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SPIRIT OF CONTRADICTION

A confluence of voices from the European radical left and beyond…
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THE PARTY AND THE BALLOT BOX

Posted on 14/07/2019 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason


THE ROLE OF ELECTIONS IN SOCIALIST STRATEGY


THE LEGACY OF THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

In 1934, in the shadow of a rising fascist threat in Europe, the Republican
Congress was convened. This congress brought together the main elements of
socialists, communists and progressives, largely drawn from the republican
movement. In the few years of its existence, the Republican Congress was
surprisingly successful in organising political rallies, pickets, and trade
union support, especially given the condition of Ireland as a young
post-colonial and underdeveloped state in which it arose. 

Ireland was highly socially conservative, had a relatively small working class,
the socialist movement was young and the workers’ movement had yet to achieve
the kind of mass successes it had won in mainland Europe and in the UK. It would
be fair to say that the terrain of struggle was difficult.

The Congress constituted itself as a federation of groups which attempted to
work together towards a common cause. However, a motion was put forward that it
should constitute itself instead as a political party. This motion was voted
down fairly narrowly in favour of remaining as a broad front united against
reactionary forces and the rise of fascism. Within a few years, the Congress
itself dispersed, breaking up into constituent groups with many participants
simply drifting away.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Proletarian politics | Comments Off on The Party and the Ballot Box


ON THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND SOCIALISM

Posted on 26/01/2019 by S. Duncan

The Balance of forces domestically: contradictions among the people and
intra-elite competition.

“…the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the
possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a
bourgeois proletariat. In the case of a nation which exploits the entire world
this is, of course, justified to some extent.” Engels to Marx in an October 1858
letter, on the English proletariat. (1)


Socialists in the United States have their work cut out for them. Though
conditions for socialist construction materially exist as a highly developed
means of production and a large wage earning class the balance of class forces
is decisively poised against any real or actually existing powers of conscious
proletarian revolution. This is largely due to the colonial, settler and
imperialist history of the country and its status as the world’s chief oppressor
nation and global linchpin of world imperialism since the end of WWII. It is
only natural for a country that has been the center of world imperialism for
almost an entire century for bourgeois polity to be firmly entrenched
domestically. Continue reading →

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments


WHAT IS DOGMATISM AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Posted on 21/03/2018 by Sylvia Smith


INTRODUCTION

There has been a revival of the working class movement across the world. But if
we want to seize this moment, we need to re-embrace scientific analysis. We have
to avoid the errors that led us to the weakened state that we find ourselves in.

The fall of the Soviet Union began a crisis for all socialists, even the
anti-Leninists. Gone was the largest sources of funding for the worker’s and
anti-colonial movements. Gone was the rationale for the existence of left-wing
social democrats. The Social Democrats had served as the final bulwark against
Communism. Gone was an organic workers’ movement for the Trotskyists to latch
onto. The rotting corpses of the trade unions are all they had left. The
Anarchists, who ascended during the anti-globalization movement, devoured
themselves with lifestyle politics. There was no longer a social basis for the
worker-centric politics of classical Anarchism. Class-struggle Anarchism defined
itself through opposition to Revolutionary Marxism. It still does, if the
anti-Bolshevik smear-jobs still put out by AK Press are anything to go by, . The
anarchists were Pharisees denouncing the Priesthood of the communist movement.

The Official Communists were distraught. At least one leader of the CPUSA had a
heart attack after learning about the fall of the USSR. They dedicated their
lives to what they believed was the most advanced mode of life to ever exist.
Allowing for modifications to national particularities. That system had shown
itself to be a rotten sham. They had two choices, either deny their official
Marxism-Leninism or deny reality. Those that chose the former had long
discredited any Marxist alternative through polemic. All they had left was
opposition to the far right without any positive beliefs of their own. Those
that chose the latter retreated into their ideological bunkers. Their views
reinforced by hack historians like Grover Furr.

