partisan patriotic internationalist h hh number166 ... · eugene mccartan reports p2. the dominant...

Communist Party of IrelandPáirtí Cumannach na hÉireann

Partisan Patriotic InternationalistNumber166 December 2018 €1.50www.commmunistpartyof irerland.ie

Page 2 Central banks Page 4 Whose borders?Page 5 Poppies and war

Page 6 Unionists alienatedPage 8 Communists confer

2 News ReportsPage 14 Psychology

Page16 Books

Socialist Voice

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SVSocialist Voice43 East Essex StreetDublin D02 XH96(01) 6708707

“We have to protectourselves with respectto China, Russia, andeven the United Statesof America . . . We willnot protect theEuropeans unless wedecide to have a trueEuropean army.”—Emmanuel Macron,president of France(6 November 2018).

Debt crisis growsGlobal debt is now becoming a majorfactor in the instability of the system ofcapitalism. Figures show that in the secondquarter of 2018 global debt reached a newrecord, rising to $260,000 billion.Of this total, 61 per cent — $160 trillion —is private debt of the non-financial sector,while 23 per cent is government debt.

Eugene McCartan reports P2

THE DOMINANT Ideological storyof central banks is that removingthem from the control of

governments depoliticised them andmade them neutral, “scientific” actorsin the economy.

The argument goes that, as

economics developed into a science, withthe primary aim of keeping inflation low,making central banks independentallowed them to act unhindered by theshort-term electoral sways of partypolitics and government. This facilitatesthem in acting in the long-term interest of

the economy. This view argues that theyare beyond political influence; they arebeyond ideology.

This could not be further from thetruth.

Central banks are deeply ideologicaland political institutions that have been

POLITICS

2 Socialist Voice December 2018

Debt crisiscrowsCONTINUED When attempting toassess the debt we need to take intoaccount the ratio of the debt to GDP; thishas passed the 320 per cent thresholdfor the first time (see chart).

The United States alone isresponsible for 30 per cent of theoutstanding public debt. Trump’s policiesin the last two years have accelerated thegrowth in US government debt. The USTreasury is followed by the Japanese andChinese debt agencies and the biggesteuro-zone economies.

The power of central banks

Nicola Lawlor

Global debt (percentage of GDP), 2017Source: Bank for International Settlements

‘Far from being neutral, “scientific,” or independent, centralbanks work hand in hand with finance capital, representing itsinterests and interfering in democratic debate on its behalf’

Socialist Voice December 2018 3

removed from democratic accountabilityand control and now, more firmly thanever, represent the interests of financecapital.

There are not many studies into thepolitical operations of central banks andhow they influence, and who theyrepresent; but two papers looking at theEU Central Bank and this issue are worthreviewing.

The two papers are “Death by athousand cuts? Financial political powerand the case of the European financialtransaction tax” and “Central banking andfinancial political power: An investigationinto the ECB” by Manolis Kalaitzake ofUCD. Both tackle head-on the role ofEuropean central banks and theirrelationship with finance capital.

In “Death by a thousand cuts,”Kalaitzake takes the case of the financialtransaction tax and looks at how, andwhy, the ECB virtually killed this proposal.

The FTT had the support of leadingmember-states in the European Union,the EU Commission, the EU Parliament,and a majority of people in Europe,according to most research and opinionpolls. Yet it hasn’t come about. And thewriter demonstrates that one of the mainreasons is the political mobilisation offinancial actors, including, crucially, theECB itself.

More generally, deep financial reformhas not materialised following the crisis;

and in large part this is because of thepower of finance capital. Reforms havebeen postponed, proposals have beenabandoned, and, most often, reformshave been significantly watered down.Crucially, the “too big to fail” dilemmahas failed miserably to be resolved. Ifanything, we have seen increasedmonopolisation in the sector.

Industry bodies, such as theAssociation of Financial Markets inEurope, led the way in lobbying andrecruiting other financial and non-financial actors. Four lines of argumentwere used consistently against thefinancial transaction tax: (1) it wouldprimarily hurt end-users, as the costwould be passed on; (2) it would reduceEuropean competitiveness, harm jobs,and so ultimately reduce tax revenue; (3)taxation is not an appropriate regulatorytool; and (4) empirical evidence fromSweden in the 1980s shows that FTTs donot work.

Impact assessments were carried outthat showed negative effects of an FTT.And lobbying was especially aimed atcentral banks, and at the ECB inparticular. The Central Banks of Englandand Spain made highly politicalinterventions; and then, decisively, theECB entered the debate, and this was thefinal nail in the coffin of a pan-EuropeanFTT.

In the second paper, “Central banking

and financial political power,” the writerexamines how financial actors influencethe ECB and how the ECB has been animportant ally of the financial sector sincethe crisis in thwarting financial reforms.

Financial actors, according to thewriter, use four mechanisms to exertpower: (1) the revolving doors of the elite;(2) closed policy meetings; (3) capitalflight; and (4) “too big to fail.”

These represent both personal andstructural power at play in shaping theideology and political interference of theECB. The paper provides examples andevidence of the four mechanisms ofpower exerted by the financial sector onthe ECB, for example the private-sectorjobs of the present Executive Board of theECB, including banks and alsoassociations and sectoral bodies. Inclosed policy meetings it notes that thepresident of the ECB, Mario Draghi,during the first three months of 2017met banks repeatedly but did not meetone NGO, civil-society organisation, ortrade union. These patterns are repeatedconstantly.

