“Woke is Dead”, read the banner. “It was all wokism demeaning window-dressing”, said the main voice of the ‘NO’ campaign, Michael McDowell, former Tánaiste and leader of the late and unlamented Progressive Democrats.
The Family and Care referendums, analysed previously here and here were massively defeated, the latter by the biggest ever No vote in a referendum. The amendment to the constitution on the family was defeated by 67.7 per cent of the votes and the care amendment by 73.9 per cent.
Both had been supported by the three government parties and by all but one of the opposition parties in the Dáil, including Labour, Social Democrats, Sinn Fein and People before Profit (PbP). An ‘out-of-touch’ establishment turned out to include Sinn Fein and PbP, as well as several Non-Governmental Organisations, which supported a Yes vote. The opposition parties all blamed the ineptness of the Government, a case not so much of rats leaving a sinking ship as jumping overboard when the ship was already at the bottom. Sinn Fein ran so far away from the scene that it promised not to re-run the referendum, as it had previously promised if it was defeated. It remains to be seen whether People before Profit will do the same and slink away from its similar promise in relation to ‘Care’.
The Irish Times sketch writer noted that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s acceptance of defeat was ‘a strangely nonchalant act of concession’, perfectly befitting the whole exercise, which was indeed “wokism demeaning window-dressing” but not only this. The proposals also contained reactionary principles, as we set out in the two articles linked above.
On the family, it couldn’t tell anyone what the ‘durable relationships’ were that would receive constitutional ‘recognition’ or what this recognition would consist of, while it still claimed that ‘The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage’. The Catholic right took this to be undermining the institution while others might have wondered how it was consistent with recognition of ‘durable relationships.’
The care amendment was bitterly opposed by some disability groups, who saw it as assigning responsibility for their care to their family and justifying the state’s abdication of any responsibility. Varadkar let the cat out of the bag when he more or less accepted this interpretation in a media interview.
The referendum was rushed after having been delayed and without prior explanation or justification of the wording, which was deliberately withheld The debate in the Dáil was cut short with the vote pencilled in for International Women’s Day, which was taken by the electorate as a cynical ploy.
Varadkar stated that “the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan”, but one person’s defeat is another one’s victory and the reasons for the victory of the No side were several, not limited to the arrogance of the Government. The No vote included the opposition of right-wing Catholic opinion that is still a significant, if minority, force, while generally progressive voices could see through the lip service given to change, the reactionary implications of some of the wording, and the noted absence of other words (the word woman for example).
The care referendum was more obviously retrogressive, which prompted a slightly higher no vote and coloured many people’s appreciation of what the whole exercise was about. The impulse to purge the existing constitution of sexism, encapsulated by a woman’s ‘life within the home’, was not enough to prompt a Yes vote, and at bottom reflects the point we made before: that no matter how reactionary it is it is not the cause of women’s disadvantage but rather reflects it.
Blame for failure of the Yes side has consisted of the unclear wording of the amendments; their change from that recommended by the Citizen’s Assembly; the government’s ‘hubris over strategy and superficiality over substance’ (Una Mullally, The Irish Times); the ‘immediate plunge into legalistic arguments’ (Una Mullally again), and the supposed ‘narrow’ campaign on the Yes side.
Since the Yes campaign included all the political parties except the smallest, the base of the Yes campaign wasn’t small. However, what was demonstrated were the limitations of the state’s political representation, including of the so-called anti-establishment parties, especially Sinn Fein. As for the wording, its superficiality and legalistic ‘entanglement that never unravelled’, these were not accidental but intrinsic to the intention of the amendments that the Government simultaneously claimed were symbolic (but important) and meaningful (but unthreatening to the status quo). No wonder it lost.
Determining the nature of the vote can sometimes be established by looking at the consequences, which one journalist has called ‘a vacuum’ and another that while “it might not be the end of gesture politics . . . it will certainly give would-be gesturers pause for thought in future.’ (Pat Leahy in The Irish Times) He provides the example of some NGOs proposals for economic and social rights to be included in the constitution. This is something we have opposed before and consider to be a complete diversion, misdirection, miseducation, and waste of time.
The threat of new Hate legislation is also offered as something that has government TDs worried about their popularity, if the public have the opportunity to understand it. The Irish government has previously passed the Gender Recognition Act with minimum publicity so that no opposition was likely to raise the issue of women’s rights. Getting away with this now is more problematic as the profession of ‘progressive’ intentions loses its capacity to silence critical thought. The referendum vote has certainly achieved this and for this alone it is to be welcomed.
The presentation of the war in Ukraine in the Western media is exactly like that of the genocide in Gaza. Just as history began with the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, so the ‘war’ in Gaza was started by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Russia and Hamas are to blame.
The majority of the Left has correctly sought to put October 7 into context, to be understood as an almost inevitable explosion arising from brutal oppression. In the case of Ukraine the context has all but been ignored, and in any event Russia is not an oppressed people and it had a choice. Of course, both of these observations are true, which are some of the reasons why Sráid Marx has not supported the Russian invasion, but this does not excuse the failure of the pro-war left to provide a coherent explanation of why the invasion took place.
Their impoverished attempts to do so, based on the flawed understanding of history and megalomaniacal mental disposition of Vladimir Putin, is about as useful for the task as depending on the flawed understanding of Jewish history and psychopathic tendencies of Benjamin Netanyahu to explain Israeli actions, or the antisemitic, crazed impulse for revenge of Hamas. Personalising such causes, or placing the onus on the inhuman character of those you don’t like, prevents understanding of the real causes and in this case avoids having to account for the interests of the Russian state, consideration of which might invite deliberation on those of the Ukrainian and Western states. This might lead to comparisons between them that would dissolve the simple narrative of big against small, good facing evil, and freedom opposing oppression.
This year is the tenth anniversary of the Maidan demonstrations and occupation, which is sometimes given as context to, and presented as the start of, the Russian aggression, although this is a particularly difficult ‘revolution’ for the left to hang its coat upon. This ‘revolution of dignity’ was based on the illusion that an EU association agreement would lead to Western standards of living, and put an end to corruption with the introduction of democracy, so that the then Ukrainian President was wrong to accept the alternative offer from Russia and attempt to repress the popular movement by force.
Unfortunately, such a story of a pure democratic movement repressed by a Russian proxy does no justice to the events, as explained before here and here. These include the issues raised in prior attempts to negotiate a deal with the EU, Russia making a better offer, and the EU deal threatening the livelihoods of millions of workers in uncompetitive industries in the East of the country. The Maidan uprising was not therefore universally supported but was based on liberal illusions and sponsorship by the US, including by Western backed NGOs.
The occupation of the Square was led by far-right forces that may well have been to blame for the final massacre. The oligarchic Government and state that arose out of this ‘revolution’ continued to be riddled with corruption and was a creature moulded at least in part by the US, including through collaboration with its secret police, the SBU. Even this Ukrainian supporter of the war cannot help admitting that the Maidan revolt was highjacked by the right.
From 2014 Ukraine built up a large army and adopted a policy of recovering Crimea and the other areas in the East occupied by Russia. Integration into NATO began and the penetration of the US through its usual vehicles, such as the CIA, has been admitted even by a US publication that cannot be accused of providing excuses for Russia. This source makes it abundantly clear that the Ukrainian state was a willing proxy for US imperialism long before the Russian invasion and that 24 February 2022 was very definitely not the ‘first shot’.
This function continues and has increased enormously through the war. Speaking about the role of the CIA at its commencing, Ivan Bakanov, then head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, stated that “Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them”.
