Cllr Madeleine Johansson Reply To People Before Profit HQ

I wrote a message to the People Before Profit AGM (which you can find here on this site) which provoked a response from PBP HQ. The response was a poorly written caricature of the politics of the Red Network and was written by Darryl Horan of the Socialist Workers Network.

I thought it worth publishing our critique of his poorly written reply to clarify the actual political positions taken by the Red Network and to clarify our criticisms of PBP:

Marxism and Moralism: A Reply To Darryl Horan

I wrote a piece outlining the Red Network’s view on the key priorities for PBP in the coming period, also offering some theoretical critiques of the SWN’s operating philosophy.

Darryl’s reply on behalf of the SWN/PBP steering majority was very poor, starting with the accusation that I was a liar. He wrote that “in the context of disingenuous attacks on the Steering Committee, unfortunately by some of its own members a response is needed.”

The idea that a long time Cllr for PBP, someone who worked tirelessly to get SWN member and TD Gino Kenny re-elected, all while fighting eviction from my home in Tathony House, is making “disingenuous attacks” is honestly outrageous.

Let’s deal with his response politically. Darryl writes that “over 200 people joined PBP during the most recent election campaign in the South.”

This goes straight to the heart of the philosophy of the SWN - as long as new people are joining and replacing those who’ve started to question the organisation then everything is fine. This response is akin to the answer many workers get when they question the strategy of their union - “things can’t need changing, we’ve recruited!”

Many of the people who joined through the Palestine movement were put into a PBP led campaigning group called “Action For Palestine” which degenerated into a small group taking small scale direct action with many leaving the party after a period.

The question is not just recruitment, but retention. Our critique was about what political framework should these new members operate in?

He next writes on the accusation that the “steering committee is not taking the need to embed ourselves in communities seriously. This is absurd.”

The main critique in my piece was of the “opportunism from below” or tailism of the SWN that leads to priorities being changed at the drop of a hat. Darryl here says this is an “absurd” accusation then later defends dropping everything to change track because if you don’t you don’t care about genocide!

“The key issue”, he writes, “is not just leafleting from the outside but building people power fighting groups that involve working class people.”

Darryl will know that when the Red Network members on the steering group pushed for a focus on the blue collar estates we were given lectures about the class nature of white collar workers.

When we suggested campaigns in council estates, he pushed for campaigns for renters.

His piece is contradictory - he admits that PBP and the left are “external” to the working class and that we need to focus on the estates, yet when the Red Network says that should be our main priority he says “what about social movements!”

Make a turn to the estates - but not too far!

He says “we should note that our ability to win TD seats has become harder in the context of more competition from Sinn Fein, Soft Left and the Far Right.”

Yes, that’s precisely why the Red Network advocated for not spending the last 5 years insinuating we’d go into government with Sinn Féin. Instead, we argued the socialist left should indicate we’d help kick out Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael while simultaneously indicating that a flip-flop party like Sinn Féin would need to be disciplined by case by case external support in the Dáil.

He then writes that “the Steering Committee has put forward a motion for campaigning maintenance and demolition” (he means dereliction I assume!)

The debate at the steering committee was that Kieran Allen and Darryl Horan emphasised young renters as the key focus. James O’Toole and myself argued against that and said we should focus on the estates, this was what led to a debate about class.

We were told we didn’t understand that class was defined by relation to the means of production and therefore the white collar workers were also workers. No one denies that. But everyone knows there’s a difference between Neilstown and Rathgar or between Fettercairn and Foxrock.

The question is where best to focus activity and the SWN accepted this - only after their own members from Cllr Conor Reddy’s area pushed hard at the PBP housing caucus zoom meeting on the issues of maintenance and dereliction, agreeing with Red members.

At the moment I am living in a council estate and not “outside” these issues. We have had to start a petition campaign in our own estate on the issue we face as working class council tenants.

I was the PBP Cllr who started the CPO campaign to get vacant homes taken over and done up for families. The Dublin Mid West branch did constituency wide petitioning on this issue.

“It’s important for that reason that we don’t just speak in vague generalities” Darryl writes. My experience of the Tathony House mass eviction wasn’t a “vague generality” for us. My CPO campaigning isn’t a “vague generality”. Organising in my own council estate isn’t a “vague generality”.

What an insulting tone! But he gets worse, writing:

“Madeleine’s document attacks our project’s intervention into social movements. The only reference to Palestine is ‘One week, everything must be dropped and every member goes into the Palestine movement. The next week, everyone must go and canvas for the elections.’ In the middle of a Genocide, this is all the author thinks worth noting about our work the last year and a half.”

First of all my criticism was of a general method - of dropping sustained, systematic work, to go tail the latest social movement. The point wasn’t about the Palestine movement in particular as the sentence clearly says: “The next week, everyone must go and canvas for the elections”.

In other words, I was clearly offering a critique of tailing in social movements, tailing in elections, tailism in general.

It was a Red Network member who organised the D8 local rally for Palestine, days after the genocide began. This was the first local rally in the South. We also published articles on how Palestine could win liberation and on imperialism.

Red Network members in Cork have attended every single Palestine protest that the city has had. In Swords a Red Network member has been key to the local Palestine group. While doing all of this we make no apology for prioritising class.

But Darryl’s reply is moralism of the worst kind.

Accusing me of not caring about genocide because I put class to the fore. Karl Marx was guilty of the same “crime”, he wrote: “In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.”

In all social movements our job is to “bring to the fore, as the leading question” the question of class. This is vital, as Lenin, explained:

“People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.”

Darryl objects: “But the thrust of this piece is to attack taking up questions of oppression, whether it be anti-racism, gendered oppression or Palestine solidarity. This is a political dead end and an expression of gas and water socialism.”

