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The Test of Ireland
But it is not necessary to wait for the truth about Comrade Graham’s death to draw some conclusions about the way the IMG and its European cothinkers responded to this tragic incident.
After recalling Peter Graham’s life as a revolutionist, Comrade Tariq Ali issued a warning: ‘At present we do not know what criminal brute shot Peter Graham to death; but we will find out; and when we do we have ways of dealing with this type of individual.’
An investigation is now ih progress, but as Saor Eire declared (cf. Rouge, no. 126), any investigation must be directed at the offices of the Special Branch (political police) in Dublin. (Rouge, November 6, 1971)
Comrade Ali’s solemn warning could not fail to make the headlines. This was particularly true since the Dublin papers were giving sensational coverage to the Graham killing, treating it as a mysterious gang war among the republican and far-left fringe.
Comrade Ali’s threats were made even more newsworthy by an article in the independent left-liberal news weekly This Week by Sean Boyne.
The Dublin Trotskyist leader Peter Graham (26) may have been murdered in the middle of a gun-running operation. Informed sources in both Dublin and London link him with a plan to smuggle guns through the 26 Counties for the IRA war against British troops in the North.
Graham would have been in a key position for any such operation. He was the Irish representative of the Fourth International, an influential pro-IRA Trotskyist organisation with a world-wide network of branches and previous gun-running experience. He had very close contacts with Saor Eire almost since its inception. He was reported to have had access to large sums of money and he was held in very high esteem by important members of the Provisional IRA.
There is no evidence that the Fourth International has been involved in gun-running to Ireland. But through the organisation he would have been able to make valuable contacts abroad. The Fourth International in recent years has supplied arms for the rebellions in Cuba, Algeria and Hungary, and it has now decided on a policy of ‘maximum support’ for the IRA.
But even if Graham had been running arms, and there is no conclusive proof for this, who should want to kill him? His close associates in Dublin have ruled out the possibility that he was sentenced to death as an informer by Saor Eire or any Republican organisation.
’Peter Graham was no informer and he was most security conscious,’ said Tariq Ali, sentiments which were echoed by all who knew the dead man. The Young Socialists have however recalled some allegations made some weeks ago by Saor Eire that ‘murder squads’ had been formed among right-wing gardai [police] and Special Branch men. And a London-based friend of Graham’s has mentioned the possibility of a move by British Intelligence to thwart a Trotskyist intervention in the Northern Ireland situation.
But there is also a theory that the shooting may have been ordered by some rival bank-robbing group to Saor Eire which for some reason wanted to teach the ‘Trots’ a lesson. It may be significant that Saor Eire men have stated in recent weeks that they were not responsible for every bank raid carried out in the 26 Counties.
One thing is certain. Whoever was responsible for the murder is in a rather delicate position. As one London Trotskyist said ominously: ‘There is an awful lot of anger about the shooting of Peter Graham.’
Boyne’s version of Comrade Ali’s remark was: “We have our own ways of dealing with such people.”
There is unfortunately no doubt that the IMG appreciated this kind of publicity, with all its exciting suggestions that the Fourth International was engaged in international gun-running and had its “own ways of dealing” with assassins. Comrade Ali in fact protested because Intercontinental Press did not reprint this flattering article in full.
In fact, one organ of a section supporting the IEC Majority Tendency seemed really to strain itself to present the situation of the Irish Trotskyists in the most heroic light:
In difficult conditions after the cowardly assassination of Peter Graham and the mysterious death in January 1972 of Mairin Keegan, another leader of the RMG, our comrades of the Irish section are assuming an enormous task. They have to offer real support to the two branches of the republican movement (the Official and Provisional IRA), to develop Marxist analyses of the Irish question, and above all to coordinate the struggles in the North as well as the South because they alone of all the revolutionary organizations have a base both in Ulster and the Republic. (Rouge, June 3, 1972)
Tragic as Comrade Keegan’s death was, it was not unexplainable. She died of a long illness. She was, however, a member of Saor Eire, as a member of the RMG pointed out at a memorial meeting held for her in London.
She was not simply an armchair Marxist, she allied theory to action. In May 1968 in Paris she took part in the struggle of the workers and students which has opened the new era of working class revolution. And in 1969, back in Ireland, as a member of the Dublin Citizens Committee and more importantly Saor Eire, she gave aid to the national revolution that has been developing in Northern Ireland ...
I might conclude by wishing a long life to the FI [Fourth International] but this would be contrary to that body’s aims. It wants world revolution and the world includes Ireland as soon as possible. So I prophesy a short and successful life to the FI and to Saor Eire. Let our enemies which are those of the working class beware. We are only beginning. [The Red Mole, January 24, 1972]
The dangers that this kind of romantic rodomontade by the supporters of the IEC Majority Tendency represent for the entire International are only too obvious. From the standpoint of revolutionary morality, moreover, it was extremely dubious. It did not honor Graham’s sacrifice but exploited it, threatening to build a farcical tissue of romantic pretensions around this death that could only discredit the Irish Trotskyists.
At the same time, this type of boastfulness and lurid imagining had a powerful momentum. For many months after the death of Comrade Graham, adventurist fantasies tended to dominate the discussions in the RMG. This was particularly noticeable in the conference of February 1972. The representative of the IMG, Comrade Lawless, to his credit, stopped this trend at one point in the discussion as it reached a dangerous point. (As for the representative of the International leadership, he was apparently not disturbed by it and in fact was anxious to reassure me when I showed signs, no doubt, of getting rather agitated.) However, it is clear from the line of The Red Mole and the IMG speaker at Comrade Graham’s funeral that the British organization and the International leadership encouraged precisely this sort of thing. It is fortunate that Comrade Lawless decided to retreat from the logic of their adventurist line. One wonders what the IMG would have done if this kind of talk had resulted in an actual adventure and victimizations. Would they have sent a commando team to “avenge” the Irish comrades? It is much more likely that a few more martyrs would have been exploited to add to the luster of the “revolutionary pole of attraction.”
Once the illusions about an “armed wing” of the RMG faded, however, the question arose of how the organization could be built on the basis of the political conceptions and attitudes it derived from the IMG and via it from the IEC Majority Tendency. Could the RMG capture the leadership of one or both of the republican groups, according to the schema laid out in one of The Red Mole’s strategy articles? If “armed struggle” was “the key,” as The Red Mole claimed, what role did a small political nucleus have to play? Could it offer material aid or military expertise? Obviously not. Could it interest the republican organizations in its ideas? It would have a hard time interesting the Officials in the concept that “armed struggle” was “the key,” since their leadership was moving away from the old physical force theories toward a kind of orientation to the masses, that is, moving toward the more “developed socialist groups” which, according to the Saor Eire manifesto, were further from the correct approach than the old-style republicans. In fact, this guerrillaist conception and the irresponsible sabre-rattling that followed Comrade Graham’s death were exactly the kind of thing that would convince the Official leadership that the RMG was not to be taken seriously.