The details of this, disclosed by The New York Times, were “a closely guarded secret for a decade”, including from the Ukrainian people. What this demonstrates is that the Ukrainian state and political regime–that the pro-war left in the West supports–walked the Ukrainian people into a war in a process of which they were blissfully ignorant. It proves yet again the old socialist adage that the main enemy is at home.
This left has been unable to tell the difference between the Ukrainian state, people and working class, and has loudly declared the ‘agency’ of Ukraine against charges of the war being a proxy one on behalf of Western imperialism. It is surely beyond doubt that the price paid to become part of NATO isn’t worth it. It is also clear what agency has been active in Ukraine before and during the war, and thus bears some responsibility for it, although this is an agency the pro-war left would like to deny.
The Ukrainian state worked against the interests of the Ukrainian people, and it behoves socialists to explain this and to work towards the working class in the country acting as an agency on its own behalf, not as cannon-fodder for the capitalist state. The pro-war left that declares its defence of the Ukrainian people and working class can’t do this because it can’t tell the difference between their separate interests and so never makes a real distinction between them. Since the working class has no independent organisation separate and opposed to the Ukrainian state the left supports the state, while lip service is paid to working class interests that are never political but simply express economistic demands compatible with, in fact subordinated to, the war.
* * *
in November 2021, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a ‘Strategic Partnership’ with Ukraine that included a commitment to supporting its objective of taking the territory lost to Russia, including Crimea. On the 17th December Russia sent an ultimatum demanding a reduction of Western military deployments in Eastern Europe and an official end to attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO. Inside Ukraine, Zelensky sanctioned three ‘pro-Russian’ TV channels and arrested the opposition leader, Viktor Medvedchuk. He demanded new and immediate sanctions, and questioned why Ukraine didn’t have an ‘open door’ into NATO given that it was functioning as Europe’s ‘reliable shield’ against Russia. The dynamic towards war and Western involvement was set, explaining why the invasion did not come out of the blue from the deranged mind of a Russian dictator.
The immediate UK media response was to paint Russia’s Special Military Operation as a ‘full-scale invasion’ that aimed to invade and occupy the whole country, with Reuters reporting that “Ukraine’s forces no match for Russia in manpower, gear and experience.” Russia was, after all, the great bear threatening the whole Western world and prime justification for the creation and existence of NATO.
Since the total Russian invading army was smaller than the Ukrainian, and much smaller when the latter’s reserves were included, this did not make much sense, since we all learned that a ratio of at least 3 to 1 was required for the attacking force. Russia launched 600 airstrikes in the first ten days, far fewer than the 2,000 strikes launched in the first days of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Two years later, the civilian deaths attributed to Russia are around 10,000, less than one third of those inflicted by the Israeli state in less than a quarter of the time. While the former led to massive economic sanctions; unprecedented supply of weapons and ammunition that drained the stock of materiel from the Western world; billions of dollars and Euros in financial support, and supply of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); in Gaza it led to sanctions, weapons, finance and ISR as well, except the sanctioned were those being massacred and the assistance went to those committing the genocide.
One might think that this would torpedo Western justification for supporting Ukraine, at least among the left, but this didn’t happen, even when the Ukrainian state declared its solidarity with the Israeli state and the Israeli state reciprocated.
Presenting the Russian offensive as a ‘full-scale invasion’ that aimed to occupy the whole country made it possible for Western ‘experts’ to repeatedly denounce it as a failure when this very obviously wasn’t happening. Russia’s characterisation of it as a ‘Special Military Operation’ (that did not require full scale mobilisation beforehand) was derided as simply a dishonest pretence.
Since the West ensured that quick ceasefire negotiations in March 2022 were torpedoed, and promises were made to support Ukraine in a fight to the end, the Russian state then did much of what the western media claimed it had already done. It expanded its military-industrial complex and mobilised hundreds of thousands of new troops, which the Western media denounced without acknowledging that this was already supposed to have happened.
The media, having predicted a quick Russian victory, then took to ridiculing the incompetence of the Russian forces, reporting its massive casualties and hailing its coming total defeat. Their retreat from Kyiv was hailed as a huge reverse, as was the later retreat from much of Kharkiv in the East and Kherson in the West. This ignored that fighting around Kyiv was more a series of skirmishes than a massive full-frontal assault; that the loss of significant territory in Kharkiv was due to thin defences that proved the invasion had not been ‘full-scale’, and that the retreat back across the Dnieper was a well-executed manoeuvre that made perfect sense from a military point of view.
None of this means that these were not victories for Ukraine, but they were not the disasters for Russia painted in the West. Influential media like Foreign Affairs carried articles such as “How Not to Invade a Nation” while Russia Matters declared “No End in Sight to Beginning of Putin’s End”. Russian advances were written off–“Russia’s Capture of Azovstal: Symbolic Success, ‘Pyrrhic’ Victory?” said Radio Liberty Europe.
The British media reported that “Vladimir Putin’s total defeat is now within reach”, according to The Telegraph on 8 Sept 2022.
“Putin is finished. The Ukrainians have him on the ropes” in The Telegraph, on 11 Sept 2022 .
“Humiliation for Vladimir Putin as Ukrainians liberate key city of Lyman” said The Guardian on 1 Oct 2022, and
Ukrinform on 19 November 2022 stated that “Defense Ministry predicts Ukrainian forces be back in Crimea by end of December”.
This obviously biased and ignorant approach continued with the promise, repeatedly delayed, of a Ukrainian offensive in the spring of 2023. Russia was apparently not only running out of missiles (repeatedly) and had suffered horrendous losses of men and tanks, but the low morale of its troops could mean a rapid victory for the new NATO armed and trained Ukrainian brigades.
In the event, Russia continued to fire its missiles at various levels of intensity; its first defences were hardly reached never mind breached, and the morale of the Russian army held while that of Ukraine fell following the utter failure of the offensive and the high level of losses incurred. It appeared, after it was all over, that during the offensive Russia had captured as much territory as Ukraine.
There then began the claim that the war was at a stalemate, with little territorial gains by either side, while stories of repeated meat grinder assaults causing horrific casualties were attributed to the Russians that had in fact become a feature of the previous Ukrainian offensive. This was combined with incompatible stories about the considerable Russian advantage in artillery in what was characterised as a war of position. Pro-Russian propaganda pointed out that this was precisely the Russian strategy – of degrading Ukrainian forces rather than seeking territorial gains, which would ultimately follow.
The only way to gain any appreciation of the state of the conflict from a military point of view was to look at this propaganda (with a critical eye). This, of course, was not something the pro-war and Pro-Ukraine left was inclined to do. The defeat at Bakhmut was thus the story of the loss of a strategically unimportant town and not that of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, while the grinding war of attrition was still a stalemate at a time when Russia was making more advances than the previous heralded Ukrainian assaults. Reading Western coverage of the war was like reading a crime novel in which pro-Russian outlets had already revealed in previous months who had been killed, how they had been killed and who was guilty.
Even now, the story is being told that Ukraine is losing only because of lack of resolve by the West and that victory is still possible. More weapons and ammunition should be supplied even though it is now admitted that neither the troops to wield them, nor the materiel itself, exist in sufficient quantity. This leads to the siren calls for NATO infantry on the ground and NATO aircraft in the sky. This became another illustration of the claim that if Ukraine falls the rest of Europe will be next, while having claimed during most of the last two years that Russia was losing.
Repeated lies by the Western media, its contradictory claims and their clash with reality should have caused the more fundamental lies about the nature of the war to be questioned and rejected. However, having swallowed Western imperialist explanation and justification for the war, the pro-war Left by and large also became subject to the illusions peddled about its course. They have become stuck in support for a proxy war that has the potential to escalate catastrophically and a political position that can only oppose catastrophe when the grounds for it have already been created.
