Communist Party of Ireland Páirtí Cumannach na hÉireann Partisan Patriotic Internationalist Number 192 February 2021 Socialist Voice €1.5www.commmunistparty.ie Number 193 March 2021 €1.50

Page 2 Unity H Page 4 Consumerism H Page 6 Health, work and neoliberalism H Page 8 EU militarisation Page 10 Marx, Gamestop, capitalism H H Page 12 Irish agricuture Page 14 In defence of China Page 18 Imperialism Page 20 Wages robbery H H Page 22 Rosa Luxemburg Page 24 International Working Women’s Day Long live International SV Working Women’s Day Socialist Voice 43 East Essex Street Page 24 Dublin D02 XH96 (01) 6708707

ISSN 0791-5217 j/7G@7I1\URQPPX/ Zpzs CLASS POLITICS Workers of the world, unite!

JIMMY DORAN then claiming that the public sector is the centre of the dispute threatening inefficient, costs too much, and provides workers with pay cuts. US DRIVERS in London went on a poor service. The workers’ union, Unite, has strike last month against pay cuts Ironically, they handed over the accused RATP of using the pandemic as Bthat a number of “private bus running of large sections of London a “convenient smokescreen” with which operators” tried to impose. However, all Transport to the French state-owned to attempt to implement pay policies is not as it seems. public transport company Régie that could result in some of their drivers The British government has privatised Autonome des Transports Parisiens losing up to £2,500 a year. much of the public transport system as (RATP), which is owned entirely by the Covid-19 is not the only they push ahead with their neoliberal French government. It operates three bus smokescreen that RATP is using, as pay agenda. They followed the usual companies on the London bus network: cuts on the workers on London buses method: slashing funds for public London United, London Sovereign, and will be indirectly subsidising public transport, running down the service, Quality Line. These companies were at transport in France. RATP would not A bitter legacy can only produce bitter fruit Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland 28 February 2021 HE SCENES In Dublin city centre Yes, people are frustrated by “austerity,” low wages, precarious yesterday [Saturday 27 February] quarantines and restrictions. But the work, overcrowding, growing waiting- Tshould come as no surprise to answer does not lie in the politics of lists for public housing, extortionate anyone. The reactions to the violence reaction, or with those who peddle rents, and the two-tier health system— of the state were as could be hate and division, nor with the one the crumbling public health expected, as were the weasel words of demigods of the right who are system, the other the bright, shiny one condemnation by establishment exploiting those genuine fears and with no queues, the private one. politicians. frustrations. Working people have listened to the Working people are frustrated with We need to respect each other and endless droning of the television and their everyday lived experience, their to protect each other from this radio pundits promising bread shattered and unfulfilled dreams. The pandemic, not because the tomorrow while our lives are filled with covid pandemic has only brought that establishment tells us but because we broken promises by the establishment frustration out into the open, with the need to do it in our own interests. political parties and the failed pain and anger that lie beneath. We have suffered decades of institutions that control our lives. They

2 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘If an injury to one is truly an injury to all, workers must unite in solidarity with these overexploited workers, be they meat-packers or Deliveroo drivers’ attempt to slash bus workers’ pay in but it has most certainly exposed them. narrative about illegal immigrants France; the French bus workers wouldn’t Poverty wages are endemic in our abusing work permits, etc. stand for it. This must not be ignored. economy. In February the taoiseach, The media remain silent when Working-class solidarity and trade unions Mícheál Martin, faced an angry Dáil workers fight back against government are the unrustable weapons of our class. when it was revealed that two thousand austerity, be it yellow vests in France, And borders must not be used as low-paid workers had travelled from farmers in India, or students in Greece. smokescreens for exploitation. Brazil to work in meat factories in the Of course there’s wall-to-wall coverage On the left we have many great previous weeks. His reply was that these of demonstrations in Hong Kong when slogans, but words are meaningless low-paid workers were essential to the the enemies of Western capital are in unless we put them into action. Workers economy! the crosshairs. of the world are under attack through This is Ireland in 2021. The head of We’ve seen the crass nature of the globalisation. Globalisation by capital is the government admits that the capitalist system throughout the health relentless in cutting pay and working economy depends on low-paid workers, pandemic. Britain abandoned its citizens conditions around the world. Workers while in order to protect the meat to the virus, resulting in one of the must also act globally in the interest of barons’ profits the state allowed public highest death rates from covid in the our class. health to be put at extreme risk by world, with more than 120,000 dead Workers of the world must unite to allowing thousands to travel from areas already. The people who died were defeat the attacks on our class. If bus in the world with some of the worst considered dispensable, as many were workers in London are under attack by mutations of the coronavirus and the old and considered a burden on the RATP, workers in Paris should come out highest rates of infection. state. Those young enough to work in solidarity, and in every other town, If an injury to one is truly an injury to would be replaced easily with the reserve district or country where RATP uses flags all, workers must unite in solidarity with army of labour. Britain moved quickly in of convenience for exploiting workers, or these overexploited workers, be they introducing vaccines, but this was not they will be the next for cuts. meat-packers or Deliveroo drivers. Of out of concern for the citizens: it was in Workers in the “gig economy” in course the state has made it illegal to order to reopen the economy as quickly France, the Netherlands, Belgium, have solidarity action to demand as possible. Ireland chose the EU Spain and Britain have had victories sickness pay and better conditions for directive to stick to using only EU- recently in their working conditions and these workers. The 1990 Industrial manufactured vaccines, in the interests employment status in national courts. Relations Act has made class solidarity of Big Pharma. Deliveroo workers in Ireland have had illegal. If we are to win this class war, a number of strikes recently. These Transnational corporations have used workers must organise at home and workers have made some progress, multiple locations for years to stop mass internationally and fight back against the but they are still among the lowest- action, confining disputes to localised capitalist class. It is essential for workers paid and most precarious workers in resistance, which is easily controlled with in Ireland to fight to get all anti-union existence. Gig economy workers need similar anti-worker legislation around the legislation abolished, north and south, to join up the dots and link up with world. The mainstream media, owned and to build class solidarity. their fellow exploited workers around and controlled by big business, attack We have nothing to lose but our the globe. Globalisation can work two striking workers locally as being greedy chains, and a world to gain. H ways; as it stands it is only working for and not caring about customers, and capital. emphasise the negative effect on the LEFT KOLKATA: A million Indian communists Covid did not cause poverty wages, economy of their actions, creating a and their allies assemble in solidarity with the farmers hear the same establishment voices exploitation, a system geared to grind Your anger is just, but your target and slick PR spin that tomorrow will be out ever-increasing profits and grind should be the system, not people with better, that the interests of working down those who make those profits: a different skin colour, or who come people will soon be dealt with but that workers. from some other country. there are “other priorities” at the The answer lies in radical economic We wear our masks to protect each moment. But they know this tomorrow and political change, with investment other. We trust vaccinations because never comes—just the same old same in public housing, public health, public we know that they have saved tens of old. schools. Investment in real jobs with millions of lives and eliminated Yesterday’s events are the result of decent pay and working conditions, dreadful diseases all over the globe. that bitter legacy, which can only constitutionally guaranteed, is the Yes, we should be wary of produce bitter fruit. priority of society and a people’s corporate-controlled science and The solution to the many problems government. medicine, but not science and facing working people lies in their own Working people should not be led medicine per se. hands. It is the economic and political down a barren cul-de-sac by false Tomorrow will not change unless we system that imposes itself upon us that promises from cynical right-wing make it happen together, a radical, is at the core of all our problems, from forces, who are offering nothing beyond fundamental change. The Communist Derry to Kerry: the system of capitalism this tired, corrupt and unreformable Party of Ireland is fighting for such a and imperialist domination and system. change. H

Socialist Voice March 2021 3 CAPITALISM

self-interest, have turned a blind eye. In my opinion, one cannot claim to be progressive, communist or concerned about climate change if First World consumerism is not on the agenda. I don’t think it’s necessary to go through the figures: people are well aware that most of what we consume here is produced in Asia: clothes and footwear in China, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar; furniture in China, Vietnam, Malaysia— and China for everything else, from hi-tech to cars and trucks. We have millions of exploited Consumer spending humans producing an endless stream of goods for our pleasure, while corporations accumulate profits in driving us to the amounts that are unfathomable even to us. The raw materials used to produce brink of extinction these goods are extracted from countries and continents without any of DAMIEN MCKENNA we could not afford if they were the benefits going to the people doing manufactured at home. Most First World the extraction. In fact most of them work ONSUMERISM AND the military- products are not manufactured here but in intolerable conditions. The raw industrial complex go hand in are made in Third World countries by materials, after being expropriated, are Chand in generating massive profits low-wage children, women and men, shipped to the areas of most exploited for global corporations. often from raw materials stolen or labour for manufacture and shipped The military-industrial complex is the expropriated under duress from weaker again (and container ships, oil tankers, guarantor of cheap raw materials and countries. large warships and cruise ships are cheap labour so that we in the First Most people, to some degree, have probably the most polluting machines on World can gorge on a never-ending been aware of this for some time but, earth) to the United States, Canada, supply of consumer goods at prices that either because of lack of alternatives or Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.

