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Collins vs De Valera
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Read McCullagh's book : DeValera Volume I - Rise, 1882-1932. Chapter 2 is ten pages devoted to the search for his paternal history. It does not matter to me, or to the vast majority of people today, but in the era when Dev lived, it mattered to a lot of people, himself included.0
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Dev ruined this country by linking it to religion and by his insular, backward politics. We lost a half century or more of positive development while the rest of the world industrialised itself. At times I think he saw the whole state as his personal toy.
Idealism vs Realism. And we still haven't found the balance.0 -
Can't we go back in time and shoot both of them?0
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twitch1984 wrote: »Not really lookin for a debate especially one thats been running for decades and will probably run for centuries to come.
Just looking for a general concencus on this as to who people would pick to support if they were around back then.
I can see this being fairly 50/50
For me it would be collins,
what about you?
Ireland lost about 60 years with the isolationist rabid cleric state that was Dev's vision of Ireland0 -
Would have been interesting to see how Ireland wiukd have turned out if De Valera hadn't had Collins killed. Would it have been very different? Who knows0
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DellyBelly wrote: »Would have been interesting to see how Ireland wiukd have turned out if De Valera hadn't had Collins killed. Would it have been very different? Who knows
Probably not a lot different.
Collins, Dev and most other nationalist people were fervently RC. This goes back to penal times of the 1600s and 1700s, but especially to the early 1880s, when the nationalist/gaelic agenda was intertwined with the catholic church.
The GAA was organised by catholic parish, and catholic priests usually nominated or seconded Nationalist candidates for elections.
This may have been partially due to Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin being involved in nationalism. The Vatican was not amused, and Walsh never got to be a Cardinal as a consequence. The "red hat" avoided Dublin for a century, only returning with Cardinal Connell.
The first forty years of Independent Ireland, really was a sectarian place. Government ministers refused to attend the funeral of President Hyde, because it was in the protestant St Patrick's Cathedral.
The other politicians, such as Costello and McBride were no better than Dev, but what set him apart was his recommendation to the vatican to appoint John Charles McQuaid as Archbishop of Dublin in 1941. JCMcQ was the most arrogant, egotistic bigot ever to occupy such a position. He even thought he should control what was broadcast by RTE, because the studios were in his diocese.
Without that malign influence, Ireland would have loosened the shackles of the church decades earlier.0 -
Ireland lost about 60 years with the isolationist rabid cleric state that was Dev's vision of Ireland
He was Mary Robinson of his day, he had great achievements but he was hopeless on economics. he had awful ideas about economics like M D Higgins, contributing to the economic stagnation of what had started as a wealthy nation.0 -
'Started as wealthy nation' lol. Seriously?0
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An_Toirpin wrote: »It is tosh revisionism to argue that Dev was isolationist or that Ireland was a cleric state. Dev was president of the Council of the League of Nations. He was a global statesman who had a powerful impact as a representive of liberty in world affairs in a dreadful extremist 1930s. His notable other achivments included attracting Erwin Schrödinger and Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, as well as helping to document the Manx language.
He was Mary Robinson of his day, he had great achievements but he was hopeless on economics. he had awful ideas about economics like M D Higgins, contributing to the economic stagnation of what had started as a wealthy nation.
The North of Ireland may have been 'wealthy' at that time but the 26 counties - lol0 -
whisky_galore wrote: »'Started as wealthy nation' lol. Seriously?At independence income per capita in Ireland was ahead of such countries as France, Austria and Italy. In the 1950s Ireland fell well behind.
Also, Ireland was a creditor until the 1970s. There was a lot of poverty but that was the case nearly everywhere.0 -
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If Collins had survived he would have been fully behind the Civil War executions. We have no reason to believe he would have stood up to the Catholic Church. We would have continued to have England as out main market. De Valera saw the opportunity to get back the Treaty ports after the Abdication crisis. Neither were economic geniuses.
Its popular to paint Colljns good and DeValerabad but examination of the facts show plenty of faults on both sides as well as both being good patriots who did their duty..0 -
whisky_galore wrote: »The Irish dabbled with Soviets and Fascism, the church (and business interests) had no stomach for the former.... the Blueshirts were a bit of a sideshow, esp with someone like O'Duffy in charge. With a more daring charismatic leader it could have made more headway.
Ireland was better off staying out of WW2, inviting more trouble than it was worth.
They dabbled with Soviets big time.
The Soviet Union was the only major power to recognize the democratically elected Irish Republic.
After the Limerick Soviet fell in 1919 more popped up a year later, like in Knocklong were that famous photo was taken of a creamery that hanged out a sign reading "we make butter not profits" & a red flag flew over the building.
