Author Archives: irishmarxism

Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (6 of 6)

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The most damning judgements in Fragments are that the movements since 2008 ‘failed to identify an avenue through which society might be changed’; ‘it is unlikely the Trotskyist People before Profit will manage to articulate a viable alternative . . . and the steps between the current situation and the long-term goal of socialism are less clear than ever before. The radical left ‘were engaged in a form of politics incapable of realising its own aims.’  (p183, 191, 192 & 181)

The left made gains during the years covered by the book, expressed in some relatively modest electoral successes, but this was achieved though pursuit of a strategy and practice that might be considered as one of least resistance, which had inevitable shortcomings and meant these ‘steps’ were not an ‘avenue through which society might be changed’; entailed a lack of articulation of ‘a viable alternative’; lacked clarity over how to achieve ‘the long-term goal of socialism’ and gave rise to the perception that its politics was ‘incapable of realising its own aims.’

This is not only a question of an absence of a revolutionary socialist programme, which we have already noted in previous posts.  The left has worked under the assumption that achievement of  its objectives requires a revolutionary party, which alone would understand the necessity for revolution and how it may be achieved, and that in its various forms it is the nucleus of this party, which is considered to be revolutionary because its leaders truly believe in revolution (regardless of how it looks from outside).  This obviously means that its own activity and building its own organisations are the absolute priority.

I am reminded of the slogan that the duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution, except socialist revolutions are not primarily made by revolutionaries but by the working class in its great majority.  The emancipation of the working class can be the work only of the working class itself, as someone famous once said.  This is one of many principles widely acknowledged but without understanding what it entails.  Revolutionaries are ‘the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class . . . which pushes forward all others [with] the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.’ (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto).

The working class party is built not solely or even mainly by the activists of the left but mainly by the working class itself, with the socialist movement playing the role just mentioned.  Instead, the mantra of building the party is reduced to building the existing left organisations not as a consequence of the development of mass working class movements but separate from them.  Revolutionary organisations can only develop if they find within the working class this growth of socialist consciousness, which is itself partly a result of their own activity but only as an integral part of the struggles of the working class itself.

We have noted the need to challenge the existing leadership of the trade union movement as an example of what is needed to begin addressing these tasks. We have noted that the limits of single issue campaigns means that they were not a substitute, however useful they may be otherwise, and that the political education that was given was the failed statist politics that subordinates the class’s own activity to that of the capitalist state. This view has come to dominate understanding of what ‘socialism’ is and reflects the historical domination of social-democracy and Stalinism.

This was rudely demonstrated by the left’s customary call for nationalisation being appropriated by the state in relation to the banking system when it faced collapse; which was carried out to protect both capitalist ownership and itself, while dumping the cost on the working class.  I have seen it defended on the grounds that this was not ‘socialist’ nationalisation, but this complaint just admits its unavoidably capitalist character.  Could capitalist state ownership be anything other than capitalist? How could the capitalist state introduce working class control and ownership when it was its own ownership that was asserted?

Progress through the lines of least resistance does not necessarily involve conscious opportunism, precisely because it does involve progress, but like all opportunism it sacrifices long term principle for short term gains. Gains which can more readily dissolve as circumstances change and change they always do.  The approach of appearing more ‘practical’ and attuned to workers’ existing consciousness by declaring that one can leverage the state to do what the workers movement itself must do, through a ‘left government’ for example, does not educate, in fact miseducates, the working class.

This does not invalidate the struggle for reforms that of necessity are under the purview of the state, but these are of benefit not only, or so much, for their direct effects but for their arising from the agency of the working class through the struggle to impose its will on the state and capitalist class.  Reforms are ultimately required to create the best conditions for a strong workers’ movement, and not as solutions to their problems that act to co-opt workers to dependence on the state.  Handed down from above they can primarily be seen as performing the latter role. 

The alternative of seeking to mobilise workers when their organisations are bureaucratised and the majority are either apathetic or antipathetic, is often seen as less practical, less advised, and ‘ultra-left’.  However, the point of socialist argument and agitation is often not with the expectation of eliciting immediate action but to advance political consciousness, which sometimes might be seen as widening what is called the ‘Overton window’.

This approach addresses the argument that only in revolutionary times or circumstances can one advance revolutionary demands.  All independent action by the working class is a step towards its own emancipation, no matter how small, just as reliance on the state is not.  Reforms won from the state are significant such steps if they involve independent organisation of the workers’ movement to achieve them.  As Marx said in the Communist Manifesto in relation to workers’ struggles: ‘Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.’

Something similar was pointed out by James Connolly, who knew that temporary victories would not yield permanent peace until permanent victory was achieved, and that for such victories ‘the spirit, the character, the militant spirit, the fighting character of the organisation, was of the first importance.’ Fragments’ statements that the left ‘failed to lay deep social roots’ and ‘failed to develop a mass political consciousness’ is the authors judgement that this didn’t happen.

It is banal and trite to acknowledge that demands need to be appropriate to their circumstances, but this must also encompass two considerations.  First, that even in situations in which it is almost impossible to achieve the working class mobilisation that is required, it may still also be necessary to say what must be done in order to achieve the desired outcome.

Second, only by always putting forward an independent working class position, which most often does not involve any call to more or less immediate revolutionary overthrow, is it possible for workers to begin to realise that an independent working class politics exists that has something to say about all the immediate and fundamental issues of the day.  As I have previously noted, this begins by instilling in workers the conception of their own position and power as a class, not that of an amorphous ‘people’.  What this involves in any particular circumstance is a political question and the subject of polemical differences that are unfortunately unavoidable.

The fall of the Celtic Tiger demonstrated that such crises on their own will not bring about the development of socialist consciousness – that capitalism is crisis-ridden and must be replaced by a society ruled by the working class.  One of the earliest posts on this blog noted evidence that these crises most often do not.  In order that they deliver such object lessons it is necessary for a critical mass of the working class to already be convinced that their power is the alternative to capitalism and its crises.  This requires a prior significant socialist movement integral to working class life and its organisations.

We are a long way away from this, with one reviewer of the book in The Irish Times noting that its editors had excessive optimism about the experience of the Irish Left over the period.  The reviewer makes other comments that are apposite.  The argument of this review is that the book records enough experience to show that optimism is unjustified, at least on the basis of continuation of the political approach recorded by it.

The project of a left government that would be dominated by Sinn Fein, with secondary roles for the Labour Party, Social Democrats and Greens is not the road to address the failures noted at the top of the post.  The project is a chimera that is incoherent and cannot work.  In (un)certain circumstances it might spur a further development of consciousness and independent working class organisation and activity, but this is by far the less likely outcome and is not, in any case, what is being argued by the projects’ left supporters.

The left is always in a hurry, partly because of the preponderance of young people involved but more decisively because of the project itself, which is not based on building the strength and consciousness of the class as a whole but of building the left organisations themselves, particularly through elections.  The next one is always the most vital.  The former is the work of years and decades to which the project of ‘party building’ and ‘the immediacy of revolution’, understood as insurrection, does not lend itself.  These are outcomes that cannot be willed by socialists but determined ultimately by the wider class struggle and the decisions of countless workers as well as by their enemies.

