Sometimes when a lefty argument has
been going for too long without any real progress or indeed any sort
of relevance, I get a bit tetchy, leading to an outburst of 'We don't
matter, this doesn't matter!'. I think this is true. Lefties (as
in members of leftwing parties or similar) generally do not matter.
We are a minute proportion of the population and the size and
relevance of any single leftwing party or organisation will be even
smaller. So in a very real sense, arguments about intricacies are
irrelevant. Our discussions should really have a concrete goal (which
can include getting a better understanding of a situation) or just be
pursued for pleasure. Either way there's no point beating our heads
off a table over issues that are not relevant if there's a
fundamental disagreement.
Lenin commented that “Politics begin
where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there
are millions, that is where serious politics begin.” We in Ireland
are probably never going to be able to engage in serious politics by
this definition, but we can at least hope for tens of thousands, even
hundreds. At the moment, we are handfuls, a couple of hundred at the
maximum, and the Left has only been able to mobilise those tens of
thousands when it has cooperated across party lines to organise on
relevant issues. Campaigns like those against the Water Tax and
Household Tax have shaped Irish State policy in a real, measurable
way. Operating alone, a good day for a Left party is when they get
their spokesperson on the radio.
Despite this, the organisational
boundaries remain set in stone and the United Left Alliance is
neglected. I think this is contrary to the purpose of the left
organisations. A party should be formed that has a smaller program
than those of the existing parties and organisations, open to the
bulk of Irish people to the left of Labour. Following the partyist
mentality will not make lefties matter.
What will become of the micro-sect?
So, if there was a dissolution into a
larger party, what would happen to the existing parties and
formations? In my (limited) experience, small leftwing parties tend
to be think-tanks with organisations attached. My suggestion is we
hive off the think-tanks into intra-party policy groups which can
compete for support for their ideas among the members.
In existing parties, think-tanks may be
executive committees or informal cliques (the former is more
democratic) but the effect is the same; a small minority come up with
policies, the majority vote on and implement them. This can be
identified as a problem of engagement or a problem of fact; most
people do not want to get involved in policy-making. If the latter,
then members should at least have the chance to choose between
different policies. If the former, it seems that engagement is
probably hindered by the narrow spectrum of debate; if everyone
pretty much agrees, what's the point in getting involved in coming up
with ideas?
But I think the narrow policy spectrum
actually masks internal division; members may actually agree more
with members of other organisations then with some of their comrades,
they may have misgivings about direction which are not articulated by
a explicit alternate policy. If a member disagrees with the
organisation's policy, they are faced with a dilemma: get involved in
a faction fight to advance their own intellectual leadership
(difficult and appealing to few people), put up and shut up
(alienating) or leave. To a certain extent this is a problem caused
by the need for discipline (i.e. doing political activity that you
don't fully agree with), but it is compounded by the small scale of
organisations and the zero-sum game in contests for power.
From this perspective, it would make
sense to have a larger party with a greater diversity of intellectual
leadership, via policy groups that come up with ideas for activity.
These would have the same characteristics as a faction leadership;
small, with a shared analysis and strategic orientation. Having many
of these groups co-existing in a large party would allow members to
hear a diversity of views on a subject, make it easy to change their
mind or support positions from different cliques and a greater
freedom for developing their own policy group if needed.
So the idea here is of a lot of
different policy groups coming up with ideas and motions which are
then voted on by the membership. This leads to the question of the
relationship between legislative and executive branches within the
party; is it possible to separate the two? If so, won't this give the
executive informal powers to decide what policy is implemented?
