Grim Economic forecast belies election 'commitments'

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Thu Apr 25, 2002 15:14 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

The curse of the internet. The longer a debate goes on, the more likely you are to get this kind of contribution. Someone comes along, yanks a quote out of context and tries to score some cheap points.

Now I'm under no illusion that Myles here is even slightly interested in a reasonable discussion, but just in case he manages to mislead anybody else:

It is a fact that at the moment very few Irish workers have much belief in the desirability or possibility of sweeping progressive social change. I don't know who exactly Myles has been talking to, but I don't see much evidence of most people trembling with anticipation of a revolution any time soon.

This has nothing to do with people being "backward" or whatever other words Myles wants to put in my mouth. Nor has it got anything to do with people wanting or not wanting to join my "sect".

It is a fact that there is no political organisation, reformist, revolutionary socialist, anarchist or anything else to the left of the FF/PD/Lab/SF/FG market consensus with anything approaching a mass membership. The only mass working class organisations left are the trade unions.

That is a bad thing. Pointing it out is not arrogant condescension, but an honest admission of where we are.

by Myles M. Thu Apr 25, 2002 14:55

Our Socialist Party representative spoke:

"...most Irish workers have no confidence in the possibility or desirability of sweeping progressive social change at all."

So, rather than recognizing once and for all that Irish workers find your little sect irrelevant to them, what do you do? You say that workers are backwards...it's not surprising that the overwhelming majority of Irish workers do not want to know about your Party.

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Thu Apr 25, 2002 14:42 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

By and large, I think that this has been a very useful discussion, even if it is a bit of a digression from the original news article.

I'm afraid that this will probably be my last contribution to it for a while, so I'll try and make my points well.

Although for socialists standing in elections is a tactical issue, I accept that for anarchists there are deeper questions at stake. For most anarchists taking part in elections under capitalism is seen as inherently disempowering, regardless of other factors. I'm not trying to misrepresent anybody here, so feel free to correct me.

For me, the value of standing in elections depends on context. At the moment, most Irish workers do not have illusions in the power of parliament to bring about sweeping progressive social change. Some might argue that this is a good thing.

The problem is that it is just a symptom of a very bad thing: most Irish workers have no confidence in the possibility or desirability of sweeping progressive social change at all.

Those of us who want to overthrow capitalism are in the tiniest of minorities. The number of workers who, while stopping short of wanting a revolution, have a strong class outlook is bigger, but still small.

The working class internationally has suffered a series of huge defeats over the last decade and a half. The miners strike in Britain was crushed. Reagan, Thatcher and their various equivalents rolled back reform after reform which had been won during the long post second world war boom. The Soviet Union and it's sidekick regimes collapsed, and regardless of our analyses of the horrors of Stalinism that had a catastrophic effect on the number of workers believing that some kind of alternative to capitalism was possible. The mass reformist labour and social democratic parties were captured by businesss and transformed from (inadequate and deeply flawed) organisations of the working class into yet more representatives of capital. Trade union after trade union has been suckered into betraying their members to "social partnership" deals on a national scale or "sweetheart" deals in individual companies.

I've been trying to avoid jargon, but sometimes such terms are necessary: class consciousness has been thrown back amongst workers. Unfortunately, the bosses still look out for their own interests.

Sidetracking revolutionary impulses into parliamentary cretinism is the least of our worries.

Building a feeling of class consciousness, of working class solidarity, has to be our primary concern at the moment.

As far as I am concerned, standing in elections is part of that process. For an anarchist, encouraging anybody to tick a box to get somebody else to represent them is a regressive step. For a socialist, getting thousands of people to even take the tiny step of going to a polling booth and choosing to vote for a working class alternative is an encouraging step forward. Perhaps it is a question of perspective.

To get back to the question of how much Joe can use his platform to get our ideas across, I would agree that it is limited. On the down side, you are correct to say that you are unlikely to see a four page article in the Irish Independent entitled "So about this socialism thing then" by Joe Higgins. On the other hand, Joe has been on Radio One talking at length about the Russian Revolution to homes and workplaces across the country, has been able to talk about why he is a socialist on whatever that Irish language current affairs TV programme is called, and has been able to talk about the existence of a working class and to publicise various campaigns and issues in innumerable smaller media items - particularly the local press. Little of that would be possible without him being elected.

Now you might argue that all of that still doesn't amount to very much - and to an extent you would be right. The Socialist Party may be the most prominent organisation on the Irish left, but we are still small. The impact we can have is limited, outside of sporadic moments (like the Water Tax struggle) where the public mood shifts. Having Joe (and with a bit of luck Clare) in the Dail helps us to increase that impact a little, and that is a good thing.

by C. Thu Apr 25, 2002 12:50

If you're reading the Cormac O'Grada paper, he says

The timing of the decline of the share of the economy taken by the public sector means that it is more a product than a cause of the economic expansion

Given the growth rates in the economy not being matched by growth rates in public sector spending this is self evident.

