JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

84 SAOTHAR 13the Free State. Yet once the new state emerged what increasingly characterises both Labour Party and'social republican' thinking is the need to build a popular alliance to achieve a set of 'national' goalswhich differ little from those of FP. The left critique took the form, not of an assault on Fianna Failobjectives, but rather of the claim that FP had not the capacity to achieve the goals which it proclaimed ..Supposedly this was due to the class nature of the FF leadership: as the manifesto of Saor Eire putit in 1931, it was 'the party of the Irish middle class' .18 However, this characterisation of the party seemsto have had little effect on working class perceptions of it. The unconvincing nature of the left republicancritique, which remained the staple of left analysis for decades, brings us to the heart of the problemof analysing FP. It is a problem of more general significance, for it stems from central facets of thesocialist evaluation of the historic role of the bourgeoisie. In its classical form, this analysis combinedcritique and opposition with an appreciation of the progressive role that the class could play indeveloping the forces of production. In countries where industrialisation came later, and where it waspossible to identify capitalism as a 'foreign' mode of production and its bearers as 'anti-national' , therewas the basis for forms of populist socialism which sought to overleap the capitalist stage ofdevelopment and proceed immediately to a new social order based on the superior traits of nationaltraditions. From this perspective the indigenous middle class was irredeemably consigned to the roleof either comprador or ineffectual foe of the main enemy - 'imperialism'. The a priori logic ofnationalism held sway, especially in its most left wing forms.However, the nationalist project was/is an insatiable one for nations that are small and weak. Noamount of political independence can compensate for the sense of historic injustices perpetrated againstit. In the Irish case the facts of geography reinforced the nationalist's inevitable dissatisfaction withthe meagre fruits of a purely political, and at that partial and truncated, form of independence. Theoverwhelming fact of continued British dominance in economics and culture was at once unacceptableand not easily shakeable. For any small state, the nationalist dream of entry as a full and free individualinto 'the world of nations' can easily transform into the nightmare of inequality and marginalisation- so damaging to the national psyche. The tragedy of such small states is that self-determination canbut slightly compensate for the memories of past wrongs and the realities of continued (relative)powerlessness. This is a tragedy, not for the bourgeoisie, but for the masses; for it is they who willcontinue to bear the brunt of nationalist ambitions.What is being argued here is that the fundamental source of the notion of an 'incomplete nationalrevolution', that profound epistemological obstacle to thinking in a materialist way about Ireland, laynot fundamentally in partition but in the inevitable disj!lncture between the idealist discourse of Irishnationalism (concerned with the 'national being' to the exclusion of material resources) and geopoliticalrealities. Those who treat the nationalist discourse of FP as some superstructural survival tobe eliminated by inevitable modernisation, ignore the profound inequalities in the internationaleconomic order and system of states to which its populist nationalism gives a particular form ofideological expression. Irish backwardness in so many economic, social and cultural spheres, whichcontinued after independence as before, did not undermine the appeal of nationalism. Rather it providedthe continuing material basis for a reconstituted nationalist politics - that ofFF. The hegemony of thatparty can be measured by the fact that its most militant critics from the left challenged not its objectivesbut rather its capacity to attain them given the social composition of its leadership.During the Free State period, the most militant and substantial left critique of FP came from leftrepublicanism, particularl y that expressed by Peadar 0 'Donnell, editor of An Phobiac ht, prime moverin the agitation against the Land Annuities, and articulate champion of a workers' and small farmers'alliance. For O'Donnell the essential revolutionary perspective was encapsulated in the notion ofundoing the 'conquest', that is, not simply removing foreign political domination but also uprootingits implanted and alien mode of production: capitalism. But the class which would be the engine ofchange was, he consistently argued, the small farmers. The urban working class tended to be treatedas a class which had sold its soul for a mess of imperialist pottage. The emphasis on the centrality ofthe small farm population and the need to rouse it through the annuities campaign was an implicit