JIMMY CORCORAN survey on attitudes towards Travellers The last found that 79 per cent of respondents N MARCH 2017 the Government “would be reluctant to buy a house next recognised Irish Travellers as an ethnic door to a Traveller.”⁴ In the presidential acceptable Iminority. This was the culmination of a election in 2018 Peter Casey, who made long campaign by Traveller activists, and anti-Traveller comments, came second, while it was a vast improvement on the with 23 per cent of the vote. Anti- form of attitude behind the Report of the Traveller discrimination has rightly been Commission on Itinerancy (1963),¹ called “the last acceptable form of racism which saw them as “deviant, destitute racism.”⁵ drop-outs from Irish society,”² it did not Travellers have existed as a separate, lead to the enactment of any positive nomadic group for centuries in Ireland, Part 1 rights. where they played a distinct if marginal Travellers remain one of the most role in the rural economy. In an era discriminated-against groups in Irish before supermarkets they peddled goods society, with lower life expectancy, lower to isolated homes, were horse traders, educational attainment and higher helped with the harvest, and repaired unemployment than society in general.³ farm and domestic utensils. From the Fewer than 31,000 people identified late 1950s, as the economy as Travellers in the census, though it is “modernised”—i.e. opened up to believed that the actual number is higher American and European imperialism— and that many choose to conceal their agriculture became increasingly heritage because of discrimination. A mechanised, plastic replaced metal

4 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘We have millions of exploited humans producing an endless stream of goods for our pleasure, while corporations accumulate profits in amounts that are unfathomable even to us’

The rainforests are being decimated, imprisoned and tortured when they show profit-making elite by extracting and and not for the peoples of Brazil or resistance to such exploitation. If the producing for us, the planned Indonesia: they are being decimated for local elite are incapable of controlling consumers of the First World. us, for the hardwoods, the the resistance, or governments come to If this isn’t enough to motivate us to pharmaceuticals, metals, rare-earth power to defend the interests of their look for a non-profit alternative to the materials, and cash crops such as palm people, the United States will come to butchery of the current system, then oil. The world’s major agricultural the rescue, using one or more of its 800 maybe the looming climate catastrophe chemical companies, having destroyed military bases, often with the help of will. biodiversity on the land, in rivers and in Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Let’s be clear: there is no technical seas are now in full battle mode to Australia, or New Zealand, to enforce solution to the present crisis. The earth attack sustainable farming methods in the wishes of their corporate masters. has, and always will have, finite Africa, India, and anywhere they haven’t The division of humans into five main resources. Nothing, and I mean nothing, yet got a foothold. categories has never been more stark: can justify the consumption differentials It’s the same with spices, herbs, (1) the elite—the 64 or so people between the highest and lowest users. vitamins, and cosmetics: we can’t get who combined have as much wealth Nothing can justify Elon Musk’s $185 enough of them, with the consequence as 3½ billion people; billion while 9 million people die of of reducing food production for the (2) the major shareholders and senior hunger every year and total military people in the producing areas and executives and managers of the large spending for 2019 was $1.92 trillion. pushing prices beyond the reach of corporations; This is the question: are we willing to millions. (3) the enforcers: national take the chance that there is a technical Massive trawlers scour the oceans governments, the media, journalists, solution and allow the present system to with the latest electronic equipment to advertising and marketing gurus continue, with all the war, misery and bring cheap fish back for our (whose job is to persuade us to starvation that it entails, or are we going consumption while plundering the stocks “spend, spend, spend”), and high- to organise and co-operate to change to for millions of coastal peoples who have level civil servants and academics; a non-profit world? fished sustainably for millennia. Massive (4) the consumers—moulded by the If we don’t, history will not remember seafood farms in Thailand and corporations, through advertising, to us kindly, and people will look back and elsewhere in Asia and South America believe that enough is never enough; think of this era in the same way that we produce millions of tons of seafood for and look back at slavery, child labour (in our consumption. The needs of the local (5) the producers—the most nineteenth and early twentieth-century people are forgotten, but they have to unfortunate victims of this vicious Europe), and racism. live with the consequences in the capitalist system of expropriation. Hopefully, we will learn to co- pollution and soil erosion. Billions of people, whole countries operate, and our children, or our All the while the workers and victims and continents are subjected to the children’s children, will get the chance of our consumption are murdered, tyranny of meeting the needs of the to thank us for it. H utensils, and supermarkets captured the Travellers have their own culture, in 1 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy market for the goods the Travellers which their nomadic way of life was (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1963). 2 Anne Boyle, Marie Flynn, and Joan peddled. Their skills and trades had central. Even though most Travellers Hanafin, “From absorption to inclusion: become obsolete. are now sedentary, the desire to travel The evolution of Irish state policy on By the 1960s, Travellers had become at will “remains the singular core pillar Travellers,” in Éidín Ní Shé, Lorelle economically and socially displaced from in terms of Traveller identity.”⁶ They Burton, and Patrick Danaher (eds.), rural society. Legislation prohibiting the have their own language, called Cant, Social Capital and Enterprise in the Modern State (Basingstoke: Palgrave erection of temporary dwellings has all Gammon, or Shelta. While it is no Macmillan, 2018). but outlawed nomadism. longer widely spoken, most Travellers 3 Census of Population, 2016, Profile 8: Unable to survive in rural Ireland, feel it is an important aspect of their Irish Travellers. Travellers moved to the outskirts of identity.⁷ 4 ibid. towns and cities. Once this happened They had a family-based economy, 5 The Last Acceptable Form of Racism? ⁶ (London: Traveller Movement, 2017). “they became a political problem.” The with their own flexible work patterns. 6 Ronnie Moore, “‘Last among equals’: Commission on Itinerancy But under pressure from capitalism, Irish Travellers and change in the 21st recommended that Travellers be Travellers were forced to abandon century,” Europäisches Journal für assimilated. A number of groups wrote their way of life for the “dubious Minderheitenfragen, vol. 5 (2012). to the commission suggesting that pleasures of public housing, full time 7 Maria Reider, “Irish Travellers’ views on Cant: What folk criteria of languageness Traveller children be taken from their school attendance, [and] subsistence tell us about the community,” Language parents and raised as settled children, on welfare benefits.”⁸ They have found Awareness, vol. 27 (2018). thus “solving the problem in a it very difficult to obtain employment 8 Aoife Bhreatnach, Becoming generation.” The report identified the or public housing, and successful Conspicuous: Irish Travellers, Society and education process as offering the best school outcomes have remained the State, 1922–70 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2006). road to assimilation. elusive. H

Socialist Voice March 2021 5 HEALTH

irresponsible. Never mind that you don’t Work, mental health, get time or money for cooking proper meals: if your children get fat it’s your poor parenting that’s at fault. and the disease of In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined, and self-defined, as “losers.” neoliberalism Part 2 “A degree of distrust and paranoia pervades relationships as we silently compare our social status with those around us, wondering where we stand and how others perceive us” (from Sami Timimi’s Insane Medicine). The people who are not at the top or close to the top of the economic ladder feel they need to work or compete harder. To them, failure equals being a loser. This creates stress in people and families. It changes the way people think about themselves and others around them. And it certainly affects the mental health of any nation or people. Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, in their renowned book The Spirit Level (2009), state that it is not just poverty per se but the level of inequality in any society that has the biggest effect on all sorts of health and wellbeing, including the prevalence of mental disorders, stress, and unhappiness. And they point out that inequality— the gap between rich and poor—has profound effects on people. After a decade of austerity, most families were further affected by stagnant wages, increased job insecurity, swingeing cuts, and changes to the benefits system and public services, nationally and locally, while the inequality gap grew. A belief in meritocracy means that BARRY MURRAY This ideology also assumes that any failure is considered a personal those at the bottom of the social status failure. According to Wilkinson and ■ Part 1 of this article was published are the most stupid or lazy. Pickett, greater inequality heightens in the February issue. Not surprisingly, we then internalise social threat and status anxiety, evoking and reproduce this logic. The poorer feelings of shame, which feed into our What model of human does classes blame themselves for their instincts for withdrawal, submission, and neoliberalism encourage? “failures,” even when they can do little subordination. When the social pyramid Neoliberalism sees Darwinian to change their circumstances. Their becomes higher and steeper, status competition as the defining disadvantage is the natural order of insecurity increases, leading to characteristic of human relations. It things, and they can be grateful for what widespread psychological costs. redefines citizens as consumers, they manage to get in zero-hour It is clear, therefore, that because of whose democratic choices are best contracts and the kindness of those who the inequalities in society, caused by the exercised by buying and selling. It give to food banks. neoliberal structure of employment and maintains that the market provides Never mind the insecure employment services, there is a clear knock-on effect benefits that could never be achieved tenures: if you can’t keep a job it’s on physical and mental health, by planning. It runs on the illusion because you’re not applying yourself. especially of those at the lower end of that we have created a meritocratic Never mind the impossible costs of the economic scale. Statistics from all society, where the most intelligent housing: if your credit card has reached over the world clearly demonstrate this. and hardest-working rise to the top. its limit you’re uncontrolled and Wilkinson and Pickett report:

6 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘The one thing that the tragedy of the covid-19 pandemic has certainly achieved is the exposure and total failure of the neoliberal capitalist system of government around the world’

Scandinavian countries, although doubt that many in the mental health consideration of the dehumanising of partly swept up in the neoliberal services know only too well that their the people already on the bread line, globalisation trend, have largely approach is not based on the main or of the mental trauma that results. maintained their roots in strong reason for the mental health crisis; but There is no column in any welfarism and provide a viable they too are trapped by the “hand that accountant’s books or spreadsheets to democratic alternative to rampant feeds and controls them,” namely record the cost, or cause, of mental or neoliberalism. Levels of inequality are neoliberal capitalism. physical illnesses. There is no much lower in Scandinavian nations and Will any psychiatrist, doctor or humanity where greed and profit are they regularly top international surveys of consultant ever stand up and shout out concerned. happiness and wellness. for all to hear: “It’s your neoliberal greed, A new, post-covid pandemic awaits We are well aware of the growing competition, deluding people into us, and it’s the mental health of the epidemic of mental health issues in thinking that they can achieve anything, people who are always at the bottom: Ireland and in many other so-called no matter how extravagant. It’s your people with, potentially, no job, even “developed” countries. Speculation on profiteering, privatising, exploitation and, poorer working terms and conditions, the reasons for this have studiously above all, the rampant inequality—the cuts in wages, zero-hour contracts, avoided implicating the neoliberal nature widening gap between rich and poor— precarious employment—and still have of our society, inequality, and the that is the principal cause of mental the bills to pay. resultant stress that all of this creates. illness.” To begin to change how we live, how Instead, mainstream mental health How long would it be until they had we work, how we are to have true practitioners take the view that there is no job and were pushed out of the elite happiness—how our society is run—we an inherent weakness in the person circle of that professional class? have to understand the damage that suffering mental distress. The treatment the present system of neoliberal resorts to medical intervention: pills and In summary capitalism has done to the people most a wide range of other therapies. The The one thing that the tragedy of the at risk from its ravages. We have to treatment therefore is “person-focused,” covid-19 pandemic has certainly refuse to accept that no change is which reinforces the person’s feelings of achieved is the exposure and total possible. We appreciate, above all, as failure. They believe they have failed to failure of the neoliberal capitalist happened during the covid pandemic, “compete” properly in the rat race as system of government around the that community together, community they struggle to survive. world. As far as work and the looking out for each other, is an Worse still, the treatment of mental availability of money are concerned, unstoppable force for real and illnesses has not escaped the a major change was exposed. People progressive change. commodification of people who are ill. It were “furloughed”—paid for not If we want to solve the tsunami of too is deemed a profit-making area by working; though even these health issues and inequality we need neoliberal thinking. It is professionalised, payments are being cut and time- to understand that the only treatment and shrouded in mystery—and fear. limited. They can’t help themselves. for the health of any nation is when There’s a “we know what’s best for you” Businesses too received all sorts of the people of that nation own and attitude towards the patient or client. grants and payments. Demands for control the means of production and As long as this deliberately naïve all this money to be repaid will add the distribution of that nation’s wealth. approach to mental health in particular even more stress in society. Our ancestors lived it, and in today’s prevails there will be no progress in But that’s all right: sure a food modern world we can ensure that we solving this health crisis. There is no bank or a charity will sort it all out. No live it too. H CONNOLLY BOOKS Connolly Books is named after James Connolly, Ireland’s socialist pioneer and martyr