The social partnership bit is also interesting - again saying it had no causal relationship. He does point up the really weird bit - our trade unions (supposedly left wing) were happy to accept lower taxes (rolling back of state) in exchange for wage restraint. While David Beggs may be complaining now about the share of GNP the public sector is at, the ICTU / SIPTU demands for lower taxes in the last 2 partnership rounds caused this.

by GluttonMan Thu Apr 25, 2002 02:04

Good discussion. But a little off-track? What do you all think about the last ESRI paper hyperlinked that says that the "pay restraint" is a RESULT of the economy rather than being its cause.

Am I misreading the summary of it or something? Seems like a pretty big counter to the usual assumptions that are trotted out by the big-business economists.

Anyway, I was hoping there'd be someone more educated and informed on economics than me that could add to this.

(That's not to say that I wasn't slightly hinting at the idea that getting a candidate or a whole government elected might turn out to be a poisoned chalice for whoever does succeed. So yes, Sean, I think that there's a possibility that Labour might do well and then reap its rich reward of blame for a tanking economy. It deserves blame, but not for being the sole agent of the disaster.)

by Chekov Thu Apr 25, 2002 01:18

Brian said:
"Having elected representatives gives us the opportunity to get our message across to a much wider audience."

How is this true? Presumably you mean that because Joe is in the Dail, he gets more media coverage than your average activist. However, what kind of media coverage is it? How many times did you see an article in a newspaper titled "An explanation of Joe Higgins' Socialist ideas" or anything even remotely like that? As somebody who probably observes the mainstream media more closely than most, I don't recall learning much about Joe's ideas at all during the last Dail, beyond the fact that he 'stands up for the people' (which I do admit is as true for Joe as it is for any politician) and that he goes to the odd protest. I'd say that very few of Joe's constituents have a much clearer picture of Joe's ideas than that.

This impression is about the most positive image of an 'anti-capitalist' politician that is likely to be portrayed by the mainstream media and is worse than useless since it gives voters the impression that Joe is 'standing up for us' when in fact, Joe is in a position that (according to the socialist party itself) is utterly powerless and all that he is doing is attempting to air his propaganda. This is especially so since the Socialist party obviously doesn't go out of its way to explain to potential voters that they consider the election to be pointless for implementing change (hardly a good motivating tactic).

The voters sit at home and occasionaly catch a snippet of news about Joe being arrested at a protest or speaking against some government measure and feel reassured that he is sticking up for them. After a few such elections, the voter realises that nothing has changed and decides that the socialism thing obviously doesn't work.

To put it in a nutshell, getting elected is a bad way to air the message that if people want change they need to get active and not rely on parliament, especially when the vast majority of people harbour serious illusions about the ability to achieve change through elections.

Chekov

by Phuq Hedd Wed Apr 24, 2002 23:46

I don't think that they're coherent though. Here's the thing: you say that you stand for election with absolutely no expectation of changing the system through its mechanisms.

I appreciate that you're involved in campaigns (my "good on you" at the end of the post was a genuine congratulation, I think this is valuable work that you're doing. It was NOT a claim that you were not -- don't be so defensive, you'll know when I'm attacking you!).

However, (to take an example), the anti-bin-tax campaign doesn't exist and is not effective because of the actions of Joe Higgins and Clare Daly (yes, it's great that they support it and it helps that they're involved), it's effective because there are huge numbers of people refusing to pay.

Its history in Cork, including the jailings of HASC members, shows that ordinary people refusing to take it anymore are what makes change. Not someone "defending their gains".

So, if ordinary people doing thing is the basis of change, and you admit that, then why divert attention? You haven't addressed the point that your call to potential voters to rally behind you, instead of calling on them to get active now encourages the perception that voting people into this parliament will change things.

I've been to your website, its "About Us" and "Candidates" sections and nowhere do I see a clear statement or admission such as the one you made above "I think we are in agreement that getting people elected to parliament will never get rid of capitalism", nor does your website say "please consider voting for us, but don't think that you can just sit back on yer arse after that, because really all we can do is to try and defend you using the mechanism which is rigged against us".

I'd consider that to be near mis-representation.

-Post scriptum: as regards all the "election" stuff above, yes your answer is glib, of course it depends upon what is the structure in which one does the voting. I was using election as a short-hand for "election in the current representative democratic structure).

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Wed Apr 24, 2002 23:00

Some answers to your questions.

> Which ideas?

