Friday, October 30, 2015

Sinn Fein Is A Failure Appearing As A Success.

The current Sinn Fein leadership has failed in its principal long standing aim of achieving a 32 county Irish republic. This is because achievement of national self-determination of the Irish people is impossible under capitalism. It supported the IRA's capitulation to the forces of British imperialism. Sinn Fein has returned to the position taken many years ago by what is today called the Workers Party. It has also effectively accepted the same deal, the Good Friday Agreement, as was accepted by the SDLP many years ago in the form of the Sunningdale Agreement.

Following this surrender its popular and electoral strength has ironically grown enormously over the years. Accordingly the electoral success of Sinn Fein, North and South of the border, has been on the basis of defeat, failure and surrender. In a sense failure appears as success to much of the Irish working class.

Ironically the Irish citizenry are apparently fooled by this political charade. It rewards failure and surrender at the ballot box. Logically, if anything, Sinn Fein should have suffered wipe-out at the ballot box. Ironically the SDLP was the successful party in the North since it was essentially its programme that SF submitted to with its acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement. Yet the SDLP suffered electoral slaughter at the hustings in the North.

The Irish citizenry suffers from a (schizoid) contradiction. There is an absence of logic in their political consciousness. Its morality is venal. Sinn Fein, within the context of the Irish republic, make many promises. Promises that they cannot support given that it supports capitalism as a social system. Its programme is unrealisable under capitalism. Given its abject and opportunist abandonment of the national struggle their is no guarantee that it will not blithely abandon its current programme too when its political circumstances change. Yet the public apear to learn nothing. The Official Republican camp did the same. By abandoning its original aim -- the achievement of a 32 Irish Republic- its popular support increased eventually giving it seats in the Dail. DeValera and his comrades did the same. This led to their growing popularity and electoral successs culminating in its forming the first Fianna Fail government. In Ireland failure and abandonment of politial principles spells success.

Clearly this is a serious problem that reflects the current character of the modern working class in Ireland. Its an indication of the venal nature of the Irish working class. It has no interest in principled politics. It is merely concerned with supporting elements within society that it believes will "protect", even appear to increase its economic benefits. It has the hallmarks of what Lenin and elements within the German radical Left in the first quarter of the 20th century termed "the labour aristocracy". The real poor in Irish society are a marginal group that is largely ignored. The Irish electorate within the state south of the border is merely concerned with maintaining its living standards even if that means voting for a party that supported bombings and killings for a cause that it later abandoned. Its principle is its pocket. The venal Irish working class is not concerned with eliminating the systemic exploitation of labour power once it has money in its pocket. It does not care as to the blood stained nature of any bourgeois party once it believes it will protect its holidays abroad. It is a working class infected by the acquisitiveness of capitalist morality. In the Marcusean sense it is a bourgeois working class.

A radically fundamental change ( a paradigm shift) in the culture of the working class is necessary if it is to become a revolutionary force. As a revolutionary force it must adhere to principled libetarian politics. Effecting such a coomprehensive transformation is a long and arduous process. It will not necessarily occur in the short term and it has to be realised by the class itself. There cannot be any substitutionism.

The anti-water charges campaign has little or nothing to do with class politics. This populist campaign has not become a force because the working class is moving to the Left. It is simply an opportunist campaign that simply wants a return to the status quo ante. It is a venal response to growing hardship caused by the austerity measures imposed by the state. It is not anti-statist nor anti-capitalist campaign. The diverse elements that constitute it merely want a return to previous living standards. They are not engaged in challenging the class nature of Irish society and the need for its replacement with communism.

Consequently parties such as the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are merely accommodating this opportunism by their involvement in the anti-water charges campaign. Indeed the Irish working class have shown its first signs of vitality over the water charges issue. Yet this mass mobilisation is being mounted at a time when the Irish capitalist class have recovered from the shock and collapse in confidence suffered by it in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007/8. This earlier period would have been a politically more correct period for mass mobilisation. But again the reactionary Irish working class get it wrong. Questions need to be raised concerning the nature of the Irish working class. Romanticising the working class as undertaken by the radical left merely holds back any chances of authentic political development. It is almost a taboo among this Left to make any serious criticisms of this working class. Left communists are not obliged to pander to a working class that has been backward for so long.

In order to stand a chance of assisting in the revolutionising of the consciousness of the working class it is necessary that communists struggle to raise the consciousness of the most class conscious elements within the working class. Its aim is the raising of class consciousness as opposed to appealing to the less politically conscious strata within the working class by coming down to its level through the medium of the anti-water charges campaign.

The Yes Vote Is Not A Victory For The Workers

The outcome of the same sex referendum in the Irish Republic shows a clear majority in favour of it.

Many people see this outcome as a manifestation of progress. However this is far from the case. The popular vote in favour of same sex marriage merely means that the electorate support the widening of the institution of marriage in Ireland. But the issue is that marriage is an oppressive institution that sustains the nuclear family. Marriage today is predominantly an institution of the state and the Christian churches.In the course of human history the family has assumed different forms. The present prevailing family form in the West is a bourgeois form that plays a key role in inculcating bourgeois morality and ideology into the working class.

Much of the radical Left and the gay rights movement by calling for a yes vote were promoting nothing but the fortification of the bourgeois marriage institution at a time when the working class have been increasingly shifting away from it. Instead of calling for a yes vote the call for the abolition of marriage should have been the demand. The very ironical fact that many of those that promoted and voted a yes vote are members of the Catholic Church illustrates the bourgeois nature of the yes campaign. Furthermore the fact that the major parliamentary parties actively supported a yes vote is more evidence of the bourgeois basis of the campaign.

