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Political Journal of the Socialist Party Issue 11 Winter 2020 €3 / £3 S cialiSt Political Journal of the Socialist Party Issue 11 l Winter 2020 l €3 / £3 alternative trump DefeateD What Next? l Covid crisis exposes a rotten system – 10-point socialist programme l Global uprisings against oppression – socialist feminism now INSIDE l Engels @ 200 – a revolutionary thinker for a world in turmoil S cialiSt Political Journal of the Socialist Party Issue 11 l Winter 2020 alternative iN thiS iSSuE No.11 SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE is the political and theoretical journal of the Socialist Party. FEaturE Editors: Kevin Henry, Eddie Covid Crisis Exposes A Rotten System McCabe, Conor Payne EDITORIAL 2 Design: Eddie McCabe Trump’s Out: Socialist Analysis & Next Steps SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE (USA) 6 SubScribE Now! Get a subscription to Socialist Economic & Social Crisis of American Capitalism Alternative and The Socialist, the BY HARPER CLEVES 10 monthly newspaper of the Roots & Realities of Racism in Irish Society Socialist Party. Text “Subscribe” to 087 2400331 BY MYRIAM POIZAT & MANUS LENIHAN 12 Lessons & Legacy of the Debenhams Struggle coNtact thE BY MICHAEL O’BRIEN 16 SocialiSt party North: 07821058319 John Hume – A Critical Assessment South: 0873141986 BY DANIEL WALDRON 20 [email protected] Global Uprisings Against Oppression BY EMMA QUINN 24 iNtErNatioNal The Socialist Party is the Irish Friedrich Engels @ 200 – A Revolutionary Thinker section of International BY KATIA HANCKE 28 Socialist Alternative (ISA), a socialist organisation linking Engels, Marx & the ‘Irish Question’ together groups in over 30 BY KEVIN HENRY 34 countries. rEviEw internationalocialist.net carries reports of struggles, The Return of Nature by John Bellamy Foster analysis and a programme for REVIEWED BY KEISHIA TAYLOR 36 the fight against capitalism. Les Misérables directed by Ladj Ly REVIEWED BY RÓISE MCCANN 37 Unquiet Graves directed by Sean A. Murray REVIEWED BY SEAN BURNS 38 The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins REVIEWED BY MANUS LENIHAN 39 internationalsocialist .net covid crisis Exposes a rotten System coviD crisis exposes a rotteN system that must be challeNgeD Fifty million people have been infected with yachts, private islands and mansions for safety, or if covid-19 globally, with over one and a needed can quickly access the best of healthcare, are quarter million tragically losing their lives. using their substantial political influence to ensure business interests and profit predominate, even during in ireland, we’ve had 65,000 cases with over this pandemic – illustrating again how backward and 1,900 deaths in the South and 42,000 cases unjust society is. with over 750 deaths in the North. a second This was shown too in the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and wave is now overwhelming health services Green Party government initially rejecting the advice to across Europe. go to Level 5, having recklessly reopened the economy in the summer because short-sighted businesses opposed continuing with the restrictions. They refused to organ - Like climate change, the roots of this pandemic lie in ise the required systems of mass testing and tracing, or the destruction of our planet in the interest of greed- properly equip the health service. Evidently, people's driven production-for-profit, which clearly cannot sus - health and lives cost too much. Little surprise either that tainably coexist with nature. establishment commentators increasingly legitimise The working class, the poor and the oppressed will variations of the callous ‘herd immunity’ strategy. continue to die because of government inaction, or more It is a deception to suggest any contradiction be - accurately, willful criminal neglect. An economic slump tween maintaining the economy and living standards, – triggered by the pandemic, but caused by deeper con - and protecting public health. The wealth and resources tradictions inherent in the capitalist system – will also exist to do both. The real contradiction is between the make poverty, oppression and inequality much worse. policies that businesses dictate and governments im - Working-class and young people are fighting for pose, and the actual needs of the majority of people. their lives. We need to get organised and mobilised This deception will increasingly be pushed to ob - now to break once and for all with this ruinous system scure the reality, and we can’t accept this. The health that is destroying the world. and economic emergencies, and their ramifications, are not being dealt with. North and South the governments people being sacrificed for profit are not looking for actual solutions. Their policy is Despicably, the super-rich have taken advantage of the about convincing people “to live with” (and die with) crisis, with the world's billionaires increasing their Covid-19, because they have no alternative. But this will wealth from $8 trillion to $10 trillion since March. In mean things can, and likely will, get much worse. We Ireland, the richest 300 have increased their fortunes to reject this approach: the virus and the economic crisis €93 billion. These parasites, who can retreat to their can be overcome. 2 l SocialiSt altErNativE l WINTEr 2020 accentuating inequalities at Goodman meat plant in Lurgan and at the sorting of - Already the pandemic has compounded the injustices fice in Derry, did just that and walked out demanding and inequalities of capitalism in society. The risk and proper protection from the virus. In Greece, students infection rate is highest among working-class, migrant occupied over 700 schools to protest against unsafe and Traveller communities, and asylum seekers in Di - conditions. rect Provision are particularly vulnerable. The silence of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Working-class women are disproportionately im - (ICTU) during the crisis has been deafening. Clearly pacted too, with layoffs and cuts to hours and condi - we can't rely on it or wait for it to act. Instead, workers tions in the retail and hospitality sectors, for example. and students should take the initiative in responding to The ‘double shift’ of working and managing family life infections and trying to suppress the virus. If and when has been exacerbated by extra tasks connected with workers take action, or school or college students rebel cleaning, sanitisation and caring for children, and for against a dangerous situation they have been forced elderly and vulnerable family members. There has also into, trade unions and student unions should support been an 18% increase in calls to Gardaí reporting inti - them unconditionally. mate partner violence this year. In reality, if there was a trade union leadership with The continued unnecessary restrictions on abortion, any conviction there would already have been a general and the heinous decision to seal the mother-and-baby strike to insist that the wealth appropriated by corpora - homes records, testify to the sexist and misogynistic at - tions and the super-rich here be re-appropriated and titudes that the Irish state fosters, which are still promi - used by the state to put in place a system of mass and nent in the education, health, welfare and legal immediate testing, and to construct the world-class systems. The North’s One Health Trust has had to close health service we require. its early medical abortion service due to limited re - This is crucial, as lockdowns alone – without mass sources. The explosive combination of exploitation and testing and tracing, and all necessary anti-virus infra - oppression means working-class women will be at the structure – will not stop the infections or the needless forefront of the fightback we need. The inspiring strug - deaths. Such a general strike doesn't have to be called gle of Debenham's workers, and the mass movement from above, it can be built from below on the issues of in Poland now against a new attack on abortion rights, combating the virus and economic crisis. What is clear demonstrate this. is that we need a movement of workers, women and young people, organised from below, if a decent feature Governments incapable of responding for people and the planet is to be secured. All the effects of Covid-19, including the inevitable in - equality in access to a vaccine when one is developed, capitalist ideology is destroying lives will cause much more turmoil and further death – big A staggering 320,000 workers are now jobless in the pharmaceutical companies are already salivating at the South and 67,000 in the North, where it is forecast that conservative estimates of a $10 billion annual market 100,000 will be claiming unemployment by the end of for the vaccine, and market logic dictates that the the year. Hardship, stress and anxiety are set to worsen. wealthy will jump to the front of the queue. Twice in just over a decade capitalism in Ireland and in - The powers-that-be are responsible for squandering ternationally has thrown the world into a deep eco - the progress that was made during the first wave nomic mess. (which was achieved in the main by the discipline that The needless anarchy of the capitalist market system ordinary people displayed in those months) exacerbat - is exposed. The skills of unemployed construction ing the extent and the impact of the resurgence of in - workers could be married with some of the billionaires’ fections and deaths that led to the second lockdown. wealth, which should be seized, and turned into hun - But how many more waves, infections and deaths will dreds of thousands of new homes and essential physi - there be? The economic tsunami that will break again cal and social infrastructure. This is beyond what the and again over people's lives in the next years will market system is capable of, however. knock society back decades. Instead of taking and using the wealth to deal with It’s clear that if permanent chaos is to be averted we the multiple crises we face, the government is opting need revolution.
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