Ireland's liberal opposition
The rise of leftism and the decline of socialism
27 September 2024
In a recent letter
to our site a supporter of Socialist Democracy denounced the left group
People Before Profit (PbP) for responding to an attack from a local columnist
by declaring that the organisation;
“Isn’t interested in rehashing historical arguments that have long been debunked.”The correspondent took this to be a repudiation of the whole theory of Marxism, a view supported by the declaration of PbP that what was important was that they could coordinate with others to get a crowd. Since then, a series of other events have demonstrated that this retreat from socialism is real.
Sligo
In July, PbP councillor Gino O’Boyle voted for Tom McSharry of Fianna Fáil to become Mayor of Sligo Borough Council after a Sinn Féin councillor nominated the Fianna Fáil man. McSharry and the Sinn Féin councillor then voted for O’Boyle to become Deputy Mayor. The Cork branch of the party has accused O’Boyle of breaching a PbP local election promise not to back the government parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
But this is a meaningless policy, based on the pretence that there is a difference between capitalist parties in government and others, such as Sinn Féin, whom PbP wants to support in government. As there is no real difference and as PbP routinely engage in all sorts of deals with other parties, O’Boyle’s manoeuvre is perfectly understandable.
Palestine
Leaked preconference resolutions from the organisation listed “two key tasks” associated with its campaigning on Palestine. One is to “build PbP” and the other is to “fight the far right”. What? Prioritising your organisation as the Palestine party in the face of genocide is pretty crass, especially when the subtask is to oppose the far right and not to focus on the Irish state’s barely hidden collaboration with the US and Israel and the direct participation of the British state.
Government
Again, leaked preconference documents show the Cork branch calling for a review of “The Case For A Left Government” policy document. The motion said Sinn Féin’s “move to the political right has accelerated”. The motion is one of a number that takes issue with Sinn Féin’s new immigration policy launched in July.
“Sinn Féin is now a party with racist polices, designed to limit immigration,” the motion says. “Sinn Féin can no longer be regarded as a party of the left. Continuing to present Sinn Féin as a left-wing party will seriously damage our credibility with the electorate.”The Cork motion calls for PbP’s national committee to review its stance on Sinn Féin within one month. PbP’s current policy is to seek a general election voting pact with Sinn Féin. It wrote to Mary Lou McDonald in July seeking a meeting to formalise this. There is very little chance that they will agree to categorise Sinn Féin as a non-left-wing party.
The existential problem here is that the entire PbP project is built around leftism rather than socialism. It does not propose an independent party of the working class or a programme of working class action, but rather a capitalist government that they claim will provide a better standard of living for the working class. Leftism is defined more in terms of gender politics and liberalism rather than class. Sinn Féin's move to the right means that this project becomes less and less convincing.
Budget
The Dublin government has presented the outlines of a giveaway budget based on billions skimmed off from transnational tax scams. The PbP alternative budget for 2024 in the face of a similar budget sets out a reformist wish list.
“Our budget and vision for the 2020s has five key components:The announcement that the government will have to accept payment of €13 billion tax from Apple has only led to more excitement and a bigger wish list. There are a number of issues that demonstrate the weaknesses of leftism. For most of their history the corporation tax rate has been 12.5%. PbP could do no better than join the union leaders in demanding that the companies actually pay the 12.5% rather than use accountants to reduce the payment further. Now they argue that the monies now available from our tax haven status can transform the state into a land of milk and honey.
1. Ending homelessness and the housing crisis
2. Tackling the cost of living crisis, increasing workers’ rights and incomes, and making poverty history
3. Providing universal access to free, high quality public services
4. Emergency just transition to a zero-carbon society
5. Taxes on wealth and profits to fund public services”
The economic reality is that €10 billion is required from transnationals every year just to balance the books and that most of this rests on a handful of companies and on low interest rates that seem likely to disappear.
A quick look at the Apple tax case shows the difficulty. The outcome of that case was to show that both Apple and the Dublin government were co-conspirators in the theft of billions of tax from European states. The government persisted in the conspiracy because they saw it as simply an extreme example of a relationship with transnationals and finance capital that they wished to preserve.
The monetary relationship extends into the political realm. The frantic support for the proxy war in Ukraine and closer and closer integration into NATO and European military structures runs alongside dancing and weaving to avoid taking concrete steps against Israeli genocide or challenging US weapons flows.What are the chances of the government changing direction? Of parties such as Sinn Féin having a different perspective?
However where leftism totally collapses is around housing policy. The central demand, with the other parties, is for “social and affordable housing”. Both of these are elements of the private housing model that utterly dominates the housing market in Ireland. The government warns that any alternative would lead to a housing crash and the collapse of the banks. The leftists, along with everyone else, refuse to step away from the realities of imperialist domination.
Behind every political phenomenon lies a material reality. It is not the opportunism of PbP that promotes the absence of a socialist alternative. Rather they are the canary in the coal mine, registering a retreat of the working class.
That class still remains, but it is constrained both by historic defeats, by the guardrails of social partnership administered by the trade unions and by the playacting of parties such as Sinn Féin. A new socialist party is required. The starting point is the recognition of imperialist domination of our society. Unfortunately the nearest thing to a programme that the Socialist Workers Network have is the absurd declaration, repeated over and over, that Ireland is an independent capitalist country.
Denying that ideology and asserting the simple reality of imperialist domination would be a step forward.