The party that calls itself the Communist Party of Ireland
It cannot be denied that within the ranks of the CPI there are genuine communists striving to pave the way to a socialist society. However, the overall state of the party prevents any progress in this endeavour. What is the overall state of the Party?
Small in numbers with a stagnant or declining membership, short of any effective leadership and marginalised, the Party is in a self-imposed political limbo. The problem facing any group of people that will not tolerate critical thinking within its ranks is that it cannot face critical thinking outside its ranks either. In fact, the party leadership has survived while the state of the party itself has gone from bad to worse.
Both the party itself and its organisational abilities are in an abysmal state. Completely devoid of any plans or strategies either for the development of the party or the development of its policies, it rests on the laurels of some imagined former glories and an unshakeable self-belief. In fact, the leadership operates in a permanent delusional state. And, what accounts for the paranoid-like fear displayed by the leadership of any initiative they have not initiated themselves?
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King Jr
No matter what the reality, the CPI believes itself to be the foremost leader of the working class ready to lead the workers to the inevitable socialist revolution. Of course, this is rubbish and there is nothing inevitable about a socialist revolution either.
Again, there is no doubt that the party has many, many good policies and also has occasional analysis that cannot be matched anywhere else on the left. However, the only backup to those positives is to lecture everyone else on what is to be done, what should be done, what needs to be done etc, etc without ever laying a single paving stone to achieving any of those goals.
Apart from articles in Socialist Voice and the various pamphlets and online publications, the party does not challenge anyone or any entity directly. Its idea of political activity is lending its insignificant weight to the campaigns of other organisations.
Questions over a period of two years to the party leadership asking for information on what person or what entity in any area of political, economic or social activity was directly challenged by the CPI remain unanswered.
Similarly, over the same period, questions to the leadership to inform members of party plans and strategies on any issue remain unanswered.
“A person reaches his highest level of ignorance when he repudiates something of which he knows nothing”
Of course, the answer to the questions is that the party does not challenge anybody or any entity directly and furthermore it does not have plans or strategies in place to further the development of the party itself or the development of its policies.
It may appear treacherous to bring this out on the open but what good has it done the political development of socialism in Ireland for it to be hidden behind polite discourse? Who has benefited from the inability of the party leadership to make any political progress? Or, any organisational progress? Or, who has benefited from the unrelenting waves of expulsions and marginalisation?
Who has benefitted from the constant war within the party against any member who even wants to have a discussion about this? Oh yes, discuss Marx and Lenin all day and all night but, discuss why the party is in continuous doldrums and you are a communist heretic. In the wrong party. Disruptive.
Of course, a communist party is nothing different from any other party without its ideology. However, a balance must be struck between the importance placed on ideology and the importance placed on organisation and presentation and agitation in its various forms.
The CPI is like a dog in the manger – it has no need of the hay but it will not let anyone or anything else near it. The CPI had a monopoly on communist organisation and it knew it.
So, when the leadership – by whatever means – banished communists to the wilderness, where were they supposed to go? There was no ‘communist’ alternative to migrate to. Such excommunicated communists could go away to operate on the margins, migrate to the ranks of social democratic parties, to nominally left-wing parties or give up the ghost altogether. When the Party banished members, that is the sentence it imposed on them.
The result is that communists were lost – forcibly lost – to the struggle.
The leadership of the Party did this in the full knowledge of the consequences. Not just the political consequences but also the personal harm inflicted on the banished members.
However, the times they are a changing. Today, communists are in a better position to look at their options.
There still remains the dilemma – what is to be done?