Could the RMG interest the Provisionals in their ideas, since after all this group also believed that “armed struggle” was “the key”? The Provisionals clearly had a need for political theoreticians to explain their practices and to provide some sort of consistent ideology. In particular, in dealing with radical journalists and foreign radical groups well disposed to the struggle in Ireland, leftwing spokesmen could prove very useful. Even a small left group could prove useful in carrying out pilot demonstrations and certain types of legal activity. The weakness of the Provisionals’ “political wing” would make such groups all the more useful, and the absence of intellectuals in the organization has been a severe problem.
One small left group, People’s Democracy, led by Michael Farrell, had some success in working with the Provisionals. However, because of its ultra-leftist conceptions this group found itself simply rationalizing the adventurism and guerrillaism of backward republicans. Some of their members were absorbed outright by the Provisionals, their ultra-leftism fitting in quite well with the abstract moralism and “physical force” ideology of the old-style republicans. Others remained in PD but became less and less distinguishable from apolitical Provisionals.
As the Provisionals have become increasingly isolated and under fiercer and fiercer attack from the Irish and American governments, they do seem to be taking more interest in socialist and radical groups and in radical ideas. It is unlikely, however, that any small socialist nucleus can politically transform the Provisionals without combating the notion that revolutionary activity equals “physical force,” or that “armed struggle” is “the key,” which has prevented republicans for more than a century from seeing the necessity of developing a consistent social philosophy and political practice. That is, any group that wants to challenge the Provisionals would have to challenge their central conceptions, not rationalize them. Otherwise, these socialists, whatever Marxist veneer they succeeded in putting on their statements, would essentially be absorbed into republicanism rather than win the republicans to socialism.
How then has the training received by the RMG from the IMG equipped them to build a Trotskyist party in Ireland? The first and most obvious observation is that they could only be miseducated by the IMG’s adaptationism. You cannot win people to your ideas by adapting to theirs. It is important in particular for a small group that has not yet proved itself in action to strive to understand the attitudes and conceptions of the larger forces that are actually in the leadership of important struggles and to seek points of convergence that can serve to initiate a dialogue. But, at the same time, it is equally important for such a small group not to fuzz over political differences or confine itself to “critical” praise. It must make clear what it has to offer, centering its limited resources on highlighting its specific political message. It is clear, moreover, that although it has been seriously hampered in its work by the miseducation it has received from the IMG, the RMG does have vital contributions to make to the Irish revolution. In the first place, the arsenal of Trotskyism is available to it.
Furthermore, despite its handicaps, the RMG already has a number of basic achievements to its credit It is the only group in Ireland that has been able to apply the theory of the permanent revolution to Irish conditions. It is the only group on the scene that has been able to advance in theoretical understanding of the socialist dynamic of the national struggle in Ireland. Consistent with this, it is the only group that has been able to understand the revolutionary dynamic of the feminist movement in Irish conditions in particular. It is the only group that has shown a potential to offer a perspective to the very young generation of Irish revolutionists in the secondary schools, the youth who have formed the backbone of the struggle in the North in particular and whose aspirations have been most brutally thwarted by the failure of the national revolution in Ireland. These youth especially have been badly let down by the big militant nationalist organizations. The Officials, on the one hand, have tried to subject them to paternalistic tutelage. The Provisionals, on the other, have used them as cannon fodder in their adventurist policies without offering them the opportunity for political development or for participating in a democratic decision-making process.
The fact that the RMG has achieved as much as it has is, in view of the difficult circumstances in which the Irish Trotskyists have found themselves, an extremely hopeful sign. In the first place, the reputation of Trotskyism among the vanguard in Ireland is a bad one. It is associated with irresponsible adventurism and abstract dogmatism, with the most vulgar forms of left opportunism, unprincipled intrigue, and sectarian cliquism. In particular, groups claiming to be Trotskyist are widely regarded as artificial extensions of English sects. Unfortunately, the history of the various groups that have claimed to be Trotskyist offers an empirical basis for such feelings. The leadership of the RMG had to begin their political lives with a bitter fight against a hardened sectarian clique that denied the revolutionary dynamic of the national struggle. They had to struggle against older and talented leaders who miseducated and failed them. They have had to build their organization in an atmosphere poisoned by the fantastic and ridiculous pretensions of a variety of “Trotskyist” sects that offer a dismal contrast to the hard struggle and sacrifices of the militant nationalist fighters in the North. Nevertheless, the RMG leaders have shown a stubborn faith in Trotskyism and have continued their activity in difficult conditions and over a long period of little gains.
But the greatest difficulty that the RMG has had to face since its inception and which it has not yet overcome has been the miseducation it received from the IMG and the IEC Majority Tendency. After their experience with the sterility of Healyite sectarianism, it was natural for the Irish Trotskyists to look with hope to the nearest sections of the Fourth International and to the prestigious theoreticians of Western Europe. In particular, the IMG seemed capable of offering effective theoretical aid because it alone of all the British groups claiming to be Trotskyist showed an ability to understand the dynamic of the national struggle.
However, at the same time as they learned some vitally important lessons from the IMG, the RMG absorbed the politics of adaptation represented by the Ninth World Congress turn. In the period leading up to the assassination of Comrade Graham and for several months thereafter adaptation to adventurism jeopardized not only the political program of the organization but the physical survival of the young and inexperienced cadres that made it up. Nor were the Irish comrades greatly helped by the International leadership bringing in a special advisor to give a first-hand account of how to apply the Ninth World Congress resolution on Latin America. Because of the strength of the terrorist tradition in Ireland, the Irish Trotskyists needed political help from the International in developing an effective Marxist critique of such methods. Instead they got encouragement to adapt to them, to rationalize them, to become the most sophisticated defenders of terrorism.
Because they were actually in the Irish situation, however, the RMG could not simply applaud the “dazzling coups” of the guerrillas. They were affected directly by the political results of terrorist errors. They experienced the political weaknesses of the “physical force” current immediately in their work. They also had to take the blame for the failure of the IMG to build an effective solidarity movement. All these things had an evident effect. Furthermore, the RMG has not yet been imbued with the dead-end factionalism that has afflicted the IMG and has shown an ability to learn from its errors. Unfortunately, however, it has not broken with the adaptationist method it learned from the IMG, and as a result its attempts to correct its course seem to have led so far deeper into political confusion rather than toward clarification. Many examples could be given of this. It is sufficient to cite the article The Actuality of Terrorism by Eanna O’Caithirneach [I assume that this is a masculine name, although Gaelic grammar was apparently ignored in its composition] in a recent issue of Marxist Review, the theoretical journal of the Irish comrades.
In the first part, Comrade O’Caithirneach says:
In fact it is easy enough to point out that terrorism of the oppressed is a concrete reply to the terror, violence institutionalized by the ruling classes, without which they could not stay in power. But it is useless to preach in the desert, we do not expect those who use or profit from this violence to denounce it.
