The reunification of Ireland
Retaking anti-imperialism as a precondition for economic development
We live in an age of anti-imperialism, which is the reasonable and necessary response to imperialism. Anti-imperialism reflects the universal human desire for freedom and social justice.
The Age of Imperialism
The age of modern imperialism and colonialism lasted from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. It began in the sixteenth century with the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas; Portuguese and Dutch conquests of parts of Southeast Asia; and English, French, and Dutch conquests of the Caribbean. These conquests stimulated the modernization of agriculture and the expansion of industry in England and northwestern Europe, which was integral to the emergence of a capitalist world-economy, with England and northwestern Europe as the core, and Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe constituting the peripheral zones, supplying raw materials through forced labor to the core, and providing markets for core surplus manufactured and agricultural goods. Beginning in 1750, the capitalist world-economy became a worldwide enterprise, as a result of new conquests by the English and French of vast zones of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, stimulating the modernization of English and northwestern European industry.
Conquest has been central to the economic and cultural development of human societies since the agricultural revolution. But there is a fundamental difference between pre-modern and modern conquests. Prior to the modern era, nations and kingdoms expanding their wealth and power generally conquered neighboring kingdoms and societies; whereas modern European colonialism involved the conquest of distant lands and peoples, made possible by advances in navigation. Moreover, premodern conquests were central to the formation of new kingdoms, nations, peoples, and civilizations, involving the assimilation and amalgamation of the conquered peoples; in contrast, modern colonialism, encountering markedly different cultures in distant lands, maintains a permanent differentiation between colonizer and colonized, with a status hierarchy.
The English colonization of Ireland began in the twelfth century, and it involved the conquest of a neighboring people, consistent with the pattern of pre-modern conquests. However, English colonialism in Ireland has many characteristics in common with modern Western European colonial domination of Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Key moments in the evolution of English colonialism in Ireland coincided with the age of the modern British Empire, and in addition, the Irish possessed religious and cultural characteristics noticeably different from the English. Because of these factors, the modern hierarchical differentiation between colonizer and colonized was constructed in the case of English colonialism in Ireland.
But the age of imperialism has come to an end. The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been marked by the emergence of anti-imperialism as a major tendency in international affairs, with many indications that it is likely to establish itself as the basis for future human development. This important phenomenon has not been seen by the Western media and academic world, where even leftist journalists and academics, who are quick to point out the sins of Western imperialism, are characterized nevertheless by a pervasive lack of appreciation for the Third World achievement of anti-imperialist alternative construction. Although scarcely visible in the West, the phenomenon of Third World anti-imperialism has important implications for the culmination of Irish decolonization, as I will address below.
On settler colonialism
In inquiring into English colonialism in Ireland, we cannot avoid encountering the issue of settler colonialism in Ireland. Settler colonialism was an important dimension of the modern European conquest of the world, and there were two types.
(1) There are cases where European settlers exterminated or displaced indigenous populations from vast territories. In these cases, the process of settlement attained a level that cannot, in practical terms, be undone today, regardless of moral sentiments concerning the matter. The return of lands—on which have been constructed the great cities of South America, North America, and Australia—to their original inhabitants would not be a viable project politically and economically. Issues of social justice in the Americas and Australia must be addressed in the context of the acceptance of settlements as an irrevocable fact.
From such a vantage point, it can be said that the nations that have been forged through settlement on a great scale in the Americas and Australia have the obligation today to justly fulfill treaty and moral obligations with the indigenous nations, as the Obama administration has done with respect to the USA and its territories, a phenomenon scarcely noted. In addition, it ought to be said that the large-scale settler nations have the moral obligation to responsibly develop the lands that they now irrevocably possess and to use the blessings from the land to develop just and cooperative relations with all the nations of the world, as the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia, the most indigenous of the nations of the Americas, has been attempting to do.
