Position paper from éirígí on socialism… April 19, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Economy, International Politics, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
As promised at the weekend here’s a document issued by éirígí on their thoughts for the future.
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There’s also an Irish language version, for those of us who love getting an aul’ dose of socialism as Gaeilge.
The document disappointed me bcause it was more a reaffirmation of soocialism rather than trying to be more specific.
Many more of you will be already familiarised with similar writings from Irish political history. Has this document added something very new or is it just another rededication by a party to a position that everyone knows they already hold and for which they themselves know they hold.
Who was this document a dialogue with?
Its like the Irish consititution. In the background and influential but where are the housing policy documents, job creation docuemnts, anti- crime, anti-drug documents. They are the laws which give effect to the constitution.
But just as a constitution on its own is redundant a document like the above by Eirigi dows not take us a step further down the road without those specific policies.
I think they tried a bit but maybe then they should have split it into 2 documents – a what we believe and then the how we’ll do it.
This was launched at the end of 2012 after a very long internal discussion in the organisation.
With eírígí, because it has reputedly recruited a good number of people and is led by an ex SF member, the question of whether it is a Republic or a Socialist party is very central to its existence. The decision not to run a candidate in the historic GE, which returned a number of left candidates, but to run several in the locals in the north raises questions in my mind as to how seriously it is engaged as a socialist revolutionary party across the island.
Eírigi has captured a good bit of public awareness through its Anglo demonstrations and the Harney paint incident. However, it is now in its 5th year, and “we are a young party” is becoming less convincing as an answer to why a more solid impact on political, social and economic questions has not yet been made. The conditions were there during the GE campaign to do this, without in any way compromising with electoralism.
We had a long discussion on the paper here at Politicalworld.org when it was launched.
http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?t=6218&highlight=salvation
Que says they should have split it into 2 documents
is he by any chance suggesting that the first item on the agenda should have been the split?
ba da boom !!!
No just that I think that maybe they succumbed to the tendency of left wing parties to focus relentlessly on ideology.
I think maybe if someone had said look lads do we really need to spell out our socialism or will we instead focus on a jobs document, a housing document and a crime document then the split would indeed have been on the agenda.
But the document itself seems to be two things – mainly another rehash of socialism but also seeks to be a policy document.
It’s an interesting doc alright. Very aspirational, which is not in itself a problem but on the other hand it does reference issues such as NAMA which one would think sit more in a policy analysis.. That said there are some omissions. No mention of unionism at all which seems curious given the all island focus.
The document reads like the political thought that arose in the sticks in the early 70s, having I suppose began in the republican movement in the 60s, and much like the IRSP again in 1974. It’s a broad, unspecific document that is along the lines of that current of thought.
An interesting bit is this quote:
”This
current recognises and accepts the essential and inseparable relationship that exists between the national and social struggles. From the Irish Socialist Republican Party to the Irish Citizen Army, to the Republican Congress and, today, éirígí,”
Do eirigi not see SF-WP and the IRSP as part of that current of republican socialist thought?
It’s one of the difficulties of establishing historical continuity with a previous time period even on a conceptual level. There are things that happened in between that sort of are problematic.
I wish éirígí well, as was noted above they’ve a good line in events, but it’s hard to seriously sustain the idea that they’re either the only expression of republican socialism or that there’s nothing that happened in that intervening time.
Moreover the context is so radically different – not in overall dynamic, capitalism, aspects of imperialism, etc but in not inessential subsidiary aspects, that there’s something both admirable but also a little diversionary about positioning te 2000s in relation to the early 1930s (at the latest).