We Cannot Go It Alone: Mercosur and the European Question

This article is intended to be an intervention into the broad and ongoing discussions on the nature of the European Union (EU), and arising from that, what the approach of socialists and communists to it should be. As a launching off point, I will be responding to an article written by Comrade Ó hAimhirgin, which was published in the Connolly Youth Movements magazine, Forward, where he critiques the Mercosur-EU deal.1 While many of his criticisms are correct, the strategic conclusions he draws are flawed and fall victim to what are all too common problems among the Irish workers’ movement; Sovereigntism and a belief that there is a viable national road to socialism in Ireland. I will instead be arguing that a retreat from the imperialist world systems that dominate us in the hopes of being able to establish independent and self sufficient islands of socialism in a world of global trade and capitalism is a flawed strategy that has been shown time and time again to not work. Instead the workers movements of Ireland and internationally must take the fight to the world’s imperialist systems and smash them in their entirety if we are ever to be truly free. Our strategic outlook will need to reflect this, and as I will outline in this article, it will involve us, today, looking beyond the narrow confines of our own borders, and to our regional allies in Europe. 

The EU and Mercosur

Comrade Ó hAimhirgin’s article primarily addresses the Mercosur-EU deal, arguing that it will have tremendously negative consequences for the farming community and for Ireland. They echo a number of points that have been reiterated time and again by Irish farmers’ organisations, mainly that the Mercosur deal will see Irish markets flooded with meat products that are produced in industries that have lower standards of food safety, and fewer regulations on the use of pesticides and land care more generally, essentially pricing Irish products out of our own market. Ó hAimhirgin notes:

“This beef is often raised on land decimated by deforestation using hormones and pesticides banned across Ireland and Europe for their health and environmental risks.”2

He is not technically wrong here. However, comrade Ó hAimhirgin is echoing a convenient half-truth that sections of the Irish farming industry have been wanting us to believe for years. The reality is that as of 2023, some 90% of Irish beef products are exported to UK and EU markets.3 It’s these markets that the Irish farmers are scared of having to compete for, not our local food trade. Their sudden concern for food safety and environmental regulations is as much a lie, and the farming industry simply chooses to ignore the fact that they pump untold tonnes of manure and nitrates into our rivers every year. As a result of this, only 20 of our country’s 3000 waterways are considered ‘pristine’.4 The facts of the matter are, the farming industry here is as ruthless and cutthroat as any other, and have been thoroughly catered to for decades, with some 7,000 farms being granted derogations to unload upwards of 250kg of livestock manure per hectare, most of which then flows into our rivers.5

Comrade Ó hAimhirgin does make an effort to distinguish between the large industrial cattle farmers and the small, often family-run farms, correctly stating that their enemy is not only the EU but the “large farmers and monopoly agribusinesses”, and the class-collaborationist Irish Farmers Association. However, it’s here that we see the emergence of his sovereigntist and in some sense, utopian strategy. In making vague statements like “Ireland has become increasingly reliant on global supply chains”, and in a sense suggesting that the monopolisation of small farms is something that needs to be reversed, Comrade Ó hAimhirgin unfortunately reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both Ireland’s capacity for “self-sufficiency” and also historical trends of capitalist centralisation. 

Marx argued strenuously against the popular trend within the workers’ movement of his time that wished to do away with capitalism and return to pre-capitalist modes of artisanal production.6 The old craftsman mode was being swept aside, and previously gilded workers were being tossed en masse into the proletariat. This understandably made some of these workers long for a return to the days when they personally owned the products of their labour and controlled the hours they worked. While finding the critiques made by the theorists of this trend accurate, Marx ultimately showed that this reversal of economic progress was simply not possible. Instead, Marx argued, it was necessary for these newly proletarianised workers to fight alongside the rest of their class for the means of production to be held in common. 

It seems to me, in the case of the Irish small farmer, that a comparison exists. Contrary to what Comrade Ó hAimhirgin may want to believe, there is no returning to an Ireland of small farmers. Such chaotic and inefficient modes of food production cannot provide for either Ireland’s growing modern society or the other parts of Europe and the world that may well rely on Irish food products. While one can understand the lamentation for what can no doubt be, on the personal level, tremendous grief and stress at the reality of losing one’s farm, what these farmers ultimately fear is not destitution, but proletarianisation. It is ultimately no different from the gradual collapse of the artisanal class and their dissolution into the mass of the workers. 

That is not to say that we should simply abandon small farmers to their fate. Quite the contrary. Just as Marx called on the recently proletarianised artisans to recognise that their future liberation lay in the collective struggle of the working class for socialism, we too must show the small farmers that their future material salvation lies with the struggle for a socialist republic here in Ireland, and a United Socialist state in Europe, and not with the utopian, nostalgic ideal of a ‘sovereign’ Ireland of small family farms. 