The Maoists, for their part, kept guerilla struggles alive in many parts of the
world. But outside isolated instances, they lacked connection with the workers
movement. The Maoists instead based their struggle on rural peasants. While
heroic, these struggles too have ended in failure. The Shining Path collapsed.
The Naxalite’s have declined. And the Nepalese Maoists have capitulated to
developmentalist capitalism. Success is establishing a proletarian dictatorship.
Nowhere has the Protracted People’s War thesis demonstrated success outside of
China. And that success was in the context of the second world war with the
support of the Soviet Union.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on What is Dogmatism and Why Does It
Matter?


THE CASE OF COMRADE DALLAS

Posted on 19/03/2018 by Sylvia Smith

By Sylvia Smith

The working class movement is divided into many different trends. Oftentimes
these differences are contradictions that have big implications for how to
organize and must be struggled out. Whether to support a left wing populist
candidate (or even organize against them), how to relate to the trade unions,
and other issues of strategy are questions that in the process of organizing
can’t simply be brushed aside in the name of unprincipled “left unity”.
Conversely, historical interpretation, political jargon, and other features that
define “tendencies” on the Left are unimportant from the perspective of class
struggle. Far too often, the latter are confused with the former. But, none of
these tactical or strategic questions changes the fact of class struggle. Our
goal is the destruction of the wage-system, not a particular strategy being the
true means to do so. Anyone who is committed to the emancipation of humanity
through the victory of the working class over the exploiting class, by
overturning capitalist society, is a genuine revolutionary.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged CLP, communism, communist labor party,
Communists, gun rights, maoism, red guards Austin, RGA, Sectarianism, socialism,
socialist workers party, Stalinism, SWP | 1 Comment


REVIEW: DO RELIGIONS EVOLVE?

Posted on 14/08/2017 by Dara McHugh

David Sloan Wilson describes himself as an atheist, but, he insists, he is a
“nice atheist”. The proviso is made necessary by the often acrimonious nature of
evolution’s forays into religious study. In contrast to writers such as Richard
Dawkins who views religion as ‘a kind of mental illness’, Sloan Wilson thinks
that the spiritual world has much to teach us about our grubby origins.

For most critics of religions, the operative concern is the truth or not of
religious beliefs. For Sloan Wilson, however, that is not the point. The
interesting questions centre on the roles that such belief systems play in human
societies, and how they make human groups behave. In evolutionary terms, “even
massively fictitious beliefs can be adaptive, as long as they motivate behaviors
that are adaptive in the real world” [pp41].
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Posted in Cultural reviews, Culture, History | Tagged evolution, religion |
Comments Off on Review: Do Religions Evolve?


FAKE NEWS: THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MEDIA

Posted on 07/06/2017 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

Post-truth, or post-irony?

“What is truth?” said Pontius Pilate to Jesus. Or at least this is what we are
told he said in the Gospel of John. Can we trust John to have related accurately
the words of Pontius Pilate? Most scholars date the book of John as two
generations after Pilate’s death. And yet, despite the dubious provenance of the
quote, it is a very important question. Indeed it is the central question we
concern ourselves with here.

On November 24, 2016 the Washington Post ran a story entitled: “Russian
propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say”. The
article claimed that Russia had been involved in a concerted effort to sway the
election in favour of Trump through a sophisticated propaganda war. But perhaps
even more significant than the central claim, is that it launched the phrase
“fake news” into the media discourse.
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Posted in Philosophy, Politics | Comments Off on Fake News: The Epistemology of
Media


OFFICIALS AND PROVISIONALS

Posted on 01/04/2017 by James O'Brien

Martin McGuinness, Political Strategy and the Civil Rights Movement

A Provisional Sinn Féin poster featuring Joe McCann and other Official IRA
members (via Irish Political Ephemera)

The death of Martin McGuinness has inevitably prompted reflection on his career,
with the reactions varying according to one’s political ideology. For the
mainstream, McGuinness’s oeuvre is sharply divided into two halves, that of
paramilitary godfather and political statesman, with the dichotomy arising from
their view on the Provisional IRA’s (PIRA) long running campaign.

