A new Marxist website, Against the Stream, has been launched in Ireland. Against the Stream stands in the tradition of the organised struggle for workers’ unity and for a socialist future. Over the years of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland activists in the workers’ movement-trade unionists and members of anti-sectarian left political parties and groups-stood against sectarian division and in defence of workers lives. Comrades grouped around the newspaper Militant in the 1970s and 1980s, and who established the Socialist Party in 1996, were often central to organised efforts to oppose sectarian division and sectarian attacks. Many other activists, and other left groups and parties also played a positive role.
Against the Stream will focus is on the ideas of the Marxist current which was represented by the Militant and the Socialist Party, but which has now separated into several different groups and independent activists.
Now, as then it is necessary to stand ‘against the stream’, arguing for workers’ unity and socialism as not only possible, but the only way forward. The purpose of the website is to share ideas and stimulate debate so that we might learn from the past, and apply the lessons learned to the problems we face today. It is the role of Marxists to consciously assimilate the lessons of past movements, to act as a memory for the working class, and to apply strategy and tactics to the world in which we find ourselves.
Ideas are a guide to action, but alone are not enough. All those who hold to the ideas of Marxism, and who recognise the challenges that lie ahead, must cooperate, and unite whenever possible.
Comrades who recognise the need for mass revolutionary parties as the necessary tools to bring about social change should be open to the idea of convergence of revolutionary forces on a principled basis. We must work to bring together those who retain the traditions of the past, and to arm a new generation with the ideas of Marxism. In time we will swim with the stream, not against it, but only if we seize every opportunity for the building of a united Marxist current. It is our duty, our revolutionary duty, to do so.
Read “About Against the Stream” here
Take a look at the website here
