Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Over the course of the general election campaign it was clear that a general feeling of bewilderment and boredom, in equal measure, was the reaction of many working families to the talking heads pontificating on television and radio in trying to interpret or reinterpret what a political party said or meant to say
THE BRITISH State left the European Union on the 31st of January, after nearly three years of political theatre, manoeuvring, backstabbing, and manipulation. How the ruling class now manage this process will depend very much on what the working class does. Many on the left have adopted a wait-and-see approach, thereby allowing the ruling
ROLL UP! Roll up! On offer today we have for you all your needs, wants, and desires, neatly wrapped in this leaflet, which explains all our plans for you, our most valued citizen! Let all your worries fade away as we promise you, the early risers, the sun, moon, and stars.
THE TRADE UNION Left Forum launched its Workers’ Rights Campaign in Dublin last month. The campaign is centred on the abolition of the Industrial Relations Act (1990) and all anti-union legislation, to be replaced with a Fair Employment Act that would guarantee— 1 the right to union access
FROM TIME to time a seemingly minor event illuminates the nature of governance in a country. Such a moment occurred last month when the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, was honoured in Dublin. There may have been a degree of electioneering on Varadkar’s part when he presented the IDA’s inaugural “special recognition award” to Cook. Nevertheless he echoed a long-held view among Ireland’s ruling business class.
THIS IS OUR democracy. It boils down to political parties arguing over semantics on policy without having any real substantive choice on policies. I see, hear and read about the hopes of many people for a political change, where many believe that we are on the precipice of a fundamental change in the political landscape, not seen since the days of the Irish Revolution.
THE ESTABLISHMENT keep repeating the mantra that in twenty years’ time there will be far fewer people working than there are now, and more people in retirement. This has now become the accepted narrative of the mainstream media. And it is lie.
THE RISE of the right wing, of fascist ideology, is inextricably linked with the crises of capitalism, which are periodic and inevitable because of the internal contradictions within the capitalist system, which can never be overcome, because capitalism is an antagonistic class-based system in which differing class interests cannot be reconciled.
THE WORKING CLASS is already dvided by capitalism. If we are to build a revolutionary movement we, as communists, must unite those divisions, not further deepen them. To do so we need to combat the tendencies of tailism and economism in our own ranks. The ruling class utilise a range of tactics designed to weaken the working class, but none of these is more….
FINGAL COUNTY Council, in association with the Residential Tenancies Board, is now offering training courses to help deal with the desperate housing crisis in the Dublin region, now virtually out of control. The courses, however, are not for tenants but for landlords.
FRYDERYK CHOPIN was born on 22 February 1810 in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a Polish mother and a French father. He grew up in Warsaw but left Poland in 1831, shortly before the Polish popular uprising against the tsarist oppressors. He moved to Paris, where he lived until his death, aged only thirty-nine, on 17 October 1849.
“In many countries, the wealthy pay lower effective taxes than far poorer people. We need to change course— or face the pitchforks. “The ecological catastrophe fueled by climate change and the socio-economic upheaval threatened by grotesque inequalities of wealth and power have the potential to destroy everything we care about.
As we celebrate the sixty-first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, a great Irish friend, loyal defender of Cuba, asked me to write for Socialist Voice about the imprint of Fidel
Castro and Ernesto Guevara on the most important event of the twentieth century in Latin America—not without first clarifying for me, with the typical frankness and the
classic and imperative Irish style: it had to be brief.
2019 was a year of victories for Venezuela, President Maduro claimed at a ceremony on 23 January for the anniversary of the fall of the Jiménez dictatorship in 1958. This was also the date chosen last year by Juan Guaidó to proclaim himself “interim president” of Venezuela. His argument, prompted by Mike Pence, was that the office was vacant, because of their non-recognition of the election of President Maduro, and therefore should go to the chairperson of the National Assembly, the office he held.
THE WORKING CLASS is under attack in a class war that we are losing. There was a time when one average worker could earn enough to provide a family with the basic necessities of food and shelter and a few luxuries. This, of course, did not
AS WE ENTER a new decade, the real living conditions of working people continue to decline; profits are up, which means exploitation is intensifying; large numbers of working families rely on family income supplement—the state’s subsidy on behalf of low-pay employers—to survive.