Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Over the weekend of the 12th and 13th of May the CPI and the Connolly Youth Movement celebrated the lives of two great thinkers and activists, Karl Marx and James Connolly. On Saturday the 12th Dr Stephen Nolan gave this year’s James Connolly Memorial Lecture, under the title “The Continued […]
The United Irishmen founded the radical press in Ireland. They had three newspapers, aspiring to cover the entire country: the Belfast Northern Star (approximately 600 issues from January 1792 to May 1797), the Dublin Press, and the Cork Harp of Erin. The United Irishmen encompassed in their demand for equality […]
Don’t believe the hype! The current narrative about automation is well known. Weekly, if not daily, commentaries and reports emerge that forecast the potential for the mass displacement of workers as a result of impending automation. To a degree this is new wine in old bottles. Automation manias have been […]
Over two issues of Socialist Voice (January and March 2018) there were two articles that explained the capitalist illusion that perpetuates the class division in society. A great deception has allowed a tiny minority of the world’s population to own and control the vast majority of wealth that is created, […]
“Universal basic income” is being suggested by many on the left, as well as the right, as a solution to world inequality and poverty. It’s been doing the rounds for a number of years now as a way of creating a fairer and more equal society. It has been tested […]
The centralisation and concentration of both capital and power means that corporations can withstand scandals and continue to retain the support of both the state and shareholders. It takes something really massive and rare for an Arthur Andersen, Enron or Lehman Brothers to happen. Here are a few recent scandals […]
The January issue of Socialist Voice had an article by me entitled “The wage system and the capitalist illusion.” A worker being told they are getting their equivalent wage relating to their work is being held captive by an illusion that in reality leads to a non-equivalent exchange, which is […]
Marx’s theories are the key to understanding the Irish housing crisis. It may seem that the situation we find ourselves in is a uniquely modern one, but nothing could be further from the truth. What has happened is a gradual shift from battles at the “point of production” (where value […]
■ See “Understanding land value tax” by Eoghan O’Neill, Socialist Voice, January 2018, p. 10 I do not think it is correct to suggest that land is finite but can be reused. We have seen in Chernobyl that land will not be reusable in any human lifetime; it is useless for […]
A growing international tendency that should concern political activists is the rightward turn of working-class voters. In the United States, workers’ support determined the election of the ultra-rightist Donald Trump, presenting himself as fighting neo-liberalism and the globalisation policies of the ruling Democratic Party, seen as driving American industry overseas. […]
Next January the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum will mark the centenary of the first Dáil Éireann and the publication of one of modern Ireland’s landmark documents, the Democratic Programme. The forum will celebrate the occasion with a conference in Liberty Hall, Dublin. While it is important that seminal events […]
The crisis in health services is Europe-wide. The pace of market-driven health “reform” has speeded up since capitalism’s 2008 crash as neo- liberal governments—with both conservative and social democratic labels—have imposed the costs of saving the banks on working people. Public health services, with their massive property holdings, substantial staff […]
With the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the United States beginning to get behind Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” policy, it brings a sharp focus to how this sort of policy is financed. That such a policy could be gaining traction in the United States, especially in its current […]
It is constantly repeated in the pro-boss media that the Irish economy is in recovery, and that this is in full swing throughout the European Union. One has to ask the serious question: A recovery for whom, and at what price? They repeat the mantra that unemployment levels are coming […]
In the early 1950s American companies wanted to invest in Ireland so that they could expand into the European market; and Irish corporation tax policy was adapted for them. In 1956 export profits tax relief was introduced. Exports of manufactured goods were zero-rated (no tax); so American companies that exported […]
Ideology has dominated the Irish housing sector since the outset. There is no period in history, even during times of relatively robust state house-building, that could be said to have had a stable or working housing system. From tenements to failed housing experiments to bubbles, the Irish story of housing […]