Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
My da always worked odd jobs. He never had much education past secondary school. For a while, he was a caretaker at a private school in Dublin, and we lived in a wee cottage on the grounds. The pay wasn’t amazing, but it was enough to support a family of […]
For almost two decades, Friends of the International Brigades Ireland (FIBI) gather in Spain to mark important dates in the history of Spanish anti-fascist struggle with other Spanish and international groups maintaining the memory of the defense of the Spanish Republic. The 89th anniversary of the Battle of Jarama was […]
When US forces stormed Caracas earlier this year to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, pundits were quick to point out the brazen hypocrisy. Maduro now sits in a New York jail, awaiting trial on unsubstantiated charges of cocaine trafficking, while a bona fide narco-dictator, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández […]
Once again, the spectre of another war haunts the Persian Gulf. The Biden—and now Trump—administration has orchestrated a massive military build-up in the region, amassing an armada of warships, stealth fighters, and bomber assets in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The stated pretext is Iran’s nuclear programme. The reality […]
It is not uncommon to hear dismissal of trade unions among leftists: too conservative, don’t mobilise enough, too eager to make deals with employers and so on. The issue for Communists is not whether these criticisms are true; it is rather that they miss the point. Unions reflect a market […]
Marx wrote the passage below pointing unions forward, away from narrow sectional interests and towards playing a role within the great push towards socialism underway at the time. In addition to their original tasks, the trade unions must now learn how to act consciously as focal points for organising the […]
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx says: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Let us compare two intellectuals—one who understood Marx’s words […]
The attacks and machinations against Irish neutrality by the coalition government, arms companies, security think tanks and the military establishment continue to gather momentum. Barely a day passes that there is not another attack and attempt to undermine neutrality—newspaper articles, discussion on radio and television spreading rumours of imminent threat […]
Reformism and liberalism manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. They are so endemic that they have become part of the human psyche. They are a central part of protests and campaigning, no matter what the cause. They have become the hallmark of perceived victories and achievements in campaigning. To […]
Is international law progressive, reactionary or neutral? Before answering, one needs a Marxist understanding of law. Marx claimed that “the totality of [society’s] relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure.”[1] Following the October Socialist Revolution, the RSFSR […]
There may be a temptation on this side of the Irish Sea to regard as entertainment the recent scandals among the upper echelons of Britain’s ruling class. This would be a mistake, if only for the reason that what is happening within Britain’s governing Labour Party and its monarchy has […]
The United States has entered what can fairly be described as a new Cold War with China. The language has changed, but the methods are familiar. Containment, economic isolation, alliance discipline, and pressure on third countries have returned as the organising principles of strategy. This reorientation is no longer speculative. […]
Yet another Frankenstein film has appeared on screens. Despite acclaim, it bears little resemblance to Mary Shelley’s novel. For readers interested in Shelley’s political vision and the historical pressures shaping her work, the 1818 text remains indispensable. To mark the 175th anniversary of Mary Godwin Shelley’s death, we revisit this […]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter and a key strategist for imperialism during and after the Cold War, said in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard that the biggest threat to US unipolarity would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran—an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by […]
Cuba has transformed its electricity system in just 12 months, increasing solar power from 5.8 per cent to over 20 per cent of total generation as the country races to escape dependence on oil imports now blocked by US sanctions. The Caribbean nation connected 49 new solar parks to its […]
James O’Toole’s recent article on “comprador theory”[https://rednetwork.net/red-theory/2026/02/comprador-theory-lets-the-irish-rich-hide/] raises an important and serious political concern. He is right to insist that the Irish ruling class must not be portrayed as innocent intermediaries. Irish capital exploits. The Irish state defends class interests. Irish firms extract surplus both domestically and internationally. Any analysis […]
Pundits estimate there are somewhere between 50 and 80 million Irish people around the world. Our 17th-century ancestors rebelled against plantation owners in the Caribbean, only to then shape racialist police departments across the USA. We spread the fiddle, the Pope and the craic as far as the Guinness family’s […]
Shivaun O’Casey, Sean O’Casey’s only daughter and now sole surviving child, has published a remarkable memoir. Born in 1939, she grew up in a highly political household: Sean defined himself as a communist for most of his life, and Eileen shared his convictions. Their home was filled with modernist art, […]