And similar sort workers take overs happened around the country during the 1919 - 1923 period. The Manchester Guardian wrote an article in 1921 about "Red Guards" roaming Carlow's streets.
Great TG4 documentary about Soviets in Ireland here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-RDYGv_RLI0 -
BalcombeSt4 wrote: »They dabbled with Soviets big time.
The Soviet Union was the only major power to recognize the democratically elected Irish Republic.
After the Limerick Soviet fell in 1919 more popped up a year later, like in Knocklong were that famous photo was taken of a creamery that hanged out a sign reading "we make butter not profits" & a red flag flew over the building.
And similar sort workers take overs happened around the country during the 1919 - 1923 period. The Manchester Guardian wrote an article in 1921 about "Red Guards" roaming Carlow's streets.
Great TG4 documentary about Soviets in Ireland here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-RDYGv_RLI
But it would never amount to anything as Communism = Godlessness.
That and big business and farming.0 -
I haven't read the thread. I voted for Collins purely because what deValera did made filth of Ireland and we're still recovering. Whether Collins would have done any better is debatable.
Connolly was the man. He wanted no religion and it is still religion that destroyed us long after he was executed.0 -
whisky_galore wrote: »But it would never amount to anything as Communism = Godlessness.
That and big business and farming.
That's pretty much where we've ended up today, surely? :-)0 -
I haven't read the thread. I voted for Collins purely because what deValera did made filth of Ireland and we're still recovering. Whether Collins would have done any better is debatable.
Connolly was the man. He wanted no religion and it is still religion that destroyed us long after he was executed.
If Connolly's vision of socialism and global revolution was realised Ireland would have been even poorer than it was in the 1920s.0 -
An_Toirpin wrote: »If Connolly's vision of socialism and global revolution was realised Ireland would have been even poorer than it was in the 1920s.
Evidence ?0 -
An_Toirpin wrote: »If Connolly's vision of socialism and global revolution was realised Ireland would have been even poorer than it was in the 1920s.
We wouldn't have had the systematic abuse of women and children in the Laundry's and industrial schools.0 -
We wouldn't have had the systematic abuse of women and children in the Laundry's and industrial schools.
Who knows, we could have had something as bad or worse.
Socialism didn't have a chance here, the population were conservative by nature and would stand on their heads for the RC Church.0 -
Jolly Red Giant wrote: »Evidence ?
In fairness, we can't be sure that it would herald famine but it is impossible for countries to generate wealth without trade and private property. Socialist countries do trade but there is a fundamental disincentive to trade if you don't control the price and if dont really own your own stock.0 -
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We wouldn't have had the systematic abuse of women and children in the Laundry's and industrial schools.
I'd wage that in Connolly's vision that they would be far more state-run correctional facilities like laundries and industrial schools. Conolly is a patriot who died for this country and he deserves respect but I am very glad his economic views were not implemented.0 -
Dev slept in the attic of my house on many occasions when down in West Cork pre 1916 and used to store weapons here hidden under the steps of the stairs0
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An_Toirpin wrote: »I'd wage that in Connolly's vision that they would be far more state-run correctional facilities like laundries and industrial schools.An_Toirpin wrote: »Conolly is a patriot who died for this country and he deserves respect but I am very glad his economic views were not implemented.An_Toirpin wrote: »The millions that starved to death in communist regimes.An_Toirpin wrote: »In fairness, we can't be sure that it would herald famineAn_Toirpin wrote: »but it is impossible for countries to generate wealth without trade and private property.An_Toirpin wrote: »Socialist countries do trade but there is a fundamental disincentive to trade if you don't control the price and if dont really own your own stock.0
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whisky_galore wrote: »Socialism didn't have a chance here, the population were conservative by nature and would stand on their heads for the RC Church.0
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Jolly Red Giant wrote: »Seriously - you have some imagination - and all without evidence.
Connolly was a Marxist - he was repelled by nationalism.
Millions have also starved to death under capitalism.
Famine conditions existed in Ireland in the mid-1920s.
So says you.
An insightful understanding of the nature of a democratically planned socialised economy.0 -
An_Toirpin wrote: »The millions that starved to death in communist regimes.
In fairness, we can't be sure that it would herald famine but it is impossible for countries to generate wealth without trade and private property. Socialist countries do trade but there is a fundamental disincentive to trade if you don't control the price and if dont really own your own stock.