Far from being neutral, “scientific,” orindependent, central banks work hand inhand with finance capital, representing itsinterests and interfering in democraticdebate on its behalf. H

By using GDP as the measure, thepositions are reversed: Luxembourg endsup in first place, with a total debt equal to434 per cent of GDP, composed almostentirely of corporate debt, while Japan’sdebt is about 373 per cent; the largestcomponent of this is public debt,standing at 216 per cent. 90 per cent ofthe debt is in the hands of the centralbank, pension funds and domesticbanks. France, Spain and the Britishstate are in the top eight for public andprivate debt.

In the euro-zone countries, states areunable to manage monetary policyindependently, as the euro is one of themain mechanisms of control and forimposing fiscal policies on member-states. All public debt of themember-states is de facto subject to

foreign law. An average of more than 70per cent of this debt is held by foreigninvestors, institutions, and individuals,more reactive in negotiating on secondarymarkets and in feeding panic selling.

Another factor that needs to beconsidered is what establishmenteconomists call “implicit debt,” whichmeans that it does not take into accountthe present value of financialcommitments made by governmentsregarding pensions and health services.

These future debts do not appear inthe national accounts and are notprojected into future expenditure. If wetake these hidden charges into account,possible future US debt could be morethan $100 trillion. Spain, Luxembourgand Ireland could see their liabilities risemore than tenfold, over 1,000 per cent

of GDP in the case of the Irish state.These are some of the hard facts

behind the push by the state andemployers’ organisations for people tohave their own private pension schemesand private health insurance, with moreand more public money and workers’wages funnelled into private pension andhealth schemes, allowing the state toundermine and reduce the publicpension.

At the global level, corporate debt isthe variable that the markets fear most. Aheavily indebted private sector isvulnerable to increasing interest rates.

The inherent instability of debtsuggests that the next slowdown ingrowth could develop into an unusuallystrongly freeze of corporateinvestments H

IRELAND


THIS NOVEMBER is the centenary ofthe ending of the Imperialist War,1914–1918, fought between

British imperialism and its allies on theone side and German imperialism and itsallies on the other.It is believed that more than 10 millionsoldiers died in the fighting, as well as anestimated 13 million civilians. More than65 million men from the various empirestook part, of whom 5 million were British.

Over the course of the “war to end allwars” Britain lost about 750,000soldiers—approximately a ninth of thetotal—while the number of Irish men whodied fighting for the British empire was inthe region of 50,000. It is also estimatedthat 21 million were wounded, of whom1½ million were British.

British imperialism drew in millions ofmen from its colonies to fight for the veryempire that occupied their countries, anempire that had slaughtered millions,whether by mass murder, famines, forcedremovals, or slavery, who experiencedsavage brutality during the period of theircolonial and imperial domination.

The two imperial blocs that werelocked in that deadly embrace did so forglobal domination and control. Theycared little for the oppressed peoples andnations under Tsarist domination (theCentral Powers) or for the “freedom ofsmall nations” or colonised peoples (theBritish and French Allies).

Then, just as now, war was for thecarving up of world markets and thecontrol of resources and peoples. TheFirst World War was about class: classpower and control. It was fought toprotect imperial markets and colonies. Itwas a war that had been in the makingfor a long time before the first shots werefired in 1914.

Only foolish and ignorant people, nowas then, fall for British imperialpropaganda. Those who care to lookmore deeply must begin from a very

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THE RULING CLASS have alwaysused, and will always use,whatever means are at their

disposal to divide the working class. Thisis done to control them and to increaseexploitation and profits. We need to becognisant of this at all times.

Since the defeat of the Soviet Union,capitalism has gone into overdrive in aclass war around the world that they arewinning hands down.

There is no doubt that the open-border policy within the expanded EUwas not done in the interest of workers.Its aim was to “increasecompetitiveness,” i.e. to slash wages in aneo-liberal race to the bottom in fortressEurope. The rest of humanity, the globalsouth, which was plundered and pillagedto finance the development of thewestern world, was abandoned on thehigh seas.

This plunder goes on throughglobalisation, with 83 per cent of allgoods being manufactured in the globalsouth for slave wages and the profitsflooding back to the west. Freemovement of capital but enslavement forpeople.

44 per cent of workers in theEuropean Union today do not havepermanent employment contracts. 50per cent of workers in Ireland earn lessthan €30,000 per year. 50 per cent ofwomen workers in Ireland earn less than€20,000 per year.

This is in an Ireland where there aremore people working than at any othertime in history. Capitalism has noproblem with near full employment solong as wages are at poverty level.

8 per cent of Irish people live inconsistent poverty. 23 per cent of non-Irish people live in consistent poverty. 29per cent of non-EU people live inconsistent poverty. 51 per cent of youngIrish people have a third-level education.73 per cent of young non-EU citizenshave third-level education.

81 per cent of western EU citizenshave a third-level education. This isreflected in the fact that western EUcitizens have a higher employment rate(76 per cent) than Irish citizens (66 percent); but the non-EU have a much loweremployment rate: Africans 45 per cent,Asians 64 per cent.

CONTINUED OVERLEAF

Whoseborders?Jimmy Doran

Communist Party of Ireland Statement

9 November 2018

simple understanding of the reasons forwar, and its class character: what forcescaused the war, what classes waged it,what were the historical and economicfactors that gave rise to it, and whoseinterests it served. History shows us thatwar is inseparable from the politicalsystems that benefit from it.

