Anti colonial struggles of Ireland and India Imperialism in 21st century
In what was a glorious day at the burial place of our revolutionary leaders Comrade Sajeev Narayan from the National Executive Committee spoke as follows:
Dear comrades and friends , revolutionary greetings to all of you who have come here to salute one of the greatest revolutionaries the world has ever seen.. James Connolly.
When he said “we only want the earth” we understand it means being in heaven is not an experience after death we want to own now the means of production which the capitalists possess so that we can experience heaven on earth.
Any revolution doesn’t remain where it originated, the ripples travel far and wide. The French revolution inspired the emancipation of black slaves of Haiti, the Bolshevik revolution inspired anti colonial struggles. Similarly the Easter Rising inspired a lot of anti-imperial revolutionaries especially in India.
India had two streams of struggle one led by the non-violent moderates and then the armed struggle of the extremists. The latter drew a lot of inspiration from Irish revolutionaries.
India and Ireland may be geographically apart, but there are many parallels in history between the two countries. We fought the same enemy – British Imperialism, both countries had artificial famines created by Imperialism and both countries had partition. If India’s partition was on the basis of religion Ireland’s partition was on sectarian basis the motivation behind both being the policy of ‘divide and rule’. The repercussions of both partitions are still felt in the respective countries. The recent escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan is a testimony to the seeds of hatred sowed by imperialism.
Revolutionary connection between India and Ireland begins from Dan Breen’s book ‘My Fight For Irish Freedom ‘ which was the Bible for many Indian revolutionaries like Surya Sen, fondly called as MASTERDA, whose Chittagong uprising of 1930 was an attempt to emulate the Easter Rising of 1916. Surya Sen’s admiration for the Irish revolutionaries were so intense that he named his organisation IRA (Indian Revolutionary Army).
The British did not want a revolutionary transformation in India and were keen to transfer power to the Indian bourgeoisie so that they can control India post independence. The imperialists employed the same tactic in Ireland by eliminating the Irish revolutionaries of the 1916 Easter Rising.
The tendency of imperialism is inherent in the logic of capitalism but only manifests in the Monopoly stage of capitalism-the highest stage of capitalism as identified by Lenin. Ireland, India,the Americas and many African countries were the victims of imperialist colonisation. Racism was used to justify colonialism and slavery, a method to dehumanize the oppressed, by saying that some races are superior than others and it’s the “white man’s burden” to civilize the world.
Since Lenin’s explanation of the first world war based on the concept of Imperialism many Marxists later have attempted to construct a theory of Imperialism – Modernisation theory, Dependency theory, theory of unequal exchange, super exploitation etc.
Imperialism in essence is the extraction of surplus value though the form in which it is extracted may vary from time to time. It could be slave trade, colonialism, enclosures, military aggression, Neo- colonialism, Neo-liberalism, IPR or Hyper-imperilaism.
Imperialism in 21 st century works by transfer of surplus value from low technology underdeveloped countries to high technology developed countries. The flow of surplus value is by currency seignorage, capital investments, unequal exchange in trade and changes exchange rate
After WW2 when imperialist nations were weakened and Soviet Union supported the independence struggles that led to de-colonisation. Though the colonies achieved political independence the challenge in the post colonial period was to shrug off the yoke of Imperialism. This was made impossible by the dependence of the newly independent nations on imperial nations for capital and technology.
Freedom in the era of finance capital, means freedom of the capital to transcend boundaries, GLOBALISATION ensured this freedom of capital. The production was off-shored to the low wage countries. The governments in the third world are forced to keep the wages low so that the commodities they produce cannot be consumed by them and are available for export to developed nations. The workers in the developed nations are forced to reduce their wages for two reasons
* to stay in competition for fewer jobs due to off-shoring and automation
* * To compete with low wage workers of the underdeveloped countries resulting in the “race to the bottom”. The people of the developed nations are able to consume not because of increase in the real wage but by the availability of cheaper goods from underdeveloped countries by super exploitation.
During the civil war in America Marx wrote to Abraham Lincoln saying that “labour in the white skin can never free itself as long as labour in the black skin is branded”. Marx, again, on the Irish question said “the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition for their own (English working class) social emancipation.
Marx’s slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite ” was modified by Lenin as ” Proletarians of all countries and oppressed peoples of the entire world unite”. Because Lenin understood that Class struggle during the stage of imperialism took the form of national Liberation struggles. Similarly in today’s world there is no socialism without the emancipation of the super-exploited workers of the third world.
The capitalist system after the 2008 crisis has never recovered and every attempt to recover is landing the system in deeper crisis. Globalisation, Neo-liberalism, trickle down theory have all failed. After 2008 crisis China started looking for markets other than the US so it created BRICS to enable third world countries to buy the commodities that China produces. After China became the “workshop of the world” the US is losing to China in production and China is making great leap forward in the technology and innovation. This led to the trade war and tariff war between the US and China.
The US hegemony is eroding and the latest attempt by Trump’s tariff war is a desperate attempt of a declining empire. Tariff is another way of saying we will create wars to maintain the hegemony and the other countries will pay the war expenses. In other words the oppressed countries are financing their own oppression through the tariffs. It is also a testimony of how globalisation has backfired on the US and hence the rhetoric to bring production back to the US and “Make America Great Again”
Capitalism and Democracy were always incompatible and neo-liberalism is a strategy to eliminate state intervention by Keynesianism and democracy where elected governments had no influence to make changes in the economy. We are witnessing the limititation or the hypocrisy of the bourgeois democracy- when Julian Assange was harassed for telling the truth, when George Floyd was suffocated to death, and University students are deported for holding peaceful protests supporting Palestine. When the ruling class is threatened by a revolutionary upsurge the bourgeois democracy has always doors open for fascism Hitler and Mussolini were backed by big corporate companies.
Under these circumstances Communists have a historical role to play which is to fight an exploitative system that not just exploits labour but also exploits nature . So we have the responsibility of abolishing a system which is pushing all forms of life towards extinction, through endless war and reckless exploitation of nature. This can only be achieved by moving towards socialism.
TINA which stands for THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE has to be replaced by SITA which stands for SOCIALISM IS THE ALTERNATIVE. The capitalist system which pushes the majority into misery for the profit of a tiny minority does not deserve to exist. That is what James Connolly fought for and died for and it’s up to us to pursue the dream and make it a reality.
” FOR OUR DEMANDS MOST MODERATE ARE
WE ONLY WANT THE EARTH”
I would like to end with SHELLEY’S words from the “Masque of Anarchy “
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.
Ye are many-they are few.
LONG LIVE COMRADE JAMES CONNOLLY
THANK YOU COMRADES
