First published at Rupture.
A far-right administration rules in the most powerful capitalist country in the world. Trump’s assistance is a key factor in electoral victories for the far-right in Latin America — with Peru and Colombia this year joining Argentina and Chile. In Europe, the far-right is in government in Italy, the Netherlands, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while almost one in four voters support the far-right in opinion polls. The far-right Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, emerged to national prominence as a result of murderous pogroms he supported as governor of Gujarat.
These pogroms are now in our own country. The political pendulum has swung so far to the right that establishment parties have raided the wardrobes of the far-right when it comes to rhetoric and policies on migration, climate and oppression.
But millions of people worldwide are also being radicalised to the left as capitalism bares its ugly teeth. A backlash to the backlash is underway, particularly strongly amongst women and young people.
The Democratic Socialists of America, in the belly of the imperialist beast, has grown to over 120,000 members and scored impressive electoral victories. 800,000 expressed interest in Your Party in Britain before the opportunity was squandered. Die Linke in Germany has been partially renewed on the basis of a strong opposition to the far-right. Catherine Connolly won the Presidential election on a clear left programme with massive majorities amongst women and young people.
Each of these developments has their political weaknesses and limitations, but they nonetheless illustrate the growing space for socialist ideas and organisation.
But Marxist forces are largely in disarray. Splits, rather than fusions, have been the order of the day across most of the revolutionary left. Many Marxists, disillusioned with sect life, have abandoned the project of building distinctly revolutionary groups in favour of broad work. Other trends have retreated to recruiting self-identifying communists and educating them in study groups with precious little relation to the existing class struggle.
This article makes the case for Marxists to be organised as Marxists, even while working constructively within broader formations. It also argues for a regroupment process among revolutionaries on the key questions of today.
These arguments are informed by the work of RISE within People Before Profit (PBP) in Ireland. However, we hope revolutionaries operating in Europe and internationally will find the analysis and strategy outlined helpful.
The case for Marxist organisation
There is a limited amount of time available to any committed socialist. Why should any of it be devoted to building an organisation of Marxists, as opposed to work in broad left parties, trade unions or social movements? Why sit at branch meetings and conferences discussing the lessons of the Russian Revolution, the applicability of the united front today, or developing an analysis of social reproductive labour? Why not just be a good activist?
In short, because all the experience of history suggests that unless we develop a mass organisation made up of critical thinking Marxist cadre rooted in the working class, we will not be able to seize the opportunities posed by a revolutionary moment. Much of that history is evidence in the negative, occasions where the working class and oppressed struggled heroically but were betrayed or failed by reformist leaders — France ‘68, Chile ‘73, Greece 2024. The outstanding positive example, of course, is the Russian revolution of 1917.
This is because of the centralised and powerful nature of the capitalist state, combined with the heterogenous character of working class consciousness and activity. It will take a mass revolutionary party rooted in every community and workplace, to make the right strategic and tactical decisions that can lead the working class to power.
But, as Barry Conlon points out:
... once we accept that a mass revolutionary party is a desirable goal, it is assumed that organising as such a party in miniature is the appropriate immediate task. This does not in fact follow. In practice, when an activist group of dozens or hundreds organises itself as a miniature scale model of a mass party, what tends to result is a kind of parody.
It is disorienting to start thinking of your small organisation as a temporarily embarrassed mass party, or even as the embryo of a mass party. It leads to a tendency to place too much importance on the organisational advancement of your activist group. It is a classic sectarian mistake.
So building towards this necessary party cannot be done simply by proclaiming a revolutionary party, studying the classics of Marxism and pronouncing that the answer to any problem is building this party. In the words of Rosa Luxemburg, it can only be done “by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight”.
Working class consciousness and organisation, as well as revolutionary organisation, have all been pushed back. One of the founding principles of RISE is to understand that a dual task is posed to revolutionaries today — to help rebuild the broader workers’ movement as well as a distinct Marxist force. The majority of RISE members’ time and energy is not spent on developing RISE, but rather on building People Before Profit as well as the social movements, tenants’ unions, and trade unions our members are involved in. But we maintain that Marxists meeting, organising, and democratically debating and deciding is essential.
We need to take seriously the reorganisation of the working class movement. Organising workers, organising tenants, organising communities and social movements, but also organising as Marxists to help train new Marxists and spread Marxist ideas. Therefore, just like we need to invest time in organising in the unions, tenants union, united fronts and mass parties, we also need to invest time in building revolutionary organisations, which can do that work. Why?
