Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
AS WE ENTER a new decade, the real living conditions of working people continue to decline; profits are up, which means exploitation is intensifying; large numbers of working families rely on family income supplement—the state’s subsidy on behalf of low-pay employers—to survive.
THE WORKING CLASS is under attack in a class war that we are losing. There was a time when one average worker could earn enough to provide a family with the basic necessities of food and shelter and a few luxuries. This, of course, did not
Socialist Voice has arguably been the most unwavering of English-language socialist periodicals in its analysis and exposition of the European Union as an inter-state structure of monopoly capital, under German…
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland4 January 2020 The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with the working people of both Iraq and Iran at this extremely critical moment in the life of their nations. The actions of US imperialism in the Middle East and most recently in […]
We are rarely forced to agree with Leo Varadkar, but it is difficult to find fault with his observation that the political tectonic plates in Northern Ireland are shifting. In the light of recent general election results, it is safe to say that not only is unionism’s majority eroding but […]
The first requirement in a debate is that everyone agree on the meaning of the words they use; otherwise the exercise is pointless and can only generate more heat than light. Nowhere is this more evident than in the debates about nationalism. Is nationalism a progressive or a reactionary ideology? […]
Last month the US government announced that its military budget for 2020 will be a colossal $738 billion. The US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. But only a minority of environmental campaigns or […]
There appears to be simply no depth to which the establishment will not sink to show what faithful servants they are to imperialism and in particular to British imperialism. The Irish people endured centuries of colonial and imperialist domination. They endured mass starvation, violent oppression, the destruction of our language […]
The Soviet Union put a massive emphasis on forest preservation and set up zapovedniki (nature reserves), set aside for scientific research. By the 1930s enough new forests had been created to cover an area the size of Mexico. The country was also home, by the 1980s, to one of the […]
It is not in the interests of capitalists to resolve crises: it is in their interests to make money from them. Too often we find that the interests of profit and the interests of the people are irreconcilable. With mental health it is no different. The capitalist media are happy […]
On 1 January 2020 we celebrated the sixty-first anniversary of the triumph of the first socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. Sixty-one years after that historic event Cubans, and the friends of Cuba in the world, recognise the greatness of that event, which made the peoples of the world fix […]
Ernst Barlach was born near Hamburg 150 years ago, on 2 January 1870. He was the most important German sculptor of the twentieth century. Bertolt Brecht said about his work: “His genius, meaning, ingenious craftsmanship, beauty without embellishment, stature without overstretching, harmony without smoothness, vitality without brutality make Barlach’s sculptures […]
A chara, As the content of last month’s Socialist Voice will show, there is an urgent need for solidarity with Latin America. The existence of mass struggles by a risen people in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Puerto Rico and so on, as well as the existence of socialist Cuba, are […]
■ Mick O’Reilly, From Lucifer to Lazarus: A Life on the Left (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2019) Mick O’Reilly’s recently launched book is a must-read for all young activists, as it records how many of the gains achieved and then taken for granted were won through hard struggle and tough battles, […]
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Here is an old adage that if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. Moreover, responsibility goes both ways. Anyone buying something below its obvious market value without checking the origin has to know there is a real probability of illegality or outright criminality being involved.
The common perception is that such shady deals are done by petty crooks working from dark alleyways.
In 2010 Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) was working as a US military intelligence analyst when she came across a video of an American helicopter crew calmly massacring Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. So shocked was she that she sent the video to Wikileaks, which published it, thereby exposing the nature of the US military occupation of Iraq.
Last month the ugly face of capitalism came into the public glare when thirty-nine people froze to death in the back of an Irish juggernaut, having been smuggled into Britain from Viet Nam.
Later on, as November came to a close and the Christmas shopping frenzy was in full swing in the streets, on television and radio and in the newspapers, sixteen people were discovered in the back of another juggernaut, on its way to Rosslare. Mercifully, they were alive.
In a letter to minister foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, Cuba Support Group Ireland,
Venezuela-Ireland Network and Nicaragua Solidarity Ireland condemned the coup d’état in Bolivia and the forced resignation of President Evo Morales and declared full recognition of the constitutional legitimacy of his presidency.
As the brutal coup in Bolivia has yet again demonstrated, these suffocating limits on democracy are even narrower in nations under the boot of imperialism and neocolonialism.
Under the leadership of President Evo Morales and his party, MAS (Movement to Socialism), the poor and indigenous people of Bolivia have made enormous…
As the “Irish question” comes back to haunt British Toryism as well as British social democracy, it is worth reflecting on what attitude Irish Marxists should take on the national question.
It is worth pointing out that nationalism is only ever criticised when it comes from an oppressed people
The most important task of our class is to shatter the illusion that socialism failed. Socialism, directed by communist and workers’ parties— contrary to what we are all taught and told to believe—did in fact succeed. It worked, and continues to work, very well.
as part of Global Climate Action Day, Galway Alliance Against War held a vigil in the city on Friday 29 November to draw attention to the link between climate change and war. The group believes that this issue has been simply ignored…
The Communist Party of Ireland has anti-imperialism in its DNA and has consistently supported the Cuban people in their struggle against US aggression. This year, despite decades of US imperialist economic blockade, the people of Cuba overwhelmingly endorsed a new…
The long war in Colombia originated in the countryside, from the state oppression of the peasants and the continuing drive of the large landowners (latifundistas) to enlarge their landholdings at their expense, using paramilitary gangs to terrorise the people. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) began in Marquetalia, in the south of the country, in 1964
Gabriel Rosenstock, Walk with Gandhi / Bóthar na Saoirse, illustrated by Masood Hussain (Dublin: Gandhi 150 Ireland, 2019, paperback, hardback, and Ebook).
This is a beautiful book to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 2 October 1869. The book is a collection of haiga—a style of Japanese painting often accompanied by a haiku poem.
Jenny Farrell (editor), The Children of the Nation: An Anthology of Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland (Newcastle upon Tyne: Culture Matters, 2019).
This anthology deals with the identity of the working class, the marginalised, people in precarious employment, the unemployed, the homeless. The title of the collection recalls the pledge made in the Proclamation of 1916.
