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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 3 2 1The 'venal working class' phrase of the poster to me seems to imply that the Irish working class doesn't deserve the leadership of dedicated left groups. But has it ever occurred to you that the working class doesn't really want the revolutionary leaders? What is the working class anyway? Western European societies have moved on since the grim days of the 19th century industrial revolution. Unskilled work itself has changed a lot since then because of technological innovation. Mass education up to the age of 16+ has made socially disadvantaged people less prone to the rallying power of political sloganeering. The Bolshevicks in 1917 could promise Bread, Land and Peace to illiterate starving peasants, urban workers and disgruntled soldiers returning from the slaughterfields of the Great War and the masses followed Lenin, Trotsky and Co. to a desired better future. That scenario cannot exist in this second decade of the 21st century.
Who are today's working class? Is it the low-paid staff in fastfood eating places? Is it unemployed and underemployed graduates? Is it the staff in chain supermarkets? I don't deny that classes exist, that disparities in income and upward mobility ability exist. I just think that sociological developments have made human segments more complicated than they were in 1917. People's sources of cultural stimulation (or cultural sedation in the case of much television viewing) and their sources of news have widened as a result of the internet. Revolutionary vanguard groups compete for attention in a world of diverse distraction and cultural triviality. So many people on low incomes and in jobs with limited career prospects don't exhibit a proletarian consciousness in the marxian sense, and they are not following any political ideology in particular.
Just how do you imagine you will change the “venal nature of the Irish working class”? Your purity is beyond reproach but any revolutionary can only work with the tools available. Consumerism and sport have replaced religion as the opiate of the masses but you can’t just wish it away.
Your criticism of the anti-water campaign because it is not a revolutionary demand is ridiculous. Next you will be saying the working class don’t need trade unions to ameliorate their material well-being because they are not demands that will fundamentally alter society.
Even Lenin used capitalism in the New Economic Policy when the situation demanded it. Further Lenin rails in Left Wing Communism; An Infantile Disorder about the absolutist ‘no compromises’ position when material conditions demand it. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is a perfect example of this.
so to summarise:
sinn fein = BAD
water protests = BAD
so lets leave the other parties in government and keep our heads down and pay our taxes like good little citizens and don't engage in any bourgeois protests or support any half measures like SF or PBP while we await the purist communist revolution from nowhere that will suddenly arrive one day to save us all from neoliberals and capitalism.
Some revolutionary you are Paddy. In your articles you seem to always be concentrating on SF and any other non status quo party, such as PBP which manages to get a little traction against the status quo parties and the stranglehold neoliberalism has over Irish politics and media. You also seem to attack any protest that gets sufficient traction amongst a significant number of the Irish people to become effective in any way, such as the recent water protesst. Curious behaviour for a revolutionary leftie.
If I was in FG headquarters, I'd give you a job tomorrow writing divisive articles like this and others which you have penned. You're doing a great job undermining these alternatives. Keep it up and we'll have another 5 years of neoliberal plunder while we await the revolution fairy!