“I must be honest and say that, like many others, I disagree with what I read as an unfairly generous appraisal of an anti-communist republican.
If the provisionals talked in any sense of ‘socialism’ it was a socialism of defending the Irish working class from capitalism’s excesses perhaps, but quite separate to Marxist socialism as we would understand it, with its agenda of seizing the means of production and the eradication of class distinction.”
Here we can see the working class of Ireland recognise their position, they can see very clearly the problems capitalism produces, namely, the health and housing crises. Here Sinn Féin had the opportunity to exploit the gap in anti-austerity politics that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil structurally support.
There appears to be a common theme among ‘leftwing’ parties who enter into mainstream politics; a soft approach which tends to leave its grass roots members disillusioned as the party will continue to pander to an entirely different demographic than the ones it once represented. Blatant ignorance or maybe the refusal to accept a bad…
