Socialist Voice Review:
February – 2023
There is an interesting mix of articles in Socialist Voice this month. Some even have concrete proposals. “Do not manage poverty” quite clearly states that charities are a blight on society and have no place in the development of working-class interests: “To conclude, it is crucial that we work together to bring about a society that is not reliant on charities, crumbs off the table, or the idea of Robin Hood coming to our rescue. The answer, in a word, is socialism.”
A statement from Dublin Communities Against Racism addresses many of the divisive issues around immigration, the treatment of refugees and domestic issues such as housing and health and hits the nail on the head singling out the government and right-wing groups/parties for their failures and their attempts to poison rational thinking and responses.
However, the government is let off the hook when it comes to exposing its deliberate policies that cause military, economic and environmental calamities that generates such flows of migrants and refugees and asylum seekers. In step with the European Union and the United States, Ireland directly contributes to these events/situations. As in the case of charities not being a solution to poverty, providing refuge to people facing terrible dangers and poverty is not a solution to their problems. Ireland is complicit and deliberate in formenting political, military, economic and environmental chaos across the world and it would be interesting to see the author address those issues.
It is also good to see in “Right-wing threat requires united response” that Fine Gael is included in the mix of right-wing outfits. It certainly makes a change from ‘we will beat them off the streets’ referring to the more obscure right-wing organisations being considered as the main threat and how they might be dealt with.
Missing from the analysis is the non-role of the CPI in all this. Perhaps if the CPI had even a modicum of organisation it might provide a different platform for people to try to work out their responses to various issues. The fact is that the CPI has left the door wide open to the forces on the right and it is difficult to blame those forces for taking full advantage of that void.
Which brings us to the “CPI Trade Union Political School” written by the CPI Industrial Secretary no less, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Plenty more of ‘we must’ and ‘we need’ and the trade union leadership must do this that and the other. Perhaps if the CPI adopted some of the basic principles of the trade union movement it would not be in the state it is in. See When it all goes wrong | Guerrilla Communists for more on this.
And, by the way, don’t mention the war.