Elections allow socialists ‘a gauge for proportioning our action such as cannot be duplicated, restraining us from untimely hesitation as well as from untimely daring’, and ‘a means, such as there is no other, of getting in touch with the masses of the people that are still far removed from us, of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions.’  It is not a means to arrive at a government that is ‘left’ of the current bourgeois duopoly but right of socialism, and that peddles illusions that the current capitalist form of democracy can deliver fundamental change.

Back to part 5

Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (5 of 6)

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Fragments makes a series of observations about the political consciousness of the Irish working class, some of which we have already noted, such as the view of many on the Labour Party entering office that ‘the crisis was clearly not their fault and . . . the harsh austerity measures they took were seen as both forced by the Troika and, while painful, necessary.

It records the view of another author that the first year of crisis saw a large number of demonstrations but these ‘dried up once the public realised the magnitude of the banking crisis, and they were replaced by years of “muted protest”. Certainly, there was a sense of powerlessness at the scale and suddenness of the economic crash, a degree of acceptance of the official narrative . . .’ (p31)

It notes that the muting of protest was partially the result of emigration, particularly of the young with 106,000 leaving from 2009 to 2013.  ‘However, the muting of opposition was also due to the influence of the Labour Party and trade unions, which contained protest and channelled anti-government anger down institutional routes from 2009 to 2011.’ (p30). These organisations did indeed push anger down the road of inevitable failure, and yes, they were betrayed, but how was this possible?

One contributor notes that by late 2013 ‘it is difficult to overstate the feeling of exhaustion and disillusionment’, with the radical left ‘comprehensively defeated on the one anti-austerity struggle they’d seriously fought – household taxes.’ The ‘public mood was judged sullen but compliant’ and was successfully ‘blackmailed’ into voting yes to the EU’s fiscal Treaty in 2012 ‘even though this treaty restricted the possibility of future government spending” (p 40-41)

I wrote about this result at the time, noting that:  ‘At 60 per cent Yes against 40 per cent No there is no room for doubt.  It is a decisive endorsement of government policy and a mandate for further cuts and tax increases.  The result should not have been unexpected given the political forces ranged in support of the Treaty, the support of big and small business, the failure of the trade union movement to oppose it and the inevitable support of the mass media.  In the general election last year the Irish people voted by a large majority for a new government in no important way different from the previous one and with no claim to pursue significantly different policies.’

I also noted that ‘Austerity isn’t popular despite the vote and never will be.  Even the Yes campaign was under instructions not to celebrate its victory . . . In October last year when the Austerity Treaty was originally being negotiated an opinion poll recorded 63 per cent opposed to it with only 37 per cent supporting.’  I noted that some people had changed their minds or perhaps did not have the confidence to follow through on their opposition.  This might have united around the demand to repudiate the debt taken on by the state on behalf of the banks and their bondholders, but this also meant opposition to the Troika upon whom the state had become reliant.  It also meant opposition to the administration in the US, even though its Secretary to the Treasury Timothy Geithner thought it was ‘stupid’ to guarantee the banks liabilities. 

I wrote a number of blogs on the issue of repudiating the debt here, here and here, and the disastrous and ‘stupid’ decision to bail out the bondholders in the first place.  Doing so was a real political challenge and required an alternative that didn’t exist.  Without this the failure of the opposition to austerity was inevitable, even if the question of the debt was only one element of the necessary political alternative.

Where the book completely fails is the neglect of what the political content of the alternative might have been, although this is revealing.  In recording the activity of the left its non-appearance reflects the absence of this in the anti-austerity movement as a whole and the failure to win any significant section of it to a socialist perspective.

The same contributor noted above goes on to say that at a later time ‘A proper balance sheet would recognise how the Labour Party and the aligned section of the union movement were rendered powerless to influence or sidetrack the anti-austerity movement.’ (p 42). He points to the drop on the Labour vote from 19 per cent in the 2011 general election to 7 per cent in the 2014 local elections and the ‘victory for left-wing independents and Trotskyist parties alike.’ (p 43)

He argues this was possible because in 2014 100,000 marched against water charges in October followed by 150,000–200,000 in November and 80,000 (in Dublin alone) in December in what was ultimately a winning struggle.  We have already noted the limp role that was expected of the trade unions and political parties in the campaign in the previous posts but the argument that the Labour Party and trade union leaders could not divert the campaign is correct.

It won because it was a community campaign based on mass protests, blocking the installation of water meters and non-payment of bills.  Independents and left wing candidates benefited from their role in the campaign which also distinguished itself by exposing the equivocating role of Sinn Fein. Despite the political weaknesses of the campaign that we noted previously its tactics were able to beat the counter-measures of the government where the previous campaign against household charges could not.

The campaign proved that individual campaigns, given the right circumstances, could defeat particular austerity measures even where the wider offensive was continued successfully. It should be recalled that the water charges campaign took off almost a year after the state exited the Troika bailout programme. It is also worth recording again the failure to draw the right political lessons as the trade union official who contributed the chapter on the campaign finishes his story by endorsing the statement by ‘one of the world’s greatest authorities on water’ that:

‘The Irish system of paying for water and sanitation services through progressive taxation and non-domestic user fees, is an exemplary model of fair equitable and sustainable service delivery for the entire world.’ (p 61)

In fact, the Irish water industry was wasteful and inefficient and state ownership is neither democratic nor socialist.  For this, workers’ cooperative ownership or the demand for workers’ control would have been necessary but the Irish left, like so much in the rest of the world, have become habituated to statist views of socialism that Marx repudiated but that have become entrenched through the domination of social democracy and Stalinism over the last one hundred years.

With such a political platform the problem of the state being the solution, when the solvency and policy of the state was the problem, was once again avoided because doing otherwise would raise the question of ownership and control that would show the platform’s inadequacy.

The main victory in Fragments of Victory was thus necessarily limited and could not be a springboard to address the many deficiencies of the resistance identified in the book.  These included the failure ‘to build lasting political and social institutions’ and ‘no lasting form of working-class self-organisation.’  Reliance on capitalist state ownership as ‘an exemplary model’  illustrates why a problem could not be addressed: that ‘the steps between the current situation and the long-term goal of socialism are less clear than ever before.’ (p192)

The view that the trade union bureaucracy was ‘rendered powerless to influence or sidetrack the anti-austerity movement’ is therefore only partially true. The politics of the bureaucracy, and of the Labour Party, were not challenged by a wider political alternative and the much-trumpeted militant tactics of the campaign were no substitute for it.

back to part 4

Forward to part 6

Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (4 of 6)

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In the previous post I argued that the leadership of the trade unions were unable and unwilling to challenge austerity because it would involve a political challenge to the state it had decades of ingratiating itself with it as its ‘social partner’.  However, I also noted that ‘the undeveloped and inadequate political consciousness of the working class itself [was] also a major factor’ in the union movement being unable to successfully resist austerity.

The socialist critique of the bureaucratic leadership of the trade unions is not that its passivity never reflects the views of its members but that the occasions in which members are prepared to take action are often betrayed and their passivity reinforced through ensuing demoralisation.

Protests and demonstrations (called by trade unions early in the economic crisis and also later) are only useful in so far as they are necessary steps to more effective action: by rallying the troops and persuading others that there are alternative courses of action and the means to achieve them.  Otherwise, they are what they are defined as, simply public expressions of objection, disapproval, or dissent, and public exhibitions of the attitude of a group toward an issue.

