5 Reasons Ireland Needs A Revolution!

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael tried to overturn the tiny sliver of democracy we get by not only forming their own anti-worker government but also by creating a loyal little opposition led by the criminal TD Michael Lowry.

They’re not very fond of democracy - that’s why real decisions are farmed off to civil servants who are beyond democratic control, while in corporate boardrooms billionaires freely move around mind boggling sums of wealth.

Only a rising by working class people can actually create a real democracy that puts workers in the driving seat. Sounds radical? Well, here’s 5 reasons why we’ve no other choice.

ONE: We don’t live in a democracy

Governments are formed by political parties who stand for election once every 4 or 5 years. They can say whatever they like during the campaign, the establishment parties have all the money in the world, a media that promotes them and constituency boundries they’ve drawn up.

After a general election parties sit down with the head civil servant in the Department of the Taoiseach and “translate” their manifestos into an acceptable Programme For Government.

The unelected state bureaucracy filters out what is acceptable and what is not.

This is a first line of defence for the boss class. This unelected state machine includes the head Guards, the army chiefs, judges and bureaucrats - all loyal to the system.

Every government, no matter how “left wing”, is a coalition with the establishment through their unelected state machine.

The second line of defence for the boss class is a separation of politics from economics- no matter who you elect to the Dáil the rich still control their wealth. Our class does all the work yet a small wealthy elite take all the profits and then they can dispose of all that wealth as they like.

You and billionaire Denis O’Brien both get one vote but he controls billions and can hire and fire thousands of workers. His social power is immense and the formal equality of the vote disguises this immense inequality.

Workers should vote tactically, to weaken the establishment, to elect working class fighters but with no illusions in how much voting can actually achieve under this dictatorship of the rich. As the saying goes: if voting could change things they’d abolish it!

TWO: Attempts to reform capitalism have been abysmal failures.

Why not just elect nice people to bring in better policies? Because as long as the market is God those policies will be undermined. Look at housing in Finland where they promised to end homelessness by 2027 - they had to put back that target because rents in the private market keep climbing.

Or look at the radical left party Syriza in Greece. They had a very radical policy platform but once in power they gave in to bullying from the rich. The EU threatened a run on the Greek banks. The Greek rich threatened to move money abroad.

It wasn’t possible to take the rich on within the framework of capitalism.

There was one period, after World War 2, when capitalism was booming because of post-war reconstruction, where the ruling class tolerated reforms that benefited workers.

As soon as the boom collapsed in the 1970s the ruling class were forced to adopt neoliberal policies - which meant attacks on workers, on unions, wholesale privatisation and outsourcing.

The system took back most of the gains workers had made.

You can’t abstract the reforms won by workers during the post-war boom from the circumstances that temporarily allowed the ruling class to make their profits and allow some spending on public services.

Socialists fight for every little scrap workers can win, all day, everyday - but without falling into the trap of thinking these reforms are the end goal and can’t be taken away unless workers run the show.

THREE: If the left isn’t revolutionary, the far right will steal our thunder

The far right are establishment stooges. They posture as enemies of the system but in fact support capitalism. That’s why they refuse to actually name the system.

They talk about “globalism” and other conspiracy theories because they desperately want to generate opposition to the system without actually harming capitalism, which they support.

This is why billionaires like Elon Musk feel comfortable supporting far right movements and promoting them on his social media platform. Billionaires are profit addicts and would refuse to support any movement that could actually do harm to their profits.

But a world of stagnant capitalism and low growth is bound to produce immense anger among working class people. The far right want to misdirect that anger and focus it downwards.

Socialists need to boldly focus it up and fan the flames of working class revolt against the rich. If the left isn’t revolutionary, it will perish.

FOUR: If your aim is to run the system, you’ve already lost

Strategy and tactics matter if we want to change the world. Just look at the trajectory of Sinn Féin over the last few years. They have aimed to run the system and it has weakened them and emboldened the establishment.

They played down street protests, had meetings with the business elite, shook hands with the imperialists in Washingtown and flip flopped on every issue going from Palestine to immigration.

By setting their strategic aim as coalescing with the establishment state they weakened themselves, losing 100,000 voters on the way.

If your aim is to get rid of capitalism then you don’t give the establishment a chance to exploit your flip flopping. You are consistent. You aren’t afraid to mobilise mass protests because you aren’t worried about putting such movements back in a box when you take power.

But let’s be honest a “left government” made up of Sinn Féin, the Soc Dems, Labour and the Greens while better than Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael isn’t going to radically transform Ireland.

They’d offer some small reforms. The rich would reign them in. Their supporters would get demoralised. Then the right would get back in. We need to be more ambitious than this.

FIVE: Only a revolution helps us to overcome feelings of powerlessness and alienation.

Capitalism isolates and atomises our class. We are forced to compete for jobs, for homes, for every little thing. This can turn worker against worker. It opens our class up to accepting establishment ideas.

But on a more profound level the powerlessness most people feel under capitalism leads to alienation - a disconnect from other people that leads to violence and brutality.

A revolutionary mass movement begins to forge the working class into a collective. Every strike offers a small glimpse of that collective attitude - when Thomas Cook workers defied court orders and occupied their store, or when Debenhams workers fought.

Even if real change were possible through the Dáil (which it isn’t) this wouldn’t help to lift people out of their alienation and hammer our class into a strong, supportive collective - a real class.

You need struggle and you need socialist politics to do that.

You don’t get a revolution by just talking about it - but you don’t get a revolution by not talking about it either. Mass movements like the tax marches of 1979 or the water charges of 2014 show the potential of our class to win change.

But such movements need to be led by working class people with revolutionary politics.

A people power revolution would involve tens of thousands protesting, accompanied by mass strikes and workplace occupations. That’s what’s needed to change Ireland and put workers in the driving seat.

To win the kind of workers’ democracy James Connolly envisioned.

That’s what we in the Red Network want to fight for. If you agree then join us. We are working class activists who believe in the immense potential of our class. We aren’t afraid to tell the truth.