Moreover a debate of this importance must be taken up by those who claim to be on the same side of the barricade; those who fight precisely for the abolition of class violence, the source of all violence, and who know that bourgeois violence can only be abolished by revolutionary violence, ultimately by the overthrow of one class by another. The ambiguity of what terrorism really means is a fundamental problem for the clarification of such a debate. So we see the American Marxist philosopher George Novack writing:
“Terrorism is a product of subjectivism and impatience, of frustration and desperation. Despite the loud noises made by its intermittent chemical warfare, it is an expression of political and social defeatism arising from a fundamental lack of confidence in the potential of the working people to recognize the need to get rid of the capitalist regime, engage it in struggle, and overcome it.”
The basic error of such a statement lies in the fact that it tries to define a concept in the abstract rather than as a method of struggle related to the historical phases of development of class struggle. Instead of clarifying the matter, such a generalization prevents us from analyzing concrete situations and taking a position in relation to the given moments of mass struggle.
In fact the above quotation plays on an ambiguity which feeds moralistic positions common to the bourgeoisie and to reformism. It betrays a failure to understand that two different problems must be distinguished and analyzed from a Marxist standpoint: firstly, terrorism as a political orientation, and then terrorism as a social phenomenon.
Comrade O’Caithirneach went on to say:
Indeed the history of the international working-class movement is paved with examples of groups of intellectuals or the like at the periphery of the mass struggle looking for shortcuts to the destruction of the ruling class. Suffice it to say that the ruling class can replace its leaders, of uneven value, as long as it owns the means of production; it is because there lies its strength that only a mass movement expropriating the bourgeoisie, can smashing its state, put an end to its domination.
Comrade O’Caithirneach gives this contemporary example of the sort of terrorism that Marxists should oppose:
The ‘underestimation of the revolutionary activity of the masses’ is exactly the type of mistakes that today ‘urban guerrilla groupings’, such as the Baader-Meinhof group (RAF) in Germany, the Red Army in Japan, the ‘Weathermen’ in the States, the ‘Angry Brigade’ in Britain, have elevated to a virtue.” In a footnote this point is qualified. “There is a qualitative difference in our mind between such guerrilla ultra-left organizations (coming from Maoist or Libertarian currents) in the heart of imperialist citadels and organizations formally of the same type – such as the Free Welsh Army, the FLB (Liberation Front of Brittany), Saor Eire, the FLQ (Liberation Front of Quebec) which in content aimed at expressing by armed minority actions the revolt of oppressed nations or nationalities. Although in some cases (Brittany, Wales) such organizations won sympathy of one part of the population, they had in common with the other groupings mentioned their ultimate isolation and fate.
Clearly Comrade O’Caithirneach has received a miseducation in the use of Marxist categories. In the first place, he shows a dismaying reluctance, strikingly reminiscent of Comrade Purdie, to draw Marxist conclusions from the statement of Marxist principles. If they shared the political and physical fate of terrorist organizations in the capitalist centers, if their actions have had the same consequences, how can it be said that organizations like the FLB are “qualitatively” different from the Angry Brigade? They do not simply formally resemble terrorist groups in capitalist centers; they have shared the fate of the latter groups in reality. “Formal” thus does not seem to have the same meaning for Comrade O’Caithirneach that it does in the Marxist vocabulary; it seems to be some kind of magic word that can be used to charm away a real problem. If Comrade O’Caithirneach’s statement is not to be interpreted as pure idealism, he would have to explain what chance factors account for these “qualitatively different” groups sharing essentially the same fate. Might Saor Eire have succeeded for example if it had been more fortunate in this or that respect? Should this experiment be repeated?
It is true, of course, that in oppressed nations any blow against the oppressor tends to win very broad immediate sympathy, whereas it is much more difficult to make an impact on the masses in the imperialist centers where the forms of control are more subtle and opaque. But even in the imperialist centers adventurism does not always fail, at least not right away, to produce some positive results. Thus, obviously the chances of success are all the greater in oppressed nations. But the very fact that the contradictions are more explosive in such cases makes adventurist errors all the more serious. They tend to result not just in the victimization of a few idealistic and self-sacrificing revolutionists or a temporary witch-hunt but in beheading mass movements that could strike telling blows against the world capitalist system and in the destruction of the small number of politically trained cadres that can be produced under conditions of repression and cultural deprivation. At best, a guerrillaist orientation in such countries makes liberation struggles unnecessarily costly and exhausting and thus robs these struggles of much of their revolutionary dynamism and political power.
From the subjective point of view, there is of course a difference between the sort of terrorist groups that have arisen in the capitalist centers and those arising in the colonial countries and oppressed nations. The desperate actions of militants in oppressed and brutally exploited nations commands a special sympathy. Here Comrade O’Caithirneach is right to say that the “qualitative difference” he is talking about exists “in the minds” of himself and his co-thinkers. That is precisely where it exists; not in reality. They have allowed themselves to become subjective. This is natural on the part of young revolutionists, especially those in oppressed countries who feel a strong empathy with others of their generation who are striking heroic blows against the imperialist oppressor. But a revolutionary party and a revolutionary strategy cannot be built on such subjective feelings. Marxists are not simply the fiercest militants but those who are conscious of a higher duty to the oppressed people and who have an intellectual and organizational discipline, a relentless logic and understanding of long-term processes, that enables them to lead revolutionary struggles to the final victory. The Russian Marxists, for example, had to take an extremely critical position toward a whole generation of heroic youth who eventually won mass sympathy. The party of the Narodniks, after all, was a mass party in 1917, far larger than the Bolsheviks.
The example of the Bolsheviks and their teachers is quite well known and its validity is accepted by most revolutionary groups. Comrade Caithirneach, on his own, might have been able to learn from it, especially in the light of the hard experience of the Irish fighters, as other generations of young revolutionists have. But he was apparently encouraged to “interpret” the Bolsheviks’ position in a way that fundamentally justified his subjective sympathy with the adventurists in Ireland. With this political and theoretical assistance, he discovered a previously rather neglected part of the revolutionary Marxist heritage.
After 1905, Lenin distinguished acts of terrorism, the number of which was increasing without respite, from the terrorist orientation of the anarchists and revolutionary Socialists before 1905.
In the first case, disarray and impatience led romantic intellectuals to transform their frustrations of being absent from the class struggle, into a strategy. After the revolution of 1905, they were faced with a deeper social movement which prolonged the revolutionary crisis; terrorism then was characterized by resistance demonstrations, acts of sabotage, expropriations, boldness of workers and peasants. This increased the revolutionary consciousness of the masses who drew the lessons from 1905. At this point it was necessary for the Social Democratic Party to enrich its political experience with these new methods of struggle.
A quotation follows from Lenin’s 1906 article on guerrilla warfare that has been widely cited by the IEC Majority Tendency in defense of its orientation. Comrade O’Caithirneach, then, goes on to say:
Consequently, the Bolshevik party used guerrilla actions, relating it to the question of workers’ self-defence against reaction (Black Hundred pogroms, etc.), and the crucial problem of preparation for armed insurrection, therefore having an educative role for the masses. Those who argue today that Lenin opposed the concept of the dialectical link between minority violence and mass struggle, should remember his articles on the subject in 1905, 1906, and 1907, and for instance his preparatory notes to the Stockholm Congress in 1906:
Comrade O’Caithirneach concludes:
This shows precisely what differentiates our comrades of the PRT/ERP in Argentina, of the ETA (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna – Liberation movement of the Basque country) in Spain, and the Volunteers of the IRA who carry out armed actions in the context of mass struggle, from the experience of the Baader-Meinhof or the Angry Brigade.
