The outcome of the general election in the 26 counties will do nothing to solve the multiple crises of homelessness, health provision, rising prices and precarious employment facing many urban and rural working-class communities. Nor will it deal with the continuing erosion of democracy which sees the Irish government unable […]
Politics
Successful ICTU Motion on Health Services
Comrade Gearóid Ó Machail, SIPTU NIDC Workplace Representative and National Executive Committee member of the Communist Party of Ireland, succeeded in having the below resolution passed at the recent NIC-ICTU Biennial Delegates Conference in the Guildhall, Derry. MOTION: This motion calls on ICTU to lead an active campaign to highlight […]
Elections in the Republic
The rumour mill is suggesting that a General Election in the Republic is perhaps closer than previously indicated by the Taoiseach. Tensions between the coalition partners over issues such as taxation of zoned farmland may cause the government to fall, forcing the incumbents to go to the country. Fuelling this […]
Capitalist Democracy
Election coverage has become a dominant part of the entertainment/propaganda sector that passes for news coverage in Ireland and the rest of the capitalist world. The soap opera that is the US Presidential election has become prime-time viewing with its twists and turns, the latest being the attempted assasination of […]
A Transformative Political Strategy – Decentralised Democracy and bourgeois electoralism – a reply to Comrade Eoghan O’Neill.
Many shades of Republicans and other groups/parties on the Left, have been calling for a coming together of the broader Left for some years now. Recently though, the calls for “unity of purpose” appear to be a bit more prolific, on social media and public speeches. Eoghan O’Neill, writing in […]
An Electoral Transformative Strategy
The following article is presented to offer up for debate a potential transformative electoral strategy in the wake of the recent local and EU elections. There is a wider and more important debate and strategy to be formulated over the coming months and years on how to deepen and broaden […]
Dictatorship and Democracy
Words carry meaning, they carry history and they are influenced by history as well. The meaning of the word “dictatorship” has evolved since Marx used it. Dictatorship acquired a terrible meaning after Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s fascism. Every past society is a dictatorship of some class or the other. The […]
Authoritarianism on the rise – New laws in Denmark and Germany
Two important and worrying new laws are on the way in Denmark and in Germany which evidence the ongoing increase in the authoritarian nature of the State across Europe. These laws come in response to the loss of legitimacy that is a hallmark of states in this era of monopoly […]
Coalition Government Running Out Of Steam and a System That Can’t Be Fixed!
The three party coalition government of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party is clearly running out of steam. Their Programme for Government has failed on many levels, from housing to the environment to healthcare, the list goes on. Their housing strategy has failed as private capital is driven […]
Ruling By Fooling
Fifty years after the collapse of the first attempt to reform the governance of Northern Ireland, the six county state remains a hopelessly failed political entity. Not only is it afflicted with the chaotically dysfunctional local Stormont administration, but lurking always in the background is manipulation by Britain’s Deep State. […]
Review – James Connolly Festival 2024
In a departure from the usual week-long run of events, this year’s James Connolly Festival ran from Thursday to Sunday, culminating on 12th May: 107 years to the day that Ireland lost its greatest martyr and Marxist theoretician, James Connolly. It was at the outbreak of war in Europe during […]
Capitalism’s “good name” is being damaged!
The Tory Housing Secretary Michael Gove has said that Kingspan Insulation in Cavan is “giving capitalism a bad name.” (Irish News, Sat 20th January 2024). Really! He went on to say that Kingspan is trying to “minimise their involvement” in regards to their insulation materials being used in the cladding […]
How prices can rise while a market slows down
The European Central Bank interest rate has been set as high as 4% which is a record interest rate since the 2007/8 credit crisis. The premise justifying this high interest rate is that the previous practice of setting the interest rate at zero, if not negative, rates caused a massive […]
The imperialist march to war
Mythology refers to Helen’s “beautiful face that launched a thousand ships”. This, according to legend, was the cause of the Trojan war. Whether true or not, what we can say in the modern era is that the face of major war is now the ugly face of capitalism at its […]
NATO killed peace in Ukraine
In early May 2022, Ukrayinska Pravda broke the story that March 2022 peace talks between Ukraine and Russia held in Istanbul were derailed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Right after the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators agreed on the design of a future possible agreement based on the outcome of […]
People Want It Now!
Thousands of activists have, over time, chanted these well known words. “What do we want, when do we want it”….”Now !!” This is a very well known chorous from all sorts of political demonstrations and calls for change, all over the world. However well intentioned and correct that call may […]