There is currently no other rival union leadership that believes in independent working class politics that is separate from and opposed to the state and seeks to increase the class’s political consciousness.  Bureaucratic organisation stifles any democratic control that might permit episodic bouts of struggle to advance and accumulate an understanding of class politics.  Lack of democracy and low participation are both causes and effects of political weakness.

Both the leadership and membership are wedded to the view that fundamental change can come only through the state as the only (legitimate) agent capable of achieving it.  All sections of ‘the left’, from Sinn Fein to supposed ‘Trotskyists’, have a political programme that hold that achievement of governmental office will enact this social transformation, and campaign on this basis.  How a capitalist state will permit this is never explained.

Of course, People before Profit and Socialist Party pay obeisance to the view that the capitalist state will have to be overthrown but this plays a role analogous to republicans’ view that the legitimate government of Ireland resides within the IRA.

During the crisis there was little to no awareness of the possibility of an independent working class political force as more than perhaps a vehicle to pressurise the state, or with a view to having its representatives occupy positions in its parliament so that they could legislate sought after policies and adopt necessary measures.

This reflects the widespread support for the democratic credentials of the state and its political system, further legitimised by the country’s colonial history and the struggle against it.  This gives the nationalism that is the express ideology of almost all political parties a progressive veneer and a reactionary essence.

Accompanying this is an acute awareness of the weakness of the small Irish state and its dependence on US investment and EU membership, where most power resides in the much larger European states.  There are some illusions in the independent sovereignty of the state but also awareness of its constraints.  When the Irish state became bankrupt the view that it could not resist the demands of the EU and US that it bailout the banks was reluctantly accepted because there appeared no alternative.

When your politics is based on winning concessions from the state, and/or the perspective of being the official government of the state, it is difficult to present these as possible when that state is bankrupt and your proposed actions are opposed by much more powerful states.  Not only does it look unconvincing, it actually is.  Hence the comment in the book, in relation to the Dáil, of the ‘futility of marching to an institution that was taking its own marching orders from elsewhere.’

One contributor to Fragments, writing about the trade union input into the one anti-austerity campaign that was successful – against water charges – reports that ‘political economy training . . . was the most impactful part of the campaign’. (p57) Except this training appears to have been peddling the same mistaken conception that state ownership is the answer that the whole crisis, and the response to it from the Irish state, should have utterly dispelled.

This campaign morphed into the Rights2Change movement that on paper united much of the left and some trade unions.  Its programme of rights, which went beyond the question of water, made sense only if the state had an obligation to satisfy them, and it didn’t begin to address the claims by the government about the lack of state resources to do so.  A programme based on the supposed moral obligations of the state was as weak as the commitment of the various organisations to the project. It demonstrated only that this spectrum of organisations was united in illusions in, and subservience to, the capitalist state.

Two aspects mentioned in the book illustrate these weaknesses: ‘throughout the period of Right2Water’s existence, nobody was working on the campaign full time. The bulk of the work on the union side was done by two or three trade union officials who also had their day jobs.’ (p61)

As to the unions role as a ‘pillar’ of the campaign, it was to ‘bring organisational skills . . . politically neutral; provide economic and political research; have activists in workplaces all over the country and bring financial assistance.’  (p 55) Nothing about workers action in the workplace and what sort of action its ‘activists’ should fight for.

The role of political parties was equally somnolent – to ‘bring political knowledge; an ability to raise issues in the Dail and have activists in communities all over Ireland.’  (p55) Again, without an acceptance that political debate over aims and strategy was absolutely required, as opposed to already accepted, there was no specifically political input sanctioned for political parties.

Like so many left campaigns, broadness was confused for depth, and political shallowness for agreement and unity.  One ridiculous outcome was that at one demonstration ‘we ended up with 36 speakers or acts.’ (p53) One unambiguously positive legacy of the campaign claimed by the writer is that the ‘unions and progressive political forces were in place to prevent the movement from being co-opted by the far right.’ (p60). Not a high bar.

If the original platform for the campaign was weak (that water was a human right), there remained differences on appropriate tactics, so it could be no surprise that this attempt at turning a ‘mass movements’ into a’ story of mass organisation’ rather than simply mass mobilisation’ was a failure (p180-1 &182). This meant that it was ‘large but ephemeral’, ‘failed to lay deep social roots’, ‘failed to identify an avenue through which society might be changed, and given this, . . .  failed to develop a mass political consciousness around the capitalist nature of our society or around what needs to be done to change it.’ (p183)

Sowing illusions in the state and failing to educate those mobilised on its unreformable class nature is guaranteed not to ‘develop a mass political consciousness around the capitalist nature of our society.’  The major success of resistance to austerity set out in the book came nowhere near this because it didn’t try, and it didn’t try because the left didn’t know what this would have to involve.

Back to part 3

Mission creep Ukraine (2 of 2)

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The views of more honest Western commentators, that the Russian invasion has been provoked, have been roundly denounced as the work of Putin apologists who are excusing the invasion.  However, knowing the invasion was provoked neither excuses it nor requires one to support it.  It was open to the left opponents of the invasion to acknowledge this as well, but many of them didn’t. They came out with the same response as the vast majority of bourgeois propagandists and politicians in the West in denouncing any recognition of this reality as an apology for Putin.

In other words, the pro-war left joined in the whitewashing of their own imperialism’s responsibility for the war.  They didn’t have to, but they did.  For many bourgeois writers, simply setting out known facts and accepted realities, and pointing out the role of the West did not invalidate their support for it because for them NATO is a very good thing.

Such an approach was not open to the left supporters of Ukraine because they can’t claim the same innocent character for NATO.  They therefore couldn’t acknowledge the previous close cooperation of Ukraine with Western imperialism, otherwise the alliance now so obvious during the war would be seen as the flowering of an existing collaboration, robbing Ukraine of its cloak of innocent bystander.   The so-called Marxists were thus left hiding the role of their imperialism much more radically than even the more honest of its bourgeois supporters!

The most that would be admitted was that western imperialism was supporting Ukraine ‘for its own selfish interests’, as if this disposed of the matter; as we have seen, these leftists were claiming that ‘NATO won’t intervene’ and that even though Ukraine had the right to seek help, this was something ‘which it won’t get’.

Others stated that ‘we are without hesitation in favour of the delivery of defensive weapons to the Ukrainian resistance.’  This source further said that ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’

Of course, the Bradley’s, Abrams, Leopards, Chieftains, HIMARS, ATACMs, Storm Shadows and F16s etc. have disposed of the ridiculous notion that ‘NATO won’t intervene.’  Has the exposure of their blunder caused them to row back?  Of course not.  Even the supply of F16s that was previously opposed has not signalled the least change, except of course that the supply of increasingly powerful weaponry does represent a change in the real world that the social-imperialist supporters of Ukraine refuse to acknowledge.

By doing so these leftists effectively stake a claim for the same innocent character of NATO intervention that its Western bourgeois allies do, its ‘selfish interests’ notwithstanding.  By virtue of the Ukrainian fight being simply defensive, so therefore (we must assume) is the NATO supply of weapons!  NATO, though it is threatening expansion into Russia’s next door is still presumably a defensive alliance!  All its moves, as that of Ukraine, are simply written off as reflexes to Russian aggression.  As we said in the first post – opposition to imperialism means opposition to Russian imperialism, no more and no less. Russian imperialism has thus performed the amazing feat of rendering Western imperialism non-imperialistic!