Unfortunately, Comrade O’Caithirneach makes the same error here that he charges against Comrade Novack; he makes an abstract generalization, failing to take proper account of the concrete circumstances. Among other things, this indicates that he uses “abstraction” like “formal” not as a Marxist description but as a magic word to conjure away difficulties.
Lenin regarded the skirmishing that followed the defeat of the 1905 revolution as representing a form of struggle appropriate to a lull in the civil war preceding a new upsurge of the revolutionary struggle that was unleashed by a general strike leading to a mass insurrection, a mass insurrection that was prepared by patient Marxist propaganda and intervention in the mass movement – not by “new methods” or “exemplary actions” or “minority violence.” The next installment of the revolution, moreover, was prepared in the same way, and acts of “minority violence” were opposed by the Bolshevik leadership in the period leading up to the general insurrection. No “new methods” of guerrilla warfare were employed.
Despite this, Comrade O’Caithirneach seems to regard these as relevant for a whole historical epoch and in a wide range of countries. These methods are supposed to be valid for Spain under Franco, for Ireland, and for Argentina (the article was apparently written before Comrade O’Caithirneach learned that the PRT/ERP had broken with the Fourth International). No mass insurrection has taken place in these countries, either on a national scale or in the key centers. The decisive masses have not risen up against the system. In the case of Ireland in particular it is quite clear now that the use of these “new methods” has narrowed the struggle and isolated the most advanced sections of the population; that is, it has had the classical result of terrorism and adventurism.
But Comrade O’Caithirneach argues:
There what Lenin condemns is a violence which is not subordinated to strategic objectives, which does not fit in an overall project of seizure of power – violence which is not understood and supported by the masses, because as Georg Lukacs pointed out:
“These isolated battles which never bring final victory even when they are successful can only become truly revolutionary when the proletariat becomes conscious of what connects these battles to each other and to the process that leads ineluctably to the demise of capitalism.”
Obviously one thing that all three situations – Ireland, Spain, and Argentina – have in common is that significant sections of the population support the actions of terrorist groups. Moreover, they “understand” them in the sense of knowing what motivates them and against whom they are aimed. That is, the argument goes, actions which are popular among a section of the people cannot be terrorist
There is no doubt that at least in Ireland such actions are in a sense “linked” to the mass struggle. Although the Provisional campaign has had the effect of crippling the mass movement, its extent and relative popularity are clearly the result of a mass upsurge. Moreover, the Provisionals’ terrorist strikes take place within the context of mass resistance to the British occupation and the Orange caste system. But at the same time instead of being “linked” to the mass struggle (any more than the Argentine guerrilla actions were “linked” to the struggle against the dictatorship), the Provisional campaign was in irreconcilable contradiction to it; it did not extend the mass struggle and carry it forward to a revolutionary mass mobilization on a scale that could lay the basis for an effective war against the imperialists and their supporters; but set back and weakened the mass movement.
According to The Red Mole, the Provisional bombing campaign was designed to impose unbearable costs on the British government and draw troops away from the Catholic ghettos. Moreover, it supposedly had the effect of preventing the British from “stabilizing” the situation. That is, it can be claimed that this campaign was “subordinated” to strategic objectives. But these generalizations were used to cover up the reality – an uncontrolled and uncontrollable campaign of random bombing that confused the political issues, demoralized and alienated the broad masses, especially in the south, and was easily manipulated by the British authorities, making repression easier instead of more difficult But still this campaign was undoubtedly popular among a fairly broad vanguard. It was “linked” to the struggle of the masses, so it couldn’t be terrorist, could it?
But according to Trotsky’s explanation in his 1911 article on terrorism (see The Marxist Position on Individual Terrorism,” in Intercontinental Press, August 6, 1973, p. 955), the terrorists are precisely most dangerous when they have the sympathy of the masses:
In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a greater avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission.
The anarchist prophets of ‘the propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more the attention of the masses is focused on them – the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization and self-education.
But the smoke from the explosion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement come disillusion and apathy.
The efforts of reaction to put an end to strikes and to the mass workers movement in general have always, everywhere, ended in failure. Capitalist society needs an active, mobile, and intelligent proletariat; it cannot, therefore, bind the proletariat hand and foot for very long. On the other hand the anarachist ‘propaganda of the deed’ has shown every time that the state is much richer in the means of physical destruction and mechanical repression than are the terrorist groups.
If that is so, where does it leave the revolution? Is it negated or rendered impossible by this state of affairs? Not at all. For the revolution is not a simple aggregate of mechanical means. The revolution can arise only out of the sharpening of the class struggle, and it can find a guarantee of victory only in the social functions of the proletariat. The mass political strike, the armed insurrection, the conquest of state power – all this is determined by the degree to which production has been developed, the alignment of class forces, the proletariat’s social weight, and finally, by the social composition of the army, since the armed forces are the factor that in time of revolution determines the fate of state power.
Hasn’t the Northern minority been encouraged by the guerrilla actions of the Provisionals to look to the “secret army” of the republic for their salvation? Haven’t the masses become continually more passive as the Provisional campaign has developed? Hasn’t the number of people actively supporting the struggle consistently declined? That all these questions must be answered in the affirmative cannot be denied by any objective person, especially not by a Marxist, who must look at the situation as a whole and not be dazzled by the partial successes of those elements that strike the most spectacular blows against the repressive forces. The proof of this lies in the effectiveness of the repressive apparatuses North and South, in particular in the attitude of the Southern state that has gone further in collaborating with the British government and in suppressing the republican organizations than it has dared to go since the start of the present struggle.
In fact, the relative successes of the Provisionals, in the context of a steady decline of the struggle in the North and an increasing isolation of the oppressed Catholic communities, is a clear refutation of the IEC Majority Tendency’s vanguardist orientation. The popularity of the Provisionals with the most militant elements has increased precisely as the real power of the struggle has waned. Inevitably this will catch up with the Provisional organization itself, unless it changes its line or other factors intervene, but throughout this process the following of the Provisionals has increased by leaps and bounds.