“Gas and Water socialism” refers to those who refuse to talk about partition and instead focus on winning Protestant workers on economic issues alone.

Was it “gas and water socialism” when Tathony House tenant and Red member James O’Toole got up at the ICTU Raise the Roof demo in November 2022 and used the authority won by fighting for his home to push back against the idea we should only “look after our own!”

The Red Network believes that organic anti-racism is more powerful than abstract moralism. You can talk all you like about the “autonomy” of racism but it’s side by side with workers in workplaces, in estates in anti-eviction work, on the doors, that anti-racism is actually effective.

The SWN have some cheek talking about “gas and water socialism” when their whole philosophy is based on playing down talk of socialism because struggle will educate.

There are a million social media moralists who do nothing for the working class but spend all their time in performative bubbles. We make no apology for breaking with that middle class left attitude.

Since the start of the Palestine movement the Red Network steering group members have argued that we needed to fight on the immediate demands of the movement (like expelling the Israeli ambassador) but most importantly explain to the movement that imperialism needs to be overthrown and that we can only contribute to that overthrow by mobilising workers in Ireland.

It’s not enough to protest for Palestine if you don’t also spend the rest of the week in the estates building up the only force that can actually take down the Irish establishment and help defeat imperialism.

The irony is that moralism constantly abandons the actual field of battle (building up our class forces).

Prioritising workplaces and the estates means not constantly disrupting that work, say for example, by removing the trade union organiser from trade union work as PBP did, disbanding the trade union department and then after the election suddenly remembering we need to do union work, before dropping it again.

“We are in a much more polarised world, and one that demands political answers” he writes. Yes, we agree. That’s why we want to connect day to day work with the need for revolution instead of connecting the day to day work of PBP to say entering a left government or running Dublin City Council with the Soc Dems and Sinn Féin!

The SWN will talk about the need for a revolution in Egypt and then say nothing about the need for revolution at home. They substitute social issues for revolution and think posturing on those is “big picture politics”.

Next up Darryl outrageously compares the Red Network to an anti-immigrant split from the German left party “Die Linke”. This is disgraceful.

“The Left, which we criticise for its reformism, poor record on Palestine, saw a split a year ago from Sahra Wagenknecht who wanted to pull the party towards a ‘common sense’ approach to migration, shun questions of oppression and focus solely on bread and butter issues.”

If you don’t tail social movements on oppression you are like the anti-immigrant group formed in Germany?

This is mudslinging from Darryl and very poor politically. Red Network members put class to the fore because we are Marxists. We argue against racism and all division in our workplaces, in campaigns and in the estates. We reject all division.

This is a strawman attack. Set up a strawman and argue against that instead of what the Red Network actually said. There is no comparison between the Red Network and the anti-immigrant groups on the left in Germany. If Darryl really believed that we should have been removed from PBP for breaking with its values!

But it’s obviously not true and he knows it.

I was the chair for Together For Yes in Clondalkin. I also argued for housing to be a key focus for us at that time. I will always fight oppression as a working class Marxist and from the point of view of the working class. How dare anyone suggest otherwise!

If you don’t go tailing performative moralism you’re a racist!

He next attacks our call for a clear socialist party programme, he writes: “Anyone who looks at our website will find a host of policies. We can only assume that a ‘programme’ must be something more than simply policies. But what exactly is it?”

In Communist Manifesto Marx wrote that Communists had the advantage over other workers in that they understood the “line of march” ahead. They could indicate the necessity of revolution and point out a path from today to that goal. A policy on animal welfare or the arts doesn’t quite get us there, Darryl.

As Lenin argued: “Neither Marx nor any other theoretician or practical worker in the Social-Democratic movement has ever denied the tremendous importance of a programme for the consolidation and consistent activity of a political party.”

A programme outlines your immediate demands but clarifies the ultimate aim of the party. It’s a line drawn on a map indicating where you want to march. The programmatic formalists think the line drawn on the map is the same as the march to get to your destination.

But the programmatic nihilists in the SWN reject having any map at all. All the better to make it up as you go along. Programmatic nihilism is the perfect accompaniment to tailism. He continued:

“And who will write it? Do we assume that a party that has limited roots among working people can get people to know by looking into its own heart what demands working class people will fight on.”

We Marxists don’t know “what issue people will fight on” (the demands of a minimum programme) - then why have any principles at all? That aren’t derived from scratch from engagement in social movements?

This is precisely “opportunism from below” that refuses to be tied to promises to the class in case they want to make a 180 degree turn.

Yet we have policies? Are the policies a substitute for a programme? And who wrote those Darryl? We can have policies while having “limited roots in the working class” but we can’t construct a programme of demands?

Why write policies if we have limited roots? Isn’t this a grotesque contradiction?

And the maximum demands, those that include the necessity of revolution are known to every Marxist out there. The skill lies in tracing a path from the minimum to the maximum and training members in explaining that path to other workers.

Instead Darryl ends by writing:

“For the last number of years, we have on occasion or at times referred to ourselves as Connollyite or in the tradition of James Connolly. We should embrace this in a much more thorough way. This would mean a people-powered vision for change, class struggle trade unionism, consistent anti-imperialism, opposition to the post partition carnival of reaction and an approach that takes questions of oppression seriously.”

I’d love to read a document defining a Connollyite more clearly. And who would write it “without roots in the working class?” Are there clear previously established values we could refer to?

Yes, of course there are. Could we use those values as a framework to list our current demands and link them to the necessity of working class revolution?

That’s called a programme Darryl. But you’ll never dare write one down. Because tomorrow’s perspective will be different to today’s. And you refuse to make any promises to the working class. We Reds work very hard every day for the working class,as members of the working class, and we argue for our class to rise and take power.

We need more Reds. If you agree join us.