The problem for this left is that it left a lot of hostages to fortune; we have already seen the delusion involved in the statements that NATO won’t intervene and won’t supply weapons.  It has supplied so many it has seriously depleted the stocks it says it needs for itself! It now needs massive rearmament to continue its support to Ukraine, which presumably must also be supported by the pro-war left. Once more the ‘selfish interests’ behind this must again presumably be considered entirely secondary, if not irrelevant.

Joe Biden made it very clear before the war that he knew that the invasion would take place but was not the least interested in seeking to stop it: he would not “accept anybody’s red lines.”  Instead, he had “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he’s going to do.” Except, these weren’t measures to stop an invasion but to hammer Russia after it had done so.

The escalation of weaponry supplied since these “initiatives” is both a sign of the intention of Western imperialism to prosecute a proxy war and a sign that it has been losing.  The first leftist quote in the previous post stated that “Ukrainians have the right to take weapons from wherever they can get them in a fight to the death with the invaders.”  The insouciance to the prospect of ‘fighting to the death’ with the help of weapons from imperialism has otherwise been correctly described as ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’, and lies behind certain imperialist interests demanding conscription of the youngest cohort to the Ukrainian army.  

Such is the policy of Western imperialism (now with the added twist that Trump wants to make money out of it) and also the policy of the social-imperialists.  Having admitted that the supply of Fighter aircraft “would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing”, this has proved to be the case; yet it has given rise to no re-evaluation of support for Western intervention.  Like the imperialists themselves, the resulting retaliation by Russia suffered by the Ukrainian population is completely secondary to the cause they jointly support.

The firing of long range missiles into Russia with the direct participation of western troops has dramatically escalated Western provocation that increasingly incentivises Russia to escalate in return since the price paid may be less than that of acceptance: with the lack of deterrence of further western escalation if it does not.  This logic is not inevitable, the weapons supplied by the West have not been able to gravely hurt Russia, never mind deliver the victory that Ukraine has until recently claimed it could achieve. I don’t know if its Western left supporters are still under this illusion.

Without a mass antiwar movement seeking to prevent it escalation is made more likely, but in any case out of our hands, and less likely the weaker Western imperialism is.  How far we are from such a movement can be seen in the need for articles like this one attempting to stop much of the left from supporting the war, with all its escalation and potential for further in the future.

The first quotation states that ‘NATO won’t intervene because it doesn’t want a new world war.’  The author obviously saw that such an intervention threatens it.  Well, NATO has intervened – big time – and the author and his fellow social-imperialists are still cheerleading it.   Has the threat disappeared or does it not matter anymore? Or does the sacred character of the Ukrainian capitalist state demand that the risk to the future of all of humanity is a risk worth taking?

Perhaps the author has forgotten his statement; although forgetting that one foresaw the potential for a world war when the circumstance that might bring it about have been amplified would show remarkable detachment.  Alternatively the author might not have really believed the statement, in which case there would still exist a degree of detachment.

In any case, the exposure of the claims of the supporters of the Western imperialist alliance in its war against Russia fully confirms its political bankruptcy.  Its predictions have been disproved and its statements of position have been exposed as false.  Running through them is the thread of social-imperialist politics – socialism in words and pro-imperialism in practice.

Back to part 1

The Irish President election

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Irish Times columnist, Fintan O’Toole, described the election of Catherine Connolly as President of Ireland as winning “a hollow crown.”  “Connolly” he said “cannot be unaware that she was also soundly trounced by the real winner: indifference.”  He makes this call based on the low turnout and unprecedented number of spoiled ballots.  Let’s look at his case.

While Paul Murphy of People before Profit boasts that the turnout increased, and it did from 43.87% in 2018 to 45.83% this year, it is also true that the 2018 turnout was the worst on record.  Bragging about the turnout this year is not particularly convincing.

The number of spoiled votes was extraordinary: spoiled papers were 12.9% of the poll, and when you take account of the Fianna Fail candidate’s vote, who had withdrawn from the race but remained on the ballot, you can add a further 6.3%.  Approaching one fifth of the poll effectively spoiled their vote while over 54% didn’t vote at all.

So, a majority didn’t vote, and while Presidential elections have traditionally had a lower turnout than general elections, it is also true that it has declined in recent elections.  Some of this year’s decline will have resulted from dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates and will have come from the less motivated cohort of those who spoiled their vote.  In this respect we are not talking about indifference but opposition to the process.

Nevertheless, taking all this into account, it remains the case that Connolly got a huge majority: over 55% of the poll and over twice the Fine Gael candidate.  The result was a stinging rebuke to the Government parties, and while the vacant character of their campaigns may reflect the largely vacant powers of the post of President, Connolly put up a rhetorical challenge that these parties spectacularly failed to address.

She championed Palestinian rights, supported Irish neutrality (such as it is) and criticised growing militarism in the West, including that of the European Union.  The government parties couldn’t or wouldn’t defend their purely verbal support for the Palestinian people alongside their lack of action, or their effective complicity through this inaction in the genocidal crimes of the Zionist state.  They couldn’t defend their policy of destroying the already threadbare claims to neutrality and wouldn’t defend their increasing collaboration with Western imperialist militarisation.

Their poor candidates were faithful reflections of the poverty of their political record, and they lost because they reflected too clearly their failure to address the myriad problems that they have created despite economic success. This includes the housing crisis to which their main political response is now to blame immigration upon which the economic success at least partly depends.

O’Toole’s “hollow crown” is not therefore because the “real winner” was “indifference”; the real problem was not that Connolly’s win was insubstantial, but because, for all his regular gripes about the governing class, he doesn’t like the Connolly alternative on offer.  In particular, he doesn’t want to call into question the liberal credentials of the West and its war drive against Russia.  He wants fundamental change, but not the only fundamental change that could bring it about.

Where the “hollow crown” comment has some correlate in reality is his observation that ‘the left’, of which Connolly’s campaign was comprised, has “as yet no clear alternative programme for government; and a very wide and disparate constituency of the disillusioned, the disgruntled and the disengaged.”

The campaign and voters for Connolly clearly have illusions in the importance of their victory but they were not so “disillusioned” that they submitted to inactivity and abstention.  Their being “disgruntled” is just the author seeking an alliterative pirouette for his column when words like anger, outrage, sanguinity and hopefulness would be more apposite.  So “disengaged” were they that they campaigned and voted and had the temerity to win.

What is correct is that this left is “disparate” and has “no clear alternative programme for government.”  The completely “insipid, inarticulate, ineffectual” Fine Gael campaign (Pat Leahy) that sought “to make a harmless niceness all over Ireland” (O’Toole) might have made Connolly coherent and substantial by comparison, at least for the post of President, but it was not, and not intended to be, a coherent and substantial political programme. Nor is it a mandate to especially do anything since the post of President is not empowered to do anything. It is mainly a ceremonial part of the political establishment, an establishment the left is meant to oppose. If it is argued that this aspect is unimportant this raises more questions about the importance of the exercise that will not be asked or answered.

As I have elsewhere laid out, Sinn Fein and the Green party have been tested in governmental office repeatedly. You can call them ‘left’ if you want, but only to render the term pretty meaningless. They are not socialist, and neither are the Social Democrats or Labour Party.  That People before Profit wants this ‘movement’ to continue under one political platform is the very definition of opportunism – the pursuit of immediate gain at the expense of principle.  The campaign only shows that elections breed more electoralism, especially the successful ones.

