Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
“Why do we work?” seems like an odd question. Sure everyone works, do they not? Or the majority of people do, one way or another. And if you can’t, don’t or won’t work there is every chance you are seen as lazy, a sponger, or worse. But there has to […]
■ This is the text of a paper given by the general secretary of the CPI that formed part of an exchange of views in June 2021, a conversation between left republican activists and Protestant religious leaders to discuss the future of the North of Ireland. First of all I […]
In Ireland, just like elsewhere, our movement stands in front of a seemingly impenetrable wall: the great wall of capital. The unfortunate reality is that we are even further from tearing it down than we were a hundred years ago, when the last revolutionary high point of Irish history was […]
One hundred and ten years ago James Connolly opened up what became known as the Connolly-Walker controversy with the following sentence: “All thoughtful men and women who observe the political situations of their countries must realise that Ireland is on the verge of one of the most momentous constitutional changes […]
Before the Industrial Revolution, human activity did not create new, global environmental conditions that could translate into a fundamentally different stratigraphic signal. Since then, however, the exploration of coal, oil and gas, in particular, has enabled worldwide industrialisation, construction, and mass transport, producing a wide range of changes that leave […]
The announcement on Sunday 18 April 2021 by a group of twelve “elite” football clubs in England, Spain and Italy—Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan—that they intend to set up a European Super League brought widespread […]
There is a saying, “Life is an education of a different kind, where exams come before the lessons.” The nineteenth-century cholera outbreak taught England the importance of underground drainage systems. Covid-19 has taught us many lessons; one among them is that there are some sectors that have to be the […]
So it’s an Irish Socialist Republic or nothing?—where the people of Ireland will eventually own the means of production and distribution of the wealth, an independent, sovereign and socialist Ireland, free from the grip of imperialism. Where are we now with that project and how long will it take to […]
In the November 2020 issue the article headed “From A to B, and everything in between” outlined the CPI’s transformative strategy. The present article is a short follow-up based on discussions that have come up since the article was published, which I hope will further illuminate the thinking and ideas […]
The World Health Organization has confirmed that the most likely source of covid-19 was transmission from bats to humans through another animal. This means that it is just the latest in a long list of viruses that have been passed from other animals to humans. As the relentless destruction of […]
T. S. Elliott wrote in “Choruses from ‘The Rock’” (1934): Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? We have all the knowledge and information about climate change, but the capitalist system doesn’t allow us to act with wisdom. As a […]
Socialist republicans and progressive forces are at a crossroads, at a time of potential momentous change in Ireland. And change, however slowly, always results in a reconsideration of positions previously taken. Human history is replete with the consequences and indeed the dialectic of change. It is only when we look back that […]
The article by Alan Farrell in the March issue under the heading “In defence of China” raises some extremely important questions but offers answers that are unsustainable. The writer asks three questions to represent the concerns expressed by many people, and proceeds to answer them. But the questions themselves are […]
The upper limit of a transformative wage demand A transformative strategy is “a means by which to expose the antagonistic contradictions between capitalism and the working class and, in so doing, to undermine capitalism and present the potential for a socialist alternative.”¹ While an increase in the minimum wage from […]
The 150th birthday of Rosa Luxemburg On 5 March 2021 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth. No-one who wishes to get a sense of Rosa Luxemburg as a person, both political and private, will regret watching Margarethe von Trotta’s meticulously researched film of the same name, made […]
Part 2 ■ Part 1 of this article was published in the February issue. What model of human does neoliberalism encourage? Neoliberalism sees Darwinian competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling. It maintains that […]