New issue of Resistance now out!

by more outlets Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:25

Resistance is now available in Barracka Books on Barrack Street in Cork and in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop in Galway.

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:55

The articles above are a selection from the latest issue of Resistance. I don't have the other texts to hand, but we hope to post everything on our own website in due course.

For a free hardcopy of the paper, just email us for a copy (or as many as you need) at irishsocialistnetwork@dublin.ie

We'll send it (or them) to you post free.

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:51

The anti-war movement is still needed 

By Deirdre Clancy  (Anti-War Ireland)

July marked the first anniversary of the unanimous acquittal of the Pitstop Ploughshares for decommissioning a US warplane at Shannon Airport in February 2003. We have said virtually all that can be said about our action. We have also commented on what our acquittal implies about the goodwill that can emerge when a jury is truly confronted with details of the day-to-day, concrete reality for the Iraqi victims of continuous bombardment.

      The truth is that, after plodding along for several years, trying to get the information out, failing and succeeding in equal measure, one’s taste for rhetoric diminishes. There is no need to repeat the same old truths about the pretexts for the shameful Iraq invasion crumbling like the fragile house of cards that they always were. Every week, it appears, there is a new revelation about the deceit that lay behind the invasion. A recent story in the politically liberal online magazine Salon.com includes interviews with two former CIA officers, who claim that Bush ignored vital intelligence that Saddam had no WMD. One officer is quoted as saying: ‘Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.’ Tell us something we don’t know already.

      At this stage, most thinking people know that the White House is deeply corrupt. Many of its erstwhile loyal advocates have been scrambling to disassociate themselves from the current administration, to the extent that Timothy Noah, journalist with Slate.com, started a column entitled ‘Bush Abandonment Watch’, which at one point produced nine articles in one month. Later, Noah declared that he couldn’t keep track of the outright betrayals among former Bush faithful, and compiled a small list of possible true loyalists, which included Barbara Bush (for having ‘bled in labour’), Laura Bush and Barney the dog (for sleeping at Bush’s feet).

      It now seems that there is very little to be written or said about the invasion of Iraq and its after-effects without becoming trite. Yes, the White House is full of war criminals and Iraq is profoundly destabilised. But these days, much anti-war discussion feels like jejune sloganeering, because we’ve integrated it all as a taken-for-granted set of truisms. The anti-war movement is tired and inactive, and, latterly, the average public meeting is capable of eliciting sensations similar to a corporate meeting room, where everything is ‘mission-critical’ and ‘value-added’, and everyone is resolutely and yawningly ‘going forward’. Replace the hackneyed corporate phrases with other overworked phrases, such as ‘all about oil!’, ‘warmongers!’ and ‘not in our name!’ (all of which I’ve used myself, admittedly) and the anti-war movement continues to slide down the slippery slope of malaise instead of becoming re-energised.

      In front of us, we have a crumbling empire, run by dangerously extreme political ideologues and religious fundamentalists, using an Irish civilian airport. Lest there be any remaining doubt about the collective irrationality of remaining supporters of the Bush Administration, check out the link below to a Max Blumenthal video, detailing the beliefs of Christians United for Israel. This extremely influential lobby group believes the anti-Christ will be a peacemaker in the Middle East, that Muslims are backed by Satan, and that the end-times are nigh. Tom DeLay declares in the video that he is looking forward to the ‘rapture’ (which would occur in Israel and necessitate a pre-emptive invasion of Iran). This is the type of disturbed thinking that is currently behind the activities of the largest military machine in the world. Does anybody even find this scary anymore?

      There is no logical reason why the moral outrage at the activities of the US government in the Middle East should have diminished: instead, the reasons for concern continue to mount up. The problem appears to be an exhausted, and barely existent, anti-war movement that has run out of ideas for resistance and needs generative rehabilitation.

      The responsibility for creative, clearheaded resistance lies with everyone concerned. A year after our unanimous acquittal for doing €2 million worth of damage to a US warplane, at least it’s possible to say that our jury understood this. Widespread collective responsibility, however, requires widespread collective imagination and motivation. The (former) Pitstop Ploughshares would ask you not to forget about the people of the Middle East, whose lives have been so cruelly disrupted by US foreign policy. 