Firstly, the bedrock of any future mass revolutionary organisation is large numbers of revolutionary cadre. In other words, people who have an understanding of Marxist analysis, can independently analyse the world and use that to organise people into campaigns and movements and win people to socialist ideas. While revolutionary parties can recruit on a mass scale in a revolutionary period, cadres have to be politically and organisationally steeled in advance.
Becoming a cadre fundamentally requires two things — experience in class struggle and Marxist education — in other words, assimilating the accumulated lessons of the workers’ movement and learning to apply them. This political development is very difficult to achieve outside of a collective space of reflection and debate. It is only by engaging with other Marxists that we sharpen our own analysis and deepen our understanding.
Secondly, being organised in a Marxist current within a broader project allows us to make better decisions about what Marxists and our broader project should say and do. It is a real strength of People Before Profit that it is engaged in the day-to-day cut and thrust of politics and that it works to build and deepen working class roots.
But in a non-revolutionary moment, that undoubtedly creates a pressure to the right - to say (or not say) something because of its potential unpopularity among sections of our base today. Being able to have a real open discussion amongst other Marxists who share the same basic understanding of the world can, as Conlon argues: “help act as a counterpressure, helping socialists to keep our longer-term objectives in mind, and place our day-to-day activism in a strategic framework.”
Being organised as Marxists enables us to try to represent “the interests of the movement as a whole”, as The Communist Manifesto puts it. In other words, to rise above sectional or immediate interests and pressures. A Marxist organisation enables us to collectively recognise opportunist pressures that arise from our roots in particular geographic areas, or among particular parts of the working class.
A Marxist worldview also enables socialists to commit and recommit to the marathon struggle of overthrowing capitalism, through the ups and downs of waves of struggle and movements, with a perspective rooted in the potential power of the working class and the possibility of revolution.
The counter to these arguments would be that Marxists will best develop by functioning independently within a broader ecosocialist party like People Before Profit and that they should have their debates within the framework of PBP, not in separate networks.
Certainly, Marxists should openly put their views within PBP, and the norm should be for Marxists not to be bound by any network discipline within a broader party and therefore to be free to argue against the members of their own network. And certainly too, engaging in broader work, including in a broader party like PBP, is a key part of political development.
But without collective organisation, without a Marxist publication, without a space where the starting point is Marxism, the outcome will be less sharp. The process will be less developmental. Over time, without the check of collective discussion, the tendency will be to slide into centrism or reformism.
The case for regroupment
I am not making the case for all self-proclaimed Marxists to come together in one organisation. Putting Marxists with agreement on the most basic generalities, but diametrically opposed understandings of the state of the world and strategies for changing it, would produce an organisation less than the sum of its parts. We want to change the world - and for that we have to act on it.
Forming an organisation of Marxists who disagree on ecosocialism, on socialist feminism or on mass politics would not be a step forward. It would likely paralyse us in debate after debate, leaving little time for actually acting on the world and then reflecting on the experience and sharpening our analysis in turn. Or it could become an irrelevancy because each trend within it might instead just implement their own strategy, undermining the potential benefit of being in a joint group.
For a Marxist group to be effective in developing cadre and in developing programme, strategies and tactics to intervene in wider movements, it must have a shared basic analysis and understanding of the tasks flowing from that. There should, nonetheless, be space for individuals or networks within PBP who disagree on these issues. Within a broader party like PBP, such debates are inevitable and, if handled fraternally, can be constructive and developmental.
The problem is not that the revolutionary left is divided. It’s that the current division is based on historic disagreements and the evolution of different political cultures, rather than the key programmatic and strategic questions for today.
The different trends of revolutionary Marxism in Europe today have their origins in important disagreements dating back many decades. Issues like the character of the Soviet Union, the Chinese revolution, Yugoslavia, guerillaism, and whether or not to work within social democratic parties had meaningful implications for their work. Although in some cases, the internal debates were exacerbated by unhealthy internal regimes, often the political issues justified organisational separation. Having one part of an organisation consider that the Soviet Union was state capitalist and the raging Korean War was an inter-imperialist conflict, while another part defended the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state and opposed US imperialism in Korea would have presented significant challenges to effective functioning at the time.
With organisations on separate tracks, developing separate political cultures and analyses, often trained on distrust and criticism of each other, these splits persisted and deepened. New generations of socialists were recruited, often because they were the first or most energetic organisation they met, and then educated in a comprehensive world view without much exposure to the views of other parts of this revolutionary tradition.