The coalition of forces behind the Connolly campaign is not currently a coherent one although it might cohere around the leadership of Sinn Fein. If ‘the left’ is more genuinely identified as limited to People before Profit and Solidarity then this left is creating a trap for itself by putting forward a joint political movement and platform with these forces.  If it succeeds it too can surrender any genuine claim to be left, or again the word ‘left’ will be rendered meaningless, if it isn’t rendered as betrayal.

Mission Creep Ukraine (1of 2)

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REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

‘NATO won’t intervene because it doesn’t want a new world war. However, the Ukrainians have the right to take weapons from wherever they can get them in a fight to the death with the invaders.  Let them have anti-aircraft weapons instead of petrol bombs. ‘

‘There’s a difference between calling for that and saying that Ukraine shouldn’t ask for/accept such help. Which it won’t get. Meantime the government is handing out guns and calling on people to make Molotov cocktails to throw on invading Russian troops.’ 

The two comments above were made by two supporters of Ukraine over three years ago in a Facebook discussion just after the Russian invasion in 2022.  Besides the puerile notion that one of the largest armies in Europe would be fighting with Molotov cocktails, the idea that NATO would not be involved was even more ridiculous.  The predictions obviously haven’t aged well, but the point is that they were nonsensical even at the time.

The prediction that there would be no NATO involvement could only be made through ignorance (or rather ignoring) that it was already involved.  This facilitates the equally spurious notion that the war was ‘unprovoked’, the staple claim of the western media and political class.  From the US sponsorship of regime change in 2014 (following years of interference) to the training of it army, military exercises and provision of weapons; to the new Ukrainian regime putting the goal of NATO membership into the constitution. All these were steps towards war when Russia had said repeatedly that NATO membership was unacceptable.

In a third Facebook contribution, another supporter of Ukraine said that the right to self-determination meant the right to join NATO if that is what a country wanted.  Given the difficulty of arguing that supporting membership of an imperialist alliance was a ‘right’, and therefore something socialists should support, the majority of left supporters of Ukraine decided that it would ignore the logic of its support for Ukrainian self-determination and pretend membership of NATO was not the issue.

Hence all the previous history of NATO enlargement and repeated Russian objections could be ignored, along with all the other western imperialist involvement just mentioned.  Opposition to imperialism now meant opposition to Russian imperialism, no more and no less.

The problem was that it was very hard to claim that NATO membership was irrelevant.  Even in western media there were enough newspaper columns pointing out the Russian attitude to NATO expansion to make it clear that pushing Ukraine to join NATO, either from the inside or from outside, was ‘crossing the brightest of Russian red lines’, as the US ambassador, and later CIA Director, put it around the time of the 2008 NATO summit.

In this summit NATO declared it wanted Ukraine as a member, which was subsequently enshrined into Ukraine’s constitution in 2019.  Supporters of Ukraine are keen to quote Putin in claims that he does not recognise Ukraine as a separate country but ignore statements that make its membership of NATO central to Russian policy.  Equally, statements by leading western figures have demonstrated the importance of NATO membership; NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated in 2023 that Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders….” 

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Davyd Arakhamia, at the peace talks just after the Russian invasion, stated that Ukrainian neutrality was the main Russian condition for a peace deal and that the war could have ended in spring of 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutrality:“Russia’s goal was to put pressure on us so that we would accept neutrality.  This was the main thing for them: they were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality, like Finland once did. And we would give an obligation that we would not join NATO. This is the main thing…”

But the main thing wasn’t done and the war continued as the US and British promised to provide more support to Ukraine, whereupon once again the left supporters of Ukraine denied the role of these imperialist states in perpetuating the war, and continued supporting it themselves.  Zelenskyy has claimed that he was told by Biden and other NATO leaders before the invasion that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO but that publicly, “the doors will remain open.”

If this is untrue, then it can be assumed that the public position of future Ukrainian membership was a real possibility.  If it is true, and Biden had no intention of permitting NATO membership, perhaps because of the risk of more or less immediate war with Russia, it means that the invasion was provoked without the perceived threat to Russia being an immediate possibility.

It also means that Biden and others were content for the war to happen, not to ensure NATO membership for Ukraine, but with the objective of pursuing the project of crippling Russia through war and sanctions – turning the ‘Ruble into rubble’ .  It also means Zelenskyy was happy to engage in the war because this is what Ukrainian policy already involved – recovery of Crimea and Russian occupied areas of Donbas. There was no attempt to prevent it by signalling agreement to neutrality. Now, however, it is Ukraine and its economy that is being turned into rubble.

In any case, the war was the result of inter-imperialist rivalry that the supporters of Ukraine have determined is of no consequence to its cause or nature, so that the only issue that matters is self-determination for a country and state that is already independent but whose political leadership colluded with western imperialism to subject its people to war.  In effect, the war ensured that Ukraine became an even greater vassal of Western imperialism, although this has not prevented these self-declared ‘anti-imperialists’ supporting its imperialist alliance.

The striking thing is not only the stupidity of pretending that NATO ‘won’t intervene’ and that Ukraine will seek weapons ‘which it won’t get’ but that the vassalage of Ukraine to Western imperialism was not denied right at the start! Ukraine, it was claimed, ‘wishes its vassalization in the belief that it is the only guarantee of its freedom. We must, of course, also oppose its vassalization, but for the time being, the most urgent need must be addressed . . .’

Vassalage is the position of a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, allegiance, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior.  A perfect description of Ukraine – a subordinate instrument of Western imperialism that the left supports while claiming it is fighting an anti-imperialist war!

The duty of socialists is not to support the subordination of a working class to the results of vassalage by imperialism, through its bourgeois class and state, on the spurious grounds that ‘it is the only guarantee of its freedom’. Vassalage is not freedom.  The ‘urgent need’ of the Ukrainian working class before the invasion was to prevent its bourgeois leadership from taking it into war on behalf of western imperialism. The urgent need thereafter has been to bring it to an end; against the efforts of Western imperialism and the Ukrainian state to keep it going.

Forward to part 2

‘Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (3 of 6)

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The summary conclusions in the previous post raise a host of questions about the struggle against austerity following the crash of the Celtic Tiger: the lack of permanent organisation; the lack of working class consciousness and awareness of its specific political interests; lack of credible political programme and the inability to ‘articulate a viable alternative’; reliance on electoralism and thus on Sinn Fein, and lack of clarity on ‘the long-term goal of socialism’.

This is quite a list, and it is to the book’s credit that they are recognised.  What is also recognised, more by implication than by explicit critique, is that this is the result of the conscious approach taken by ‘the left’, which the book sees as one of failure qualified by some success.  It also implies that the answer to overall failure is not simply more and better activity.  For the left however, it is the roller-coaster of activity that is consciously seen as necessary to keep the show on the road.

If we briefly look at these issues, the first question is why ‘mass movements were less a story of mass organisation than mass mobilisation’ and were ‘large but ephemeral’.  These mobilisations were campaigns so were inevitably time limited and impermanent.  The issue is why they were temporary when their object of attack – austerity – had not been defeated and why the permanent organisations that did exist failed to keep the campaign going?

