Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
What happens to labour when the ratio of jobs being created is dwarfed by the number of people entering the labour force? The futurists look to an existence where automation and artificial intelligence—as opposed to just machines and robots—in a multitude of disciplines, such as complex medical diagnosis and autonomous […]
■ Liam O’Flaherty, Hollywood Cemetery: A Vision of the World to Come (Nuascéalta, 2019). The veteran film-maker Bob Quinn will launch this new edition of Liam O’Flaherty’s novel Hollywood Cemetery, long out of print, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday 10 April at Galway City Library. Published in London in 1935 […]
The CPI held a number of successful events to celebrate International Working Women’s Day this year. The two main events took place in Belfast and Dublin. The Dublin event, organised by the CPI Women’s Group, was held under the heading “The lives and struggles of working women.” It took the […]
The American anti-war movement, with Veterans for Peace in the lead, are taking up the issue of US military use of Shannon Airport as a transit hub for American wars in the Middle East and provocative NATO war “games” in eastern Europe. This is one of the many positive outcomes […]
A recent study by the Think Tank for Action on Social Change (TASC), The State We Are In: Inequality in Ireland Today, throws up a lot of interesting facts about life in Ireland. The survey points out that Ireland’s low union density leads to low pay and high rates of […]
Addressing his partners at the Fianna Fáil ard-fheis last month, the leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood, drew inspiration from the president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, and told the audience that “there will be a special place reserved in Hell for those who call for a border poll […]
“The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie.” […]
The situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate as the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States (Trump’s policy, a continuation of Obama’s) and the European Union continue to have an impact upon workers, the urban and rural poor and farmers. The Venezuelan oligarchs have used every possible manoeuvre—economic, political, and […]
The attempted coup d’état of 23 January in Venezuela is unique in one respect: it was promoted and organised openly and publicly by the government of the United States, supported by its allies and client states in Europe and Latin America. One hundred years ago the United States declared its […]
The Trade Union Left Forum is holding a public meeting and discussion workshop on anti-union legislation and how it affects the Irish working class, north and south. The purpose of the forum is to encourage and initiate serious examination and debate on the major questions facing the labour movement today […]
There has been a growth in resistance by workers and demands for increased wages, for better terms and conditions, and for union recognition. Pay and conditions for nurses have deteriorated with the continuing “austerity,” and during February nurses and midwives were the latest group of workers to organise and strike […]
Last month the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty, which was concluded with the Soviet Union in 1987. That treaty was the first nuclear disarmament agreement ever to be concluded between the two countries, albeit to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union. It led to the […]
Priscilla Metscher, Pioneers of Women’s Emancipation in Ireland (Connolly Books, Dublin, 2018) This fascinating study stands out as a commentary on Irish fighters for women’s emancipation, written from a Marxist viewpoint. The author, Priscilla Metscher, examines in turn the ideas and activities of Mary Ann McCracken, Anna Doyle Wheeler, William […]
Part 2 ■ Part 1 of this article was published in February. All the wealth created by labour in the production process is appropriated by capital, only appearing in its money form in the exchange process, with a portion of the proceeds then being redistributed back to labour through the […]
Arrival, a recent and popular sci-fi film based on the Ted Chiang novella Story of Your Life, and China Miéville’s perennially popular Embassytown both build on a long tradition of fiction challenging and examining the power of language. These are especially interesting because of their focus on the interaction of […]
Many regions on the outskirts of Dublin have been plagued in recent years by an invasion of aggressive gulls, which soil houses and clothes-lines and scatter refuse, as well as killing smaller birds. Most people, it seems, have either not speculated about the cause of this new plague or else […]