Furthermore, Comrade O’Caithirneach not only took Lenin’s 1905 article out of its historical context but apparently did not consider the balance sheet that the Russian revolutionary Marxists made later of the experience with guerrilla warfare in these years. Of course, he could not have learned this from the IEC Majority Tendency’s writings. But in his book on Stalin, Trotsky discussed the “mass” terrorism of 1906–1909 in some detail, and offered more than one lesson that could prove useful in Ireland:
It was not, of course, a matter of abstract morality. All classes and parties approached the problem of assassination not from the point of view of the Biblical commandment but from the vantage point of the historical interests represented. When the Pope and his cardinals blessed the arms of Franco none of the conservative statesmen suggested that they be imprisoned for inciting murders. Official moralists come out against violence when the violence in question is revolutionary. On the contrary, whoever really fights against class oppression, must perforce acknowledge revolution. Whoever acknowledges revolution, acknowledges civil war. Finally, ‘guerrilla warfare is an inescapable form of struggle ... whenever more or less extensive intervals occur between major engagements in a civil war.’ [Lenin] From the point of view of the general principles of the class struggle, all of that was quite irrefutable. Disagreements came with the evaluation of concrete historical circumstances. When two major battles of the civil war are separated from each other by two or three months, that interval will inevitably be filled in with guerrilla blows against the enemy. But when the ‘intermission’ is stretched out over years, guerrilla war ceases to be a preparation for a new battle and becomes instead a convulsion after defeat. It is of course, not easy to determine the moment of the break.
Questions of Boycottism and of guerrilla activities were closely interrelated. It is permissible to boycott representative assemblies only in the event that the mass movement is sufficiently strong either to overthrow them or to ignore them. But when the masses are in retreat, the tactic of the boycott loses its revolutionary meaning. Lenin understood that and explained it better than others. As early as 1905 he repudiated the boycott of the Duma. After the coup of June third, 1907, he led a resolute fight against the Boycottists precisely because the high-tide had been succeeded by the ebb-tide. It was self-evident that guerrilla activities had become sheer anarchism when it was necessary to utilize even the arena of Tsarist ‘parliamentarism’ in order to prepare the ground for the mobilization of the masses. [Trotsky notes elsewhere that the actual scope of the guerrilla war reached its peak in 1907, that is, after Lenin rejected boycottism and by extension the use of the “new methods” mentioned in the 1906 article. Lenin obviously did not base his judgment on the “military” success of the “armed struggle.” – G.F.] At the crest of the civil war guerrilla activities augmented and stimulated the mass movement; in the period of reaction they attempted to replace it, but, as a matter of fact, merely embarrassed the Party and speeded its disintegration. Olminsky, one of the more noticeable of Lenin’s companions-in-arms, shed critical light on that period from the perspective of Soviet times. ‘Not a few of the fine youth,’ he wrote, ‘perished on the gibbet; others degenerated; still others were disappointed in the revolution. At the same time people at large began to confound revolutionists with ordinary bandits. Later, when the revival of the revolutionary labor movement began, that revival was slowest in those cities where ‘exes’ [expropriations – G.F.] had been most numerous.” [Stalin, pp. 98–99]
In the case of the 1906-09 guerrilla warfare, also, the popularity of terrorism increased as the fundamental movement that gave it its mass character declined:
On the whole, the three-year period from 1905 through 1907 is particularly notable for both terrorist acts and strikes. But what stands out is the divergence between their statistical records: while the number of strikers fell off rapidly from year to year, the number of terrorist acts mounted with equal rapidity. Clearly, individual terrorism increased as the mass movement declined. Yet terrorism could not grow stronger indefinitely. The impetus unleashed by the revolution was bound to spend itself in terrorism as it had spent itself in other spheres. Indeed, while there were 1,231 assassinations in 1907, they dropped to 400 in 1908 and to about a hundred in 1909. The growing percentage of the merely wounded indicated, moreover, that now the shooting was being done by untrained amateurs, mostly by callow youngsters. (Page 96)
Furthermore, Trotsky clearly did not draw the conclusion that the devotees of “armed struggle” were the purest revolutionary current:
In the Caucasus, with its romantic traditions of highway robbery and gory feuds still very much alive, guerrilla warfare found any number of fearless practitioners. More than a thousand terrorist acts of all kinds were perpetrated in Transcaucasia alone during 1905–1907, the years of the First Revolution. Fighting detachments found also a great spread of activity in the Urals, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, and in Poland under the banner of the P.P.S. (Polish Socialist Party). On the second of August 1906, scores of policemen and soldiers were assassinated on the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities. According to the explanation of the leaders, the purpose of the attacks was ‘to bolster the revolutionary mood of the proletariat.’ The leader of these leaders was Joseph Pilsudski, the future ‘liberator’ of Poland, and its oppressor. (Page 96)
Among other things, reading Trotsky on Stalin would have forewarned the Irish comrades about the prospects for Saor Eire:
A typical picture of how even the most disciplined detachments degenerated is given in his memoirs by the already-cited Samoilov, a former Duma deputy of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk textile workers. The detachment, acting originally ‘under the directives of the Party Center,’ began to ‘misbehave’ during the second half of 1906. When it offered the Party only a part of the money it had stolen at a factory (having killed the cashier during the act), the Party Committee refused it flatly and reprimanded the fighters. But it was already too late; they were disintegrating rapidly and soon descended to ‘bandit attacks of the most ordinary criminal type.’ Always having large sums of money, the fighters began to preoccupy themselves with carousing, in the course of which they often fell into the hands of the police. Thus, little by little, the entire fighting detachment came to an ignominious end. ‘We must, however, admit,’ writes Samoilov, ‘that in its ranks were not a few ... genuinely devoted comrades who were loyal to the cause of the revolution and some with hearts as pure as crystal ...’ (Page 97)
The Irish comrades have not been taught to recognize a decline in the mass struggle and draw the necessary conclusions from it. For them, guerrilla warfare seems to always move forward. After all, doesn’t it represent the “revolutionary phase” of the struggle, according to the IEC Majority Tendency? As a result of this training, they called for a boycott of the Northern elections in May and June, 1973, on the grounds, among other things, that the struggle had gone beyond parliamentarism. The Irish comrades thought the thing to do was to call for reviving the forms of dual power that existed at the height of the popular upsurge. But they failed (1) to recognize that the mass movement was in a steep decline and (2) to recognize that the embryonic dual power that existed was the result of the mass civil-rights movement and could not be revived without a revival first of the broad movement that engendered it. That is, under the influence of the miseducation they received from the IMG and the IEC Majority Tendency, they made the fundamental error of mistaking the hind part of a revolution for the fore part. Thus, they were left unarmed for grappling with the realities of the situation and assuming their real tasks.
There was something obviously very wrong, fundamentally wrong, with the method these young comrades used. It lay in the subjectivism so evident in Eanna O’Caithirneach’s approach to the question of terrorism. If so many people were, doing it, there had to be something to it. Moral solidarity with the heroic young terrorists became subtly transmuted into political endorsement, tail-ending, of their actions in the way that became so typical of The Red Mole’s Irish articles. In the process Marxist categories were turned into empty generalities to rationalize impressionist judgments. At first this process led simply to a political default, a refusal to face the realities squarely and draw the necessary conclusions. But over time, it was inevitable that this kind of fuzzy thinking would lead to total confusion. And such confusion, unfortunately, is the distinguishing feature of Comrade O’Caithirneach’s article.
After quoting Lenin to try to demonstrate the value of the “new methods” of guerrilla warfare and then arguing that terrorism is not terrorism when it is supported by large layers of the population, Comrade O’Caithirneach goes on to explain that there really is a terrorist problem in the new mass vanguard.
As we pointed out above, terrorism for the past years has taken on a world dimension. It is essential to understand that such a phenomenon is objectively a product of the crisis of capitalism itself.
