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One hundred years since Irelands Easter

RisingPart three
By Jordan Shilton
29 March 2016
Bolshevism and the Easter Rising
This is final part of a three-part series on the Easter Rising in Ireland.
Part one is available here; part 2 is available here.
Drawing the necessary political lessons from 1916 and its aftermath is
only possible through a careful study of the writings of Lenin and
Trotsky.
Whereas Connolly after 1914 focused his energies chiefly on preparing
an armed uprising in alliance with bourgeois nationalist forces, the two
foremost leaders of the Russian Revolution of 1917 emphasised the need
for an implacable political struggle against all forms of opportunism and
insisted on the need for an internationalist orientation in the development
of revolutionary tactics and strategy. This was the significance of Lenins
determined struggle against the Mensheviks from 1903 onwards, and
Trotskys elaboration of the theory of Permanent Revolution.
Writing months after the Easter Rising, in July 1916, Lenin sharply
criticised Karl Radek, who took a critical view of the uprising. Lenin
denounced Radeks position of calling the Easter Rising a putsch as a
monstrously doctrinaire and pedantic assessment of the situation. He
continued:
The term putsch, in its scientific sense, may be employed only when
the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of
conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the
masses. The centuries-old Irish national movement, having passed
through various stages and combinations of class interest, manifested
itself, in particular, in a mass Irish National Congress in America, (
Vorworts, March 20, 1916) which called for Irish independence; it also
manifested itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the urban
petty-bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass
agitation, demonstrations, suppression of newspapers, etc. Whoever calls
such a rebellion a putsch is either a hardened reactionary, or a
doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a
living phenomenon. (V.I. Lenin, The Discussion on Self Determination
Summed Up, Collected Works: Vol. 22, pp320-360)
Lenin understood the inevitability and necessity of rebellions by smaller
nations against imperialist oppression, but he also realised that they could
not succeed in isolation and that it fell to the working class to lead the
struggle against imperialism to final victory:
To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by
small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary
outbursts by a section of the petty-bourgeoisie with all its prejudices,
without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and
semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the
church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.to imagine all
this is to repudiate social revolution, he wrote.
Lenin continued, The dialectics of history are such that small nations,
powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism,
play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real
anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on

the scene. It is the misfortune of the Irish that they rose prematurely,
before the European revolt of the proletariat had had time to mature.
The successful conquest of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia, only 18
months after the Easter Rising, was possible only due to the years-long
political, theoretical and organisational struggle waged by Lenin to
establish the political independence of the working class through the
building of the Bolsheviksin direct opposition to all tendencies that took
a conciliatory position in relation to the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
democrats. Lenin emphatically rejected any illusions in the revolutionary
capacities of the bourgeoisie, insisting instead that regardless of its
rhetorical commitment to democracy it would act to suppress and betray
future revolutionary struggles.
On the eve of the Russian Revolution, he adopted Trotskys theory of
Permanent Revolution, which demonstrated that in underdeveloped
countries where bourgeois-democratic tasks still had to be fought for, they
could be achieved only by the working class leading behind it the rural
poor in a struggle for the conquest of political power and socialism. A
precondition for the success of such a programme was the embrace of an
international perspective and an acceptance that no revolutionary struggle
for socialism could be led to completion within the framework of the
existing nation state.
Trotsky, writing around the same time as Lenin, in Nashe Slovo, took
Plekhanov, the founder of the Russian Marxist movement, but by that
time a Menshevik, to task for his opposition to the Easter Rising, which
he considered to be harmful for the cause of freedom.
Trotsky described those who raised barricades and fought the British
army in the streets of Dublin as heroic and added that the working class
had injected its class hatred of militarism into the movement.
His brief essay provides an excellent application of the theory of
Permanent Revolution to the Irish situation. He noted how the Irish
rebellion demonstrated the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to carry through
those national democratic tasks that remained outstanding in Ireland. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, these tasks were indissolubly
bound up with the fight for socialism under the leadership of the working
class.
He wrote, The general national movement, however it was expressed
in the heads of the nationalist dreamers, did not materialise at all. The
Irish countryside did not rise up. The Irish bourgeoisie, as also the upper,
more influential layer of the Irish intelligentsia, remained on the sidelines.
The urban workers fought and died, together with revolutionary
enthusiasts from the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. The historical basis for
the national revolution had disappeared even in backward Ireland.
Trotsky explained how, completely dependent on its ties to imperialism,
the Irish bourgeoisie as it had developed over previous decades, emerged
with undisguised hostility towards the working class.
Although Trotsky did not mention Connolly by name, he identified the
objective pressures at work that brought about his adaptation to the
nationalists. This was not based on picking apart Connollys tactical

