Socialist Voice review:
May 2024
As always, the May edition of Socialist Voice is a mix of interesting articles interspersed with what appears to be a regulatory addition of a number of clangers.
Niall Cullinane, whose articles are certainly challenging, well researched and argued and who cannot be faulted when it comes to generating or responding to a debate, opens his article on The Assembly and Mobilising Northern Workers HERE with “The Socialist Voice is to be commended for providing the only party medium on the Irish left that supports critical debate. Such debate was evident in the February, March, and April editions on unions in the North.”
Immediately, the Noam Chomsky warning on the management of debate comes to mind: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views.”
That is exactly what is happening in Socialist Voice, in this case, around trade unions. Try having a debate within the Party or in Socialist Voice that the leadership does not approve of and see how you get on. It is clear that the debate on the trade unions is taking place because, for whatever reason, the leadership and the editor of Socialist Voice are not prepared to shut Cullinane out.
For further information on the CPI and the trade unions see Trade unions and the CPI – Guerrilla Communists
Light relief?
Meanwhile, where would we be for a little light relief without the regular inputs from trade union leader and Party stalwart, Jimmy Doran? His article Build Workers’ Power HERE concludes: “We need to go much further than collective bargaining rights alone and undo the damage created by the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, to give power back to workers and re-establish the trade union movement as a decisive Force for social change and the common good.”
Social change and common good? Secret trials, no appeals, ignoring rules and constitutions and dispensing with current basic trade union procedures-sort of social change and common good? Doran and more so the CPI are in no position to lecture trade unions on social change and the common good. At least, not until they clean up their own act first.
And here we go again: “We must rebuild workers’ power and the trade union movement, not reinvent social partnership. Trade unions must be radical or they will become redundant!”
‘There, I’ve said it again’ (and again and again)! It is infantile for Doran to keep exposing himself in this way. Repeating previously exclaimed slogans – slogans that have been analysed and which analysis he has failed to respond is not exactly the height of political sophistication.
He really should have listened to Eugene McCartan, former General Secretary, when he proclaimed that if slogans could win the day, then it would have been won long ago. However, it’s not just Doran who failed to heed this sound advice – McCartan regularly declined to heed his own counsel also. Can there be any hope that Doran might take the sensible advice delivered at the end of Niall Cullinane’s article in the same issue of Socialist Voice? “Perhaps if we pursue more convincing analysis and less sloganeering……”
The reason why trade unions and other left and progressive organisations no longer rate the CPI in any favourable way is precisely because it is an empty shell, an echo chamber devoid of either originality or vigour. Meanwhile, we still await an answer to what steps the CPI has taken to make the unions more radical.
China – again
Now, we come to China. More lively debate? Deep analyses and critical examinations? Not in Socialist Voice, that is for sure. In fact, we are treated to quite the opposite.
For the People – CPI Delegation to China HERE is classic propaganda penned this time by Graham Harrington in more-or-less the same fawning style as Gearóid Ó Machail ‘reported’ on the first junket in Socialist Voice last August and September.
This is the second CPI delegation to China inside a year and again, the article is totally uncritical of China.
It reads like a pre-prepared statement issued to them by the CPC and has all the hallmarks of a vassal delegation, more than eager to disseminate it’s propaganda.
For instance, “The Jiaxing Party Masses Service Centre……….. facilitates, free of charge, mental health services…..” It then goes on to state that “while this is a pilot programme they hope to roll it out to more centres”. Amazing, after seventy five years of socialism in China they are now getting round to providing “free mental health services” on a very limited pilot basis.
This from the second largest economy in the world, the factory of the world and the country with the most billionaires (by number, not worth).
Likewise, they highlight that China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and are “rolling out health insurance policies such as a new rural co-operative medical system which covers 60-80% of health costs for just 10-20 dollars a year. The remaining costs are covered by insurance provided by the state insurance companies” (which are not free either).
A recognisable hallmark of ‘Socialist Countries’ was free health and free education – even Cuba, suffering more than 64 years of barbaric US sanctions and sabotage to this day, provides free health and education.
Does anyone believe that, for instance, the unfortunate people toiling endlessly to produce dirt cheap clothing products for SHEIN are protected by labour laws or healthcare? If members of the CPI believe they are, then maybe, they can provide us with the magic formula that enables SHEIN to import the necessary raw materials, manufacture them and ship them across the world at a fraction of the cost they can be produced for in the countries of destination.
Harrington regurgitates the propaganda that in China “people are at the centre of decision making, not profit. China puts the social in Socialism.” Considering that more than half the economy is now dominated by the private sector and it has more billionaires than any other country, it is obvious that the surplus value created by more than half the working population is going directly to the bosses and billionaires. Who makes the decisions for those workers?
If the CPI delegates went to China on a fact-finding mission rather than a CPC propaganda junket and they ventured out of the bright lights of the large industrial cities (where, even there, they would find the working conditions at levels that they would not tolerate at home) into less developed and rural areas they would find the conditions there intolerable.
“In all areas, especially Beijing, one could see the fruits of what the CPC calls “Beautiful China” in the green trees that are almost on every street.” CHINA IS THE MOST POLLUTING COUNTRY ON EARTH – no amount of greenwashing can change that. Two other articles in Socialist Voice comment on climate change including one titled Climate crisis: a product of capitalism. HERE
Does China provide the system change required?
Image from Socialist Voice
There is not a single reference to any role that ‘socialist China’ may have played.
China has less than 18% of the world’s population, yet it makes up to 30% of global emissions and accounts for over half of global demand for coal. It is one of the few countries still building coal fired generating plants.
In 2023 it added 40Gw of coal generated electricity – a figure which alone is equal to the total production of electricity in Indonesia, Germany or Japan.
Small scale farmers are reduced to using horrendous amounts of fertiliser to try and maintain enough produce to survive. They are abandoned by the state and the result is danger to the farmers, consumers and lethal run-offs into the land and water system
The Yangtze river, the longest in Asia, is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. More than 50,000 dams have been built on it and its watershed since the 1950’s and more are planned. Dams divert and disrupt the natural flow of the river with detrimental effects for people and nature. And, that’s just the Yangtze!
Again, with less than 18% of the world’s population, China has the world’s largest fishing fleet and is responsible for about 30% of fishing on the high seas. It is draining the seas of a most valuable commodity which is detrimental to coastal fishing communities, and, on a much larger scale, to the ecology of our seas and oceans.
They are draining the seas of fish in Asia, Africa and South America. Coastal people who totally depend on near-shore fishing are being decimated. Not only that, there are credible reports of horrendous working conditions aboard the factory ships, akin to slavery. It is only, very recently, that the Chinese government is being forced to act.
Will the ‘communists’ in the CPI raise their voices in support of the workers and fishing communities, or is it all a farce to them? The issue is not whether we like the political and economic reality that is China today – rather it is whether or not we make a rational, objective analysis of China today and whether such a process would be allowed to take place within the CPI and in Socialist Voice?
So much for the quote from President Xi Jinping at the end of the article, part of which states “We should never oppress other nations or loot the wealth and resources of other countries in any form.” Just don’t mention China’s ownership of critical resources in Asia, Africa, South America and their foreign owned property portfolio spanning the world, including Dublin and other Irish cities which contribute to unaffordable rents and home buying prices for ordinary people.
And, so much, for critical debate and analysis in the CPI.