Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
“We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia, and even the United States of America . . . We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army.”—Emmanuel Macron, president of France (6 November 2018)
Global debt is now becoming a major factor in the instability of the system of capitalism. Figures show that in the second quarter of 2018 global debt reached a new record, rising to $260,000 billion. Of this total, 61 per cent—$160 trillion—is private debt of the non-financial sector, while 23 […]
The dominant ideological story of central banks is that removing them from the control of governments depoliticised them and made them neutral, “scientific” actors in the economy. The argument goes that, as economics developed into a science, with the primary aim of keeping inflation low, making central banks independent allowed […]
“Oxford Union votes down motion on reunification of Ireland” read a recent headline in the Belfast Telegraph. It was the type of news story guaranteed to warm the hearts of delegates gathering in Belfast a few days later for the DUP’s annual conference. Coupled with the attendance at the event […]
Communist movement gaining in strength globally In late November the 20th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties took place in Athens. These meetings have proved very important gatherings, invaluable in pulling together the communist parties around the world after the overthrow of socialist power in the former socialist countries. […]
Peace activists from around the world gathered in Dublin from 16 to 18 November for the First International Conference Against US and NATO Military Bases, organised by the Global Campaign Against US and NATO Military Bases. The meeting was supported by the US Peace Council and the World Peace Council […]
It was this writer’s privilege and pleasure to attend the 55th congress of the Communist Party of Britain, held in London on 17 and 18 November, as a guest and representative of the Communist Party of Ireland. Well attended by comrades from England, Scotland, and Wales, there were also numerous […]
Empathy is most often discussed in examples of its absence. The idea of a human as unempathetic is the stuff of nightmares, horror films, and late-night true-crime documentaries: the psychopath motivated to kill by an innate evil impulse. Like most dramatic pop psychology, this is an oversimplification. Psychopaths are as […]
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o turned eighty this year. He has written prolifically. Arguably his most famous (non-fiction) book is Decolonising the Mind, about the constructive role that language plays in national culture, history, and identity. The reclaiming of African languages as keepers of memory, of African history, became central to Ngũgĩ’s […]
Speech at the international communist meeting, Athens, by Eugene McCartan, general secretary, CPI Comrades, Imperialism is mired in an ever-deepening crisis. At the global, regional and national levels the system is now enmeshed, through its contradictions, in several interconnected crises—economic, political, environmental, cultural, and moral. It is the role of […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland 9 November 2018 This November is the centenary of the ending of the Imperialist War, 1914–1918, fought between British imperialism and its allies on the one side and German imperialism and its allies on the other. It is believed that more than 10 […]
The ruling class have always used, and will always use, whatever means are at their disposal to divide the working class. This is done to control them and to increase exploitation and profits. We need to be cognisant of this at all times. Since the defeat of the Soviet Union, […]
To paraphrase and develop Marx, in certain conditions unions can be the schools of socialism for working people; but they are not socialist in themselves, and in fact only rarely act as such schools. Unions are a product of their conditions. When craft unions dominated, it was the period of […]
There is no doubt that union density and union activity have declined drastically over recent years. The only time there was any increase was at the height of the global financial crash—and this was not an increase in total membership, it was an increase in density, resulting from the fact […]
In late October the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) called for an “urgent” meeting with President Nicolás Maduro to discuss a series of government shortcomings in the area of workers’ and campesinos’ rights. The proposed meeting, according to the general secretary of the PCV, Óscar Figuera, should be held “with […]
Theresa May once told a Tory party conference that people viewed Conservatives as “the nasty party.” She claimed this was an unfortunate misunderstanding, to be rectified by improving the party’s public-relations campaign. While few readers of Socialist Voice would fall for that type of self-serving nonsense, too many others accept […]
When people are discussing happiness, there are few things that come to mind as immediately as freedom and autonomy. As Starbucks said, “happiness is in your choices.” We are told that without freedom we cannot be happy, and that freedom, boiled down to the basics, simply means choice.
Social media and Google serve three strategic purposes for the US government. Firstly, they allow the United States to conduct espionage; secondly, they facilitate the spread of disinformation; and thirdly, they serve as conduits for the transmission of social contagions.
Paul Stewart, Tommy McKearney, Gearóid Ó Machail, Patricia Campbell, Brian Garvey, Between Sectarianism and Neo-Liberalism: The State of Northern Ireland and the Democratic Deficit (Glasgow: Vagabond Voices, 2018) If, like me, you mourn the loss of intelligent debate among Irish republicans as they descend into the gobbledegook of bourgeois democracy, […]
The 11th of November 2018 is the centenary of the ending of the First World War. During that bloody slaughter the propagandists described it as “the war to end all wars.” A hundred years and as many wars later, the militarists in the United States and Europe—many of them the […]
Sinn Féin is the big loser from the presidential election. Given a golden opportunity to present itself as the principal alternative to a triumvirate of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Labour Party, it offered the Republic’s electorate a package so bland that it blended in with the wallpaper. Surely […]
Panos Cosmatos’s film Mandy (2018) has received widespread acclaim for its visually arresting murder-and-revenge story, set in a heavily aestheticised 1980s rural America (thanks to the cinematography of Benjamin Loeb). This article is not so much a review of the film as a critical assessment of some of the political […]
Samantha Power was born in Ireland but was taken to America at a young age by her parents, a doctor and a dentist. She attended Yale University and subsequently became a war journalist. Later she was an adviser to Barack Obama, who appointed her US ambassador to the United Nations […]
As the time for a final deal between the British state and the European Union draws near, the British government is attempting to push through its minimalist Brexit strategy so as to secure its “special relationship.”
