Book Review: End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity, Wang Hui (Verso 2011)

Apologists for Beijing sometimes like to say that nobody died on Tiananmen Square in 1989. This is the kind of statement whose technical accuracy is meant to be deceptive. It’s long been documented, if not fully embedded in public understanding, that [...]

Book Review: Prison Notebooks: Volume II, Antonio Gramsci

“The concepts of revolutionary and internationalist, in the modern sense, are correlated to the precise concept of state and class: a poor understanding of the state means a poor consciousness of class (understanding of the state exists not only when one defends it but also when one attacks [...]

2011 has been a very interesting year for the southern Irish party political left.
The general election in February brought the largest number of left wing deputies into the Oireachtas in its 90-year history. Sixty-three TDs were elected on a variety of social democratic, left republican, revolutionary socialist and independent left platforms.
The combined left vote broke [...]

In a year of revolution, causes have been easier to identify than consequences.
In 1989, following the end of the Cold War, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in The End of History? of the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”, marking “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal [...]

The Sunday Times poll which shows Labour attracting only 11% support and coming in fifth place after independents and others should serve as a wake up call to Labour Party members.
It is well known that Labour always gets a hammering in elections after propping up Fine Gael led governments. However this poll rating is not [...]

Between 24-27 November 2011, the Government of Israel held “Israeli Film Days” at Filmbase in Temple Bar, Dublin’s “cultural quarter”.In advance of this event, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) requested Filmbase to reconsider its decision to host the festival:
“At a time when Irish peace activists have been illegally imprisoned in Israel after their humanitarian [...]

The appointment of former secretary general of the Department of Justice Seán Aylward to the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture was described by the Justice for Magdalenes group as ‘a slap in the face to women who have suffered in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries‘. This was on account of his appearance in [...]

Book Review: Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the state: experiments in popular democracy. London / New York / Calcutta: Seagull (2nd edition - 2009).
A new book by Hilary Wainwright is usually a significant event: Beyond the Fragments (with Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal, 1979), Arguments for a New Left (1994) and the first edition of Reclaim the [...]

The December edition of the Socialist Voice is out now (PDF) or from the Communist Party of Ireland Socialist Voice website.
Articles in this issue include:

Monopoly capitalism: “technocracy” or fascism? [NL]

The outing of “social Europe” [CMK]

The budget: Make the poor, the sick, children and pensioners pay [EMC]

Enda’s big speech [MA]

A tale [...]

“You are Irish, I like George Bernard Shaw”
“Shaw. Wow…I don’t know much about him”
The disappointment on the face of the Egyptian man sitting beside me would have made the Sphinx cry.
It was just the truth. Shaw is one of the Irish writers I know least about. I saw ‘Saint Joan’ in the Abbey Theatre (I [...]