Sinn Fein was established in 1905. To mark its centenary we are publishing a series of articles looking at the party's history and politics. This month JOE CRAIG examines Republican politics from a Marxist perspective. In the middle of January this
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams launched a year of events celebrating one hundred years since the founding of Sinn Fein in 1905. He claimed that one of its purposes was 'about learning the lessons of a century of struggle."
Adams has claimed that at its foundation Sinn Fein was the political expression' of the trade union movement, thus ignoring the fact that the Irish trade union movement had rejected the party and set up its own political voice.
He further claimed revolutionary socialist James
Connolly as a Republican, although it was he who proposed the resolution to create a Labour Party.
He also mentioned the support of Republicans for workers during the Dublin
Lockout in 1913, though he
failed to mention the opposition of the founder of Sinn
Fein, Arthur Griffith. Adams
also claimed Republicanism
to be the river into which the tributaries of socialism, feminism, etc., flowed. The historical process In general the less conscious of its own social position an individual or political movement is, the more it will reflect society rather than shape that society. The remarks of Adams, including his views on the significance of Sinn Fein's origins and its philosophy display a movement with little social understanding of its role.
One example. The current peace process has been built on the view that an Irish nationalist consensus, described as a nationalist family, could, in alliance with the leader of US imperialism, become an agency for expelling British rule from
Marxists say that the parties of the southern State are capitalist parties, that they have interests subordinated and aligned to imperialism and that US imperialism has no interest in overthrowing an allied imperialist power.
This is ancient Greek to the pragmatic minds of the Sinn Fein leadership.
Republicans are both unwilling and unable to understand social and political struggles in class terms. For them their struggle is a national one in which class is strictly secondary.
For their opponents however their oppression of subject nations has nothing to do with national antipathy (which is generated as a consequence and is not a cause) but is a result of pursuit of power and resources by the capitalist class of the imperialist countries.
The capitalist class of Ireland shares with their class cousins in Britain and the US pursuit of capital accumulation and determination to enforce the most stable political conditions that will allow this to happen.
For Marxists the Irish Republican movement is a petty bourgeois movement. This makes it incapable of consistent opposition imperialism.
This is because it does not understand the fundamental nature of imperialism, based as it is on the interests of the capitalist class, and therefore is incapable of opposing its essential nature and everything that flows from it. Lurching left and right
The history of right and left wing lurches by Sinn Fein, its cyclical championing of armed struggle and then descent into the shabby deals of constitutional politics, has been hidden for long time by its past habit of splitting and creating new parties such as Fianna Fail or Clann na Poblachta.
Now however it is a party retaining the name Sinn Fein which has accepted the role of junior partner in promotion of capitalist stability within an imperialist dominated Ireland.
A party which daily called for stability when the partitionist structures of the Good Friday Agreement were in place and now seeks a role in coalition government with the arch bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party is one lost to democratic and socialist change.
These however are just the results of its class nature. The Republican Movement has thousands of committed working class supporters.
It also has members who can accurately be called capitalist - who reap profits by employing wage labour and have considerable personal wealth. It has others who own small businesses or farms and who sometimes 'exploit" themselves as much, if not more, than they do any hired help.
A movement's class nature however is not determined by counting which class has a numerical majority within the movement.
It is determined by its political programme, and it is by looking at the programme that the nature of a party or movement can be discovered.
Nationalist movements, such as Sinn Fein, are particularly adept at using populist phrases about the unity of the nation's 'people' or its "poor but they will reject as divisive the division of the nation into irreconcilable classes.
Equality will never be the real equality that can only arise from the abolition of classes through abolition of the capitalist system.
They will maintain that their programme stands against, above, or outside such divisions. Since such divisions exist, whether Past and present: James Connolly (above) and today's Gerry Adams recognised or not, nationalist policies leave capitalist ownership and control unchallenged.
The history of Irish Republicanism will present many examples of this. During the War of Independence in 1919-1921 for example the Republican Movement exhibited its petty-bourgeois nature by claiming to represent the whole nation regardless of class.
It made radical declarations such as the Democratic Programme of 1919 - which had no application, and declared that Labour must wait,' intervening through its Republican courts to defend bourgeois property when Irish workers began to take it over.
Left wing -Republicans attempting to break pragmatically from such practices generally never went further than calling for workers to support the revolution.
For Marxists the point is rather that the revolution should have such a nature that it is necessary for workers not only that workers are necessary for it. • A fuller version of this article can be found at www.socialistdemocracy.org. Next month we look at Sinn Fein's role during the War of Independence and the aftermath of the Civil War.
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