(2) There have been other cases of European settler societies on a more limited scale, and they pertain to the second type of settler colonialism. There were four cases of limited-scale settler colonialism in Africa (South Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, and Algeria) and one in Indochina (the French in the Saigon region of Vietnam). These European settler societies sought to construct societies in which the natives, who constituted the majority, were denied fundamental political and civil rights, segregated, and used for cheap labor. None of these “white settler” societies were allowed to stand by the Western imperialist powers, which found them inconvenient as they transitioned to neocolonialism in response to the strength of emerging anti-imperialist movements in the second half of the twentieth century. All the “white settler” societies have been dismantled and replaced with democratic republics of one form or other. The descendants of white settlers participate in the development of these societies with full citizenship rights but with no special privileges, at least in a formal and legal sense.
The Jewish settlement in Palestine is a special case, and to treat it simply as part of the process of European colonial domination of the world is to ignore important considerations. The case is made special by the fact that Jews in Europe endured centuries of discrimination and exclusion, culminating in genocide during the reign of fascism in Europe. This fact legitimates the creation of a Jewish state in the ancient homeland of Israel, which was attained in the late 1940s with the support of the Western imperialist powers. However, since its creation, modern Israel has undertaken an expansionist policy, militarily occupying much of Palestine, which cannot be justified. Today, the governments of the Global South recognize the legitimate claims of both Palestine and Israel. They affirm the right of Israel to exist, and at the same time, they call for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The Palestinian Authority and the Arab governments join in this demand, which Israel and the USA are morally obligated to accept.
In the case of Ireland, the settlement of English and Scots in the northeastern province of Ulster, displacing Irish farmers from the land, occurred during the seventeenth century. The settlement was encouraged as a dimension of English colonial policy in relation to Ireland. Aware of their religious difference from the native population, overwhelmingly Catholic, the settlers used the labels Protestant and Catholic to differentiate English and Scottish settlers from the Irish natives.
The English and Scottish settlement of Ulster never arrived to a great scale. Ulster consisted of nine of the thirty-two counties of Ireland; and within Ulster, Protestants were approximately half the population at the time of the creation of Northern Ireland. The designers of the state of Northern Ireland carved out six of Ulster’s nine counties to ensure a workable Protestant parliamentary majority in the newly created state. Today, as a result of demographic changes, Catholics outnumber Protestants in the six counties that form Northern Ireland.
The creation of the six-county state was cynical political gerrymandering that occurred in reaction to a great increase in popular support in Ireland for Irish nationalist republicanism. In the UK parliamentary elections of 1918, the Sinn Féin Party, which in 1917 had issued a Manifesto calling for the establishment of an Irish Republic, won seventy-three of Ireland’s 105 seats in the UK Parliament. Inasmuch as the inclusion of Irish MPs in the UK Parliament was designed to ensure an Irish minority in the UK Parliament, thereby corralling the Irish voice, Sinn Féin adopted a policy of abstentionism for its elected MPs in the Westminster Parliament. Instead, they assembled in Dublin to constitute an Irish Parliament, which emitted the Declaration of Independence of Ireland.
The United Kingdom did not accept the Irish Declaration of Independence. It enacted in 1920 the Government of Ireland Act, which partitioned the island, creating the six-county state of Northern Ireland.
During two years of guerrilla war, the Irish Republican Army was not able to inflict sufficient damage to compel British withdrawal. The newly declared Republic of Ireland was left economically overextended, and British reprisals left the people in a condition of exhaustion.
In the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6, 1921, Britain was able to include key components of its 1920 Government of Ireland Act. The 1921 Treaty established the Irish Free State and gave the six parliamentary counties of what it called Northern Ireland the option of withdrawing from the Irish Free State. The Treaty was endorsed by the Irish Parliament on January 7, 1922, by a vote of sixty-four in favor and fifty-seven opposed. Irish Republican defenders of the controversial treaty maintained that more favorable terms were not possible, and that it should be interpreted as a first step toward full sovereignty for the whole of Ireland.
