division, however, obviously came with the Minority-Majority split, revolving around the analysis of not only the Islamic republic, but a whole set of issues, such as the nature of the current era. The Majority held that it was one of imperialism versus socialism, as represented by the USA and the USSR. On Iran’s regime, they said that, although it was Islamic, the government was objectively moving Iran towards the socialist camp and therefore should be supported. The main questions in the Minority-Majority split concerned the nature of the Iranian government: was it progressive or counter-revolutionary?

The Majority consisted of those who claimed to have been close to Bijan Jazani in prison. They were called Fedayeen Majority only because they constituted a majority on the central committee, although it soon became clear that they did not have majority support in the country. They considered the regime as anti-imperialist and gave it at first conditional and later full support.

Things became much more tense after the spring of 1979, with the government strengthening itself and being in a position to impose repression on opposition forces. For that reason we see a number of specific events, not least the takeover of the US embassy by students. This was hailed by the Fedayeen Majority and most of the left outside Iran as an anti-imperialist act, but was seen by the radical left in Iran as a deliberate diversion to stop the wave of political strikes and opposition to the islamic regime.

It was this event that really brought the arguments within the Iranian left to a head. The Minority had walked out of the CC, but drew in support from thousands of left-wing students and youth who did not want to follow the islamic republic into the abyss. But it was also true that the Fedayeen Majority retained some support among the working class.

The embassy incident was also significant in that the government declared that anyone who did not support it must be a counter-revolutionary or a CIA agent. Counter-revolutionaries could be arrested and even executed – a situation that intensified once the Iran-Iraq war, which the government portrayed as a war against imperialism, started. Some on the left, including the Fedayeen Minority, adopted the line, originally put forward by ‘line three’ Maoists, that the Iran-Iraq war was a reactionary war.

That meant you could now be arrested for being a member of the Fedayeen Minority – you were part of the US aggression against Iran, you were a traitor and you could easily be killed. By contrast at this time the Fedayeen Majority might be invited into ayatollah Rafsanjani’s office for consultations over the organisation of this or that event. Obviously by this stage we are talking about revolution and counter-revolution.

Both the Majority and the Tudeh Party definitely supported the government in repressing the rest of the left. By now the Majority was totally following the Moscow line and was very close to the Tudeh Party. The Minority was telling workers that, while we defend Iran, we also have to fight the regime. But the Majority was saying, ‘Produce more – there is an anti-imperialist war and a war economy, and Iran is moving towards the socialist camp.’ Let me also say that Iranian Trotskyist groups were divided along very similar lines.

From this point on we are talking about two very different organisations. The Majority was able to operate openly until at least 1984, with offices in Tehran until 1982-83. The Minority, on the other hand, was considered a proscribed organisation, with their houses raided and a lot of deaths in those first two years.

The first congress of the Fedayeen Minority shows the diversity of forces that had taken a united position against the Fedayeen Majority. For example, there was another split in this congress, with those in favour of joining the Mujahedin in the National Council of Resistance leaving. There was also a Trotskyist Tendency and debates about entrism.

Apart from these political difficulties, it was a bad time generally for the Fedayeen Minority. Its secret printing press was raided by the government and a lot of people were killed. Political debate became confused with security issues and formed a terrible backdrop for what I would call militarism and centralism within the Fedayeen – some of the blame was put unjustly on the Trotskyist Tendency. This marked the beginning of what I call total centralism in the Fedayeen Minority – a complete disregard for democracy by people who were preserving the organisation for the sake of preserving the organisation.

The whole ideology of the Fedayeen had always been dominated by talk of professional revolutionaries, heroes, the elite – dedicated people who have no other life, no other concern (and never meet anybody else either, because they might become ‘confused’ and do something that is not in the interests of the organisation). My personal experience of the Fedayeen began at that time, in the middle of this difficult period. But for all its faults, the Fedayeen Minority remained for many years the main left organisation opposing the islamic republic.

The Majority also suffered when a CIA plant in the Soviet embassy in Tehran gave the names of many Tudeh Party members to the islamic government. Many leading members of the Majority were arrested too. It was the beginning of the end for those two organisations inside Iran – now what remains of them survive in exile. The workers who had illusions in the Majority had by then given up. By 1982 leading oil workers, who had gone with the Majority or Tudeh in the period of debate over whether the government was revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, had left these organisations.

