Notes on Communist Organisation as a Bulwark Against the Far-Right

Notes on Communist Organisation as a Bulwark Against the Far-Right

Notes by Cillian Ó Riain, in collaboration with Saoirse Ní Bhaoighealláin
Introduction

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The future of Ireland is to be determined by the revolutionary class struggle to come. The objective conditions for this revolutionary class struggle are to be found in the permanent crisis of capitalism. This crisis renders the escalation of isolated political and economic struggles into a revolutionary class struggle possible, because under the crisis of capitalism the fundamental contradictions between classes which are to be found in the very structure of capitalism are sharpened. As the capitalist economy collapses, and the contradictions between classes sharpen, there is a historical moment where the logic of capitalism itself breaks down in the social consciousness of the proletariat, and this makes the conscious intervention of the proletariat into the class struggle possible. The only way to secure the victory of the proletariat in this historical juncture is to build up the subjective conditions for revolution. 

When we refer to the subjective conditions for revolution we refer to the superstructural organisation and consciousness of the proletariat. These subjective conditions reflect the ability of the proletariat to consciously intervene into the class struggle with the only measures capable of overcoming the crisis of capitalism, i.e. with proletarian revolution and communist measures. When capitalism has become overripe and the crisis becomes permanent, the immediate task for communists is to strengthen these subjective conditions, to construct a revolutionary organisation capable of coordinating and escalating the class struggle, and consolidating the revolutionary consciousness that the proletariat gains through its struggle. The work that defines such an organisation, that is the work that builds the organisation and the work that the organisation must build itself around, is mass work.

Mass work generally refers to agitation, education, and organising work done by communists among the people. Mass work quantitatively advances the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat because it uses every opportunity to link the specific struggle facing that particular group of workers with the general class struggle which defines class society. Mass work does not just refer to instances of engagement by revolutionaries with the masses but rather is defined by the continuous, procedural execution of agitation, education, and organising work by revolutionaries among the masses.

This series of articles will go into the principles of communist mass work among the working class as it relates to ongoing struggles such as the housing movement, the labour movement, and the rise of fascism. It will also explore specific examples of workers’ and peoples’ struggles, and analyse the effectiveness of the work conducted by revolutionaries in these struggles.

Anti-Fascism

The rise of fascist sentiment in Ireland has concerned left-wing activists, revolutionaries, republicans, and liberal citizens alike. The response of left-wing forces has been the counter-protest, and the narrative of  “mobilizing against the far-right”. As Saoirse Ní Bhaoighealláin explains in her recent article on Rosa, organisations such as the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) are doing more to stem the rising fascist tide than any counter-protest. This is consistent with the communist analysis that fascism is the reactionary vanguard of capitalism in decay. According to this analysis, if fascism takes the energy of a people struggling under capitalism and directs it against minorities and left-wing elements in society in order to protect capital, then to combat fascism means to organise the proletariat in struggle against capital.

What is the far-right in Ireland? In liberal media, the “far-right” denotes the social movement in Ireland which takes the reactionary position that identity in general, and nation and race in particular, is the primary contradiction in society. The central struggle for the “far-right” is the struggle against immigration, which it justifies through an ideology which scapegoats immigrants and non-white races for the many woes of the white working class in Ireland. The “far-right” in this narrative also tends to hold reactionary views on gender, sexuality, and religion.

The communist analysis recognises the class dynamics at play within the “far-right”, and rejects the view that it is an independent social force which is, in and of itself, to be struggled against. We recognise that within the “far-right” is a coalition of classes and social forces consisting of bourgeois benefactors, petty-bourgeois political idealogues, drug dealers, media outlets, and a mass made up of reactionary sections of the proletariat. We understand that this reactionary working-class mass are generally categorised as economically deprived, socially neglected, and politically unrepresented. The process which draws these workers into “far-right” networks is not some independent behavior of an inherently reactionary class of people as classist liberals believe, nor simply the result of savvy fascist agitators, but is a systemic process within a declining capitalism under conditions where the working poor are neglected not only by the government, but also by socialists. It is a simple fact that there has been no consistent revolutionary presence in these communities, and that the door has been left wide open to fascist agitation. Without the communist analysis and leadership in the struggle against their social conditions, it is no surprise whatsoever that droves of working-class people have been taken by fascist ideology. The anti-fascist response cannot be to protest or debate this ideology out of existence, but to undermine it through an effective campaign of education, organisation, and struggle against the social conditions which give rise to it.

