Adam Hanieh’s new book, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso, 2024) could not be timelier. As all eyes turn to Baku for COP29, the capitalist world heads to yet another performance of misdirection. In contrast to that monumental deception, we need to see things as they really stand and take action accordingly. (read more)
The TUC’s general secretary, Paul
Nowak, has made great claims for the new Workers’ Rights Bill being introduced
this week. The deal is linked to a public sector pay deal which was the minimum
that would get through a union vote and has not been accepted in many areas,
especially in the NHS. According to Nowak, the Bill will turn the
tables on the Conservatives’ “low rights low pay economy” and will “make work
pay again”. (read more)
In the later decades of the last century, a new wave of ideas broke across the study of literature throughout the world. Known simply as ‘theory’, it ranged from structuralism to feminism, semiotics to hermeneutics, Marxism to deconstruction. All this was formidably abstract stuff, but it managed to be sexy as well. (read more)
‘Is biology woman’s destiny?’ was the title of an essay by the US Marxist anthropologist Evelyn Reed, written more than fifty years ago at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It chimed with the feeling of many women that their role as mothers should not prevent them from fighting for very different roles within society from those normally allotted to them. Reed made the point that biology and anthropology, as academic disciplines under capitalism, were themselves full of loaded social assumptions about sex roles and of women’s supposed ‘inferiority’. (read more)
On
October 5th, as Israel pounded both Gaza and Lebanon, up to 50,000
people marched through the streets of Dublin to protest against the ongoing
genocide in Gaza, the expansion of the war to Lebanon and what may be the
beginning of a genocide there.
The march started off from Parnell Square and went to
Molesworth St. There was some sense of
routine about the march, despite the swell in numbers due to what is happening
in Lebanon. (read more)
Budget 2025 had been trailed in the media for a long period so its content didn’t come as a surprise. The expectation of a budget filled with pre-election sweeteners was duly fulfilled. If anything, the speculation surrounding the various one-off give-aways were underestimated. For example, the value of the so-called cost of living package that accompanied the regular budget, was significantly higher than what had been trailed. (read more)
The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April 2023 was met with jubilation and celebration in Belfast. Past and present taoisigh (Irish government leaders), British prime ministers, US presidents and a raft of academics were brought together by the local universities and media in an extended celebration.Yet all is not well. If the decay of the agreement is of concern, the universal failure of academia, of the press, the trade unions and political parties to acknowledge such decay is astounding. John McAnulty provides that missing critique and suggests how Ireland will move beyond this historic inflection to fulfill the revolutionary implications of its initial struggle for freedom.
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10 April 2023
25 Years On: in the debris of the Good Friday Agreement
The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is being
marked by assemblies of the great and the good. Joe Biden rushes through the
North, avoiding attention to the barren political landscape. On RTE television
the ghost of Bertie Ahern dominates, while the high point will be the upcoming visit
of Bill and Hilary Clinton and Tony Blair to a celebration at Queens
University.
No-one will remark on the unsavoury character of
these saints of peace. Even less will anyone notice that the fine mansion that
they built is now in ruins. (read more)
Defend a woman’s right to tell
the truth - 20/10/21
People before Profit student
society calls for ‘no-platforming’ of feminists and LGB rights activists -
25/03/21
Puberty Blockers: An
unregulated live experiment on children - 17/04/21
Vulnerable children being seen
at Gender Clinics - 06/03/21
On the Reactionary Roots of
Queer Theory - 28/02/21
A new front in human
liberation, or a medical scandal in the making? - 09/01/21
Amnesty International Ireland opposes the right to free speech -
06/11/20
Gender Identity Ideology, the Trans Rights
Movement, and
homophobia - 27/09/20
Socialism, Feminism and transgender politics -
07/09/20
All COVERAGE
Socialist Democracy Statement on Coronavirus pandemic - 28/03/20
The promise and reality of vaccination -28/03/21
Herd immunity - myth and reality - 30/11/20
Coronavirus pandemic - a deepening health and economic crisis - 28/07/20
Protest, class conflict and Covid 19 - 06/05/20
Unionism’s silent shift on the pandemic
- 16/05/20
Ideology and Science - 05/05/20
Big Pharma in Ireland - 24/04/20
Europe and the pandemic - 09/04/20
All COVERAGE
Rayner O’Connor Lysaght Presente!
Tributes from
International
Viewpoint
Irish
Labour History Society
Socialist
Voice
Sráid
Marx
Emancipation,
Liberation & Self-determination
Workers
Liberty
Irish
Republican Marxist History Project
The
Pensive Quill
Irish
Left Archive
Obituray from the Irish Independent
A selection of writings by Rayner can be found online at:
Socialist Democracy
Arguments for a Workers' Republic
The Encyclopedia of Trotskyism
Red Mole Rising
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