Kurdistan base

As for the Fedayeen Minority, we were forced to move most of our leading members to Kurdistan. The central committee kept one person in Tehran and ironically, as a woman, she could not be recognised by the regime. Although the government posted her photo on every lamppost, showing her without a headscarf, in real life she was totally covered up! She managed to produce a left-wing paper in the middle of Tehran until 1985. Despite the fact that the paper featured mass work among the class more prominently, the image of the heroic guerrillas persisted as a strong element among certain figures in the Fedayeen Minority.

So basically the organisation as a whole moved to Kurdistan, leaving some key figures in various cities – people who had not been involved in the various security scares. Kurdistan was both a good and a bad time for the Fedayeen. It was a safer place than Iranian cities, but here was a Marxist organisation forced to work in the countryside amongst the peasantry, who hardly wanted to build socialism and to whom Fedayeen ideas were quite alien.

They were hospitable towards us, although I suspect this resulted from their hostility to the regime based on Kurdish nationalism rather than any understanding of what the Fedayeen actually stood for. Quite clearly they were not religious in the way that the Islamic republic was, and that is true of the peasantry all over Iran – they have their own ways of expressing their religion. I felt we were a bit like aliens there, especially we women Fedayeen, who wore men’s clothes and carried a gun. The peasant women did not really take to us and the peasant men thought us very strange.

In Kurdistan the organisation needed a lot of backbone to survive the real serious hardship. The winters were terribly cold and the summers very dry. Later, as the government mounted its offensive against us, we had to move from bases in villages to more mountainous areas, where the people were much more tribal and there was no real village.

I think the beginning of corruption within the Fedayeen Minority came during the Kurdish period, when everyone had pragmatic reasons for demanding the right of passage from Iraq. The way many of us travelled to Kurdistan originally was via the southern part of Turkey. In winter it was hell – cold, mountainous, terribly dangerous – and, of course, there was a much easier way through Iraq. All the political organisations of the Iranian left, not just the Fedayeen Minority, agreed to accept right of passage from Iraq – at a cost.

Later on there came the idea that in order to feed and clothe people it was necessary to accept financial aid, including from dubious sources. The Fedayeen were amongst the last to accept such aid, but it began in Kurdistan. So an organisation based on such high principles, whose heroes were supposed to be beyond criticism in the way they behaved, took the first small step of accepting money from Iraq, and so it went on. Today some organisations on the Iranian left see no contradiction in accepting US ‘regime change’ funds or money from certain Israeli institutions (I assume on the basis that the end justifies the means).

Debate in our Kurdish base was very limited. It was not that there was no debate at all, but most people had to ask questions in writing. As the situation became more difficult, the central committee became even more centralised, so that dissent from the political line was seen as equivalent to treachery. Dissidents were not expelled, but were treated less favourably.

For example, four months after a congress, we found out about a pamphlet written by the Trotskyist Tendency – but only thanks to a superficial book, Leninism or Trotskyism, written by a central committee member, who denounced the tendency mainly through insults. The book made a wonderful U-turn regarding one of the Fedayeen’s long-standing positions: “In a future revolutionary Iran the Soviet Union will help us build heavy industries in order to achieve socialism.”

When in a written question some of us asked the author what the difference was between this and the Tudeh Party’s ‘non-capitalist road to development’ – the line that our founders had rebelled against – his comment was: “We are not treacherous like Tudeh”! Of course, the majority of members did not share his opinions, but we were never given the chance of debating such issues or holding another congress.

Another corrupting influence was the interference of Jalal Talebani’s group in Kurdistan – Talebani is now president of Iraq, of course. His group was one of those that controlled not just Iranian Kurdistan, but bordering areas in Turkish Kurdistan and part of Iraqi Kurdistan. There is a place known as the ‘valley of the parties’, between Iran, Iraq and Turkey. With high mountains on all sides, it was a safe place to locate your base, training schools, radio stations and so on.

Talebani’s group was dominant there. He had already moved well beyond anything to do with the left and this was more than 25 years ago. He was a bourgeois politician with a tribal, feudal background even then. He would meddle in the affairs of political groups, supporting one faction of this or that group against its central committee. The whole situation was pretty bad.

