Why Dáil Reform Serves The Capitalist System?

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Monday March 14, 2016 13:35 by Paddy Hackett

FIanna Fail's Tactical Ploy

The working must struggle for the establishment of Workers' Councils as its institutions of power.

In the Irish Republic FF is seeking Dáil reform as a means of rendering it more difficult to blame it should it go into government to implement unpopular policies. It can then claim that the opposition, because of this reform, had joint influence over unpopular policies. The “radical” left sitting in the Dáil, conspicuously failed to expose this tactical ploy dressed up as a liberal proposal.

There is a good chance that FF will bring about a new general election in the not too distant future. This is because it is confident that there is a progressive electoral shift towards it. It is also in a buoyant mood because of its inchoate election recovery. It more than likely has the resources to fight another election. Many of the independents and small parties probably lack sufficient resources for another repetition of this political exercise. This may mean that they may loose seats that the FF party can pick up. Even if it fails to win sufficient seats to form a comfortable majority Fianna Fail may still fare well enough to form the leading party in a future government. Other things being equal it may too have learned from the mistakes of the FG-Labour coalition.

SF's parliamentary demagogic onslaught at the Dáil opening was just mere noise. Bombast over the homeless and other issues does not solve such problems. It was merely a tactical ploy to look good and concerned. Sinn Féin is merely exploiting suffering, as it has been doing in the six counties, to venally promote itself. Again there has been no attempt made by the parliamentary “radical” left to expose the cynical nature of this SF tactic.

The nomination by the AAA-PBP alliance of Boyd Barrett as taoiseach was a way of suggesting that its politics is essentially no different than those of the main bourgeois parties sitting in the Dáil. It is a further manifestation of its grossly opportunist nature. Even the alliance is farcical in character: It is an alliance of two alliances (AAA and PBP alliance) with only one of these alliances (PBP) in alliance with another alliance (the Right2Change). If this is not convoluted farce nothing is. It is an mind defying arrangement that can only but justifiably cause confusion among the working class.

The abstention by the PBP in the Dáil division over the nomination of Gerry Adams as Taoiseach further exposes the opportunism of PBP. If it is not a fake radical left alliance it would have voted against nominating the leader of a capitalist party, SF, for Taoiseach.

The Dáil forms an integral part of the bourgeois state. Consequently it cannot serve the class interests of the working class. Power cannot be concentrated in the hands of the working class through the medium of the Dáil. The fake parliamentary radical left by participating in parliament in the way that it hads is merely fortifying illusions in this bourgeois institution. The AAA and the PBP alliances are merely covers for the SP and the SWP. These parties are so opportunist that they cannot relate to the working class under their own names but must hide behind these soi distant “alliances.” Essentially the SP and the SWP are respectively, at most, Social Democratic parties. They will end, at most, playing the same role as the present minuscule Irish Labour Party.

Instead the working class must struggle towards the establishment of workers’ councils as its institutions of power.