Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The robots are coming!—The robots aren’t coming!—Half of all jobs will be gone!—No need to panic: there’ll be plenty of jobs building and designing robots. These are just some of the contradictory headlines and predictions we get from mainstream commentators on the subject of technology and work. All of this […]
There have been articles in Socialist Voice recently on China and Laos. While I hope to write in the future on North Korea and Viet Nam, there are some points to make on the Asian models, especially their use of market relations in order to build socialism. It should be […]
Comrade Robert Navan’s letter in the May issue of Socialist Voice raises some interesting questions that go to the core of Marxism. It is appropriate that he raised them in the month of the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth in Trier in Germany. The agricultural question was one that […]
This year’s Connolly Festival was another step in the consolidation of the festival as an important cultural and political event. Nearly all the events attracted a full house, and the response was uniformly positive. The festival opened with the unveiling of an exhibition on the life of James Connolly to […]
Over the weekend of the 25th and 26th of May the first Connolly Festival in Co. Monaghan took place, the birthplace of the parents of James Connolly, John Connolly and Mary McGinn from Áth an Lobhair in the impoverished townland of Coillidh Chuanach, who left Co. Monaghan and settled in […]
What for long appeared unimaginable has seemingly now become inevitable. The Northern state, created with a built-in unionist majority and uncompromising regime, once seemed as permanent a fixture as its grandiose parliament building at Stormont. Not any longer, though. Britain’s Tory prime minister has voiced her doubts about its future […]
Once again problems relating to women’s health and the treatment of women within the health system were exposed with the the discovery that 209 women are affected by the Cervical Check scandal that emerged in the last few weeks. Once again people’s lives, and in particular those of women, have […]
More than two hundred employees of Lloyd’s Pharmacy in its fifty branches in the Republic are voting on whether they will take industrial action following the company’s refusal to negotiate with their trade union, Mandate. The union has called for a ballot. In response the company is using its tame […]
Over the weekend of the 12th and 13th of May the CPI and the Connolly Youth Movement celebrated the lives of two great thinkers and activists, Karl Marx and James Connolly. On Saturday the 12th Dr Stephen Nolan gave this year’s James Connolly Memorial Lecture, under the title “The Continued […]
The corporate media denounced the recent election in Venezuela in advance as “fraudulent” and a “sham”—not the elections in Honduras, Colombia, or Mexico, whose subservient governments joined with the United States in demanding that the Venezuelan elections not be held. Also at the instigation of the United States, the main […]
The United Irishmen founded the radical press in Ireland. They had three newspapers, aspiring to cover the entire country: the Belfast Northern Star (approximately 600 issues from January 1792 to May 1797), the Dublin Press, and the Cork Harp of Erin. The United Irishmen encompassed in their demand for equality […]
Leabhar dátheangach (Fraincis–Béarla) é If the Symptoms Persist, dánta le Francis Combes aistrithe go Béarla ag Alan Dent agus foilsithe ag Smokestack Books (www.smokestack-books.co.uk). Creideann Combes san fhilíocht, filíocht de shaghas áirithe, une poésie d’utilité publique. Is réabhlóideach an dearcadh é sin ar go leor slite. File réabhlóideach é Combes. […]
“Cost-rental model” is the flavour of the month as a way of solving the housing emergency and making the provision of shelter more affordable and sustainable. The cost-rental model is a system whereby the total cost of a housing development (land, design, construction, property management and maintenance) is divided by […]
The Irish people have passed judgement on the thirty-five years’ experience of the implementation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. The electorate voted by a substantial majority to abolish the controversial amendment that gave equal legal status to the lives of a foetus and of the mother. Our people […]
Capitalism exploits the working class, and in particular women. This is done through the devaluation of women’s labour in the home—that is, the necessary work of reproducing and maintaining workers for the capitalist machine—and the devaluation of work done by women outside the home: the pay gap.* Neither of these […]
Comrades, So far, the issue of the fodder shortage does not seem to have troubled the pages of SV, and I’m hoping that this letter may be a first. Briefly, for those of you who have not been following the “crisis,” it seems that the prolonged wet winter has meant […]
The sleek intercity train connecting Amsterdam to Rotterdam zips between the two cities in a mere forty minutes and, with a fare of only €15.40 (£13.50), puts our fares to shame. The Dutch railways are still nationally owned, operated by Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and the route between the two cities claims […]
Don’t believe the hype! The current narrative about automation is well known. Weekly, if not daily, commentaries and reports emerge that forecast the potential for the mass displacement of workers as a result of impending automation. To a degree this is new wine in old bottles. Automation manias have been […]
John Heartfield died fifty years ago, on 26 April 1968. He was the creator of political photomontage, a fearless communist and activist. Helmut Herzfeld was born on 19 June 1891 in Berlin. In 1899 his parents abandoned Herzfeld, his brother and two sisters at a very young age. The children […]
In 1985 a delegation of women from the United States held a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua. This was at a time when Nicaragua was suffering a terrorist campaign, waged by the United States. The women assumed—correctly—that the site of the conference would attract more attention to their plight. All […]
At the end of April, Mandate held its biennial conference, with more than three hundred delegates from the retail and bar sectors in attendance, under the theme “Organise! Organise!! Organise!!!” The conference was opened by the general secretary, John Douglas. His remarks were not “grandstanding” or throwing shapes but instead […]
We regret to inform readers of Socialist Voice of the death of one of our regular contributors, Seán Joseph Clancy, who wrote regularly on events in his adopted homeland, Cuba. Seán was born and raised in the suburb of Raheny in Dublin. He first went to Cuba in 1999 on […]
Over two issues of Socialist Voice (January and March 2018) there were two articles that explained the capitalist illusion that perpetuates the class division in society. A great deception has allowed a tiny minority of the world’s population to own and control the vast majority of wealth that is created, […]
If the workers take a notion They can stop all speeding trains; Every ship upon the ocean They can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the creation, Every mine and every mill, Fleets and armies of the nation, Will at their command stand still. —Joe Hill The trade […]
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is a country of less than 7 million people in south-east Asia. It has been officially under the leadership of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party since 1975. Article 13 of the country’s constitution states that “all types of enterprises are equal before the law and […]
The European Union continues to push forward with deeper integration, as that is the economic and political imperative of European big business. The EU Commission continues to promote its strategy of deepening integration. It has proposed a finance minister for the euro zone and transforming the European Stability Mechanism, which […]