It also remains true, then, that we cannot continue to attempt to sell the lie to either small farmers, or the working class as a whole, that the road to freedom lies in attempting to establish a self sufficient Ireland that has “withdraw[n] from all imperialist economic blocs”, those assumedly being everything from the EU to the IMF.7 The simple reality is that the strategy of ‘National roads to socialism’  is a dead-end. By this I refer to both the Marxist-leninist “Socialism in one country” approach and the pseudo “domino theory” common among those of the Trotskyist tradition. These approaches have been proven time and time again, to fail,  by the events of both the 20th century, and the last two and a half decades of the 21st. The case studies for this failure are dotted all around the world. Cuba and the DPRK both would have never lasted as long as they did if it were not for the USSR and China respectively, and both have suffered tremendously since the former’s collapse and the latter’s capitulation to market reforms.8 The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, never truly a workers state (despite its extremely admirable empowerment of workers, and efforts to socialise aspects of the economy), has been under heavy sanctions since 2006, being turned, very much against its will, into a pariah state.9 The economic fallout has helped erode domestic support for the revolution, seen some seven million Venezuelans leave the country, and as of this month has seen Maduro kidnapped and likely the end of any real or substantial opposition to America’s actions from that state.10

At every turn, national roads to socialism lead to isolation, sanctions, famine and in the long term, the erosion of domestic support for revolution that forces revolutionary states to become more and more repressive. What follows, whether its colour revolutions, foreign intervention, or complete economic collapse almost always sees the liberatory spark that gave rise to these new states snuffed out. If the Irish workers’ movement, therefore, were to pursue a similar strategy of socialism in one country, through the exiting of the EU and the cutting off of Ireland from the rest of the economic world, we would be guaranteed to face the same fate. Arguably, we would face it even sooner given Ireland’s small size, lack of native industry and proximity to the UK. There can simply never be a totally sovereign and self sufficient, Irish workers’ republic. 

The European Solution

If we accept that there exists no national road to socialism in Ireland, where does that leave us? Much of the communist and socialist left harbour eurosceptic views, which often manifest as calls for Ireland to leave the EU via some left exit, or ‘Lexit’ referendum.11 12 13 People Before Profit is not innocent of this either, having supported the leave vote in the Brexit referendum in 2016.14 It is argued by the proponents of ‘Lexit’ that the European Union is an irredeemably imperialist, racist, and capitalist institution that places heavy pressure on its member states to implement austerity measures and to police the external borders of the union viciously. They will also point out that it ultimately cannot be reformed, and that for these reasons, Ireland must leave it if it wishes to pursue socialism. In their analysis of the EU, the supporters of ‘Lexit’ are entirely correct. The European Union is all of those things and more. While free movement may be encouraged for the peoples within member states, the border forces of the EU and its constituent countries do not hesitate to murder, en masse, those who try to enter the union from outside.15 The EU will often also empower compliant neighbours to do the dirty work for them.16 

However, in what ways does this horrific violence substantially differ from the actions of capitalist states more broadly? Hundreds die every year while attempting to get from Mexico to the USA; the actions of the American border patrol being just as brutal as those of Frontex and EU member states’ border units.17 Irish communists are rightly incensed and outraged at the massacres that are perpetuated by the EU’s border force, but that this would be a reason to simply withdraw from the EU is rather farcical. We wouldn’t suggest withdrawing Munster from the Free State over the Garda National Immigration Bureau’s treatment of migrants. Arguably, all of this would, in fact, be more of a reason to actively pursue the destruction of the EU in its entirety!

At the end of the day, our approach to the EU has to be considered from a strategic point of view. No national road to socialism is available to Ireland (or to any other European country in the globalised world we live in, for that matter), so it follows that for any revolution in Ireland to succeed, it has to be in conjunction with, at the very least, a regional European wide uprising. This means that our perspective has to be internationalist, and cannot be constrained by a ‘sovereigntist’ perspective of seeing an ‘independent Ireland’ established in a sea of reaction. If we want Ireland to be truly independent of capitalism, imperialism and British rule, it will have to be as part of a European socialist state. 

How do we get there?

In order for the demand for a European Socialist State to be more than a handwaved slogan, it has to be a concrete demand of a European wide organisation. To that end, it is imperative that the socialist parties of Europe, both within and without the EU Parliament, begin to build links with one another outside the narrow confines of the extant EU Parliamentary groups with the goal of forming a European Socialist organisation united around a shared revolutionary political programme. It would only be through the popularisation of said programme amongst the working classes of Europe that such a goal could become a reality. 

This revolutionary programme must consist of demands that smash the EU State and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat. The vast unelected bureaucracy would need to be smashed, with all power invested in a unicameral European parliament, whose representatives are elected and recallable. Frontex and all other border units would have to be abolished, alongside all migrant quota systems. Such a state would then need to withdraw from all bourgeois military alliances, abolish all national armies, and replace them with a European wide citizens’ militia. Only then would any revolutions in Europe have a chance of succeeding longterm, and spreading the flames of liberation further around the world.

