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Jack
Holland, the author of a book on the INLA, recently
wrote an article contrasting a
speech made by Terry Harkin, one of the leaders
of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement with real
estate purchased by some of the leaders of the Provisionals.
Holland's point was not that Republican Socialism
was "bad", "mistaken" or "wrong",
but obsolete. Holland's criticism of Harkin's speech
wasn't so much that it was "a vintage piece of
leftist babble", but that material changes in
the economic structure of Irish society made Republican
Socialism a relic of the past and the integration
of the Provisional movement into the institutions
their movement once was supposed to destroy a necessary
consequence of those changes:
The
speech represents the fantasy world of aging lefties
who still do not recognize the transformation of
Ireland from a poor country into a modern European
state. The story about the Provo leaders’ real
estate bonanza is a product of that new Ireland.
Their flight into middle-class affluence is the
reality.
For
Holland therefore, Harkin and Republican Socialists
are some kind of anthropological curiosities "like
one of those Japanese soldiers left behind on a remote
Pacific island after the end of the World War II who
comes charging out of the jungle 20 years later to
attack a busload of U.S. eco-tourists." Ironically
for a hostile critic of Republican Socialism, there
are echoes of Marx in Holland's argument. For Marx,
changes in the economic structure of society in the
last instance make some ideologies obsolete. For example,
it was the development of capitalist production rather
than the force of intellectual arguments that made
feudal ideas obsolete. For Marx one of the greatnesses
of Don Quixotte lay in the fact that the book brilliantly
showed that errant knights were an anachronism in
the age of the rising bourgeoisie. For Holland Republican
Socialism is thus as relevant as charging wind mills
on horse back.
Where
the difficulties start to rise in Holland's argument
is when he introduces pseudo-sociological categories
like "modern European state" and "middle-class
affluence". Republican Socialists never denied
that Ireland, North and South, was a "modern
European state", that has enormously changed
over the last fifteen years. Where Republican Socialism
becomes more relevant than Holland's pop sociology
is that Republican Socialists like Harkin would ask
"changes, but in whose interests?" and say
that those "changes" have benefited some
social groups more than others. Republican Socialists
would also agree that many in Ireland now benefit
from "middle class affluence", but that
this has gone hand in hand with the creation of a
socially and economically marginalised underclass.
The difficulties of
implementing the 1998 Good Friday Agreement are also
a sign that the national question is far from being
resolved in Ireland. As long as there is an Irish
working class, and as long as the national question
remains an important issue for the Irish working class,
Republican Socialism will continue to exist. However,
what is more difficult is whether or not Republican
Socialists will be able to find strategies that will
enable them to give relevant political leadership
to the various social struggles. The problem with
Republican Socialism is thus not that the objective
material conditions have made it obsolete, but with
the subjective conditions.
In
many ways, the problems with Holland's argument are
the same that have been associated with "modernisation"
theories and the "end of ideology" thesis.
If Terry Harkin is a Japanese soldier, then Holland's
critique of Republican Socialism is perhaps as relevant
as the writings of Walt Rostow or Daniel Bell that
have been left to the gnawing criticism of the mice
decades ago.
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