The second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to several retrospective summaries of the war and recapitulation of the arguments about its justification. This should have involved an examination of the various claims made about its course over the two years and how they stand up today, but this was studiously avoided. If we take even a cursory look at these claims, we can see how the lies told by the Western media about the war have increasingly been shredded by reality. Instead of winning against a stupid and incompetent Russia the all-powerful NATO might be losing? But let us come to that presently.
The genocide in Gaza has to a great extent eclipsed the war while the bias and lying of the Western media has increasingly been impossible to hide. That the BBC live-streamed the Israeli case at the International Court of Justice but not the South African is just one example. While driving my car this morning Sky News reported that one hundred Palestinians had just ‘died’, which must be taken to refer to the killing by the Israeli army of their desperately starving victims attempting to get food from one of the few aid convoys the Zionists allowed through.
All this should provide grounds for clarifying the nature of the war in Ukraine but instead these have been treated as two entirely separate happenings, including by much of the left, which supports the actions of the United States in one and damns it in the other; excuses its intervention in one and rejects all its excuses in the other. And we are supposed to believe this makes sense.
So, the war in Ukraine is the war in Ukraine; and the genocide in Gaza is but the latest murderous assault on the Palestinian people that must be addressed by a Palestinian solidarity movement. The long adopted method of single issue campaigns, designed supposedly to involve the maximum number of people, is exposed as divorced from reality. Rather than help explain the world, it fragments reality and is an obstacle to understanding it. Without such understanding the fundamental cause of war – capitalism – will forever lurk in the background, smothered by the appearance of this or that conflict, inviting this or that ‘solution’ that often relies on the criminals who caused it.
Much of the Western left has supported the Ukrainian state, and Western intervention, which is now accepted in Washington and Kyiv as the only thing keeping it going, with repeated threats that it will lose very soon if Western weapons do not continue to come. Since money on its own does not kill Russians the reckless sponsorship of the war has been exposed because the Western powers no longer have the ammunition or other war materiel to keep Ukraine fighting.
Zelensky promises a new offensive in 2025 but the integrity of his armed forces might not last that long. Western powers are scrounging ammunition from various parts of the globe, but these simply mean that Ukrainians will keep on fighting and dying a little longer. The alternative is the provision of more advanced weapons such as longer-range missiles and F-16 aircraft but these cross previous red lines, risk Russian retaliatory escalation and will not lead to Ukrainian victory. In turn this risks further Ukrainian attempts to provoke greater Western intervention.
Threats to directly intervene with troops on the ground have only revealed that some have already been there and many of them have been killed. A Russian officer has already stated that “NATO military personnel, under the guise of mercenaries, participate in hostilities. They control air defence systems, tactical missiles and multiple launch rocket systems, and are part of assault detachments.” The loss of over 60 French ‘mercenaries’ has already been reported in Kharkiv. Now the German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz has let slip that the British and French are using their own troops to target and fire their missiles. And someone else has revealed discussions within the German armed forces to attack Russia.
What successes Ukraine have achieved, such as the sinking of Russian warships and scarce and expensive surveillance aircraft, could only have been accomplished with Western systems, intelligence and personnel. The most advanced weapons systems can only be used effectively by forces trained and familiar with them while their servicing and maintenance requires similar support. None of this has prevented increasingly rapid Russian advances on the ground.
Stopping, and reversing, this could not be achieved even by French, German, British or US troops on the ground without creation of a massive intervention force that these countries are currently in no position to construct and employ. This has not excluded repeated announcements of the possibility of Western troops being sent to take part directly in the fighting. This, even if on a limited scale, has the potential to lead to a World War. The piloting of F-16 fighters by NATO pilots, with the green light by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to attack targets in Russia, shows one path to escalation and war.
The prospect of Western infantry in Ukraine raised by Macron and shot down by others reflects awareness of the possibility of defeat, which Biden in particular has cause to fear, if this becomes clear before the November Presidential election. Even If Western escalation were partial, limited to occupation of Western Ukraine, Russia has the capacity to continue to move forward to achieving its aims, which would be expanded to account for a Western incursion.
Left supporters of the Ukrainian state face the defeat of what has, politically, become their own proxy in their imagined progressive struggle alongside Western imperialism. The presumed priority of Russian defeat would require massive Western imperialist intervention, with the risks discussed, and serves to justify the most reactionary nationalism in Eastern Europe (to be covered later).
Given the nature of the parties involved, exemplified in the massive disparity in power of the two forces, it is not Western imperialism that has become a proxy for the Left but the Left that has become a bourgeois proxy within the socialist movement. Such is the position this pro-imperialist Left has put itself by supporting a pro-Western capitalist state in a war and by also supporting the assistance provided to it by Western imperialism.
The split personality of this left can be seen in their support in the case of Ukraine and opposition in the case of Palestine, as if all the Western powers are confused as to what is in their interests. This disorder is as real for those that straight-forwardly support Ukraine and deny the proxy nature of the war as it is for those who directly express their confusion by both supporting the capitalist Ukrainian state while opposing the assistance of the capitalist states supporting it.
Defence of the Palestinian people will not be advanced by upholding in Ukraine the imperialist supporters of the Zionist state that is carrying out genocide, or by claiming that it is capable of playing a progressive role in one but not the other.
Of course, the genocide in Gaza is immediately more obvious and easier to argue, and especially more convenient for the moralistic approach that single-issue campaigns rely upon. But for exactly this reason it is important to show how the two require the same approach and are not two single issues but two expressions of the one oppressive system that must face one combined struggle against it.
Both are wars by proxies of US imperialism in order to defend its hegemonic position in Europe and the Middle East. Both reveal the poverty of its putative capitalist rivals. The Russian invasion is incapable of stirring the sympathy of the workers of the world, and China, as the ultimate target of the US, cannot politically defend the Russian invasion. In the case of Gaza, these putative leaders of the alternative pole of imperialist power have stood aside while the Zionist state commits genocide. Russia and China have not made even a significant symbolic gesture by expelling the Israeli ambassador, while its BRICS associate, Saudi Arabia, has facilitated trade with Israel to nullify the efforts of the Houthis in Yemen to block it. Iran has been as keen as the US to limit its opposition through its allies so that it can avoid war between them.
In both cases the Left, of almost all shades, sees no role for socialism in ending these capitalist wars but puts forward purely formal democratic proposals that do not go beyond capitalist solutions and have no bearing on reality. This includes the demand for ‘self-determination’ for Ukraine when the part of it allied to the West is already utterly reliant and subordinated to it.
In Gaza, the renewed murder and displacement of Palestinians has revived the debate over a two state or one state solution, neither of which are socialist and neither of which address the over-reaching power of the Zionist state, its US sponsors, or the opposition of the autocratic Arab regimes, which oppose the creation of any democratic Palestinian state lest it act as a beacon of inspiration for their own oppressed populations.
The hypocrisy that has been exposed by the two conflicts is a starting point to enlightening working people about the depraved and ruthless nature of the societies they live in, and that the scope and scale of the barbarity exposed is not accidental but is a fundamental feature. This means that only a complete reordering of society will work and that this is what the socialist alternative involves. If capitalist war does not demand and call for a socialist alternative then activists opposed to these wars will never be able to promise that one day they will end.
Last year during a break in the local anti-war meeting there was a short disagreement about the transgender issue. The woman could barely conceal her disdain for the idea that men could claim to be women by wearing a dress and lipstick (as she put it). The man thought that it was an important issue that had to be addressed.
The woman was primarily a Palestine solidarity activist but recognised the war in Ukraine as one in which hundreds of thousands of people were being killed and that had the potential to escalate with catastrophic results for the world. The man thought the issue had important implications for women’s rights and should be taken up by socialists.