After the late 60s, a new revolutionary vanguard has emerged in the context of this crisis of capitalism but also of the crisis of traditional workers’ parties, particularly in rupture with Stalinism. But this revolutionary vanguard has not necessarily emerged organized in a strong credible revolutionary pole. As a matter of fact, the crux of the problem lies in the inadequacy between the maturation of the objective revolutionary situation and the weaknesses of the organized revolutionary vanguard. This gap leaves young generations of revolutionary militants oscillating between revolutionary exhalation and desperate revolt.
Isn’t this exactly the kind of mood Comrade Novack was describing in the passage that Comrade O’Caithirneach found so “abstract,” “moralistic,” and so dangerously open to “reformist” interpretation? Why is he unable to draw the obvious conclusion?
Two examples of this problem are given by Comrade O’Caithirneach – the Palestinian resistance, which receives short shrift, except for the DPFLP; and the Provisional bombing campaign, which is viewed much more sympathetically. The bombing campaign may have had its weaknesses but after all.
... the split of the Orange monolith was consummated through this campaign. Unlike the ‘Black September’ action which solidified the Zionist front, the Provisional Campaign blew up the Orange front; this campaign in spite of technical mistakes, of political weaknesses, was successful only because it was linked intimately with mass resistance struggle.”
Anyway, it was the only game in town:
Eventually it is theoretically correct to say that if a Revolutionary Socialist Party had led the armed struggle in Ireland, the liberation war would have reached a higher level; likewise it is correct to say and to propagandize for the transformation of the Army of the People (IRA) into the People’s Army [This formulation is puzzling. In view of the IMG’s dalliance with the Dail Uladh conception, the question arises whether Comrade O’Caithirneach thinks that a revolutionary armed force can be created from above first and given popular content afterward. – G.F.], through the organization of People’s militias, Vigilantes Units and the like, elected and armed by the population for the protection of the ghettos.
But the point is, that Socialists have got to take sides, whether or not such situation exists. To condemn or refuse to support the IRA at this stage by arguing ‘that it would be better if such a situation existed’ does not in actual terms provide help in the process of political maturation of this organization; moreover it condemns those who issue such statements to sheer political isolation from the class or the national struggle; likewise it prevents them to influence politically their course.
This has been clearly demonstrated during the Algerian war of liberation when the Fourth International refused either to tail-end reformists or to sacrifice content for the form when denouncing the M.N.A. which sounded more Marxists [sic] to many and ended by pledging its support to Charles de Gaulle in 1958. Instead it supported the FLN (National Liberation Front) coupling technical help (e.g. the publication of their paper El Mujahid) with political support. This laid the basis for a political radicalization, which one will easily appreciate when studying the evolution of the FLN from the 1954 bombings to the establishment of ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Control’ in 1963 under the leadership of Ben Bella and his comrades.
Apparently Comrade O’Caithirneach has based a whole strategy for orienting toward guerrilla movements on a one-sided version of the Algerian experience. Is he aware that in Algeria itself, after years of activity, the Trotskyist movement made no lasting impact whatsoever either in terms of cadres or political influence? While it is possible for socialist intellectuals to gain considerable personal influence in broad national liberation groups by becoming technical experts of various kinds, it is not possible to educate a cadre without firmly putting forward clear Marxist principles. No one except dead-end sectarians of the SLL variety would say that revolutionists should condemn or denounce terrorists or guerrilla fighters. But Marxists cannot point the way forward without keeping their principles clear.
The guerrillas will learn by their own experience, the results of political errors, and, if they have the capacity for political development, look for the answers where they are to be found, not from their “friends” who employed their superior political education to rationalize their errors. The whole development in the Latin-American left since 1969 shows this lesson clearly. At the very time the majority of the young revolutionists were abandoning the guerrilla orientation, under the blows of reality, the followers of the Ninth World Congress Majority became its most insistent supporters. Not only did they fail to influence the broader Guevarist currents but they lost the bulk of their forces to alien ideas (this was the fate, for instance of the “comrades of the PRT/ERP’). Unfortunately, in spite of these experiences (does he know of them? has he discussed them? what are his opinions of the losses the Trotskyist movement suffered in Latin America?), Comrade O’Caithirneach seems to have elevated adaptationism into a strategy for a whole period, and on the basis of an idealized version of the Algerian experience! He could have learned this only from the IEC Majority Tendency.
This adaptationism ultimately makes the article almost incomprehensible. It is impossible to draw any clear political line from it. After all this “understanding” and “solidarity,” the concluding appeal to young revolutionists, tempted by the seemingly more direct road of terrorism to “seek another road,” loses all force and coherence. He writes:
As we noted earlier in this expose, it is vital to understand that new generations of revolutionaries can be misled in the deadlock of terrorist actions which they consider revolutionary in essence.
The reformists siding with the bourgeoisie condemn them. The duty of revolutionary Marxists is to face frankly the situation, remembering what Trotsky said of Herschel Grynszpan, this young Jewish terrorist who killed a member of the Nazi embassy in Paris in 1938:
“People come cheap who are only capable of fulminating against injustice and bestiality. But those who, like Grynszpan, are able to act as well as conceive, sacrificing their own lives if need be, are the precious leaven of mankind.
“In the moral sense, although not for his mode of action, Grynszpan may serve as an example for every young revolutionist. Our moral solidarity with Grynszpan gives us an added right to say to all the other would-be Grynszpans, to all those capable of self-sacrifice in the struggle against despotism and bestiality: SEEK ANOTHER ROAD!
“Not the lone avenger can free the oppressed but only a great revolutionary movement of the masses which will leave no remnant of the entire structure of class exploitation, national oppression and racial persecution.”
What is Comrade O’Caithirneach’s conclusion from this passage? He either cannot understand or cannot accept (which is more likely) Trotsky’s clear call to fighters like Grynszpan to abandon terrorism and take the road of Marxism. Instead he draws a peculiarly centrist conclusion that suggests a sort of convergence between terrorism and the Marxist movement, a “fusion” perhaps of Marxism and republicanism. Comrade O’Caithirneach writes:
The lesson is simple: the commitment and energy of such militants must be used to the best of their capability; the task of a revolutionary organization is to provide this ‘road’ linking their struggle with the masses of workers in motion. In this sense, even minority violence can be used as tactical means in the over-all strategy for the conquest of power by the masses.
Under these conditions it will be possible to use fully the experience of groups of militants who fight to a certain extent in the dark, but unsparingly.
To win these militants over to the proletarian revolution is vital, for in every generation there are few militants of this calibre; but in order to win them over, one must understand their struggle.