The war could have been ended withpositive consequences if the oppressedthroughout Europe rose up against theirmasters, as did the insurgents of 1916,rather than serve slavishly in the imperialarmies. Instead the war brought about apermanent rift in the European working-class movement, with the emergence ofwhat is now known as social democracy,an opportunist ally of capitalism andmilitarism.

Now we have the grovelling by what isleft of Irish “nationalism,” in the form ofFine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party,and even sections of Sinn Féin, fallingover themselves to pay homage to theIrish men and women who served theneeds of the British empire. One wouldexpect little else from unionism, as it stillremains the most reactionary and pro-imperialist ideology influencing sections

of the people of Ireland.No amount of trying to understand

“the other side,” or wandering roundFlanders Fields looking at war graves,can take away from the simple fact thatthe First World War was not a noble orheroic event but the organised brutalslaughter of millions of people—mainlyworkers and peasants—while facilitatingand perpetrating the continueddomination and exploitation of tens ofmillions more.

At the end of that war we once againwitnessed the carving up between Britainand France of the spoils of war, withGerman, Austro-Hungarian and Ottomanterritories and colonies being distributedamong the victors. The Treaty ofVersailles laid the basis for the rise offascism and the Second World War. Onlyin Russia did the working class triumphand take state power and set aboutfundamental political, economic andsocial change.

The poppy promoted by the BritishLegion—a recruiting organisation for theBritish army—at the behest of the Britishstate is for celebrating militarism, thenand now. The British state does not seeany difference between those who diedbuilding its empire, those who dieddefending it in Europe during the period1914–1918, and those who died in theIrish War of Independence (1919–1921), the Third Afghan War (1919),Palestine (1940s), the occupation ofGreece (1946–47), the Korean War(1950–53), Cyprus (1955–59), Kenya(1952–1960), the Suez Crisis (1956),Malaya (1948–1960), Brunei (1962–66), Aden (Yemen) (1963–67), theDhofar Rebellion (1962–1975), thenorth of Ireland (1968–1998), theMalvinas War (1982), the Gulf War(1990–91), the Yugoslav wars (1991–2001), the Bosnian War (1992–95), theKosovo War (1998–99), Afghanistan(2001–2014 and continuing), and the

Iraq War (2003–2011 and continuing),together with those killed in secret warsin other countries round the world.

Those who will walk round the streetsof our cities, towns and villages wearinga poppy are more gullible than those whowent to fight in Flanders a hundred yearsago, as they do not have the excuse ofignorance.

The reason for the Irish state being soengaged with this centenary celebrationis directly connected with its continuingand deepening involvement with themilitarisation of the EU, through PESCO,and with NATO, not least our seventeen-year role as accessory to mass murder,from Afghanistan to Yemen, via ShannonAirport and Irish air space.

The limitations of nationalism areincreasingly exposed. Those forces withinIrish nationalism that sided with theBritish state and supported partition fortheir own material interests are stillacting in their own interests as they alignthemselves with the needs ofimperialism.

People can dress it up whatever waythey like, but the historical facts remainfacts: the First World War was a warbetween imperial powers, and the poppyis used by the British state and its warmachine to perpetuate its continuingwars of aggression and occupation andto finance its recruiting campaigns.

This is amply demonstrated todaywith British soldiers being paraded outduring football matches and other sportsevents to be honoured for their “brave”fight to defend imperialism’s interestsaround the world, and the British airforce being invited to fly and performaerial tricks at the Bray Air Show as partof the normalising of industrialised waras entertainment.

As James Connolly put it so well,“ruling by fooling is a great British art,with some great Irish fools to practiseon.” H

‘The poppy promoted by the British Legion—a recruitingorganisation for the British army—at the behest of the British

state is for celebrating militarism, then and now.’


Celebrating war shows the limits of Irish nationalism

IRELAND


Sombreassessmentfor unionismTommy McKearney

“Oxford Union votesdown motion onreunification ofIreland” read arecent headline inthe BelfastTelegraph.”

IT WAS the type of news storyguaranteed to warm the hearts ofdelegates gathering in Belfast a few

days later for the DUP’s annualconference. Coupled with the attendanceat the event of Conservative Partyheavyweights—the chancellor of theexchequer, Philip Hammond, and thebarnstorming Boris Johnson—it appearedthat the spirit of James Craig was smilingbenevolently on the DUP and itsassembled delegates.

Yet for all the self-congratulatorybackslapping there were more sombreassessments emanating from influentialvoices elsewhere within unionism. ArleneFoster’s party was suffering setbacks, theysaid, and the future of the Union wasproblematic.

While speaking at Knock MethodistChurch in Co. Down on the eve of theconference, a former leader of the DUP,Peter Robinson, informed those inattendance that in his opinion the unionwith Great Britain is not secure and thatunionists must actively engage with theiradversaries.¹ At the same time RobinSwann, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party,told the News Letter that unionism needsto win converts rather than push peoplefurther away, saying that this is “what theDUP seem determined to do . . .”

The very same week Alex Kane, aformer adviser to David Trimble, was

Whose borders?CONTINUED

16 per cent of Africans areunemployed, compared with 4 per cent ofpeople from western Europe. The totalunemployment rate is 5½ per cent.

We live in a very divided and unequalsociety.

The reason the Irish unemploymentrate is low is the large numbers who areretired, children, students, etc. This putsthe figures askew.

If you are European there is noproblem getting a job in Ireland, but if youare from Africa or Asia it is more likely thatyou will not. We too are building a wallagainst immigrants, but it is hidden.