Link: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07...l.php 

Deirdre Clancy is a member of Anti-War Ireland and was one of five activists, known as the Pitstop Ploughshares, who were acquitted unanimously by a jury in the Four Courts in July 2006 for their decommissioning of a US warplane at Shannon airport in February 2003. 
 
 
 

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:48

Shell to Sea: The Struggle Goes On

By John Apparat (ISN) 

When ordinary people involve themselves in a battle against powerful institutions, those institutions, with superior resources, will try to coerce or suppress the campaigns. The state and business interests can quickly steamroll over poorly organised, unfocused acts of resistance. A case in point is the fragmented campaign protecting Tara and the road presently being built through that national monument.

      If faced by a better-organised opposition, institutional bureaucrats take a long-term view and try to grind down those involved in struggle. After all, the police will always be on their side, to pick people off the fringes of large protests and smash through smaller ones. Their institutional friends in the media can be counted on to do the same, albeit without the use of truncheons.

      There is no doubt that the Shell to Sea campaign by the people of Erris and their supporters has been one of the best to take place in our country for many years. Like the anti-bin and anti-water charges campaigns, it has challenged those elitists who see hitting the poor with financial and environmental burdens as ‘common sense’.

      It has provided a clear alternative to the plans of the political and corporate bullies by demanding the return of Irish natural resources to the people of Ireland and, in the case of the Corrib gas, for it to be processed at sea with the best available technology, far from family homes, schools, wildlife, and farm animals. Most importantly, those involved in the campaign have fought hard to have their demands met against fierce competition from a multinational and its lackeys in uniform, wigs, and suits.

      Like any big campaign, Shell to Sea has seen its fair share of opportunistic elements pass through its ranks. And, naturally, mistakes have been made by those involved. The campaign is now under threat from reduced public interest and from a mistaken perception among many sympathisers that the battle cannot be won.

      But it is not lost. The scheme is far from built, and the recent jailing of three fishermen from Porturlin shows that local militancy is as strong as ever. Anyone attending a meeting of the solidarity group in Dublin or elsewhere will tell you that they have plenty of support.

      Eamonn Ryan may have jumped off his bike and onto the political steamroller, but the long, hard, grind of resistance hasn't stopped. Two summers on from the jailing of the Rossport Five, the struggle against Shell continues. On 14 September, as this paper was going to press, another day of action occurred at the Shell site in Erris, with several protesters arrested while engaged in justifiable and necessary direct action.

      Indeed, one of the strongest features of the Shell to Sea campaign has been its deployment of a diversity of tactics and, in particular, its use of direct action. It is important that this continues and that Shell and its government allies are eventually defeated.

      And it must be borne in mind that this is not simply a struggle against a greedy corporation – it is equally a fight against a neo-liberal government that will bend over backwards to facilitate a corporation that puts its profits before the welfare of working people.

      Sending Shell to sea will be an extremely useful beginning, but it will only be a beginning – it is essential also that the issue of ownership of natural resources be raised. Why should private, greed-driven corporations be allowed to secure ownership of our natural resources? Why should Shell have control of this gas in the first place? And why should the people of Erris have their lives put at risk to boost the profits of these multinational corporate vultures?

       

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:44

A Rough Guide to Socialism 

Leninism

By Fintan Lane (ISN) 

‘Go back to Russia!’

      Sure, why not? In the 1980s, and for decades before, left-wingers of all varieties occasionally had this pithy witticism thrown at them by the more excitable opponents of socialism.

      One shouldn’t make excuses for political troglodytes, but I kind of understand where this was coming from. Seriously.

      Marxists, with the exception of the ‘orthodox communists’ (aka the ‘Stalinists’), have generally been critical of the politico-economic system that existed in Eastern Europe, but most, nonetheless, place themselves firmly within the Bolshevik tradition – in short, Stalinists and Trotskyists (whether ‘neo’ or otherwise) actually have much in common: they are all Marxist-Leninists of one hue or other.

      In fact, Leninism is often mistakenly seen as synonymous with Marxism. This is an appropriation that was very deftly done in the decade after the Russian revolution when the Bolsheviks, through the Comintern, gained control of the international communist movement.

