Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
On June 25th last, the Cabinet took the decision to proceed with Stage 3 of the “Roadmap for Reopening Society and Business”. It is abundantly clear that public health concerns have not been the priority in taking this decision. The rhetoric of “getting the economy up and running again” has grown […]
Mainstream culture and politics is invested in the idea that the age of nationalism has ended. Liberals proclaim that the world economy has been thoroughly globalised, and therefore nations are no longer of importance. Yet, as usual, reality serves to upset the declarations and pronouncements of liberal commentators. The question […]
Statement by the National Executive Committee, CPI 11 June 2020 The formation of the three-party coalition government in Dublin, and their agreement on a “programme for government,” is a case of more of the same—a continuation of the same old polices that favour the rich and powerful, policies that are […]
Dear Comrades, May I request a little of your column space to comment on an article in the Socialist dated the 2nd of June 2020 relating to an all-Ireland Health Service. While agreeing that underfunding and privatisation is damaging health services in both parts of our country I have some […]
Havana, June 26, 2020 Year 62 of the Revolution His Excellency Mr. Antonio Gutérres United Nations Secretary-General New York Your Excellency: Seventy-five years after the member states of this organization signed the United Nations Charter, strict adherence to its purposes and principles, to international law and the preservation of multilateralism […]
The film Wasp Network has recently arrived on Netflix. It tells the story of the heroes known as the Cuban Five who successfully infiltrated anti-communist terrorist groups in Miami. The Wasp Network (La Red Avispa) was a creation of Cuban intelligence to thwart the efforts of such groups as Alpha […]
■ Ethel Voynich, The Gadfly(1897) Liam Mellows read this novel while awaiting his execution, along with the other condemned men imprisoned by the Irish Free State during the Civil War (1922–23) for opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which gave Ireland dominion status within the British Empire, rather than establishing an independent […]
A central goal of socialism is to transition into an economy without commodity production for profit. A socialist economy would co-operatively create goods and services for their use values rather than their exchange values, with production planned by the producers themselves. The question that we want to ask readers to […]
We are in the first moments of an economic crisis more serious than anything experienced in living memory. The World Bank’s “baseline forecast” envisages a “5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades.”[1] Even that assumes we are living through the most optimistic scenario. […]
“By sowing chaos [abroad], they’ve got chaos at home. Everything they’ve been embedding into the world’s consciousness—they’re reaping it now.”—Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, on current events in the United States. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”—African proverb […]
The Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) is Ireland’s only union organised within the community you are living in—in the same way that a trade union branch is based within a workplace. CATU members come together to combat not only issues concerning tenancy but anything that affects the whole community, such […]
Writing in the Irish Times on 17 April, the Spanish academic Javier Cercas described the EU’s response to the covid-19 pandemic as having been slow, stingy, and fearful. It is a view shared by many, especially those in southern Europe. Indeed the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, went so far […]
“Social partnership” is anti-democratic, because a small group of insiders make the deal. This is then packaged and sold to workers as the best deal possible at this time, given the present circumstances. Social partnership comes onto the horizon as a result of political, employment and economic crisis, in order […]
The recent demonstrations that began in Minnesota following the murder of George Floyd by a white cop are not only a continuation of the past seven years of the Black Lives Matter movement but of decades of struggle by black people against a racist police force, which functions to uphold […]
So, after months of shadow-boxing and pretend negotiations, three parties—Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party—have eventually tied the knot and will set up house together. They have been leading the public on a merry dance, in the pretence that they had worked hard to “overcome major obstacles,” etc. […]