Donald Trump may physically build awall between the United States andMexico; he may authorise the bordersecurity troops to shoot people attemptingto cross into America, or to ban all peoplefrom Muslim countries. At least Trumpditches the veneer of humanity and,unlike our Blueshirt regime, does itopenly.

He fails to mention, of course, theimperialist wars that NATO and its allieshave unleashed in every corner of theworld, creating massive numbers ofrefugees, or how capitalism has forcedmillions of people all over the planet toflee poverty, environmental catastrophe,and starvation. Given a choice, the vastmajority of people choose to live at home.

There is an endless portrayal ofimmigrants by the ruling class as beingscroungers and freeloaders. But the sameruling class are happy to exploit them bypaying them lower wages than localworkers, causing division betweendifferent groups of workers. But it is notthe immigrants who are driving wagesdown but the capitalist class—the samebosses who exploit Irish workers.

Restrictions on immigration neverwork. All they do is at best force the mostvulnerable people into the black economy,slave wages, and tenements, like the Irishin America, or, worse, to die in the oceansin the present-day equivalent of coffinships.

Lenin wrote: “The bourgeoisie incitesthe workers of one nation against those of

another in the endeavour to keep themdisunited. Class-conscious workers,realising that the break-down of all thenational barriers by capitalism is inevitableand progressive, are trying to help toenlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries . . .

“Only reactionaries can shut their eyesto the progressive significance of thismodern migration of nations.Emancipation from the yoke of capital isimpossible without the furtherdevelopment of capitalism, and withoutthe class struggle that is based on it.”

Unfortunately, we do not live in aclass-conscious society; but it is up to usas communists to strive to bring aboutthis class-consciousness and unity.

We must expose and fight against thereasons why people are forced to movefrom their homelands, namelyglobalisation, poverty, and war, which areproducts of the capitalist system.

Those who shout for restrictions onimmigration should struggle in the fight toend forced displacement, not to punishthe victims of capitalism. There is nocountry in the developed world that hasnot benefited from the plundering of thepoorest nations in the world. The mostdeveloped countries plundered the most.It’s called imperialism.

Our trade unions must organise allworkers, with or without papers, for equalrights—not a two-tier employment systemof local and foreigner. We are not here tosolve the problems of capitalism: we arehere to challenge it, expose it, defeat it.

We need unity of the working class tosmash capitalism and not be fooled andallow ourselves to be divided andconquered by it.

When we finally win socialism inIreland, should we reject it if the struggleis led by a Swedish person or a Cuban?Will only an Irish man or woman do? Inthe words of Che Guevara, “in my veinsflow the blood of Irish rebels.” Cuba hadno problem with a foreigner leading them.

Wolfe Tone singled out Catholic,Protestant, and Dissenter. In today’sIreland only unity of the working class willbe able to take power. Instead of Irish,Syrian, or Pole, let us substitute thecommon name of proletariat. H

saying not only that the DUP had been“deliberately, unambiguously shafted byMay and a majority of her Cabinet” butthat “only a fool would assume that theWithdrawal Agreement* couldn’t, albeitincrementally, lead to Irish unity.”

Powerful stuff, and offering littlecomfort to unionism.

However, conditioned from itsfoundation, and by its founder, to speakloudly rather than to listen or seekaccommodation, the DUP has traditionallyresisted meaningful engagement withother political parties in the Six Countiesor the Republic. Its electoral support wasbased largely on containing and resistingthe political agenda of Sinn Féin,regardless of what that party or its votersasked for. In the North this negativeprogramme has proved to be a winningformula for hard-line unionism, in theelectoral arena at least. “No surrender”and “Not an inch” worked out fine forthem, so long as little else was required,as all the while the DUP sought the returnof an idealised status quo.

The durability of such a strategydepended, among other conditions, onthe British government being tolerant of, ifnot indifferent to, deadlocked inter-partypoliticking in Stormont. In the absence ofan armed conflict, the political elite inLondon believed that the Irish in Belfastcould be allowed to disagree for as longas they wished.

This situation changed for the DUPwhen, after the last general election, theyentered into a “confidence and supply”arrangement with Theresa May’sConservatives. While gaining a limitedmeasure of influence over decision-making in London, Arlene Foster’s partyhas inevitably been drawn into the bitterinfighting over Brexit that is engulfing theTory party.

Not since the demise of the IrishParliamentary Party at the beginning ofthe twentieth century has a political partyfrom Ireland occupied such a pivotalposition in English politics. Yet that is atwo-edged sword. Long used to the stiflingworld of northern Irish politics, with itsvirtual absence of accountability, the DUPis now finding itself answerable forchoices it makes in the more challengingatmosphere of an internecineConservative Party feud. Whichever Tory

camp they side with will inevitably alienatethe other.

The Tory party is a coalition of theBritish ruling class, and all within it are notnecessarily in favour of Brexit. As aneditorial in the Morning Star recentlystated, divisions among the Tories revealdivisions in Britain’s ruling class, and woebetide those who back the losing horse inthis contest!² For all those who comecourting the DUP’s ten MPs there areothers who see them as a threat, to beremoved when necessary.

The next general election may alter thebalance of power through differentparliamentary arithmetic; but there areother options in the undergrowth.

Ominous for Foster and her colleaguesis the option of ending partition. Obviously,if Northern Ireland were to leave theUnited Kingdom there would be no DUPvoting in the House of Commons.Moreover, such a constitutionalrealignment would also, for some,temptingly negate the need for a“backstop” involving the border.

Both scenarios are, for the time being,hypothetical. Nevertheless, the certaintyof alienating at least one significantsection of the Tory party while offeringtemptation to elements in both campsmust make uncomfortable reading forUlster unionism.

