Many of Britain's social advances since the rise to prominence of the British Labour Party have given rise to the belief by many English people that,"British is best" (national chauvinism,Lenin).
Let those of us in Northern Ireland who had to listen to Thatcher's constant screeching remind the English that their prosperity was built on pillars of plague-ridden and famine-dead and slaughtered.
Those in England who trumpet their social progress since 1945, should remember that it has many downsides such as malingering, ignorance and well-publicised instances of medical misconduct, hospital murder and social parasitism (social chauvinism,Lenin).
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I hope that the English saw in Thatcher's vulgar hedonism for the few and austerity for the many,insufferable national chauvinism.
National chauvinism is a closely-linked phenomenon to social chauvinism.
Lenin used the two concepts and others in connection with the political developments in the revolutionary period which overtook the Russian Empire in 1917.
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English people should remember the lessons of Russia and listen to those who criticise imperialism from a socialist standpoint.
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Irish people, respect those who moved our country forward from economic backwardness,social decay and political stalemate to a modicum of stability after centuries of state oppression. Both Church and idlers played their part because a moribund society can only be changed by force and the use of revolutionary methods.
Are there,in Ireland's transformation, parallels to the November 1917 Russian Revolution?
Yes, certainly but other countries have had revolutions too whether the Americans or English like it or not. Check the dates,you people in the US Army and Navy. Both of your countries had revolutions.
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28.1.2023
Two of Lenin's concepts familiar today only to perhaps a few dozen on the left are "social patriotism" and "social pacifism".
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There was one thing which made real peaceful coexistence impossible to some hoary old buzzards in the the West during the Cold War. That phenomenon was the publicity concerning the "uneven" international balance of terror. Such conceptualisation was illusory and the publicity concerning it was misleading. Such ideas can be traced back to the US Department of Defence and CIA.
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'Eastern change' was partly built on illusions. Many of the ambitions to "enrich yourselves" are still apparent in post-socialist and post-Christian countries.
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Proper discourse and debate have to focus on the creation of a web of political illusion in a contemporary setting.
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Both the Russian Ministry of Defence and its US counterparts deceive those at the head of their respective governments.
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The big thaw after 1983 and Eastern democracy today?
By way of a response to profound change in the East,let Westerners not throw the Russian democratic 'baby' out with the memories of the Stalinist bathwater.
For his part,can Putin not accept the right to free speech, political conflict and press controversy.
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The philosophical tenet of class against class which colours Russia's Stalinist past
The philosophical proposition which influenced Russian class conflict between 1898 and 1917 in the former Soviet Union that Communists so admired was Marx's concept of bellum omnium contra omnes (Letter to Ruge,1843). This is best translated to Irish conditions as "It's everyman for himself!" (Terry Bolger,1990-1).
The concepts of 'war of all against all' and class conflict is still very much alive in post-industrial societies.
Romantic idealism and " the Jewish god of peace" (Brecht) does not prevail.
The detritus of the past and its manifestations today...
In Marxist theory and in classic political teleology,it must be remembered, if I am not muddying the water,that labour and capital are fundamentally at odds as are worker and poor and professional person and the rich and that one has effectively vanquished the other. That is a guide to modern events and the lesson of Russia's awkward course.
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14.2.2023
This Ireland? Native comparisons
Sinn Fein were in the 1970's, national chauvinist.
Under Adams immature leadership,they turned social patriotic. They later turned turtle.
Today, many Sinn Fein spokespersons in the North go with the media flow and are characteristically socially pacifistic. P.A.'s take no firm position on hostilely workplace situations caused by clear and irreconcilable class interests.
Our recent Northern experience has similarities to the revolutionary political and social trends of the democratic changes in Russia. Engels's concepts of a political revolution are still relevant to our times in Ireland because we may be on the brink of profound political upheaval (Anti-Duhring,1878).
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The Ukraine war and the world economy
Sanctions against Russia have brought on a world crisis of revolutionary significance. Unlike the 1980-88 US prohibitions on high-tech exports to the Soviet Union,it may be the West's economy which is heading into a deep crisis. The ruling classes of Western states may be about to alter themselves as governing organisms.
The warning sign of the Eastern economic and political transformation was widespread police and medical repression in the seventies and eighties.The ratcheting up of police repression and growing economic obsolescence engendered social desperation and political dismay in the Soviet Union and later in Eastern Europe.
So,is there a Western parallel to the Soviet Union in the 1980's?
Very much so!
In the UK,there is a political inability to see the shortcomings of handing the government of society over to an unelected autocracy which is composed of medical screwballs and political looneys.
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19.3.2023
Left-wing socialism? Northern Ireland and its orientation towards a British -style medical dictatorship
We say to the misguided old women and political hens who take up lists of names to support doctors as we currently see in parts of Northern Ireland,you are fashioning a noose for your own hanging.
These silly old cows know nothing about the medical profession or the thugs who they incite against medical inmates.
No right-minded person believes in the protracted crying into their cocoa of boring old farts such as doctors and nursing staff.
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21.3.2023
Other lessons of the past
In terms of political manoeuvring,Lenin wrote a pamphlet titled One Step Forward,Two Steps Backward in 1902-3 concerning political opportunism.
In those terms,where does Russia sit today?
Firstly in order of historical appearance during Lenin's literary discourses from Russia came broadly Great Russian Chauvinism. That was followed by a movement for progress,a trend of agrarian socialism.
Following forward from the late 1890's to the Democratic Revolution of February 1917..
The dominant revolutionary trend in the February Revolution of 1917 was socialist revolutionary politics. Lenin coined the phrase for that of social patriotism to characterise socialists who argued for the continuation of the war against Germany.