      Lenin, unfortunately, had a few controversial ideas: his views on the role and organisational structure of socialist parties are particularly contested.

      The Irish Socialist Network (ISN), for example, places itself within the Marxist tradition and we view Marx as an immensely important thinker. However, we are not Leninists and we reject several key arguments made by Lenin and his allies.

      Our rejection of Leninism arises from our emphasis on participatory democracy. Socialism is something that must come from below, from the self-activity of working people – and it must be thoroughly democratic. The workers’ councils (‘soviets’) that emerged in towns and workplaces across Europe between 1917 and 1920 are important examples of socialist democracy in action; they indicate the potential of politicised working people to create new democratic structures for a new type of society. In the process, they create their own organisations of struggle. The working class will emancipate itself and, in the long term, will abolish itself.

      Lenin, however, was a strong believer in the ‘professional revolutionary’ and in What is to be Done? (1902), he took a decidedly conspiratorial turn; he elaborated his concept of the ‘vanguard party’ (i.e. the communist party), which, as the ‘most advanced section of the working class’, would be the ‘leadership’ of that class in struggle. Elements of his theory of the party were modified as the political context changed, but the essential Leninist belief is an elitist one. With regard to the working class, the Marxist-Leninist ‘vanguard’ is the brains of the operation!    

      This, of course, creates difficulties with others on the left; Leninist groups often take an adversarial approach to those they have much in common with. In some cases, it leads to nasty sectarianism, with leftists outside the group treated as a real or potential threat.

      Lenin also argued for ‘democratic centralism’ for internal decision making – a method that the ISN rejects as hierarchical. ‘Democratic centralism’, which necessitates a centralised and dominant leadership, means that decisions taken become the public positions of all members. A military-style discipline is enforced from the top down.

      The ISN, by contrast, makes policy decisions collectively at national meetings and once a policy has been decided (by consensus or majority vote), that is the ISN position, but members remain free to dissent and promote a different – minority – position. In other words, a member is free to publicly articulate a position different from the official position of the ISN as long as such a minority view is not misrepresented as the official ISN view. Leninists generally see such behaviour as grounds for expulsion.

       Which brings us neatly back to Russia and the gulags.

      The Leninist attitude to other left organisations was made clear in the years after 1917 as a one-party state was introduced gradually in Russia. The participatory democratic soviets were neutralised and, at the Bolsheviks’ Tenth Party Congress in 1921, even internal organised factions were abolished. It would be wrong to blame Lenin for the Stalinist state that later emerged, but he certainly opened the door.

      Lenin and Trotsky were markedly authoritarian in their leadership style and the Bolsheviks created state capitalism not socialism in the USSR.  

Recommended Reading 

* Hal Draper, The ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ from Marx to Lenin (New York, 1987).

* Herman Gorter et al., Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers’ Councils (St Petersburg, Florida, 2007).

* Fintan Lane, ‘Contradicting the Bolsheviks: Anton Pannekoek and European Marxism’, Saothar (journal of Irish labour history), vol. 30, (2005).

* Marcel Liebman, Leninism under Lenin (London, 1975).

* Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets: the Russian People and their Revolution, 1917–21 (Oxford, 1996). 
 

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:40

Hospital co-location – adding insult to injury 

By John Lally (ISN) 

The government’s decision to co-locate private hospitals on the grounds of public hospitals across the state is the latest in a long line of health policy decisions that widen the gap in healthcare provision between those who can afford to pay for health insurance and those who cannot.

      For a long time now, public patients have been subsidising a better service for private patients.

      In what has come to be known as our ‘two-tier health system’, government health policy actively supports the treatment of private patients in public hospitals. The state has allowed the development of two separate waiting lists – one for public patients and one for private.  As private patients are seen to more quickly, this acts as an incentive – if not a compulsion – to buy private health insurance.  Latest figures show that 52 per cent of the population have health insurance, an extraordinary phenomenon in a state where all qualify for public care. 

      And it is worth remembering that private patients do not pay the full cost of their care – many aspects (such as operating theatres and nursing and other care staff) are paid for by the public system. In effect, public patients subsidise a better, faster care for their private counterparts.

