Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
It is not uncommon to hear dismissal of trade unions among leftists: too conservative, don’t mobilise enough, too eager to make deals with employers and so on. The issue for Communists is not whether these criticisms are true; it is rather that they miss the point. Unions reflect a market […]
Marx wrote the passage below pointing unions forward, away from narrow sectional interests and towards playing a role within the great push towards socialism underway at the time. In addition to their original tasks, the trade unions must now learn how to act consciously as focal points for organising the […]
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 […]
The attacks and machinations against Irish neutrality by the coalition government, arms companies, security think tanks and the military establishment continue to gather momentum. Barely a day passes that there is not another attack and attempt to undermine neutrality—newspaper articles, discussion on radio and television spreading rumours of imminent threat […]
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 […]
Is international law progressive, reactionary or neutral? Before answering, one needs a Marxist understanding of law. Marx claimed that “the totality of [society’s] relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure.”[1] Following the October Socialist Revolution, the RSFSR […]
There may be a temptation on this side of the Irish Sea to regard as entertainment the recent scandals among the upper echelons of Britain’s ruling class. This would be a mistake, if only for the reason that what is happening within Britain’s governing Labour Party and its monarchy has […]
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. […]
Yet another Frankenstein film has appeared on screens. Despite acclaim, it bears little resemblance to Mary Shelley’s novel. For readers interested in Shelley’s political vision and the historical pressures shaping her work, the 1818 text remains indispensable. To mark the 175th anniversary of Mary Godwin Shelley’s death, we revisit this […]
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 […]
Cuba has transformed its electricity system in just 12 months, increasing solar power from 5.8 per cent to over 20 per cent of total generation as the country races to escape dependence on oil imports now blocked by US sanctions. The Caribbean nation connected 49 new solar parks to its […]
James O’Toole’s recent article on “comprador theory”[https://rednetwork.net/red-theory/2026/02/comprador-theory-lets-the-irish-rich-hide/] raises an important and serious political concern. He is right to insist that the Irish ruling class must not be portrayed as innocent intermediaries. Irish capital exploits. The Irish state defends class interests. Irish firms extract surplus both domestically and internationally. Any analysis […]
Pundits estimate there are somewhere between 50 and 80 million Irish people around the world. Our 17th-century ancestors rebelled against plantation owners in the Caribbean, only to then shape racialist police departments across the USA. We spread the fiddle, the Pope and the craic as far as the Guinness family’s […]
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 […]
The Irish Government’s response to the US attack on Venezuela is hypocritical and exposes the extent to which the 26-County State’s membership of the EU and dependence on foreign, mostly US, capital has undermined Irish neutrality. Micheál Martin, while refusing to condemn the illegal US actions in kidnapping President Nicolás […]
SIPTU presents itself as the largest force for organised labour in Ireland. Its scale is cited as proof of strength, of presence, of the collective weight of workers. Yet for many members, especially those in small and medium workplaces, the reality of SIPTU representation is starkly different. Instead of strength, […]