The second question is posed mainly to the trade unions and particularly ICTU, which called initial demonstrations and then left the stage.  Two further questions then arise – why did they do so and why were they able to get away with it?

The first answer is that since 1987 the trade unions have seen the state as a ‘social partner’ and very definitely not an antagonist – never mind enemy, and conducted themselves as partners in not opposing austerity itself but only seeking to modify its implementation. This to be done in the normal way of partners, through lobbying and negotiation.

The decline in strike activity and union density during the period of partnership was therefore not simply a result of economic conditions because they improved dramatically in the 1990s, at first rather slowly in terms of employment and then rapidly.  In 1986, just before the first deal, there were 309,198 days ‘lost’ in strikes and in 2007, just before the crash, a total of 6,038 days. By 2022 this had fallen even further to 5,256 while union density declined from 46 per cent in 1994 to 30 per cent in 2007.

Economic power and state revenue shifted to foreign multinationals that unions largely failed to organize, resulting in many skilled, educated, and younger workers being excluded.  One of the early results of partnership was the 1990 Industrial Relations Act that made illegal a strike unconnected to a ‘legitimate’ trade dispute, which successfully thwarted solidarity action – one of the very purposes of a trade union movement.  ‘Partnership’ also did not prevent the bosses refusing to recognise or negotiate with trade unions

Since the crisis was one of solvency of the state, arising from it guaranteeing the deposits and liabilities of the banks that it could not itself finance, the response was cuts in state services and the pay of public sector staff. The initial ICTU response was therefore a public sector strike that recognised its weakness in the private sector.  Bourgeois politicians and its media made hay with accusations about the privileges of these workers that sought to divide private sector workers from those working for the state, which the unions had themselves done little to prevent through their failure to organise across the whole working class.

Private sector workers were met by a withdrawal of their bosses from the social partnership arrangements, one result of which was their repudiation of sectoral pay arrangements.  This demonstration of the hollowness of partnership with the state and bosses, both of whom had withdrawn, did not prevent the unions going into another deal in 2010, the Croke Park Agreement, which gave way to Croke Park 2 as more cuts were sought.  When the proposals for it were initially rejected by a large majority of members the union leaders were able to manoeuvre ultimate acceptance by warning of the consequences of rejection while providing no strategy for fighting for its members decision.

‘Mass mobilisation’ was not therefore meant to involve ‘mass organisation’ but dependence on the trade union’s own bureaucratic organisation.  Its purpose was to assist union leaders’ lobbying with some pressure from below that was to be applied to the government while releasing it from the working class, amounting to simply blowing off steam. By February 2013 ICTU speakers at one of their demonstrations gave over the stage to musicians before many marchers had arrived at the finish in order to avoid being heckled.  They avoided it afterwards by not having any demonstrations at all.

Mobilisation wasn’t mean to be permanent, and it wasn’t meant to be an alternative to social partnership and the union bureaucrcay.  Although it was formally dissolved by the state it never ended given the objectives and strategy of the trade union leaders who simply pursued it unofficially, originally pushing the idea that the Labour Party in government might mitigate the worst effects of austerity.

The trade union movement, through its bureaucracy, is wedded to the state.  Most of its members are in state employment and the state facilitates its organisation through facilitating membership subscriptions, while the share of members in the private sector has declined.  The alternative offered by the trade union leaders was therefore the Labour party in government; rises in taxation instead of expenditure cuts, and ‘sharing the burden’ rather than its repudiation.  While the unions’ organisational weakness was material, they were partly responsible for this themselves, and while this weakness was also the basis of political passivity and failure, this too was partly their leaders’ own responsibility.

If we look to answer the questions about the lack of permanent working class self-organisation and failure to maintain mobilisation against austerity, we need to look at the prior commitment to social partnership and dependence on the state, which itself had become dependent on the Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The unions were, and are, not the expression of the self-organisation of the working class and for this their leadership is partly responsible, with the undeveloped and inadequate political consciousness of the working class itself also a major factor.  While in times of social peace the union leaders can represent the passivity of the membership, in times of heightened political awareness and activity they consciously act to limit this independent action and the possibility and potential for advancing political consciousness.

Had there been any permanent opposition to social partnership within the trade union movement prior to the crisis it might have presented a starting point to build an alternative to the union bureaucrats.  Any opposition however was generally of a temporary campaigning character while the bona fides of the bureaucrats became generally accepted.  No independent political alternative was built within the trade unions, reflecting the political weakness of the left outside it.

In these circumstance the bureaucracy was able to mobilise spontaneous anger, demoralise it and then dump it, getting away with it primarily because the politics of the union movement went unchallenged.  This in turn partly reflected the political weakness of the left.

Back to part 2

Forward to part 4

‘Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (2 of 6)

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In the book’s introduction we are informed that after the 2016 general election one in 20 members of the parliament was a Trotskyist”, which would, for example, translate to over 30 MPs at Westminster.  In the conclusion it notes that this election was ‘perhaps the greatest electoral success of Trotskyism in any western country ever’, ‘the development of one of the strongest electoral lefts in western Europe’ (p177)

Except this avoids the question of what manifesto – what political programme – did these ‘Trotskyists’ get elected on that was in some way supported?  Was it in any way a revolutionary socialist one and if not, in what sense was it a vote for Trotskyism or for Trotskyists? What wider movement, if any, did the vote reflect?  How isolated was it, or was it the vanguard of a much wider radicalisation?

Fragments initially appears to be organised around the concept that there is some identifiably coherent ‘left’, except reading it reveals that this is not the case.  There is however some commonality that we alluded to at the end of the previous post, but it is this commonality that is itself incoherent.

We are informed that the Irish were one of the ‘strongest electoral lefts in western Europe’ and that this ‘left’ not only includes the ‘Trotskyists’ but also Sinn Fein; so we know that however strong this left became in electoral terms its political unity is at the very least questionable. You can assemble the various parts but it becomes less an alternative the more it is put together.

On page1 we learn that the left ‘won some victories’ (a near unique achievement in western Europe during this period) that ‘other countries could learn from.’  Yet in this introduction we are also informed that the austerity following the economic crisis ‘created a collapse of living standards, experienced by many’ with emigration that exceeded ’even the highest rates . . . of the past’.(p 13) 

On page 3 we learn that apart from Sinn Fein other left wing parties and campaigns ‘have struggled in the face of the new political challenges’ while despite ‘widespread support for leftwing politics, the left has failed to build lasting political and social institutions . . . After a decade that saw the left win real victories, mobilise hundreds of thousands and transform the electoral landscape, in many ways the left finds itself in a strangely weak position.’  These judgements are all in one paragraph!

In the conclusion, after noting some successes, including electoral gains, it states that ‘despite these successes, the left is in many ways as weak as it was pre-2008.  No lasting form of working-class self-organisation has emerged.  Union density is lower now than it was in 2007.  No mass parties have emerged.’ (p177-8)

On the next page we learn that ‘These apparent advances by the left in Ireland contrast sharply with the decline of its counterparts in most of the West . . . the left in many countries is in a worse position than it was before the crisis.’ (p 178). ‘The advance of the left in Ireland is even more striking when the political situation in pre-crisis Ireland is compared with that of Western European states.’ (p179).

