The Election Candidates on Prime Time

by fred Wed Oct 08, 2014 20:07

Paddy, you talk of capitalism in the general sense, but yet your specific attacks seem to be levelled at the only left leaning alternative candidates there are to the main dyed in the wool capitalist parties i.e. FF / FG / LAB which, oddly, you don't actually attack directly at all in your article.
Most surprising.

It smacks of sectarianism designed to widen faultlines in an already weak and fragile left, rather than a genuine revolutionary position.

That makes me very suspicious of your motives. When you publish a piece directly attacking our real class enemies in the pro capitalist neoliberal parties, FF / FG / LAB instead of just continually attacking our only practical left leaning alternatives within the current political structure such as PBP / Socialist party / sinn fein / AAA then I'll consider taking you seriously instead of my current view on your articles which is that you are not really interested in changing the status quo at all, but rather wish to deliberately try to undermine and do damage to any parties on the left daring to challenge the current right wing neoliberal government parties and hence do the work of FG / FF / LAB for them. Coming, as it does close to elections, it's all the more suspicious.

In practice both you and I know that the Irish people are a long way off from true revolutionary consciousness and the best we can hope for at present is that they kick out the neoliberals and at least give the left parties a chance. Your attacks, while to a degree, theoretically valid perhaps, seem aimed at undermining even that faint hope of change, rather than fostering it.

Ok we've had your revolutionary critique of every single party on the left.
So where's your direct scathing critique of our real class enemies, FF/FG/LAB who are currently in power and imposing a very real neoliberal agenda on the Irish people. What have you to say about them Paddy?? Or are you just going to let them off scott free as usual, while continuing to undermine the left?

by Asconi Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:12

Seems pretty well studied in left theory Fred maybe a former lefty with a chip on the shoulder name rhymes with 'Cohen Farris'?.

by Paddy Hackett Thu Oct 09, 2014 13:11

Fred you miss the entire point of my piece. The theme of my piece is that there is essentially no political difference between the mainstream parties and SF,SP and the SWP. Consequently it makes no essential difference as to which party is voted for. They all fit well within the same bourgeois paradigm. Given this it is these so called Left parties that want to maintain what you call the status quo. It is I that seeks a break from the status quo by advocating a communist platform. These Left parties merely seek to expand the capitalist state further than do the mainstream parties. Enlarging the capitalist state is not the way to abolish capitalism. Surely the point is to smash the capitalist state not enlarge it.

Your piece is very superficial and fails to even attempt to subject to examination the substance of my piece. You dont endeavour to show how my argument is flawed. Such an exercise would perhaps have made your piece interesting. As to your suspicions about me. That is neither here nor there especially coming from a source not prepared to even use a real name.

One of the reasons why the working class "are a long way off from true revolutionary consciousness" is because of the influence of these capitalist parties including the SP and SWP on the working class.

Stalin was viewed as a socialist yet he was responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of people.Trotsky was responsible for the slaughter of the heroic Kronstadt sailors. Lenin engaged in a programme, a la Robespierre, against figures to his Right and Left. And then there was Mao and the enormous number of deaths he was responsible for.

"...but yet your specific attacks seem to be levelled at the only left leaning alternative candidates.."

Withe regard to the above: Bernstein, the father of revisionism, was subjected to scathing and continuous criticism by the "principled" Marxists as was Economism by Lenin and others. Even the SP and the SWP dont see eye to eye which is why they compete with each other even to the advantage of the mainstream parties. This is partly because both parties cannot resist the smell of the gravy train.

Incidentally I am not a former Leftie. I am a communist. Whether I have "a chip on the shoulder" is irrelevant. The strength of my argument is what matters.

by fred Thu Oct 09, 2014 19:27

Fred, you miss the entire point of my piece. The theme of my piece is that there is essentially no political difference between the mainstream parties and SF,SP and the SWP. Consequently it makes no essential difference as to which party is voted for. They all fit well within the same bourgeois paradigm. Given this it is these so called Left parties that want to maintain what you call the status quo. It is I that seeks a break from the status quo by advocating a communist platform. These Left parties merely seek to expand the capitalist state further than do the mainstream parties. Enlarging the capitalist state is not the way to abolish capitalism. Surely the point is to smash the capitalist state not enlarge it.

I don't miss the point. I just think the population are not ready for revolution. Thats just an impractical fantasy at present. They're not even ready to vote for a slightly centre left leaning party over a rabid right wing neoliberal one. What hope is there of people taking to the streets in an act of revolution when you can't even get them to give up shopping for an hour to protest against water charges?