Thus, in response to the advances of Irish nationalist republicanism, British imperialist interests were able to carve out a small piece of Ireland for inclusion in the UK. In this six-county “state,” the settlers would be able to maintain political control and enact discriminatory and exclusionary measures directed against the native population, or so it was thought. At the same time, inasmuch as the most advanced industrial and commercial sectors of Ireland were located in the six counties, the Irish Free State would be prevented from attaining its potential for economic development. It would be unable to escape from the economic dependency that blocks the sovereignty of newly independent nations in a neocolonial world. In its economic dependency and persistent underdevelopment, the Irish Free State of the 1930s would have much in common with the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia during the 1950s and 1960s.
Accordingly, the sovereign economic development of both parts of Ireland was retarded by the partition. At the same time, Northern Ireland was not able to attain a viable level of social and political stability. The UK was compelled to assume direct rule in 1972, and for the next quarter century gradually facilitated the establishment of social democracy, in a demographic context in which Catholics arrived to outnumber Protestants.
Although the six-county state maneuver was unique, the Protestant settlement of Ireland has much in common with the “white settler” societies of Africa and Indochina, except for the superficial fact that both the settlers and the natives are considered “white,” an unscientific classification that was invented during the nineteenth century to legitimate European colonial domination of the world.
As noted above, none of these “white settler” societies were allowed to stand, because they were inconvenient for the advancing of imperialist interests. Neither should the six-county state be allowed to stand. Its political reason for being has been rendered outdated by political and demographic developments, and the partition of the island today serves only imperialist objectives against the interests of the whole of Ireland, standing in contradiction with the anti-imperialist spirit of our age.
The new age of anti-imperialism
The theoretical foundation for anti-imperialist construction was created by the Latin American independence movements of the first decades of the nineteenth century. Anti-imperialist thought and practice were further developed by exceptional Asian, Middle Eastern, and African leaders during the 1950s and 1960s, who founded the Non-Aligned Movement. During the 1960s and 1970s, joined by the advanced voice of revolutionary Cuba, the Non-Aligned Movement put forth demands for a New International Economic Order based on such principles as respect for the sovereignty of nations, without interference in their internal affairs; and the right of nations to control their natural resources and to implement their own development plans in accordance with their national conditions.
During the same period, four nations developed and ultimately were able to sustain alternative projects of socialist construction, a form of socialism different from that of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a socialism with Third World characteristics. In these four nations (the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Republic of Cuba), people’s revolutions came to power by means of armed struggle, and they have been able to sustain themselves in power through fundamental political-economic-social-cultural transformations that elevated the living conditions of the people. Agrarian reform and land redistribution provided the foundation for their sustainability and legitimacy. They have developed political systems of people’s democracy, characterized by direct elections by the people at the base, indirect elections to higher positions of authority, the concentration of political power in a national assembly of people’s power that is elected by the elected delegates of the people, the formation of mass organizations that have defined roles in the political process, a vanguard political party that constitutes the highest moral authority of the nation, and exceptional leaders that have been able to forge unity of national purpose. The four nations initially focused on nationalization of private enterprises and on state ownership, but during the 1980s and 1990s, seeing their economic progress constrained, and confronting an international political-economic order in crisis, they turned to providing more space for private economic enterprises, in accordance with a development plan of the state. They today have economies that are directed by the state, are a mixture of state and private enterprises, are oriented to increasing productivity, and are committed to social justice goals.
The four vanguard nations were condemned as outlaw states by the Western imperialist powers, which disseminated falsehoods and distortions among their peoples with respect to these projects of alternative construction. The distortions have deprived the peoples of the West of the possibility of critically reflecting on possible strategies for future economic development in their own nations. Combined with the incapacity of Western elites to understand and address critical social problems, such distortions give rise to a pervasive sentiment of pessimism and cynicism in Western societies.
In the 1980s, the Western powers, in addition to falsely condemning the four projects of Third World socialist construction, ignored the demands of the Non-Aligned Movement for a New International Economic Order. The Western political establishment went in the opposite direction, taking drastic steps to shore up the neocolonial world-system. They proceeded to impose neoliberal policies on the countries of the world, using economically, financially, and politically coercive measures, thereby weakening the power of Third World states with respect to their national economies. This imposition of neoliberal policies, unanticipated by critical thinkers, created ideological confusion in the Third World.
