Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Does the concept of polycrisis capture the current conjuncture? The world is on fire. Every day we wake up to news of brutal wars, reckless environmental destruction, oligarchy brazenly flaunting its wealth and power amidst escalating economic inequality, election of politicians who are blatantly corrupt and hostile to the class […]
This is the third in a five-part series on the politics of power. Earlier articles asked what makes rights real and why some carry greater weight. This article examines the State and institutions through which those power relations are reproduced. One of the clearest moments when political power appears to […]
For most workers, whether living standards are improving comes down to something fairly tangible: what comes into the household and what has to go out again. A pay rise matters because it increases the claim a worker can make on the goods and services produced by society, but that gain […]
Football is the global language of ordinary people. It is played on any suitable surface (and many unsuitable surfaces) by working people in every corner of the world. But the World Cup stands above this mass, democratic experience, a political and economic spectacle, a plaything of FIFA, multinational corporations, broadcasters […]
Growing up during the cold war, China was a distant, mysterious, menacing spectre. During my new left years, during the cultural revolution, China became a beacon of possibility, when masses seemed to be examining the foundations of knowledge and pushing at the boundaries of the social order. Then it seemed […]
My first car was a 1990 Mitsubishi Colt, which I picked up for €500. Although I did not love it at the time, I have recently been reminiscing about it. With comfortable seats, an ergonomic design and a reliable engine, I even remember the smooth motion of the door as […]
Recent reports on the Irish economy show that Modified Domestic Demand, a better estimate of economic activity than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Ireland because it strips out some of the distortions caused by foreign multinational activity, rose by 0.3% between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, spurred by personal spending […]
The 22-point ‘manifesto’ of the Epstein class has been floated by Alex Karp, the CEO of the tech giant Palantir—the company that provided the AI system called Movan Smart Systems, which killed 167 children in a girls’ school during the Iran war and helped orchestrate the genocide in Gaza. The […]
Across Ireland, north and south, immigration has become one of the defining political issues of recent years. From the racist violence witnessed in Belfast to protests outside accommodation centres and anti-immigration demonstrations across the country, a familiar political argument is repeatedly advanced. Migrants are blamed for housing shortages, overstretched public […]
St Petersburg (Leningrad), 2026 – If you are considering visiting Russia, let’s cut through the Western media noise: I would genuinely recommend travelling. It is rewarding, eye-opening and surprisingly easy, with one genuine headache: Western bank cards. Before we left, we secured our visa online in under five days – […]
Elbridge Colby, the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, took to Twitter in April to celebrate the EU stepping up to the plate, declaring that “NATO must no longer be a paper tiger”. He said: “Germany is now taking the leading role in this. After years of disarmament, Berlin […]
The Government’s Summer Economic Statement sets Budget parameters for 2027: an €8.5 billion package, involving €7 billion above the 2026 expenditure ceiling and €1.5 billion of tax measures. The €1.5bn announced for tax measures likely signals changes to income-tax bands, thereby preventing what is known as ‘fiscal drag’ – when […]
As we move into the summer, developments demonstrate continuing instability and geopolitical reorganisation of global capitalism. Throughout May and June, inflation remained stubbornly above target. As the business press reports, capitalists are no longer assuming an automatic return to the ultra-low-inflation world that characterised the 2010s; access to cheap capital […]
We are witnessing a full-court press of business lobbying against workers’ rights – specifically, for the focus of this article, but against so-called ‘gold-plated’ regulations more generally. Pay Transparency is meant to be legislated for and in place from June by the Government in Dublin. However, they have now said […]
I’ve been trying to get this question straight in my own head for a while now. It surfaced in the last piece on housing, and in many ways draws on arguments I’ve been working through more fully in Breaking Dependency: Ireland’s Struggle for Class Power and Sovereignty, but here I want […]
For decades the housing question in Ireland has been framed in narrow and increasingly sterile terms. On one side stands the market, presented as the mechanism through which supply and demand will balance if given sufficient freedom. On the other stands the traditional social democratic response, calling for increased public […]