The Cost of Living Coalition had many people taking to the streets during the protest march on the 24th of September. The coalition was a broad range of left-wing organisations, such as People Before Profit, the CPI, the Connolly Youth Movement and other grass-roots movements, such as activists from mica […]
Socialism
The gaslighting of the Anthropocene
In geology, the periods and smaller epochs of Earth’s past are named by the region in which they were first determined as such, or by their characteristics. Well-known periods are the Carboniferous, for its ample coal deposits, and the Jurassic, for the Jura Mountains, where it was first identified. The […]
Religious freedom in Cuba: A constitutional right
Innumerable religious organisations, institutions and fraternal associations exist and function in the Republic of Cuba which have structures at the national, provincial and local levels. For their work they group their members, both in an evangelising function as well as a social and ethical one, in defence of peace, solidarity […]
Do we live in a representative democracy?
Forty-eight TDs and twenty-nine senators are landlords, with others owning shares in companies and some owning both shares and rented property. The majority of landlords are in Fine Gael, followed by Fianna Fáil. Other parties with landlords or shares include Sinn Féin, the Green Party, and the Labour Party, while […]
Forcing workers to pay for the crisis
For months the media have been full of stories about the cost-of-living crisis, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, and the crisis in the health service. The Government has laid the blame on the world economy, or on supply-line issues, either as a result of the pandemic or of the […]
Change and a participatory democracy
Elections cause even the most docile of people to become excited. It really is a circus. But the human reality is that it is deadly serious for those who are trying to survive in life. And this is true in 95 per cent of the world. Worse than that, there […]
Stranger than fiction
Anyone who is politically active knows the importance of reading—and knows the weight of books one ought to have read. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of works to be read and the knowledge to acquire and process, and not only from weighty political tomes. For […]
A story of capitalist contradiction
This is an old story that is told in Marxist circles, still relevant, and never loses its novelty. It’s a conversation between a little girl and her mother during a cold winter evening in London when the father has not returned after going out in search of a job. The […]
CPI participates in conference organised by CPC
At the end of July the Communist Party of Ireland participated in an on-line International Marxist Parties Forum organised by the Communist Party of China. The theme of the forum was “Adapting Marxism to the National Conditions and the Times of the 21st Century.” The CPI was represented by Eugene […]
The Free Staters’ Red nightmare
Students of the coup d’état of 1922 will be interested in the following letter, which appeared in the Freeman’s Journal of 5 August 1922 under the headline “Irregulars’ Eager Allies | Policy of the Communist Party of Ireland.” The following excerpts from The Workers’ Republic of 28th July—the “official organ […]
On transphobia
Recently, right-wing and liberal media have been attacking trans people in increasingly vicious ways. How can we analyse this from a left-wing viewpoint? In 1919 Lenin said the following in a speech on anti-Semitism: “The hate of the workers and peasants, the landowners and capitalists tried to divert against […]
To fix these problems we need socialism
As the cost of living grows ever higher, and more families are choosing between eating and paying bills—with some parents skipping meals so their children can eat—we continue to produce an over-abundance. We produce such an over-abundance of food that no one should be without food. Roughly a third […]
May Day in Havana: International Solidarity Brigade, 2022
From Havana to Santiago de Cuba, the revolutionary people of Cuba are an inspirational force, struggling against the effects of the US blockade on their beautiful country. Living under the blockade is having a seriously detrimental effect on the day-today lives of Cuban people. The United States has blocked trade […]
The first woman in space
On 16 June 1963, only two years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, Valentina Tereshkova made world history and became the first woman in space. This was during the height of the Cold War and during the space race, in which the Soviet Union achieved tremendous feats, […]
Evolution or revolution?
It would appear that, one way or another, humans have always been trying to find a better way to live and survive in the world, particularly from a materialist viewpoint, to meet their needs and develop their capacities—not always with success—by their own volition or as they would want it […]
The importance of political theory
Part 2 Last month I wrote an article on the importance of political theory. In that article I explained that it is not enough to read the Communist Manifesto to learn about Marxism properly but that you must examine different points of Marxism. In this article I will examine the […]