Similar real world questions have been posed to each separate organisation: how to respond to the feminist movement, how to relate to broad left parties; how best to integrate the ecological crisis into Marxism? Many Marxist organisations were also confronted with darker issues of abuse and safeguarding and the problems posed by internal power imbalances. However, these debates on these important questions took place internally and separately, often at huge expense to those who pioneered the way (women, queer people), leaving those with similar instincts and approaches separated by organisational walls and decades of distrust.
Ten core ideas as basis for regroupment
This is therefore an argument for Marxists to regroup on the basis of the main programmatic and strategic questions for the current period as well as a common conception of how a revolutionary group should function. Below are ten core areas to consider.
To go beyond generalities and truisms, these are concrete proposals that arise from the perspective of building a revolutionary group in Ireland. Hopefully the underlying method is still useful for Marxists operating in different contexts.
I also ask readers to focus on the content of the ideas presented, rather than the exact formulae used. In many cases, different trends have adopted different languages to express similar ideas. It is the content, rather than the form, which is essential.
1. The working class as the force to change the world
The working class has the power to change society. Ten years ago, at the height of the water charges struggle, most activists could see the potential for the working class to be a revolutionary agent. This is much less obvious to those who have been drawn to socialist politics in recent years, when the working class’ heterogeneity is in sharp relief and is largely inactive and disorganised.
Winning a new generation of socialists to an active orientation to the working class in both communities and workplaces is an essential task for Marxists. The weakness of the trade union movement in general, and of socialists within the movement, is obvious. This won’t be primarily addressed by declarations or activities from outside of the movement. Instead, it needs a consistent approach to encourage members to become active in their unions and to work as conscious socialists to rebuild them into fighting organisations.
2. Revolutionary socialists doing mass politics
Revolutionary socialists should not be satisfied existing in small circles on the fringes of social movements. It is possible, and necessary, to do mass politics in a principled way. To speak to and attempt to organise large numbers of working class people, while putting forward Marxist ideas and building a Marxist organisation.
A mass orientation in Ireland has meant taking elections seriously, without thinking that elections are how fundamental change will be won. It has also meant popular agitation and advocacy for a left government. Done in a principled way, this can creatively apply the traditional workers’ government slogan and popularise the necessity of ecosocialist rupture.
3. Organising rather than tailing
The limitations of a ‘mobilising’ approach have been put in stark relief by the retreat in working class activity. When there was an upsurge of working class struggle like around the water charges, this weakness was partly covered up. Even then though, a lot more than that was necessary to build rooted local campaigns, promoting the boycott and blocking water meters, and developing activists as organisers and winning them to left wing ideas.
If we want to effectively build roots in working class communities or workplaces, an organising approach is necessary. That means a consistent and strategic approach to party building, rather than freneticism. This does not displace or diminish the centrality of politics. Rather it supplements it and enables us to act more effectively on it.
4. Connecting to the socialist horizon
The temptation for an organisation genuinely involved in day to day struggles at a moment of low class consciousness and confidence is to reduce ourselves into being good left reformists in practice. To rarely if ever raise the necessity of fundamental socialist change.
We have a duty to intervene in day to day struggles while consciously trying to link them to the need for a socialist revolution. A written programme, while not a vaccine against reformism, can ensure that our positions are decided openly and democratically, rather than cobbled together on the fly by paid organisers or elected representatives, where opportunist pressures can be the strongest. Together with appropriate transitional demands this can help provide guidance and educate our activists.
5. Ecosocialism as more than a slogan
A thoroughgoing ecosocialism requires a rejection of equating the development of the productive forces with producing more goods and services and using more energy and raw materials. We need to place an understanding of the ecological crisis at the centre of what we are doing. We are not just eco-socialists when we are campaigning about the environment and socialists the rest of the time. We are ecosocialists when we are trade unionists, cost of living and housing activists.
Programmatically, it means advocating for a good life for every person on the planet, within the planetary boundaries. That does not mean a superabundance of material private goods. Instead, we want high-quality public goods, the decommodification of the commons and all aspects of life, and the healing of the rift between humanity and nature.
6. Socialist feminism and consistent opposition to oppression
Too many Marxists reacted with anxiety to the emergence of a new wave of radicalisation of women, LGBTQ and anti-racist struggles. Class reductionists portray various oppressions as simply a “divide and rule” tactic of the ruling class. But gender, race and LGBTQ oppression and discrimination are persistent ideological structures that can’t be reduced to conscious machinations of the capitalist class. From the very beginnings of capitalism, race was the primary “rationalization for the domination, exploitation, and/or extermination of non-’Europeans’.” Colonisation, imperialism and the slave trade were central building blocks of this emerging economic system — not secondary features.
