The Iranian war exposes capitalism’s core logic: upward wealth transfer and economic instability driven by profit, speculation and debt. Rising energy prices, triggered by the war, are accelerating inflation and rippling through the economy, with knock on effects, either now, sooner or later, for transport, food and business costs. That […]
Imperialism
Cuba, a Beacon of Hope to Billions
“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” were the progressive slogans of the bourgeois French Revolution. Capitalism cannot deliver on those promises, because it needs inequality as a fundamental condition for its existence, since it is based on exploitation. It needs inequality amongst the people within a country and inequality amongst nations, and […]
Revolutionary Defeatism and Ireland in 2026
As multiple war zones on the world map trace the urgent imperialist demand for escalation and violent intervention in economic and geopolitical arenas, the Left in the part of the world often labelled as the Global North finds itself in search of a principled position with respect to war, governments […]
Enemies of the State: Resisting US Imperialism in Honduras
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 […]
Imperialist Aggression and the Defence of Iranian Sovereignty
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 […]
Michael Parenti
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 […]
Reformism and Liberalism
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 […]
The Fracture in American Power: Empire in Transition
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. […]
The Strategy of Imperialism: From Ukraine to the Americas
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 […]
US Empire
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 […]
Capitalism: An Inhuman System of Exploitation
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 […]
The Transatlantic Alliance Is Alive and Kicking
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 Monroe Doctrine and the True Face of US Imperialism
US policy regarding Latin America is nothing new. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) established a US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, which considers Latin America as the backyard of the US and treats any interference there as an act of war. The recent attack on Venezuela took place following […]
From the Smuggling Narrative to the Engineering of the International Position: A Critical Reading of Israel’s Political Use of the Iranian Arming File in the West Bank
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 […]
Why is the US Interested in Greenland?
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 […]
Billionaires Are Not Wealth Creators. They Are Poverty Creators
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 […]