This brought to mind the passage in ‘What is to be Done’ by Lenin ‘that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects…’
So, the questions that naturally arise are about the demands that are raised by the trans activist movement and whether socialists should support them. We can start by looking at the Gender Identity ideology that grounds the politics of the movement and their ‘allies’.
Not all trans people support the same demands or Gender Identity ideology, and this ideology has various features and makes dissimilar claims. What is hardly in dispute however, is that trans people should not be subject to unjustified discrimination or violence, and deserve respect based on our common humanity. The specific claims of Gender Identity ideology are particular to a certain strain of trans political activism and make claims which go beyond this response.
In a series of articles in the British ‘Weekly Worker’ these issues are addressed, and in the fourth part the author writes–‘I use ‘trans people’ for the present purposes to mean people who wish to live permanently in the gender identity polar opposite to that ascribed to the biological sex in which they were born.’
At first reading this can be taken to mean that the issue is men, for example, who wish to live as women. Except, if this were the issue there would hardly be a dispute. Few are going to object to men wearing women’s’ clothes, make-up etc. and presenting themselves as women, in so far as they are able, in their everyday lives.
Gender identity ideology asserts much more than this; it asserts, for example, that men are women if they consider – ‘identify’– as women. As the mantra goes – ‘transwomen are women’. This is stated, not as a metaphor, but as a literal truth.
This is the main problem with the definition as presented in the ‘Weekly Worker’; if we must assume that the word gender in ‘gender identity’ means something other than what it has (until this controversy) been traditionally regarded to mean – as simply another word for sex. Instead, it is a word that is employed to substitute for sex and thereby erase it. In the next few occasional posts I will look at the ideology and the claims of the movement, beginning by asking what ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’ mean.
The second set of changes to the Constitution proposes deleting the current Articles 41.2.1 and 41.2.2 and inserting a new Article 42B.
Article 41.2.1 states “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”
Article 41.2.2 states that “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
These are to be replaced by inserting a new Article 42B:
“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
The two existing Articles are said to be sexist and based on Catholic teaching, such as the encyclical from 1891 in which Pope Leo XIII stated that ‘a woman is by nature fitted for homework . . .”, while it is believed that the Article was written by the Catholic archbishop, John McQuaid.
A socialist might note that it is not the role of working class women, or men, to support the State and that the State is not about “the common good” but about what is good for bourgeois private property, something the Irish State’s constitution is well known to be very good at protecting.
The commitment to “ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” not only assumes that it is women who must carry out domestic labour but also pretends that the state will help them avoid the economic necessity to go out to work. The necessity to go out to work is a requirement of capitalism, otherwise there would be no working class to exploit, and it would not make much sense to effect equality by limiting this to only one sex, if it were possible, which it is not.
The Article had not much success in keeping many women “in the home” because economic necessity compelled them to seek paid employment. In fact, it did not have much success in keeping them in the country, as hundreds of thousands emigrated in search of a better life. This led to agonised concern that there were “moral dangers for young girls in Great Britain”, including that they might get pregnant.
As the Irish economy expanded in later decades more and more women entered the labour force although there is now concern that their presence is still relatively low. Women’s participation in the labour force grew only slowly, from 28 per cent in the early 1970s to 32 per cent in 1990, rising rapidly during the economic boom to over 63 per cent in 2007. In the third quarter of 2023 the participation rate for females was 60.8% compared to 71.1% for males. Nothing of this had anything to do with the words in the constitution and everything to do with the workings of the capitalist economy.
Socialists should welcome the higher participation of women in the workforce both for the position of women in society and for the potential unity of women and men in the struggle to emancipate themselves from the domination of capitalist accumulation. Domestic labour should be shared equally, and as far as possible should be socialised so that individuals of both sexes are able to exercise greater choice over whether, and how much, to work. This, however, recognises that those able to work should work and under capitalism have mostly no choice.
There are some things that cannot be shared equally, but the concern to be ‘progressive’ in the sense of what has been called ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘performative activism’ means that this has been deliberately ignored. The wording of the replacement Article is instructive not only because of what it says but because of what it doesn’t say.
If almost everyone is a member of a family and part of some sort of ‘durable relationship’ then the support given to Society by the care shown to each other by members of a family is simply the support given to all members of a family by Society. It’s a truism that it is people in society who care and support each other. The question is, what is the Irish State, through its Constitution, going to do to help? How will it address the large additional labour carried out by women in paid employment through domestic labour?
The answer, if we look at the Article, is nothing much. It “shall strive to support such provision” of care but commits to nothing, which means its ‘striving’ is meaningless, but rather points to the concept of caring being an individual concern of “members of a family” but of no fundamental responsibility of the state.
The state, however, is supposed to represent the general interest, “the common good”, as it is called here. I suppose socialists should welcome the clear message for anyone that cares to discern it, that the provision of care is a private matter, or perhaps a privatised matter that the state will rely on becoming a wholly commodified service to be produced like all commodities in capitalism–for a profit.
It has been pointed out, and is also referenced above, that the Article drops any refence to women, while the two existing Articles reference them, albeit in reactionary terms. The current Governing parties are not keen on talking about women and their rights because they have decided that women are some sort of thing that men can become if they put their mind to it. I will be posting soon on Gender Identity Ideology but suffice to say here that the Irish State recognises that men can legally change sex by declaration.
The state cannot therefore recognise the role of women in society, and their specific contribution has to be ignored and covered under the general rubric of “care”. Except “care” doesn’t cover it; it doesn’t cover what many women do, and only women can do. Within whatever definition of family that the Governing parties want accepted, if it includes women, the contribution they make not only may include a major share of the care of others, but also the carrying of new humans to birth through pregnancy and breastfeeding thereafter.
This, however, would be to recognise the essentially biological nature of women and the Governing parties have decided to reject this. They are therefore unable to recognise the real role of women in society and so substitute a new form of sexism for the old.
Given all these considerations in this and the previous post it is clear that the changes to the constitution should be rejected. The false promises of extra funding to social services as a result of a yes vote from some, and the ‘unenthusiastic’ support of People before Profit because of its vacuousness are pointers. This, and the previous, post have argued that these are the least of the reasons to vote No.
Liberal regimes usually involve claims about the rule of law, human rights and constitutional government. Marxists believe that it is not the law that rules but people, a ruling class; that human rights are ignored when it suits the state, as British complicity in the genocide in Gaza amply illustrates, and that constitutions don’t determine the nature of society, the state or regime but reflect them. The work of socialists involves disabusing people of their illusions in all of these.
This should be the starting point for consideration of the proposed amendments to the Irish State’s constitution. In a previous post I noted the illusion of expecting changes in the constitution to be any sort of a solution to the housing crisis. Now the government parties are proposing changes relating to the family, and to the care provided within it, while removing some archaic and sexist text based on reactionary Catholic teaching.
It’s all supposed to reflect the new progressive and enlightened Ireland that is no longer bound by such views: “It’s important that our constitution reflects the Ireland of today” says Minister Heather Humphreys. In fact, the wording shows how shallow this is and actually contrasts with the world outside the document. The Church still controls almost all primary schools and will be given ownership of the new national maternity hospital. The state continues to subsidise the Church by paying for the claims arising from its abuse of children, while the Holy Orders drag survivors of abuse through the courts hoping they will get lost. It drags its feet on paying up its much reduced liability, just as it also does with its promised divesting of patronage of schools.
The argument to approve the proposed changes on March 8th thus confirms that constitutions reflect and do not propel society. The wording in the changes is so anaemic even supporters are calling it symbolic, but the symbolism is revealing – symbolic of the emptiness behind the claims.
