Indeed the increasing participation of republicans in the property market along with the prospect of republicans in the police will likely make his predictions more relevant than ever, before we even see a mere ‘national republic’.

But there is another prospect which Connolly’s rightful socialist followers today should also consider.

If we were to hoist the red flag over our cities tomorrow, without the rejection of hierarchy we would probably be better off under capitalism.

Human progress and freedom would still be hampered through elitism and corruption, resulting in demoralisation, alienation, poverty and inevitable oppression.

The party “vanguard” and the state would still stifle the innovation and so far untapped potential talents of the worker, who they claim to represent by enforcing on him a concept of hierarchy which they will buy into hook line and sinker. Just as they did under capitalism.

Why could this be so?

I am not a particularly well-read person preferring to draw my analysis through what I experience and this is why I believe the above.

One of the biggest obstacles in the struggle against capitalism is surely attempting to break the apathy of the working class.

Yet apathy is only a sign that the worker has identified himself with the hierarchy of the capitalist state and agrees with his or her assumed role within it, be it slave, employee, star employee, criminal, prisoner, or bailiff.

Once they have occupied that place and as long as they can perform in their assigned role there is no need for them to explore or be innovative anymore. Responsibility for their actions will come from above, i.e. through the state, the government, the judiciary, etc. And so innovation stops.

We cannot begin to imagine the amount of untapped talent that is wasted through this process.

Socialists today rightly point out that ‘the market’ does not provide the incentive to allow every person to develop their full potential.

That is true, but operating alongside this is also the corrupting force of the ever present hierarchy, consider the term “all power corrupts”.

Hierarchy not only corrupts those at the top, it also corrupts those at the bottom, relieving the masses of the need to think, plan and analyse because in the background a leadership is making decisions for them.

Albeit subconsciously the masses become lazy, they trust the government, the police and the state in general, allowing capitalism to thrive on their backs.

Unfortunately for us revolutionary organizations themselves are not free from such tendencies.

Why a vanguard? an intelligentsia? And at the other end a rank and file and grassroots.

A future socialist society created by Irish republicans or Marxists would involve a hierarchy, immediately requiring the masses to subconsciously surrender responsibility to an elite again discouraging real innovative social cooperation.

Is this not merely a sop to the values that we have grown up with under feudalism and capitalism? Are we not revolutionaries?

True freedom must involve the participation of every person in socialism at every possible level.

Whilst a spell as a republican prisoner I had the chance to witness debates by men both before and after they were part of a hierarchical structure.

As part of their structure many thought they knew what they believed, yet after rejecting it they had a chance to think for themselves, only then with a feeling of liberation did unconstrained innovation and incentive begin to flow often from people who didn’t think they were up to it in the past and who relied on a leadership to think for them.

I began to apply this principle to the whole of society as a means to advancing revolution itself, the complete abandonment of elitism and hierarchy in the faith that human nature has the potential to discover better alternatives to it, freeing itself in the process.

After voicing this belief I was accused of being an Anarchist, I’m happy enough to accept that.

To help us along on our way to such a society we could do worse than to set a good example. Socialists should renounce any hierarchical status high or low and unashamedly return to loving human values based on empathy and solidarity rejecting macho tendencies, bitterness and of course notions that divide our class such as sexism and racism.