Compounding their distress is thespectacle of divisions opening betweenthe DUP and Northern Ireland’s businessand farming sectors. For long, unionismhas viewed the business class as a solidand dependable constituency, generallysupporting the status quo but neveropenly critical of the dominant politicalparty’s economic stance. This changeddramatically when Theresa May offeredthe Six Counties a deal promising accessto both EU and British markets. The list offarming and business groups siding withthe prime minister was impressive; amongthem were the Ulster Farmers’ Union, theConfederation of British Industry inBelfast, “Hospitality Ulster” (the touristauthority), NI Retail Consortium, andManufacturing NI.

This is a powerful lobby offeringsupport for a deal that means (accordingto Nigel Dodds MP, writing in the IrishIndependent) “Brexit in name only or thebreak-up of the United Kingdom.”

Although Sammy Wilson angrilydescribed the business spokespersons asmouthpieces for the Northern IrelandOffice, his party leader knew better thanto gratuitously insult them. Foster movedquickly. Firstly, she blamed the media forcausing the divide, presumably forreporting the issue, and thereafterestablished a dialogue with this wealthysection of society.

Nevertheless, unionist confidence hasbeen damaged. An influential elementwithin northern society, many of whom areinstinctively pro-British, has indicated thatits fundamental loyalty is to its ownprosperity rather than to the Crown.

None of which means that the Six-County political entity is about to collapsein the near future. However, when taken inconsideration with other factors, such asrapidly changing demographics, Britain’saltered security requirements, and thefailed political institution that is Stormont,the prognosis appears terminal. We can atlast hold on to a reasonable hope that thestructure that paved the way for our longcarnival of reaction—south as well asnorth—is coming to an end.

A century after the publication of theDemocratic Programme of Dáil Éireann,the challenge for socialists is not to waitpassively for events, or to entertain anysense of triumphalism. There is work to bedone to ensure that we don’t endureanother century of reaction emanatingfrom a different source within the EU andsupported by a native bourgeoisie with itsheadquarters in Dublin.

James Connolly showed us the way,and his message remains as relevanttoday as when he sat writing at hisdesk in Liberty Hall. We must build aworkers’ republic that guarantees thewell-being of all working people livingon this island; and, as always, thatstruggle begins today. H

1 Sam McBride, “Peter Robinson in eveof conference warning to DUP on state ofthe Union,” News Letter (Belfast), 24November 2018 (athttps://bit.ly/2P1NzkW).2 Morning Star, Wednesday 21 November2018.*i.e. the arrangement for leaving the EUagreed by Theresa May with the othertwenty-seven members.

‘Not since the demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party at thebeginning of the twentieth century has a political party fromIreland occupied such a pivotal position in English politics’


COMMUNISTS


In late November the 20th International Meeting ofCommunist and Workers’ Parties took place inAthens.

These meetings have proved very important gatherings,invaluable in pulling together the communist parties around theworld after the overthrow of socialist power in the formersocialist countries. They have also helped new and fledglingrevolutionary workers’ parties that have emerged in the decadessince the first meeting.

This year more than ninety parties took to the floor to deliverpapers covering the very diverse struggles against imperialismand the struggle to defend and advance workers’ and peasants’rights facing the workers’ movement globally today. (Most of thespeeches can be found at www.solidnet.org/meetings-and-statements/imcwp/20th-international-meeting-of-communist-and-workers-parties/.)

There were strong exchanges of opinion, reflecting thedifferent material conditions experienced by communists at thenational level. Some parties that attended operate in conditionsof illegality at home, while other parties have begun to gainelectoral strength as well as experiencing growing influencewithin the wider working-class movement.

In relation to a number of speeches delivered at the

conference, or circulated, it is clear that the communistmovement needs to be vigilant against both right opportunismand left sectarianism. Both have the capacity to lead working-class forces into a cul de sac.

Left sectarianism is most pronounced in some parties andgroups from eastern Europe, while right reformism is mostpronounced in a small minority of western European parties,particular in relation to their understanding of the nature androle of the European Union.

The great crisis of 2007–08 shattered many illusions andopened a crack in the ideological superstructure of the rulingclasses in many countries, as well as damaging social-democratic illusions within workers’ organisations. This hasallowed for greater space for a more working-class, class-struggle politics to emerge and grow.

All continents were represented: Europe, Asia, North andSouth America, and Africa. Parties came from such countries asAustralia, China, Viet Nam, Laos, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,and most Arab states, including Palestine. A number of partiesmanaged to make it from Latin America, including Venezuela,Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. It is still very difficult for manyparties to get the necessary resources together to come to thesemeetings; yet, despite everything, our numbers are growing.

20th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties

World communist movementgaining in strength

‘The great crisis of 2007–08 shattered many illusions andopened a crack in the ideological superstructure of the ruling

classes in many countries...’


Many of the parties’ contributions illustrated the growingresistance globally of workers and peasants in very difficultconditions. Of particular interest was the intervention of theVenezuelan communists. Their delegate outlined the growingclass struggle and the increasing use of violence by reactionaryforces, including foreign mercenaries from Colombia, financedby big business and large landowners and agribusinesses. Hereported that in 2018 they have had six leading activistsmurdered, mainly those leading the farmers’ struggles.

The communists of Greece pointed out that their partystruggles “to take the direction of overthrowing the capitalistsystem, and in that direction it attempts to link the struggle ofall the sections of the working class as well as the popularmiddle strata, in order to improve working and living conditions.”