H Irish history H politics H Marxist classicsH feminism H environment H progressive literature H trade unions H philosophy H radical periodicals 43 East Essex Street, Dublin between Temple Bar and Parliament Street. Tuesday to Saturday 10.00 to 17.30 www.connollybooks.org

Socialist Voice March 2021 7 IMPERIALISM

Part 1 The militarisation of the European Union grows apace

DORIAN Ó SEANÁIN become of them in the intervening procurement and conducting research thirteen years. on the resources needed for military HE LISBON TREATY is working The treaty centralised the institutions operations.³ Both these agencies report perfectly. Just as opponents of the that implement the EU’s “common directly to the “high representative.” TEU in Ireland warned after the bloc’s security and defence policy,” and Since the adoption of the Lisbon leaders signed the treaty in December reduced scrutiny over them, in the Treaty, the militarisation of the EU has 2007, the last vestiges of the Irish interests of “efficiency,” bringing “co- hastened as its partnership with the state’s neutrality have disappeared over operation on defence among the United States has come under enormous the last decade. participating EU Member States to a strain. The ruling classes of the EU’s The importance of the Lisbon Treaty new level.”¹ One single member of the member-states can no longer depend on to the incontrovertible aims of the unelected European Commission, the the United States. The mistrust worsened member-states’ ruling classes, especially newly created “high representative for considerably during the period of the the core imperialist states, was made foreign affairs and security policy,” would Trump government; but a change of clear after a plucky Irish electorate oversee all the EU’s activities in the area occupant in the White House will not shocked its political leaders in 2008 by of foreign policy. reverse the goal of “strategic autonomy” defeating it in a referendum, in the only Readers of Socialist Voice will be envisaged by the EU.⁴ member-state where the treaty was put familiar with the “permanent structured The core EU states are no longer before the people. The government of cooperation” (PESCO) initiative. Its content to be at the mercy of US whims the time was simply told to have a rerun secretariat comprises two agencies: the in NATO. In its annual report for 2019, of the referendum and obtain the European External Action Service and the EEAS bemoaned US sanctions “correct” result. Deeply cynical lies were the European Defence Agency.² The against Russia and Iran, claiming that repeated endlessly during the second EEAS is the EU’s diplomatic corps. It they interfered with the “legitimate referendum campaign, claiming that the sends delegations to international business” of European companies. Irish state’s military neutrality would not organisations, and its divisions monitor Consequently, the EU is seeking to be jeopardised by its ratification. each region of the globe. The EDA is protect its “economic sovereignty” by It is worth reviewing exactly what specifically tasked with developing the creating “independent economic institutions were set up under the Lisbon EU’s military-industrial complex, by channels” to circumvent American- Treaty before considering what has creating an internal market for arms imposed sanctions.⁵

8 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘The centralisation of the members-states’ military capabilities is overseen by the EU’s permanent military apparatus. At its head is the EU Military Committee, consisting of the chiefs of staff of the member-states’

Furthermore, the split down the Africa, given its colonial past, is enlisting ■ Part 2 of this article, in next month’s Atlantic between these ruling classes troops from other EU member-states to issue, will delve more deeply into the has resulted in the creation of the advance the interests of French capital EU’s operations outside its borders in European Defence Fund. Set up in June in the region. pursuit of its goal of “strategic 2017, it finances the research and Large-scale operations are being autonomy,” analyse the military- development of military equipment and planned by the EU for the years ahead. industrial complex the EU is creating, technology. The multi-annual financial In November 2018 the EU Council and determine the Irish state’s role in framework for 2014–2020 allocated decided that the Military Planning and the development of the EU’s military €590 million to military co-operation.⁶ Conduct Capability unit should be strategy. After a proposal from the Commission to “ready to plan and conduct one pledge €13 billion to the EDF, it was executive military operation of the size References finally allocated €8 billion under the of an EU Battlegroup [2,500].”¹² 1 European Union, “About PESCO” MFF for 2021–27, its budget being Warnings of a future EU army from the (https://pesco.europa.eu/). ⁷ 2 European Union, “PESCO Secretariat” reduced in the light of the pandemic. No side during the Lisbon Treaty (https://pesco.europa.eu/pesco- In 2019, proponents of the EDF campaigns were not exaggerations in secretariat/). argued that the lack of co-operation the slightest. When it comes to warfare 3 European Union External Action between EU member-states in matters at sea, the present high representative, Service, “Common Security and of “defence” was costing between €25 Josep Borrell of Spain, has stated that a Defence Policy (CSDP) Structure, € ⁸ Instruments, Agencies” (2016). billion and 100 billion every year. The central goal of the EU is to be “a global 4 European Defence Fund: Factsheet objective of allowing European military maritime security provider.”¹³ (https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/docum contractors to submit a tender to any The vital sea routes along the African ents/34509), p. 1. member-state government means that coast are at the core of this ambition. At 5 European Union External Action the largest corporations can establish a present two naval operations are being Service, “EEAS Annual Activity Report, 2019” (https://tinyurl.com/u94yez27). monopoly over this lucrative market, with co-ordinated under the EU flag in the 6 European Defence Agency, “European the core member-states pushing for their region. One is enforcing the UN arms Defence Fund: Factsheet,” p. 3 national champions to become EU- embargo on Libya, the other combating (https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/docum backed industrial behemoths. piracy off the Somali coast. The most ents/34509). Not surprisingly, the US armed forces far-ranging project for EU fleets, 7 European Defence Agency, “European Defence Fund (EDF)” are the standard by which the EU judges however, is the “coordinated maritime (https://eda.europa.eu/what-we-do/EU- its operations and military capacity, presence” concept, which was launched defence-initiatives/european-defence-f implying that the bloc has plenty of in the Gulf of Guinea in January 2021.¹⁴ und-(edf)). catching up to do.⁹ This will add to the military assets of 8 European Defence Fund: Factsheet The centralisation of the member- France, Italy, and Spain, which already (https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/docum ents/34509), p. 2 . states’ military capabilities is overseen have a large footprint in the Gulf. 9 European Defence Fund: Factsheet by the EU’s permanent military The explicit aim of this concept is to (https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/docum apparatus. At its head is the EU Military ensure “a permanent maritime ents/34509), p. 2 . Committee, consisting of the chiefs of presence and outreach in Maritime 10 “The Military Planning and Conduct staff of the member-states. The crucial Areas of Interest.”¹⁵ EU imperialism is Capability—MPCC” (https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files unit that plans operations, assesses not hiding its intentions: it wants to /mpcc_factsheet.pdf), p. 2. external threats and analyses secure supply lines of commodities and 11 “Vice-Admiral Hervé Bléjean” intelligence is the EU Military Staff. Both energy resources for European big (https://tinyurl.com/syjknt4b). the EUMC and the EUMS report directly business and to promote “investor 12 European Union External Action to the high representative and the bloc’s confidence.”¹⁶ Service, “Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) structure, foreign ministers. A tenth of EU member-states’ oil instruments, agencies” (2016). Although the EUMS was formed in consumption is obtained from the Gulf 13 European Union External Action 2004, its role has expanded of Guinea, and there are an average of Service, “Why the EU needs to be a significantly since 2017 with the thirty EU-flagged or EU-owned vessels in global maritime security provider” establishment of the Military Planning the Gulf at any one time.¹⁷ (2021) (https://tinyurl.com/3bb26pff). 14 European Union External Action and Conduct Capability unit. This now Africa has a “comparative Service, “The EU launches its directs EU missions in Mali, Somalia, advantage” over the Middle East in its Coordinated Maritime Presences and the Central African Republic.¹⁰ In proximity to Europe, the latter being concept in the Gulf of Guinea” (2021) the Sahel region of Africa in particular Africa’s primary export market for such (https://tinyurl.com/k4hscmyf). these missions complement those of valuable minerals as iron ore, 15 European Union, “Coordinated Maritime Presences” (2021) the French army, the largest military diamonds, manganese, cobalt, and º(https://tinyurl.com/tdc6wsr5). force within the EU. Hervé Bléjean, a bauxite. It is the classic strategy of 16 Council of the European Union, “EU vice-admiral of the French navy, is ensuring that resources can be Strategy on the Gulf of Guinea” (2014) director-general of the EU military extracted cheaply from the global south (https://tinyurl.com/wmrecr6k), p. 12. staff.¹¹ France, with its deep only to be shipped to the industrial 17 Council of the European Union, “EU Strategy on the Gulf of Guinea” (2014) commercial and diplomatic links to centres of the imperialist core. H (https://tinyurl.com/wmrecr6k), p. 2.