The reality of the modern capitalist world is one where the economies of the various nations of the planet are deeply intertwined with one another. The capitalist class, while at times divided by national lines, operates internationally in the pursuit of its collective interests, and the states they rule, while separate, make up an interconnected web of states that cannot be fully disconnected from one another. There is no circumstance where one country on its own could withdraw from the world economic system and establish a new regime that can ultimately withstand both the militaristic and economic pressures from the rest of the capitalist world, simply because globalised capitalism is superior in every sense to seclusion and autarky.18 

The Mercosur-EU deal is just one more symptom and feature of this endless drive for profit within the capitalist system, and will only be fought effectively on its own international terrain. So long as capitalism exists at the level of the world market and economy, that must be the level the international proletariat attacks it at. A United Socialist Europe would have a substantially better chance at not only defending itself from counter-revolution, but acting as a springboard for world revolution than any national state on its own would.19 Sooner or later, Irish Socialists will need to leave the petty bourgeois notions of sovereignty and self sufficiency behind if we are ever to challenge the global capitalist system, fully realise a 32 county socialist Ireland, and usher in our collective communist future.

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  1. Ó hAimhirgin, J. “Cheap Steak and Corporate Courts: How Will Mercosur and CETA sell out Farmers and Workers?”Forward, 2025. https://cym.ie/cheap-steak-and-corporate-courts/ ↩︎
  2. ibid ↩︎
  3. Unknown. “Beef farming and its challenges in Ireland” Teagasc, 2023. https://teagasc.ie/news–events/daily/beef-farming-and-its-challenges-in-ireland/ ↩︎
  4. Mulligan, H.Q. “Rivers and lakes face pollution crisis caused by Ireland’s dairy industry” Irish Times, 2022. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/farming-food/2022/07/09/rivers-and-lakes-face-pollution-crisis-caused-by-irelands-dairy-industry/ ↩︎
  5. ibid ↩︎
  6. Engels, F & Marx, K. “Manifesto of the Communist Party” Marx/Engels Selected Works, 1969. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ ↩︎
  7. Ó hAimhirgin, J. “Cheap Steak and Corporate Courts: How Will Mercosur and CETA sell out Farmers and Workers?”Forward, 2025. https://cym.ie/cheap-steak-and-corporate-courts/ ↩︎
  8. Mes-Lago, C. “Comparing Socialist Approaches: Economics and Social Security in Cuba, China, and Vietnam” University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025. ↩︎
  9. Unknown. “US-Venezuela timeline: From sanctions to military action” Le Monde, 2026. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/01/03/us-venezuela-timeline-from-sanctions-to-military-action_6749038_4.html
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  10. Unknown. “Venezuela diaspora celebrates Maduro’s deposition, wonders what’s next” Reuters, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-diaspora-celebrates-maduros-deposition-wonders-whats-next-2026-01-03/#:~:text=Since%202014%2C%207.7%20million%20Venezuelans,for%20Migration%20%2C%20opens%20new%20tab.
    ↩︎
  11. Unknown. “Programme of the Connolly Youth Movement” Connolly Youth Movement, 2025. https://cym.ie/post-7795/
    ↩︎
  12. Unknown. “A Democratic Programme for the New Republic” Éirígí, [Unknown date]. https://eirigi.org/about-us
    ↩︎
  13. Éirígí’s programme in particular calls for a popular referendum to decide Ireland’s membership of the EU. This, in and of itself, is flawed given the long standing socialist opposition to referendums. Referendums reduce the complex class nature of political questions like membership of the EU to a binary yes/no vote that’s put before the class negating ‘people’ which will almost always sees workers having to align with other class forces that are very hostile to it. Brexit is a perfect example of this, as no matter which camp socialists chose to support, they would have had to swing in behind either establishment bourgeoisie or middle class reactionary campaigns. ↩︎
  14. Unknown. “Lexit: Why we need a left exit from the EU” People Before Profit, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160521033827/http://www.peoplebeforeprofit.ie/2016/05/lexit-why-we-need-a-left-exit-from-eu/
    ↩︎
  15. Unknown. “Migrant deaths and disappearances” Migrant Data Portal, 2025. https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/migrant-deaths-and-disappearances
    ↩︎
  16. Thomas, E, and Walker, A. “How Spain looked on as dozens were crushed to death at its border” BBC, 2022. ↩︎
  17. Alvarez, P. “First on CNN: A record number of migrants have died crossing the US-Mexico border” CNN, 2022. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/07/politics/us-mexico-border-crossing-deaths/index.html
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  18. Outside of a few edge cases like China and the USA due to sheer size and share of the world’s industrial capacity.
    ↩︎
  19. It’s worth noting that there does not exist a ‘Europe alone’ road to socialism. A United Socialist Europe could only ever work as a springboard for world revolution if capitalism were to be defeated.
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