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errors or personal failings, but through a careful analysis of the historical

and political factors shaping the evolution of the Irish proletariat:
The young Irish working class, taking shape in an atmosphere
saturated with the heroic recollections of national rebellions, and clashing
with the egoistic, narrow-minded, imperial arrogance of British trade
unionism, naturally swing between nationalism and syndicalism, ever
ready to unite these two concepts in their revolutionary consciousness. It
attracts the young intelligentsia and individual nationalist enthusiasts,
who, in their turn, supply the movement with a preponderance of the
green flag over the red.
Trotsky concluded his article by noting that the Easter Rising provided a
foretaste of what was to come, writing, The undoubted personal courage,
representing the hopes and methods of the past, is over. But the historical
role of the Irish proletariat is only beginning. (Leon Trotsky, On the
Events in Dublin, in Trotskys Writings on Britain, Vol. 3, London: New
Park, p168-169)
The aftermath
Trotskys prognosis was borne out by subsequent developments.
With the Easter Risings brutal suppression, the socialist movement in
Ireland lost not only its most prominent leader in Connolly. The
overwhelming majority of deaths in the fighting were suffered by
members of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), which made up a critical
section of the political vanguard of the working class.
The ICA was never again a serious political force. But the Irish working
class struggle in opposition to the war and British imperialism continued
to radicalise. By 1918, general strikes were called to resist attempts by the
government in London to impose conscription in the wake of the German
spring offensive on the western front. The Russian Revolution inspired
workers in Ireland, with seizures of land and landowners property
occurring throughout 1918. Strikes were called to stop the transportation
of supplies for the British army and troops, and to force the release of
republican prisoners. A general strike took place in Belfast, cutting across
the sectarian divisions between Ulster and the rest of Ireland, on the issue
of a shorter workweek. British rule in Ireland was so shaken by this that
troops were sent to Belfast on February 15, 1919, to push for a settlement
of the dispute, which the reformist labour leaders soon enforced.
Warnings of the influence of Bolshevism were widespread in the
bourgeois press. The 1918 congress of the Irish Labour Party and Trade
Union Congress (ILPTUC) passed resolutions calling for workers
control of the means of production and support for the Bolshevik
revolution.
Time and again, workers showed their determination to fight. Strikes
broke out across the whole country. It was out of one such strike, a
general strike called by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council to
oppose the declaration of a special military zone in the area by the British
Army, that the short-lived Limerick soviet was established in April 1919.
During its 12 days of existence, it took on the responsibilities of
distributing food and other necessities to the workers and directing city
administration, and it even printed its own money. The arrival of the Irish
Labour Party/Trades Union Congress leadership put paid to the soviet,
which was wound up on April 27.
However, the lack of political leadership offered to the strikes and mass
struggles of the working class by the reformist union leadership handed
the political initiative to the nationalists.
Sinn Fein was not involved in the Easter Rising and only adopted the
call for a republic in its aftermath. But it was allowed to become the sole
political force offering leadership to the mounting anger towards British
imperialism.
Founded in 1907, Sinn Fein initially aimed to achieve Irish
independence through a combination of electing MPs to the British
parliament, who would then boycott their mandates, and by establishing a