      Even before the co-location proposal, the government was actively incentivising private healthcare.  Generous tax incentives to encourage the construction of private hospitals and nursing homes were introduced in 2002.  For every €100 million in hospital construction, the Exchequer gives €40 million in tax breaks to investors, who put up just €20 million of the cost. Hospital promoters, normally, put up a further €20 million and the banks would lend the remaining €60 million.  Thus, the taxpayer effectively funds the equivalent of all the risk.  And for that €40 million subsidy, the taxpayer gets absolutely nothing in return: no extra beds are added to the public health service; the taxpayer has no control over, or interest in the new facility. And should the owners decide, in perhaps 15 years time, that there is more profit to be had from a supermarket or high-end apartments, the hospital can be sold off and the €40 million subsidy will not be returned. In short, it’s a barefaced rip-off of the taxpayer.

      Three years after the introduction of these subsidies, then Health Minister Mary Harney launched the ‘co-location initiative’, which will see up to ten private hospitals built on the lands of existing public hospitals.  Her stated aim is to free up 1,000 private beds in the public system by effectively relocating them to the new (subsidised) facilities. The plan was announced as being ‘cost-free’ to the exchequer, until it was pointed out that the tax breaks could result in a bill of over €400 million. And to this sum should be added the cost of the public land on which the new facilities will be constructed. The ‘co-location’ plan is simplistic in the extreme. It will not result in the freeing up of 1,000 beds in the public system. 

      Private hospitals cannot and do not provide the same level of care as hospitals in the public system. Private hospitals focus on planned surgery rather than on emergency or essential care and they avoid certain expensive treatments, such as care in stroke units. So, they select relatively quick and straightforward procedures that require little follow-up care. Indeed, if follow-up care is needed, the patient will fall back on the public service.  Private hospitals will continue to cherry pick, while public hospitals will continue to provide more complex and costly services, including complicated surgical procedures and expensive but lifesaving rehabilitation treatment. 

      The co-location initiative will not free up 1,000 public hospital beds.  What it will do is further entrench the inequality in the health system, with private care privileged over the public system.  It will result in an increase in private beds, partially paid for by public money.

      Socialists know that health care is about much more than hospitals.  We agree with Dr Jane Wilde, Director of the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, who put it clearly and simply when she stated that ‘Poverty and inequality threaten our health and social and economic development.  Research from the Institute of Public Health shows almost 6,000 premature deaths each year are due to poverty and inequality. Inequality and poverty are unnecessary. They can be addressed through concentrated social and political action.’ They will not be addressed by the government’s current health policies, which, in fact, will more deeply entrench inequality in Irish society.

by isn'er Tue Sep 25, 2007 09:36

Aer Lingus, Shannon and the dangers of privatisation 

By Steven Morrissey (ISN) 

The Aer Lingus move from Shannon to Belfast came as no surprise to those who opposed the privatisation of Aer Lingus. Let’s face it – the central objective of privatisation was the transformation of a public company, built up with hard-earned taxpayers’ money, into one that makes profits for a handful of private individuals.

      That is how and why the man largely responsible for driving down wages and conditions in the airline industry, Michael ‘Skinflint’ O’Leary, has become the biggest shareholder in the privatised company, with an eye to becoming the majority shareholder or even, god forbid, the sole owner. His use of the Shannon issue as a stick to beat Aer Lingus management is simply part of an intra-capitalist struggle over the spoils of privatisation. It’s a case of pigs bumping each other’s noses in the trough.

      The Shannon/Heathrow debacle draws into sharp focus the real agenda of management in Aer Lingus, which is centred on the maximising of profits. The significance of the move to Belfast is that conditions of employment and the wages of those working in the airline industry there are considerably worse than in the south.   This is neither a plot against the west by the pale nor a victory for the north, but simple naked capitalism, endlessly moving in search of greater profits. The bizarre spectacle of Skinflint O’Leary, Fianna Fáil backbenchers, Green councillors, local and multinational capitalists and SIPTU leaders lining up in an elite campaign to ‘defend’ the west is laughable, given their support for, or acquiescence to, privatisation.  The Aer Lingus management did what capitalists do – it went where the greater profits are, regardless of the human consequences.

