Socialist world, where are you?

Examining Left Movements in Ireland and Beyond: Lorna Bogue on How Neoliberalism Could Be Its Downfall

Lorna Bogue suggests that the conditions created by neoliberalism might eventually pave the way for its collapse, at a demonstration at Tynagh Power Station, a privately owned gas-fired power plant in County Galway, An Rabharta Glas – Green Left and People Before Profit members gathered to discuss this potential.

‘People love to ‘claim that they’re working they’re Gary said. ‘No one here is ‘actually from a working-class background.’

‘Right, but everyone here works for a living and pays rent to a landlord,’ Eileen responded.

Raising his eyebrows, Gary replied, ‘Paying rent doesn’t make you doesn’t class.’

‘Yeah, working doesn’t make you doesn’t class. Spending half your paycheck on rent, not owning any property, getting exploited by your boss—none of it makes you working class, right? So what does, having a certain accent, is it?’ – Sally Rooney’ Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021)

When it comes to understanding the class politics of neoliberalism, Ireland’s literature is far ahead of its political Left. Plagued by organizational atrophy and, worse, constrained by a media landscape hostile to any ideas that threaten the Irish tax-haven model, there is a pressing need for a new approach to advancing a Left agenda in this neoliberal stronghold. Ireland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s most central ‘sd state, should not be seen as immune to class politics; instead, developing a relevant revolutionary framework is essential for change.

The Left, both in Ireland and globally, has struggled to articulate the role and purpose of class politics and communist ideas in a neoliberal context. This has led to a lack of purpose and organizational confidence, preventing meaningful action. There is a “mystification” “or lack of clarity around the purpose of left-wing politics and communist ideas within a decaying but still dominant neoliberal hegemony. The paradoxes that plagued Corbynism—believing that Labour could both gain and maintain state power within a neoliberal framework while simultaneously dismantling it to benefit the working class—remain unresolved. Much of European Left political thinking is similarly naive at best and nostalgic at worst. In Ireland, both these shortcomings are evident despite growing doubts about the sustainability of the current regime. This starkly contrasts the capitalist class’s unwavericlass’sidence in Ireland’s role as aland’s tax haven.

Ireland’s NationIreland’soisie

The Irish state was established 100 years ago after the 1916 revolution. Over the past century, the Irish Left has struggled to reinterpret this event as a socialist uprising rather than recognizing it for what it was: a revolution that empowered a new national bourgeoisie.

This bourgeoisie’s bourgeoisie’s 21st-century global capitalism has led to widespread market exposure, from agriculture to housing. This has created what former Taoiseach Enda Kenny called “the best little”country in the world to do business” (read: dodge t”xes and exploit public resources). The consequences of this business model include the most severe housing crisis of any European capital, chronically inadequate infrastructure for utilities and transport, and levels of inequality reminiscent of the 19th century.

At a time of multiple crises in Ireland, it is not the Left but relatively ideologically unmoored nationalist populism best positioned to capitalize. Much like the Fianna Fáil of the 1970s, Sinn Féin’s promises to Féin’s working class on issues like housing and health serve as window dressing for a more profound commitment to the Irish ruling class and the status quo. The unholy trinity of developers, landlords, and financiers remains unchallenged. This tactic, used by the national bourgeoisie for a century, is still accepted by the Anglosphere Left as a blow against imperialism.

Ireland’s RevoluIreland’sotential

While neoliberalism in the UK has been said to create a precariat mired in deepening poverty, in Ireland, it has produced an alienated industrial working class in call centers, abattoirs, hotels, and office buildings. This class historically didn’t exist even after joining the Single Market. This model has led to a unique form of a rentier economy, characterized by the highest residential rents in Europe, the highest consumer prices in the Eurozone, an over-reliance on regressive consumption taxes, and a near-total lack of universal public services. In this context, Irish neoliberalism brings what Gramsci termed an “organic crisis,” where the benefits of global economic positioning erode the domestic support base upon which the national bourgeoisie relies. Where else could there be such ideal conditions for advancing socialist class politics?

The mistake of the Left in Ireland, and indeed globally, is thinking of revolutions as singular events, often dramatized with pseudo-militaristic pageantry. Instead, revolution might be seen as an unpredictable “event” that creates “tes i”own political space, where a conscious and liberated class can redefine conditions for themselves. What is crucial is the type of consciousness that emerges—a strategic, versatile, and liberated consciousness that can act rather than an angry, reactive awareness that can be easily led. Consciousness is the critical revolutionary condition. But where and how can it develop?

Since 2020, the Irish government, with the Green Party at the forefront, has been turning the climate crisis into a wholesale opportunity for eco-austerity. In doing so, they are inadvertently creating conditions ripe for revolution. The task of the Left is not to convert climate politics into class politics; the Irish government is doing that for us by imposing the costs of climate action on a working population already subjected to some of the highest living costs relative to wages in the EU.

Unlike the missed opportunities and squandered moments since 2008, Ireland’s revoluIreland’sotential directly results from neoliberalism’s neoliberalism’sacy and the existing conditions upon which socialists can build. However, these conditions are not well-theorized by the Irish Left. The subjective conditions of class consciousness in a landscape marked by unchecked suburbanization and urban gentrification are still far from fully developed. This is how our party, An Rabharta Glas – Green Left, views the situation in Ireland and the context in which we seek to develop class politics centered on eco-socialism.

Neoliberalism has created a global economy of interconnected flows. We often look to the most industrialized, largest economies as the places where socialist transformation can occur on a significant scale. However, the networked nature of global capitalism can present opportunities in less-expected places.

Lorna Bogue is a Cork City Councillor for An Rabharta Glas – Green Left, representing Cork City South-East.