The Taoiseach strongly defended Fianna Fáil's record in Government when he addressed members of the party's youth branch in Cavan on Saturday.
Mr Ahern made no reference to being a socialist, but said the party's policy was to create wealth because without the capacity to sustain the creation of real wealth, the party would be like the Opposition and simply lack credibility.
"There has been a simplistic debate whether Ireland is closer to Boston or Berlin," said Mr Ahern. "What Fianna Fáil has done, through social partnership, is to build our own Irish economic model from the bottom up. It is now the European flagship. While some at home continue to talk about Boston or Berlin, the fact is that in Boston and Berlin they are talking about Ireland."
He said Fianna Fáil's republican model of progress embraced social responsibility and it rejected economic stagnation. "It embraces the real needs of our people and rejects uncontrolled market forces," he added.
"The fact is that the republican and Irish economic model we have created is the first and only model in this country that has proven equal to the task of tackling poverty and ending exclusion for good. That is the achievement of Fianna Fáil.
"The republican movement that was founded a century ago took a position in their generation that 'we serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland'. Today, so do we."
The fact was, said the Taoiseach, that the marginalised could only be helped if resources were created first.
"There is a direct link between cutting corporation tax, keeping income tax low, having prudent limits on what we will spend in any one year and continuing to deliver resource teachers and delivering services for the disabled," he added.
Mr Ahern told delegates that by becoming members of Ógra Fianna Fáil they had taken a decision that the country's progress was their responsibility. The party strategy is to work until the last hour of the last day of the term that the people gave to deliver on the Programme for Government.
"In the second-half of our term we are redoubling our efforts to deliver on the commitments we gave." Fianna Fáil, said Mr Ahern, had the ideas that when implemented would have used the wealth being created today to transform the opportunities of those who were most marginalised.
"Our wealth will be used to improve the services we provide for those who are most vulnerable, the very young, the very old and the very sick. It will have been used to invest in infrastructure that will both improve our quality of life now and increase our capacity to create wealth in the future," he added.
The Taoiseach told the delegates that to be republicans they must first be activists.
"We must be in the vanguard of our community groups and we must be socially committed," he added.
"Ireland is increasingly a society that is rich in resources but lacking in time.
"While our lives are lived at an ever-faster pace, all around us there are others who are not moving forward at the same frantic pace.
"These people are our responsibility, our social responsibility, our political responsibility and our personal responsibility."