Socialist Voice March 2021 9 THEORY

The lender of money does not expend Marx, it in purchasing commodities, or, if this sum of values is in commodity-form, does not sell it for money. He advances it Gamestop as capital, as M–M , as a value, which returns to its point of departure after a and finance certain term. He lends instead of buying or selling. This lending, therefore, is the appropriate form of alienating value as capitalism capital, instead of alienating it as money or commodities. It does not follow, however, that lending cannot also take the form of transactions which have DAVID HARTERY again in the separation of the money nothing to do with the capitalist process business from commerce proper.) of reproduction. S RETAIL Investors launched a short It is this separation of “money We can see here that Marx foresees squeeze on large hedge funds, business” from commerce proper that is the emergence of an entirely parasitic Aforcing large stock-market the instructive part here. We can view the rentier class, creating a system of movements and frenzied recapitalisation, current economic situation on a transaction with little to no relation to many commentators heralded it as a continuum from the last major economic production. victory for “the little guy” against Wall crisis in 2008. The current situation is And this is a large component of the Street. However, the truth is far from that directly influenced by the current situation of rampant speculative simple. accommodations that capitalism was bubbles. Marx quite correctly showed “The biggest owners of Gamestop: forced to make following the credit that interest rates are defined by the total Fidelity (14%), Cohen’s RC Ventures crunch that precipitated the crisis. With rate of profit. And with rates of profit now (13%), and BlackRock (11%), and then a austerity enforced to rein in public at a historic low point, we see historically bunch of other mutual and hedge funds, spending, aiming to reduce states’ public low interest rates. It is the aim of asset and also a guy named Donald Foss who debt liabilities, gut public services, and inflation, by means of QE, to attempt to became a billionaire from a subprime thereby (the hope was) invigorate private offset this historically low rate of profit— auto loan company.”* These giant enterprise, fiscal remedies were out of the compromise reached after 2008. financial outfits are the real winners, as the question. It was the turn of Since interest is merely a part of profit always. quantitative easing, and monetary policy, paid, according to our earlier Also incorrect is the idea that this is to attempt to get capitalism out of crisis. assumption, by the industrial capitalist to some new departure, a uniquely modern Quantitative easing (QE) is the the money-capitalist, the maximum limit phenomenon. As Marxists we should widespread purchasing, by central banks, of interest is the profit itself, in which situate our analysis in history, and of government bonds and other financial case the portion pocketed by the understand that this is just the latest instruments. It has resulted in a huge productive capitalist would = 0. Aside manifestation of the transition of money inflation in asset prices since it was from exceptional cases, in which interest from mere unit of exchange to “social introduced, and has led to the largest might actually be larger than profit, but symbol,” as described by Marx in the stock-market rally in human history. It then could not be paid out of the profit, Grundrisse (chapter 3): has also completed the transition of one might consider as the maximum limit [Money] serves [the money holder] power from industrial capitalists to of interest the total profit minus the . . . only because of its social “money capitalists.” portion (to be subsequently analysed) (symbolic) property; and it can have a In Capital (volume 1), Marx which resolves itself into wages of social property only because differentiates between the money superintendence. The minimum limit of individuals have alienated their own capitalist and the industrial capitalist interest is altogether indeterminable. It social relationship from themselves so (productive capitalist). A money-owner may fall to any low. that it takes the form of a thing. uses their money as interest-bearing Marx is also highly wary of the Exchange value naturally remains at capital, by lending it to an industrial destructive power of speculation, with his the same time an inherent quality of capitalist, thus putting it into circulation. harshest words kept for the rent-seeking commodities while it simultaneously After the agreed period, when the loan is behaviour of the money capitalist: exists outside them; on the other side, repaid, the money returns to the money The relations of capital assume their when money no longer exists as a capitalist, as so-called realised capital. most externalised and most fetish-like property of commodities, as a common The industrial capitalist uses the form in interest-bearing capital. We have element within them, but as an individual credit to employ workers to produce here ‘M–M’, money creating more entity apart from them, then money itself goods, creating surplus value. From the money, self-expanding value, without the becomes a particular commodity resulting profit they pay to the money process that effectuates these two alongside the other commodities . . . capitalist the interest on the loan. extremes. In merchant’s capital, ‘M–C– Here a new source of contradictions Interest-bearing capital as a commodity M’, there is at least the general form of which make themselves felt in practice. arises from the fact that money is sold as the capitalistic movement, although it (The particular nature of money emerges capital at a price—interest. confines itself solely to the sphere of

10 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘This idea of “late capitalism,” “financial capitalism” and so on is not a departure from Marx but is in fact just the’ new face on a very old system’ circulation, so that profit appears merely the reproduction process, which is elastic capital; on the other hand, the money- as profit derived from alienation; but it is by nature, is here forced to its extreme capitalist makes of the savings of others at least seen to be the product of a social limits, and is so forced because a large his own capital, and of the credit, which relation, not the product of a mere thing. part of the social capital is employed by the reproductive capitalists give to one The form of merchant’s capital at least people who do not own it and who another and which the public gives to presents a process, a unity of opposing consequently tackle things quite them, a private source for enriching phases, a movement that breaks up into differently than the owner, who anxiously himself. The last illusion of the capitalist two opposite actions—the purchase and weighs the limitations of his private system, that capital is the fruit of one’s the sale of commodities. This is capital in so far as he handles it himself. own labour and savings, is thereby obliterated in ‘M–M’, the form of interest- This simply demonstrates the fact that destroyed. Not only does profit consist in bearing capital. the self-expansion of capital based on the appropriation of other people’s In the post-QE world there is no real the contradictory nature of capitalist labour, but the capital, with which this relationship between asset prices and production permits an actual free labour of others is set in motion and their underlying value. Money in effect is development only up to a certain point, exploited, consists of other people’s handed to speculators to play with as so that in fact it constitutes an immanent property, which the money-capitalist they wish, creating gigantic transactions fetter and barrier to production, which places at the disposal of the industrial but with no impact on the productive are continually broken through by the capitalists, and for which he in turn capacity of the underlying economy. credit system. Hence, the credit system exploits the latter. Marx’s concept of “fictitious capital” is accelerates the material development of What is interesting about the the key here. the productive forces and the Gamestop events is the ability to create a Can you find a more perfect summary establishment of the world-market. It is narrative of “us versus them.” Even if of the casino nature of the modern the historical mission of the capitalist these are retail investors, and not economy than the following passage from system of production to raise these financial organisations, they are probably Capital (volume 2)? material foundations of the new mode of only rarely members of the actual working The reserve funds of the banks, in production to a certain degree of class. It is the professional tech classes countries with developed capitalist perfection. At the same time credit that are most likely to make up the production, always express on the accelerates the violent eruptions of this majority of the Wall Street Bets average the quantity of money existing in contradiction—crises—and thereby the contingent, forced to work from home the form of a hoard, and a portion of this elements of disintegration of the old during the pandemic, overpaid and hoard in turn consists of paper, mere mode of production. underworked, with huge disposable drafts upon gold, which have no value in This “money capitalist” that Marx income going unspent now that most themselves. The greater portion of warned about in the nineteenth century is commerce and travel is curtailed. It is banker’s capital is, therefore, purely capitalism taken to its natural conclusion. these bored petit-bourgeois who are fictitious and consists of claims (bills of This idea of “late capitalism,” probably the real financial muscle for the exchange), government securities (which “financial capitalism” and so on is not a current rally. represent spent capital), and stocks departure from Marx but is in fact just the However, the bored should not be (drafts on future revenue). And it should new face on a very old system. In fact underestimated as a class of investor. not be forgotten that the money-value of Marx says that this money capitalism is Karl Marx wrote (letter to his uncle, Lion the capital represented by this paper in the true face of capitalism, as it doesn’t Phillips, 25 June 1864): the safes of the banker is itself fictitious, even pretend to be earned: it is nakedly I have, which will surprise you not a in so far as the paper consists of drafts extractive and parasitic, destroying the little, been speculating – partly in on guaranteed revenue (e.g., government very lies that capitalism tells about itself. American funds, but more especially in securities), or titles of ownership to real How else do we explain condemnation of English stocks, which are springing up capital (e.g., stocks), and that this value the trading app Robinhood by an like mushrooms this year (in furtherance is regulated differently from that of the ubercapitalist like Ted Cruz? of every imaginable and unimaginable real capital, which the paper represents Only one aspect should be joint stock enterprise), are forced up to a at least in part; or, when it represents emphasised and that is that the business quite unreasonable level and then, for mere claims on revenue and no capital, of actual saving and abstinence (by the most part, collapse. In this way, I the claim on the same revenue is hoarders), to the extent that it furnishes have made over £400 and now that the expressed in continually changing elements of accumulation, is left by the complexity of the political situation fictitious money-capital. division of labour, which comes with the affords greater scope, I shall begin over This is a very interesting situation, progress of capitalist production, to those again. It’s a type of operation that makes because this hyperfinancialisation is both who receive the minimum of such small demands on one’s time, and it’s the salvation capitalism is using to elements, and who frequently enough worth while running some risk in order to salvage itself from crisis and the seed of lose even their savings, as do the relieve the enemy of his money. H the next crisis. Marx puts it best when he labourers when banks fail. On the one says: hand, the capital of the industrial *Andrew Granato, “Joke capital: The credit system appears as the capitalist is not “saved” by himself, but Gamestop populism and the desire for main lever of over-production and over- he has command of the savings of others narrative,” The Margins speculation in commerce solely because in proportion to the magnitude of his (tinyurl.com/1ovtglve).

Socialist Voice March 2021 11 IRELAND

JOE HURLEY The future of HE NEWS that Britain has applied to join the Comprehensive and agriculture TProgressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a big blow to Irish farmers and rural agri- in Ireland 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, in which every country involved can individually negotiate its own free-trade deals. At present 80 per cent of British beef imports and an estimated 90 per cent of cheddar cheese imports come from Ireland. Ireland’s agri-sector will be badly affected when Britain is flooded with the products of the lowest-cost dairy, beef and sheep producers in the world. To be competitive, Ireland will have to reduce total prices further, and that would be calamitous for farmers and workers in the sector. The meat factories, co-ops and millers benefit greatly, but at the expense of the workers.

