Firstly, thank you to Horizon magazine for opening up a space for Irish Marxists to critically debate and examine our ideas in advancing the struggle towards a ‘communist horizon’. The two contributions to date have both touched on key issues facing socialists as they struggle to grow into a mass working-class party. It is right, too, given the prevailing influence of People before Profit (PBP) on the Irish left, that at least some of our analysis is inextricably tied to their policies and perspectives.

Aron Keane’s critique of PBP’s ‘The Case for a Left Government’ and Niall McGann’s article on Party Democracy both touch on what kind of party we need and the programme it should advance. A slogan for government would be a key part of an action programme, and the issue of party democracy is crucial in developing such a programme. This article, therefore, attempts to place our understanding of the programme in a Marxist context.

There may not be a huge clamour for a discussion about a programme within People Before Profit at present, but nonetheless, it remains an issue that some in the organisation regard as fundamental to how we operate as socialists. The Red Network has raised the need for a revolutionary programme on their website and in two unanswered contributions at the party’s last AGM. RISE is another network that advocates developing a programme and argues that it is necessary ‘to grapple with the transitional method’ in order to craft one capable of meeting today’s problems. Diana O’Dwyer asks ‘ What’s the Point of a Transitional Programme?’ in RISE’s magazine, Rupture.¹

This is entirely legitimate and goes to the heart of what kind of party we are trying to build. The two above networks would not be the first socialist groups to take a keen interest in developing a programme. In fact, nearly every generation of Marxists has attempted to formulate a programme, dating back to the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Many of these programmes have been hotly contested, if not roundly rejected, but seldom has the very notion of having a programme at all been called into question! 

So, the first question to answer is: why do we need one at all? PBP does not have one. The dominant influence in PBP is the Socialist Workers Network (SWN), and their position holds roughly that we already have a series of policy documents, e.g., “The Case for a Left Government”, which inform our electoral stance and day-to-day work within working-class communities. We are a broad party, not exclusively ‘revolutionary’. Do we really need to waste everyone’s time on another internal academic debate? What is so special about a programme?

Clearly, if there is a deeply held view amongst some of the membership, then the issue should be openly addressed and not allowed to fester. It is also the case that a discussion around a programme should not be an academic exercise but serve as a guide to action. The focus must be our strategy and tactics for building a party in the working-class as well as showing our ‘political passport’ in the class struggle.

But to answer the question of what kind of programme is needed is to shed a light on what kind of party is being built. As Trotsky said ‘the significance of the programme is the significance of the party.’² PBP is a socialist organisation with many members believing that the working-class can only come to power by abolishing capitalism via a socialist revolution, but it is not necessary to be in agreement with such stances to become a member.

This approach is fundamentally flawed, not only by the dishonesty of having to conceal our overall revolutionary aims, but also because it bases recruitment on fighting particular struggles rather than on an interconnected understanding of a revolutionary socialist alternative to capitalism. As the world situation increasingly throws up the stark alternative between ‘socialism and barbarism’, it is imperative that we train comrades to be the ambassadors of a new society based on working-class ownership and control.

The class struggle at the point of production is the key arena for political education, but there is no automatic route from militancy to revolutionary conclusions. That’s why we need a party to act as the ‘memory of the class’ which can not only give a lead in day-to-day struggles but culminate in smashing the capitalist state machinery and achieving workers’ power. There can be no purpose in concealing this other than to create the illusion that the system merely needs tinkering with!

Minimum/Maximum or Transitional Programme?

Red Network’s (RN) James O’Toole correctly points out that ‘a programme defines your intended “line of march” to the class’. RN believes that a programme must have minimum demands addressing the immediate needs of the working class, but also ‘maximum demands’ that would require a revolution to achieve. The reasoning behind this is to guard against the danger of opportunism and merely tailing behind the struggle for reforms. ³

Lenin was quite clear on the dangers of economism and of tailing behind economic struggles, and he operated within the maximum/minimum framework of the Erfurt Programme for some time. But so did the authors of the programme, Bernstein and Kautsky. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop them from reneging on revolutionary internationalism during the First World War. Nor did the Erfurt Programme stop the domination of opportunism in the pre-war Second International and German Social Democracy, as the fight for minimum demands became separated from the ultimate goal.

The minimum programme limited itself to reforms within capitalism, whereas the maximum programme promised socialism at some disconnected future date. There was no bridge or transition connecting the two. Throughout this period, Lenin and Luxemburg fought this opportunism, as they focused on the practical and tactical application of the programme, which transcended the rigid divide between minimum and maximum demands. Alongside the aims of the minimum programme, Lenin’s revolutionary interpretation consisted of fighting for key methods of struggle to achieve them. For example, in the 1905 revolution, that meant support for land seizures, arming the workers, a political general strike and armed insurrection. It was a plan of action that also aligned with the St Petersburg Soviet as a potential form of government.

