Marxist Republican Network

The Marxist Republican Network is a group of socialists organised in People Before Profit, and the editors of Horizon Magazine. PBP is the most serious and viable attempt to create a mass socialist party in Ireland, and it is the foundation we mean to build on. The points of unity below set out how we think this can be done: from the kind of party we need today to the world we ultimately fight for. This will not be the work of a single election or campaign, but of the patient effort, over years, to root a mass party in every community and workplace on this island. Our ultimate aim is to complete the unfinished revolution: winning power for the working class, here and across the world.

Our Points of Unity

1. Class Independence – For a break with the left-government strategy

The Marxist Republican Network’s primary task is building People Before Profit into a mass, class independent socialist party. That means a party that is clearly opposed to the capitalist state in all its forms with members organised in every community and shop floor on the island.

Class independence requires political clarity. PBP needs a public face that is unmistakably socialist and distinct from every other party to our right. We reject any strategy that subordinates socialist politics to maintaining a “broad left” bloc.

This necessarily means a break with the “left government” strategy. Participation in or support for governments who rule within the confines of the capitalist state ties the workers’ movement to the system it must overthrow. Electoral tactics must be subordinated to a broader vision of societal transformation.

Building such a party requires developing our own independent base. We want to see PBP build large, active and militant branches, its own media and publications and its own independent fundraising. Only a movement that stands on its own resources can sustain a consistent socialist politics.

In the longer term we need to be ambitious. We want to build party affiliated cultural institutions, mutual aid networks and working class defence organisations. Within the unions, we would work to fight the existing bureaucracy, build militant, democratic unions, and strive to win these unions to socialist politics.

Developing class independence will require confidence in our party, confidence in our class, and the belief that a mass base for a radical oppositionalist socialist politics can be built. The only path to our goals runs through the hard work of building a mass socialist constituency from the ground up.

2. Programmatic Unity – For a programme that guides all of PBP’s work

To actually practise class independence PBP needs a programme. A programme is not an electoral manifesto or a guide to action within one specific struggle. A programme is an expression of a party’s long-term goals.

What holds a socialist party together is agreement on what we fight for, not tactical consensus on how to get there on any given day. This approach can be called programmatic unity: unity through struggle for essential political goals, rather than ideological lines or populist slogans.

We want PBP to adopt a minimum-maximum programme. The minimum programme is the party’s platform: what we fight for now and implement immediately upon taking power to dismantle the capitalist state and institute democratic working class political power.

The maximum programme is where that leads: a society free of class exploitation, borders, the market and imperial domination; and, in turn, informs the minimum demands we make. Both are crucial and draw clear lines of demarcation between socialists and the rest of the left.

We would like to move towards programme acceptance as the basis of PBP membership. That does not mean agreeing with every dot and comma of the programme. Nevertheless, being a PBP member would mean committing to fight for its programme as the democratically agreed aims of the movement. Members would have the right to organise to change the programme and to voice public disagreement.

3. Tribunes of the People – For worker leaders in every arena of class struggle

Armed with a common programme, party members have the means to win workers to a concrete socialist vision. This requires developing worker leaders in every arena of class struggle: unions, community campaigns, anti-imperialist groups, among migrant workers, in CATU, and in Leinster House, Stormont and local councils. Through this work, our aim is to build durable working-class institutions and to attract increasing numbers to our programme and socialist politics.

To do this our members must act as tribunes of the people. That means fighting against sectionalism, combating all forms of oppression, and making every effort to generalise individual struggles into a wider political challenge to the system. Democratic accountability is the foundation of this work. Party members must remain accountable to the party membership and the programme as its democratically agreed expression.

For those operating in Leinster House, Stormont and the councils, this requires clear discipline and political consistency. We stand on a common programme, continue to vote as a bloc, take a worker’s wage, and refuse any arrangement with capitalist parties. At all times, our representatives would act in line with the programme. Those of us elected to the halls of capitalist power have a unique ability to powerfully indict the system in front of the whole nation.

In the labour movement, this means coordinating across industries and unions, building rank-and-file power, and challenging bureaucracies while openly maintaining our socialist programme. Only an independent socialist party can provide the political basis for a strong union movement, because only that kind of party can unite workers across different sectors behind the demands of a class rather than a collection of competing interests.

4. 32-County Struggle – For an all-Ireland, radically democratic party

Struggle in Ireland can often tend towards low level clientelist forms. We are encouraged to believe that the possibility of change ends at the gates to our estate, the boundaries of our constituency or the border. Socialists must fiercely resist this tendency.

Ignoring high politics will disarm the working class by obscuring the true face of the Irish and British states. Local organising is the foundation of our movement, but it will be far more effective when it is connected to a 32-county and continental vision for the working class revolution.

To break from these tendencies Marxist Republican Network will work to contribute to the building of PBP as a democratic all-Ireland organisation. This means building collaboration and debate across the island through open, membership-led national committees, caucuses and a lively party press. It means the guaranteed right to form factions and tendencies. It means a transparent and recallable leadership so all members can become knowledgeable of how the party operates on a national political level.

It means lifting branches out of localism by increasing communication across branch lines and integrating local struggles into a shared all-island politics and programme. It means making political education and practical organising training available to every member. It means building up PBP’s capacity to run a serious slate of candidates for both Leinster House and Stormont, using those platforms to deliver a common socialist message to every corner of the island.