Relations with the Connolly Youth Movement Statement by the National Executive Committee, Communist Party of Ireland 9 February 2021

VER THE recent period a serious education materials. While there has conflicts and problems with holding dual rupture in the long-standing been a long-standing and comradely membership. Opolitical relationship between the relationship and close cross-body work It was not only the political Communist Party of Ireland and the between the two organisations, there differences that caused the Connolly Youth Movement has taken was no official affiliation between the fundamental shift in the CPI-CYM place. On 9 January, at its extraordinary CPI and the CYM. relationship but the political aspirations ard-fheis, members of the CYM voted to The relationship between the two of key figures within the CYM leadership remove their support for the programme organisations had remained to mount a challenge for the leadership of the CPI. This was followed on 17 complementary since the CYM’s of the CPI, without having broad support January by a “CYM Statement on foundation in 1965 until 2016, when within the party. With this fact in mind, Disaffiliation.” the CYM and its leadership began to at its “CYM 1970–2020 Congress” a The Communist Party of Ireland has move in an increasingly divergent motion was passed instructing that “all had a long history with the Connolly political direction from that of the CPI. members are to apply for membership Youth Movement since the party Changes to the CYM constitution over [of the CPI] and find a means to engage established the CYM in 1965, sharing a the past number of years shifted the in a limited capacity.” common revolutionary ideology and long-standing relationship from being This motion was proposed and allowing for dual membership. The party constructive to being competitive and passed without prior consultation with has given the CYM material and antagonistic, exemplified in its change the CPI and without extending an financial support over the decades, as from being supportive to being a invitation to members of the CPI’s well as the use of party facilities and fraternal organisation of the CPI, akin to leading body, the National Executive offices, enabling it to run meetings, the relationship some international Committee. This had been a custom education schools and campaigns as parties hold. These changes, initiated by extended to the CPI; had CPI well as providing campaign and the CYM leadership, gave rise to representatives been made aware of

12 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘We need to follow the lead of CPTPP and Mercosur by producing at low cost. The countries on the socialist path, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, produce this way and are successful’

Take, for example, New Zealand. It ranch-type farms. joins). We are limited by the Single has the highest beef price in CPTPP, This is not good for the consumer. Market and the Customs Union. namely €3 per kilo. The cost of making How does one know what is in this The government has no interest in silage, spreading slurry, the feed and all product they are buying? In order to the rural areas or in agriculture. I the costs of producing a kilo of feed compete we have to lower the cost in remember on the RTE “Prime Time” make that figure nearly impossible to live Ireland. It is the dearest country on the programme some years ago an on in Ireland. planet to farm. The cost of silage-making economist stated that we didn’t need Our problem is simple: we are too is over €14 to €15 for wrap and cutting farmers: we can import cheaper. That high-cost to make a realistic profit—or a (mowing), baling, and everything. Vets’ sums up the elite’s attitude. living. You would want about €4.70 to bills are very high; feed prices are very In the Soviet Union there were two €5 a kilo. The question one would ask high. types of socialist farming. The collective is, How does the CPTPP produce at such We need to follow the lead of CPTPP farms amalgamated small farmers into low cost and price? The answer is and Mercosur by producing at low cost. larger state-run concerns that were simple: mass production, on massive The countries on the socialist path, such highly productive, and profitable. Then farms of thousands of acres with tens of as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, there was Nikolai Bukharin’s plan, in thousands of livestock, on a very-low- produce this way and are successful. We which the meat factories and other large cost grass minimal-feed system. need to follow the socialist principle of co-operatives were nationalised. But (Canada is the exception, adopting an nationalisation and planning to produce small to medium-sized farms and American-style indoor feeding system.) as much as we can to be self-sufficient businesses remained privately owned, The numbers are so large that a low and also to negotiate sustainable and were encouraged to produce as price by our standards would yield a markets for our products, with all agri- much as they could, with no restrictions. considerable profit. workers paid according to the economic Both these ideas revitalised the rural The Mercosur countries in Latin reality. areas. I prefer Bukharin’s ideas myself, America operate the same way: high- Why isn’t the government finding and I think that form of socialist thinking quality, low-budget-cost farming. Most of markets? Well, the EU controls this is the way forward in Ireland. the CPTPP and Mercosur countries don’t country, and we don’t have the freedom We need a balance: rural and urban have TB testing, allow excessive use of to trade with who we want. We don’t workers working together, the two steroids, and destroy massive areas of have an individual trading policy like the economies working off each other and forests to facilitate the creation of new CPTPP countries (and Britain when it prospering together. H such a motion they would have strongly external organisation within the CYM to manoeuvre their way advised against its adoption. An attempt • Leaking party documents to non- into leadership roles within the party, to join en masse shortly followed in members despite failing to gain broad support 2020 but was halted by the party until • Discussing and voting on party work from the existing CPI membership. As bilateral discussions could take place to with non-members outside the CPI most will appreciate, this is a form of discuss this highly irregular behaviour, • Dual members boycotting meetings behaviour that would not be tolerated in as well as to discuss the notable and activities any club or organisation, much less a differences between the two • Dual members disrupting branch communist party. organisations. Unfortunately, attempts meetings. It is regrettable that the bond of to resolve these matters were not Far from the fantasy of a “clique” solidarity and co-operation between the successful in the light of bad-faith controlling the party, the CPI was left CPI and CYM has now degenerated into practices by leading elements of the with no choice but to defend its a hostile one. A relationship that had CYM. democratic structures, resulting in lasted over five decades has been The CPI has always respected the action being taken by the appropriate derailed by the political ambitions of a contribution of CYM activists over the bodies of the party against a very small few divisive individuals within the decades, many of whom have gone on number of dual members who were leadership of the CYM. to join the ranks of the party. However, found to be in serious breach of party These are challenging times, but the the attempt to establish a narrative rules and discipline. Those individuals CPI will continue to earnestly fight for, about “a clique surrounding the main refused to accept or abide by the help, organise and support the hopes leadership” (i.e. the democratically sanctions that followed. and aspirations of the youth of Ireland in elected National Executive Committee This campaign to discredit the CPI a movement representative of the of the party) over the much more and its elected leadership continued in revolutionary theory and programme of mundane realities of internal party an attempt to bypass the democratic the CPI. democracy and discipline is a processes of the CPI. On numerous We have no wish nor desire to enter transparent attempt to divert blame for occasions these now expelled party into a protracted public discourse about the factional approach, actions and members placed their individual this unnecessary rupture; the struggle activities of some dual members, which ambitions and loyalty to the CYM above for Connolly’s goal of a Workers’ include: that of the party. Furthermore, they Republic remains the goal of the • Adopting a line in the CPI from an attempted to leverage their positions Communist Party of Ireland. H

Socialist Voice March 2021 13 NEW COLD WAR

In defence of China

Alan Farrell explores the The environmental question environment. However, given its present apparent contradictions A common criticism levelled at China population of approximately 1.4 billion, inherent in China today and from those in the West, on both the an examination of any per capita chart examines the evidence left and the right, is that it is engaging will show that China is still far behind in unsustainable growth, which is nearly every country in the west.¹ relating to criticisms made of leading to irreparable damage to the Ultimately, a country’s borders are the Chinese state by some global environment. fairly abstract, so in gross numbers the figures and organisations on If we look at bulk numbers of country with the most people will always the left. emissions, it’s undoubted that China produce the “most” waste. This is why a places a heavy burden on the global measure per capita is important. Broadly speaking, critiques of China from the left fall under three categories.

Firstly, that the rapid growth and development of China is a cause for concern for ecological reasons; secondly, that China engages in quasi- imperialism or “social- imperialism”, a criticism also levelled at the Soviet Union; and thirdly, that China is a totalitarian state that abuses the human rights of its citizens.

PICTURE ABOVE: Staff members check the body temperature of a worker at a construction site in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Cheng Min) Carbon dioxide emissions (tonnes) per capita, selected countries Source: World Bank 14 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘China’s approach to the very loud and apparent needs of environmental and climate reform is only possible through the central structural principle that underpins the country’

Additionally, while calling for China that underpins the country. That is, road, railway and other networks that to curb its growth because of the through the guiding principles of serve the needs of the African people. “ticking clock” of inevitable global Marxism-Leninism alongside socialism On the question of debt it must be catastrophe is understandable, this with Chinese characteristics and Mao noted too that China regularly forgives ultimately ignores the centuries of Zedong thought. Only in a dictatorship of these huge loans, which are invariably enormous growth and consumption, the proletariat, where the power of the interest-free. This is a significant change which still continues, in the West. Do state apparatus is guided by the to the previous paradigm for most the people of China, and indeed all the fundamental needs of the working class, African countries, where the rates of other countries of the Global South, not is it possible to achieve this desperately servicing loans to businesses in the deserve to enjoy the simple dignities needed and profound change. West were (and still are) so high that we take for granted in the West, such they were unable to develop in any real as public transport infrastructure, well- The imperialism question sense.⁶ maintained roads, widespread “Socialist in words, imperialist in broadband internet connection, etc.? deeds” was Lenin’s critique of The human rights question The myth of global overpopulation is European countries before the First Some final words on Xinjiang and the a commonly used bourgeois criticism of World War and specifically a criticism claims of human rights abuses in the developing South. This, however, of the chauvinistic attitude of the China. You would be hard pressed to ignores the waste inherent in an ever- Social Democratic Party of Germany. avoid some of the recent sensational expanding capitalist paradigm. We Later this same critique was used by claims made about the westernmost already produce more than enough Mao and Enver Hoxha to attack the region of China, home to one of its food and commodities for the global Soviet Union, eventually leading fifty-five officially recognised population, and most forecasts show towards the Sino-Soviet split. minorities, the Uighur people. that the global population is levelling Ironically, many today see modern These include the claim that up to 3 off. It therefore follows that the China as very much embodying this million Uighurs are detained in problem isn’t with a billion Chinese criticism.⁵ purported concentration camps. The people wanting a moderate standard of However, deeper analysis will show great majority of these articles and living but rather with ceaseless that there are qualitative differences claims can be traced back to one expansion in the pursuit of profit, driven between the imperialism of the West person, Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow at by political and economic interests and the trade deals and infrastructure- the explicitly pro-imperialist and anti- based in the West. building projects in the global south communist “Victims of Communism It is also important to examine that constitute part of China’s “Belt Memorial Foundation.” His method of China’s response to the climate crisis and Road” programme. Consider, for obtaining his statistics is notoriously relative to that in the West. In recent example, trade partnerships between flimsy, and the way he applies this data decades China has been able to marry China and Africa. The former Liberian is equally crude. Zenz manipulated data a reduction in emissions with minister of public works Gyude Moore, to try and claim that the Uighur continuing alleviation of poverty. While speaking at the Paulson Institute in population was decreasing in Xinjiang the Western world prevaricates and Chicago in 2019, laid out the broader as part of the evidence that a genocide hopes for a free-market solution to our African viewpoint on these is taking place; the reality, however, is climate crisis, China has orchestrated a partnerships, revealing the continuing that the Uighur population is growing number of large-scale and strategic legacy of colonialism and imperialism rapidly, far outstripping the increase in environmental projects. on the continent ($1 trillion worth of the Han population in the same region.⁷ These include an ambitious national natural resources, still in the ground, Recently the International Criminal reforestation policy (with hundreds of belongs to 101 companies listed on Court (not a noted pro-communist or billions of trees planted so far)² and a the London Stock Exchange) and how, pro-China organisation) concluded that de-desertification effort that restored beginning at the start of the there was insufficient evidence that up to 40 per cent of forest in some millennium, the trade deals with China China is carrying out a genocide in former desert regions.³ It has offered a completely new experience Xinjiang.⁸ This was recently echoed by developed the world’s largest green- for political leaders on the continent. the US State Department.⁹ Indeed energy sector, by several metrics,⁴ and There remain some reasoned China has been largely transparent in is the biggest manufacturer and buyer critiques of these enormous trade its anti-terrorism exercise, inviting globally of electric vehicles. It also has deals, namely that they stymie delegations from majority-Muslim the largest and most sophisticated domestic development and saddle countries to inspect its work,¹⁰ high-speed training network. These countries with large amounts of debt. describing the facilities in Xinjiang demonstrable, measurable efforts far However, it is important to note that instead as “re-education” facilities to outstrip those in the United States, they provide a way for the continent to bring Uighurs away from Islamic Britain, and the EU. break out and develop an infrastructure extremism and offering them China’s approach to the very loud that is not based on old colonial lines opportunities for employment and and apparent needs of environmental of linking peripheral resource sites with education. and climate reform is only possible central exporting areas. Instead, there through the central structural principle is a chance to develop fully integrated Continued overleaf Socialist Voice March 2021 15 INTERNATIONAL

