Socialist Voice: March 2021 March 8, 2021
Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.trackback
The March Socialist Voice is now available on at:https://socialistvoice.ie/category/article/latest/
International Working Women’s Day
by National Women’s Committee, CPIThe 8th of March each year has continued to grow in popularity around the world as a day on which to recognise and celebrate women in general. But this increase in popularity stems from a growing disconnection from the radical socialist roots of what was once widely known as International […]
Marx, Gamestop, and finance capitalism
by David HarteryAs retail investors launched a short squeeze on large hedge funds, forcing large stock-market movements and frenzied recapitalisation, many commentators heralded it as a victory for “the little guy” against Wall Street. However, the truth is far from that simple. “The biggest owners of Gamestop: Fidelity (14%), Cohen’s RC Ventures […]
by Jimmy DoranBus drivers in London went on strike last month against pay cuts that a number of “private bus operators” tried to impose. However, all is not as it seems. The British government has privatised much of the public transport system as they push ahead with their neoliberal agenda. They followed […]
by Dónall Ó BriainManchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020). This acclaimed book ostensibly celebrates the Irish-speaking community in Co. Kerry, where the author spent his holidays as a young man. He explores the rich vocabulary of traditional Irish-speakers and their words for natural phenomena: the weather, the sea, plants, […]
by Eoin MacDermottThe upper limit of a transformative wage demand A transformative strategy is “a means by which to expose the antagonistic contradictions between capitalism and the working class and, in so doing, to undermine capitalism and present the potential for a socialist alternative.”¹ While an increase in the minimum wage from […]
“A social order worthy of the human race”
by Jenny FarrellThe 150th birthday of Rosa Luxemburg On 5 March 2021 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth. No-one who wishes to get a sense of Rosa Luxemburg as a person, both political and private, will regret watching Margarethe von Trotta’s meticulously researched film of the same name, made […]
by Dónall Ó BriainJust as it did with St Patrick’s Day, the state has decided to take over the 1st of February—the beginning of spring, traditionally known as St Brigid’s Day—and convert it into another cheap stunt for promoting tourism and “selling Ireland.” (The only wonder is that there’s anything left to sell.) […]
The future of agriculture in Ireland
by Joe HurleyThe news that Britain has applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a big blow to Irish farmers and rural agri-business workers. The CPTPP is different from the EU, in that it has no customs union or single market. It is a free-trade organisation, […]
The militarisation of the EU grows apace
by Dorian Ó SeanáinPart 1 The Lisbon Treaty is working perfectly. Just as opponents of the EU in Ireland warned after the bloc’s leaders signed the treaty in December 2007, the last vestiges of the Irish state’s neutrality have disappeared over the last decade. The importance of the Lisbon Treaty to the incontrovertible […]
Memorial to a forgotten revolution
by Laura DugganSuomenlinna is a beautiful little island off the coast of Helsinki. A regular boat service (part of the public transport system) ferries residents, navy cadets and tourists alike to the island in about fifteen minutes. On the trip across, depending on the time of year, you can be met by […]
Work, mental health, and the disease of neoliberalism
by Barry MurrayPart 2 ■ Part 1 of this article was published in the February issue. What model of human does neoliberalism encourage? Neoliberalism sees Darwinian competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling. It maintains that […]
The last acceptable form of racism
by Jimmy CorcoranPart 1 In March 2017 the Government recognised Irish Travellers as an ethnic minority. This was the culmination of a long campaign by Traveller activists, and while it was a vast improvement on the attitude behind the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963),[1] which saw them as “deviant, destitute […]
Israel judged an apartheid regime
by Declan McKennaThe Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, has judged Israel to be an apartheid state, bent on perpetuating the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians. “Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it,” said the body’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad. “It […]
Understanding the past to unlock the future
by Sajeev KumarDialectics says that everything is changing and everything is evolving. Capitalism is no exception—so can tactics for abolishing capitalism be the same? Capitalism was nascent during Marx’s time; and by the time Lenin arrived it had evolved into imperialism, which he said is the highest stage of capitalism. Marx’s assessment […]
by Alan FarrellThis article seeks to explore the apparent contradictions inherent in China today and to examine the evidence relating to criticisms made of the Chinese state by some figures and organisations on the left. Broadly speaking, critiques of China from the left fall under three categories: that the rapid growth and […]
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
In Farrell’s article on China, we are informed that we should place our hopes for the world’s future in “A powerful state apparatus” guide by the “science of Marxism-Leninism”. Elsewhere we learn that the same apparatus is generously providing “re-education” for those poor deluded Uighurs. Jesus wept!
You couldn’t make it up – it’s so bad, to call it Stalinism is an insult to Stalinism.
LikeLike
Colm beat me to it!
Here’s the deal. The issues raised are complex and real (environmentalism, predatory lending, authoritarianism up to genocide). So to simply mock them as slavishly pro Beijing does fall short of what is needed, but my God is it cringeworthy stuff.