We recognise that any mass socialist movement that genuinely threatened the power of either state would face fierce repression from both the British and Irish state apparatus. We must build a 32-county force ready to meet them head on.

5. Continental Struggle – For a united political challenge to Fortress Europe

Just as socialists must not solely focus on the local, nor should we solely focus on the national. Southern Ireland is a small tax haven, deeply embedded in the global capitalist system. The North is a systemically underfunded statelet that has experienced continuous neglect under British rule. A socialist republic here would not be left in peace.

Capital flight, economic warfare, expulsion from the EU and the mobilisation of reactionary loyalist forces are but a few threats the state would be forced to reckon with. The Irish and European ruling classes would bring the full weight of their power to bear the moment socialist politics threatened their interests. We must necessarily reject developmentalist, isolationist fantasies.

The European ruling classes increasingly act together. From the EU’s extremely undemocratic character, and its constitutional neoliberalism, to the push towards rearmament and a European army, to Fortress Europe and the mass murder of migrants at sea – the EU is a system of continental class rule.

The response must match the scale of the problem. Irish socialists cannot wash their hands of the barbarity of the EU. PBP should commit to building real fraternal ties with socialist parties across Europe, toward the horizon of a united European socialist party. A coordinated slate of socialist candidates for the European Parliament, condemning the EU’s violence from Galway to Tallinn, together with unified workers’ action can raise political sights across the continent and point towards a viable alternative.

The fight against capitalism must necessarily be an international one. Ultimately as a long term goal we require a new International of mass class independent socialist parties. A true international capable of coordinating worldwide political action and delivering a socialist alternative on a global scale.

6. Smash Partition, Smash the EU – For a struggle against the Free State, partition and the entire Western camp

Irish socialists have a duty to stand firmly against the repressive and undemocratic structures of capitalist states, beginning with the capitalist states on this island. The Free State was a counter-revolutionary settlement, built to protect property, partition the working class, and subordinate Ireland to reliance on Britain. The Orange State was its mirror image in the North. The Good Friday Agreement did not resolve this. It reorganised and legitimised the northern statelet, stitching together a power sharing arrangement that copper-fastened partition and enshrined the loyalist veto in a thoroughly undemocratic settlement.

The dismantling of both reactionary states is a precondition for any genuine democratic settlement on the island. The border poll cannot deliver this. It can only be called by the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, it confines the question to a state-imposed binary, and at best delivers the unification of two reactionary states. Socialists cannot sow illusions in this being a path to liberation.

We must wholly reject the legal frameworks that are used to defend and legitimise the capitalist state order. We reject Bunreacht na hÉireann and the Good Friday Agreement. PBP must stand in complete opposition to partition and the Irish and British states. We demand unconditional British withdrawal from the North and a 32-county constituent assembly to dismantle both states and win a true democratic republic on the island.

But we must go further than just opposing the states on this island. Irish socialists located in the western camp have a duty to oppose the imperialism of the American empire. This means opposing the wars of the capitalist states on this island and their allies. Opposing NATO, EU militarisation and American imperialism across the globe. It means using all the power at our command to resist any pushes towards militarism and war.

Every injustice, every scandal, every manifestation of state oppression is an opportunity to rally the working class toward a socialist alternative. PBP representatives should be bound by our programme to vote down any military or police funding. They should continue the call for the abolition of the Special Criminal Court, raise the demand for freedom for political prisoners and oppose all deportations. They must oppose every extension of state and police power, and expose in public the connections between the violence of the Southern Irish and British states, the EU border regime and the American empire. We must build up a popular sense of opposition to our states and the world order.

7. Complete the Unfinished Revolution – For a democratic socialist republic in Europe

Our goal is a socialist Europe and, ultimately, a socialist world, a genuine seizure of political and economic power by the working class. To win it we must do away with every institution that denies us democracy. Immediately upon taking power we would implement a sweeping minimum programme to cement working class political rule. Partition is abolished. We repudiate Bunreacht na hÉireann and the Acts of Union alike. Every institution that denies us authentic democratic rule is dismantled: the Seanad, the presidency and the courts.

Supreme power will rest in a unicameral assembly elected by proportional representation. Delegates are recallable at any time and take no more than a worker’s wage. Local organs of government have wide autonomy. Freedom of speech, assembly and organisation is guaranteed to all.

Our programme cannot stop at the sea. A situation where the Irish working class finds itself alone is the absolute worst-case scenario. We must be united with a continent-wide workers’ movement to smash the EU and fight for a democratic socialist Europe. All power to a new radically democratic European Parliament that governs accountably in the interest of the working class.

Fortress Europe will be dismantled, Frontex and every mechanism of border control abolished, with climate refugees and every oppressed people welcomed without condition. NATO will be dissolved, all military interventions ended, and standing armies replaced with citizen militias. Free from the war machine, we can take immediate radical action against climate change.

Together with the global socialist movement we can extend working-class rule to every corner of the globe. This lays the path toward a classless society: communism, a society without money, class distinctions, national borders, patriarchy, or any form of social oppression. Guided by the principle: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, communism unleashes true freedom for both society and the individual, allowing humanity to fully realise its potential.

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