UOMENLINNA Is a beautiful little Guards; 39,000 were released on Memorial island off the coast of Helsinki. A parole, and 555 were sentenced to Sregular boat service (part of the death, of whom 113 were executed. public transport system) ferries The mortality rate for prisoners was to a residents, navy cadets and tourists alike astronomical, with approximately a tenth to the island in about fifteen minutes. of the prisoners dying of starvation and On the trip across, depending on the diseases alone. Deaths were forgotten time of year, you can be met by seal compounded by the angry, punitive and pups, flocks of different birds, or the callous treatment of the prisoners by the revolution remains of ice floes that ice-breaker White Finnish state. ships have left behind. The visibility of the abject horror of LAURA DUGGAN But the little time capsule of an the camps and their hopeless conditions island hides a dark past; and away from affected the minds of many people the main route you can find a small much more deeply than the war itself memorial to the prisoner-of-war camp and increased support for the Reds that was here from 14 April 1918 until throughout Finland, with people in the 14 March 1919. The camp was a vicinity of the camps attempting to remainder and a reminder of the civil sneak food and other comfort to the war that was fought for a little over three prisoners. weeks in 1918 between White Finland Even with this change in public and the Finnish Socialist Workers’ attitude, the camps were totally ignored Republic. for decades by the White interpretation The camp on Suomenlinna was one of history, and it took until 1927 for the of thirteen large camps scattered about last fifty prisoners to be pardoned and the country. At their peak these camps full rights returned to the Reds. The held about 80,000 prisoners of war, Finnish government finally paid including 5,000 women, 1,500 children, reparations to 11,600 former prisoners and 8,000 Russians. About 10,000 of war in 1973. members of the Red Guard and The memorial, unveiled on 28 suspected sympathisers were interned in September 2004, consists of two rocks, the camp on Suomenlinna alone. one natural and one quarried, engraved In total, 68,000 of the prisoners with the years 1918 and 1919. It can were convicted by field court-martial for often be found adorned with candles treason as a result of their membership, and flowers, in remembrance of those or assumed membership, of the Red who fought for a different world.

abuses may function as a proxy for escape the never-ending boom-bust In defence other, more fundamental divides. cycles and environmental of China What unites these criticisms and catastrophes that come with it. All on attacks? They all originate from the the left should look unambiguously to continued West, and they all seek to discredit China as a country to defend, and as China on the world stage. However, a country that demonstrates a real as we should all know by now, the alternative to the power structures we (It should be noted that this is West lies. It lies to foment war, it lies have here in the West. extremely similar to an approach to destabilise countries, it lies to This does not mean that China taken by France in recent years,¹¹ deflect criticism. It lied about should be exempt from reasoned though it has not been subject to the incinerators in Kuwait, it lied about critiques, or that we should invest same level of international scrutiny or nuclear weapons in Iran, it lied about blind faith in the country; but our criticism.) There is a global divide, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. critiques should come from a Marxist- with North America, Europe, Australia It is now lying about China, and will Leninist viewpoint, a perspective that and New Zealand, and Japan (i.e. the continue to do so as long as China understands that the road from West) actively condemning China’s presents a fundamental challenge to capitalism to socialism is an uneven actions while many in the Global its authority and a threat to its one, fraught with contradictions. If South and other noted antagonists of political and economic system. ever there was a clear signpost that the West support them. Notably, not A powerful state apparatus, they’re heading in the right direction, one Muslim-majority country in the ideologically guided by the science of however, surely lifting close to a world condemns what is happening in Marxism-Leninism, that remains true billion people out of extreme poverty Xinjiang, suggesting that, as ever, to the working class of a country is in forty years is a good indication that Western cries about human rights the only hope for our planet to China is on the right path.¹² H

16 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘... two peoples living in the same space, ruled by the same state, but with profoundly unequal rights. This is a vision of a 21st-century apartheid.’

Gaza Strip, governed by Hamas but over Israel which Israel has “effective control” LETTER because of its ruthless blockade. Above them, B’Tselem said, are the judged an roughly 2.7 million Palestinian “subjects” in the West Bank, who live in “dozens of Humanitarian disconnected enclaves, under rigid intervention apartheid military rule and without political rights.” Next on its hierarchy are the roughly regime 350,000 Palestinians who live in East Thanks to SV for disclosing the truth Jerusalem. Israel has offered citizenship about Samantha Power. Biden is DECLAN MCKENNA to these residents, though many have making many hawkish appointments refused to apply on principle, and for to his foreign policy team. Power is HE ISRAELI Information Centre for those who try the rejection rate is very one of them, though she always Human Rights in the Occupied high. proclaims her alleged “humanitarian” TTerritories, B’Tselem, has judged The highest tier—Palestinian citizens motives. The Agency for International Israel to be an apartheid state, bent on of Israel, also called Arab Israelis—have Development, which she will head, perpetuating the supremacy of Jews over full citizenship and make up about a fifth funds many US interventions in the Palestinians. of Israelis. Even at that, B’Tselem said Third World. In her 2019 memoir The “Israel is not a democracy that has a they are also kept below Jewish citizens, Education of an Idealist, Power temporary occupation attached to it,” pointing to land discrimination, records [p. 106] that when NATO said the body’s executive director, Hagai immigration laws that favour Jews, and began bombing Sarajevo she shed El-Ad. “It is one regime between the other laws that afford Jews extra political “tears of relief.” Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, rights. Joe Jamison and we must look at the full picture and On top of that, forty-seven of the New York see it for what it is: apartheid.” independent “special procedures The report claims that Israel has mandates” appointed by the UN Human created a system over all the territory in Rights Council concluded that Israel’s which Jewish citizens have full rights. intention to annex more areas of the Meanwhile, it argues, Palestinians are West Bank “would be the crystallisation of divided into four tiers, with various levels an already unjust reality: two peoples of rights according to where they live but living in the same space, ruled by the always below Jewish people. At the same state, but with profoundly unequal lowest end are the roughly 2 million rights. This is a vision of a 21st-century Palestinians in the deeply impoverished apartheid.” H

“China: A modern social-imperialist (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/c NOTES power,” 21 September 2018 hina-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo- (https://anti-imperialism.org blinken/). 1 World Bank, “The World Bank in China” /2018/09/21/china-a-modern-social- 11 Karen Leigh, “China takes diplomats to (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN. imperialist-power-cpimaoist/). tour ‘re-education camps’ as pressure ATM.CO2E.PC). 7 Anastacia Promskaya, “France still builds over mass detention of Uighurs,” 2 Michael Shermer, “Why Malthus is still robbing its ‘former” African colonies,” Time, 7 January 2019 wrong,” Scientific American, 1 May Pambazuka News, 25 September 2015 (https://time.com/5496435/china-12- 2016 (https://www.pambazuka.org/governance diplomats-tour-xinjiang/). (https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti /france-still-robbing-its-former-african- 12 Adam Sage, “France fights terror with cle/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/). colonies). camps for re-education,” Times 3 Bloomberg News, “China’s 40-year, 8 Gareth Porter and Max Blumenthal, “US (London) billion-tree project is a lesson for the State Department accusation of China (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/franc world” ‘genocide’ relied on data abuse and e-fights-terror-with-re-education-camps- (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl baseless claims by far-right ideologue,” plan-7wg9vrrgd). es/2020-09-14/china-s-40-year-billion- Gray Zone (https://thegrayzone.com tree-project-is-a-lesson-for-the-world). /2021/02/18/us-media-reports-chinese- 4 World Bank, “Curbing desertification in genocide-relied-on-fraudulent-far-right-r Further reading China” esearcher/). “Gyude Moore: ‘China in Africa: An African (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feat 9 Patrick Wintour, “ICC asks for more perspective’,” Youtube.com. ure/2019/07/04/china-fighting- evidence on Uighur genocide claims,” “The Chinese ‘debt trap’ is a myth,” desertification-and-boosting-incomes-in- Guardian (London) Theatlantic.com. ningxia). (https://www.theguardian.com/world/20 “Curbing desertification in China,” 5 Xinhua World News, “Factbox: 20/dec/11/international-criminal-icc- Worldbank.org. Achievements in China’s energy china-uighur-genocide-claims). ‘China’s 40-year, billion-tree project is a lesson development,” 21 December 2020 10 Colum Lynch, “State Department for the world,” Bloomberg.com. (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/202 lawyers concluded insufficient evidence “China to forgive interest-free loans to Africa 0-12/21/c_139607437.htm). to prove genocide in China,” Foreign that are coming due, Xi Jinping says,” 6 Communist Party of India (Maoist), Policy (Washington), 19 February 2021 Scmp.com Socialist Voice March 2021 17 IMPERIALISM