The Portuguese Communist Party pointed out that it wasnot in any electoral or parliamentary agreement orgovernmental positions in relation to the present SocialistParty government, stating that there is “a minority governmentof the PS [Socialist Party], a social democratic party, whichremains tied to the interests of big business and imperialismand whose alliances on substantive issues are with the partyof the Right.” In relation to the current global struggle forpeace, their representative called for strengthening “the anti-imperialist front” and stated that “building a broad andcombative peace movement is a fundamental task” at thistime.

The conference adopted an Appeal outlining the evaluationof the present world situation and the continuing struggles andthe importance of solidarity. A number of solidarity statementswere also circulated, regarding Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba,Cyprus, and Ukraine. (All statements are available onwww.solidnet.org.)

The final session of the conference was the adoption ofcommon and joint actions over 2019:l War and peace: Actions against NATO and the EU, tohighlight the dangers of nuclear weapons and to use theoccasion of the eightieth anniversary of the start of theSecond World War to raise workers’ understanding of fascism.l To counter anti-communism: To mark the hundredthanniversary of the founding of the Communist International.l International solidarity: To build solidarity with those peoplesstruggling against imperialism and facing occupation, threats,and intervention: Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.l Class solidarity: Solidarity with workers in struggle for labour,social and trade union rights.l Women’s rights: To continue to show solidarity and developactions supporting women’s struggles in the work-place; touse International Women’s Day as a platform for advancingthe position of working and oppressed women.l For political and trade union freedoms and democraticrights.l The environment: To raise the links between the destructionof the global environment and the destructive role oftransnational corporations. H

The Communist Party of Ireland was represented at theconference by its general secretary.

Challengesfacing theworkers’movementSpeech at the internationalcommunist meeting, Athens,by Eugene McCartan, generalsecretary, CPI

Comrades,Imperialism is mired in an ever-deepening crisis. At the global,regional and national levels the system is now enmeshed,through its contradictions, in several interconnected crises—economic, political, environmental, cultural, and moral.

It is the role of communists to bring clarity andunderstanding to the multiple crises facing workers: massunemployment, growing poverty, precarious employment,precarious shelter, precarious health, and precarious old age.

Communist parties are, of necessity, involved in the day-to-day immediate struggles of the working class, such as thedefence of wages and conditions, and must be the mostmilitant and determined protagonists in these struggles. Wehave a responsibility to base our activity in the context of ouroverall revolutionary strategy.

It must be admitted that our movement has not alwaysbeen consistent in this regard. Historical experience shows ushow easy it is to drift into the mire of reformist social-democratic thinking when concentrating on short-termobjectives, like the electoral cycle, posing the question “Whomdo we attempt to build alliances with and what goals do wewish to set ourselves?”

The challenges facing the workers’ movement globally arecertainly shaped by the deepening crisis of the capitalistsystem, a system that requires constant growth in conditions offinite resources. This growing scarcity of resources is forcing itto intensify the exploitation and destruction of the naturalenvironment, worsening global warming and affecting the livesof tens of millions of working people. It is becoming everclearer that there is no capitalist solution to the environmentalcrisis.

The crisis of the system continues to throw up difficultquestions and challenges, adding new urgency to the oldquestion of “reform or revolution.” We, as communists, are notopposed to reforms but to reformism, which tends to save oreven to strengthen capitalism.

CONTINUED OVERLEAF

IRELAND


CONTINUED

Attempts to manage these crises inthe interests of state-monopoly capitalismhave intensified class conflict, posing fourcore questions for the communist andworkers’ movement around the world: thenature of revolutionary transformation; thedefence and deepening of democracy; theprotection of a sustainable naturalenvironment; and the promotion of worldpeace.

The demands posed by theCommunist Party of Ireland are those thatwill lead to a transformation of our societyand shift the balance of economic andpolitical forces decisively in the interestsof the working class, to raise class-consciousness, demands that willstrategically open up and allow for thebuilding of the necessary forces toadvance to socialism.

State-monopoly capitalism has, ofcourse, its own reforms to pose: theundermining of national democracy,national sovereignty and workers’ rights bymeans of the centralising of control andpower in technocratic institutions, alongwith the removal of economic decision-making from democratically accountableinstitutions. These are not merely astrategy but a structural necessity for it tothrive. Keynesianism has outlived itsusefulness in this regard and is nowviewed as an obstacle to be removed.

The continued centralisation of powerin such institutions as the European Unionis also reflected in the transnationalagreements TTIP and CETA. Even thelimited forms of democracy experiencedunder capitalism have become ahindrance to the needs of state-monopolycapitalism.

These assaults on the limiteddemocracy experienced by the people,coupled with the constant attacks onworkers’ rights and living standards, areprovoking growing resistance globally asworking people begin to question themantra of “There is no alternative.”National governments have increasinglybecome gatekeepers of the interests ofglobal monopoly capitalism.

We can see the dual role that the EUplays in the protection of class interests atthe national and the EU level. The rulingclasses at the national level ceded powers

to the EU (thereby appearing weak) inorder to shield themselves and to dampdown national class struggles.

By presenting economic and fiscalpolicies as a fait accompli, deriving from“our” democratically agreed EU treatyobligations, they are able to argue thateconomic and fiscal policies are non-political and are mere matters oftechnical competence—all of this tosubtly reinforce the idea that there is noalternative.

This duality of the EU is expressed in:l EU competition law preventing state aidto national industriesl the “single market,” meaning little morethan the right of corporations to movecapital throughout the EU internal marketl intensifying economic competitionbetween EU member-states, creatinggreater momentum for liberalisation.