It notes the failure of Syriza in Greece and Irish hopes for it, although Ireland did not even produce a Syriza and, as the book acknowledges, its defeat led Sinn Fein to shift its rhetoric to the right, opening the door to junior partnership in government with one of the two main bourgeois parties.  Gerry Adams is quoted –“I have to say, I never really subscribed to that notion of a left-wing government, certainly not in the short term.  I mean, who are the left.” (p 171) A very good question, to which Adams gives one element of an answer – it doesn’t include Sinn Fein.

This favourable comparison with the rest of Europe sits uncomfortably with the observation that ‘Missing in Ireland, especially in the early years, were the massive explosions of protest seen in other countries during 2009–13’. (p 184). 

Nevertheless, we are told that ‘The material successes of the Irish left and its social movements have been unique . . .’ (p185) and ‘the achievements of the social movements since 2008 are striking.  There are some real, substantial victories. Hundreds of thousands were mobilised. And the political culture of Ireland was definitely changed.  The neoliberal consensus . . . is over.’  ‘Today the left in Ireland is no longer marginal. While in almost all of Europe the last few decades have witnessed the decline of the left. In Ireland it has grown in strength’ demonstrating ‘what can be achieved.’  ‘There is today in Ireland significant support for the left . . .’ (p191)

These advances were apparently based on an already well-positioned movement because ‘in some ways, the left in Ireland was well prepared for the crisis.’ (p185). By this is meant that it was not focused on identity politics and ‘cultural questions’ although in fact this is not the case.  It is just that the majority of the Irish left have swallowed gender identity politics for example with hardly a debate, mirroring the introduction of gender self-id recognition carried out by the state purposely also without debate.

The conclusion presents ‘two key findings’, including that ‘the 2008-18 period saw the emergence of major mass movements that have both fundamentally changed Ireland’s political life and can provide lessons for the left internationally.’ (p188)

‘Trickier to identify, but unquestionably real, Ireland is a more leftwing country than it was in 2007 . . . Between the summer of 2021 and the summer of 2024, the left consistently outpolled the right, whereas before 2008, the left only had a third of the support for rightwing parties.’  Also adduced as evidence is that there is now recognition of the need for state intervention to solve the housing crisis. (p184). The problem with the latter however is that this state intervention has largely been to incentivise private sector solutions, which the left has denounced.

The success is qualified – ‘looking forward, the achievements of the last 15 years seem rather more fragmented’ and even the ‘electoral gains arising from a period of struggle . . . is now very much in the rear-view mirror.’  In the same paragraph it notes that the campaign victories over abortion rights and water tax ‘failed to result in lasting organisations.’ (p191). The other ‘side of the coin’ as the book puts it. (p3)

Capitalist crisis did not see ‘the re-emergence of working-class self-organisation and provide a space for the activity of the radical left’ while ‘mass movements were less a story of mass organisation than mass mobilisation’ (p180-1,182)

The movements since 2008 were ‘large but ephemeral’, ‘failed to lay deep social roots’, ‘failed to identify an avenue through which society might be changed, and given this, they have failed to develop a mass political consciousness around the capitalist nature of our society or around what needs to be done to change it.’  While they apparently ‘frequently terrified the ruling elite’ ‘they have never presented a serious challenge to the existing order.’ (p183)

Despite the positive evaluation and even with the qualifications, which leave a rather confusing picture, the real damaging conclusion is contained in these comments:

‘In many ways, despite the victories of the left since 2008, the future looks bleak.’ (p190). ‘It is hard to believe Sinn Fein will deliver the change that many desire . . [and] It is unlikely the Trotskyist People before Profit will manage to articulate a viable alternative . . .’ (p191) So despite short-term victories’, ‘the steps between the current situation and the long-term goal of socialism are less clear than ever before.’ (p192)

The book’s last words are that ‘it is clear that fragments of victory are not enough.’ (p 192) with the fatal verdict that despite the ‘striking’ advance of the left and ‘the apparent success of the Irish left’, the radical left ‘were engaged in a form of politics incapable of realising its own aims.’  (p179 &181)

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

‘Fragments of Victory’: The Contemporary Irish Left’, book review (1 of 6)

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Reading ‘Fragments’ I was reminded of the statement by Marx that ‘We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.’

Fragments sets out to record the struggles of the Irish left (in the Irish state) over the past few decades so that the reader can form a view on its successes and failures.  In doing so we can apply Marx’s prescription and determine to what extent it shows the left ‘what it is really fighting for’ so that it can be conscious of the lessons that should be learned.

There are some obstacles in the way, including the variety of authors with different viewpoints although an introduction and conclusion is meant to summarise the results.  The major problem is the definition of what it means to be ‘left’.  In the introduction Sinn Fein and the Green Party are listed as left even though the major theme of the book is the response to the implementation of austerity following the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and the consequent bankruptcy of the State.

During this period Sinn Fein presided over austerity while in a coalition government with the DUP in the North, while the Green Party entered into a coalition with Fianna Fáil in 2007 that bailed out the banks and inaugurated widespread cuts in social welfare and wages.

As part of the relaunch of Stormont in 2015 the ‘Fresh Start’ agreement committed the parties, including Sinn Fein, to reducing NI civil service staff numbers: ‘Between April 2014 and March 2016, the NICS is set to reduce headcount by approximately 5,210 and between April 2015 and March 2016 a further 2,200 will exit from the wider public sector.’ The Green Party supported the bank bailout that the state could not afford, which resulted in the intervention of the Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, along with the huge austerity necessary to satisfy their demands.

Even taking account of the elastic possibilities permitted by employing a relative term such as ‘left’, it is difficult to sustain any claim that these parties are in any substantial or verifiable way left-wing.  Sinn Fein was described by a comrade of mine a long time ago as containing members with left-wing opinions and right-wing politics.  The party has, in the meantime, fully confirmed this judgement while in government.  The Green Party began life as The Ecology Party promising ‘a radical alternative to both Capitalism and Socialism’ but in office twice it has displayed no alternative to capitalism and therefore no alternative to socialism.

Looking at political struggle through the lens of ‘left’ versus ‘right’ has therefore the potential to obfuscate as much as it clarifies.  A more illuminating approach is to set out the class nature of the politics of a political party and to explain why different parties with generally similar class natures have the politics that they do, even if they have different colouration.

Thus, as a nationalist party, Sinn Fein is a petty bourgeois party that considers the Irish people as one, with any class distinctions completely secondary and subordinate to the interest of the nation and its state, which can represent the true interests of all the people simply because of their nationality.  The Green Party claimed at its birth to have a radical alternative but also rejected a class approach through its largely petty bourgeois base and ideology.  It confirmed its class character by its members enthusiastically joining Fianna Fáil in government (voting 86% in favour) and by its commitment to the banks and austerity.

It might appear difficult to assign a class identity to some parties, and any classification has to be justified, but this is precisely the point of identifying the class nature of the forces involved.  As petty bourgeois parties, both Sinn Fein and the Greens have imposed austerity on workers while espousing radical rhetoric.  Calling them left is an attempt to obscure this and works to introduce doubt that they will not always fall on the side of the capitalist class in a struggle.