There was a big split in the international Socialist movement between Marxist-Leninist's (Bolsheviks) authoritarian view of Socialism which believed workers needed to be forced by an iron fist from capitalism to communism led by a strong leader because the poorest workers were too un-educated & backwards, and the Bolsheviks split with the left-wing Socialists people like Rosa Luxemburg & Anton Pannekoek who believed the transition from capitalism to communism had to be achieved by the workers themselves, democratically organised in workers' councils. The view that won out was the Bolsheviks because, well the winners right history.
The Bolshevik view was pretty inconsistent with traditional Marxism. Marx spent sometime writing about the Russian peasentry & he believed there was quit a lot of revolutionary potential in Russian peasent society & that they could lead a revolution by themselves. This work was supressed by the likes of Lenin & Stalin.
So it's not clear what position Connolly would have took or what a Socialist Ireland would have looked like. The workers councils that sprung up during the Tan War & Civil War ran pretty efficiently in the absence of British or Republican control.0 -
An_Toirpin wrote: »Famines have existed capitalist countries , far less occurred in actual free markets and none occurred due to the implementation of capitalism in the 20 the cen.
Estimates of the number who die from hunger or hunger related disease every year stand at 9 million - with more than 3 million children - approx half the children in Asia and a third in Africa suffer from stunted growth for the same reason.
All of this in a world swimming in wealth - and could be prevented by a tiny cost in global termsmAn_Toirpin wrote: »While implementation of central planning directly caused famines in many countries in the 20th cen.An_Toirpin wrote: »Patriotism is not the same as nationalism and disaowing an ideology doesn't perclude the possibility of being part of it.An_Toirpin wrote: »As for laundries and industrial schools, at least they were ofthen voluntary and this is perhaps only 1 homicide on theirs history0 -
BalcombeSt4 wrote: »There was a big split in the international Socialist movement between Marxist-Leninist's (Bolsheviks) authoritarian view of Socialism which believed workers needed to be forced by an iron fist from capitalism to communism led by a strong leader because the poorest workers were too un-educated & backwards,BalcombeSt4 wrote: »and the Bolsheviks split with the left-wing Socialists people like Rosa Luxemburg & Anton Pannekoek who believed the transition from capitalism to communism had to be achieved by the workers themselves, democratically organised in workers' councils. The view that won out was the Bolsheviks because, well the winners right history.
1. she opposed the distribution of the land to the peasantry believing that the rising class of property owning peasantry would threaten the revolution. The Bolsheviks had no choice - they had promised the peasantry bread, peace and land and were intent on carrying through on those promises.
2. Luxemburg opposed the Bolsheviks policy of self-determination of ethnic minorities in the Russian empire - Luxemburg was utterly wrong in this approach. The Bolsheviks rightly understood that to secure the revolution the minorities in the Russian empire had to be allowed to determine their own future.
3. she opposed the abolition of the Constituent Assembly - not understanding that the Constituent Assembly was undemocratic and that power in Russia had shifted to the workers councils. Her approach would have undermined the revolutionary process and posed the potential for a counter-revolution. She later acknowledged that she had adopted an incorrect position on this issue and opposed similar demands within the USPD in 1918.
4. Luxemburg criticised the Bolsheviks for undermining workers democracy. There was a validity in this criticism - however, it has to be seen in context, specifically in the context that the Bolsheviks were facing a white counter-revolution determined to overthrow the workers government and exact vicious revenge against the working class and the peasantry. Following her release from prison Luxemburg reviewed her criticisms and withdrew them.BalcombeSt4 wrote: »The Bolshevik view was pretty inconsistent with traditional Marxism. Marx spent sometime writing about the Russian peasentry & he believed there was quit a lot of revolutionary potential in Russian peasent society & that they could lead a revolution by themselves. This work was supressed by the likes of Lenin & Stalin.
And Lenin never 'suppressed' any of the works of Marx - Stalin, however, suppressed the work of every Marxist thinker - including Lenin.BalcombeSt4 wrote: »So it's not clear what position Connolly would have took or what a Socialist Ireland would have looked like. The workers councils that sprung up during the Tan War & Civil War ran pretty efficiently in the absence of British or Republican control.0 -
This is actually a load of nonsense - and the big split in international socialism was between the Marxist-Leninists (another misnomer because Lenin was a Marxist) and the Stalinists.
I don't need to talk about the "White Army" as they were just Imperialist scum, but the more interesting struggle during the civil war was between the right Socialists vs the left Socialists. The Bolsheviks were time & time again having to put down left-wing uprisings between 1918 - 1924 by the left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SR) & the Revoltionary Socialist party, as well as the Anarchists & the Kronstadt Sailors.