What capitalism needs to secure forits own survival, its own objectiveinterests, is the central purpose of theinternal market—that is, to increasedownward competition within Europe, itsvery own race to the bottom. The so–called “freedom” of movement is thefreedom for capital to exploit.

This also applies at the global level.We communists face the challenge ofanalysing and understanding the deepstructural changes necessitated bycapitalism itself. The drive for marketexpansion is approaching the limits of itscapacity for growth. Financialisation andmonopolisation have proved unable toovercome stagnation.

The constant drive to controlproduction and markets and to exploitnatural resources is already having adevastating impact on the lives of billionsof people, as well as causing thedestruction and elimination of thousandsof species of plants and animals.Irreparable damage has already beendone to the bio-diversity of our planet,ultimately threatening human existence.

Growing militarisation is yet anotherthreat to our planet, with such schemesas the European Defence IndustrialDevelopment Programme (€500 million),Military Mobility (€6½ billion), and theEuropean Defence Fund (€13 billion),along with Permanent StructuredCooperation (PESCO), all coming intoexistence in the last year alone. The Irish

government under PESCO will be obligedto upgrade and develop the Irish armedforces at a cost of an additional €6 billiona year.

The EU security and defence budget isto increase 22-fold in 2021, to €28billion. This is not including border control,with a budget of €21 billion for an armyof 10,000 border guards, or the manyother hidden billions that will aid in thedevelopment of the military-industrialcomplex in Europe.

This armaments industry was alreadyworth more than €97 billion in 2014 andemploys more than 500,000 peopledirectly and 1.2 million indirectly. It is anuntapped goldmine in the eyes of Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EUCommission, and many other EU officials.

France and Germany have some of thebiggest arms-manufacturing companies inthe world. EU arms exports amount toover 27 per cent of the world’s total,second only to the United States, whichexports 34 per cent.

Forces at the heart of the EU wantfurther fiscal integration, for tightermonetary controls, and a deepening ofmilitarisation. At the same time we arewitnessing a growing alienation amongworkers throughout the EU, with the EUitself and the decades-long austerityprogrammes that it has imposed.

It is a myth to suggest, as speechafter speech does, that “more Europe”will bring us closer to a “Social Europe.”Why have the social democrats and tradeunions always supported closer EUintegration? Because it was accompaniedby a social promise, sometimes implicitly.There was a belief that economicintegration would spill over intoneighbouring areas of politics andultimately bring about “Social Europe.”This has proved itself patently false.

The growing uniformity of the member-states has not prevented economicintegration from becoming increasinglyradical, but radical in the interests ofcapital; and this ultra-capitalism haspermeated every conceivable area ofpolitics. Yet some still argue that the EU issomehow salvageable. The submission tocapitalism is complete, and its roots aresafely entrenched.

Private providers see Europeancompetition law as a godsend. It is

‘The political demand for national democracy and sovereignty isthe ground upon which we can attack both the hard-nationalist

Right and the integrationist EU forces in the ruling class’


centred towards even furtherliberalisation, which is private enterprise’sultimate goal.

We know that European economicintegration serves to amplifyglobalisation.

And the working class know that theEU is the problem, but they are not clearwhy. Workers are reacting to their livedmaterial conditions. We must understandtheir (mistaken) sense of powerlessnessand the attacks on their living standards.We must reframe the discussion aboutthe EU in a way that makes sense oftheir worsening conditions and growingprecariousness in life, an analysis thatdoes not demonise their misgivings butrefocuses their anger into challenging thepower and control of capital.

If we do not speak to them andprovide them with this analysis, the Rightwill do it for us. That is where we canmake a strategic intervention, andpresent clarity where the Right can onlysow confusion and division.

The current crisis triggered by theBrexit vote, and now the publication ofthe terms and conditions of the Britishstate “leaving” the EU, are just anotherexpression of the growing contradictionswithin capital, in Britain itself, within theEU, and in the United States. Within theEU the balance of forces is shifting, andeach solution presented by the EUaccentuates those contradictions.

Both “remainers” within Britain andthe EU and “Brexiteers” have been usingBritain’s border in Ireland as a means ofsecuring their strategic positions. The EUand the remainers within the BritishConservative Party, with significantsupport among British Labour Party MPs,are holding on fast to the mantra of “noborder in Ireland,” and using the BelfastAgreement (1998) as a stalking-horsefor bringing this about, using the Irishnational question as a pawn on thechess board.

Meanwhile the Brexiteers of theBritish establishment are using unionismto lever May’s government into taking aharder line with the EU. At the same timethe Democratic Unionist Party have beenattempting to use the Brexit negotiationsto undermine the Belfast Agreement.Brexit has brought about a crisis in both

the British union and the EuropeanUnion.

The social-democratic Left as anorganised force continues to decline, butthat does not mean a weakening ofsocial-democratic ideas and illusionswithin the working class. Reformist forcesthroughout the EU are offering theworking class more of the same, moreEU and deeper EU integration, while theclass is looking for more accountablenational governments and to have theirvote mean something.

The Right appears to be capturing themood of the class, capitalising on thegeneral disillusionment with the EU,creating serious problems for ourmovement. While we fish in the samepool, we offer different solutions toworkers; but those solutions can makesense only when they accurately describeworkers’ experiences and reflect materialconditions. The Right offer easy andemotional answers, steering the classaway from concrete solutions thatchallenge the system itself.