Both gender and LGBTQ oppression have their roots in the defence of rigid, sexist gender roles. These roles, like racism, are functional for capitalism. They generate unpaid and undervalued socially reproductive labour, overwhelmingly done by women. Marxists should foreground unconditional opposition to oppression and consciously seek to create space for oppressed groups to organise, within both PBP and in Marxist networks.
7. Anti-imperialism of socialists
The brutal horror of imperialism has been exposed to millions of people over the past three years of genocide in Palestine. It has resulted in the only sustained mass movement in the recent period. Many are asking how imperialism can be defeated. Marxists have a unique answer.
The bottom line conclusion is that we unconditionally back those who are resisting imperialism, but without prettifying those forces, or hiding our political or strategic differences with them. As I argued in an analysis of the inter-imperialist war over Ukraine:
We are not just activists who seek to be on the ‘right side’ of conflicts – we are socialists who are seeking to end all wars through global socialist revolution. For that, the independence of the working class, with an emphasis on working class power and a socialist position, is essential.
8. The Connolly tradition
Just as we oppose imperialism abroad without tailing nationalism or losing our independent working class position, we must oppose British imperialism in the North while seeking to build a socialist working class movement. We campaign for an end to partition within the Connolly tradition of fighting, not to unify two reactionary states, but to found a new 32-county socialist Ireland.
Avoiding or “both-sidesing” sectarian discrimination as sections of the revolutionary left in Ireland historically did, is not a recipe to unify the working class. It can only paper over differences temporarily, only for these to be used later to divide. Just as the working class can only be unified on the basis of a struggle against racism, queerphobia and sexism, a powerful working class movement in Ireland can only be built on the basis of an uncompromising class stand against British imperialism and sectarianism.
9. A vibrant and democratic internal life
A revolutionary organisation must have a thoroughly democratic internal life if it is to develop a critical-thinking cadre and arrive at useful strategic and tactical conclusions. This is not just a formal question of conferences, an absence of leadership-selected slates, votes and faction rights - although that is all vital. It is, above all, a cultural approach that normalises the expression of different opinions and encourages these to be openly and politically discussed rather than finding half expression in personal or localist groupings.
As Trotsky puts it, the “level of a revolutionary organization rises all the faster, the more immediately it is brought into the discussion of all questions, the less the leaders try to think, act and behave as guardians for the organization.”
10. PBP as a broad ecosocialist and pluralist party
The road to a mass revolutionary party is not a straight line. Given the crises of consciousness and organisation, it likely leads through the building of broader organisations, which are part of the redevelopment of consciousness and organisation within the working class as a whole, and within which revolutionary forces can grow and be steeled. People Before Profit is a part of that road.
For the next period PBP should be a party where branch meetings are primarily based on issues arising from day to day struggles in Ireland and internationally, rather than being too heavy on Marxist history and theory. It should be a space where revolutionaries fraternally challenge the reformist ideas that are inevitably present. It means the battle for a consistently ecosocialist approach is never going to be finished, but will constantly present itself with every new issue and every new opportunist pressure.
Conclusion
Trotsky in My Life writes about travelling to Zimmerwald for the gathering of socialists opposed to World War I:
The organization of the conference was in the hands of the Berne socialist leader, Grimm, who was then trying his utmost to raise himself above the philistine level of his party, which was also his own inherent level. He had arranged to hold the meeting in a little village called Zimmerwald, high in the mountains and about ten kilometres distant from Berne. The delegates, filling four stage-coaches, set off for the mountains. The passers-by looked on curiously at the strange procession. The delegates themselves joked about the fact that half a century after the founding of the first International, it was still possible to seat all the internationalists in four coaches. But they were not sceptical. The thread of history often breaks then a new knot must be tied. And that is what we were doing in Zimmerwald.
The open betrayal of the Second International and complicity in the horrific slaughter of World War I underlined the necessity of a new organisation. Despite being dominated by moderates like Grimm, who opposed a clear break with the Second International, Zimmerwald marked a step forward. The morning after the close of the conference, the left caucused with eight out of 38 delegates. This Zimmerwald Left was effectively the embryo of what was to become the Third International.
We have neither the mass organisations of the Second International, nor the dramatic betrayal of 1914. But we do have the possibility of regroupment based on common work and shared analysis. The precondition for this is the creation of spaces for a process of political clarification. To engage with each other in a way that gets at the real issues and establishes agreement and disagreement. This can lay the basis for a qualitative leap forward in the construction of revolutionary forces, which can in turn act as a magnet for those looking for radical change.
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