They are welcomed as a step forward for those in non-marital relationships and for those who provide care within the family. The main argument for voting yes is that the existing provisions are so bad that they discredit the constitution and thus reflect badly on the state and country. In terms of their impact on state welfare payments the Minister responsible, Roderic O’Gorman, has stated that the constitutional changes will have no effect:
“It must be noted that the proposed amendment does not create an express constitutional entitlement to specific measures of support such as grants or allowances. The Government and the Oireachtas retain the power to define both the types and levels of supports, and the criteria in respect of eligibility for those supports.”
Changes to grants or allowances will continue to depend on political decisions partly reliant on economic realities so that changing these are what matter, not words on a page reliant on the good intentions of a state that has no good claim to have them. This makes the argument by People before Profit that it is a “shame that there is no firm commitment to the women, children and men who are the carers” something of a complete delusion about what the capitalist state is willing and able to do.
As to what the existing articles reflect, hypocrisy remains rife, and they remain as a standing reminder of the role of the Irish state that socialists have no reason to see either forgotten or provided with a facelift.
The first involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1 and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1. The proposed changes are:
to change Article 41.1.1 to include the text in bold:
Article 41.1.1 “The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
and to change Article 41.3.1 by deleting text shown with line through it:
“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”
In the first change to article 41.1.1 the state promises to recognise ‘durable relationships’ it hasn’t been able to define: a politically correct, right-on gesture that is immediately shoved aside by the wording of the second, Article 41.3.1.
Much criticism arises from what ‘durable’ is supposed to mean: ‘capable of lasting’ is held to not necessarily meaning ‘enduring’ or permanent, while of course nothing is permanent, and enduring is an observation at a point in time. ‘Capable of lasting’ invites interpretation of two other words, as does the word ‘relationships’. In attempting to impose the state on human relationships it is found that its mechanism of the law cannot define and thus delimit the expansive nature of these relationships.
The growth of capitalism means that family production as the basis of society (by peasant holdings or small family farms) has been destroyed or marginalised and the attempt to encompass all the fragments of familial forms that have arisen ignore the worst effects of capitalist wage labour in its freeing workers from their means of production and consumption. Free wage labour is the basis of capitalist society and the myriad forms in which workers attempt to provide love and security to each other in their relationships are subordinated within it.
This is reflected in the care or neglect of children, in their education and protection. It is reflected in the services provided or not provided to workers such as health and social services, housing, child minding, and transport and the jobs and income they can obtain. These all have decisive impacts on how people, including within families, are able to live. Most workers know that what they can do for themselves and those they love depends on their own efforts. It is just a pity many have so little comprehension that this has a class and political dimension and not just an individual one.
The family, in all its forms, thus really is ‘a moral institution’, demonstrating that what is moral is only as virtuous and good as the reality it is based on. Families are often the grounds of domestic abuse, primarily against women and children, and not havens from the big, bad world outside. Their rights are not ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’; they are often subject to state or other social interference, for good or ill, with their presumed prerogatives sometimes taken away, again for good or ill. They are subject to social circumstances and the institutions of the state and its laws.
The hypocrisy of the Irish state’s claims to ‘recognise’ ‘durable relationships’ in their different forms is illustrated by the treatment of those seeking refuge in the State. Demonstrations against the accommodation of international protection claimants have targeted single males, while the government has accepted this by withdrawing the accommodation from them and accommodating women and children instead. But do these men cease of to be members of families because they are separated from them, potentially because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’?
The promise to protect the institution of marriage is not provided to the other ‘durable relationships’. Perhaps this doesn’t matter, in which case the absence of such words calls into question the importance of their inclusion and the point of the changes. At the very least it calls into question the claim of the National Women’s Council that a “Yes vote will value all families equally,” whatever valuing means.
When Sinn Fein stewards threw out some Palestinians from a Palestine solidarity meeting in Belfast, they threw out something else – all pretence that it will ever take effective action against the Zionist state’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Specifically, it will do nothing to upset the United States, the sponsor of the Zionist state, its financier, arms supplier, and political attorney. The Zionist state has its main benefactor, and through it Sinn Fein becomes an accomplice to Zionism’s actions by one remove.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found it plausible that the Israeli state is carrying out genocide, although the vast majority of the world’s population did not have to wait to make this judgement, and does not have to wait the years required to see the ICJ confirm it. There is therefore a political obligation to take now whatever action that can be taken to stop the genocide and Sinn Fein is not taking it. How little this requires is demonstrated by the leader of the SDLP refusing to go to Washington on St Patricks day. Sinn Fein has rejected doing the same. This article has good coverage of the meeting and its background.
What this incident shows is the common nature of the struggle against imperialism across the world and the common character of that struggle. Solidarity movements are supposed to be expressions of that common struggle but have become detached by petty bourgeois politics to be mere expressions of sympathy; appealing to human rights that fail to understand that the violence of imperialism is intrinsic to the capitalist system and that the only alternative is working class socialism. This means that working class leadership of the struggle is needed, not just in Ireland but also in Palestine and all the other countries in the region and beyond where the outcome of the genocide will be determined.
Thus, this meeting illustrates that Sinn Fein, newly reinstalled in the leadership of the imperialist settlement in Ireland, will brook no criticism of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which plays the same, increasingly discredited, role in Palestine. The PA is widely reported to be employed again as the mechanism for imperialist and Israeli pacification once the latter has finished its slaughter.
The message is therefore clear, Sinn Fein is not part of the Palestinian solidarity movement in any meaningful sense. A party that participates in a shindig with those behind the genocide is a fifth column that undermines the solidarity movement by limiting the terms of effective solidarity, with an attempt to blind everyone to what it is doing. What the solidarity movement needs to do, at the very least, is to take effective action to thwart the genocide. A result of this it should be a step forward in the creation of a militant working class movement in Ireland as well.
Refusing to party with Biden is not even a forceful act of solidarity but rejecting it is a statement that Palestinian genocide is not important enough to demonstrate opposition to its main facilitator. The celebration with the British Prime Minister the week before showed Sinn Fein’s partnership with the British Government, second only to the US in its support for the Zionist state and complicity in the genocide.
Effective opposition in Ireland would involve preventing the US using Shannon airport as a transit to the Middle East and refusal to handle Israeli goods. The solidarity campaign involving leaflets, meetings and demonstrations are in themselves protests, but the ruling class everywhere is perfectly happy to ignore protests unless they lead to more radical action.
Instead, protests lead only to more protests which eventually tire the protestors. They often involve naïve beliefs that those in power will listen and take action, as if they did not already know what is happening or are willing to be convinced or shamed into ‘doing the right thing’. This is a view borne of ignorance that they are not actually acting out of their class interests and will change their behaviour only if these are threatened, and only permanently change if their political and social power is destroyed.
This means creation of a working class solidarity movement. Calls for individual boycotts of goods involve calls for individuals or individual companies that are unorganised. The working class has the power to enforce boycotts that don’t require millions of individuals taking individual decisions millions of times not to buy this or that good.
The first place to seek to organise this is in the existing workers’ movement. Any solidarity campaign should seek to achieve this, and the membership of its supporting organisations would have the duty to try. The many Sinn Fein members will never be given this task, yet the purpose of all the leaflets, social media posts, meetings and demonstrations is to build a movement that will take this on and succeed. They are designed to build the support, organisation and confidence of those who can undertake this action. Token attendance on the odd demonstration by the Irish trade union movement is a testament to failure to attempt this.
