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Is Southern Ireland a Neo Colony
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May 29, 2021
the primary complaint i'd make about this work is a slightly unfair one and is based on the fact that it is a pamphlet as opposed to a full-length work. i'd be reasonably confident that were this book written in order to set out allen's analysis of the development of monopoly capitalism, giving way to imperialism and then neo-colonialism versus 'global market' capitalism as opposed to one so rooted in polemic disputes with socialist republicans it would be a far stronger work. as it stands there's a fair bit of argumentative bluster driving the arguments home at key points and i think its leaves it weaker than it could be as a result.
allen has a few antagonists here. the most noteworthy is gerry adams and adams' arguments on the economics of the Free State as rendered in 'the politics of irish freedom'. i haven't read this book, nor have i read Nkrumah (who allen doesn't cite here) but i understand his is *the* book on the subject of neo-colonialism, so whatever i say here should be weighed against that fact. other antagonists allen names include poulantzas and other unnamed academic marxists who refer to the dynamics between core and periphery in their works, so presumably working within the context of world systems theory or suchlike.
If I was being mean I would say that Adams is a good opponent for Allen to have chosen, I don't know if there were any republican socialists producing empirical accounts of Irish capitalism in 1990, but certainly Allen opts to tackle 'socialist republicanism' at its weakest points. To offer an example we may reduce Adams' argument to a single statement of fact: 'Ireland is a neo-colony of Britain'. Allen's critique is rooted in the fact that the United States and the then-EEC have significant investments in the Free State and command a comparable percentage of the Free State's export markets. Ergo, the Free State cannot *just* be a neo-colony of Britain. It might have been interesting to try to update Adams' hypothesis to the actual data, suggest that this may be associated with Britain's declining status as an imperialist power relative to the German-dominated EEC and United States, but the aim is more to demolish Adams than take his analysis in a more interesting direction. Another example of this more polemical approach is when socialist republicans who argue that an anti-imperialist broad front is necessary in order to secure national liberation are associated with a Stalinist brand of stageism.
Much of the early stages of the pamphlet feature reasonably interesting accounts of how Irish industry was suppressed under British imperialism, rendered non-competitive and forced into becoming a mere sattelite of British capitalism, forced into exporting raw materials for British production in order to remain profitable. While Allen accepts that this satellite status lasted for a number of decades into the Free State's early history (the military and economic assistance the Cosgrave government received from the Brits going unmentioned but is certainly a part of this picture) once securing foreign direct investment under Lemass becomes the overriding objective of the Free State bourgeoisie, the neo-colonial state of affairs has been superseded as the Free State had become an industrialising power in its own right, selling fully-fledged outputs of industrial processes as opposed to mere raw materials. Insofar as I can see this is the one instance in which Allen spells out clearly what the difference is between a neo-colony and an equal, or relatively equal, partner within the capitalist world market. If that is the case, we could identify earlier points in Allen's argument in which Allen points out that at a number of points in Ireland's history, Ireland did in fact have something of a developed productive base outside of agricultural production and would, therefore, have been exporting commodities that are by necessity, outputs. Allen's argument would then seem to be that this is a question of degree, which is perfectly fine, but that difference isn't outlined here.
There are some statistics, and far more than I would be accustomed to encountering within analyses of Irish conditions, but not enough to render the matter in its totality. The section which attempts to prove indigenous Irish dominance of the Irish financial sector I found to be the weakest in the book, because Allen admits there are no figures and seems to draw very large conclusions from what little evidence is there, without accounting at all for the quite complicated means through which imperialist powers exert themselves through financial markets, at one point seeming to suggest London wasn't or isn't absolutely a central focal point for financial capital. I would really like to see Allen return to this in a post-2008 context in which the Irish state bailed out the private losses of anonymous, and presumably largely international, bondholders serving to lay out in clearer terms the contradictions which do exist between multinational capital and indigenous Irish productive firms.
The fundamental difference between Allen's notion of the history of the Free State and that which may be held by a socialist republican, would be that Allen argues that a bourgeois revolution has been fully accomplished in Ireland and has resulted in the creation of a 'stable bourgeois democracy'. This is one instance in which the need for a longer and more systematic account of the history of the Free State is clear; it wouldn't take much consideration of the history of various Free State governments in order to put that phrase under serious amounts of pressure.
From my own point of view, Conor McCabe's notion of the Free State bourgeoisie in terms of a garrison class works really well in answering some of the more superstructural aspects of this question and can account for why it is true that if the Free State bourgeoisie is a self-confident and autonomous bourgeoisie it is so hostile to republicanism and so consistently servile to British security forces, that the Free State inherits many law and state structures from the British. Allen regards this as unimportant to the matter of capitalism and the state, which is grand, but it presumably has some significance.