Yeah sure, I agree, we need to replace the ugly edifice of capitalism with something saner. But first you need to build a revolutionary consciousness in the population at large. Revolution is unlikely to happen without it.

And you won't build that with FG/FF/Lab controlling the message from a position of power. Your message merely serves to undermine an already fractured and weak left, thus leaving the way open for a further term of neoliberal governance and a consolidation of their power and dominance of their message, and the even greater resignation of the population to the notion that there is no credible alternative. Seems a rather counter productive approach for a revolutionary no? Unless of course your real purpose is to maintain the status quo.

Your piece is very superficial and fails to even attempt to subject to examination the substance of my piece. You dont endeavour to show how my argument is flawed. Such an exercise would perhaps have made your piece interesting. As to your suspicions about me. That is neither here nor there especially coming from a source not prepared to even use a real name.

Your argument has some "theoretical merit" as I acknowledged in my post, but it completely falls down on the basis that it does not allow for current conditions on the ground. Expecting a communist revolution to just arise from an ever dumbed down consumerist population whose minds have been colonised for years by TV and who are daily immersed in a systematic bath of lies and propaganda from a captive media is just insane optimism.

Your argument is old fashioned and flawed because for example, it does not allow for the rapid advance of various technologies controlled largely by elites and their corporate partners and the consolidation of media into fewer and fewer hands and the use of financial terrorism to control governments and states and the current set of circumstances that have evolved on the ground as a result of this. Also, whatever tiny hope there might be of such a "fantasy" revolution occurring in Ireland, if it did occur, it would likely fail if other EU countries did not rise up at the same time.

I think if, in the days when marxist revolutionary texts were being written, they had realised how all pervasive the influences of television, internet and media and the control of these by an ever smaller number of entities would be, and how powerful financial institutions would become, and the insidious nature of globalisation, then the tactics for building a revolution might have had to be amended somewhat.

The left are still trying to adjust to these new realities on the ground.

Yes yes ideally we should all just rise up and destroy the edifice of rapacious capitalism and replace it with something that better serves the longer term needs of human beings, other earthlings and the environment sustainably and fairly. But the majority of people have to see the current system for what it is first. Then they need to decide whether they prefer having mobile phones and skinny lattes and looking at the womb of miley Cyrus' on tv, or living in a cramped smelly but ecologically friendly eco commune with nothing but a guitar and a campfire in the evening, after a long backbreaking day weeding in the vegetable fields. It's truly a hard sell if you can't see the long term bigger picture and have continuously absorbed from birth a barrage of "every rat for himself" "there is no such thing as society" "look at all the shiny things" "being famous is everything" memes continually pumped into you 24/7 from all media sources.

One of the reasons why the working class "are a long way off from true revolutionary consciousness" is because of the influence of these capitalist parties including the SP and SWP on the working class.

But another, perhaps more important one is that FG / FF / Lab are in power largely controlling the message in the media. And if the tiny voting percentage gained by SP / SWP is any indication of their influence on the working class then your thesis falls on its ass right there :-)

Stalin was viewed as a socialist yet he was responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of people.Trotsky was responsible for the slaughter of the heroic Kronstadt sailors. Lenin engaged in a programme, a la Robespierre, against figures to his Right and Left. And then there was Mao and the enormous number of deaths he was responsible for.

ah here, if you have to wheel out the likes of insane authoritarians like Stalin and mao to justify why you attack a rather powerless and fractured irish left while leaving the true mainstream neoliberal enemies of the working class (who are in lockstep) completely unmolested, then you have lost the argument.

And If we are comparing deaths, please do at least give a passing mention the countless millions of lives lost to imperial wars, 26 million russian deaths fighting fascism, the carpet bombing of north korea killing 25% of the population, the unnecessary use of atomic weapons on hiroshima and nagasaki, etc etc. right up to the wars in libya, afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq today.

"...but yet your specific attacks seem to be levelled at the only left leaning alternative candidates.."

Withe regard to the above: Bernstein, the father of revisionism, was subjected to scathing and continuous criticism by the "principled" Marxists as was Economism by Lenin and others. Even the SP and the SWP dont see eye to eye which is why they compete with each other even to the advantage of the mainstream parties. This is partly because both parties cannot resist the smell of the gravy train.

I agree that the stupid infighting on the left has only served the interests of mainstream parties. And no doubt a certain amount of this has been deliberately fomented by provocateurs.
However in light of the complete absence of a revolutionary consciousness in the population at large, I see little alternative but to work with the current lot to try and gradually introduce more left leaning ideas into public consciousness with a view to building up that revolutionary consciousness needed to truly reject capitalism

Incidentally I am not a former Leftie. I am a communist. Whether I have "a chip on the shoulder" is irrelevant. The strength of my argument is what matters.

