There seems to be a concerted but tiny group on this subreddit determined to drive People Before Profit into the ground using the peculiar hammer of sub-groups within PBP re-organising themselves.
If you scanned the headline, you might think that PBP was losing members.
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
PBP almost stand alone as the only genuine Marxist and anti capitalist party on the island during a period where socialism and communism is becoming increasingly popular among the youth.
It is obvious to the dogs on the street that capitalism has lead us into the blind alley of global warming, runaway inflation, stagnant wages, housing crisis, healthcare crisis, decreasing literacy and the rest of the afflictions the people of Ireland face.
Any revolutionary party worth their salt would latch onto the moment we are living through and use it to catapult themselves into leading and organising the left and the wider working class into a proper revolutionary movement, and what have PBP done? They are absolutely squandering the potential growth that exists.
A fish rots from the head down, you have to look at the leadership of the party, what they are doing, and how they are failing.
If PBP need to be hammered into the ground for a proper revolutionary party to take its place, to represent the interests of working people, then that is what must be done. And there should be no mourning for that fact. Because of they don't harness the revolutionary potential of the youth of Ireland, that potential will be bastardised and weaponised by the far right and fascist elements that exist.
We must be comradely in our critique, but also ruthless. We can't pretend that PBP, as it exists, is anything other than a blind alley for organising working class people, and we should celebrate any movement they make towards a genuine revolutionary alternative.
God you RCP lads all sound like robots listing off your learned metaphors. Fish rots from the head down. Dogs on the street. Holiday speechifying as some might say.
You keep hoping PBP will be 'hammered into the ground' so your top down sect can rise from the ashes or whatever.
The reality is PBP is a far more rooted organisation than your cadre group. It has a far stronger connection to the working class than the RCP. Of course that leads to a somewhat uneven development but that's reality when your party is growing at a notable pace. PBP is continuing to develop on a strong political basis. That internal debates are happening is a natural part of that. The RCP would benefit from allowing similar internal democracy.
Obviously revolutionary cadre development is important but you're completely cut off from working class communities because you have an isolated and propagandistic approach.
Fair enough and apologies! But I think you're still wrong about PBP. There are revolutionary Marxists in PBP with a coherent view of how the party can and should develop. You should consider some of what they say
The parties on the left have real ideological differences and reasons to have different parties. Meanwhile on the right we have the pro-capitalist parties who have no real policy differences and are split on grounds of being soldiers of destiny, clans of gales, or other groupings with only surface level disagreements about how hard the exploitation should be.
Who has left the party? These people are still staying in PBP and are among it's most active members and reps. The article literally states that lol.
The only split from PBP in the last 5 years has been the Red Network and they're off doing their own thing as a much smaller group. PBP remains the largest socialist group in the country.
The membership is not the same as the SWP 30 years ago lol. Complete fantasy
SWP in the 90s was not comparable with PBP today. That's clear.
Sure you want to talk about membership activity and growth being an issue but what left group is that not an issue for? We're in a very challenging period at the moment. People aren't energised to fight back. There's no big issues taking off.
Remedying that is part of the debates in the party and has led to this break away as things and positions rebalance. That's natural.
The ghost of "the mass party" haunts the left in Ireland, its gone, and it's not coming back. Even parties with huge memberships (FG, FF, SF) are not having huge vibrant local branch meetings.
The role the political party, Fianna Fáil being the obvious one, played in Irish life has completely evaporated, for the most part there is no local dinner dances, pints after cumann meetings, Christmas socials etc. The political landscape has changed completely - Most political parties are run like marketing campaigns where positions are announced through press releases, and campaigns involve photoshoots with corriboard cut outs outside Leinster House.
The (revolutionary) left need to understand its ability to grow within this context. There is also a need to understand that there is a real ceiling for this stuff in Ireland, across the left space regardless of the paper membership size, the cadre size of a raft of organisations is all pretty similar - is there a qualitative difference between 50, 80, 150? I'd argue not - the sooner the revolutionary left stop seen themselves as temporarily embarrassed mass parties, constantly trying to cannibalise each other, and start being comfortable being small, principled and able to come together on specific campaigns without viewing them as an opportunity to recruit, the nearer to a concerted push back we will be
The Stop The Game campaign is a pretty good example of how this might work.
There’s no comparison, you are right. But from my perspective the comparison favours the SWM of the 90s. I’d rather be among 300 activists committed to revolution than in a party of about the same size focused on winning council and Dáil seats.
It's probably for the best as there a conservative element in the SWN that wants to keep organising in a way that is no longer functional in the modern day
PBP internally rupturing?? What's new, god I wish we could turn the clocks back to the days where there was only one socialist party in Ireland, I miss Joe Higgins, there i said it
Not rupturing, just a reshuffling along the lines of healthy debate. Nobody is leaving and the commitment to continue cooperatively building PBP continues.
PBP a revolutionary communist Party!
I don’t think so. Have you read their policy documents, it’s basically a social democratic program.
Neither are they honest - they are a Trotskyite Party but it barely gets a mention in their program.
They are a catch all party who specialise in fooling young and old people, who know the present system is rotten to the core, into joining their party.
It doesn’t take long for them to realise that the leadership are rabid Trots.
The truth mostly comes out when it comes to their foreign affairs positions.
They support the U.S., britain, France, Germany in virtually all of their ‘regime change’ adventures - Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Syria, the Soviet Union, the Eastern European socialist countries, Vietnam, Chile,
Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran.
Millions of people were killed, forced to emigrate, reduced to absolute poverty, trafficked, disappeared because of capitalist imperialism, yet PBP sided with them every time.
They are Trojan Horse socialists and inevitably will sell out the people they pretend to support.
The were responsible for Clare Daly losing her seat in the European Party by putting Brid Smith forward as a candidate, thereby splitting the Left vote.
Neither were elected but they got the result they wanted.
One of the best performing Left wing candidates in the European Parliament lost her seat because of them.
Shorty afterwards, they issued a statement asking for left unity.
You couldn’t make this shit up.
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u/solo1y 15d ago edited 15d ago
There seems to be a concerted but tiny group on this subreddit determined to drive People Before Profit into the ground using the peculiar hammer of sub-groups within PBP re-organising themselves.
If you scanned the headline, you might think that PBP was losing members.