Some other lessons can be learnt from the Belfast episode. There should be no fear in challenging Sinn Fein because other Irish political parties are doing nothing better. It is not the job of a Palestine solidarity campaign to save Sinn Fein from its own perfidy. The government parties are in office and have demonstrated the limits to their expression of sympathy; they will do nothing much more unless forced – they are not there to be convinced of the justice of any particular action, they know already. Sinn Fein, on the other hand, professes to be part of the solidarity movement.
The common nature of the struggle across the world demonstrated by Sinn Fein’s defence of the Palestinian Authority means that assertions that we cannot criticise any particular Palestinian organisation or movement, as is sometimes stated, is frankly stupid and reactionary. Socialists criticise movements across the world if they think their politics are inadequate, fail the working class, or betray it. The Palestinian Authority has certainly betrayed the cause of Palestinian freedom and it would be a dereliction of duty not to say so. Only belief in the moral superiority of Palestinians as a nation, uniquely undivided by class or blessed by political leadership, could justify such a position. That some Palestinian activists have condemned the PA is to be welcomed and shames those who would keep schtum.
That these activists were thrown out of a Sinn Fein meeting is to their credit as much as it is damning of those who ejected them. A fitting way that Sinn Fein could atone for their disgraceful action would be to protest against Genocide Joe and be thrown out of the White House. What’s the chances?
I remember giving out leaflets at a Sinn Féin demonstration on the Falls Road in about 1993. The demonstration was called to support the Hume-Adams Agreement, hammered out between the leaders of the SDLP and Sinn Féin after several secret meetings. No one knew what was in the Agreement, but thousands of republican supporters came out to show their support for it.
I don’t think my comrades, or I, ever had such a keen and eager crowd as the demonstrators queued up to get a copy. It was clear that they thought they might find out what it was they were demonstrating in support of. That in itself told us an awful lot about the political consciousness of rank and file republicans at the early stages of the peace process – they were going to faithfully follow their leadership, wherever it led them and swallow whatever they were told.
Many, many subsequent leaflets, and meetings through the long peace process changed nothing of their approach, or raised in them any consciousness that they might require a more critical approach, one that involved some scepticism of where their leadership was taking them.
Only a few years before, in 1987, Sinn Féin had published a document called ‘A Scenario For Peace’ in which it set out its proposals for a settlement to end the conflict. It included that Britain should declare its intention to withdraw; the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment would be disbanded; ‘political’ prisoners should be unconditionally released; and Britain should provide a subvention for an agreed period to facilitate harmonisation of the northern and southern economies. In return, unionists would be offered equal citizenship within the new Ireland.
Well, the Hume-Adams talks were not about this agenda, and neither was the peace process. The British have not gone, the RUC and UDR were indeed disbanded but the former was replaced by the PSNI and the latter were a unit of the British Army, and it certainly hasn’t gone away. Political prisoners were released but not unconditionally, Britain imposed austerity (and Sinn Féin helped implement it).
The peace process in its various guises is now longer than the war it was supposed to end, and the former looks harder to get to the end of than the latter did. When it was announced that the devolved Stormont Assembly was coming back, and a Sinn Féin leader, Michelle O’Neill, would be first minister, it was declared by Mary Lou McDonald that this showed that a united Ireland was “within touching distance”. Of course, the Provisional republican movement has been promising a united Ireland since the early 70s, that is, for over half a century. A unionist commentator noted recently that a recent opinion poll showed no increase in support for a united Ireland in the North over the last couple of decades.
Some columnists have claimed that the real significance of the return of the DUP to the Assembly and Government is this accession to the post of first minister of Sinn Féin, even while they admit that this is symbolic since the unionist deputy first minister has equal power. No decision can be taken by the first minister if not agreed by the deputy and the post cannot be filled in the first place without unionist agreement.
In order to minimise unionist opposition to the deal between the DUP and British government over the ‘Irish Sea border’ the process of getting DUP agreement and all it entails is being rushed through. The DUP Executive thus voted for the deal without seeing it; fittingly appropriate to the return of what passes for democracy in the North of Ireland.
This democracy, in the shape of the Stormont Assembly, has been suspended at least eight times, ranging from a single day to a couple of years. It has been functioning for only sixty per cent of its existence and subject to a number of reviews and changes with yet more changes now widely canvassed. The sectarian, corrupt, incompetent and clueless governance it has provided and the future problems considered inevitable by everyone who thinks about it (and many don’t) means that the rules are not the problem.
Public services, from health to roads, are routinely described as being in crisis, while others such as education and voluntary organisation are subject to open sectarian practices. It has been claimed that these issues can only be put right by local governance, but its track record shows that it is as much responsible for the decay as British rule. The repeated suspension allows the alibi to be sold that were it not for suspension public services would be much better. The previous suspension following the Sinn Féin walk-out, after the DUP-implicated Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, showed levels of incompetence that could more easily be explained as corruption.
The return of Stormont is therefore no step forward, never mind a panacea, and is mainly an unstable framework to accommodate sectarian competition, one that has not proved to be very stable. It stands on its rotten foundations only because there is no outside force to push it over, while those that have knocked it over temporarily have been internal. It is widely accepted among the population and further afield because no alternative seems possible, which is why the DUP have gone back in. This also helps explain why the misgivings of many unionists, and significant opposition, will be unsuccessful in stopping the Assembly’s return.
The opposition has no credible leadership, which would have to come from within the DUP itself, and there is as yet no real sign of this. Further demoralisation of unionism is therefore one (welcome) result.
That this is the case throws light on the claim by the DUP leadership that their new deal is a significant victory. Packaged as a joint British government/DUP initiative, and launched by a joint press conference, there is not the slightest pretence at non-partisanship by the British: ‘Safeguarding the Union’ is the name of Command Paper1021.
Its content in 77 pages could safely be accommodated at one tenth of the length. The measures introduced include proposed legislation to say that Northern Ireland is part of the UK – who would have thought it? It has proposed legislation to ‘future-proof the effective operation of the UK’s internal market by preventing governments from reaching a future agreement with the EU like the Protocol’, which by definition cannot achieve what it claims. It also includes a ‘commitment to remove the legal duties to have regard to the “all-island economy” in section 10(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.’ A bit of red meat for the DUP, and sticking it to Irish nationalism North and South, that will make little or no difference.
It promises that ‘Legislative change to recognise the end of the automatic pipeline of EU law . . . which applies in Northern Ireland is now properly subject to the democratic oversight of the Northern Ireland Assembly through the Stormont Brake and the democratic consent mechanism.’ This implies either future bust-ups with the EU if single market changes are not incorporated into the Northern Ireland market, or a formality to cover regulatory alignment. The Brexiteers in Britain are aghast at this as they no doubt realise it might not be the former.
Media reporting has suggested that the EU Commission has yet to look at the Agreement but that ‘no red lines’ have been crossed; however, it is hard to believe it has not been agreed and only kept quiet in order to help the DUP sell it as an act of undiluted British sovereignty.
The ‘democratic consent mechanism’ that is held to act as a check on unwelcome EU encroachment states that it can be triggered by a majority of local members of the Assembly and not by some ’cross-community consent’ mechanism. It is hard to be optimistic that this whole area will not entail future argument.
Other measures include promises on maintaining trade flows that can’t be honoured and a number of new quangos that will deliver more red tape that Brexit promised to get rid of.
The main gain pointed to by Jeffrey Donaldson is the removal of routine checks on certain exports from Britain to Northern Ireland that were set to reduce anyway but are now declared to be zero. This is on goods, such as retail to consumers for example, that will stay in Northern Ireland and not considered to be at risk of going further into the Irish state and thus the EU single market proper.