However, amongst the positives was the fact that people who wanted to fight the government arrived in numbers in Kurdistan. They had no history of involvement with the Fedayeen, no theoretical background, but unfortunately there was no real attempt to give them a political education. Most members and cadres only read the works of Lenin or of ‘martyred’ Fedayeen comrades.

One of the worst events was the battle for control of the Fedayeen radio station. Ordinary members wanted a congress and the central committee refused to organise it, because it knew it would lose power. It had co-opted members who agreed with its line and there were many complaints about lack of democracy. The political line of the people who attacked the radio station in order to take control of it from the central committee was pretty dodgy and they moved gradually further to the right as time went by (now they are in discussions to rejoin the Fedayeen Majority, which gives you some indication of their trajectory even then).

However, the central committee delayed the congress and stopped everybody having a proper discussion about our strategy and tactics, and our current political theory. Where did we stand now? We were no longer guerrilaist or Maoist and the Trotskyist Tendency had been expelled. Clearly some in the central committee did not see anything wrong with the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. But none of this was discussed. This situation threw into relief the political decline of the Fedayeen Minority.

Even with all these disasters in Kurdistan, even with the fact that the Fedayeen had not managed to gain much support inside Iran, they remained a very powerful force outside the country. When I was sent to the foreign committee in 1984, we had about 1,000 supporters in the US and around 100 in several European countries.

These supporters were doing a lot of work for the Fedayeen – fund-raising, publicity, producing their own publications, including a student journal. But Fedayeen membership was totally different. Remember, this was an organisation of professional revolutionaries, and because recruitment had slowed to perhaps one a year and many had died, there were probably only around 40 Fedayeen Minority members left, compared with 60 at the first congress.

Supporters had few rights. They could elect their own representatives, but these representatives had no influence on the organisation. At the end of the 20th century this model – a body of professional revolutionaries aided by supporters – was alien to most people, but we still kept it.
Most importantly, the Fedayeen still worked on a ‘need to know’ basis, so supporters had a distorted view of both the theory and practice of the organisation. It was very hard to do much to change this, because members like myself were not allowed to divulge any secrets.

There was very little serious political discussion in the foreign committee. If in Kurdistan there was the excuse that we were fighting a war and did not want the enemy to take prisoners who knew too much and so on, in Europe that argument was really redundant.

Most of us were given so much to do and were literally so exhausted that we could not even read or study properly. It was not unusual to be sent to another continent at a few hours’ notice, so it was really a very disruptive time.

Many of us by 1985-86 had come to the conclusion that we just could not work effectively, but you cannot just leave such an organisation. I resigned three times and was told each time that my resignation was not accepted! The central committee discussed my resignation and threw it in the bin. Eventually I just stopped working and went into hiding.

Lessons

What are the main lessons? First of all, one has to remember that it is easy to criticise all of this in retrospect, just as it is easy to underestimate the repression of the shah and the islamic republic. The influence that the Fedayeen had in the birth of the new left and on the Iranian revolution is historic and cannot be taken away, though a very heavy price was paid for it.

But there were many mistakes – militarism, Stalinism, centralism, the culture of the heroic guerilla and the professional revolutionary. As the organisation disintegrated, not surprisingly heroes suddenly became villains in the eyes of many supporters.

A lesson that I personally learnt is that without debate, without democracy, without the ability to discuss every aspect of theory, your organisation will end up as a sect rather than a serious force capable of leading a revolution. I have also come to the conclusion that the end does not just justify the means. I know some people think I am very dogmatic and uncompromising, but my experience with the Fedayeen has made me very vigilant about the betrayal of principles. We started by being pragmatic on minor things and ended up compromising on very big issues.

At the end of my stay in Kurdistan I was in a base with about 40 people and, apart from one other person, I am the only survivor. That gives me a responsibility. I just cannot give up politics, because, whatever you think of the Fedayeen’s various leaders, the 38 people who died in that base were all Marxists; they all believed in and wanted to achieve socialism, though they knew they would not see it in their lifetime. Tens of thousands of Fedayeen died.

Our task is to ensure that their lives were not lost in vain.