Program and Tactics of ULA.

by Alan Davis - IBT Thu Feb 10, 2011 15:15 alan.bolshevik at gmail dot com

I'd agree with the thrust of the aspirations you put forward but would like to know what your programme is regarding the state - both in terms of the repressive apparatus and the government.

In my opinion the platform of ULA is completely deficient in these areas and is limited to an implicit reformist fantasy that the fundamental social change necessary can be achieved through the capitalist parliamentary framework and it has nothing to say about the repressive apparatus of the state, though I understand that its components all share the illusion of some kind of "community control".

Do you agree with the ULA's reformist approach or do you have an alternative?

by Ipso Thu Feb 10, 2011 22:14

Allowing the state to monitor bank accounts of the people, and take action based on that information.
The rich will move their money offshore. The poor will suffer at home. God knows what the powerful will do with the infomation.

How can such authoritarianism benefit the poor. It would restrict personal freedom, and cement personal circumstances. It would not even benefit the wealthy, with the exception of the ultra rich who can play at the highest level. Ultimately it would only benefit the authoritarians themselves.

Have you not seen the state people have made of the country, and of the world, when decisions are made by the super rich, self important minority. Granting more power to an even more self important minority won't help. We need a more functional democracy - we need to have more people making the decisions that effect us all. Maybe we need to have a better informed and better educated public for that, but we have plenty to go on right now. Standard of education is only going downhill from here. There could be an open access assessment exam in order to progress to a further level of democratic involvement. Voluntary of course - financial incentives are counter productive to the proper running of the country.

ULA aren't really convincing me. All I'm hearing is "we will get rid of this and that bad things", but I haven't really heard plans that I think will work.
Sinn Fein make more sense tbh, but can you trust em?

"all bank accounts to be looked at and those of the rich taxed at a much higher rate than the smaller accounts and all accounts examined to see where the money came from"

by Alan Davis - IBT Sat Feb 12, 2011 01:50 alan.bolshevik at gmail dot com

What do you think of this piece on the election, particularly its critique of the ULA's reformism?

by D_D - PBPA-ULA individual Tue Feb 15, 2011 00:31

John, give the ULA a chance will yah! Calm down. The ULA is less than four months old. It has flung open a window to be sure and quicker than old campaigners ever envisaged. It has an election to fight. It is as yet formally only an electoral alliance.

Left sectarianism is not just about division and conflict within the left. It is also about isolation from the class and the real world. Living in a sect, a bit like living in a religious sect, living an illusion. You have a proud record of opposition to the former side of sectarianism, a record that makes your welcome for the ULA warmly welcome to these eyes.

Yet as regards programme, strategy and tactics you seem to mix sound advice with hopeless ultra leftism. You are perfectly perceptive to identify the need people feel for a concrete answer to the question 'if we default, burn the bondholders, where will we get the money to pay for nurses wages and the petrol to run ambulances?' The left needs money answers or concrete steps to propose for what happens the morning after - or better still, the month before - refusal to adhere to the IMF/EU deal. You do not - nor would I expect you to from a distance - give detailed, costed, alternatives, but you should know that the Irish left is feeling its way towards them. Or perhaps towards refusing to play the media's game of 'where would you get the €19 billion?'

You wish the ULA to move rapidly from the election and then from propaganda to providing the active leadership for resistance. Are you aware of the experience of 2010 and the fact that the left has sought by all kinds of devices, campaigns and initiatives - often in the face of sobre reason - to bring the masses out on to the street in the absence of such a lead from the trade unions leadership? That the Irish people are undergoing the severest and most shocking drop from boom to bust in Europe? That the only body so far capable of mobilising tens of thousands has been the trade union leadership and that that leadership is, coincidentally, the weakest and most compromised in Europe? That as yet the left, with all the progress it is making, is as far from taking the place of that leadership as you are from where I am now typing?

