The Workers’ Party of Ireland
James O’Brien,
Director of Strategy and member of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers’ Party of Ireland
The current pandemic has accelerated trends 69 already present in the evolution of capitalism: the downward pressure on the petit bourgeoisie, the difficulty in finding profitable investments, and the acute pressure on working families to survive in the midst of economic crisis. For the present, both governments in Ireland, north and south, are subsidising the income of workers directly affected by Covid-19 but the ruling class will inevitably attempt to transfer the costs of this onto the proletariat through cuts in public services, privatisations, and increased taxes. The existing trends of widening inequality, rising geo-political tension, and ecological damage continue and threaten not only the stability of the leading capitalist countries but the future of humanity itself. These three known long-term trends are joined by other crucial factors. Firstly, capitalism is based on unevenness, not only between countries and their ruling classes but between elites within a state. Acute intra-elite competition, especially within the United States, threatens the stability of their country and given the USA’s position in the international system any instability in the imperial core will have unpredictable consequences for the entire world. The American ruling class and their acolytes in managerial professions are coalescing into two sharply divided camps: nationalist, and sometimes far-right, populists on the one hand, and pro-globalisation liberals on the other, the latter pushing not only a highly individualistic liberal agenda domestically but advocating unashamed imperialist interventions on an even greater scale than the nationalist-populists. The two wings represent distinct strategies for capital. It is no surprise that the tech giants like Google and Twitter are firmly in the liberal camp given their own global scale. It appears too that the state managers, particularly in the security apparatus, are concerned that the nationalists will undo the informal but massively dominant US Empire; hence their unprecedented backing of the liberal Democratic Party. In this struggle between factions of the capitalist elite the working class does not have an interest. Worse, its influence and strength is at a relatively low point since the advent of industrialisation in the 19th century and in the absence of a strong working class movement, the liberals have increasingly adopted the mantle of “The Left” and have managed to seduce large swathes of socialist minded people to prioritising their agenda. Hence the increasing focus on identity politics throughout the Anglophone