At this stage, for Lenin, the methods were still separate from the programme. But 1917 saw Lenin in his ‘April Theses’, ‘The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It’ and ‘Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power’, produce the outline of a transitional programme. This involved beating off the Stalin-Kamenev position of conditional support for the Kerensky Provisional Government.⁴ Lenin reoriented the Bolsheviks by rejecting any political support for a bourgeois government. Even after the February Revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, the cry for peace, land and bread could only be realised by a struggle against bourgeois counter-revolution. This posed point-blank the question of working class leadership in the revolution, posing the accomplishment of socialist tasks and deepening the revolution.

Lenin was now questioning as outdated his own formula of ‘a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’, favouring instead a revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat, resting on the support of the peasantry. He therefore developed transitional demands addressing the immediate needs of the masses, but which also posed the question of a new soviet state power, one without the capitalists and their ‘democratic state’. His programme outlined the nationalisation of the banks and key syndicates; the formation of control committees and consumer organisations; the abolition of commercial secrecy and the call for all power to the soviets. ⁵

So, the minimum/maximum programme was not abolished, but rather transcended by the transitional method. The bridge was built on a system of demands starting from today’s conditions and consciousness, leading to the conquest of power by the proletariat. Transitional demands become immediate ones, for example, the struggle for workers control becomes an immediate part of the struggle for working class power.

In a ‘Prometheus’ article, Jeremy Dewar sums it up nicely,

‘Transitional demands must not be viewed statically, in isolation, but rather as a system of demands. Workers’ control in one factory poses the need for workers’ control in a whole industry, which in turn poses the question of control over the full economy and society as a whole. In the words of the Communist Manifesto, they are measures “which appear economically insufficient or untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order”.’ ⁶

Today’s Programme

It is, of course, true that many groups that pay formal allegiance to Trotsky’s Transitional Programme fail to use its method of re-elaborating the programme to fit present-day needs. Witness the Revolutionary Communist International’s Manifesto, which offers a catastrophist and inaccurate analysis of the world situation, without proposing any action programme of transitional demands to take the class forward. ⁷

RISE’s ‘What We Stand For’ is more concrete in its programme of demands and represents an attempt to re-elaborate according to present conditions. However, it fails to situate the programme within an analysis of the current global political situation and its impact on Ireland. Crucially, it fails to spell out what will be required when the capitalist state inevitably sabotages its call for a ‘left government’- a demand they share with PBP. If you call for ‘a rupture with capitalism’, then the programme should outline working-class methods of resistance from general strikes to workers’ self-defence, on the road to smashing the bourgeois state. ⁸

Diana O’Dwyer argues that ‘the majority of today’s programme would bear little resemblance to Trotsky’s’. She contends that his call ‘to arm the workers and form workers militias’ would not serve as a suitable bridge in the current period. This raises the question: Can transitional demands only be raised in revolutionary periods? Clearly not, as a programme has to be transitional, linking today’s conditions to the conquest of power. So from today’s calls for democratic strike committees to picket line defence squads, forms the bridge between tomorrow’s battles for state power and the future organs of a workers’ state, including workers’ councils and a workers’ militia.

Does that mean we should call for a militia now? Of course not. But it must remain part of today’s transitional programme for working class power. It is part of our aims, and an action programme should include rallying calls for the working class to take action and overthrow capitalism i.e. strategy and tactics.

Today’s programme must also be international in scope and designed to build both an international tendency and party. The search for international co-thinkers should be a priority for any organisation claiming to be Marxist. Socialism cannot survive on a single national terrain surrounded by hostile imperialisms; our struggles are inherently international. As Israel doubles down on its genocidal war with the backing of Western imperialism, it is clear that a struggle in solidarity with Palestine necessarily involves a struggle against imperialism too.

If a revolutionary party is essential to the abolition of capitalism in Ireland, then the building of an international revolutionary party is all the more urgent. Marx and Engels in establishing the First International, Engels in the Second, Lenin and Trotsky in the Third and Trotsky again in the Fourth, all realised the need to analyse the world as it actually existed and the need to develop an international programme away from national centredness and towards proletarian internationalism.

So an international programme should proceed with an analysis of how we got to where we are in the world, and it should codify the lessons of the last period in history. For example programmatic agreement should be sought on the nature of inter imperialist rivalry in the world. Clearly any unity established based on abstaining from analysing the class relations of China and Russia would soon disintegrate in the event of war.

Viewing Ireland’s position in the international order is paramount, particularly its semi colonial relationship to US, EU and British imperialism in the South. In the North, British occupation backs up a more direct colonial relationship, disguised by the sectarian and pro imperialist institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. The resolution of the national question would be a key component for today’s programme, posing the need for working-class leadership in the fight for a specifically working-class socialist republic.

Clearly, if we as Marxists are to develop a programme then all the major struggles facing our class must be integrated into our perspectives. The burning questions of war, the ecological question, women’s liberation, transgender oppression, racism and fascism, building a rank and file movement in the unions, the national question, etc, must all be addressed in a programme designed to inform our practical intervention in the class struggle.

Left Government or Workers’ Government?

The crowning element of any revolutionary action programme is the need for a government that will answer the needs of the workers and pose the need for working-class state power. The Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), the last before its Stalinist degeneration, recognised that the demand for a workers’ government ‘follows inevitably from the entire united front tactic’.⁹

Such a government should be under the control of workers’ organisations like workers’ councils and ready to break with capitalism. Clearly, we are not in a situation where dual power exists or where we are demanding that a workers’ government be formed right away! Nonetheless, the Theses from the Fourth Congress stipulated that the demand could be used ‘practically everywhere as a general propaganda slogan’.