Final bugbears include Allens' repeating the usual canard about the Provosionals being a right-wing anti-communist movement and occasionally caricaturing the nature of imperialism in general as 'The notion that the “Brits” control Irish industry, banking and parliament'. Irish language not mentioned.
allen has a few antagonists here. the most noteworthy is gerry adams and adams' arguments on the economics of the Free State as rendered in 'the politics of irish freedom'. i haven't read this book, nor have i read Nkrumah (who allen doesn't cite here) but i understand his is *the* book on the subject of neo-colonialism, so whatever i say here should be weighed against that fact. other antagonists allen names include poulantzas and other unnamed academic marxists who refer to the dynamics between core and periphery in their works, so presumably working within the context of world systems theory or suchlike.
If I was being mean I would say that Adams is a good opponent for Allen to have chosen, I don't know if there were any republican socialists producing empirical accounts of Irish capitalism in 1990, but certainly Allen opts to tackle 'socialist republicanism' at its weakest points. To offer an example we may reduce Adams' argument to a single statement of fact: 'Ireland is a neo-colony of Britain'. Allen's critique is rooted in the fact that the United States and the then-EEC have significant investments in the Free State and command a comparable percentage of the Free State's export markets. Ergo, the Free State cannot *just* be a neo-colony of Britain. It might have been interesting to try to update Adams' hypothesis to the actual data, suggest that this may be associated with Britain's declining status as an imperialist power relative to the German-dominated EEC and United States, but the aim is more to demolish Adams than take his analysis in a more interesting direction. Another example of this more polemical approach is when socialist republicans who argue that an anti-imperialist broad front is necessary in order to secure national liberation are associated with a Stalinist brand of stageism.
Much of the early stages of the pamphlet feature reasonably interesting accounts of how Irish industry was suppressed under British imperialism, rendered non-competitive and forced into becoming a mere sattelite of British capitalism, forced into exporting raw materials for British production in order to remain profitable. While Allen accepts that this satellite status lasted for a number of decades into the Free State's early history (the military and economic assistance the Cosgrave government received from the Brits going unmentioned but is certainly a part of this picture) once securing foreign direct investment under Lemass becomes the overriding objective of the Free State bourgeoisie, the neo-colonial state of affairs has been superseded as the Free State had become an industrialising power in its own right, selling fully-fledged outputs of industrial processes as opposed to mere raw materials. Insofar as I can see this is the one instance in which Allen spells out clearly what the difference is between a neo-colony and an equal, or relatively equal, partner within the capitalist world market. If that is the case, we could identify earlier points in Allen's argument in which Allen points out that at a number of points in Ireland's history, Ireland did in fact have something of a developed productive base outside of agricultural production and would, therefore, have been exporting commodities that are by necessity, outputs. Allen's argument would then seem to be that this is a question of degree, which is perfectly fine, but that difference isn't outlined here.
There are some statistics, and far more than I would be accustomed to encountering within analyses of Irish conditions, but not enough to render the matter in its totality. The section which attempts to prove indigenous Irish dominance of the Irish financial sector I found to be the weakest in the book, because Allen admits there are no figures and seems to draw very large conclusions from what little evidence is there, without accounting at all for the quite complicated means through which imperialist powers exert themselves through financial markets, at one point seeming to suggest London wasn't or isn't absolutely a central focal point for financial capital. I would really like to see Allen return to this in a post-2008 context in which the Irish state bailed out the private losses of anonymous, and presumably largely international, bondholders serving to lay out in clearer terms the contradictions which do exist between multinational capital and indigenous Irish productive firms.
The fundamental difference between Allen's notion of the history of the Free State and that which may be held by a socialist republican, would be that Allen argues that a bourgeois revolution has been fully accomplished in Ireland and has resulted in the creation of a 'stable bourgeois democracy'. This is one instance in which the need for a longer and more systematic account of the history of the Free State is clear; it wouldn't take much consideration of the history of various Free State governments in order to put that phrase under serious amounts of pressure.
From my own point of view, Conor McCabe's notion of the Free State bourgeoisie in terms of a garrison class works really well in answering some of the more superstructural aspects of this question and can account for why it is true that if the Free State bourgeoisie is a self-confident and autonomous bourgeoisie it is so hostile to republicanism and so consistently servile to British security forces, that the Free State inherits many law and state structures from the British. Allen regards this as unimportant to the matter of capitalism and the state, which is grand, but it presumably has some significance.
Final bugbears include Allens' repeating the usual canard about the Provosionals being a right-wing anti-communist movement and occasionally caricaturing the nature of imperialism in general as 'The notion that the “Brits” control Irish industry, banking and parliament'. Irish language not mentioned.
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