Fragments demonstrates this repeatedly, even when making secondary observations, for example that individual members of Sinn Fein were active in the Campaign Against the Household and Water Taxes but that the party was not: ’This form of partial (non-)commitment proved to be the defining feature of Sinn Fein’s approach to most political struggles of the time.’ (p37)

Approaching politics this way allows us to make judgements of other ‘left’ parties such as the Labour Party and Social Democrats etc. and permits an understanding of their behaviour during this period.  While the Labour Party paraded its ‘Labour’s Way’ as resistance to ‘Frankfurt’s Way’ while in opposition, it had no alternative to austerity when in government.  The doubling of its vote in the 2011 general election was a prelude to its consequent decimation in the next one.  ‘Labour’s Way’ didn’t become Frankfurt’s Way’, not having an alternative meant it always was.

Was the 2011 vote for Labour therefore a victory for the ‘left’ and was its subsequent decimation a defeat?  Did those who voted Labour in 2011 make an advance in consciousness or do so by deserting it in 2016? Or were they just registering disappointment and resignation?

Fragments offers the view that despite Labour delivering austerity when in office ‘the new government retained a huge amount of goodwill . . . the crisis was clearly not their fault and . . . the harsh austerity measures they took were seen as both forced by the Troika and, while painful, necessary’, while ‘the ‘honeymoon lasted for much of 2011 . . .’  (p31) So, were these views completely discarded when the Labour Party was dumped out of office? Was there any real advance in consciousness of an alternative when it happened?  Is roping the Labour Party into ‘the Left’ clarifying either history or the future?

Today, all these parties are allied in supporting Catherine Connolly for the post of President with the additional enthusiastic support of People before Profit and Solidarity.  The latter’s politics are supposed to be based on the view that existing power in capitalist society does not come from parliament but from the permanent state apparatus and the economic and social power of the capitalist system, yet they promote the idea that election to a post that is admitted not only to be without power, but forbidden to exercise any, would be a major advance.

Paul Murphy, People before Profit TD, states on Facebook that ‘this is a rare opportunity for the left to come together, and elect a voice for workers, for women and for neutrality.  Change starts here.’ This is a left that includes all the parties above that have been tried and tested.

In doing so all sorts of illusions in the role of bourgeois politics and institutions; about the ability of one person to represent the nation, and all the people within it; because of a one-off vote, and of the way ‘change’ can be made, are strengthened against an alternative view that real change comes from the organisation and struggles of the working class itself.

Are such views ‘Trotskyist’, as Paul Murphy’s organisation is called in the book? Or is this term used because that is just how it is usually described, or should such a designation not require some comparison of its political practice to a reasonable account of what Trotskyism is?  The umbrella term of ‘left’ addresses these questions by rendering them unimportant, and this is a problem.

To anticipate one message of this review; Fragments provides enough testimony to show that a different approach is necessary and that an alternative is required to the illusion that there is a ‘left’ that should be united to advance the cause of the working class.

It demonstrates, in its own way, that only a class analysis can explain events, including the actions of the state, why it succeeded in imposing austerity and why the resistance to it was unable to rise to the challenge.  Explaining all this in terms of whether certain actors, institutions or policies were ‘left’ or ‘right’ is hopeless not only because of the vagueness of the terms but because all of these acted out of material interests, as they perceived them, and these in turn were based on objective factors that were fundamentally determined by class relations.

Forward to part 2

Hate is useful?

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Raju Das, in an article on ‘The Communist Manifesto’ noted that:

‘Interest in anti-capitalism as well as socialism is growing in many parts of the world.  According to a poll conducted in 28 countries, including the United States, France, China, and Russia, 56% agree that “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world”. A June 2021 poll indicates that 36% of Americans have a negative view of capitalism; this number is much higher among the youth: 46% of 18–34-year-olds and 54% of those aged 18–24 view capitalism negatively. Conversely, and interestingly, 41% of respondents from all ages have a positive view of socialism. This number is higher for the younger people: 52% of 18–24-year-olds and 50% of young adults aged 25–34 have a positive view of socialism. An October 2021 poll shows that 53% of Americans have a negative view of big business . . . The situation outside of the United States within the advanced capitalist world is similar.’

A more recent opinion poll by the magazine Jacobin also recorded promising results on the advance of the idea of socialism in the US. Believing these views can be advanced further by more hate, as we have reviewed in previous posts, is a mistake, not least because it already exists is copious amounts. What is required is clarification and direction, not a greater emotional charge which is unlikely to provide either.

Anger and hatred at the iniquities of capitalism on their own, or even fore-grounded, invite moralistic evaluations that do not in themselves form an understanding of how capitalism can be replaced or the nature of the alternative.  The influence of capitalism on the working class, in terms of illusions, pessimism, demoralisation, passivity, and backward ideas, can cause those opposed to it to look for an alternative in various ideas and movements that ignore or reject the working class as the force that can bring about the alternative.

Historically, revolts based on hatred have been the province of peasant rebellions that fail to achieve any lasting change, even in circumstances where they appear to be successful.  Provocations by the capitalist state rely on hatred of their regimes in order to suppress developing movements before their time has come; something only clear-headed judgement can hope to determine. Hate is not therefore a distinguishing mark of successful movements and while extreme subjectivism may have become more prominent it is not an answer to objectively unfavourable circumstances or contributory to the working out of strategy.

For Marx the primary need for socialist revolution is not so much to overthrow capitalism as to make the working class fit for its own rule – the transformation of the working class so that the economic, social and political system can be transformed.  This involves opposition to ideas and practices that divide the working class such as nationalism, racism and sexism but hatred of these should not lead to the belief that these can and must first be completely eradicated within the working class before the building of a working class movement can be commenced or continued.                                           

Marx and Engels stated in ‘The German Ideology’ that ‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’.  This includes the existing working class that must make itself capable of creating this movement, which is only possible through struggle, not the assumption that it can come when the class has first purified itself.

Marx had no illusions about the shortcomings of the working class and refused to simply follow it when its actions were antithetical to its long term interests.  In the ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ written in 1875, he explained the character of society following the capturing of political power by the working class:

‘What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.’ The working class will itself still be stamped with this birthmark, both ‘morally’ and ‘intellectually’, something that intensifying hatred will do nothing to remedy.

Even alienation, which we looked at before, through which the workings of capitalism disorients and oppresses the working class while also acting to suppress and hide its true nature, has its positive as well as negative character, which more hatred would do nothing to illuminate. As Sean Sayers set out in an article:

Alienated labour ‘is also the process by which the producers transform themselves. Through alienated labour and the relations it creates, people’s activities are expanded, their needs and expectations are widened, their relations and horizons are extended. Alienated labour thus also creates the subjective factors – the agents – who will abolish capitalism and bring about a new society.’

‘Seen in this light, alienated labour plays a positive role in the process of human development; it is not a purely negative phenomenon. It should not be judged as simply and solely negative by the universal and unhistorical standards invoked by the moral approach. Rather it must be assessed in a relative and historical way. Relative to earlier forms of society – strange as this may at first sound – alienation constitutes an achievement and a positive development. However, as conditions for its overcoming are created, it becomes something negative and a hindrance to further development. In this situation, it can be criticized, not by universal moral standards but in this relative way.’ (Sean Sayers 2011, ‘Alienation as a critical concept’, International Critical Thought, 1:3, 287-304).

Advocating greater hatred in order for workers to advance towards greater awareness of their class position assumes it is a pedagogical aid for a politics that is already sufficient for its task. It is not such an aid and the politics sufficient to its objective is still in the process of elaboration.

Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism part 70

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