What road, then, is Comrade O’Caithirneach recommending? The road of Marxism – of educating, organizing, and mobilizing the masses? Then, why all the justification of terrorism? On the other hand, he obviously does think that there is something wrong with terrorism. But what it is precisely is hard to say. If the Provisionals’ brand of terrorism is more closely tied to the mass struggle than other varieties, how have they achieved this? What is the secret of their success? What political lessons can the Palestinian resistance learn from them? Obviously, none. The difference between the terrorism of the Palestinians and the Provisionals is not the result of any strategy or political conceptions but of conditions that neither movement produced or had any control over. The Orange monolith was split by the rise of the civil- rights movement; it was deepened by the mass resistance of the Catholic people. The terrorist actions of the Provisionals could not break the morale of the Loyalists or the hold of Orangeism over them. Why does Comrade O’Caithirneach think that Protestants can be expected to react differently to isolated acts of terrorism in Protestant neighborhoods than Israeli Jews to the actions of Black September? Have his advisors really answered that question?
In all, the educational and scientific value of this attempt to demonstrate a contrast between the actions of the Palestinians (except DPFLP) and that of the Provisionals is zero. Comrade O’Caithirneach calls on the heroic youth of Ireland, in the words of the founder of the Red Army, to ‘seek another road’ but without pointing to any definite road at all. If he had only begun his quote a few lines above, or continued it a few lines further, the road would have been clear. In the preceding sentence, Trotsky says:
The Stalinists shriek in the ears of the police that Grynszpan attended ‘meetings of Trotskyites.’ That, unfortunately, is not true. For had he walked into the milieu of the Fourth International he would have discovered a different and more effective outlet for his revolutionary energy.
The article ends:
The unprecedented crimes of fascism create a yearning for vengeance wholly justifiable. But so monstrous is the scope of their crimes, that this yearning cannot be satisfied by the assassination of isolated fascist bureaucrats. For that it is necessary to set in motion millions, tens and hundreds of millions of the oppressed throughout the whole world and lead them in the assault upon the strongholds of the old society. Only the overthrow of all forms of slavery, only the complete destruction of fascism, only the people sitting in merciless judgment over the contemporary bandits and gangsters can provide real satisfaction to the indignation of the people. This is precisely the task that the Fourth International has set itself. It will cleanse the labor movement of the plague of Stalinism. It will rally in its ranks the heroic generation of the youth. It will cut a path to a worthier and more humane future.” (For Grynszpan: Against the Fascist Pogrom Gangs and Stalinist Scoundrels, Intercontinental Press, October 16, 1972, pp. 1126–27.)
Trotsky was clearly not talking about artificially “linking” the struggle of terrorists to the masses but about “another road” entirely, the road of the Transitional Program for organizing mass insurrection.
Only armed workers’ detachments who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers behind them can successfully prevail against the fascist bands.
Obviously such numbers could not be achieved in Ireland, but a far broader movement than either or both of the IRAs is necessary to successfully confront imperialism and the Orange bands. Trotsky also said: “It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia ...” He does not say that “obviously it would be better” if there were a workers militia but in the meantime the choice is do you or do you not support the terrorist groups that exist. Comrade O’Caithirneach’s counterposition of support or non-support is nothing but a false dilemma. It goes without saying that every revolutionist supports the IRA against imperialism and the Orange and capitulationist bourgeoisies. As such, for Marxists, this statement is as elementary and meaningless as an aphorism from Mao’s Little Red Book. That is about how much the method of “elliptical and synthetic phrases” illustrated by the Ninth World Congress Resolution on Latin America is worth. This soporific truism has been used to charm away the real political problem – what program must be raised. Just because we support the IRA against imperialism we do not stop putting forward our program. To do that would mean definitively abandoning the political leadership of the struggle to non-Marxist forces, tail-ending a non-Marxist program. There is no future for a Trotskyist group that does this (at least not as a Trotskyist group).
What have been the practical effects of the method illustrated by Comrade O’Caithirneach’s article? While it is not possible, of course, to get a complete picture from relatively short visits, some very disturbing symptoms can be noticed very quickly. The first is the ease with which this very young, inexperienced, and highly vulnerable group was led into the wildest adventurist delusions in the period around Comrade Graham’s death by the guerrillaist orientation of the IEC Majority Tendency. The second is its consistent misjudgment of the situation in the North and the state of the mass movement, as shown in the document on the North adopted at its founding conference, which claimed that the Provisionals were developing organs of direct democracy in Belfast; and its articles on the Northern elections and their aftermath, which called for a revival of dual power in a period of decline in the mass movement.
Another disturbing symptom was a certain tendency that persisted for many months of conceiving the role of a propaganda group in such a narrow and static way that it seemed virtually to exclude any activity and deny in practice the perspective of the group ever developing into a revolutionary party or even the nucleus of a revolutionary party. This tendency was all the more disturbing in that it would be the logical outcome of a tendency to view one or the other, or both republican organizations as an “adequate instrument,” as an organization that could lead the Irish revolution without being fundamentally transformed both by the ideas and example of revolutionary Marxists. Such a conception would relegate a Trotskyist propaganda group to a passive or auxiliary role. In particular, if “armed struggle” is “the key,” it is natural for militants to conclude that small organizations have little role to play. The exciting and important thing is to become part of the “armed vanguard.”
On a recent trip to Ireland, I found that one of the key contacts of the Irish comrades had drawn just this conclusion. He was a young radical from their milieu essentially who had joined the Provisionals and was apparently doing some good work in introducing political ideas into the organization. Although he liked the comrades’ ideas about “the revolutionary role of the Provisionals,” he was convinced that the RMG as such had no role to play. Of course, this was only one individual but the Irish comrades’ political contacts in the Provisionals are not so many. And this attitude seemed to be a natural outgrowth of the IMG’s line of praising the efficacy of “armed struggle” as such, divorced from the political work of organizing and educating the masses, a line that has been reflected to a considerable degree by the RMG since its inception.
Furthermore, the IMG’s work in the solidarity movement in Britain does not seem to have won much respect for Trotskyists as such in the Provisionals. Since the British organization has not build anything in its own right but rather adapted to the Provisionals’ politics, it seems that it will be the special needs of the Provisionals that will determine whether they have any use for Trotskyists or not – as a political catspaw. And they are most likely to need such an instrument while they are on the retreat rather than while they are on the advance. Therefore, it is extremely important for the Irish Trotskyists to see their work with the Provisionals in the context of the general situation and their long-term political tasks. Otherwise, the systematic work of building a section could be disrupted and diverted.
If the concrete context and perspectives are not kept in mind, our Irish comrades, in seeking to make a breakthrough in the “armed vanguard,” can run into a deadly trap; that is, being pulled after the Provisionals into the kind of disaster that marked the end of the 1956–62 guerrilla campaign. In the best of circumstances, they would find themselves committed to defending bankrupt policies at the very time they were being abandoned by the rest of the Irish vanguard and even the decisive forces in and behind the Provisionals.
In the event of more serious setbacks for the Provisionals, it will, of course, be all the more important to defend them – both to minimize the losses of militants and to get the chance to explain the reasons for the defeats and what must be done to rebuild the mass movement and lead it to victory in the next upsurge. But in the first place, no effective defense work can be done without a realistic assessment of the period and rigorous political discipline, which are completely incompatible with any concessions to ultra-leftism. Secondly, political gains can only be made by putting forward a Marxist program.