      Over the years the Aer Lingus unions concluded deal after deal, accepting ‘flexibility’ in return for supposed protection of security, wages and conditions. What was missing was a tooth and nail struggle against the government and management’s privatisation plans. In the end, the only opposition emanating from the union leaderships came in the form of rhetoric.  The outcome was a consultation process, led by a senior bank official, which resulted in an arrangement that any announcement of privatisation would be made initially to the unions involved in Aer Lingus, a ‘courtesy’ the government duly ignored.  What a relief to the condemned it would have been to be informed in advance of their execution!

      Every time the Aer Lingus unions capitulated, the management came back for more. Give the employers a foot and they’ll take a mile. Management and government never had any intention of keeping the airline in public ownership; the restructuring was simply preparing the ground for privatisation. A sustained struggle against this gradual softening up, including all-out industrial action, could have halted this process. The workers had made the company profitable and had a huge sense of pride in this public enterprise, so they would not have been found wanting in taking the fight to management. 

      Such a struggle was never on the cards given the bureaucratic nature of union structures and the dominance of conservative union leaders.  Instead, we were confronted with the sad spectacle of the leadership of one union simply using their position to secure the most they could get in any privatisation of the company through shareholdings, while the other union’s bosses blew bubbles of rhetoric at a government wise to the emptiness of their rhetoric. That the privatisation of Aer Lingus happened without a fight speaks volumes about the state of Irish unions today. 

      The whole debacle must be viewed in the context of a trade union movement severely undermined by so-called ‘social-partnership’. Whether it is a demoralised Aer Lingus workforce, a weakened trade union movement, a decline in industrial militancy or the almost total stranglehold of conservative bureaucrats on the unions, the root of all the problems is the co-option of the trade unions into the corporatist model, which commits them to assisting with the efficient functioning of the capitalist economy.

      The real weakness of this shackled trade union movement becomes transparent in times of crisis. Workers are working longer hours, productivity is at an all-time high, inflation eats into any pay elements of the partnership deal, while the unions are tied up in layers of procedures. Meanwhile, the neo-liberal attack on public services continues unabated. Now the race to the bottom is in full swing in Aer Lingus before the ink is even dry on this new social partnership deal.

      The alternative to social partnership is fighting, democratic unions, controlled and led by their members, willing to take on the employers and government, eager to oppose privatisation at all costs, to agitate for democratic public ownership and workers control.  The time has long past for talk of winning over the ‘leaders’ or replacing them with better ones. The struggle now must be to democratise and radicalise the unions from below. A daunting task indeed, but the struggle is only lost if we give up the fight.    
 
 
 
 

by answer Mon Sep 24, 2007 15:44

The photo above is of the July/August issue, not the one just out. Our candidate, John O'Neill, like many on the left, didn't do as well as we'd have liked, but, hey, if you read the post-election issue, you'll see the ISN doesn't put much stock in the electoral road to 'socialism' anyway. We argue for real democracy - participatory democracy - not the fakery known as representative democracy where you get to scratch a piece of paper once every four years and fcuk all input otherwise. Genuine democracy will only exist when people get real control of all aspects of their social and economic world.

by answer Mon Sep 24, 2007 15:20

It's planned to put all the articles from Resistance on the irishsocialist.net website soon, either as full pdfs of the paper or, more likely, as html texts. At the moment, though, you'll have to rely hardcopy, which you can get free of charge and post-free by mailing irishsocialistnetwork@dublin.ie

Sorry!

by Godot Mon Sep 24, 2007 15:01

is there a pdf version on the site, i can't find one?

by anon Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:12

Read it on saturday. Good issue. Good articles. Excellent production values.

by update Sun Sep 23, 2007 18:46

Resistance is now available in both Connolly Books and Books Upstairs in Dublin.

Should be available in the Quay Coop (Sullivan's Quay) and Barracka Books (Barrack St.) in Cork by the end of the week.

by isn'er Fri Sep 21, 2007 19:35

Should be available in Books Upstairs (College Green) and Connolly Books (Temple Bar) within a few days.