Anyone with an ounce of humanity has been focused, angered, and motivated by the horrific genocide in Palestine. The old saying springs to mind: ‘For those who know, no explanation is necessary. For those who don’t, none is possible.’ But perhaps that is not entirely true. As radical, revolutionary activists, where do we stand on Palestine? More importantly, where do we go from here?
Where we direct our energies after Palestine, after the hunger strikes in Britain, and after the Ukraine-NATO war is vital. There is always a danger: the next ‘critical issue’ can deflect our focus and drain our personnel.
Even without these interruptions, a mountain of ongoing political work remains. The ‘old favourites’ have not gone away. Homelessness, a two-tier health service, a chronically underfunded education system, and rampant inequality and exploitation at work—for the majority, the poor and the working poor, very little has changed in 300 years of capitalism. These are the core needs in everyone’s lives.
On top of this is the ever-increasing cost of living, particularly for basic foods, monopolised by multinational corporations and stock market speculators. Then there is climate destruction, driven by the relentless race for ever-increasing profits. In fact, those words—‘ever-increasing profits’—explain most ills facing the majority on this island.
And then there are the issues of sovereignty, neutrality, imperialism, and peace. We must also deal with partition and its effects on our actions, North and South.
None of this is new. As socialists and communists, we grasp the politics, culture, and economics of it all. The perennial question is: how do we use these issues to raise awareness among the wider population? Can they be ‘vehicles of education’? How do we get the uninitiated to ‘join up the dots’?
Rather than acting on issues in an ad hoc fashion, we need the ‘psychological driver’ of a single goal: we want to take power in Ireland. This may sound grandiose, but it must become the basis of our tactics and ultimate strategy for a 32-County Socialist Republic.
We must approach our work by asking what it will take to retain future gains—to practically lay the ground for the inevitable reaction and counter-revolutionary attacks as we undermine capitalism. By our actions today, we must build the defences of tomorrow and ensure the wider population sees this in action and is an integral part of it.
To achieve this, we must be involved in people’s lives at every possible level. We cannot do it all, so we must actively recruit for every campaign that needs work. We are small in numbers but rich in knowledge. Let us impart that knowledge widely and recruit prolifically.
This necessary groundwork would be greatly assisted by forming people’s community councils around campaigns, directly linked to local government councils. This can only work if it is based on radical, revolutionary politics designed to undermine and ultimately replace bourgeois politics.
But none of this will happen if we do not push ourselves out among the people. We must live what we know works; theory and practice are the basis of praxis. This, too, is not new.
For those who know, more is always possible. For those who don’t, our praxis is necessary.