“concrete analysis of the concrete Understanding conditions” in Russia and then created the tactic that showed that, thanks to uneven development in the capitalist the past to unlock world, a revolution could be possible in the weakest link. the future The Leninist party was able to overthrow the Russian bourgeoisie, built on the ruins of the feudal Tsar regime, because it didn’t have the time (between February and October 1917) to build a bourgeois state machine, whereas in Britain the bourgeois state machine was strong, and therefore could sabotage Ireland’s heroic 1916 rising. As Lenin said, “the misfortune of the Irish is that they rose prematurely, when the European revolt of the proletariat had not yet matured.” So the tactics in each case against imperialism have to be based on concrete conditions. Capitalism is based on overproduction; and colonisation was carried out to accumulate the resources (both raw material and labour) needed for production and for discovering new markets to trade off the commodities. Colonialism was carried out in the name of civilisation. It was the “white man’s burden” to civilise the world; but Dialectics says that APITALISM WAS nascent during the plunder and atrocities had no everything is changing and Marx’s time; and by the time Lenin indications of civilisation. Even Marx Carrived it had evolved into thought Britain’s colonisation of India everything is evolving. imperialism, which he said is the highest (which he called the “Ireland of the east”) Capitalism is no exception— stage of capitalism. Marx’s assessment an “unconscious tool of history”; but his so can tactics for abolishing was that revolution will take place in a later assessment in relation to India was capitalism be the same asks well-developed capitalist society, such as that “the autocracy wanted to conquer it, Sajeev Kumar. England or Germany, where there was a the moneyocracy wanted to plunder it and strong working class. Lenin did the the millocracy wanted to undersell it.” Another phoney celebration

DÓNALL Ó BRIAIN

UST AS it did with St Patrick’s Day, the state has decided to take over Jthe 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 first day of spring is recorded from earliest times as Imbolc, a term of uncertain origin but probably meaning

18 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘Modern imperialism is not like colonialism or just military coercion but is for imposing neoliberal policies and using globalisation to shift labour-intensive work to countries with cheap labour, to provide those commodities to its population so that they can keep the real wages’

The footprints of imperialism emancipate the working class. The sweatshops, reminds us that what Engels Imperialism uprooted Africans from their working class, nurturing the illusion that it mentioned in The Conditions of the countries and made them toil in the can ameliorate the conditions, should be Working Class in England should be taken sugar-cane fields of the Caribbean so made to realise that bourgeois seriously and internationally. The shifting that Europe could enjoy the taste of “democracy” is fragile and will last as long of production to low-wage countries sugar. Imperialism destroyed Indian as the ruling class allows it to exist. results in race-to-the-bottom wages and agriculture and made the country grow And if it is no longer possible to rule by the weakening of trade unions all over the cotton, which could be fed to the the old method there is always room for world. factories of Manchester, and the fascism. As Antonio Gramsci said, Ireland’s shift from being neutral to product then sold to Indians cheaply to “fascism is an attempt to solve the being a partner of imperial warmongers destroy the local weavers. problems of production and exchange should be opposed. Military expenditure Even in Ireland the plantations were with machine guns.” Fascism has a should be questioned, and more spending methods of creating the “primitive material base: it is used by the on people’s welfare, such as education, accumulation of wealth” in order to uproot bourgeoisie when everything else fails, housing, and a free universal health Irish people from their land so that they unleashing fatal attacks on trade unions service, should be demanded. become cheap labour to operate massive and workers’ rights. Initiatives for creating international machines in the factories. Modern imperialism is not like pressure to lift sanctions on developing Imperialism threatens other countries colonialism or just military coercion but is countries that fight against imperialism that get in its way in its plundering of the for imposing neoliberal policies and using and protect their sovereignty should be world. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima globalisation to shift labour-intensive work supported. Environmental issues are no and Nagasaki were not to defeat Japan to countries with cheap labour, to provide longer at the periphery of the class war: but were a warning to the Soviet Union, those commodities to its population so they have become a central issue in the which was rising as a superpower. that they can keep the real wages fight against capitalism. “Green As it’s the nature of a river to flow into stagnant in their own countries. Any capitalism” is an oxymoron. the sea, capitalism inevitably runs into the government that doesn’t allow its The neoliberal agenda of imposing quicksand of crisis. Every day, attempts to resources to be extracted and labour to “austerity,” which is a euphemism for recover deepen the crisis. The trade union be exploited is labelled “undemocratic” class war declared by the bourgeoisie movement involved in day-to-day and will be destabilised by sponsored against the working class, must be fought. struggles against capital should rebellions or threatened with sanctions. We can be sure that the forthcoming simultaneously lead the working class to congress of the Communist Party of the understanding that capitalism comes The fight against imperialism Ireland will analyse the concrete out of every crisis by subjecting labour to The bourgeoisie promised liberty, conditions in Ireland so as to design the greater exploitation and turning more equality and fraternity during the French tactics for unlocking the imperialist triple people from the middle classes into Revolution but could not implement it, lock of Britain, the United States, and the paupers. The “American dream” for the because if it did the bourgeoisie could European Union. H middle classes is turning out to be a no longer exist. Only by transcending nightmare. the capitalist system will we achieve LEFT: Work 1865 painting by Ford Maddox The solution is to shatter the system liberty, equality, and fraternity. Browne depicting navvies at work. 250,000 migrant Irish navvies built Britain’s and build a new one devoid of exploitation Working-class issues of the global railway network at the height of the British and to abolish wage slavery, which will south, where capital exploits the labour in imperial project.

the season of pregnancy and birth, be trotted round the world, just as the education . . . in seeking to ensure that especially of domesticated animals. In usual suspects have been on St Patrick’s her voice was heard in a male- the Early Christian period the event, like Day, to promote the export of this non- dominated world.” so many others, was taken over by the existent festival. Practically every facet of traditional Church and turned into a holy day, this Utter nonsense has been invented by culture has been allowed to die out, one in honour of Brigid (Modern Irish the state to promote itself and to project when not actually exterminated; but any Bríd), a pagan goddess who was then its contemporary stance backwards a scraps that can be sanitised and reinvented as a Christian saint. thousand years, making the non-existent repackaged as harmless nonsense have The Department of Foreign Affairs is saint sound like a 21st-century politician. been turned into commodities that the the organiser of a programme of “global Michael D. Higgins (or his scriptwriter) gombeen class and its state can hawk St Brigid’s Day events,” claiming that the was carried away: “We celebrate the around the world to help make Ireland day “has long symbolised hope, renewal, courage and commitment of St Brigid in “the best small country in the world in and the feminine,” which will come as a her day . . .” Irish women have benefited which to do business.” The best small surprise to Irish people. A group made up from the “inspiration and legacy” of this country in the world in which to live and of officially approved intellectuals and non-existent personality, who “dedicated have a decent life, however, is not part of carefully selected bourgeois women will herself to innovation in the realm of the agenda. H

Socialist Voice March 2021 19 CAPITALISM €38.04 an hour? The upper limit of a transformative wage demand

Table 1: EU-27 aggregate data, 2018³

Net national income €13,929,602,801,250 Employed work force 189,298,000 Net national income per worker €73,586 Average hours worked per week 40.3 Weeks worked per year 48 Total hours worked per year 1,934 Average value created €38.04 per hour per worker

What happens to your €38.04 of value in Ireland?

EOIN MACDERMOTT

TRANSFORMATIVE strategy is “a means by which to expose the antagonistic contradictions between Acapitalism 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 €10.20 to a “living wage” of €12.30² would undoubtedly improve the lives of many, and should be supported, it poses no threat to the reproduction of capitalist social relations. So, what would n €17.97 (47.24%) n €20.07 (52.76%) count as a transformative wage demand? median hourly earnings worth of surplus is To understand this we need to determine the average (excluding apprentices) usually stolen amount of value produced by a worker each hour. We can then approximate the hourly wage that would make, under Sources: OECD, Eurostat, CSO. present conditions, capitalist production relations impossible, given that workers would be remunerated for the full value of During simpler times, this type of exploitation was easier to their labour. see. A peasant farmer would plant a field in the spring, tend to That breaking-point for capital is the €38.04 worth of it in the summer, then harvest and store the grain in the value created each hour in 2018 by the 189.3 million workers autumn. At the end of the harvest the church might take a in the EU-27, as seen in table 1. This means that the median quarter of the total grain produced, the landlord would take (a better assessment of the “average” than the mean) Irish another quarter, and the poor peasant would be left staring at worker is paid €34,754 to produce €73,569 worth of value half of what they harvested, praying that it would sustain their each year. In other words, a surplus of somewhere around family until the next year. €38,815 per worker is usually being produced over and above Thanks to the opacity of wage labour today, we’re not even what is being paid. given the dignity of seeing the surplus we create being taken This is what Marxists mean when the matter of exploitation from us. Yet the surplus is created, and the Irish worker is left is discussed. It is not a subjective feeling of being treated with a little under half of what they produce each year. badly by one’s boss: it is the concrete figure of €38,815 that Detractors will cry that it is “unrealistic and unreasonable” represents a surplus of labour that was not paid for under to demand €38.04 an hour. But we must remember that all capitalist production relations. progress depends on the unreasonable person. The detractor

20 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘Thanks to the opacity of wage labour today, we’re not even given the dignity of seeing the surplus we create being taken from us. Yet the surplus is created, and the Irish worker is left with a little under half of what they produce each year’

would be quite right: it does seem quite unreasonable—as it work in a way that allows us to tackle the many crises we are should be. We are demanding what is impossible to concede facing while ending this type of obscene exploitation. under capitalist production relations, thereby showing its Ireland is not a poor country incapable of providing ample limits. housing, medical services and education for its citizens— Furthermore, we should not be seeking to adapt ourselves despite what we are told by the establishment. The idea that to the point of being seen as reasonable or legitimate within we cannot provide these services is simply a lie. It is in our the confines of an ideology that, quite unreasonably, interests, both collective and individual, to build an economy legitimises the theft of more than half a person’s work each that is democratic, capable of planning to meet the basic year to further enrich an obscenely wealthy minority needs of our citizens, and willing to remunerate each for the Let us leave that politics of respectability to our moderate full extent of our labour. friends, who may be fond of red flags but not the politics they These are not just reasonable demands: they are symbolise. Our goal is to demonstrate this obscenity and show increasingly urgent to realise for our collective future. H that there is an alternative. How unreasonable this idea is in society simply shows how much ground we have yet to cover. After all, there is nothing unreasonable about expecting to NOTES be remunerated for the full value of your labour, and there is 1 CPI, “Developing and building a coherent strategy for socialism” no sector in Ireland in which the average employee would not (2017) (https://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/c-2017-02- 13.html). benefit from a socialist economy that achieves this. It is also 2 James Ward, “Government to examine introduction of living no surprise that the sector in which the average wage is wage, Taoiseach says,” Irish Examiner, 27 December 2020 closest to reaching €38.04 an hour, education, is also one of (https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40197090.html). the most highly unionised. 3 From Paul Cockshott, “Who benefits from socialism?” None of us are passive spectators in our future. With (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfHV0y). When European figures are used as a proxy to estimate the value produced by mounting debt and unemployment we cannot afford to give a an Irish worker over the course of a year, as a comparable subsidy of almost €95 billion each year to a parasitic class calculation, using Irish national income statistics, gives a figure that lives off our labour. Only a socialist economy and a close to €67 per hour. This is a figure that is distorted unionised and organised working class can help us plan our considerably by our status as a tax haven, even when using adjusted measures such as gross national income.