Syriza Cannot Solve The Problems Of The Greek Working Class

The referendum is a decision made by the Syriza government because it has run out of road. Syriza lacking strategic vision is entrapped in a political cul de sac. Its politics have reached their limits. After approximately five months of negotiating with the EU leadership the abject result is capitulation to austerity. The recent draft deal would have meant the acceptance of even more austerity. Accepting such a deal would have split Syriza and alienated much of its popular support. Rather than face this it fell back on the referendum tactic. But this forthcoming referendum can only add to the confusion and further demoralisation of the Greek working class. This is because the referendum is ambiguous. It is not clear as to what it is about. It is not clear as to whether it concerns a vote for or against the Euro and even EU membership. The brevity of the campaign and the surrounding financial conditions entailing bank holidays, capital controls and cash withdrawal restrictions may not help debate. The referendum, as it stands, is a manifestation of the political bankruptcy of Syriza.

Should the public vote yes in this forthcoming referendum it will mean the transfer of political power back to the previous conservative Greek forces. In that way Syriza will have, in effect, surrendered power to these conservative forces thereby missing a golden opportunity to actively participate in the radicalisation of the Greek and European masses towards the seizure of popular power and the establishment of communism. But Syriza's very nature prevented it from such an achievement. Its function is the disarming of the Greek working class.

The Greek crisis is an acute and concrete manifestation of the limits of capitalism. The Greek crisis can only be resolved on a European and global basis through the popular democratic establishment of communist society. It is not a choice between being in or outside of the Euro. Both choices are capitalist I character entailing austerity. Anti-austerity is only realizable through a popular based social revolution that transcends the limits and contradictions of capitalism.

The various programmes advanced by much of the radical left are lodged within the limits of capitalism. But it is these very limits that the Greek financial crisis is manifesting. Leftists proposing the limits of capitalism to solve those very limits is a contradiction.

The principal problem, then, is not the bourgeoisie. The principal problem is the failure of the working class to recognise through its experience the Greek situation as a manifestion of the limits of capitalism. This is not, as such, an objective problem but a subjective one. It is a problem of the consciousness of the Greek and European working class --class consciousness. Capitalism in the form of the Greek crisis is telling the working class that it, capitalism, has limits and thereby cannot satisfy the needs of the workers. Yet the working class resist this thereby persisting in the maintenance of the deluded image of a capitalism that can overcome its own limits.

No Anti-Austerity Campaign Can Be Successful Under Capitalism

The Greek working class have no option but the promotion of European communist insurrection to abolish the EU and the capitalism that it supports. The Greek working class cannot achieve communist on a national basis. A revolution confined to Greece would be strangled at the hands of European and US capitalism. Greek society is too weak to successfully transform itself on a nationalist basis. Communism in one country is an impossibility.

Staying in or out of the Euro is not an option for the Greek working class since both options will involve austerity for it. Only communism precludes austerity. Syriza's anti-austerity platform is based on the false view that an austerity free membership of the capitalist Eurozone is possible for the Greek working class. Events are verifying the pro-austerity nature of Syriza. Even if Syriza was to take the working class out of the Euro austerity will still face it.

Consequently the entire debate as to whether Greece should stay within the Euro or not is a bourgeois debate of no real relevance to the working class. It is an option presenting itself within the limits of capital. Indeed present conditions concerning Greece are acutely manifesting capital's limits and the need to transcend them in the form of communism. Much of the Left, such as the Irish Socialist Party, show solidarity with Syriza in its pseudo anti-austerity campaign. In this way it is promoting capitalism and deceiving workers. Of course in Ireland the active politics of the Socialist Party suggest that anti-austerity is possible under Irish capitalism.

State Budgets Never Serve The Class Interests Of Workers

The annual budget statement is a bourgeois matter. It is the obligation of communists to highlight the latter rather than getting exclusively immersed in its details. No matter how popularly appealing a budget appears it can never serve the class interests of workers. Sections of the Left relate to state budgets as if they are pliable and can consequently meet workers' needs. In this way they seek to delude the working class and thereby promote capitalism. The state budget cannot, by its very nature, transcend the limits of capitalism. No government can transcend these limits through the medium of the budget.

It is not a subjective matter. It is an objective matter determined by the laws of capital. Conservative bourgeois governments do not introduce annual budgets that fail to meet the needs of the working class because of their immoral nature. Capitalist constraints prevent this just as the law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics impose objective constraints on the physical world. The nature of budgets is not a moral question.

Consequently arguments made by the radical Left as to how adverse the substance of a particular budget is amounts to no more than mere political rhetoric designed to obstruct the development of class consciousness. Such delusional rhetoric is designed to suggest that capitalism is a progressively rational system capable of serving working class needs. It falsely suggests too that bourgeois governments fail to meet the needs of workers for morally subjective reasons. This assumes that such governments consist of "bad people".

In the light of the foregoing it is clear that it is not the obligation of communists to evaluate budget details in themselves. To do so is to base a budget on the false assumption that it can serve the interests of workers. At most the content of a budget must be discussed as evidence of the inherent inability of budgets to meet the needs of workers.

Having said this I am not claiming that all budgets, although bourgeois, are of equal value. Some budgets may more adequately serve the class interests of capitalists than others. Analogously some bourgeois governments are better than others at representing the interests of capitalism. Bourgeois governments can vary in competence.