FFS the person who shot Lenin, Fanny Kaplan was a Socialist Revolutionary Party member. And you are trying to tell me the Bolsheviks had no opponents from the left? Kaplan reminds of Corday, the French Revolutionary who stabbed Marat. And fair play to both women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_uprisings_against_the_Bolsheviks
Lenin even wrote a book called "Left-Wing" Communsim: An Infantile Disorder. Which in it he attacks people like Luxemburg, Pannekoek & Gorter. He also claims Communsim must relate to & win over the Lloyd George's (Liberals) & Churchills (Conservatives), which probably shows how delusional he was in that regard. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
How you can sit there & deny that Lenin never suppressed works by Marx & other Socialists is be on me. You seem to have a good grasp of the Russian Revolution & Civil War. You seem to want to put all blame on Stalin for mass killings & make Lenin out to be perfect with no flaws.
Leninism or Marxism-Leninism was a distortion of Marxism not a natural progression of it, Lenin was more worried in furthering his own class interests which was that of the radical intelligentsia, which he did very well, rather than furthering the intrests of the working class, who if they always had to rely on people like Lenin would never be able to liberate their class.
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-lenin-distorted-marxis.htmlLenin's theory is often considered to be a logical development of Marx's in the sense of adding practise to Marx's theory. Yet Marx's own theory was closely tied to practise. Marx, in contrast to Lenin, saw communism as arising from a highly developed capitalism; his theory envisaged a working class that would be able to take on capitalism world-wide or face further defeats.
Lenin's analysis proceeds from the assumption that a minority working class in Russia (and soon thereafter the Soviet Union) would be able to inspire workers and peasants in other countries to seize state power - and not abolish the state as in Marx's analysis and political thought - and gradually, by power of persuasion and violence, bring the other - often hostile - classes round to joining the struggle for communism.When the Bolsheviks seized control of Petrograd in October 1917, they were supported by the Left SRs, a small but influential revolutionary group. As their name suggests, the Left SRs once belonged to the Socialist Revolutionary party, which until the revolution had been Russia’s largest left-wing political party. But the events of 1914-17 proved divisive and destructive for the Socialist Revolutionary movement. Populist and broad-based, the SRs had always contained a wide range of political views, along with conservative, moderate and radical factions. The onset of World War I further exposed these political fractures within the SR party, which was divided about how to respond. The majority of SRs favoured supporting the war effort, either as a patriotic gesture or a defensive measure- but the party’s radical left adopted an anti-war position, similar to that of the Bolsheviks. Several SR leaders became ministers in the Provisional Government during 1917 but their continued support for the war, along with the lack of progress on land reform and redistribution, led the Left SR faction to align with the Bolsheviks. The split in the SR movement was finalised by the events of October 1917. Dozens of Left SRs contributed to preparations for the overthrow of the Provisional Government – in fact, the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, Pavel Lazimir, was a Left SR rather than a Bolshevik. On October 26th, when the Second Congress of Soviets was told that Red Guards had arrested the Provisional Government and seized power on their behalf, moderate SR delegates stormed out of the building – at which point they were famously consigned to the “dustbin of history” by Leon Trotsky. The Left SR delegates chose to remain, a decision that led to their expulsion from the broader SR organisation, after which they formed their own independent party. From this point, the Left SRs were aligned with the Bolsheviks. Shortly after the October takeover, Lenin offered them a role in a coalition government but the Left SRs wanted a Soviet-based government – a “united revolutionary front”, one called it – and rejected the offer. In early December they changed their minds and formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks, accepting seven portfolios in the Sovnarkom.“The Left SRs were hardly less radical than the Bolsheviks themselves (they tended to stress peasant interests)… It is nevertheless possible that over a period of years, the coalition could have led to mutual restraint, which might in due course have mitigated the worst features of totalitarianism … It soon became clear, however, that the Bolsheviks did not want to share power with any party.”
Dmitri Volkogonov, historian
The de facto leader of the Left SRs during this critical period was Maria Spiridonova, a young female activist who had once murdered a tsarist police commander on his doorstep. Under Spiridonova the Left SRs supported most of the Bolshevik programme, though some significant points of difference were exposed and teased out during the first weeks of 1918. Land reform, reorganisation of the peasantry and rural self-sufficiency remained at the forefront of the Left SR agenda; Lenin, however, rejected these policies as “bourgeois-tinted dreams”. Of greater concern to some Left SRs was the exclusion of non-Bolshevik socialist and Soviet voices from government. Left SR leaders opposed the closure of the Constituent Assembly, though they were outnumbered and thus outvoted by the Bolsheviks. The extra-legal violence and intimidation wielded by the emerging CHEKA was accepted as necessary by some Left SRs but condemned by others. Isaac Steinberg, the Left SR lawyer who served as commissar for justice in the first Sovnarkom, regularly criticised the CHEKA and called for an inquiry into its conduct, with no success.
