Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 19:47:56 +0100
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-G: Ireland Agreement Delivered


[This post is 9K in on my check out queue]


Dear Gerry, 

Thank you for your clear but polite criticism of my piece on the Ulster
agreement. Although on political position I am bound to see you as
sectarian in your application of marxism, and you are bound to see me as
reformist, I think it is good to spell out the issues in the context of
this important current issue, and where there are differences, and where
there are points of unity. Incidentally in this spirit it is relevant for
the talk elsewhere on this list about co-operation, that you took up the
issues that Sid and I contributed  about the plunder of the patent on
Basmati rice.


Now your criticism on Ireland I would say comes from a characteristic
political approach that tries to look for a pure form of Marxism, and has
difficulty applying it the concrete situation. 

I agree with you however that there is a similarity with South Africa and
Palestine. Indeed Arafat has just welcomed the agreement and expressed the
desire that something like it can occur in the middle east. 

I think you lack a dialectical analysis of the situation. Yes these
conflict resolution intiatives are imperialist initiatives designed to
stengthen imperialist and capitalist control. But that does not mean that
they are always opposed to the interests of the people. Lenin as well as
Marx and Engels argued for a concrete analysis of concrete conditions and
pointed out that there may be times when the working class and working
people may support the big bourgeoisie against the small bourgeoisie. 

On this point there are parallels between South Africa and Northern
Ireland. The Anti-Apartheid settlement came with the overthrow of the
hegemony of the small and middling Afrikaner bourgeoisie. The current
settlement in Ulster is an overdue consequence of the decline of local
Unionist capitalism. 

"In fact there will be no peace in Northern Ireland". 

This is at best rhetorical rather than analytical. Of course there is never
any peace in the sense that all classes and strata of society are in
perpetual conflict. But the question is whether in return for some
concessions of a limited nature, the mainstream Republican movement will
give up the armed struggle. They will.

Yes there will be armed actions by a smaller number of Republicans and
Loyalists, but the secrurity forces will be focussing intensively on them
now, and their political base will be undermined. The substantial flow of
funds from the USA through Noraid is likely to be greatly reduced, although
it is inevitable that some will continue to more resolute Republican groups.


You accuse that Sinn Fein will be coopted to police inequality in the
Nationalist community. Well we shall see. What was striking last year was
how extensive Sinn Fein's roots and links with street protest were. As the
Marching Season comes up we shall find out whether their role is purely
passive. They may negotiate to end all provocative triumphalist marches,
but who are we to assume from England that they will not work vigorously
and effectively with the local community to resist what Loyalist
provocations do occur. Your assumption that the message will be "Croppy Lie
Down" is a hostage to fortune, and not very respectful to the nationalist
community. Indeed the speculation is that Sinn Fein may displace the SDLP
as the leading party of the nationalist community in the north and no
courtesies by Gerry Adams to John Hume should disguise that possibility.

You seem to be assuming that it is unmarxist to negotiate with an enemy
especially when you cannot defeat that enemy. It is not, and negotiation by
no means implies surrender.

Concerning inequality, details have to be seen in practice, but the
proportional representation nature of the proposed Assembly and the
weighted vote arrangements for major decisions are designed to enable
Trimble to be the first prime minister, but to oblige him to govern with
the politics of consensus. That is potentially very different from the
Loyalist almost fascist little statelet that was Ulster. Of course
inequalities will remain but there is a shift in power about how to deal
with them.

Was the armed struggle a dead end? Well it wasn't at the time of the Easter
Rising 1916, which Lenin argued was no putsch, and was vindicated by
subsequent events. It was not when the American colonists took up arms
against English rule in the 18th century. It was not when the ANC took up
armed struggle side by side with political struggle against apartheid. But
the cross border campaign of the late 50's and early 60's against border
posts was a dead end. And Sinn Fein's own analysis is that the balance of
forces has allowed it to push the armed struggle only to the point that
neither it nor the British army can win.

Your other comments seem to me to be schematic. A reference to Permanent
Revolution, a reference to a presumably pure working class leadership,
which exist in pure form only in abstraction, and a fusion of the class
struggle and the national struggle that does not differentiate and clarify
the inter-relation of the two. 

The reference to 1934 sounds concrete but it is actually a retreat from a
concrete analysis of the concrete situation now. I looked the date up in TA
Jackson's "Ireland Her Own":

"Former members of Saor Eire in 1934 joined with the Communists and left
sections of the Labour Party ... to found the Republican Congress. A number
of their leaders resigned from the IRA which then denounced them as
traitors and offered physical violence rather than have them march with
them at demonstrations. The IRA came to be dominated by its right wing for
the greater part of three decades."

If you are claiming that the historical stage and the balance of forces in
Ireland is actually favourable to the succesful completion of the national
political struggle as a political struggle (and not as a process of
unification by the insidious workings of the differential birth rate), then
how would comrades sharing your position but based in Ireland, regroup and
and avoid getting isolated from the great mass of the working people, and
show how the national struggle could *openly* be carried forward as a
political struggle? (Because without a political movement it is not
possible to sustain a military one even if a military one is "right"). 

We will see whether Gerry Adams gives a more ringing statement at the
coming Ard Fheis  than he gave yesterday. But Bernadette McAliskey, (the
former MP Bernadette Devlin of course) and known to be opposed to Sinn
Fein's peace strategy) said cryptically yesterday "If you want to know how
this conflict affected me, ask me when it's over. That's my only comment."

I am not replying to try to hit you over the head or to convince you to
change you opinions, which is unlikely, and I would not look to a long
polemic, but I suggest your stated position allows you to publish an
agitational or a polemical article in a small paper of limited circulation
convincing enough to maintain the recruiting to a small group. But to break
out of being confined to small purist groups, good merely at saying what is
wrong, marxism needs a more concrete and convincing analysis of the whole
balance of forces in a way that is relevant to the great majority of the
population.

At the moment such an analysis confirms the reasons why it will be
progressive for the great majority of people of Ireland if they can
cooperate with one another without being divided by the politics of
coercion. That is the most progressive basis for tackling the control of
their lives by capital, and the achievement of unity within the island of
Ireland, on the basis of the ending of oppression of any group.

I am sure I will not have convinced you, but perhaps I will have stimulated
you to sharpen the way you express this in discussion with comrades of your
own group.



Chris Burford

London [a large imperialist city on the largest of a group of islands
separated on the north west from the continent of Eurasia by a channel of
sea, with a long history of oppressing and exploiting the people of the
second largest of this group of islands,  for which group of islands I know
no name, that is neutral from the stains of this cruel and shameful history.]





     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---