Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas . . . And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps”
— Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1999.
This year’s James Connolly Conversations return as face-to-face meetings. At the same time we will provide an opportunity for others to join in the conversation on line. The sessions will take place on four consecutive Saturdays, from 28 May to 18 June, at 11 a.m. The meetings are designed to […]
On behalf of the Communist Party of Ireland I would like to express our deepest sorrow at the loss of a great comrade and friend, Liam O’Brien, who died on 6 April. To his children, Aaron, Jason, Tanya, Cain, and Corinna, we can only guess the deep sense of loss […]
Marlene Dietrich, who died thirty years ago on 6 May 1992, must be remembered not only for her importance as a role model for emancipation but also for her outspoken and active stand against her Nazi homeland. Born in Berlin on 27 December 1901, she became one of the most […]
Latin America entered the twenty-first century dominated by neoliberal governments. It was the region of the world with the most neoliberal and the most radical governments. Neoliberalism arrived in Latin America through the “Chicago Boys” during the Pinochet dictatorship. As a result, it was the region where the greatest manifestations […]
Comrade Carroll (Socialist Voice, April) provides an excellent analysis of the role of theory. However, a few points of addition. The concern with Marxism is perhaps not so much theory but science. A central claim of Marxism is that it is scientific. Characterising science is its method: the systematic study […]
Part 2 Last month I wrote an article on the importance of political theory. In that article I explained that it is not enough to read the Communist Manifesto to learn about Marxism properly but that you must examine different points of Marxism. In this article I will examine the […]
It would appear that, one way or another, humans have always been trying to find a better way to live and survive in the world, particularly from a materialist viewpoint, to meet their needs and develop their capacities—not always with success—by their own volition or as they would want it […]
August Spies, one of the Haymarket Martyrs who fought for an-eight-hour working day, said, “You can stamp out the spark, but the ground on which you stand is on fire.” May Day is the festival of the working class—the only day the whole world celebrates beyond boundaries of religion, caste, […]
Geopolitically and militarily, the EU has never been a big player. Contrary to some great-power fantasies in the Brussels political bubble, it is merely an appendage of the USA. Economically, too, the cartel of states is barely getting off the ground in the face of fundamentally conflicting national capital interests. […]
The despicable treatment of Clare Daly and Mick Wallace by the Irish Times in its Easter Saturday edition is more than simply evidence of the wretched state of the Irish mainstream media: it is also a reflection of concerns gripping the 26-County establishment. The sanctimonious piece by Naomi O’Leary was […]
On Wednesday 13 April residents of the Devanny housing estates held a protest in their area and expressed their continued anger at Dublin City Council and the planners involved in this quango as these bodies seek to privatise more public lands. There was a good turn-out by residents, local political […]
The recent announcement that the state plans to allow local councils to buy homes in order to house refugees from Ukraine is another example of the class interests responsible for the present housing “crisis.” In reality there are more than enough housing units—90,158 vacant dwellings in 2021, according to the […]
As the conflict in Ukraine drags on into its fourth month, it has never been more important for us to champion the cause of cease-fire, peace, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, voices aiming to do so are ever more marginalised in Western media and political discourse, adding another shameful chapter to the […]
The Trade Union Left Forum announced on May Day that it is near to completing a draft bill to restore rights lost to workers as a result of anti-union legislation dating from the 1940s. The TULF has been campaigning against the Industrial Relations Act (1990) and also anti-worker legislation in […]
A small group of individuals of different origins, with dissimilar professional results, most of them residing outside Cuba, claim they represent the entire Cuban intellectual community, of millions of people who speak loud and clear for ourselves. The website La Joven Cuba serves as their voice, because their text is […]
Statement by the National Executive Committee, Communist Party of Ireland Today the world is closer to global war than at any time since 1962. The two largest countries in Europe are at war. The immediate cause of this situation has been the expansion of NATO and its project to constrict […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