Anti-fascism means nothing if it is not explicitly socialist and explicitly revolutionary. Therefore, mobilizing against the far-right is useless unless the energy of that mobilization is directed not towards counter-protests, but towards socialist methods of organizing and struggling. In fact, the current model of “mobilizing against the far-right” is worse than useless, as it actively aids Irish fascism. It has produced a symbiotic relationship between far-right agitation and reformist counter-agitation, with one side fueling the other and neither engaging in effective struggle against capital as a social force. This is a relationship which can only end in the victory of fascism.

Which political tendency in Ireland represents the most advanced revolutionary socialist analysis? Revolutionary socialism in Ireland is Socialist Republicanism. Socialism without republicanism in Ireland is a flawed theory which fails to take into account the considerable impact of the national question on the development of both the capitalist system and the socialist movement in Ireland. Therefore, the socialist response to the rise of fascism must be a Republican response. It must assert the revolutionary socialist claim to Irish nationalism as outlined by James Connolly and the socialist republicans of the past, and it must recognise the role of US-British imperialism in general, and loyalism in particular, in the rise of fascism in Ireland. Any socialist organisation which fails on the national question and rejects republicanism cannot produce any effective anti-fascist strategy. 

What material basis exists for a Republican solution to the rise of fascism? To answer this question, we must first analyse the state of Republicanism today. When we speak of Republicanism, we do not mean the constitutionalist reformism and nationalism of traitors to the Republican movement. We do not mean the empty promises of Provisional Sinn Féin, nor the newfound “republicanism” of the Labour Party, nor the loose sentiment that Ireland should be united. When we speak of Republicanism, we mean the analysis of capitalism in general, and imperialism in particular, which recognises the occupation of the six counties by Britain and the subservience of the Free State to the Triple Lock of Imperialism as the defining features of Irish capitalism. Republicanism means recognising the revolutionary struggle for socialism as integral to the struggle for Irish unity, and the revolutionary struggle for Irish unity as integral to the struggle against capitalist imperialism.

Republicanism today is in a worrying position. Older organisations have failed to continue engaging in the vital mass work necessary to advance the Socialist Republican struggle and have thus faded into obscurity, while newer ones have struggled to gain a foothold in the political landscape. Older revolutionaries have failed to overcome their biases against different Republican organisations as their energy and initiative has dwindled, and thus have failed to maintain and strengthen Republicanism as a legitimate force. Many younger revolutionaries have inherited these biases which have combined with their youthful energy and initiative into an unprincipled sectarianism which is not rooted in any fresh analysis of modern conditions, and has produced a self-reinforcing echo chamber in many younger Republican spaces. That being said, there is hope to be found in the sections of the Republican youth who have not lost faith in the revolution and who reject sectarian biases in favour of dialectical analysis of concrete conditions. This tendency is the only one with the capacity to bring about a Republican revival, and thus constitutes the vanguard of revolutionary Republicanism in Ireland. It is this vanguard which must take the initiative to lead the struggle against fascism in Ireland, and in doing so bring about the Republican revival.

What are the principles this vanguard must organise around in order to advance the Republican and anti-fascist struggle? We understand that fascist agitation in working-class communities offers no real struggle against capital and the social conditions it imposes on the proletariat. In contrast, communist work among the proletariat is centered around educating and organising the people to struggle against these conditions themselves, centering their unique position as a class of producers within capitalism and the leverage this gives them if they are effectively organised and educated. Therefore, our first principle is:

1. We cannot expect to lead the people if we cannot organise to feed the people.

If outreach in working-class communities returns food insecurity as a core issue, then our efforts must focus on organising the community to collectively manage food distribution, educating them on the social conditions which give rise to this food insecurity, and organising a general campaign against food insecurity. If we find poor housing conditions to be rampant, we must help the community organise a tenants’ union in order to pressure landlords into maintaining the property, and we must use this struggle to educate the community on the dynamics of capitalism which allow the landlord class to neglect the properties they rent out. At every step, we must ensure we are conducting mass work in order to engage with communities, center the issues of the community in our propaganda and agitation work, try organise the community to struggle against these issues, and use the process of organisation and struggle to educate the community on the communist analysis of class society in order to win them over to the revolutionary strategy. This line of thinking leads to our second principle:

2. We must teach the people how to free the people.

At each stage in our mass work, we must use every opportunity to educate people on the structure of capitalism and how it gives rise to the social condition of the proletariat, as well as how to effectively struggle against those conditions. Every victory which wins economic concessions but fails to inform the worker on the ephemeral nature of these concessions under capitalism is actually a defeat for the revolutionary cause. Unless the experience of the struggle is explicitly used to elevate the consciousness of the people and educate them on the need to intervene into the class struggle in a revolutionary way, all we will have done is help to reproduce capitalism for another while longer by patching up its most grotesque crimes. If we do not seek to become yellow union bureaucrats, middlemen between the worker and the capitalist whose function it is to find a compromise and maintain the existence of capital, we must transform the experience of the particular struggle into education which elevates the consciousness of the proletariat and cements in their minds the necessity of revolution. Failure to transform the experience of the struggle into a socialist education leaves an opening for fascist agitation, which we have seen in the wake of the water charges protests; socialist republicanism failed to transform the experience of that struggle into a revolutionary education, and now many of the most active water charge protesters are members of fascist organisations. 

In the case of the water charge movement, the hegemony of reformism among the political leadership played a major role in preventing the experience of the struggle from being transformed into a revolutionary education. Opportunism, defined as sacrificing the long-term revolutionary struggle for short-term gains within a reformist framework, is a tendency which must be resolutely rejected in communist mass work. This struggle is represented in the principle:

3. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.

This principle defines communist mass work as opposed to progressive organising work in general. What separates the two is that communist mass work always maintains organisational continuity along with a clear vision of the isolated, single-issue struggle as only one component part of the larger revolutionary class struggle. To sacrifice the long-term vision of revolution for messaging, optics, or organisational concessions from reformism is to betray socialist republicanism, and to ensure that the experience of the struggle is never transformed into a revolutionary education for the working class. While mass work should be conducted in mass organisations, communists within mass organisations should caucus together (in the absence of a formed vanguard party) and discuss the communist strategy within the mass organisation, as well as run parallel mass work where the mass organisation is unable to agitate and organise in a revolutionary way. Adhering to this principle means that mass work will always be grounded in consciousness of the masses, and reduce deviations from the initiative and consciousness of the community, but the revolutionary perspective is still always made clear. This, along with organisational continuity, will allow the communist vanguard to build its influence over time by chaining together the experiences of many struggles over a period of time into a single, cohesive, revolutionary picture of the situation.

The single most effective tool which the bourgeoisie possess for suppressing an organising proletariat is to reinforce division on the basis of identity. Religion, gender, sexuality, race and more are promoted as the primary contradiction within society rather than class. Therefore, a vital principle of Republican mass work must be:

4. United we stand, divided we fall.

It must be absolutely clear to every communist and republican that so long as a single scapegoat exists, capitalism possesses the means to protect itself. It is the role of fascism to enforce this truth. The duty of the revolutionary is to combat all those forces which impede the progress of the revolution. This means struggling against not just the bourgeoisie, the imperialists, and the state which protects their interests, but also against any ideology which seeks to divide the proletariat, to remove power and initiative from proletarian organisations, to obscure the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, or to disorganise the subjective conditions for revolution. This means struggling relentlessly against racism, sexism, homophobia, and all forms of bigotry, as well as against any liberal forces which seek to impose on our revolutionary mass work a politics based on race, gender, sexuality, or identity in general.

We seek not only to build the unity of the working class, but also to raise its revolutionary consciousness and initiative. With this in mind, we cannot make the same mistake as many Republicans in history have by neglecting the special conditions which define the lives of proletarian women. Our fifth principle is:

5. Women hold up half the sky.

We cannot limit our activities on working-class unity simply to struggling against misogyny, but we must also actively encourage and enable the political participation of proletarian women. This means recognising the unique forms of oppression experienced by proletarian women which prevent them from taking an active part in revolutionary politics. Every provision must be taken at every step along our organising efforts to encourage the participation of women, which means not only the categorical exclusion of misogynists and those guilty of abuse against women from organising spaces, but also the bolshevization of feminist work in general. Socialist feminist work cannot simply be about raising awareness around the social conditions which oppress proletarian women, but must have for its content the work of directly struggling against these conditions. For example, where childcare and parental responsibilities hamper the ability of proletarian women to engage with our organising efforts or to come to our meetings, we must try and organise collective, on-site childcare. We must recognise that these are not issues exclusive to women, but also that they are issues which predominantly and disproportionately affect women.

Adherence to these principles will ensure that Republican work in the housing movement, in the labour movement, and in the movement for national unification will result in a synthesis of these various struggles into a single, strong, principled revolutionary movement for a 32-County Socialist Republic. These principles of mass work are inherently anti-fascist because they guide the struggle against the objective and subjective conditions which give rise to fascist sympathies.