The Workers’ Party of Ireland

James O’Brien, Director of Strategy and member of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers’ Party of Ireland

69The current pandemic has accelerated trends 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

70 world at the expense of workingclass politics. Marx said that “The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” Marx’s insight applies not only to the economic structure of society but to the subsequent social and political struggles. And in the United States, it is not the class struggle that dominates political struggle but identity politics, most recently ethnic and racial struggle. There are obvious historical reasons for this but now in Europe we see the emulation of American radical politics despite the completely different historical conditions, especially in countries like

Ireland which did not even have national independence let alone overseas colonies. Divisions within the working class and the promotion of identity politics at the expense of both the workers movement and anti-imperialism is now the norm in the Anglosphere left. Thus, western liberals focus on issues of identity but say nothing — or often support — the imperialist onslaughts against the Syrian or Libyan states and even cheer the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia. In effect the

CIA have rebranded coup d’etats and proxy wars as popular revolutions and in doing so have harnessed the instinctive support for revolution amongst leftists to the galloping horse of imperialist reaction. There can be little doubt that the prioritisation of American radical norms by left-wing movements is being fostered by the security apparatus. Given a choice of facing an organised class enemy or myriad of disparate groups who can be set in motion by turning up the propaganda through their domination of the mass media, including social media, the security apparatus will always choose the latter.

For the liberal leftists are not, unlike the Communist movement, organised to build an alternative economic structure to capitalism. Not only, then, is the state, mass media, industry, and the main opposition in ruling class hands, so too are, even if unconsciously, large swathes of the radical opposition. This is an unprecedented situation and the danger for the Communist movement is that the inevitable opposition to the driving force of liberal imperialism stems from nationalist reactionaries rather than the socialist-labour movement.

the workers’ movement

Let there be no illusions. The workers’ movement is powerless to stop the terminal crises building up against bourgeois civilisation. It has a momentum and power of its own and just as the workers movement could not halt the drive to war in 1914 it cannot stop the ruling class from driving modern society into major social unrest. Our task, then, is not to attempt the impossible and try to salvage capitalism but to prepare for the serious upheaval that its unfettered evolution makes inevitable.

This is most clearly seen in the increasingly unstable political situation in the imperial core: The United States of America, which has seen riots, impeachment, manoeuvring by the security apparatus to overthrow the president, and threats of civil war should the election not turn out to the liking of either faction.

In the coming years, this combustible situation will be augmented by the ramifications of climate change, the challenge of geo-political rivalry, and the difficulty in securing profitable investments.

Of course, each country will, in addition to American cultural influence, experience its own distinct struggle.

In the case of Ireland, the national question is back on the agenda because of Brexit and the United Kingdom’s possible medium term break up, should Scotland gain independence. But increasingly the political spectrum is coloured by liberalism and an incipient but growing far right opposition to it.

This leaves our party, as one which holds to the belief that it is only through working class organisations that socialism can be built, in a challenging political environment.

As a small party our main avenue for growth is political activity among the working class. As a result of the pandemic this avenue of work is currently denied to us. We must be prepared, however, for the political battles that the post-pandemic economic crisis will bring and ensure that our Party connects actively with the concerns of working class people in Ireland in a manner which it has not done for the last number of decades, in order to redevelop our roots amongst working people.

Under the difficult restraints imposed by the pandemic, the Party has endeavoured to maintain our reach through a series of seminars on policy and ideological topics, ranging from debates on nuclear power as a solution to the climate crisis to the history of the Communist Parties in Western Europe to the success of the Communist-led government in Kerala in tackling covid. We have also developed a series of positions advocating a stronger response to tackling covid in Ireland and one centred on promoting the

role of the state as opposed to the private health system in combating it.

Meanwhile, the paramount sovereignty of Brussels has reduced the already low democratic norms at the national level. The inability of the national states to respond to the wishes of the people induce the dissatisfied to turn to anti-democratic forces as the primary forces resisting the EU, for they can promulgate a simple message: nationalism.

It is imperative that we in the socialist movement develop a clear and simple alternative to bourgeois nationalism and the ultra-capitalist EU and it is therefore imperative the international communist movement deepens our links and that a cohesive continental resistance to capitalism is available to the people.