For Sinn Féin and a wider body of sympathisers, that division is an artificial
construct; the two eras – military leader and peacemaker — are different forms
of the same struggle. The change in strategy by no means entails an admission
that the Provisionals’ military campaign was misconceived, only that it could no
longer sustain progress towards their goal.

Interestingly, much of the online commentary sympathetic to Sinn Féin has
revolved around how the Provisionals’ armed campaign was a fight for civil
rights in Northern Ireland; the military campaign being an inevitable response
to the brutality of British State and the loyalist mobs that the campaign’s
progress elicited.

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INTERVIEW WITH CATHAL GOULDING

Posted on 26/12/2016 by Cathal Goulding

This introduction and interview is from “On Our Knees: Ireland 1972” by Rosita
Sweetman

Introduction

The Irish Republican Army officially came into being when Padraic Pearse read
the Proclamation of Irish Independence from the steps of the General Post Office
in Dublin on Easter morning, 1916. The IRA traces its roots right back through
all the physical force resistance groups that at various times throughout 700
years of British domination of Ireland had risen up to try and get them out. Its
recognised father figure is Theobald Wolfe Tone, of the United Irishmen, and his
grave is the scene of an annual re-affirmation of Republicanism.

The IRA was the army of the people during the War of Independence (1919-1921).
They secured military victory for the Irish people in that they forced the
British to the conference table, but were sold down the Swanee by political
leaders who divided on the Treaty offered by Britain. The compromise reached was
that Republicans would have a 26 Country “Free State” to run as they wished in
theory (in practice of course it was to be run as the British wished as they
still held the purse strings), and the 6 remaining counties were to be jointly
controlled by the Unionists in Stormont, and Westminster. In the absence of the
British enemy the Irish turned on each other and the resulting Civil War saw the
IRA defeated, the Free Staters in control and building bourgeois Ireland under
President Cosgrave. Thousands of IRA men were imprisoned and interned and
Ireland settled down temporarily to trying to become a nation of grocers and big
farmers.
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TRUMP, RUSSIA AND THE CIA

Posted on 10/12/2016 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

In 2012, there was substantial outrage about Russia placing restriction on
foreign financing of NGOs and unions which was spurred by the fact that there
was significant funding by the United States. The Western media were almost
uniformly appalled that such restrictions would be placed. I remember reflecting
at the time on what the media angle might be were the roles reversed. What if
Russia had tried to interfere in US politics by funding opposition forces? I
surmised there would be immediate calls of treason and the response would be at
least as intense as the one for which Russia was being condemned.

Well, it turns out I wasn’t wrong in this prediction. The current scenario
demonstrates the asymmetry nicely. Russia is currently being accused of hacking
the US to subvert the election. This claim is being made by both the power
centre of the Democratic Party and by the CIA and is now being featured as a
media headline in the Washington Post, the Guardian and other major media
outlets.
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WHY IS MY RENT SO HIGH?

Posted on 31/10/2016 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

After a quick perusal of Daft.ie, it’s clear that the rental situation in Dublin
is an absolute catastrophe. Rental prices have gone through the roof. Literally,
garden sheds and one-car garages are now going for 900 Euro per month and more.
Prices are up more than 30% from their lowest point, and they are now higher
than they have ever been, even during the Celtic Tiger. To add insult to injury,
you would be hard pressed to find a place to rent even if you could afford one,
perhaps by packing in like sardines. The recent saville report says that
vacancies are now below 1.5%.

