B_345_The-Rulers-of-Russia

material advantage of vast funds such as a despotism can levy at
will from the labour of more than fifty million adult men and
women working on its soil, allowing as productive for revenue onethird
of the gross population. All the surplus value of that labour
is available, and a very large part of it is actually used, for propaganda
and supply in countries outside Russia." 1
The numbers of
fiie New I.R.A., who are members of the Communist Party of
Ireland and who took part in the formation of the Dublin Branch
of the Left Book Club in 1936, seem to prove that Russia is ready
to utilise the Partition grievance in Ireland, in order to prepare the
way for the Popular Front and the attack on the Mass. 2
We must
not forget that the General Convention of the New I.R.A. on
January 8th, 1933, issued a manifesto to the Irish people, which
stated unequivocally that: "the reorganisation of Irish life demands
the public ownership of the means of production, distribution
and exchange in a State based on the needs of the mass of the
people." The I.R.A. thus accepted the central point of "Moscow's"
programme. The New I.R.A. ought to remember how a small
section of the Basques were used as the instruments of Russia in
Spain. 3
They ought to bear in mind, too, the fate that awaits
them if "Moscow" triumphs. It will be given to others to read
that "they have disappeared," like so many marshals, generals,
ambassadors, professors, technicians, and other dupes of all kinds,
not to speak of ordinary citizens in their thousands and hundreds
of thousands. The Natural Messias is not meek and humble of
heart like the Supernatural Messias.
Labour unions ought to watch their leaders closely, for every
socialistic programme which sacrifices personal to common ownership
operates in the long run towards the concentration of all control
in the hands of a small minority and the reduction of the rest
of the population to propertyless serfdom. 4
It is one of the tragedies
of James Connolly's life that he who believed firmly in the
1
H. Belloc in G. K.'s Weekly, August 13th, 1936.
2
The Left Book Club is the creation of the Jew, V. Gollancz.
8
The Soviet programme of action in Spain in 1932 included "the intensification
of the national revolutionary movement in Catalonia and Biscay."
(Theses of XII Plenum of the E.C.C.I.) The letters E.C.C.I: stand for
Executive Committee of the Communist International.
* Cf. Socialism Unmasked, by A. N. Field.
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