Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
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 […]
In 2004, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as Frontex, was set up. It is tasked with aiding EU member states with border control, specifically in the Schengen area, from its headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. However, in practice, this means stopping refugees and asylum seekers and has in […]
As multiple war zones on the world map trace the urgent imperialist demand for escalation and violent intervention in economic and geopolitical arenas, the Left in the part of the world often labelled as the Global North finds itself in search of a principled position with respect to war, governments […]
Once again, the spectre of another war haunts the Persian Gulf. The Biden—and now Trump—administration has orchestrated a massive military build-up in the region, amassing an armada of warships, stealth fighters, and bomber assets in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The stated pretext is Iran’s nuclear programme. The reality […]
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 […]
As Communists, we should not be surprised by the rise of right-wing and neo-fascist groups in an orchestrated fashion all over the world, because fascism raises its head when capitalism is in decay. When the ruling class is no longer able to rule by persuasion, it uses coercion to maintain capitalist accumulation. […]
The United States is working to limit tensions between its allies in the Middle East as it prepares, alongside Israel, a regime change for Iran. The Pentagon has deployed additional forces to US bases in the Gulf states and to the US-UK military base in Diego Garcia. Meanwhile, another front, […]
In last month’s article1, we argued that public ownership is not enough, but that it must be combined with democratic planning to truly serve the working class. Planning is the linchpin of socialism: the conscious, collective organisation of economic life for the common good. This article takes that argument further […]
Can there be a world based on equality? People living in countries benefiting from imperialism to justify that inequality might say no, it’s impossible. But the people in poor countries may ask, at least can there be a just world? After World War 2, when global hegemony shifted from Britain […]
The terms left and right originated following the French Revolution. In the French national assembly, the right comprised aristocrats and the rich. The left comprised the poor and working class who demanded democracy and wanted more tax on the rich. Throughout history, the concept of left and right has changed, […]
To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: […]
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, emboldened by recent election results, are confident enough to return to policies that feather the nests of the ruling class. They have created the narrative facilitated as always by their lackeys in the media that inheritance tax is “too punitive and unfair and needs to […]
The M-C-C’-M’ circuit means Money (M) which is exchanged for Commodities (C) – including labor power which also becomes a commodity in a capitalist society – involved in the production process to produce a value-added commodity (C’) which is sold for more Money (M’), and thus the accumulation of capital […]
Two rival positions are circulating regarding the British and the North. The first is the British have no interest in maintaining the North. Lord Alderdice recently revived this argument in an interview online, claiming the Irish government, not the British, block unity. The second is that the British want to […]
We are in a pivotal moment in the global anti-war movement. Not since the Iraq war and the start of the so-called “global war on terror” have we seen so many people actively engaged in direct action, political education, boycotts and sustained protest. Rarely, if ever, has the racism and […]