Even in such simple matters as how a small group should function, the RMG seems to have suffered unduly from the education it has received from the IEC Majority Tendency. In one discussion I attended it was seriously argued that the reason for the group’s low level of activity was that the individual comrades had not read enough Marxist literature. This conclusion flowed from Comrade Mandel’s pamphlet on the Leninist Theory of Organization, which was quoted to support it:
The category of the Revolutionary party stems from the fact that Marxian socialism is a science which, in the final analysis, can only be assimilated in an individual and not a collective manner.
The Irish comrades attempted to base themselves on this conception of Leninism. As a result, they missed one of the basic conceptions of Leninism. That is, even theoretical Marxism can usually be assimilated only through involvement in building the revolutionary party. Comrade Mandel’s formulation opens the door to an individualist and intellectualist deviation that fits in well with relegating Trotskyists to the role of advisors to broader movements.
In the first place, sciences are not assimilated individually. Scientific learning is an eminently collective process. In this it differs notably from the literary disciplines. But what group of young Trotskyists anywhere – outside of those benefiting from the kind of advanced theory that emanates from the IEC Majority Tendency leaders in Western Europe – would get the idea that the elementary work of getting out the ideas and literature of Trotskyism depended on the individual study habits of the members? No effective revolutionary group can be built on such petty-bourgeois elitist principles, principles which at the same time as being elitist are “spontanéist” in the worst sense, in that they negate the political responsibility of leadership.
This approach is also reflected in the RMG’s debate with the Stalinoid sect that has established a reputation in student left circles as being the most “serious Marxists.” The RMG comrades correctly assessed this group as their most immediate rival. They realized that they had to establish themselves as the most respected source of Marxist ideas. But in this, they made the theoretical and political error of being drawn onto the ground of academic theorizing chosen by the Stalinoids (the BICO), into debates over the social history of the late medieval period in Scotland and Ireland and the details of Irish economic history. Aside from incidental errors, in debating the character of the Northern Protestant community and how it fitted into Irish national development, they did not keep the main political principle to the forefront. The question of whether or not the Protestants can be characterized as a nation is after all a rather academic one. The political question that must be answered is whether revolutionists should defend the right of the Protestants to self-determination. And the answer to that is absolutely clear. No. In the concrete circumstances, any distinct “Protestant” consciousness is pro-imperialist and reactionary through and through. To proclaim and defend the Leninist position on this question does not require any special theories about the nature of the Scottish reformism or a “unique Gaelic feudalism.”
Furthermore, the concept of the revolutionary party requires that those who aspire to lead the working class take clear political positions and accept responsibility for them. But in both the propaganda and analysis of the IMG and the IEC Majority Tendency, there is a general failure to keep the main principles clear and to the fore and a dismaying tendency for unexplained shifts to occur in orientation without discussion of what was wrong in the previous line or how such mistakes should be avoided in the future. The attempt to take an “understanding” attitude toward non-Marxist positions has resulted in “elliptical and synthetic” formulations and multiple “variants” that in the case of this young group have led on several occasions to the most dangerous political confusion.
While the involved speculations and pretentious abstract formulas typical of the IEC Majority Tendency can prove attractive for a time in areas where young revolutionists live primarily on ideas and can function in a rather routine way (this, of course, can include exciting although stereotyped activities) the climate in Ireland is much severer. Ideas and theories are put to a rapid and stern test by the recurring crises and great political complexities. The method of the IEC Majority Tendency has led the IMG into abject confusion in its Irish work. The question then arises, since the RMG has received its training in Trotskyism to a large extent from the IMG and the IEC Majority Tendency, what future does it have? The answer is that if it continues to try to apply the method of the IEC Majority Tendency in Ireland, it has no future.
Not only can the empty generalities of the IEC Majority Tendency offer no guide to action in the difficult conditions the RMG faces, they will inevitably undermine and destroy such gains as the RMG has registered, primarily its understanding of the revolutionary dynamic of the struggle for democratic objectives such as national liberation and equality for women. The IEC Majority’s adaptationist method will first disorient and demoralize the few young cadres that exist and then drive them away from Trotskyism altogether. It will prevent the RMG from projecting any clear program, from learning from concrete experience, from testing its ideas and line against the reality of the revolutionary struggle. In the last analysis, the IMG and the IEC Majority Tendency have failed the Irish Trotskyists as badly as their original teachers of the Healyite League for a Workers Republic.
But members, of the RMG who have gone through an indigenous experience have some theoretical capital of their own, and that is primarily the experience of their political fight against the League for a Workers Republic. Although the League viewed itself as an irreconcilable opponent of adaptationism, it was in fact its mirror image. It had the same subjective method. In fact, I could not help being struck by the similarity of the arguments I had with the old leaders of the LWR and with some RMGers caught up in the logic of adaptationism. On the basis of a one-sided version of the past history of the Trotskyist movement in Britain and America, the LWR was determined to build a “proletarian” party. Only “working class” issues could interest them. Anyone who talked about anything other than a “proletarian orientation” was obviously revisionist. The very fact that someone would talk this way was proof enough of that. Everything you said after it was determined that you were not talking about “going to the workers” now was just additional evidence of renegacy or at best a sharp debater’s point. No matter what analysis was put forward, what facts were presented, or how many quotes from the Marxist classics could be produced to support an argument, it would have no effect. You were simply a revisionist and that was that.
The fact that the strike wave of the late sixties and the leftward movement of the Labour party dominated political life on the left in the period of their formation seemed to confirm their attitude. Their mistake was the notion that revolutionary activity had one definite style. That is, they thought in terms of shibboleths and not scientific analysis. A certain impression of the appearance of revolutionary activity blinded them to the actual process of the development of revolutionary opportunities.
The comrades adapting to ultra-leftism and guerrillaism have similar reflexes. Slogans that can appeal to the masses just don’t sound revolutionary. Participating in elections is reformist; calling for dual power is revolutionary. And what could be more revolutionary than “armed struggle”? Anyone who does not hail the Provisional guerrilla campaign is just a reformist, that’s all.
Despite the “flexibility” of the theoreticians who discover and prove in such an impressive style that the real tradition of Marxism does not conflict with, but rather justifies ultra-left moods, these attitudes are no less obscurantist and dogmatic than those that destroyed the most promising cadres of the LWR. The basic cadres of the RMG have had a chance to learn from this example. The future of Trotskyism in Ireland in the next period depends on their ability to draw the conclusions from this.
But there is a limit to the number of times a young cadre can follow a false path and survive politically. The adaptationist line has already destroyed two revolutionary organizations in Latin American that numbered many times the Irish group; hundreds of heroic cadres have been lost to Trotskyism and no one knows how many opportunities wasted because of the adaptationist politics of the IEC Majority Tendency. Now the adaptationist tendency has begun to take its toll in Europe.
In Ireland, where the revolutionary movement is one of the most promising and at the same time one of the must vulnerable, we cannot afford to lose one Irish cadre. The logic of adaptationism there will be quick and deadly. And its results will not be limited to Ireland. It is imperative for the Irish comrades to “seek another road.”
August 31, 1973
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