Political Economy

From A to B, and everything in between

1st November 2020 by Eoghan O’Neill

The Communist Party of Ireland has, time and time again, shown its analysis of capitalism and imperialism to be correct. Where we have been able to intervene and make a contribution to the wider political movements, debates and campaigns we have actively intervened in what were popular reformist demands, shifting them to transformative ideas and demands, in a number of crucial areas: (1) repudiating the debt,

(2) austerity is working, (3) the triple lock of imperialism, (4) public ownership of water enshrined in the Constitution,

(5) universal public housing, and (6) repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, to name a few. Eoghan O’Neill reports

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The possibility of a perfect storm grows

11th October 2020 by Eugene McCartan

The economic crisis facing the Government continues to grow. While economic data paints a much rosier picture of the economy, thanks to the dominance of foreign direct investment (i.e. transnational corporations), the pandemic is having a wider and more lasting impact on the domestic economy, in particular on small and […]

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Political Economy

Who said that?

11th October 2020 by Declan McKenna

“The earth is not dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”—Utah Phillips, folk singer “The US has bombed no less than thirty countries since the end of World War II, killing millions of people, maiming tens of millions more, disrupting and destroying education, […]

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Political Economy

Understanding the crisis – and preparing for what is yet to come

11th October 2020 by Dorian Ó Seanáin

The CPI, in conjunction with Socialist Voice, streamed two talks in September under the title “Economics for Workers.” The guest speaker on each occasion was a leading Marxist economist. The thread that linked the interviews by Graham Harrington of the CPI was an attempt to understand the current crisis (or […]

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Current Affairs Political Economy Socialism

Power to the working people

1st September 2020 by Tommy McKearney

Robert Owen, the nineteenth-century philanthropist, was by any standard a decent sort of bloke. He believed workers should be treated compassionately and that they deserved a reasonable standard of living. In fact he went a step further and attempted to build ideal societies in different countries, including one at Ralahine […]

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Ireland Political Economy

Capitalist agriculture and the culling of small farms

1st September 2020 by Fred Moran and Gearóid de Paor

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 […]

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Political Economy

The end of the neoliberal social contract

1st September 2020 by Dónal Ó Coisdealbha

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 […]

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Political Economy

Who is the average Irish farmer?

5th August 2020 by Gearóid de Paor and Fred Moran

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 […]

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Political Economy

Who said that?

5th August 2020 by Declan McKenna

“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 […]

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Political Economy

Sacrificing workers to get their economy open

4th July 2020 by Dorian Ó Seanáin

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 […]

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Political Economy Socialism

Measuring the production of use values

4th July 2020 by Madara Kupce and Dónal Ó Coisdealbha

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 […]

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Political Economy

Economic update: July

4th July 2020 by Fred Moran

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. […]

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Political Economy

Who said this?

4th July 2020 by Declan McKenna

“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 […]

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Political Economy

On supernovas and milkshakes

2nd June 2020 by Dónal Ó Coisdealbha

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 […]

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Political Economy

Who said that?

2nd June 2020 by Declan McKenna

“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 […]

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Political Economy Socialism

Music, value, and all that jazz

2nd June 2020 by Eoghan O’Neill

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 […]

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