The Irish Government’s response to the US attack on Venezuela is hypocritical and exposes the extent to which the 26-County State’s membership of the EU and dependence on foreign, mostly US, capital has undermined Irish neutrality. Micheál Martin, while refusing to condemn the illegal US actions in kidnapping President Nicolás […]
The government continues its strategy of absolute subservience to the needs and interest of global imperial interest in relation to foreign policy, its ongoing efforts to undermine and get rid of Irish neutrality and the Triple Lock and its absolute unquestioning commitment to market forces solving the housing crisis. Despite […]
The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with Kneecap, who are now under serious threat by the forces of the British State. The arrest and charging of one of the group’s members Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, is just the latest in the ongoing effort to silence the group and […]
We are now at a critical point in the history of imperialism. The US-led imperialist bloc is facing a challenge with the emergence of a more multi-polar world, led by the rise of China and alternative institutions such as the BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, imperialism is […]
The Irish Government’s response to the US attack on Venezuela is hypocritical and exposes the extent to which the 26-County State’s membership of the EU and dependence on foreign, mostly US, capital has undermined Irish neutrality. Micheál Martin, while refusing to condemn the illegal US actions in kidnapping President Nicolás […]
SIPTU presents itself as the largest force for organised labour in Ireland. Its scale is cited as proof of strength, of presence, of the collective weight of workers. Yet for many members, especially those in small and medium workplaces, the reality of SIPTU representation is starkly different. Instead of strength, […]
With Donald Trump drawing so much attention to his outrageous demands and acts of international piracy, it is hardly surprising that, with notable exceptions, little attention is paid in Ireland to problems caused by the European Union. One exception is the CPI. Opposition to the European Union has been party […]
Again, there is a lot of noise about the imminent end of the transatlantic alliance. ‘NATO may not survive the Trump era,’ reads a recent Time Magazine piece. ‘US intentions towards Greenland threaten NATO’s future. But European countries are not helpless,’ we are told in an expert comment for Chatham […]
The unprecedented real-time broadcast of genocide we witnessed on our phones for two years brought many new faces out onto the streets in protest against the extermination of Palestinians. “Politics aside”, some would say, “the suffering of civilians, of women and children, is heartbreaking, and it needs to stop.” This […]
In recent days, Irish media and the political establishment have sounded the alarm about the escalating dispute between the European Union and the United States, warning that new tariff threats and the possible unravelling of last year’s trade deal could have serious consequences for the Irish economy and jobs, particularly […]
Events surrounding the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro on 3 January by the US continue to cause confusion and division on the Left worldwide as people try to understand what happened. Many questions have certainly been raised by the events that unfolded on […]
The political and economic space in which the Irish state operates is increasingly shaped by the growing inter-imperialist contradictions within the NATO/EU bloc, which is itself a manifestation of the general crisis of capitalism. The tensions over Greenland are not an aberration but the latest symptom of a systemic process […]
With Israel repeatedly announcing the launch of large-scale military operations in the West Bank, particularly in Nablus and Tubas, and more recently in Hebron, a series of reports published by Israeli and Western media during the final quarter of 2025 has resurfaced. These reports addressed what was described as “Iranian […]
Jack London’s journey as a socialist and a writer is a story of dramatic ascent and tragic decline. His socialism grew from lived experience: childhood poverty, hard labour in factories, and firsthand exposure to capitalism’s exploitative logic, crystallised in 1894 during his time as a hobo. On “The Road,” travelling […]
It’s a question asked by many working people. The US establishment already has access to Greenland’s rich natural resources, and NATO already has a number of bases there. The Danish establishment was happy with its subordinate relationship with the US and willing to allow the US to expand its military […]
In December, I argued that calls to “tax the billionaires” stop well short of the real problem. The billionaire is not a moral aberration or a failure of regulation. The billionaire is the logical outcome of capitalism itself. That argument dealt with redistribution and its limits. This article follows directly […]
The rallying cry at demonstrations across Denmark over the past weeks has been: “Hands off. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” On the face of it, a country united from left to right in resistance to US aggression. ‘We want democracy, we want freedom, we stand behind Greenland,’ they chant. ‘We […]
The Frank Conroy Committee has designed a badge to mark the 90th anniversary of thedeath of Kildare IRA volunteer, anti-fascist and Communist Party member Frank Conroy.Christy Moore took to the stage at the 2018 James Connolly Festival in the Communist Partyof Ireland’s New Theatre to give an impromptu performance of […]
In the dark days of December, the Irish ruling class through their government, not once, not twice but three times displayed their contempt for the concept of democracy and political and economic sovereignty. They rushed through the Dail their proposals to abandon the Triple Lock governing the deployment of Irish […]
