Socialist Democracy

Bourgeois democracy in Ireland in two Acts (2) – Orwellian and Surreal

30/09/24 (Sraid Marx)

Bourgeois democracy can not only lie, it can also invent crimes for which you can be punished.  The Government is going ahead with the hate crime bill, shorn of its hate speech elements.  This follows its stinging defeat in the family and care referendum in which it also lied about the implications of what it was proposing when asked whether these had been raised within it as a concern.   (read more)


Fredric Jameson’s capitalist horror show

28/09/24 (​New Statesman)

For someone whose sentences were long and intricate, putting every thought through a dialectical wringer, Fredric Jameson gets quoted a lot. His most-quoted sentence comes in two versions. The first, “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism,” later restated to, “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”  (read more)

Ireland's liberal opposition

27/09/24

In a recent letter to our site a supporter of Socialist Democracy denounced the left group People Before Profit (PbP) for responding to an attack from a local columnist by declaring that the organisation;  “Isn’t interested in rehashing historical arguments that have long been debunked.”   The correspondent took this to be a repudiation of the whole theory of Marxism,  a view supported by the declaration of PbP that what was important was that they could coordinate with others to get a crowd. Since then, a series of other events have demonstrated that this retreat from socialism is real.       (read more)


From the mean to the meaningless: the targets of Cancel Culture

20/09/24 (​​Gearóid’s Substack)

Cancel culture is one of those terms often bandied about by people who neither understand what it actually is and who its victims are.  Some, mainly on the Left, have wrongly claimed that its targets are all very powerful people with money, fame and recognition and they are not really cancelled because they continue to write books, articles and use twitter.   (read more)

Winter Fuel Payment Cut

19/09/24

The UK’s new Labour Government under PM Keir Starmer has announced that the annual Winter Fuel Payment introduced by the last Labour administration under Gordon Brown will be ended as a universal benefit. Where 11 million
pensioners were previously eligible now the payment will be means tested for around 1.5 million.   (read more)

The popular front experiment in France

17/09/24

The current governmental crisis in France stems back to the European elections of June 2024. There was a substantial growth in the vote for right wing parties and a collapse in the vote for traditional capitalist parties. In France President Macron found his party achieving 15% of the vote, with the far right on 30%.   When Macron called a snap national election, the results were even worse for him.  (read more)

Videos

Gender identity ideology

Presentation by Orla Ni Chomhrai on why socialists should oppose a dogma which undermines women's rights, gay rights, free speech, and science.

18 October 2021