The CPI and the Dublin riots
First, there was a statement from the National Executive Committee (NEC) that outlined the underlying causes of both the problems and the responses to those problems. There is nothing wrong with the analysis of the causes of the problems but it gets quite problematic when it comes to the responses.
Everyone is to blame, but the trade union movement gets a distinction in the blame game when it comes to what the responses should be: “In previous generations in many working-class communities, trade unions and their activists would have been central to self-organising and building support networks within and between working class communities. As the trade union movement has been increasingly assimilated by the state and has abandoned any concept of class analysis and working-class interests, its political and organisational influence has declined. This is reflected within working class communities, leaving them open to the siren calls of the far-right. Decades of neglect by the state has resulted in many working-class communities being exploited and dominated by criminal gangs.” And, “We call upon the trade union movement to lead a community base and lead opposition to both racism and this government’s economic and social policies.”
Read that again but substitute the name Communist Party of Ireland for the trade union movement and we start to get an idea of how little self-awareness the CPI has. It has so little self-awareness that it does not even regard itself as part of the process and the best it can do is blame everybody and everything else.
That statement is followed up by two articles in Socialist Voice: one deals with the word “alienation” in a rambling fashion that adds nothing to the understanding of the issues but, naturally, contains a ‘Marxist analysis’.
The other article is a bit more down to earth though still riddled with the usual platitudes about the wonderful contributions made by migrants. Still, it does make a concession: “It is on this point that the left have ceded ground to a right wing, racist narrative, which targets people of colour, whether refugees or asylum seekers, migrant workers or Irish-born, deliberately ignoring that migrants make a great contribution to Irish society, just as Irish emigrants have made in other countries.”
The article then goes on to call for an honest debate: “Migration is a complex issue which needs mature and honest debate on how Ireland can and should deal with people entering the country, with all stakeholders, not least the communities with which they would reside.”
So, lets have an honest debate. The truth is that the CPI has failed to make as much as a dent in the formation of any thinking that would assist people to respond to issues like migration. It is not just that it has lost the argument – it didn’t even manage to put up an argument. A major reason that the right and the ultra-right have made such progress is because the left – including the CPI – have nothing to say that really addresses the issues that people grapple with every day.
Long, rambling articles about alienation, nicely wrapped in alleged Marxist analysis or platitudes about the contributions made by immigrants just aren’t good enough. And, while the articles in Socialist Voice attempt to cover up the massive deficiencies in the NEC statement, the fact remains that the NEC statement is still the official position of the Party.
These statements and articles are published as if the CPI has no role in the process and the fact is that it doesn’t. Blaming everybody and everything for the causes, the effects and the responses simply exposes the reality that the CPI has added nothing to the debate and has made itself irrelevant. It will stay irrelevant for as long as it fails to take responsibility for its share of the outcome – the government, the media and the right-wing have run away with the ball. It will stay irrelevant for failing to develop any strategy to prevent that from happening and the various statements and articles Socialist Voice and on the Party website predict a future no different from the past.
There is nothing new about this state of affairs. The CPI bought into the Covid debacle with hardly a word to say, terrified of agreeing with anything that smacked of a moderate or right-wing position no matter how sensible that position may have been. Anyone questioning any aspect of the handling of the debacle was forced to turn to the right to have their questions even heard. Turning to the left – and to the CPI in particular – was simply not an option. Then, they scratch their heads wondering how the right-wing gained such traction!
Much the same is happening around the broad migration issues. While able to correctly identify certain causes, the response is shockingly poor. The Party is riddled with delicate petals who cannot wait to be profoundly offended by whatever is the latest or enduring absurdity. And, the leadership – similarily infected – is terrified of the rest of the delicate petals. The result is permanently terrified ‘revolutionaries’ utterly paralysed by their own constraints.
One measure of that fear and paralysis is that the CPI has failed to answer a single criticism levelled against in in the pages of Guerrilla Communists. Not a word to defend itself or to counter any or all of the serious charges against it. These are the ‘comrades’ who would preach that the workers have nothing to lose but their chains and that they should get on with freeing themselves – led, of course, by the valiant CPI.
At least, the chains on the workers are not self-imposed. The same cannot be said of the chains strangling the CPI.
Meanwhile, if only the trade union movement had………