Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Capital accumulation is one outcome of the irrational motor that drives our economic system. This is no less true for the agricultural sector than it is for industry. As capitalist production advances over time we witness a greater and greater accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands. Let’s consider […]
In 2019 there were 37,859 applicants on the social housing list in the north of Ireland. 26,387 of those were deemed to be in priority need of housing, described as housing stress; 74 per cent of those were considered officially homeless. These grim statistics are compounded by the fact that […]
How can it be that Venezuela, a country that is so terribly battered by an imperialist blockade, nearly a decade of underinvestment, frequent examples of bad decision-making, wide-reaching corruption and technical brain drain, in addition to recent neo-liberal and anti-worker economic policies, including privatisation and asset-stripping, is managing to keep […]
In July 1940, after the fall of France and with a German invasion of Britain seeming imminent, the IRA leadership explained their attitude to the war in a public statement. In it they made it clear that if German forces arrived in Ireland they would come “as friends and liberators […]
■ Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) The First World War was described as “the war that will end war,” so great was the horror of this new, diabolical stage of industrial annihilation. We know today that, without seriously addressing the causes of war, or the […]
It’s a familiar story: Western imperialist forces are orchestrating another coup in a sovereign state while the bourgeois media in Ireland bombard us with sympathetic coverage of anti-government protesters and the “democratic opposition,” whose ranks are brimming with the most vicious reactionaries. Behind the scenes, the United States and the […]
Covid-19 did not cause overcrowding in schools, but it has exposed it. Schools are reopening with up to thirty people in a confined space for extended periods. There are almost a million children, teenagers and teachers in four thousand schools. In the two weeks before reopening, more than a hundred […]
Articles 1 and 2, “Health of a Nation” (June and August) violate democratic centralism. Both are public attacks on CPI policy. I wrote a 2,500-word article criticising the inadequacy of article 1; article 2 is no better. Between congresses and coming up to congress it is protocol that we discuss […]
Like a game of fantasy football, the establishment media and media pundits fill the pages and the air waves with speculation about how long the present coalition government may last. The coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, while only in office since 27 June, stumbles and […]
The much-heralded recent “Next Generation EU Agreement” between the member-states of the European Union is little more than the papering over of growing and deepening cracks. The lack of a co-ordinated response to the covid-19 pandemic exposed the underlying fault lines within the European Union, contributing to and speeding up […]
This is the second part of a discussion article offering a detailed look at the effects of partition, at the continued role of British imperialism in Ireland and the effect it has had and continues to have on our people. The focus on public health in the Six Counties argues […]
War imagery and rhetoric abound in the media discourse surrounding covid-19, along with the resurgence of the post-“Celtic tiger” crash cry of “we’re all in this together”—all of which paints a picture of a country united and unified in action against the menace of the deadly virus. It is true […]
Irish farming as we know it is in a state of terminal decline. But why is this so, and who is to blame? Some will insist that it is a natural development of economic progress; but, as always, we must ask, Progress for whom? The average Irish farmer struggles to […]
The hard-boiled readers of this paper rarely recognise the huge difficulties encountered by a right-wing coalition as it endeavours to govern this republic. There is the problem of ensuring that the rich are pampered, and that the middle class receives favourable treatment, and all the while guaranteeing that the working […]
The “Republican Party” of Fianna Fáil is back in government. Its leader has laid out a pragmatic approach to the national question that rules out a border poll, meaning that a united Ireland is out of the question. How very republican indeed! Instead Micheál Martin has advocated a policy “much […]
International solidarity has a tendency to be treated as an optional extra by revolutionary movements, the type of thing you do if you have the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Showing solidarity with others in struggle is a central component of communist ideology. It should be recognised […]