Irish Marxist Review 9 ISSN 2009-647X (Print) ISSN 2009-6499 (Online) Editor: John Molyneux Deputy Editor: Dave O'Farrell Website Editor: Memet Uludag Editorial Board: Marnie Holborow, Sin´eadKennedy, Donal Mac Fhearraigh, Tina MacVeigh, Paul O'Brien, Peadar O'Grady Cover Design: Daryl Southern Published: February 2014 SWP PO.Box 1648 Dublin 8 Phone: John Molyneux 0857356424 Email: [email protected] Website: www.irishmarxistreview.net Irish Marxist Review is published in association with the Socialist Workers Party (Ire- land), but articles express the opinions of individual authors unless otherwise stated. We welcome proposals for articles and reviews for IMR. If you have a suggestion please phone or email as above. i Irish Marxist Review 9 Contents Editorial 1 Is the Irish State Racist? Memet Uludag 4 The Resistible Rise of Golden Dawn Nikos Loudos 17 The Permanent Crisis of 21st Century Ulster Unionism Se´anMitchell 27 The Precariat: New Class or Bogus Concept? Kieran Allen 43 Irish Tories and social bandits of Seventeenth Century Ireland Ruair´ıGallagher 54 Oppression, Intersectionality and Privilege Theory Karl Gill 62 Review: Sabby Sagall, Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Geno- cide John Molyneux 69 Review: Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: the Secret Origins of the First World War Roy H W Johnston 74 Review: Gary Younge, The Speech, the story behind Martin Luther King's Dream Conor Kennelly 77 Review: Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights Jim O'Connell 80 Review: Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare - Killing by Remote Control Michael Youlton 83 Review: Brian S. Roper, The History of Democracy Stewart Smyth 85 ii Contributors Memet Uludag is a Turkish - Irish socialist in Dublin, active also with the Anti-Racist Net- work and the Irish Anti-War Movement who writes regularly at http://minordetailsnews.net Nikos Loudos is a regular contributor to Socialism from below in Greece and a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SEK). He is author of a book on Resistance in the Middle East and a pamphlet, What SEK is and what it fights for. Kieran Allenis a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at UCD and author of numerous books in- cluding The Politics of James Connolly, Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism and, with Brian OBoyle, Austerity Ireland. Karl Gill is a recent Social Science graduate from University College Dublin and is currently a local election candidate for People Before Profit in Dun Laoghaire. Se´anMitchell is an activist and socialist based in Belfast. He is the author of a forthcoming book on the 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots. Ruairi Gallagher graduated recently with a BA (Hons) in Irish History and Politics at the University of Ulster and is a socialist activist in Derry. John Molyneux is editor of Irish Marxist Review and author of a number of books including The Point is to Change It! An Introduction to Marxist Philosophy and The Case for Socialism in Ireland, with a blog http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.ie/. Roy H W Johnston is a veteran Marxist, physicist and former member of Sinn F´ein.He is the author of Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the Twentieth Century in Ireland. Conor Kennelly is a socialist activist in Dublin South Central. Jim O'Connell lives in County Cork where he is active in anti-fascism, anti-racism and sup- port for Palestinians. He is a member of the Socialist Workers Party and an organizer with the People Before Profit Alliance. Mike Youlton is a Greek socialist in Dublin who is active with the Irish Ant-War Move- ment and the Peace and Neutrality Alliance. Stewart Smyth lectures at Queens University Management School, Belfast. He writes on the neo-liberalisation of public services, including housing and grass-roots tenants campaigns. iii Editorial Climate change gets real like Bangladesh where many millions of peo- ple live on the banks of the countries three On a global scale the most important polit- great rivers and where a one metre rise in sea ical development over the last year, indeed levels would permanently flood one fifth of the over the last couple of years, has been the land, home to 15 million people. All this will transformation of climate change from a well- hit a country where people already live in ex- grounded scientific prognosis to a palpable treme poverty and many literally starve on present reality. the streets. Its neighbour, India, is presently This has included not only the familiar, constructing the Indo-Bangladeshi barrier, a but rapidly increasing, melting of the artic ice 3,406 kilometres (2,116 mi) fence of barbed but also a heat wave in Alaska in June, fero- wire and concrete nearly 3 metres high, al- cious temperatures of over 50^oC in Australia, legedly to prevent