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Hi Einde Please let me respond to a recent posting of yours to the Marxism List. Political instability or even crisis is not, in itself, evidence that an anti-capitalist force is growing. Simply because the two traditional bourgeois parties have the support of less than 50% of the electorate is of no significance. The electoral support won by the Sinn Fein party has made up for it. SF is a bourgeois party. SF, incidentally, is a party that bombed itself to the negotiating table.Then there are other independent bourgeois parliamentarians. Apart from, perhaps, the SP and the SWP other elements are little different from what the Irish Labour Party has been in the past. There is no evidence that deputies Wallace and Daly are radically left wing. At most they are populist. Neither do I see how you can justify your claim that the radical left took ten parliamentary seats in GE16 –was it not six? Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. What you call a mass movement is a cross class alliance. Water charges affect all classes. Furthermore what you label “a mass movement” was on a smaller scale than previous such demos. If anything there has been a ongoing diminishing attendance at these demos. FF lost electoral support but much of it went to other right wing parties. It was not a zero sum game. The world financial crisis, capitalism, moderately changed the politics in Ireland –not the “Left.” Even if the Fianna Fáil party had lost more support, given the state of politics in Ireland, this electoral support would have remained in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Indeed it is extraordinary, by even bourgeois standards, that this party has, more or less, held onto such electoral and political support for so long –since the the 1930s. Questions need to be raised too concerning the character of the SP and the SWP. These parties have been showing increasing opportunism. It is questionable as to how to the Left they are. Just look at the political trajectory of Syriza in Greece! Take Care Paddy _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
