Latest

International Latest Opinion

Multipolarity and the BRICS

A current fashion within the left is the championing of multipolarity. It assumes a bloc of states in different countries, some with more mixed economies than others, as objectively “anti-imperialist” insofar as they present a threat to the American hegemon. Some of this interpretation is jaundiced, especially when one considers […]

Latest Music

Indigo girls’ recent Dublin concert

Indigo Girls (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) opened their recent show in what was without doubt an incredible performance, singing a combination of folk-protest songs and country music in a sold-out National Concert Hall, Dublin. They performed without orchestral accompaniment or flashing lights: just two women with acoustic guitars playing […]

Books Latest

The East is still Red

■ Carlos Martinez, The East Is Still Red (Glasgow: Praxis Press, 2023) The East Is Still Red is a very readable and able defence of the current People’s Republic of China. The basic argument of the book is that China is on the right path with regard to building socialism, […]

Books Latest

Blackshirts & Reds

■ Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997) In the thirty-two years since the Soviet Union was dissolved and Fukuyama’s “end of history” began, more and more young people are becoming communists. Multiple failures of capitalism—runaway rent and housing costs, and unabated climate disaster—are bringing young […]

Culture Latest

For an inverted theatre

Brecht and radically proletarian art The majority of theatre broadly falls under the umbrella of dramatic theatre. It will have a linear plotline, actors who wholly inhabit well-developed characters, structured, thought-out themes, etc. Bertolt Brecht, the German Marxist playwright, would call it escapism. Brecht held that “art is not a […]

Latest Opinion Socialism

Working-class unity

Last month’s Socialist Voice had an article on “learning with the people.” The writer made the point about its content that “is anything being said that hasn’t been said a thousand times before? Almost certainly not.” While that may be true, it seems that it’s often forgotten. Socialist movements are […]

Ecology Latest

Climate crisis

The dystopia that awaits our children, and their children The ladder has been well and truly pulled up on younger generations—and not just that, but the earth around them has been set on fire. Not everyone shares equal blame for this; and not every state shares equal blame. It is […]

Latest Trade Unionism

Solidarity forever!

The Industrial Relations Act (1990) was designed to control workers, and it attacked the trade union movement at its very core by making solidarity between workers illegal. This was done by restricting workers taking industrial action together, dividing work-places into separate grades, and banning support strikes. Solidarity is the foundation […]