The debate over Irish neutrality forces us to confront a deeper question: Is Ireland truly sovereign? Sovereignty is defined as “the complete independence of a state in deciding all questions relating to its internal life and foreign relations. Sovereignty serves…as a rampart under the protection of which individual peoples are […]
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Between Bondholders and Ballot Boxes
Since 2008, governments across mature capitalist economies have come to rely heavily on debt issuance. For example, governments in the US, Japan, the UK, France, and Italy are now structurally dependent on deficit spending, low interest rates and debt rollover to maintain political-economic stability. Persistent deficits, even during tepid growth, […]
Far Right Propping Up The System
The presence of the far right in Ireland has not gone unnoticed to date, yet some further analysis is required. Several recent developments need our attention. There is, for example, the spreading of meetings and rallies to areas not previously centres of such public displays. Disturbing too is the presence […]
Imperialism and the Irish people
This rag-tag coalition government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and a motley crew of Independent TDs continues to show absolute loyalty to the needs of imperialism and the interests of capital over those of the Irish people. This is best understood in relation to the foreign policy of this state and the […]
Big Monopolies Are Watching You!
Last year The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) issued an alarming report that should be known and talked about yet received comparatively little coverage. The report, entitled Europe’s hidden security crisis- How data about European defence personnel and political leaders flows to foreign states and non-state actors, outlines how […]
Building Maximum Unity Against Imperialism As The Primary Systemic Contradiction
Lenin identified imperialism and its corollary of anti-imperialism as the principal contradiction of the global capitalist system in his day. This remains the case today, as evidenced in further monopolisation and concentration trends, labour and tax arbitrage, war and market creation and control, and the distinctive role of finance capital […]
Statement from the Communist Party of Ireland on the British Government decision to Charge Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh of Kneecap.
The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with Kneecap, who are now under serious threat by the forces of the British State. The arrest and charging of one of the group’s members Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, is just the latest in the ongoing effort to silence the group and […]
South Korea’s Political Crisis
As South Korea faces political turmoil – an impeached president, public outrage, and a pivotal election – recent events reveal deeper systemic fractures rooted in imperialism, authoritarianism, and comprador capitalism. Historical Foundations: Colonialism and Cold War Repression South Korea’s modern political economy was forged under Japanese colonialism (1910–1945), which exploited […]
Food, profits and chemicals
When you mention “the politics of food”, most people look at you askance. Through no fault of their own, they have never been told about the crucial links of consumerism, politics or economics to food and its production. They certainly know about the Thatcherite “hand-bag” economics. The ever-rising cost of […]
Trickle Down Tyranny
Marxists know well the state is not a neutral arbiter but a mechanism for managing the affairs of the capitalist class. While the state may exhibit relative autonomy, that is, it can act independently from capital, it functions, in the last instance, to reproduce the conditions for accumulation, whether state […]
Trump re-focusses US strategy on China
China’s economy is now 23% larger than the US according to the IMF. China is the largest trading partner with Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Japan and third largest to the EU. The Belt and Road Initiative has gone from strength to strength since 2013 and is the centrepiece […]
The Settler Colonialism Mentality – to eradicate their Existence
In Gaza today, we are witnessing an atrocity: an attempt not merely to kill a people but to erase them. Whole families exterminated, hospitals turned to rubble, libraries turned to ash. This is not simply military conquest, it is the logic of settler colonialism: the logic of elimination. The goal […]
James Connolly Festival 2025
This year’s James Connolly Festival runs from Tuesday 6th to Sunday 11th May 2025 with almost all events taking place at Connolly House and The New Theatre. It will include a week-long James Connolly Art Exhibition. Seven artists have been invited to prepare prints and paintings that will be available […]
Ireland as the laboratory of Empire, Part 1
1800s British colonialism’s “hierarchy of races” saw white Europeans as superior peoples, followed by east Asians, with the Irish tied with Africans, coming just ahead of the Australian aborigines, who placed bottom of the ladder. This grotesque “race science” would be taken up and furthered by the Nazis later on, […]
Book Review: Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn, by Domenico Losurdo
Western Marxism (WM) by Dominico Losurdo, translated into English and published recently by Monthly Review, is an important work exposing the idealism, pro-imperialism and eurocentrism (i.e. the paternalistic approach towards struggles in the periphery) of western Marxists. In the introduction, the book explains that WM is not a geographical orientation […]
Book Review: Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic by Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé, as readers may know, is one of the most controversial of Israel’s “new historians” after having sacrificed his academic career there by publishing extensively on the buried history of the Nakba and challenging official Zionist accounts of the colonisation of Palestine. His most recent work, Lobbying for Zionism […]