smuggling of narcotics and the terrible Typhoon Haiyan in the Philip- already operates a shoot to kill border policy pines, and the combination of heat wave and that has claimed 1000 lives. drought in California with the Polar Vortex across middle America down to the South. While this kind of scenario is becoming Now climate change has come to Ireland and an imminent prospect around the globe, the Britain with the exceptional storms and floods long term prospects are, of course, even more of recent weeks. catastrophic. What will make it so deadly is Meanwhile the scientific evidence accumu- not the change to the climate in itself, though lates. Here is a graph which shows what is that will be extremely serious, but the com- happening to ocean temperatures: bination of this with a class divided capitalist system that ruthlessly subordinates people to profit. Vast areas of land will become infer- tile or uninhabitable, water and food supplies will be hit and the price of both forced up, generating conflicts, wars and refugee flows in the tens of millions which will be met with, at the least, callous indifference and, more likely, vicious repression. Those who rule our planet, both the own- ers of the giant corporations and the govern- ments of the major powers, are well aware of all this and have been so for many years if not decades. They have access to all the As the oceans heat up so storms become scientific data we do and much more be- more frequent and more intense. The trajec- sides. They have been repeatedly warned tory shown above guarantees that in the com- by their own (very cautious) expert commit- ing years (and not just later in the 21st cen- tee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate tury) we will see many repetitions, and worse, Change and indeed politicians such as Barack of the extreme weather that has ravaged Cork, Obama, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Chi- Limerick, Somerset and the Thames Valley nese President, Xi Jinping, have all acknowl- in the last month. In many cases the places edged the reality of humanly generated cli- affected will be enormously more vulnerable mate change. than modern Ireland or Britain and the hu- Yet they have done and are doing nothing man consequences will be immensely more about it; or to be more precise they are doing tragic. One has only to think of a country nothing effective. The essence of what needs 1 to be done is simple and well understood: the climate change already built into the ecologi- world economy, not you, not your community, cal system by past emissions, it will be neces- not Ireland but the world economy, which sary to break capitalism. means its major players - USA, China, In- This is regardless of whether there is a dia, the EU, Russia etc - have to switch from mass movement against climate change. Ob- being driven by greenhouse gas emitting fos- viously such a movement is desirable and sil fuels (oil, coal and gas) to using renewable should it emerge we will be an enthusiastic and sustainable sources of energy such as wind part of it, but it will not be a question of per- power, solar power and tidal power. This has suading or enlightening our rulers. It will be to happen on a huge scale and it has to happen necessary, on pain of fascism and barbarism, quickly. Nothing else and nothing less will do, to overthrow them and replace production but this is precisely what is NOT happening. for profit with planned production for human Despite all the talk of sustainability and envi- need which can only be done through working ronmental awareness global carbon emissions, class struggle internationally. far from falling drastically, are rapidly rising. All of us, all of humanity, are being walked towards utter disaster. The rise of racism It is of vital importance to understand The picture is mixed but overall the last clearly why this is happening. It is not ig- year or so has not been a good one for that norance, it is not even lack of compassion. global class struggle. Certainly the stunning Compassion for ordinary people is clearly not momentum of 2011, with the Arab Spring a characteristic that distinguishes our planet's and the general Occupy movements has been rulers but its absence is not the main reason beaten back, most obviously in Egypt, and for their inaction. It is that, without excep- one consequence of this is that in a number tion, they are locked into capitalism, not only of countries such as Thailand, Ukraine, and ideologically but politically and economically France it is the right that have been able to and capitalism is locked, by its very nature, seize the initiative on the streets. With this into competitive capital accumulation. has come an inevitable rise of racism, though This means that faced with even a small it has taken different forms in different coun- downturn in economic activity, say negative tries.