Our understanding of foreign direct investment (FDI) is heavily influenced by Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, where FDI is seen as the export of capital from the advanced capitalist core, led by monopolists, to peripheral countries. The motive behind this is clear: to secure higher rates of surplus value no longer […]
Tag: Ireland
Imperialism Must Be Confronted – Mobilise For Unity
The Socialist Voice is a useful medium for critical debate on many issues, for advancing the self-determination of the people of Ireland. It is not for promoting or ignoring British colonialism in Ireland. An article, “Mobilising Northern Workers”, in the May edition completely ignored the savagery and injustice of the […]
Lord Alderdice and the North
Two rival positions are circulating regarding the British and the North. The first is the British have no interest in maintaining the North. Lord Alderdice recently revived this argument in an interview online, claiming the Irish government, not the British, block unity. The second is that the British want to […]
An Insider and Outsider View on Gaeilge
Over the years, the Socialist Voice has had some great articles advocating for the Irish language, seen from an anti-capitalist lens which are definitely worth re-reading. I didn’t go to school in Ireland so I don’t have any experience with learning Irish in that setting, but I did grow up […]
Ulster Says No
On 18th January 2024, 150,000 public sector workers joined together in a wave of strikes across the North. The main reason for this strike was pay. Workers were demanding pay increases that match inflation. Public sector workers’ pay has been falling behind inflation for more than a decade: more than […]
Opinion: Sovereignty and Reunification
A recent article in December 2023 Socialist Voice (“Sovereignty and Reunification”) muses on the benefits of a united Ireland, offering many insights. One argument advanced is that a single island-wide political structure would offer benefits from unified infrastructures, eliminating “duplication” in health and education, for example. This argument raises problems. […]
Statement on Government Plans to Abandon the Triple Lock
The Communist Party of Ireland condemns the plans by the Irish government to abandon the “Triple Lock” on the deployment of Irish troops outside the state. The government does not have a mandate for this policy, it was not put to the public in a General Election and does not […]
On the visit of Joe Biden
We could waste a lot of time speculating on the real purpose behind the Biden visit. Nevertheless it is worth reflecting on the nature and impact of his trip to Ireland and especially how the Irish establishment reacted to it. Ostensibly the US president was coming here to celebrate the […]
Partition grinding to a close
Once again the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have failed to elect a first minister and deputy first minister and have now been mothballed pending the ability of the British secretary of state for “Northern Ireland” to pull a rabbit out of the hat regarding the Protocols, or to persuade […]
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael: Marching in step
We are living in difficult and dangerous times, with every chance that things may get worse. Global inflation is driving up the cost of living, the impact of which is felt most severely in working-class communities. Against this backdrop of economic hardship there looms the spectre of war in Ukraine […]
Assembly elections: Opening new opportunities for struggle
A historic step forward was taken on the road to Irish freedom when the nationalist party Sinn Féin won more seats in the recent Northern Ireland Assembly than the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party. Sinn Féin secured 29 per cent of the popular vote, to become the largest party, with 27 […]
An urgent need to fight for neutrality
“Gallant little Belgium must be saved from the swinish Hun” was the cry in 1914. So intense was the propaganda deploring and berating the Kaiser’s Germany, and so heart-rending the story of a small European country being violated, that millions enlisted to fight and to die. Among the fallen in […]
EU court is not an upholder of democracy
The decision of the EU Court of Justice on 27 October ordering Poland to pay the EU Commission a daily penalty of €1 million for failing to comply with an order of the court in July was welcomed by the slavishly pro-EU Irish media as a victory for “democracy” and […]
Sinn Féin | Unsettling the equilibrium but not breaking the mould
Governments are not formed on the basis of opinion polls. Nevertheless it would be unwise to discard their findings, especially when a consistent trend is emerging. With this in mind, it is difficult to deny that Sinn Féin is gaining ground and establishing a strong, some might argue unassailable, position. […]
Public Health | Cuba shows the way
We have two health services in Ireland, and both are on the verge of collapse. Since Covid exposed their existing inadequacies, very little capacity has been added to either service in preparation for the next wave. We should have been building and training staff for several new hospitals. In fact […]
The CPI as a product of Irish conditions
One of the most common attacks against us by anti-communists, in Ireland and elsewhere, is that communist parties were little more than “pawns of Moscow.” This line of attack was used against the CPI, both by the right and by some on the so-called left, in an effort to use establishment anti-Sovietism as well as to paint the party as…