In a nutshell, we need to get rid of capitalism and replace it with socialism.

We try to explain that workers are exploited by capitalists and that ultimately no "partnership" between them is possible.

We try to encourage people to get involved in political and economic struggles against exploitation, racism, sexism, police brutality, environmental degradation, cuts in public services, the list goes on and on.

Just how much detail do you want?

> Don't you think that particpating in the fraud > spreads the idea that the Socialist Party is
> just another party?

No.

Firstly, referring to voting as "the fraud" is simplistic.

I think we are in agreement that getting people elected to parliament will never get rid of capitalism. That alone doesn't make voting "the fraud".

Working class people struggled for decades to get the right to vote. It wasn't given to us by our rulers as some kind of confidence trick. It was a concession forced out of them, which they have sought to devalue ever since.

I am not in favour of working people handing back anything to the bosses voluntarily. Even today a significant block of working class representatives can play a valuable defensive role in parliaments and councils helping to make it more difficult for the state and the bosses to cut back on public services and privatise what's left.

Leaving that issue aside, I don't think the fact that we stand in elections makes people think we are like, say Fianna Fail or Fine Gael. Our actions make us visibly different. Fianna Fail or Labour don't set up local anti-bin tax groups and try to build a campaign of mass non-payment. They don't organise protests to defend asyomu seekers. And they definitely don't argue for the overthrow of capitalism.

> Or that it might confuse people into thinking
> that elections are a good way to run society?

Elections are a good way to run society. How do you think people will manage their affairs in a socialist system? I'd argue that they would elect delegates to carry out their wishes, with the right of instant recall.

I know that's a little glib, but seriously I don't think that socialists standing for elected positions necessarily create illusions in the ability of elections to change things. And to be honest I think that a much bigger difficulty facing socialists at the moment is a feeling amongst many workers that nothing can change anything.

> Good on you for being active in real campaigns > though.

I'm amazed that you don't seem to have known this. The Socialist Party has been involved in campaigns against water and bin taxes, against racism, sectarianism and sexism, against polie brutality, for decent housing, against environmental destruction, I could go on for a long time here. Regardless of the views others on the left have of our position on one issue or another, I've never heard anyone accuse us of not being involved in real campaigns before.

by Phuq Hedd Wed Apr 24, 2002 22:12

Which ideas?

Don't you think that particpating in the fraud spreads the idea that the Socialist Party is just another party?

Or that it might confuse people into thinking that elections are a good way to run society?

Or the idea that socialism is a crock "because I voted for that SP guy in the last election and I'm still screwed"?

Good on you for being active in real campaigns though.

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Wed Apr 24, 2002 22:00

The Socialist Party stands in elections because they provide a handy platform.

Having elected representatives gives us the opportunity to get our message across to a much wider audience.

We are under no illusions that we can change the system through parliament.

As for involving ourselves in real campaigns, you are well aware that we do just that - from anti-racist campaigning to setting up the anti-water tax federations.

by Phuq Hedd Wed Apr 24, 2002 21:40

Brian,
I completely agree with you about Labour being pro-business. But what will happen if we all turn out to vote for Socialist Party candidates?

As I see it there are two possible outcomes:
1. The Socialist Party sweeps to power in a completely unexpected landslide victory. Immediately worker's soviets are set up by the revolutionary masses. Unfortunately these require centralised control because some of the workers have different ideas. Of course at this stage (70% of the population avowedly revolutionary socialist) there is no function that the Socialist Party can fulfill! Ice-picks all around just to make sure that the revolution doesn't get de-railed.

2. The Socialist Party gets one seat. Another Capitalist coalition takes power. The SP TD complains (in the limited and ineffective space provide as a safety valve by representative democracy) and no-one listens. Years later after more people living miserable lives another election is called. Repeat until entropy-death of universe.

Wouldn't it be better for the Socialist Party to put its energy into real campaigns instead of debilitating, ultimately ineffective electoral strategies?

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Wed Apr 24, 2002 21:00 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

You are forgetting one thing, Sean. Labour are the pro-business people.

Labour will "manage the economy" in much the same way as Fianna Fail or Fine Gael: aiming to maximise profits for people like Ruairi Quinn's brother and to keep trade unionists tied to "social partnership" (otherwise known as "wage control").

It makes no difference which coalition of right-wing, "pro-business", parties takes over in May.

Fianna Fail, Labour, Fine Gael, the Progressive Democrats, Sinn Fein - all are financed by businessmen, all will continue attacking the standard of living of working people.

by Sean Cucaigh Wed Apr 24, 2002 20:24

If labour gets in then it will be perfect for the pro-business people. What happens when you get a labour government? the economy tanks. itll just be proof again that labour governments cant manage the economy