The World Socialist Party Ireland , [ 1 ] founded as the Socialist Party of Ireland in before changing its name a decade later, [ 2 ] was a Marxist political party in the impossibilist tradition.
The party participated in elections in Northern Ireland, but without success. The party disbanded in the s. As with all parties in the WSM, the object of the World Socialist Party of Ireland was "[t]he establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community.
The party was staunchly anti-Leninist. Along with its companion parties in the WSM, it believed that socialism could only be established when the majority of the population decided that socialism was in their best interests, not through a revolutionary vanguard.
The party stressed the limited nature of any reform within the capitalist system, saying of the Irish Labour Party that it "serves capitalism just as faithfully as the other political parties, and as you cannot serve capitalism and the majority of the people at the same time, the Labour Party is as much to be condemned from the workers' viewpoint as the others. It does not and cannot act in the interests of the Irish working class". Like other Marxist parties, it believed that the origins of the conflict lay in divide and rule tactics of the ruling class, of privileging Protestant workers over Catholic ones.
Indeed, it was argued that this focus stood in the way of achieving socialism and therefore both republican and loyalist paramilitaries were considered to be "fighting the bosses' battles". The party viewed the Irish War of Independence in much the same light as it viewed the later conflict in Northern Ireland, saying that as far as the working class was concerned, it only amounted to a change in masters.