On all the burning questions facing Irish workers we should be explaining how a workers’ government would best defend and extend their interests. It would have to base itself on organs of struggle and accountability such as workplace and factory committees, workers’ councils or Soviets and workers’ defense squads that would create an alternative centre of power against the capitalist state.

The Comintern also recognised different types of workers’ government that could develop. At one end of the spectrum, communists might form the main component of a workers’ government, and this pure form would represent the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the other hand, as the slogan reflected a form of the united front, such a government might be composed of reformist workers’ parties. In this situation, communists could give no political support to a government that would stop at the point of reform and not break with capitalism, even though such a government might be forced by the masses to go further than they wished.

Where communists join together with non communist workers’ parties in government, it is on the basis of guarantees that there will be a real struggle against the capitalist state. Here, they will have complete freedom to agitate, be under the control of their party, and remain in close contact with the revolutionary workers’ organisations. The Theses are clear that in such a situation the Communists ‘will still openly declare to the masses that the workers’ government can be neither won nor maintained without a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie’.

So does PBP’s pamphlet, ‘The Case for a Left Government’, conform to any of the Comintern’s criteria?No. But Why?

Firstly, many of its policies, whilst being eminently supportable, neither fulfill the task of serving as a bridge to socialism nor do they pose the key methods of struggle, i.e. workers’ action, by which they can be achieved. The demand for ‘people’s assemblies’ comes across as a supplement to bourgeois democracy rather than a clear call for workers’ organisations, based on workplace or strike committees, up to wider soviet-style councils of action, as the representative basis for the government.

Secondly, by focusing on Sinn Féin as an essential ingredient of such a left government, it misunderstands both the nature of Sinn Féin and the kind of government the working class needs. Sinn Féin is seen as the main vehicle for workers’ reformist aspirations. Therefore, whilst PBP argue that Sinn Féin cannot be trusted ‘to carry through a consistent left programme’, they recognise that working class illusions in them need to be put to the test. ‘That is why we commit in advance of an election to vote for Mary Lou McDonald as Taoiseach if she is willing to lead a government that does not include Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael’.

Further, PBP would participate in a left government if it were ‘willing to break the rules of capitalism and challenge the obstruction of the rich’. If Sinn Féin refuses to adopt a sufficiently left programme, ‘that really challenges the rich by mobilising people power.’ We would only support its election to government, not join it, voting on an issue-by-issue basis. This sounds similar to Red Network’s position that ‘socialist TDs should offer external support for a Sinn Féin-led government and vote for it case by case’. ¹⁰

Obviously, getting rid of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael from government is crucial, but installing a Sinn Féin-led government does not guarantee its left-wing character or class basis. PBP knows that its red lines would not be met, ruling out its involvement, so why would you then support a government that is not going to ‘really challenge the rich’. Worse, even promise your support before the election?

But we already know what Sinn Féin does in government, just look at the north. In the six counties, whilst the ceasefire was welcome, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was not. They sold out their republicanism in a deal struck with British, American, and EU imperialism to copper-fasten the northern state. Now, they jointly administer British rule with one of the most right-wing parties in Europe in a deal that neither challenges the sectarianism of the GFA institutions nor protects the northern working class from Westminster austerity. If this isn’t bad enough, nothing should greatly surprise us about their rightward shift in the South and their ‘natural’ inclination to enter government with Fianna Fáil.

As socialists, we should not give ‘external’ or any form of political support to any capitalist government led by a petit bourgeois nationalist party. This, of course, does not rule out a vote from socialist TDs for any progressive legislation on a case-by-case basis. If Sinn Féin as a party has no organic links to workers’ organisations, then even more tellingly, a Sinn Féin-led government would not be based on working-class organs of struggle or ‘people power’ assemblies. To suggest that it could be anything other than a capitalist government is to create nonsensical illusions in its trajectory.

It is far better to warn workers in advance that a Sinn Féin-led government will be committed to maintaining the capitalist system. It will have nothing to do with a genuine workers’ government. If we want to put Sinn Féín to the test, then through our campaigns and trade union work, alongside their rank and file members, we demand their leaders struggle in the interests of workers by developing a clear strategy for working-class action. We will not curry favour by cosying up to Sinn Féín but through honest and sharp criticism of their pro-capitalist politics.

On a range of struggles facing Irish workers, we should be addressing how a workers’ government would best defend and extend their interests. It would have to base itself on organs of struggle and accountability like action committees, workers’ councils and workers’ defence squads that would create an alternative centre of power against the capitalist state. The urgent task for revolutionaries today is to elaborate a revolutionary programme in the struggle for a Workers’ Republic and build a new revolutionary party in Ireland. Of course, this must go hand in hand with a perspective for building a new international party of the working class to confront global imperialism and capitalism. ‘Workers of all countries, Unite’. ¹¹

If you want to get in contact with a submission or a response to the above article reach out at contact@horizonmag.ie