LikeLike
YC, you’re right, the issues are important but surely there comes a point when it’s just not worth the energy.
To give a different example, when I come across full scale covid denialism or conspiracy theory stuff, I just am not wiling to invest the time and energy. Equally with this all-out support for the kleptocractic, anti-worker, culturally genocidal state-capitalist regime. TBH the article reads like a parody, maybe it was a joke to wind us up?
LikeLike
Given the huge antipathy between the USSR and PRC I’m always surprised how more orthodox tending parties are in the contemporary era willing to wave the latter through in a way that would have been unthinkable thirty or forty years ago.
LikeLike
Totally agree, pick your battles. I’m certainly not going to cancel my plans today because someone on the internet is wrong.
That being said the issues are worth raising and dealing with in a substantive manner when they appear, just not under the guise of this article.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m with you there YC, so in that spirit, I include two useful links:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/China_s_Engine_of_Environmental_Collapse.html?id=NkvszAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
LikeLiked by 2 people
“These include the claim that up to 3 million Uighurs are detained in purported concentration camps. The great majority of these articles and claims can be traced back to one person,” I suppose Yvonne Murray is a pseudonym. https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0929/1168302-china-xianjiang/
It is sad that the majority of the Left has little interest in this mainly Muslim nation. And the excuse that they are just extremists remind me of similar vis a vis the Palestinians.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah the contrast is depressing really. These pro-Chinese-state leftists are just a mirror image of the right-wingers who shout and ball about the Uighurs but support Israel’s oppression about the Palestinians.
LikeLiked by 2 people
meanwhile, the CYM is celebrating Stalin on its FB page
LikeLike
Dont even want to look but chimes with the impression that their split with CP has some element of Third Period Stalinism involved.
LikeLike
kind of a tendancy in several CPs in Europe, following the “successful” Greek CP, adopting “Marxism-Leninism”, etc. sometimes with interesting results like one breakaway group of the German CP which is heavyily into theory and doubting popular frontism and “socialist China”
LikeLike
Yes the KKE seem to the inspirers of all things stalinoid these days
LikeLike
however not sure that the pro-church policy of the KKE (destined to court “anti-imperialist, patriotic priests”) would go down well among the CYM 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks be to god I’m not internet active enough to know this. But something struck me about something someone said on here about some of the conspiracy/freeman and so on stuff in the States – that a lot of those involved are kind of into performative stuff on the internet, which I take partly to mean they love to seek attention and try to shock people and get a reaction to the stuff they put up, the more outlandish the better.
Is there an element of that with the likes of CYM and other oddballs on ‘the left’? You know, in 2021 putting up paeans of praise to Stalin and China and all that? On the internet. To shock and dismay everyone. A kind of “look at us, we’re mad so we are, and all you sensible leftists please express your shock horror at how mad we are”?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suspect you are right J. I think the equivalent from our youth was the kind of verbal leftist machismo I used to enjoy when I were a young lad: “sure I would shoot my granny in the cause of revolution” etc. I think there’s a gender and age factor here as well – young guys showing off their toughness.
All that said, I think it’s worth confronting this nonsense, not in the hope of winning over the Stalin LARPers but because there is always a wider audience who can be convinced either way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t know that it’s just the CYM. The FB page of the CPI Dublin District posted an appreciation on the anniversary of his death last week.
https://m.facebook.com/dublindistrict.cpi/photos/a.228303447510739/1397892597218479/
LikeLike
This sort of thing is a new development. Most orthodox CPs just stopped saying anything about Stalin after the 50s, this sort of madness was left to Maoists and their barmy cousins, the Hoxha gang. You certainly would never have seen any of this overt references to Stalin in the WP in the 70s and 80s.
But since the fall of the USSR and especially in the last few years, the whole Stalin thing has undergone a revival in mainstream orthodox CPs, along with a rehabilitation of China, which has become a sort of replacement Soviet Union.
Come back Khrushchev, all is forgiven 😢
LikeLike
I’d be a Khrushchevite myself. An anti-Stalin Stalinist I suppose. Btw I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything explicitly pro-Stalin from the WP.
LikeLike
viz the WP, you don’t have to defend Stalin explicitly to be a Stalinist but that’s another days work.
I’d be for Khrushchev vs the Stalinists, and later Brezhnev and crew, but then there’s those small matters of the Ukraine, Hungary, the massacre of the workers at Novocherkassk, etc etc
LikeLike
Yes, I was using the phrase “anti-Stalin Stalinist” in the sense that you’ve previously explained your perspective on what constitutes Stalinism. My comment on the WP was about Stalin himself, and again I can’t remember the WP ever publishing anything in the party’s name, as opposed to the personal views of a member, that is pro-Stalin. Unlike what the CYM or CPI have done recently. I might be wrong in that, but I’d be surprised if it ever happened, as I’ve certainly heard plenty of mixed opinions from senior party members over the years about Stalin himself which makes me believe that anything of that nature would not receive the blessing of the Ard Comhairle.
LikeLiked by 1 person