A Historic Step Forward: IRSP Adopts the Teachings of Marx, Engels & Lenin

Many thanks to Sean Patrick Smyth for forwarding this document to the Archive. This is a central document in the development of the Irish Republican Socialist Party – outlining the adoption of ‘the teachings of Marx, Engels & Lenin’. It notes that:

On the week-end Sept. 8/9th, the Irish Republican Socialist Party(IRSP),at its annual Ard Feis (Conference), took a historic step forward when it adopted the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin as providing the basis for its socialist principles. In taking such a step the IRSP do not see these teachings as a collection of immutable, fossilised principles to be accepted as a faith or dogma. Studied In the light of the historical experience of the working class and related to the concrete conditions existing in Ireland to-day, they become a powerful weapon in the hands of the party, providing the necessary method, viewpoint and science, to define the correct strategyand tactics to defeat Imperialism and build Socialism.

This momentous decision by the I R S P was arrived at after a considerable period of internal discussion relating to:

(1) the experience of the internal organisation of the party since its formation,

(2) the party’s contribution or lack of contribution to the struggle for national liberation and socialism,

(3) our failure to adequatly define our understanding of revolutionary socialism,

(4) an analvsis of the Irish revolutionary tradition, and

(5) the historical experience of the world revolutionary movement under the influence of the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin.

Signed by Jim Lane, then National Chairperson of the IRSP (and other organisations and documents relevant to him can be found here in the Archive), the document concludes:

The I R S P not alone rejects the peaceful transition to socialism through parliamentary means, but alone among the parties advocating revolutionary socialism, we support the Armed struggle against British Imperialism, unequivocally.

We do so because we believe the resolution of the National Ouestion to be a necessary prerequisite to socialism in

Ireland. Armed now as we are with the powerful -weapon of Marxism-Leninism and committed as we are to the greater ideological schooling of our members followers, we intend to dig roots so deep among the working-class that it will prove impossible to dislodge us.

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