A recent edition of The Economist
(April 7, 2011) complained about “Capitalism’s waning popularity”. One
does not have to be a genius to understand that thirty years or more of
cuts in welfare, large scale privatizations and constant pressure on
workers in the workplace was sooner or later going to end up with
ordinary working people questioning the system that is responsible for
these policies, i.e. capitalism.
As we approach the 95th
anniversary of the Easter Rising many Irish socialists and republicans
will go out as they do every year to marches to celebrate the
anniversary of the episode which asserted Ireland’s right to national
self-determination. It was, however, also a revolution which saw the
working class prove itself in the words of Connolly as “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
As we mark the 95th anniversary of the easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland,
we republish an article written 10 years ago by Alan Woods and Ted
Grant.
In this article, written on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Uprising, Ted Grant writes that it is impossible to understand this heroic event without understanding the ideas of its leader, James Connolly – who considered himself a Marxist and based himself on the ideas of Internationalism and the class struggle.
The young activist from the 25th February
group, Ala’a Nabiel was released on Saturday, April 16th, after being
arrested on Friday, April 8th.
In all this talk of Career Average Pensions an important element has
been missed in all the media reports that women will come out worse when
the pension calculation is done. Hutton has not taken into account the
normal working life of women when making his proposals and the very act
of using Career Average Pensions is sex discriminatory.
Firas Ali, an Iraqi political
activist, was detained at the office of the Federation of Workers’
Councils and Unions in Iraq, Baghdad, at about 2pm on 13 April. A
protester, Haidar Shihab Ahmad Abdel Latif, is believed to have been
detained on 1 April on Tahrir Square, Baghdad. Alaa Nabil, another youth
leader of the February 25 Group, was also arrested on April 8, and
remains in custody. It is feared that they and other detained activists
are at high risk of torture.
These days, Iraqi authorities feel free to carry out
arbitrary arrests, physical assault and torture of Iraqi citizens who
participate in peaceful demonstrations. In fact, they have begun to
recruit and utilize of the expertise of the masterminds who were part of
the horrific Baathist regime of Saddam.
Come
to the Marxist Summer School June 17-19 for a packed weekend of
discussion and debate on what relevance the theory and programme of the
Marxists has in this epoch of world revolution.
The French army has bombed the residence
of Laurent Gbagbo, to "protect civilians" we are told. One is struck by
the wide variety of means used to achieve this so-called “humanitarian”
objective!
There is no future without the past.
An empirical, mechanistic and a pragmatic approach to the revolution
sweeping across the region from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea
would end up in a flawed analysis and a disastrous fate for the mass
upheaval.