An American press report on the July 1918 fighting in Moscow The fragile alliance between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs was brought to an end by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Left SRs considered the March 1918 treaty to be treacherous, a “sell-out” filled with cruel disregard for Russian peasants living in affected territories, and they opposed it intensely. Once the Bolsheviks had accepted and ratified the Brest-Litovsk agreement, the Left SRs withdrew from the Sovnarkom, leaving it entirely in Bolshevik hands. They continued to participate in the Congress of Soviets, however, the opportunistic measures taken by the Bolsheviks in 1918 widened the rift between the two parties. Among the Bolshevik policies bitterly opposed by the Left SRs were the imposition of state control in factories; the restoration of the death penalty; and the introduction of war communism. In the spring of 1918, the German army occupied Ukraine and violently suppressed peasant opposition there, while the Bolshevik government did nothing. The outraged Left SRs lobbied the Fourth Congress of Soviets (July 1918) to have the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk nullified, calling for a new declaration of war against Germany. The motion was defeated by the Bolshevik majority.
A group of anarchists who fought alongside the Left SRs in 1918 The following day the Left SRs took action into their own hands, sending agents to assassinate the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, in Moscow. Inspired by this success, a brigade of soldiers loyal to the Left SRs defied the Bolsheviks, refusing orders and even detaining Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the much-feared CHEKA. The rebels held the upper hand in Moscow, where their troops outnumbered soldiers loyal to the Bolsheviks by almost three to one. With the city’s workers unwilling to defend the Bolsheviks, the Left SRs and their troops might have swept into the Kremlin to arrest Lenin and other members of the government. But the Left SR uprising was a spontaneous event: unlike the Bolsheviks in October 1917, their leaders had made no planning or provision for a takeover.
Though it took several days, the SR revolt was eventually crushed by Red Army and CHEKA reinforcements. Around 950 Left SRs were hunted down, arrested and given a show trial in late 1918, though they were treated with comparative leniency, with only 13 given short sentences in Soviet labour camps. Maria Spiridonova herself was sentenced to just one year in prison. The onset of the Civil War and the widening of the Red Terror soon produced tougher measures. The Left SR party was declared illegal in February 1919 and Spiridonova was arrested again shortly after, for publicly criticising the government. Other individual Left SRs were chased into exile, where they fought with peasant militias against the Red Army during the Civil War; some withdrew from political life but later agitated against the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s. As a political party, the Left SRs quickly faded into political oblivion. Their bold attempt to initiate a ‘third Russian Revolution’, mirroring the events of October 1917, was the last concerted stand against Bolshevism until 1921.
https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/left-srs/
Trotsky himself oppossed a lot of Lenins ideas until the October Revolution when he jumped on board the bandwagon. But Trotsky was another of the radical intelligentsia and his class interests were tied closely to Lenin's.
I think why Stalin's violence was less subtle than Lenin's reign was because he was not apart of that class and he came from a more working class - lower middle class background, and it's maybe one of the reasons for his paranoid state of mind & why he purged the intelligentsia class, people like Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev & Smirnov.
But whatever about Stalin's crimes, Lenin mustvhave been the first dictator in Europe in the 20th century who formed a secret police & death squad in the Cheka. He used state power & the techniques of control & repression masterfully to crush any opposistion that got in his way.
And this version violent, authoritarian communism is the version that swept third world countries engaged in legitmate liberation struggles like Vietnam, Angola, Palestine & Cuba, and they & wanted a new order to replace the old imperialist systems & Bolshevik communism with it's anti-imperialist slogans was very intriguing to these countries, it's why the Irish Republican movement adopted it in the 1960's.0 -
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Jolly Red Giant wrote: »There was widespread support for socialism in Ireland during the revolutionary period - and the potential for socialist revolution existed in this country at the time.
It existed in the 60's, 70's & early 80's as well.
You had People's Democracy which was led by people like Michael Farrell, Eamonn McCann & Bernie Devlin. You had the Officials & the National Liberation Front, you had the Irish Republican Socialist Movement which included the IRSP & INLA. The Repubican Socialist Collective & Irish People's Liberation Organization.
The Provos even tho they were not a Socialist movment per say, their main objective was the establishment of Democratic Socialist Republic.0
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