Again,it must be remembered that in November 1918 elections the Socialist Revolutionary Party had three supporters to each Bolshevik.
In those times of civil war,the Socialist Revolutionary Party and minority social democrats mixed social democracy with imperialist rhetoric.
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Are Lenin's concepts still relevant to theorising the world,post-Fall,where national borders are largely stable and no world war has been joined in this nuclear age?
Apart from Africa where borders are contested,yes.
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Russian socialism in a contemporary setting?
Those who see hope for Russian socialism in the Russian Communist Party and Our Home would be advised to see in that society a case of "Two (or three) steps backward,One Step Away".
Away?
Away from peace.
Three steps backward?
A sharp lurch back from socialism via social patriotism via social chauvinism to Great Russian Chauvinism.
Democratic and revolutionary socialists say clearly that the Ukrainian War is aggression and territorial expansionism in the form of the "Special Military Operation", so-called.
Putin's war follows the traditional course of ethnocentric self-aggrandisement based on false concepts of race and nationality.
A relevant description rooted in the early writings of Lenin for this military adventure?
Great Russian Chauvinism.
However,Leninist conceptualisation and socialist concepts are not accepted by those in the Duma or broadly acceptable in the contemporary Russian setting.
All parties have abandoned revolutionary liberty and the democratic path to socialism. That freedom is a Western concept and forms the legal foundations of Britain,the US, Germany,France,Italy and Ireland.
The war?
The Great Russian Chauvinism which Lenin railed against prolongs unnecessary human suffering.
The future for social democracy in a Russian setting?
Russian democracy must renew itself and start once again as in December 1829 at the very earliest,stumbling beginnings.
In the conceptualisation of pure moralists, evil will have its own reward.
In temporal terms,those counselling militaristic and ethnocentric aims will get their full payback with premature or unexpected deaths,even in our own state of Northern Ireland.
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30.7.2023
If we accept that the Soviet Union retreated from Great Power status in 1989 by its own volition, where does its political status rest now?
Russia was between 1991 and 2022 a national democracy,a self-absorbed political democracy.
Modern times
In April 2022,Putin embarked on a campaign of aggression based on false concepts of race,nationality and religion.
Sensible observers similarly counter to NATO warmongering that Russia has a right to feel secure within its own borders.
Ireland,too. Neither cause is realistic because of defence inadequacy and NATO's creeping up on Russia.
With Britain's occupation of part of our own country coming to an end and Western aggression threatening Russia's very existence,the time to take a stand for Ireland's territorial integrity and Russian sovereignty and territorial unity has come.
In the East, in Eastern Europe and Asia,the die is cast against the neo-colonial class.In the West,the US and many European powers are walking on a nuclear cliff-edge.
Ireland
In this country,let us all moderate our demands of society and look "not to what our country can do for us,but what we can do for our country" .
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31.7.2023
Russia,1898.Ireland,2023. Agrarian socialism
Since neoliberalism took hold in Ireland,there is no pooled reward of labour exertions in agriculture such as in the form of cooperatives. In our country,there is only a small residual measure of cooperation in agriculture and dairy cooperation faded with the ghost of Sir Horace Plunkett and the cooperators of the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
Pat O Connor of Avonmore Foods and Pierce Brosnan of Kerry Foods introduced demutualisation. With that retrograde step came even more intensive 'forced' farming and the introduction of hormones and growth promoters to industrial agriculture. Bertie 'the Rascal' Ahern and that pair and the hung-his-mother middle farmers engineered the breakdown of the agricultural cooperation movement after 1989.
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US 'business trade unionism' is a system of sole union recognition,employer-labour arrangement. It contrasts with Anglophone countries free collective bargaining.
English trade union collectivism rather than Irish social consensus or US 'business unionism' holds the upper hand in most progressive anglophone powers.
The big picture.
The Western world is trying to halt with financial sanctions on Russia and restrictions on China changing trade patterns and the search for cheaper labour-power.
English political forces are trying to guide Anglo-American financial cartels to play the 'national bankruptcy' card. Politicians in the US seek to use effective import quotas,the manipulation of credit ratings and capital to debt ratios to render Chinese industry uncompetitive and bankrupt Chinese banks and financial institutions.The market will win out because such financial blackmail can only win out against a lesser power not an industrial powerhouse such as China.
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A Manifesto for Change in A New Millennium?
Western countries should turn to themselves and their own resources for the solution to their problems. If imperialist predators are not to gain a renewed grip, voters should vote to keep the focus of military measures away from weaker and more vulnerable powers.
An end to international adventurism on both sides and a return to the basic tenets of peaceful, democratic progress!
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German collegiality implies a closer tie between workers in the workplace rather than the disassociative "Geselle" as in English collectivism. The German worker refers to his workmate as "Kollege". "Kamerad" is reserved in Germany for a military relationship or an associate in an enterprise with social revolution in mind as a Communist would refer to a comrade.
In Germany,we say therefore that people are more tightly bound together but that this does not relate to domestic life which is strictly "privat".
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In talking about "lay priests", those men and women who translated Lenin's final works in the 1930's imparted the great lesson that a beast such as German fascism or Italian corporatism would stoop to charity-mongering to recruit cutthroats and hooligans as did the Daughters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy in Weaver Street in Dublin in my instance sooner than pay me for what were the fruits of my intellectual labours,namely municipal housing redevelopment schema and what was to become the National Development Plan. The good and pious nuns reckoned that I should endow them with my labours and receive no payment.
The Communists were the orchestrators of the campaign of terror directed at myself. They acted in association with the Gardai. They alone knew where I lived, foremost amongst them being Eugene Mc Cartan (Phibsboro/ Ballymun/ Castlewellan).