Socialist Voice March 2021 21 CULTURE “A social order worthy of the human race” The 150th birthday of Rosa Luxemburg Luxemburg occasionally speaks in Polish, especially to Leo Jogiches, her close comrade and lover of many years. Her letters reveal her love of nature, of animals, and her prison “garden,” for children and her close friends, creating the sense of a profoundly humane person. Von Trotta magnificently brings together important stages in Luxemburg’s political career. The main parts of the film deal with Luxemburg’s political activity in Berlin. Considerable time is devoted to her growing disillusionment with the leadership of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Poignantly, the SPD leader Friedrich Ebert says to Luxemburg at a dinner party that events in Russia have ultra-radicalised her and continues, in chilling foreshadowing, “We will hang you.” From early on she senses and tackles the reformism of the SPD leadership. The complete betrayal by the social-democratic leadership becomes shockingly clear in the scene where Karl Liebknecht emerges from the Reichstag to tell her that all SPD parliamentarians had voted in favour of the granting of war funds. Liebknecht was the only member of parliament in 1914 to oppose these. National chauvinism, as a direct result of this JENNY FARRELL HE FILM begins on 7 December party’s reformism, drives them into 1916 with Rosa Luxemburg in their disastrous support for the First On 5 March 2021 we TVronke prison, cutting back to this World War. celebrate the 150th location again and again. Von Trotta Luxemburg unmasks time and uses Luxemburg’s prison letters to her again the profoundly inhuman nature anniversary of Rosa good friend Sonja Liebknecht like a of war as the senseless slaughter of Luxemburg’s birth. No-one leitmotif right through the film to paint working people in the interests of who wishes to get a sense of a very sensitive and personal portrait power and profits. Her anti-war Rosa Luxemburg as a person, of this Polish revolutionary. From this struggle becomes a central theme of both political and private, will prison the viewer relives many the film, and her speeches apply regret watching Margarethe episodes of Rosa’s life in flashbacks. uncannily to our own times: “European Some of these evoke the more problems and interests are now fought von Trotta’s meticulously personal aspects of Luxemburg’s life. out on the world seas and in the by- researched film of the same Early childhood is touched on. corners of Europe. Hence the ‘United name, made in 1968. It is Some of these sequences are in States of Europe’ is an idea which available with English subtitles. Polish, adding greatly to the authentic runs directly counter both economically feel of the film. Throughout the film and politically to the path of progress.”

22 Socialist Voice March 2021 ‘Luxemburg unmasks time and again the profoundly inhuman nature of war as the senseless slaughter of working people in the interests of power and profits’ Irish as spectacle

DÓNALL Ó BRIAIN

Manchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020).

his acclaimed book ostensibly celebrates the Irish-speaking Tcommunity in Co. Kerry, where the Canalside memorial to author spent his holidays as a young Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin man. He explores the rich vocabulary of traditional Irish-speakers and their words Following her arrest for speaking at place on 15 January 1919; and the for natural phenomena: the weather, the an anti-war rally in Berlin in 1913, she rest is history. sea, plants, animals—and fields. But it’s defended herself in the courtroom: The film does not make clear all presented as an oddity, a peculiarity, “When the majority of working people Ebert’s final betrayal of his erstwhile something to be marvelled at as a kind of realise . . . that wars are barbaric, comrades. An officer of the General aberration, and even a source of deeply immoral, reactionary, and anti- Staff, Captain Waldemar Pabst, amusement. His readers, mostly no people, then wars will have become informed the Reich government at an doubt monoglot English-speakers, are impossible.” early stage about the arrest of the two. presented with a dizzying array of Faced with the betrayal of the SPD Pabst lived until 1970 in West vocabulary, sometimes differentiated but leadership, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Germany and in old age maintained more often as a mere list, as if all the Zetkin discuss the need for a new that the SPD leadership, in the person words were synonymous. This is inevitably party, the Spartacus League, which of Gustav Noske and in all likelihood contrasted, at least by implication, with went on to become the Communist Ebert, had agreed the killings. English, the language of precision, Party of Germany. Luxemburg is put in Expressing her profound belief in reason, and civilisation. “protective custody,” imprisoned from the eventual and unstoppable The Irish Times described the book as 10 July 1916, and released on 9 liberation of humankind, Luxemburg “a rip-roaring archaeological exploration November 1918. During this time she declares: of the lyricism, mystery and oddities of is allowed books and letters and The day approaches when we who the Irish language.” But the Irish-speaking secretly passes visitors her are at the bottom will rise! Not to carry community are not lacking in recognition contributions to the “Spartacus out that bloody fantasy of mutiny and for their “lyricism” or oddities but rather Letters.” slaughter that hovers before the for their civil rights. On the day of Luxemburg’s release terrified eyes of the prosecutors, no, Why would any functional society the Kaiser abdicates and the SPD we who will rise to power will be the present one of its languages almost as a politician Philipp Scheidemann first to realise a social order worthy of freak show? The question answers itself: proclaims Germany a republic, with the the human race, a society that knows this is not a functional society but a SPD leader Ebert taking power. He no exploitation of one human by deeply dysfunctional one, shaped by prevents the country from turning into another, that knows no genocide, a centuries of colonisation, followed by a the soviet socialist republic that society that will realise the ideals of century of self-colonisation. Liebknecht proclaims on the same day. both the oldest founders of religion It’s impossible to avoid the suspicion The Communist Party of Germany is and the greatest philosophers of that the book was inspired by the founded on New Year’s Day 1919. humanity. In order to bring about this notorious “fifty Eskimo words for snow,” Uprisings in Berlin against the Ebert new day as quickly as possible we long exposed not only as offensive but as government follow in the second week must use our utmost powers, without complete nonsense; and there’s no of January. looking to any success, in defiance of doubt at all that this is what prompted Luxemburg and Liebknecht do not all public prosecutors, in defiance of the publishers’ choice of title. see eye to eye in the analysis of the all military power. Our slogan will This book, whatever the high rising. They are now “wanted.” They become reality: The people are with principles of the author, is firmly in that are betrayed, tracked to their hiding- us, victory is with us! H tradition. H

Socialist Voice March 2021 23 Who said that? Declan McKenna

“It’s a small nation with a strong identity, but it jumps like a puppy desperate for attention from one of the big boys—in this case, Biden. His PR team have played the Irish like a Stradivarius.” Chris Sweeney author and columnist, on Ireland’s “relationship” with Joe Biden

International Working “Ah, yes, America. The country where Republicans spend all day screaming that socialism is happening and Women’s Day 2021 Democrats spend all day making sure it never does.” NATIONAL WOMEN’S COMMITTEE, CPI demonstrations organised by Clara Zetkin Caitlin Johnstone Australian and her contemporaries we have seen journalist he 8th of March each year has the removal of the word “working” from continued to grow in popularity the title of the day, under the guise of “No government can justify from an Taround the world as a day on which including women who are not in paid ethical point of view that the vast to recognise and celebrate women in employment. This doesn’t lead to a more economic and technological strength of general. But this increase in popularity equal and inclusive celebration of a superpower, like the United States, stems from a growing disconnection from women: it simply shows that women who can be deployed over 60 years to the radical socialist roots of what was work inside the home or in unpaid caring subject to economic strangulation a once widely known as International roles are not considered to be “working relatively small nation with limited Working Women’s Day. women” in a capitalist economy. We natural resources.” The origins of the day can be traced reject this sanitising of a proudly socialist, Miguel Díaz-Canel president of back to the late nineteenth and early working-class day; we recognise that all Cuba twentieth century, when women began work undertaken by women—inside or protesting en masse for equal rights. In outside the home, paid or unpaid—is “A foolish faith in authority is the worst 1911 Clara Zetkin was a leading work in its own right. enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein organiser of the first International Working Bodies such as the United Nations, Women’s Day demonstration, which took NGOs, trade union federations etc. have “Partisan myopia simply won’t let place on 19 March; by 1914 the 8th of co-opted the day, wrapping it up in the people understand the magnitude of March had become the internationally concepts of bourgeois-liberal feminism, what is on display here: utter moral recognised date. such as “leaning in” or “breaking the bankruptcy of the entire US political Zetkin, like her contemporary Rosa glass ceiling.” Apart from being devoid of and media establishment.” Luxemburg, believed that women’s any transformative possibilities for the Nebojša Malic Serbian-American oppression was linked to the class nature majority of women, these messages are journalist, on the nature of the US of society, and that women could only be in fact often reliant on the outsourcing of establishment liberated through the destruction of the oppression, from women in the global capitalist system, of which patriarchy is north to those in developing countries or “My overall reaction is one of sadness just an inter-related component. immigrants. How many Hillary Clintons or to see a country as global and as In 1917 tens of thousands of women Cheryl Sandbergs have to clean their dominant as the United States—in marched in Petrograd above (later homes, take care of their children, or terms of its role in the world to protect Leningrad, now St Petersburg) care full-time for an elderly relative? It’s democracy and the fundamentals demanding an end to the First World War easy enough to break a glass ceiling around democracy—deteriorate into and the consequent food shortages. This when you’re standing on the backs of complete chaos at the heart of its demonstration is considered to have low-paid female domestic workers! capital.” marked the beginning of the Russian Therefore, it is in the tradition of Simon Coveney minister for foreign Revolution, causing a massive shock to Zetkin and Luxemburg that we organise affairs, showing why he is perfectly the global capitalist system and and celebrate International Working suitable for the position he holds fundamentally changing the geopolitical Women’s Day. Our aim is the landscape. reorganisation of society under a socialist “The books had opened my head, the The foundation of the USSR led to economic system, and to use the movies opened my heart.” hugely transformative changes for Soviet liberation of the working class from Walter Bernstein, blacklisted women, living under a socialist system capitalist oppression to begin to screenwriter, who died in January, on with equal rights enshrined in the new dismantle the inter-related system of reading Marx and Engels, Steinbeck constitution. patriarchy which now supports it, to truly and Dreiser and watching films by More than a century since the first emancipate all women. H Sergei Eisenstein and other Soviet directors. H

24 Socialist Voice February 2021