Red Statement: In A World At War The Enemy Is At Home!

The US has launched an attack on Iran. Trump is acting as a henchman for US corporations. The world is becoming far more unstable and war will worsen the cost of living crisis as oil and gas prices skyrocket.

In a world at war the only thing workers in Ireland can practically do is fight to overthrow our own establishment. That’s our contribution to the international battle against war. You see imperialism is corporate competition spilling over into military competition.

War is no accident of personality, it’s built into the DNA of capitalism. The only way to stop war is for the workers of each nation to take down their own ruling class.

The slogan: “The main enemy is at home” isn’t just a reminder that your own rulers are your exploiters and that you shouldn’t be fooled into fighting other workers, it’s also a practical orientation. What else can we really do to pull down imperialism apart from taking down our own rotten establishment?

But to do that we need leverage in workplaces and in the estates. To get purchase among other workers those of us who want a revolution need to be organic to every strike, protest and campaign that involves working class people.

We have to stand in elections but not as mere vote catchers - but to use the process of capturing a platform to coalesce a movement of workers and win them to socialist politics. That’s why revolutionaries from Connolly to Lenin insisted on electoral work. It can help to organise and educate our class.

The key battles for working class people at the moment are strikes like the school secretaries and caretakers’ strike and the battle against rent hikes in Dublin City Council. By focusing on getting rooted and a few key areas or work we could become a force that can eventually take on the Irish state. Without those roots we just stand at the Spire and wave flags.

Solidarity is always important, let’s not forget that, but solidarity is not a strategy for the class struggle. Know it for what it is. Show your solidarity then as quickly as possible get back to the real work. We have to be able to tell the difference, many on the left can’t.

The Irish political class are nothing but puppets of the Irish rich. They serve the interests of billionaires like Denis O’Brien and Larry Goodman, of big corporations like Cement Roadstone and Kingspan. They work hand in hand as junior partners of the US and EU corporations.

These big Irish companies have a global reach and know the Irish state can’t defend them so they want to kill our neutrality and line us up with the EU and NATO. It’s in the interests of the Irish rich to send workers off to fight and die in future wars, but it’s not in the interests of the working class.

The Red Network will continue to use every fightback to argue for the need for a planned economy where the working class is in the driving seat, we will also fight every day for a left that’s made up of workers, led by workers and rooted in the workplaces and estates.

We make no apologies for this singular focus. It’s the only way to win. The main enemy is at home. Let’s get to work. There’s no other way we can overthrow them.