Direct action? You should know that the incidents to date have sometimes been counter productive, sometimes a heartening spectacle and always a firelighter that has not lit the fire. Are you really proposing that the four or five TDs that might get elected for the ULA, along with some other leading ULA supporters, occupy a bank as the main way forward and chief activity for the ULA and the left in the short term? You speak of "mass direct action". That would be a good thing: MASS direct action. To urge Joe Higgins, Richard Boyd Barrett, Seamus Healy and Joan Collins to lead two dozen others in direct action in the coming months is substitutionism of the first order. There is a power of work to be done, on the ground, in the communities, in the workplaces, in the unions, in the meeting rooms, on the media, on the internet, in discussion, on the streets, over the long haul before the left on its own is near to commanding a call for mass direct action, or even a MASS demonstration.

You seem to go further, urging that "we break with capitalism entirely. That is we break with the IMF, the EU, the entire profit system. This is what has to be spelled out. It is a weakness of the ULA that they are not sufficiently spelling this out." The first shakey steps to breaking out of decades of divided isolation have been taken and already you are sounding the clarion call to revolution! Do you know that the ULA has yet to agree, and may not do so for some time, to use the word 'socialism'? The ULA is the beginning of a process. You hold up the example of the Egyptian revolution. It is indeed a thrilling example. But even here you are running ahead. The Egyptian revolution has as yet removed a dictator whose place has been taken by a military junta for, hopefully, the time being.

Cairo may not be as far from a "break with capitalism entirely" as Dublin is but, on the other hand, so far it is taking for itself the democratic freedoms and capacities that we - however imperfectly and precariously - already have in Dublin.

by individual voter Tue Feb 15, 2011 02:51

The only regular masses found around Ireland are sports supporters pouring out of stadia after weekend events. Once in a blue moon 100 thousand or more people have joined tax protests (in 1980) or demonstrations against the US-British decision to attack Iraq (February 2003). It wasn't the revolutionary stalwarts in fringe groupings who 'mobilised the masses' on such occasions, but widespread trans-class feelings among citizens that the taxation system was inequitable or the attack on Iraq based on false premises. Television, radio and newspaper commentary by centrist and a few left-leaning journalists helped to get the crowds out, not the doctrinaire newssheets produced by the militant groups.

Mass action is always temporary as emotions simmer down and people get back to their daily routines. People don't want to, and cannot, live in a continuing state of hyped up political and economic emotional tension.

Several of the ULA candidates have worked steadily in their various localities for many years campaigning on unemployment, bureaucratic neglect, corruption and other issues. Much of their work has had nothing to do with platform speeches aimed at 'galvanising the masses'; in fact it is one-to-one communication on doorsteps, in street corners and at meetings of residents associations in people's sitting rooms that has gained the respect and following for activists who now hope that voters will remember their painstaking commitment.

Theoreticians and platform orators who believe that the masses are living lives of false consciousness and that the masses will eventually snap out of it and follow the true leaders-in-waiting are living in clouds of deluded grandeur. Revolutionists pander mass delusions.

by D_D - PBPA - ULA individual Tue Feb 15, 2011 15:33

You are partly correct 'individual voter'. The gap beween the left and a 'mass' following is a wide gulf and the recognition of this is the beginning of political wisdom. You are being over negative about collective action and revolution. A glance across North Africa and the Middle East at this very moment shows that mass movements are not a delusion.

There have been more recent large manifestations since the tax marches and the anti-war march. Several large ICTU, union and community marches since the beginning of the slump and a whole series of local marches last year, in defence of hospitals, which brought out almost entire town populations.

Interestingly both the tax marches (the Trades Councils) and the anti-war march (IAWM, Richard Boyd Barrett, etc.) had radical left people at their centre. The other organising factors you mention were crucial, sure, (and your point about consistent work on the ground being essential for successful election candidates is well made) but the people at the organising centre, and those who spoke on the platforms at both occasions, were key as well.

You are right to sedate delusions of revolutionary grandeur but your pseudonym of 'individual voter' denotes the isolated powerlessness that can be and continually is overcome by large numbers of people acting together.