Part 11 - DW63 DB101 003 011

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This movement is a struggle to realise the Chajusong of the popular masses in each country, and it is the communists and the people of the country themselves who are the performers, the masters of this struggle. Founding a working-class party in each country, too, is a task which the communists of the country should necessarily carry out by their efforts as the masters. WPK 4) Only when one knows the things of one's country well, will one be able to solve all problems arising in the revolution and construction in an independent manner and to suit one's specific situation and carry out the revolution and construction in conformity with the aspirations and requirements of one's people. Only then will one be able also to love one's country and people ardently and demonstrate a high degree of patriotic devotion and revolutionary enthusiasm. (OJI 38) A socialist movement must rest upon and draw its inspiration from the historical and actual conditions of the country in which it functions and not merely lose themselves in an abstract 'internationalism' (which has no relation to the real internationalism of the socialist movement) on the other. (Jan 23 1909) Socialism in its application to Ireland means and requires the fullest trust of the Irish people as the arbiters of their own destinies in conformity with the laws of progress and humanity. (Jan 23 1909) That labour movement of the future, as well as the socialist movement of today, must indeed draw inspiration from the successes of our comrades abroad, but must also shape its course to suit the conditions within our own shores. The Socialist Party of Ireland recognises and most enthusiastically endorses the principle of internationalism, but it realises that that principle must be sought through the medium of universal brotherhood rather than by self-extinction of distinct nations within the political maw of over-grown Empires. (March 11 1911) The freedom of a people must in the last analysis rest in the hands of that people. (July 1915) Say, ye British socialists, have your leaders any conception of this problem, or do they imagine that an Irish branch of a British socialist organisation can grapple with this problem, or do anything with it save make a mess of it? Or that it can be grappled with in any manner save from within the Irish nation by the workers of Ireland uniting in a party of their own to throw off the incubus of social slavery and religious intolerance? (March 18 1911) The ILP in Belfast believes that the socialist movement in Ireland must perforce remain a dues-paying, organic part of the British socialist movement. ... The Socialist Party of Ireland considers itself the only international party in Ireland, since its conception of internationalism is that of a free federation of free peoples, whereas that of the Belfast branches of the ILP seems scarcely distinguishable from imperialism, the merging of subjugated peoples in the political system of their conquerors. ... This is a unique conception of internationalism, unique and peculiar to Belfast. There is no 'most favoured nation clause' in socialist diplomacy, and we, as socialists in Ireland, can not afford to establish such a precendent. (May 27 1911) I have written in vain if I have not helped the reader to realise that the historical backgrounds of the movement in England and Ireland are so essentially different that the Irish socialist movement can only be truly served by a party indigenous to the soil, and explained by a literature having the same source; that the phrases and watchwords which might serve to express the soul of the movement in one country may possibly stifle its soul and suffocate its expression in the other. (Aug 2 1913) 10

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