Well regarding communism, I have heard good things about it, but sadly it's never really been properly tried. It always seems to get hijacked by authoritarians at the last minute. I do hope we get to see a genuine example of it in action some day. Meanwhile lets keep chipping away at the rotten edifice of capitalism and building that revolutionary consciousness one step at a time, taking the practical realities on the ground into account. Not undermining what little there is of a resistance to right wing neoliberal ideology in what is a very brainwashed and propagandised society.

by Paddy Hackett Fri Oct 10, 2014 22:48

A revolutionary consciousness cannnot be built by advocating utopian solutions within the framework of capitalism. The reason I focus on the Left in my criticism is because it contains elements that are nearer, so to speak, in consciousness to the grass roots membership of the mainstream parties. There is then generally a greater chance of winning elements from this pool towards communism. There is much less chance of winning FF,FG,Labour and SF elements over to communism. However that does not mean that I never criticise the foregoing.

Revolutionary politics is about the truth. These so called left groups are misleading the public. Creating and perpetuating illusions cannot create a revolutionary consciousness. Consequently principled revolutionaries are obliged to expose these illusions and the left organisations that are their source. They are presenting themselves as anti-capitalist when in fact they are not.This is an illusion that must be scuppered if the working class is to transform itself into a revolutionary movement. In making a modest contribution to exposing illusions, within the Left in capitalism I am assisting the struggle for communism. Admittedly communism is a condition that can take many years to achieve. But there are no short cuts.Lenin and Trotsky sought one and we see what happened.

If I am underming the Left, as you claim, then this is because its solutions to the poroblems of the working class are inherently flawed. You cannot turn the consciousness of the masses by deceiving them as the Left has
been doing. If the Left's existence is based on a utopian illusion then it is open to being undermined. Anyway I am not trying to undermine the Left. I am seeking to transform the Left into a revolutionary communist movement. In a sense I am attempting to strengthen it. It is the existing Left leadership that is weakening it by the illusions it attempts to inculcate into its rank and file.This Left have politically destroyed many enthuasistic young people who have blindly followed it. Consequently the turnover within these organisations has been quite high. It is not the popular base of the Left that I attack. They are the victims of this Left. It is its leadership that I challenge.

I never suggested that communism can leap fully armed out of the head of Zeus. Because communism is so extremely radical the realisation of it is enormously challenging. But if, instead, illusions in capitalism are implanted in popular consciousness then the liklihood of its realisation is even less. Remember it was the misleadership of of much of the German Left that played an enormous role in the coming to power of Hitler. Again much of this Left based itself on illusion too. The role of much of the Left in 1968 in France led to a missed opportunity for developing the class struggle. The defeat of the working class in the 1926 British General Strike was due to the politics of large sections of the Left. The role of the Left in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement was partly responsible to the emergence of reactionary forces such as the Provos and the UDA. Just because a Left establishes itself in a country does not necessarily lead to real progress. In fact it can lead to a reversal.This is just what happened in Allende's Chile.

If what you say is true then your claim defends my argument. The (bourgeois) Left cannot implement its plans to reform capitalism because of "the control of government and states". This is an argument for attempting to initiate a communist movement. I already said in at least one of my pieces addressed to you that communism cannot be national. It must have an international character. But neither can the reforming of capitalism by the bourgeois Left be established on a narrow nationalist basis in the 26 counties. Yet ironically this Left suggest this. Its encirclement by imperialism would lead to the strangulation of a reformist Irish capitalism.

But the bourgeois Left, the SP and SWP etc., are prepared to propose the reforming of an Irish capitalism while the culture that you describe would persist under reformed capitalism -- I assume, for argument's sake, that your anecdotal description is correct.

I never claimed the Left's influence was enormous. Despite this it does exercise influence, however modest, over the working class. But Stalin and Mao originally formed part of a "weak" Left. I cannot agree that the Irish Left is powerless. It has some power.

Hope this hasty reply clarifies your understanding of my politics.

by info Sat Oct 11, 2014 22:40

Paul Murphy (Socialist Party) running under the Anti-Austerity Alliance and who failed to get back his seat in the Euro elections earlier this year has won a the seat in the Dublin-West by election. He beat the favourite Cathal King of Sinn Fein by 566 votes

by Paddy Hackett Sun Oct 12, 2014 10:29

To Info

Thanks for the info info.