RISE joins People Before Profit
RISE is joining People Before Profit as a network. This decision follows a year of discussion and common work and a vote by overwhelming majorities of both RISE and People Before Profit (PBP) members to combine our efforts. The common aim is to build PBP as a broad ecosocialist party, which utilises people power to fight for the interests of workers and communities.
People on the socialist left can get sick and tired of being asked “why don’t you unite? Why don’t you just get together?”. The question is sincerely meant, but it often overlooks very real political incompatibilities, disagreements that are so deep that they would turn any attempt to unite into a disastrous mess. Sometimes though, the question is a good one. If you are serious about changing the world, you have to be willing to ask yourself if you are duplicating effort unnecessarily or wasting energy doing things separately that would be better done together.
In the case of RISE and PBP, we come from different parts of the left, different traditions. But it’s no accident that during the pandemic our organisations have led the call for a Zero Covid strategy, and have both been supporting workers like the student nurses, Debenhams workers and taxi drivers. It's also no accident that we have converged on a common understanding of the centrality of the environment. By joining PBP we will be strengthening the call for ecosocialist change to combat the climate and biodiversity crises. We urgently need system change if we are going to avoid catastrophic climate change.
RISE has its disagreements with others in PBP. But these are divergences of opinion that can and should be debated and discussed fraternally within the framework of a common party. RISE will function as a network within PBP and its members will continue to contribute its ideas to Rupture magazine and the podcast Rupture Radio.
We urge all of our supporters to seriously consider joining PBP and helping to build Ireland’s ecosocialist party into a powerful force in society.