Nationalism, Self-Determination and Political Geography by R. J. Johnston David Knight Eleonore Kofman

Author:R. J. Johnston, David Knight, Eleonore Kofman [R. J. Johnston, David Knight, Eleonore Kofman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Human Geography
ISBN: 9781317610120
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Clearly whatever the ‘objective’ conditions in which such movements as the IRA operate, the formation of a coherent ideology based upon anti-imperialism is possible and it can gather electoral support. In order to understand such an ideology, one really needs to study the beginnings of ‘national liberation ideology’ in the works of Mao Tse-Tung, which first developed the formulations underlying much of the thinking of anti-imperialists and radical nationalism. Crucial to his tactics was the need to form class alliances between the proletariat and the peasantry and with sections of the bourgeoisie. It was important for him to be able to represent various class interests without apparent contradiction. During revolution this was done by characterising the enemy as feudal, imperialist and generally anti-progressive against which all ‘progressive’ elements should combine, as a result his rhetoric hailed the ‘people’s democratic dictatorship’ rather than that of the proletariat. Resolution of any contradictions in the reconstituted society was easy, said Mao, because ‘the basic contradictions in socialist society are still those between the relations of production and the productive forces’ (in ‘On contradictions’ in Schram, 1969) but in socialism these contradictions are democratic and non-antagonistic. This theoretical back-flipping is possible because of the concept of ‘the people’, a near national body that encompasses the working-class and their interests to a degree and so makes it possible for nationalists to be allied to the proletariat as a class rather than as merely part of the national mass.

It is these kinds of concepts and political formulations put into practice in various ways by a number of ‘Third World’ liberation movements that Sinn Fein has drawn upon in building their own anti-imperialist ideology. In some regions, of course, such a response is inappropriate, although the position of E.T.A. in Spain is very similar. In Wales, for example, the successful response for the nationalist Plaid Cymru has been a switch to labourist socialism. The reasons for these changes lie not just in party political development but in the interaction in civil society of local historical relations of gender, class, religion and, of course, ethnicity with the social relations of production that also vary over time and space, but each case has to be studied in its own right, as well as part of wider patterns.

The failure of non-nationalist radical politics to overcome sectarianism, the renewal of communal violence and the presence of the British Army all added to the resurgence of a nationalist response in Northern Ireland but in order to last longer than the initial resumption of violence and repression, it had to be a different form of nationalism and it would be wrong to see these changes as purely cosmetic. The problem was how to combine nationalist tradition and contemporary issues and this has been attempted by the IRA through anti-imperialist radicalism. The willingness of numbers of feminists to agree to their position on the need for national liberation in order to achieve women’s liberation in return for a shift on issues such as abortion encapsulates the possible way in which such an ideology can succeed.

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