However, the negative social and economic consequences of the neoliberal project gave rise in the late 1990s to people’s movements of resistance. They initially were movements in opposition to particular neoliberal consequences, such as the elevated cost of water or transportation. But by the twenty-first century, they had evolved into movements in defense of national sovereignty and in opposition to imperialist interference in national politics, particularly in Latin America, where a new political reality emerged. New political parties were formed, as a result of the delegitimation of the traditional political parties, for their complicity with foreign powers in the imposition of neoliberal policies. No one who heard it will ever forget Hugo Chávez’s denunciation of the political parties: “They are on their knees before the imperial power!” In this environment of rebellion and demand for change, progressive governments, some proclaiming socialism for the twenty-first century, came to power through electoral processes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and Honduras, to name significant progressive projects in power now. Other progressive projects would rise and fall, such as those in Ecuador and Argentina.
The new political reality in Latin America impacted the Non-Aligned Movement. In the ideological confusion that had been generated by the imposition of the neoliberal project in the 1980s, the Non-Aligned Movement was hijacked by representatives of the Asian Tigers, who put forth proposals for Third World development that accommodate to neoliberalism and to the interests of the imperialist powers. But stimulated by the new political reality in Latin America, the Non-Aligned Movement retook the classic proposals of the Third World project. The return was evident in the Declaration of Havana, issued by the Non-Aligned Movement at its Summit in Havana in 2006. Subsequent summits of the Non-Aligned Movement have reaffirmed the classic anti-imperialist political agenda of the Third World project, putting forth demands in the name of the Movement. Today, the Non-Aligned Movement, which at its founding in 1961 had twenty-one member nations, has reached 120 member states from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, advocating for an alternative international economic order that respects the right of nations to sovereignty and the right of nations to formulate their own national development plans, without interference from the world powers.
The rise of several key progressive governments in Latin America also gave rise to a process of Latin American integration and union, dedicated to the construction of mutually beneficial economic relations among the nations of the region, bypassing the exploitative terms dictated by the USA and Europe. The process was led by Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa. It culminated in the establishment in 2010 of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish), which is composed of all 33 governments of Latin America and the Caribbean. At its 2014 Summit in Havana, CELAC declared the right of the nations of the region to an alternative form of integration based in solidarity and cooperation, and their right to control their natural resources.
The rise of CELAC and a new political reality in Latin America coincided with the consolidation in political power of Xi Jinping in China, who gave renewed emphasis to the People’s Republic’s foreign policy of developing mutually beneficial cooperation with the nations of the world. In 2014, Xi met with the heads of state of the nations of CELAC, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, to establish the China-CELAC Forum, and he subsequently visited Venezuela and Cuba. In an interchange with Latin American journalists, the Chinese President described China as a large nation, but not a global power, and in a phase of development similar to Latin America and the Caribbean nations. He maintained that China is seeking to develop through trade based on cooperation and win-win relations of mutual benefit. He defended South-South cooperation as the engine that can drive the autonomous and sustainable development of the developing nations, and he observed that the expanding economic and social relation between China and CELAC is an example of this necessary South-South cooperation. He affirmed the commitment of China to an alternative international economic and political order, more just and reasonable.
During the last ten years, Xi Jinping has emerged as a highly respected leader among the peoples of the Global South. In an address to the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2021, Xi proposed a Global Development Initiative. He maintained that commitment to development must have high priority for the governments of the world, a development that is people centered, for the people and by the people, with the blessings of development widely distributed among the people. He stressed the need for an emphasis on new technologies, in order to boost global productivity, with concern for the special needs of the developing countries. Concrete results with respect to climate change, poverty alleviation, food security, green development, vaccines, and digital connectivity must be given emphasis. Xi pledged the cooperation of China in the attainment of these common human objectives.
