Primitive Communism and the Blasket Islands

Primitive Communism and The Blasket Islands Paul O’Brien ganisation of pre-class societies. Morgan’s study of the family relations of the Iroquois Indians was the intellectual basis for En- gels Origins of the Family Private Property and the State. Engels visited Ireland on three occa- sions, in 1856, 1867, and in 1870. He was collecting material for a ‘History of Ire- land’, a project he never completed. In Houses on the Blasket Islands in the 1920’s 1856 he visited West Galway, and in his let- ters he says he found a post-famine Ireland that was ‘broken and demoralised’ and in- capable of raising itself up again. It is a In the fifty volumes of the Collected pity he never ventured to the South-West, Works of Marx and Engels there is very especially to the Blasket Islands. I suspect little speculation as to what a future so- Engels would have been fascinated by what cialist society might look like. The reason he found there. for this as Engels makes clear in The Ori- gins of the Family Private Property and the The Blasket Island is situated about State is that we cannot know how people four miles of the Southern tip of the coun- freed from class oppression will choose to try. There is evidence of stone-age occupa- live their lives. tion on the Island, but it is the later occu- But Marx and Engels had a real inter- pation of the Island that concerns us. In est in the past and how people lived in the 1750s about forty or fifty people lived pre-class societies. Though little was then on the Island. In 1841 this had grown known about the past - particularly the to approximately one hundred and fifty, social relations of pre-class society. They and in 1901 had reached one hundred and were interested in the evolution of society eighty. From then on there was a slow for a number of reasons. Firstly, because decline in numbers, especially among the they wanted to illustrate that the organi- young people, until the Island was evacu- sation of society and the social relations on ated in 1953 when the population had de- which it was based was not static or perma- clined to about forty souls. nent. Class struggle is the motor of history, What was so interesting about this Is- where changes in the social relations of any land was the fact that because of its isola- society, reflect the changing material relation it had escaped the modernising effect tions of that society. Secondly, they were that had destroyed the old Gaelic way of interested in pre-class societies because of life across most of Ireland in the nineteenth the insight they might throw up as to how century. Because it was cut off from the people freed from class oppression might Mainland this cultural destruction was de- live their lives. Marx and Engels relied on layed for over sixty or seventy years. The the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Island was owned by the Earl of Cork but Morgan’s book, Ancient Society (1877) for the Islanders had stopped paying rent in much of their information on the social or- the period following the famine. On oc- 32 casions the landlord’s agent sent a raiding the coast of Europe. party to the Island to seize goods or cat- tle owned by the Islanders, but they were repulsed by the women of the Island who Family Structure assembled at the top of the cliff and hurled Nearly all marriages on the Island were ar- rocks down on the agents boat. After that ranged to cement communal ties, though they were left in peace to get on with their there was the odd love marriage. De- lives. This was a close knit community spite this the status of women was not based on kinship and co-operation. Soli- diminished. In the Iroquois society Mor- darity was a condition of survival. This gan had noted that descent was reck- was what John Millington Synge called an oned through the mother and the high ‘unalienated environment’. There was in- status of women reflected this arrange- sufficient material wealth on the Blasket ment. This was not the case on the Blas- for there to be inequality, but it was rich ket, but women were valued. In many in social capital. cases women retained their maiden name on marriage. Young men were identi- Co-operation fied by their mother’s name. As story- tellers, which was a highly regarded ability, If Engels had visited the Island on one women were seen as the equal of men. The of his trips to Ireland he might have ex- distinction of parent, grandparent, uncle, perienced a community who ‘gave accord- aunt, or cousin was blurred on the Island ing to their ability’ and received ‘accord- in relation to child rearing. There was al- ing to their need’. However, this was not ways a loose collective approach to child some utopian community. The harsh ma- rearing. The Island also had a more lib- terial conditions on the Island made co- eral approach to sexual matters that that operation a necessity rather than a choice, of the mainland. The people were very re- in order to survive. Fishing and subsis- ligious, but it was not a faith that was me- tence farming was the mainstay of the is- diated exclusively through the church or a land. Land was held in common. Each local priest. There was no church or priest family was allocated a field - the size and on the Island- and as a result this was not needs of the family determined the size of a ‘priest ridden’ community. The moral- the field. Field ownership was not perma- ity on the Island reflected that of the more nent but changed over time according to liberal Gaelic past rather than the Victo- need. Turf banks were allocated on the rian strictures that dominated the Catholic same basis. That accounted for the best Church at the time. land, about sixty acres just above the vil- lage, the other twelve hundred acres were Money held in common. Fishing was organised on a communal There were no monetary relations between basis, usually two boats with three men in the islanders. There was no shop or pub each boat. Trust was an important factor on the island, but money was needed for in building a sense of community. Each goods such as sugar, flour, and tobacco member of the crew knew that the oth- that were purchased from the jobbers and ers held his life in their hands, as they shops on the mainland. But the islanders faced out in the canvas covered currachs had no experience of buying in order to into some of the most dangerous seas off sell. No money circulated on the Island 33 and there were no master/servant relation- or no meaning for them. When Peig Say- ships. The islanders were bound to each ers heard about the 1916 Rising in Dublin other by close ties of blood, marriage, and and the destruction of the city, she spoke interdependence. All of them were en- of how ‘strangers’ had burnt the city to gaged in the same occupations and faced the ground. Peig had little concept of and the same dangers at sea. Meitheal is an almost no connection with the great his- old Irish word for co-operation that is still torical events that were unfolding at that current in some rural communities. On the time. Island co-operation was at the core of all activity. Whether it was fishing, building a house for a newly married couple, Culture or looking after the old and the infirm the Marx and Engels had used the term primi- islanders looked out for each other. In tive communism to describe these pre-class the books of Tomás Ó Crohan and Muiris societies. The social and economic struc- O’Sullivan there are many stories of fisher- tures on the Island up to about the 1920s men returning home and leaving a few fish fits this description. There was no division for an old or infirm couple. Turf was cut of goods based on a top-down hierarchy. for them, rabbits were provided, and the Rather, it was a society of mutual support community took responsibility for the old. and a real humanity, without which no-one on the Island could survive. For that rea- Democratic son alone the Island community is worth consideration. There are echoes of a people’s democracy But this was also an Island that was from ancient Greece or of people’s assem- highly cultured with an oral tradition that blies in the way decisions were made. One harked back to the old Gaelic bardic tra- of the houses on the Island was known dition of poetry and story-telling. George as the Dáil or parliament; where the is- Thomson a young student who had stud- sues concerning the community were dis- ied classical Greek at Cambridge Univer- cussed. Votes were not taken but issues sity arrived on the Island in 1923. He was were thrashed out and an informal con- born in England to Irish parents and in- sensus reached. It was a form of self- spired by the revival movement he wanted government. There was no police or law to learn Irish. He was directed to the Blas- on the Island. As Séan Ó Criomhthain has ket Islands as they were reputed to speak recorded; if an offence was committed, or the purest form of Irish.

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