Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed last month, causing major turbulence across the world’s financial sector. Within a week of its closure, the Financial Times was reporting that the value of global bank stocks had fallen $460 billion. Fearing meltdown from contagion, state-controlled treasuries across the capitalist order made huge sums […]
Capitalism evolved from the development of trade: mercantile capitalism gave way to manufacturing capitalism which transformed into industrial capitalism after the industrial revolution, which was fueled by scientific inventions. The history of capitalism as a dominant mode of production begins in the 17th century, with Holland and England being the […]
The annual James Connolly Festival returns for its ninth year, from the 8th – 14th of May 2023. The annual week-long festival sees events in radical arts, culture, and politics take place in The New Theatre, Dublin, and across the city. It is a community-based celebration of music, film, discussion […]
(Pádraig Mac Oscair is an author and activist based in Ireland. His writing can also be read in Mionlach, Rupture and Socialist Voice. He can be found on Twitter at @PMacOscair) In recent months, the inner-city Dublin community of East Wall has seen a persistent series of protests against the […]
These past few months, Germany’s Die Linke (“The Left”) party has been struggling with the issue of agreeing on a position regarding the Ukraine war. Die Linke – founded in 2007 after a merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – through the PDS […]
Small business owners, farmers, tech enthusiasts, workers, and environmentalists are forming an unlikely alliance, fighting for the right to repair our own stuff. How did it get this way, and what is the Marxist perspective? In this article I will dig deeper into the “right to repair” movement. Planned obsolescence […]
Striking is never an easy option – especially for health and social care workers. The longer management can draw out a strike, the harder it gets to maintain the unity of purpose and public support that has been such a feature of the on-going health and social care strikes in […]
Dublin may not boast quite the same scene as other cities, nor does Ireland in general, but no journey through any urban centre is devoid of the plague of advertising or of the sight of its counterpart, graffiti. Opposing sides of the same coin, they both involve the co-option of […]
I was 16 years old, sitting in an A-level politics class in a college in the middle of London when suddenly my teacher asked the class, “Why did we go to war with Iraq?” Her question filled me with fury and I abruptly answered, “It isn’t a war, it’s an […]
Western Europe has been the scene of climate activism for many years. Driven by the reality of our changing climate, activists take desperate action to demand their governments uphold their agreement to reduce their carbon footprint. In few places was this more evident than in Germany. In the months leading […]
Early in March, Leo Varadkar said, “renters need landlords, and landlords need renters. We don’t have enough landlords.” As the leader of the largest landlord party in the Dáil, it is unsurprising that this is his proposed solution to the housing crisis. It is also unsurprising that in the same […]
Brendan Behan was born after the foundation of the Irish Free State and during the Civil War, on 9 February 1923, into a working-class family of house-painters. Behan’s people sided with the Republicans. One of Behan’s uncles, his mother’s brother Peadar Kearney, wrote “A Soldier’s Song,” and another uncle, P. […]
A chara, Ba chóir do Choillte diúltú don socrú seo le hinfheisteoirí. Tá Éire, lena haeráid bhog mheasartha (téite ag Sruth na Murascaille) an-fheiliúnach do chrainn dhúchasacha. Ach le míle bliain anuas laghdaíodh méid ár gcoillte go dtí 1%. Faoi láthair tá níos lú ná 12% den talamh faoi chrainn, […]
Siblings by the GDR writer Brigitte Reimann has just been published in an English translation by Penguin in its series of classic international literature. In this novella we have an authentic female voice communicating what it felt like to live in the GDR just before the Berlin Wall was sealed […]
The Charlie Donnelly Winter School returns to Dungannon on Saturday 11 March and will again be hosted by the Hill of the O’Neill and Ranfurly House. The centre will play host to a series of presentations and discussions on the ideals and legacy of the Dungannon-born revolutionary socialist poet who […]