Politics

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December 5, 2010

Sean and politics

Posted by Brendano under Ireland, Memories, Politics | Tags: , , , |
[18] Comments 

Sean was a deep thinker, but was not particularly politically minded. He never voted in his life … the only time he could have voted was in the second Lisbon referendum, but he hadn’t registered. He said he would register in time to vote at the next general election.

At secondary school, history was his favourite subject. Early-twentieth-century Ireland interested him particularly … for his Leaving Cert he did a project on the IRA flying columns of 1919–21.

He admired Michael Collins and knew a lot about de Valera, and, in particular, the Irish Free State’s role in the evolution of the Commonwealth in the 1920s and 1930s (much more than I did, as it has generally been overlooked). He sometimes spoke about this. He didn’t sympathize with the modern ‘Republican Movement’. (more…)

 

September 18, 2010

The indomitable spirit of Mother Jones

Posted by Brendano under Biography, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

Some time back, Ana the Imp posted a blog on MyT entitled ‘Obama and the Deer Hunters’, contrasting ‘un-American’ ‘liberals and socialists’ with the kind of blue-collar individualists who ‘built America’ and are instinctively hostile to the state … epitomized by the steelworker-soldiers of The Deer Hunter.

In a comment, I said ‘It seems that some people, for ideological reasons, would like to tear out whole chapters of the American story … such as the “deer hunter” class fighting not the state as such, but big business that was backed by the forces of the state.’

Around that time I went to an Andy Irvine concert, and he sang a new song he’d written called ‘The Spirit of Mother Jones’. Mother Jones was an interesting character, and personified the struggle of the ‘little person’ for fair play that was a big part of what made America the greatest country in the world. (more…)

 

July 5, 2010

Trotsky, socialism and the EU

Posted by Brendano under Politics | Tags: , , |
[27] Comments 

I posted this on MyT a few years ago in response to an American blogger who saw ‘Trotskyism’ almost everywhere he looked.

Richard

Many years ago I had some Trotskyist acquaintances, and I knew a fair bit about Trotsky’s ideas at that time. One thing about him is absolutely clear – he hated ‘bourgeois democracy’. In order to have true (socialist) democracy, he felt, capitalism would have to be swept away. If the workers’ lives were controlled by their bosses, the right to elect members of parliament was immaterial.

Trotsky envisioned democracy through ‘workers’ councils’; he felt that this was the core idea of Bolshevism but it had been betrayed by Lenin and Stalin’s dictatorial instincts. He was on a mission to rescue it; the ice-pick put an end to that, but it couldn’t have succeeded in any case – Trotsky had a naïve view of human nature. He thought that if capitalism were overthrown in one country, that country would be attacked and overcome by others where capitalism persisted – hence the need for worldwide revolution. (more…)

 

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