Donaldson has, however, claimed too much – that there is unfettered trade between GB and NI and therefore no sea border. The command paper states that ‘there will be no checks when goods move within the UK internal market system save those conducted by UK authorities as part of a risk-based or intelligence-led approach to tackle criminality, abuse of the scheme, smuggling and disease risks.’
‘Abuse of the scheme’ must mean that checks will be made if it is suspected that goods purportedly sent for sale only in Northern Ireland are actually heading further. The acceptance of such controls by the DUP has so far been rather successfully sold by the leadership as simply a common sense measure that ensures that checks are made at the Northern Ireland ports instead of a long and windy North-South border.
This problem arises only because of Brexit, which the DUP supported, and of course the argument makes sense in its own terms; except those terms mean acceptance that there is a trade border on the Irish Sea because there had to be one somewhere, and its not south of Newry and north of Dundalk. The opponents of the Agreement among unionists are therefore right that single market membership means EU law applying in Northern Ireland. They go wrong when they, like the other hard Brexiteers, assume that the British government must pursue widespread non-alignment, without which Brexit makes even less sense that it already does.
In the last few weeks public sector workers in the North have engaged in very large strike action in pursuit of wage demands designed to recover some of their lost real incomes. It has, however been subsumed under the politics of Stormont return, even while the trade unions have demanded that the British Government pay up and not use the lack of an Assembly as an excuse. It was supposedly putting pressure on the DUP to get back so the workers could get payed when the DUP didn’t, and doesn’t, give a toss.
The return of Stormont has not been lauded and celebrated as in previous ‘returns’ and the population is jaded by repeated failure and broken promises of a ‘new approach’. The real new approach required is, unfortunately, a long way off.
In my previous post I noted that the logic of supporting the Ukrainian State, and the British state’s support for it, was to support the British state itself; just as the Ukrainian state itself committed itself to this in their joint security agreement.
Further evidence of the unfolding logic of support for Ukraine was provided by the text of an agreement by leftist organisations in Eastern Europe published on International Viewpoint. On top of vague anti-capitalist aspirations, this noted that among its ‘top priorities is countering Russian aggression, which is destroying Ukraine and threatening the entire region. “The only reason why Russian troops have not yet attacked Poland or Romania is because of the US troops deployed there. We are convinced that the countries of our region must jointly build their own subjectivity and strength,”
The statement thus endorses the view that Russia is an immediate threat, that the people of the region are being protected by US imperialism, and that the countries should strengthen the military power of their states. There was no critique of any of these positions by the hosts of this statement and it is not hard to understand why.
The ‘Fourth International’, whose publication International Viewpoint is, agrees that Russian imperialism is responsible for the war, that the Ukrainian state should be defended and that the support of US imperialism (and British) should also be defended. This too, for them, is a top priority. The statement of the Central Eastern European Green Left Alliance (CEEGLA) is consistent with the political line of the Fourth International, which prioritises opposition to aggressive Russian ‘imperialism’ and supports Western imperialism in this opposition.
The remilitarisation of the West has been accelerated and trumpeted with more and more bellicose rhetoric from Germany and Eastern European states on the need to face a coming Russian invasion. Ukraine of course has been making this claim for two years, arguing that the best place to stop it is in Ukraine; in other words, the Western powers should directly join with Ukraine in the war. However, since Western powers are unprepared for this, including that they have not prepared their own populations, they have taken the route of proffering weapons to the Ukrainian state so that its workers can do the fighting and dying in the meantime.
Now the British state has upped this rhetoric by the head of its (supposedly non-political) Army calling for a “citizen army”, which implies the introduction of conscription, although this is denied, for what that’s worth.
In one way this is preparation for a replacement narrative to the one sold up to now that Ukraine must be supported because Western support is helping defeat the Russians, who are often portrayed as being as brutally incompetent as they are simply brutal. Now that it is becoming clearer that the West does not have the means to ensure a Ukrainian victory and Russia is winning the war, previous escalation of the power of the weapons supplied cannot continue without such escalation increasing the risk of a qualitative change in its character, which again the West is not prepared for.
The call for a “citizen army” raises lots of issues, including the not irrelevant point that Britain including the bit of Ireland it controls, does not actually have citizens – it has subjects. It is also relevant that some parts of the UK will not provide many volunteers, one thinks of the North of Ireland and Scotland in particular; and while these two might find some more than willing, many in England and Wales might also not be so keen.
For the left supporters of the idea that Russian imperialism is a real threat, which must be opposed as a priority – even alongside and on behalf of capitalist states, it raises the question of how the British military is to be supported in the case of Ukraine but not otherwise. (I assume that the pro-Ukraine left has not followed its own logic and gone so far down the road as to support the defence of its own capitalist state, although I have little doubt it would, should a war with Russia eventuate).
This left can maintain this inconsistent view because it refuses to consider everything from the position of the interests of the working class, the class as a whole. Instead, it has a routine of political positions based on reforming capitalism through its state by way of a range of political formulations that hang together while appearing to hang apart, unacknowledged as reciprocal. This includes self-determination for independent capitalist states; state removal of oppression of social groupings through laws against discrimination; capitalist state ownership of the means of production; capitalist state provision of welfare services, and capitalist state enlargement through appropriation of greater resources through increased taxation. Bizarrely, it thinks that this is a road to smashing this state.
The most important failure then is not to see the capitalist world as a whole and recognise the consequences, So, for example, it supports Western imperialist intervention in Ukraine but not in Palestine. It genuflects to the imperialist interest and objective in intervening in Ukraine but gives it no role in determining the nature of the war. In fact it goes further and refuses the idea that this is a proxy war and would have us believe that Western imperialism is supporting an anti-imperialist war of national liberation.
When we simply add up the increasing military intervention of the West in Ukraine; Middle East, including Yemen; in economic sanctioning and forecast of war with China; mobilisation of the Russian armed forces and growth of its military-industrial complex; the growth of Chinese military power; and the increased fracturing and realignment of state alliances with the relative decline of US imperialism, what we have is a drift to war across the world. In other words – World War III. The inevitability of war as a result of capitalist competition has in the past been well understood.
It must be obvious, to even the meanest intellect of those on the Left in the Western countries, that opposing the steps to this war by their own capitalist state cannot be done by claiming that in some parts of the world these states are defending the interests of the working class; against other capitalist states that are workers’ primary enemy. By doing so you have already surrendered the foundations of any argument a socialist might have.
The calls for a citizen army by the General is part of the British state’s preparation of the working class for war on its behalf, so how does the pro-war left prepare the working class to resist the entreaties and demands of the state by validating its role in Ukraine?
Behind the war in Ukraine lies Russia, China, Iran and North Korea on one side and the United States/Europe etc. on the other, with other states negotiating a place between them. A similar split arises in the war by Israel against the Palestinians and threats against Iran and some Arab countries. War over Taiwan would involve China and the US with Europe dragooned into supporting the US and Russia having good reason to support China. In other words these wars are conflicts between the same forces and their eruption signals their coming together. The forces creating them are not for disappearing so hoping that they will dissipate and simply go away are forlorn.
As regards the proposal of a citizens’ army, Boffy has succinctly put forward the socialist view of such a proposal. It is incompatible with the notion that workers should willingly join the armies of the capitalist state and defend its sovereignty, either with nominally separate workers battalions utterly subordinated to the Army command, or as individuals. In the latter case, it would be the duty of socialists to still carry forward their arguments, in so far as individuals can, and not to put a shine on the patriotic lies of the capitalist state.
So, once again, the socialist alternative stands in opposition to those defending Ukraine in the war, as the Interview with a Ukrainian and a Russian ‘socialist’ previously mentioned, shows.
