[South Wales IMG internal discussion document]

Criticism of the Previous Document

This new document has to correct the previous one on the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, which we discussed at the last Area Aggregate. It is open to a basic criticism. The mistake of the previous document, and the discussion, was that it did not proceed as we are now - first, an historical analysis of Welsh nationalism and, second, an examination of the WSRM’s position in the light of that analysis of Welsh nationalism. As we didn’t do that, the nationalist roots of the WSRM lay hidden and the emphasis in our analysis miscued. We tried to analyse the WSRM in terms of a group with Marxist traditions, just because they presented themselves as Marxists or Socialists. We kept to admiring the foliage instead of digging up the roots. Thus we saw them implicitly as left-centrist, people vacillating between reformist and revolutionary positions, with no political understanding of reformism or labour bureaucracy, no definite stand on whether socialism could be achieved through parliament (whether a British or Welsh one), and no concept of what forms of organisation the working class would organise itself through in the struggle against British capitalism (workers’ councils, workers’ democracy, dual power). Obviously, we recognised nationalist tendencies within that the WSRM’s call for a separate Welsh state, confusion over whether the character of such a state should be socialist or capitalist, and putting Wales on the same parallel as Ireland in its oppression by the British state and British capitalism. Rather than seeing these nationalist tendencies as the dominant ones, the all-encompassing ones, we presented them as certain strains within a centrist framework. The present document has to correct this.

More (html, 27 KB): The Nature of the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement