New Year Greetings from the Workers Party of Ireland to International Communist and Workers’ Parties

Dear Comrades, The Workers Party of Ireland sends comradely greetings and best wishes for 2019 to communist and workers’ parties throughout the world. Capitalism continues to condemn millions to poverty, unemployment, homelessness, inequality, oppression, exploitation, hunger and disease. Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, with its specific features, including the concentration of production into monopolies and inter-imperialist rivalries in fierce competition with each other for resources, markets and trade routes, threatens the peace and security of the peoples of the world and leads to intervention and war. The working class has the ability to change this. Class remains the motive force for social change. Class struggle is the means through which the working class advances from a class “in itself” to a class “for itself,” as a necessary precondition for its own emancipation. The conditions for class struggle are ripe. The case for socialism remains timely and relevant. This year many important events will be remembered. The October Revolution brought about a social system which abolished private ownership of the means of production and affirmed social ownership as the basis for creating the conditions for a new way of life. In the aftermath of the October Revolution, on 21 March 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. On 7 April, 1919 the Bavarian Soviet Republic was declared. In September 1919 the Communist Party of America convened in Chicago. In Ireland the “Democratic Programme” approved by the First Dáil Éireann (lower house of the Irish parliament) on 21 January 1919 was a progressive recognition of the rights of labour although much of the explicitly socialist content in the earlier draft was removed. In April 1919 workers organised a General Strike in Limerick, Ireland, in which workers delegated by the strike committee were in control of the city, a development which was described as the “Limerick Soviet”. The Communist International was formed in Moscow in March 1919, on Lenin’s suggestion, at the First Congress of Communist Parties and provided the framework for the co-operation of militant workers organisations across the world which continued and developed the internationalist traditions created by the first generation of proletarian internationalists, Marx and Engels. We also celebrate the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban revolution in January 1959. The Workers Party of Ireland extends its best wishes and solidarity to our comrades in the international Communist and Workers’ Parties, in the spirit of socialist internationalism, towards success in our common struggle for peace, workers' rights, social progress and the building of a society of emancipated labour, the construction of socialism and communism.

G Grainger International Secretary Central Executive Committee Workers Party of Ireland January 2019