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Part 2 ■ Part 1 was published in the April issue; read it here Cuba’s nature as a “privileged satellite” within the US imperialist expansion created an aspiration in its bourgeoisie and sectors of its middle class, linked to the symbolic dominance and prevalence, in many, of the so-called American […]
Quid est veritas? What is the truth? A question that has echoed down the centuries has increased relevance as we live through the greatest propaganda assault of all time. Western “news” media have mounted such a constant barrage of anti-Russian propaganda that it is almost impossible to hold an alternative […]
The politics and complex history of eastern Europe are not the focus of the Western media’s attempt to explain the war in Ukraine. Instead the personality of Russia’s president is the focus. A latent Russophobia has existed since the end of the Cold War, supplemented in the past three decades […]
Never miss the opportunities thrown up by a crisis to advance long-held goals! The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided such an opportunity for the Irish establishment and the establishment media to push forward their long-held agenda to ditch Irish neutrality and to use the Ukrainian crisis to push for […]
In March 2015 a Saudi-led coalition of ten countries, backed by the United States, invaded Yemen, with the goal of restoring power to the government of President Hādī. This would be the start of a brutal war, which has been going on for the past seven years. As a result […]
“Gallant little Belgium must be saved from the swinish Hun” was the cry in 1914. So intense was the propaganda deploring and berating the Kaiser’s Germany, and so heart-rending the story of a small European country being violated, that millions enlisted to fight and to die. Among the fallen in […]
All wars bring out the worst in humans. The war in Ukraine has shown us two ugly faces. One is the calamity of war itself; the other is racism. When European countries are welcoming Ukrainian refugees (with white skin and blue eyes) with open arms, the world also witnesses with […]
The James Connolly Festival is an annual, week-long series of events in radical arts, culture, and politics. It is a community-centred celebration of music, film, discussion and debate that brings together the ideas and thoughts of progressive and radical thinkers and organisations from around Ireland and beyond. Since the festival’s […]
A growing number of trade unions are joining the call for measures to control the increasing numbers being infected by the omicron variant of covid. At the end of March the general secretary of the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation, Phil Ní Shéaghdha, in a letter to the ICTU, explained […]
Venezuela is close to reaching its maximum petroleum production capacity, since it has managed to double its crude production in recent months, thanks to Iran and other countries that have helped it evade US sanctions. Oil industry sources confirmed to the Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, published in Florida, that […]
Alexandra Kollontai, born 150 years ago on 31 March 1872, was an outstanding figure in the Russian communist movement. Kollontai’s active political work began with workers’ evening classes, through which she became part of the Political Red Cross, an organisation supporting political prisoners. She participated in leafleting and fund-raising campaigns […]
The ruling class around the world have decided that the global economy must get back to normal, and that restrictions introduced to protect people in the so-called “developed world” from the covid-19 pandemic must be abandoned, despite the onset of a new wave of the virus. Governments have gone back […]
Being There (a found poem from The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck) We’ll be ever’where —Wherever they’s a fightso hungry people can eat,we’ll be there. Wherever they’s a copbeatin’ up a guy,we’ll be there. We’ll be in the way kids laughwhen they’re hungryan’ they know supper’s ready.An’ when our folks […]
Part 1 On the 14th of March we observed the 139th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death. Marx devoted much of his life to writing about the social and economic problems that plague the working class of the world, and his words still hold true more than a hundred years later. […]
Imagine your child who you love so much suffering mental distress. You would literally do anything for them. Their anxiety reaches a point where they become so frustrated it turns to anger and rage. Violence erupts. You act in self-defence, and the family home is up-ended, debris everywhere. The Gardaí […]
Part 1 I believe that what can give coherence to cultural, political, and ideological work is a definition of the ideology of the Cuban Revolution. Our ideology is based on the guiding principles of Cuba’s national liberation and social emancipation processes; on the development of our own thought characterised, as […]