When the head of the British Army makes a political speech with such a far-reaching proposal, which assumes an approaching war, the proper reaction is not one of either complacency or dismissive of the inconsequential. It is a political intervention of some purpose and socialists must explain what this purpose is and why it must be opposed.
The Ukrainian and British Governments have just signed a security agreement that is supposed to be the first of many to follow with other Western countries. What attitude should the supporters of Ukraine take to this agreement? Should they support it? After all, it promises an increase in military commitment from £2.3bn in 2021 and 2022 to £2.5bn in 2024, and the pro-Ukrainian left supports the provision of arms to Ukraine because it knows that without it the country would already have lost the war.
The main objective of the Agreement is ‘to ensure Ukrainian Armed Forces and security forces are able to fully restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders,’ which is precisely the objective of the Ukraine supporting left.
Of course, the agreement is also ‘committed to implementing the full set of policy requirements as set out in the IMF programme’, with Ukraine being able to ‘attract private finance, boost investor confidence, tackle corruption and create a fair and level playing field for all parties, including through a reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).’ This is all to be ‘underpinned by a strong private sector-led economy. The UK will seek to build a modern, resilient and sustainable Ukrainian economy that is integrated into global markets, is not susceptible to hostile Russian influence . . . ‘
This is obviously an imperialist charter but the intervention of the Western powers is usually dismissed as ‘of course’ the West is intervening ‘in its own interests’, which is taken to effectively bat away the problem, although how it does so outside the world of the pro-Ukraine left remains a mystery. Would not NATO membership, as supported in the Agreement, swiftly follow ‘victory’? Not to mention widespread privatisation and exploitation? This is after all, what we mean by the West intervening ‘in its own interests’. In what way then is this a victory for the working class, unless the continued integrity of the Ukrainian state is paramount to this Left as it is to the Ukrainian ruling capitalist class and Western backers?
This left is keen that Ukraine is not saddled with onerous debt and the Agreement has an answer to this – ‘the Participants reaffirm that the Russian Federation must pay for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine’, so that’s sorted? Well, the idea that Western countries such as the US and Britain will pay to restore Ukraine and scrub its debt, when the debt of these countries themselves has exploded, is another mysterious eventuality of the pro-Ukraine left.
Since military victory against the Russian invasion is the absolute priority, it is hard to see how this Left, including its British component, cannot support this Agreement. Since they advocate that everything else must wait until this success there can be no reason for it not to be welcomed. Besides, stating support for some of it and not for others is a bit like saying that I want the chocolate from the chocolate cake but not the sugar, butter, eggs and flour – good luck with that!
In fact, opposing it because of the clear imperialist intentions of Britain within the Agreement implies that Ukraine also cannot be supported because these intentions are agreed and shared. Unfortunately, prioritising support to Ukraine then means endorsing British imperialism, its partner in agreeing all the measures promised. In fact the Agreement declares that Ukraine will defend the British state should it be attacked! And why not? (section 5.7) By supporting the capitalist Ukrainian state which in turn supports the British imperialist state, by one remove, so does this British Left.
The Agreement caused some apprehension because it said that ‘in the event of future Russian armed attack against Ukraine, at the request of either of the Participants, the Participants will consult within 24 hours to determine measures needed to counter or deter the aggression. The UK undertakes that, in those circumstances . . . it would: provide Ukraine with swift and sustained security assistance, modern military equipment across all domains as necessary. . .’
It was thought that this might mean any new incursion by Russia into Ukraine, such as around Kharkiv or from Belarus, would cause direct British troop involvement, but this seems not to be the case. This would entail war between Britain and Russia. The British would need the US on-side and the US to believe that NATO would not fracture in such a situation with some European states perhaps considering that it was not in their interests to suffer the costs of fighting for Ukraine.
The Agreement also implies the threat to confiscate the estimated $300bn in assets of Russia currently frozen in the West, mainly in Europe; the latest wheeze that could save Western countries from an expense it is more and more unwilling to bear. The Russians have called this piracy, and it is difficult not to accept this description.
The pro-war Left might point to Western hypocrisy, especially its current support to Israel, but again, in the circumstances of absolute (that is unqualified) support to Ukraine, pointing to hypocrisy would be the height of their opposition. They could, I guess, say that two wrongs do not make a right and that therefore Russian ‘imperialism’ should be made to pay. What they can’t do is damn all the capitalist pirates and villains in the conflict because that again would include the West and its Ukrainian proxy.
Ukraine might not actually see much, if any, of this $300bn as much of it would go to the US (primarily) and other Western arms manufacturers to pay for past, current and future arms purchases. What isn’t military hardware would go to Western contractors in Ukraine, with no doubt something for the local oligarchs and some reduction of the burgeoning Ukrainian state debt.
The Agreement’s objective to ‘fully restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders’ is a recipe for slaughter and bloodshed on a massive scale. The summer 2023 Ukrainian offensive led to the massacre of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, and they didn’t even reach the first of three defensive lines. The offensive was called off because of the losses. To think that a new offensive can succeed is to support the press-gang of hundreds of thousands Ukrainian workers, men and women, many of whom have either fled the country, hope to escape, or hide in their homes out of fear of being apprehended on the streets by the recruiting commissars of the Ukrainian army. Even with this conscripted-against-their-will army Ukraine cannot succeed.
An interview with two supporters of this objective, who believe it can be achieved – one from Ukraine and one from Russia – declare that ‘we have to end the Russian invasion as a priority. They state that ‘the government’s stance is clear about fighting for the sovereignty of Ukraine’, and that the war ‘is, first and foremost, a people’s war for national liberation’. ‘The key priorities of the state should be based on the protection of people’s interests, fostering social cohesion, and promoting global solidarity against oppression.’
They repeat the maxim that ‘the Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves; they are the main victims in this conflict. This label of ‘proxy war’ doesn’t give any agency to the Ukrainians themselves.’ Yet it is acknowledged that, for the working class ‘there are not really other viable options in terms of separate fighting militias and units at the moment.’
The objectives and conduct of the war are thus in the hands of the Ukrainian state, in so far as it is not in the hands of its Western sponsors. Thus, the ‘agency’ we are to bow down to is that of this state, including its conscription of workers to be flung onto the front in meat-grinder assaults. The agency of Ukrainian workers does not stretch to having their own militias, never mind determining the objectives of the war and how it is to be conducted.
This is not considered a problem because ‘the sovereignty of Ukraine’, that is, the sovereignty of the Ukrainian capitalist state is what must be defended for these ‘socialists’; not that of the working class. They believe that the Ukrainian capitalist state can be made to base itself ‘on the protection of people’s interests, fostering social cohesion, and promoting global solidarity against oppression.’ What capitalist state has ever displayed these features?
The Agreement is further evidence that the Ukrainian state is basing itself on Western imperialism and that such lofty and fanciful views are preposterous and unbelievable, including its aspiration to ‘a hundred-year partnership.’
The Ukrainian interviewed believes that ‘some on the left . . . put an ideological lens on the war that obscures rather than clarifies, but actually obscures the situation for real people on the ground.’ Except hundreds of thousands of dead are not just ‘on the ground’ but underneath it, while tens of thousands more are disfigured and disabled above it. The coerced conscription of the unwilling, who are not prepared to die for their state, is forcing many to hide while hundreds of thousands of refugees will not go home. It is the supporters of Ukraine who give no evidence of appreciating the bloody consequences of the war while displaying total innocence of any understanding of its capitalist character.
The interviewee, Vasylyna, asserts that the war ‘is, first and foremost, a people’s war for national liberation’, while she admits the workers cannot even organise themselves in their own defence: since when did British imperialism ever support ‘a people’s war for national liberation’?
Sráid Marx 