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 […]
Previous Articles
Opinion – The Climate Bill and the end of agriculture
The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill (2021) is of major concern to all farmers and rural workers. If it is allowed to be implemented in full it would be the death knell of rural industry. The bill entails a massive cut in the national herd, setting legally […]
Albrecht Dürer – Champion of the peasants
Albrecht Dürer was born 550 years ago, on 21 May 1471, during the Renaissance, a time of upheaval that rang in the early modern age. With improved production methods, industry and trade grew rapidly, bringing with them more money and the strengthening of a new middle class. Modern science developed, […]
Pages from history – The CPI and industrial schools
Printed in Workers’ Voice on 4 May 1935, the following article describes the horrific treatment and the murder of a young boy in the care of the Christian Brothers at Artane Industrial School. During its existence, from 1868 to 1969, approximately 15,500 boys passed through its doors. For over a […]
Capitalism and the future of human-animal relations
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 […]
James Connolly Festival returns
The annual James Connolly Festival returns for its seventh year on 3–9 May, bringing together working-class arts, culture, and politics. This year’s week-long virtual events, recorded at the New Theatre, will include lectures, panel discussions, round-table talks, debate, and performance, covering a wide variety of contemporary and historical topics and […]
May Day message of solidarity
The Communist Party of Ireland sends warmest May Day greetings of solidarity to the working people of Ireland. For the Irish working class there is a clear crisis in housing and health. We emphasise the need to build resistance and struggle to demand and secure decent public housing and to […]
Marxism and the housing crisis
“Our cities can never be made really habitable or worthy of an enlightened people while the habitations of its citizens remain the property of private individuals. To permanently remedy the evils of city life the citizens must own their city.” (James Connolly, Workers’ Republic, 18 November 1899) “The so-called housing shortage, which […]
The militarisation of the European Union grows apace – Part 2
According to its high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, the EU at present has 5,000 troops stationed around the world under its aegis.¹ Most of its operations are based in Africa (as shown in part 1 of this article). However, the EU’s most significant operation on the European continent […]
Climate change: No longer a peripheral issue
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 […]
The last acceptable form of racism| Part 2
In part 1 of this article (Socialist Voice, March 2021) I used official statistics showing the gap between Travellers and society in general in health, employment, and educational achievement. Travellers die earlier, have greater ill-health, have lower educational qualifications, have higher unemployment and have more overcrowding and poorer housing than society […]
How long will they get away with it?
Two instructive headlines from the bourgeois financial news web site Business Insider give an indication of how the balance of global wealth has shifted since the covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020. The first: “Billionaires made $3.9 trillion during the pandemic,” informing us that the likes of the Victorian workhouse […]
The broad front: alliances, compromises, and principles | A republican view
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 […]
Left for unity: unity for strength
Unity is indeed strength. We must ensure that the strength gained from Irish unity is for the working class. The partition of Ireland was an imperial solution as a result of the British empire beginning to crumble at the beginning of the last century. The British empire has been confined […]
A view from rural Ireland
The CAP talks have stalled. That means no new environmental schemes until the powers that be, the parties to the negotiations, are all in bed with big-money capitalism. The result, of course, will benefit large corporations and factories, not small or medium farmers, meat-factory workers, or all the rural workers. […]
Drugs: A weapon of imperialism
Narcotics are, in some ways, just like any other commodity. Be it oil, natural gas, sugar, or coffee, under capitalism their purpose is to allow profits to be made. Hyper-consumerism has led to unequal levels of development in the Global North and South, social alienation in domestic markets, and environmental […]