Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
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 […]
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 […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland 28 February 2021 The scenes in Dublin city centre yesterday [Saturday 27 February] should come as no surprise to anyone. The reactions to the violence of the state were as could be expected, as were the weasel words of condemnation by establishment politicians. […]
The news that Britain has applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a big blow to Irish farmers and rural agri-business workers. The CPTPP is different from the EU, in that it has no customs union or single market. It is a free-trade organisation, […]
Just as it did with St Patrick’s Day, the state has decided to take over the 1st of February—the beginning of spring, traditionally known as St Brigid’s Day—and convert it into another cheap stunt for promoting tourism and “selling Ireland.” (The only wonder is that there’s anything left to sell.) […]
Suomenlinna is a beautiful little island off the coast of Helsinki. A regular boat service (part of the public transport system) ferries residents, navy cadets and tourists alike to the island in about fifteen minutes. On the trip across, depending on the time of year, you can be met by […]
Part 1 The Lisbon Treaty is working perfectly. Just as opponents of the EU in Ireland warned after the bloc’s leaders signed the treaty in December 2007, the last vestiges of the Irish state’s neutrality have disappeared over the last decade. The importance of the Lisbon Treaty to the incontrovertible […]
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 […]
Part 1 In March 2017 the Government recognised Irish Travellers as an ethnic minority. This was the culmination of a long campaign by Traveller activists, and while it was a vast improvement on the attitude behind the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963),[1] which saw them as “deviant, destitute […]
“It’s a small nation with a strong identity, but it jumps like a puppy desperate for attention from one of the big boys—in this case, Biden. His PR team have played the Irish like a Stradivarius.”—Chris Sweeney, author and columnist, on Ireland’s “relationship” with Joe Biden “Ah, yes, America. The […]
Dialectics says that everything is changing and everything is evolving. Capitalism is no exception—so can tactics for abolishing capitalism be the same? Capitalism was nascent during Marx’s time; and by the time Lenin arrived it had evolved into imperialism, which he said is the highest stage of capitalism. Marx’s assessment […]
The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, has judged Israel to be an apartheid state, bent on perpetuating the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians. “Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it,” said the body’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad. “It […]
Consumerism and the military-industrial complex go hand in hand in generating massive profits for global corporations. The military-industrial complex is the guarantor of cheap raw materials and cheap labour so that we in the First World can gorge on a never-ending supply of consumer goods at prices that we could […]
Thanks to SV for disclosing the truth about Samantha Power. Biden is making many hawkish appointments to his foreign policy team. Power is one of them, though she always proclaims her alleged “humanitarian” motives. The Agency for International Development, which she will head, funds many US interventions in the Third […]
This article seeks to explore the apparent contradictions inherent in China today and to examine the evidence relating to criticisms made of the Chinese state by some figures and organisations on the left. Broadly speaking, critiques of China from the left fall under three categories: that the rapid growth and […]
Over the recent period a serious rupture in the longstanding political relationship between the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) and the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM) has taken place when…