Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
A strange thing happened in OECD countries between the 1970s and 2008: economic growth rates that looked poor on paper compared with the 1950s and 60s seemed to be boosted dramatically by a massive subsidy, somehow hidden from all national accounts statistics. That subsidy, it turns out, was cheap labour […]
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 […]
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”—Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, responding to a critic who pointed out (correctly) that the US regime organised a coup in Bolivia to secure lithium for the Musks of this world. “The US military has its knee on the throat […]
On June 25th last, the Cabinet took the decision to proceed with Stage 3 of the “Roadmap for Reopening Society and Business”. It is abundantly clear that public health concerns have not been the priority in taking this decision. The rhetoric of “getting the economy up and running again” has grown […]
A central goal of socialism is to transition into an economy without commodity production for profit. A socialist economy would co-operatively create goods and services for their use values rather than their exchange values, with production planned by the producers themselves. The question that we want to ask readers to […]
We are in the first moments of an economic crisis more serious than anything experienced in living memory. The World Bank’s “baseline forecast” envisages a “5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades.”[1] Even that assumes we are living through the most optimistic scenario. […]
“By sowing chaos [abroad], they’ve got chaos at home. Everything they’ve been embedding into the world’s consciousness—they’re reaping it now.”—Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, on current events in the United States. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”—African proverb […]
The economist John Smith of the University of Sheffield caused a lot of debate with his recent article “Why coronavirus could spark a capitalist supernova,” in which he offered a powerful rejection of mainstream and Keynesian analysis of the bond market. For years now, “core” capitalist economies have been suffering […]
“Bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, it is more fully developed, and has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination.”—V. I. Lenin (born 150 years ago), What Is to Be Done? The covid-19 pandemic will result in a “savage recession” around the world “that will […]
I have been a musician for more than twenty years, playing in various original bands, cover bands, and wedding bands. As the whole industry for working musicians becomes ever more uncertain because of covid-19, I have often found myself pondering the question of the value of being a musician. Many […]
“Today’s media are exponentially worse than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. They no longer provide news. What they provide are stories that are around 80 percent ideology and opinion, 10 percent lies and spin, and 10 percent fact.” Mitchell Feierstein, investor, banker, and author.
“People can’t criticise Maduro and not criticize the blockade. The blockade doesn’t attack soldiers, it doesn’t kill the guilty, the blockade kills innocents.” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil
COVID-19 did not cause the crisis in our two- tier, two-jurisdiction health service. It did, however, expose the utter failure of it.
WHATEVER WAY one looks at it, the reality is that this crisis, and its four forms— environmental, health, economic, and political—will prove to be worse than 2008. The fact that China’s economy has slowed down, for the first time in decades, only shows that this crisis will be a global affair, rather than a Western financial crisis, as happened in 2008. The 2020 crash will be a
The capitalist mode of destruction – Eoghan O’NeillDownload The great global crises (they come in threes) On Thursday 12 March many of us watched Leo Varadkar announce (in Washington) “the closure of schools, pre-schools and further and higher education settings for a period until 29 March 2020, to support efforts […]
Covid-19 and the global economy – Ewan MacDonaldDownload Is coronavirus the problem? Over the course of the next few years we will hear the same excuse over and over again. The social and economic crises we are experiencing the first moments of will be levelled at the feet of the […]
“It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” Fredric Jameson The global coronavirus pandemic has spread across the world, leaving incalculable, indescribable tragedy in its wake. The lives of every human being on the planet are being today, or will soon be, somehow […]