LETTER: Revolutionary and Realpolitik

László Molnárfi is a member of the Red Network and former student union president at Trinity College Dublin.

The article published by Diarmuid Flood and Aron Keane titled Neither Revolutionary Nor Realpolitik in Horizon Magazine on the 11th of June 2025 gives an opportunity to clarify central questions surrounding socialist tactics, strategy and aims. It is clear that there is both (1) an organisational and (2) a political disagreement at hand. Of course, (1) and (2) are part-and-parcel of the same mistake and the same solution.

A revolutionary socialist party needs a “line of march” arising out of a programme; otherwise, it is but a collection of disparate activists. The vanguard is not an activist group but a political party. The following excerpt from the article expresses an individualistic, rather than collectivist, approach to the question of organising:

“Politics is not just what you say or what’s in your programme; it’s also what you do. Socialist parties are composed of activists who have a particular view and focus on a range of issues. With this comes a desire to campaign on the issues that they are affected by or invested in.” ¹

This approach negates the party. It is not the role of the party to facilitate the projects of activists. The role of the party is to clarify politics to the masses of people through the lens of class struggle. There has to be a level of control over party members, not too lax nor strict, as democratically decided. This is so that the party can implement tactics, strategies, and aims, which is called politics. This implies narrowing the organisation, structurally, ideologically and action-wise. Without a level of control, no conscious politics can be applied.

If the operation of the party is on a spectrum from cult to broad-left organisation, then the critique of People Before Profit (PBP) is that it is too frenetic and could benefit from focus. It should maintain the vanguard conception of seeking the “advanced and resolute sections of the working class” who have fused with revolutionary socialism rather than the conception of a “transitional party,” whose broadness leads to the dilution of revolutionary socialism to social democracy.Vladimir Lenin is proven right again:

“Political questions cannot be mechanically separated from organisation questions.” ²

Without the conception of the party as a vanguard, no conscious politics can be applied; without conscious politics, no vanguard party can arise. Both the organisational structure and the correct politics are necessary to start the dialectical dance between leadership and the people.

It is obvious that there is no vanguard party in Ireland. There are proto-vanguard parties and a fractured vanguard spread out, unorganised and disillusioned. The task of revolutionary socialists is to seek out the advanced workers by applying the correct tactics, strategies, and aims of politics. A “transitional party” that mixes revolutionary socialism with social democracy in its organisation will falter as it tries to anchor this layer because its roots are cross-class, and so will its politics. Of course, a “vanguard party” which tries to locate the advanced workers might struggle, even if it is organisationally sound, because it has to pinpoint the appropriate politics.

Only the politics of Communism can reach the advanced workers. The following quote by Lenin has been oft-repeated in the prevailing discourse in Ireland:

That the [Communist] ideal should [be] the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of… capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat. ³

However, later on, he says:

[…] unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a [Communist] point of view and no other […] ⁴

This means that we must react to every manifestation of injustice, but through Communist politics.

When Lenin saw what the Black Hundreds were doing to the Jews of Russia, he was naturally horrified. They were holding pogroms and massacring them. However, what he did not do was propose to direct the party apparatus towards a moralistic campaign of condemning the masses for anti-Semitism. This is despite there being widespread anti-Semitism in Russia amongst people at the time. He merely repeated that this is ever more the reason that the masses of Russia should unite and overthrow the Tsar, basing his defence of the Jewish people by tying it back to class lines.⁵ He pointed out that Capitalists are inflaming tensions between the people. He considered what approach would work best. This is agitation with class-based messaging. His 1919 speech highlights the essence of his approach:

“In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to turn away their attention from the enemy of the working people, capital.

[…]

It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews, there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism.” ⁶

Apart from agitation, the Bolsheviks also fought against the Black Hundreds, the reactionary core, using military force. They differentiated between masses under illusions and who they were influenced by. This is an important distinction. They would not have gone far using the approach of United Against Racism (UAR), with its insistence on ‘countering’ with ‘anti-racist’ messaging around the masses of workers. UAR’s approach is outside of the class struggle, rooted in a liberal worldview.⁷ It is focused on identity, with some buzzwords about class thrown in as an afterthought. Rather, organic anti-racism arises through a focus on class-first grassroots involvement in workplaces, universities, and communities on bread-and-butter issues. This, of course, is where agitation for unity between the Irish and non-Irish finds fertile ground, not at counter-demonstrations. This begins with class and dissolves identity, or begins with identity and dissolves in class. The magic of class is its primacy, where differences can be made to dissolve for the shared interest of social revolution. This inherent discipline in class is what will forge solidarity between different identities. The worker whose workmate is a migrant will despise racism after standing up to the boss; the tenant who is cis and whose neighbour is trans will reject transphobia after taking on the landlord, and so on and so forth.

Lenin would not want us taking actions which are not effective. For instance, appealing to the morality of people for trans rights. This is an issue which is important but affects merely a small section of the population. There is, however, a way to universalise it. He would say: all this transphobia makes it more important that we focus on where the immediate experience of the masses of people lie, unite as one working class to bring down the Capitalist State and do away with oppression for good. Focus! To respond from a Communist point of view can only be this: to universalise based on class. Thus, the so-called ‘deferral’ of trans rights is merely an abstract postponement, because liberation for this group of people is already inseparable from the organic totality of the class struggle itself – economic, social, and political. Within this struggle, pragmatic prioritisation of certain frontlines does not negate but ultimately advances all emancipatory demands. Class-first issues are primary, and identity manifestations of this are attached to the class aspect; it is not the other way around. To put it plainly: a demand for universal healthcare includes trans self-determination, public housing includes migrant justice and wealth redistribution includes racial equality. These are universalist demands that will trickle down to particularist ambitions, rather than the vice-versa, and erode the material basis for prejudice.

Summed up: to repeat simple-to-understand, popular, and deeply-felt issues and tie them back to the class struggle is an instance of politics which can court advanced workers. These issues are not exclusively economic, but in the current climate, will tend to be. Economism, a limited focus solely on economic issues and the belief that these will automatically converge into revolution should be avoided. This is why intervention into the class struggle necessarily involves Communist politics. This stands up against all oppression while linking it back to class war.

Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign to win Democratic nomination for mayor of New York in June 2025 underscores this approach. Interestingly, Zohran’s statements echo that of Lenin, one a social-democratic reformist, the other a revolutionary socialist, intersecting in their politics at this specific point. Owen Jones remarks:

[His] strategy is essential in combating a ‘culture war’ designed to force leftists into a defensive posture. It doesn’t mean abandoning marginalised minorities—Mamdani has unequivocally committed to transgender rights, for example. It just means emphasising unifying economic messages.⁸

Zohran did not stop talking about minorities. However, his campaign mobilised through a unified message based on economic hardship. A class-first politics does not mean identity is put aside, merely pragmatic prioritisation. Just as Lenin extracted the mass politics of Karl Kautsky and rejected his opportunism, so too can we extract appealing optics from Zohran and fuse it with the revolutionary socialist politics of Lenin. This is the path to socialist revolution.

If you want to get in contact with a a submission or a response to the above article reach out at [email protected]

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