general council and other institutions in Ireland that would refuse to pay
taxes to London and make Ireland ungovernable. Ireland would become
independent, but be part of a dual monarchy system modelled on the lines
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In December 1918, Sinn Fein swept the board in parliamentary
elections, and implemented their boycott of the House of Commons
before declaring an Irish parliament (Dail) in January 1919. The Soviet
government was the first and only government to initially recognise
Irelands independent parliament.
Working class strikes and protests persisted throughout the (1919-1921)
war of independence with Britain. But the Labour Party and trade union
leadership maintained their political subordination to Sinn Fein. Sinn
Feins Eamon De Valera, the first president of the Dail, was welcomed at
the trade union convention in August 1921 with a standing ovation.
Proving once again its organic incapacity to lead the revolution to its
conclusion, the nationalist leaders brought the revolutionary struggles to a
premature end by agreeing to the Anglo-Irish Accord with British
imperialism later that year, which sealed the partition of Ireland by
establishing the Irish Free State in the 26 counties outside of Ulster.
The Irish Free State, far from guaranteeing religious and civil liberties,
was dominated by the overbearing influence of the Catholic Church.
A small minority, led by Connollys son Roddy, had declared openly
for the Third (Communist) International when it was founded in May
1919 at the instigation of Lenin and Trotsky. The Socialist Party of
Ireland had organised a demonstration of 10,000 in October 1917 in
support of the Bolshevik seizure of power. Roddy Connolly led the
establishment of the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in 1921, having
attended the second congress of the Communist International in 1920. The
CPI opposed the Anglo-Irish treaty, and demanded the adoption of
socialist policies to continue the struggle against British imperialism and
came under sustained attack by both the paramilitary Black and Tans
created by London and by the Irish Republican Army.
However, the significant progress made by the CPI during its brief
existence was to be derailed by the bureaucratic degeneration of the
Soviet regime and of the Communist International, under the leadership of
Joseph Stalin. In 1924, the Comintern dissolved the CPI in favour of
establishing relations with Jim Larkins personal political vehicle, the
Irish Workers Leaguea relationship that barely lasted four years.
The Easter Rising today
From its inception, the Irish state seized on the events of Easter 1916 as
evidence of Irelands national resistance to Britain. Connolly was
co-opted as a patriotic icon and his statue stands today in Dublin. As the
government notes on its website promoting state-sponsored
commemoration events to take place throughout Easter week, Formal
State celebrations will, as they have always done, mark 1916 as the
moment when Irish nationalism joined forces with a revolutionary,
cultural and language movement to forge an irresistible movement
towards self-determination. The Proclamation of the Republic, drawing
on the ideals of that generation, has remained an inspiration over
succeeding generations.
But assertions of a supposed continuity with the revolutionary and
democratic aspirations of 1916 ring hollow when made by the
increasingly discredited Irish capitalist state and the openly right-wing,
pro-big business and anti-working-class policies pursued by all the major
parties.
In the wake of the global capitalist crisis in 2008, all of Irelands
establishment parties participated in the implementation of a multibillion
austerity programme aimed at offloading the crisis onto the backs of the
working class and bailing out the banks. The result is an Irish society
today that is more unequal than it has ever been in decades, with the
number of billionaires doubling between 2008 and 2013. The vast

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increase in poverty and joblessness and the destruction of public services

have been overseen by the trade union bureaucracy and pseudo-left
parties, who have ensured that no fundamental challenge to the current
social order from below has been possible.
One hundred years after the Easter Rising, it is the warning made by
Connolly in 1897 and the political struggle waged by Lenin and Trotsky
that have been proven correct. The formation of an Irish capitalist state
did not provide a way out of the grinding poverty and exploitation faced
by working people. The nationalist leadership proved utterly incapable of
uniting Ireland, helping create the conditions instead for decades of
fratricidal, sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
The lesson to be drawn from 1916 is not the dishonest propaganda about
a steady march to independence and national glory, as the ruling elite
would have it. Instead, the experiences of the century that has followed on
from the Easter Rising have confirmed the need for the Irish working
class to create its own party committed to a socialist programme and an
internationalist strategy.
The advanced workers and youth must absorb the essential lessons of
how a capitulation to nationalism led to the political degeneration of the
parties of the Second and Third International and educate themselves on
the fundamental struggle waged by Trotsky against Stalinism for the
perspective of world socialist revolution. Today, more than ever, the Irish
working class must link its fate to that of the workers of Britain, the
European continent and beyond. This means building an Irish section of
the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Concluded

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