Economists are fond of telling us that it’s all about supply and demand. And of
course they are right, but if one is to believe the story of the invisible hand,
efficient markets and all the rest, increases in price are supposed to create
supply to meet the demand. So why is it that the rental market is so tight, new
housing units are not being built, and we’re not only finding things
unaffordable, but unavailable in the first place?
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REVIEW OF CAPITALISM: COMPETITION, CONFLICT, CRISES BY ANWAR SHAIKH

Posted on 30/10/2016 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

For a long time, neo-classical economics has been the economic orthodoxy.
Neo-classical economics is a patchwork of theories all with a general aim of
demonstrating how production and distribution takes place under mediation of
supply and demand.

The theory came to prominence in the late 1800s, displacing the previous
classical economics, a research programme which was initiated by Adam Smith most
famously in his great work, “The Wealth of Nations”. This programme was
continued by David Ricardo in Principles of Political Economy and Taxation among
other works, and later by none other than Karl Marx in his seminal work Das
Kapital.

Marx made deeply important contributions to classical economic research. In fact
his contributions were so important that they poisoned the well of classical
economic theory completely, leaving no room for more conservative theorists to
wiggle out of the implications which are brought forward in Das Kapital. To put
the central problematic in a nutshell, there was an unresolvable antagonism
between wage labourers and capital over value. Yet despite the importance of his
additions, Marx’s theories are firmly rooted in the tradition of classical
political economy.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Review of Capitalism: Competition,
Conflict, Crises by Anwar Shaikh


ELECTORALISM VS ABSTENTIONISM (OR: WHY YOU SHOULD RUN FOR OFFICE)

Posted on 26/08/2016 by Sylvia Smith

This article is a response to an article posted on The North Star by Sophia
Burns, a comrade and fellow member of the Communist Labor Party titled Don’t Run
for Office. It can be found here: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12742

The tradition of movements commonly grouped under the umbrella “the left” is
diverse. It includes movements rooted in ecology, labor struggles, women’s’
struggles, fights against racism and many other currents. Likewise, the tactics
employed by these groups have varied across time and space.

One of these tactics, standing candidates for government offices is perhaps the
most divisive. In the early years of the socialist movement, the Marxists, and
others, argued decisively in favor of using the popular assemblies conceded by
the ruling coalition of classes to further the cause of the workers’ movement
against the anarchists. The electoral socialists would create the movement known
historically as “social democracy” which is distinct from the modern ideology
using that name. Many communists, including those in the Marxist tradition, have
argued since these days that the failure of social democracy in the early 20th
century to achieve revolution is proof that the tactic of standing candidates
for democratic assemblies in capitalist society is either outdated or was never
correct to begin with.

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You Should Run For Office)


CENTRISM EXTREMISM: HOW HORSESHOE-POLITICS SILENCES BRUTALITY

Posted on 02/07/2016 by yeksmesh

Extremism as a concept is central to current popular political discourse. In its
common definition, however, it is also a highly flawed. Its use shows a bias
towards centrist politics that silences a history of extremism. Centrists are
just as well capable of committing extremist acts upon populations, and
violently exclude them from basic rights. The concept extremist should be
re-purposed to highlight centrist extremism, and expose the fundamental
inclusion-exclusion divide of modern politics.

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Uncategorized | Comments Off on Centrism extremism: how horseshoe-politics
silences brutality


OF TANKIES, TROTS AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

Posted on 12/05/2016 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

The uncomfortable questions of formerly existing something-or-other

Hammer and Sickle, 1976 – Andy Warhol

On the left, there can be no subject more divisive than the question of unity.
There are approximately three times as many opinions on the question as there
are socialists. I probably hold at least four of those opinions myself.

One of the fissures rent by the “unity question” is provided by the debate on
“formerly-existing socialism” – which is in quotes, of course, because somebody
wants to emphasise that they don’t think it was socialism. This major dividing
line has allowed the various Trotskyists to define themselves in relation to
each other, and in relation to their “Stalinist” enemies who are naive enough to
think these states represent something historically positive, but also between
these and the Social Democrats, who think it proves that socialism doesn’t work.
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