The founding programme of An
Rabharta Glas-Green Left, the newly formed Eco-Socialist political party (their website is here .
An Rabharta
Glas – Green Left ([ənˠ
ˈɾˠəuɾˠt̪ˠə ɡlˠasˠ], “The Green Tide/Flood”)[2][3] is
an unregistered Irish political party, launched on 5 June 2021 as a split from
the Green Party. It has two councillors, who had
previously been elected as Green Party members — Lorna Bogue, on Cork
City Council, and Liam Sinclair, on South Dublin County Council.[4] Its
outlook has been described as “eco-socialist“.[1]
This document which is twenty pages long describes itself as being ‘Towards a Programme for Eco-Socialism’. It contains two broad sections, one titled ‘Analysis’ and the other titled ‘Approach’.
Under the former section various areas are addressed
including ‘The political system and the economy, ‘counter-hegemony and
intersectionality’ and ‘class politics’. Under the latter section consideration
is given to areas such as ‘Eco-socialism’, ‘State power’, ‘Renewing the
commons’ and ‘Electoral politics and policy’. An ‘Agenda’ is offered and a
Conclusion arrived at.
The
document primarily addresses the Republic of Ireland, though it notes that ‘The
party will seek to develop its approach to Northern Ireland in future
documents’.
There document
notes in relation to class politics that:
Little
progress however is being made on the class7 front. Class is the glaring vacuum
at the core of
Irish
politics. Of the few political parties, trade unions and other organisations
which grapple with
class
formation as a serious objective, none have managed to articulate and
promulgate class
politics to
a wider audience. Several organisations which claim to represent ‘the working
class’
have
variously been subsumed into normative neoliberal governance or lack a strategy
for a
transition
to socialism beyond fomenting transient anger. Outside small bubbles of
activism,
virtually no
political discussion takes place on class formation as a substantial objective,
despite
the
atomisation and alienation of the most disadvantaged sections of Ireland’s
working class being
quite
obvious during the pandemic.
The party
explicitly looks at the Democratic Socialists of America and Podemos as
offering “examples of a successfully operationalised class politics of
ecosocialism in tough circumstances”. And it agues against the approaches
of Die Linke and SYRIZA with respect to the ‘pitfalls of eschewing class
politics’.
Based on
this analysis, we seek to offer a demonstratively new prospectus: we are not
offering
“green”
capitalism like the Green Party, nor “green” socialism like the smaller Left
parties, but ecosocialism.
Eco-socialism
symbiotically and inextricably unites the twin objectives of decarbonising
human
activity and transitioning from a capitalist society to a socialist one. While
individual
definitions
for either of these objectives vary, perhaps the most important role of
ARG-GL is to
establish
the frame for developing eco-socialism in Ireland within the limited time frame
permitted
by climate emergency [emphasis
in the original – ILA].
It concludes:
Relating our
vision of eco-socialism to the everyday lives of working people is a task which
ARG-GL
takes as being
of equal priority to the mechanics of advancing our political programme. This
means
inverting the
lens on the spatial and social order of villages, towns and cities, workplaces,
homes
and communities
to demonstrate that not only can working people be in control of their lives
and
the spaces in
which they live them, but they must be if people and planet are to survive in
the
coming decades.
Offering a prospectus based neither on designed utopias nor wishful thinking,
but
on the momentum
and space produced through and by popular struggle, has the power to reverse
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