Xi also has put forth proposals for a Global Security Initiative and a Global Civilization Initiative. In addition, China’s project for a New Silk Road is now in its tenth year of implementation.
“The New Silk Road: China explains its Belt and Road Initiative,” October 20, 2023
China plays a leading role in new associations of international cooperation that seek to develop cooperative and mutually beneficial trade among nations. In the period 2006 to 2011, China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa formed BRICS. The group has been increasingly oriented toward the promotion of a shift from a Western-led system of global governance to a more inclusive paradigm of multipolarity that likely will increasingly function as an alternative to U.S.-directed unipolarity. Its 2017 Xiamen Declaration was described by one commentator as “a 68-point manifesto for a multipolar world order aimed at replacing Pax Americana.”
On August 24, 2023, BRICS announced that it will include six new member states beginning on January 1, 2024: Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Iran. With the inclusion of the six new members, BRICS nations will comprise 46% of the world population, and their economies will constitute 37% of the world GDP.
In addition, cooperative regional integration is occurring in Southeast Asia. On January 1, 2022, China and fourteen other Southeast Asian and East Asian nations launched the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). In addition to China, the economic partnership includes South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, and Vietnam, among others. The creation of RCEP has been described as a victory for multilateralism and for China and as an arrangement that is beneficial for all.
Moreover, China and Saudi Arabia have had mutually beneficial and respectful relations since the 1990s, which have been intensifying since 2016. The Chinese-Saudi relationship is part of a larger project of Chinese cooperation with the Arab world, celebrated in a state visit of Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia from December 7 to December 10, 2022.
We are thus in an anti-imperialist age, in which China and the nations of the Global South are constructing, step-by-step, an alternative to the Western dominated neocolonial world order. This construction of an alternative world order creates important opportunities for Ireland, if a reunited Ireland were to be able to forge the necessary political will for cooperation with China and the other emerging nations of the Global South, setting aside New Cold War ideological distortions that have been fabricated by imperialist interests. Ireland, in other words, must renew the anti-imperialist political views that were central to the Irish nationalist and republican revolution from 1916 to 1922.
United Ireland
Seeking national economic development
For an independent developing nation to advance in the further development of its national economy, the government cannot simply erect foreign tariffs to protect its industry, or provide tax incentives to stimulate investment, or reduce taxes to stimulate spending, or increase taxes or increase the state budget deficit in order to provide social benefits. It must develop a comprehensive development plan, based in an analysis of the existing industrial, commercial, financial, natural, and labor resources of the nation, including identification of the sectors that would be most capable of stimulating the national economy, if there were long-term investments in the sectors. The analysis must include the identification of possible national and foreign sources of investment in the identified sectors of the economy. To attract foreign investment, potential investors must be approached with creative proposals, which are designed to be profitable for the foreign investor and at the same time beneficial to the economy of the nation and consistent with the national development plan.
The process in the formulation of such a comprehensive development plan depends on conditions. They can be developed by the leadership of the government and its advisors, if exceptional persons are present, possessing advanced analytical capacities as well as firm commitment to the long term good of the nation. Generally, one would be inclined to recommend a commission that includes political leaders, the business community, scientists, the press, the academic world, and organizations of civil society. There are two pitfalls that such a commission would confront. First, the tendency for business executives to be more concerned with their particular interests rather than the long-term economic development of the nation. And secondly, the tendency for activists, academics, and journalists to fall prey to simplistic ideologically driven false solutions. These problems can be overcome through strong leadership. The vanguard nations constructing socialism are demonstrating its real possibility.
With respect to Ireland, critical reflection on the prerequisites for a successful national development plan makes evident the tremendous importance of reunification. Reunification would greatly increase the national resources that are available to the nation in creatively searching for projects that would promote the long-term development of the nation.
In the case of a reunited Ireland, priority ought to be given in its national economic plan for the development of cooperative relations with the emerging nations of the Global South, which are each day accumulating practical wisdom in the techniques and strategies of mutually beneficial cooperation, for the common good of humanity.
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