Cllr Johansson: A Message To The PBP AGM

People Before Profit has now been in existence for 20 years. What began as a loose electoral alliance has become the biggest radical left party in Ireland.

The last couple of years have been a hectic time for the party. As we emerged from the Covid pandemic we saw the rise of the far right in Ireland. In 2024 alone the party threw itself into two tough election campaigns, local work and into the Palestine protest movement.

Now we have some time to reflect on where the party is at and more importantly where it should go next. To work out a political strategy for the period ahead we must first understand the current political environment and assess past mistakes.

Globally, and in Ireland, the political pendulum has swung to the right. The aftermath of the financial crash of 2008 saw an upsurge of working class struggle in Ireland and abroad. We saw the Indignados in Spain, the Occupy movement in the US, general strikes in Greece and the Arab Spring.

Here in Ireland the water charges movement channelled anger against austerity and brought hundreds of thousands of working class people onto the streets. As that movement receded after 2016 we won Repeal in 2018 and the climate movement took to the streets in 2019. (these were qualitatively different from the water charges which had a much more blue collar working class composition compared to Repeal and the Climate Strikes)

The left everywhere was too small, or in many cases too politically weak, to break through and now we’re facing the inevitable striking back of the establishment. The Covid pandemic accelerated this underlying political trajectory to the right. The return of Trump as President and the growth of the far right across Europe is part of this pendulum swing to the right.

If the mass movements of 2008 to 2016 were a “revolution in miniature” then we are living in a “counter revolution in miniature”.

As the majority on the Steering Committee of PBP recently admitted, PBP has had an “episodic” relationship to the working class. This begs the question - what class does the party have an non-episodic relationship to?

In order to change this we must do systematic, hard work to recruit workers. This should be done by a focus on:

1. Trade union work.

Organising our trade union members through regular caucus meetings and building grassroots union groups (such as FORSA Left) in all the major unions. Simply putting this work onto branches as suggested by the Steering Committee is not taking this seriously. We need to reinstate the position of trade union organiser to systematically undertake this work.

2. Community work.

Our branches and representatives should organise local campaigns in working class communities such as against dereliction, against vacant homes and for better council housing maintenance.

This should be done in order to gain the ear and trust of working class people and find (and recruit) the advanced workers in our communities. We need to build long lasting and stable relationships with the best working class people.

Community work also involves serious preparation for elections. Many in the SWN are saying “take a break from elections” but this swing to the ultra left will damage us as having a representative in an area helps to build movements and recruit people.

Election work needs to be more focused on winning workers politically, articulating clear socialist politics, rather than just chasing votes.

Recruiting through the trade unions and community work might not yield immediate results, however when advanced workers do join the socialist left they provide a more stable and dedicated membership base.

With a focus on becoming a more working class party we should avoid making some of the mistakes that the international left has made in recent years. The growth of identity politics and establishment use of the culture war has helped cut the left off from sections of the working class.

Petty bourgeois, middle class moralism is rampant on much of the international left and instead of finding ways back to the working class they are choosing to continue to remain in a left bubble of moralism. This is not to say that we should not argue hard against racism, sexism and transphobia, but we must do that while winning working class people class struggle, to socialism.

We need a big push on class war, not culture war. The more working class our membership the better they become at arguing against division without alienating other workers. Moralism will destroy the left, real Marxism will build it.

But it’s not enough to recruit workers and community leaders; we also need to hold on to members. We are entering a period of economic uncertainty, attacks on workers at home and war abroad.

This requires crystal clear clarity in our politics and in our organisational methods.

The political leadership of PBP has primarily been composed of members of the Socialist Workers Network. There are 3 networks: SWN, Rise and Reds. The SWN view has been that PBP should not have a clear socialist programme because it is a “transitional” organisation.

But from where to where is PBP “transitioning” and when will this “transition” be complete?

The lack of a programme is not an accident, but a deliberate strategy to allow for an opportunist flip-flopping, or tailing of various movements. This inevitably leads to freneticism and disorganisation.

Opportunism comes in two forms: opportunism from above and opportunism from below. We can all think of examples of opportunism from above, from union leaders to the Labour Party.

But opportunism from below is more subtle. It’s a semi-anarchist philosophy that says struggle will automatically overcome political and organisational deficits in the working class. This is the operating philosophy of the SWN.

One week, everything must be dropped and every member go into the Palestine movement. The next week, everyone must go and canvas for the elections.

There is no doubt that a certain flexibility is necessary in all our activities but the consequence of this lack of focus is a revolving door of members who join on a particular issue and then leave because the party has moved on to something else.

A party programme based on the revolutionary Lenin’s maximum/minimum formula would help clarify what PBP is, for our current members and for new ones, and guide our day-to-day activities. It would train up members and help them bridge the gap between everyday demands and ultimate goal.

It would also set boundaries beyond which elected reps cannot stray.

A programme sets out what Lenin called our “line of march”. It says to workers “we intend to start here and march here!” The programme Karl Marx wrote for French socialists was a few mere bullet points but started with a preamble that described what socialists ultimately wanted.

Minimum demands are those we make everyday, that can be won under capitalism. Without this day to day work socialists have no reputation as fighters. Maximum demands are those that require a revolution to fulfil. Without clarifying this ultimate goal we’re mere reformists.

You cannot farm out the maximum demands to internal networks and think that is sufficient. They become abstracted from day to day articulation to workers.

The maximum programme must be public, explicitly revolutionary, making the argument for revolution in everyday language that the best workers can understand and that they can then popularise to others.

It should clearly set out that we believe in worker control of the economy and for the dismantling of the repressive bourgeois state, we are in favour of a truly democratic workers state. You can’t expect to win workers to socialism unless you actually tell them what you mean by that. It’s a fundamental duty of socialists to tell workers the truth.

After 20 years it’s time for PBP to stop “transitioning” and become a real working class, revolutionary socialist party. One that clearly sets out to organise all the advanced workers to overthrow the Irish state, winning legitimacy to call for that goal by being at the forefront of fighting for the daily needs of the working class.

This will not be an easy task but it’s not impossible. Now is the time to prepare - the pendulum always swings back and we can make real gains in the future. But only if we are ready.