The political demand for nationaldemocracy and sovereignty is the groundupon which we can attack both the hard-nationalist Right and the integrationist EUforces in the ruling class. We mustarticulate demands that give expressionto the real needs of the working classand provide a revolutionary way forward.

Another area that we need to look atis the role of the euro as a mechanismfor imposing fiscal controls by the centralcore countries on behalf of monopolycapitalism. Is this a possible structuralweakness that we can attack and soweaken the superstructure of the EU?

In Ireland the ruling class maintainsitself through an alliance with both theEU political establishment, providing aveneer of sophistication, andinternational monopoly capital, providingfake growth in GDP and some jobs in theeconomy. The position of our ruling classwas exposed in the case of the Apple taxdeal as a bankrupt state fights to givebillions away and make sure that Apple,and others, can continue to use Irelandas a tax haven.

Politically, the state and ruling classhave embraced liberalism as a means ofproviding for “democratic” debate in a

space safe for monopoly capital tocontinue to ride roughshod over workers’rights. Recent referendums on marriageequality and abortion, while verywelcome and progressive, are affordedfar more space than debates about ourtax regime or the public social ownershipof water.

Because there is a vacuum left by thecollapse of social democracy, this doesnot mean that we should move into thatpolitical swamp. Rather it is a time forgreater ideological clarity, greaterunderstanding of our enemy and itsgrowing contradictions.

At a conference like this weunderstand the common features of ourparties and movements; no matter wherewe are in the world we all fight for thedestruction of capitalism, the overthrowof imperialism. But it is also importantthat the very real material differences inconditions and the balance of forces inour countries be considered.

We need to re-establish trust andrespect among ourselves. Without theunity of communist forces we could missmaking a decisive contribution to theadvancement of our class.

This does not mean a unity of politesilence but a unity of respectful exchangeof experiences and discussion of ourdifferences, with an understanding ofthem.

It is through challenging each other indebate that we can all grow and developour ideology. This challenging does notlead to the abandonment ourrevolutionary ideology but to a sharpeningof it, for use in class warfare, a war inwhich solidarity will be the key. H

NEWS


DUBLIN Peace activists from around theworld gathered in Dublin from 16 to 18November for the First InternationalConference Against US and NATO MilitaryBases, organised by the Global CampaignAgainst US and NATO Military Bases. Themeeting was supported by the US PeaceCouncil and the World Peace Council andhosted by the Peace and NeutralityAlliance (PANA).

Up to thirty-five peace delegationsfrom Europe, the Middle East, Africa andthe Americas, comprising 350–400people, attended the three-day event andset out the negative issues caused by USand other NATO military bases that theyencounter in their countries daily.

A number of activists were not given avisa to enter our country, including Dr AkelTaqul of Palestine and delegates fromSerbia and the Philippines.

A press communiqué adopted by theconference states that delegates attendedfrom all continents and included speakersfrom Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain,Canada, Colombia, DR Congo, Cuba,Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany,Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan,Kenya, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, SouthAfrica, Turkey, and the United States.

As might be expected from our fake-news Irish media, no national newspaperreported on this major peace event, withthe honourable exception of the Examiner.

A number of speakers addressed thegathering, including Irish peace activistsinvolved in the campaign to closeShannon Airport to US warplanes. ClareDaly TD gave one of the openingspeeches. There were contributions fromleading peace campaigners, includingFulvio Grimaldi (journalist and warcorrespondent from Italy), Dave Webb

(British CND), Dr Stelios Sofocli(chairperson of the Pan-Cyprian PeaceCouncil), Silvio Platero (president of theCuban Movement for Peace andSovereignty of the Nations), SocorroGomes from Brazil (president of the WorldPeace Council), Bahman Azad (US PeaceCouncil), Roger Cole (chairperson ofPANA), Dr Aleida Guevara (Cuba), andIraklis Tsavdaridis (executive secretary ofthe World Peace Council).

One of the speakers who stepped in totake the place of the guest speaker fromPalestine was a People Before Profit TD,who abused the peace agenda of theconference by launching a verbal attackon Syria and, particularly, on Iran, which issurrounded by thirty-four US and NATOmilitary bases.

The United States today is the mainimperialist power in the world, responsiblefor about a thousand foreign bases in 172countries. This is approximately twentytimes the number of foreign military basesof all other countries in the worldcombined. In Africa alone the UnitedStates has a military presence in 53 outof the continent’s 54 countries under its“Africa Command.”

The countries with the second andthird-highest number of overseas basesare Britain and France, two of America’sprincipal NATO allies.

Besides the essential work of startingthe building of an international movementagainst US and NATO foreign bases, theconference recognised that it is onlythrough building an internationalmovement that an anti-war movementcan succeed.

Most delegates acknowledged that theDublin conference was probably thebiggest international anti-war meeting to

take place for a long time. All believedthat it was very timely, as our worldbecomes more and more unstable andthe growing military build-up by the UnitedStates, its NATO allies and the newPESCO militarisation of the EU pose gravedangers to both world peace and theglobal environment.

The conference adopted decisions ontwo important events that can help buildthis movement into a truly global anti-warmovement and to involve moreorganisations and the mass of people whoare concerned about the state of ourworld today. It expressed support for theglobal mass mobilisations being plannedfor the summit meeting marking NATO’sseventieth anniversary, which will takeplace in Washington on 4 April next year.These actions will include a mass proteston the weekend before the summit, 30March, and other conferences andmeeting leading up to 4 April.

The conference also expressed itssupport for the Cuban people’s decades-long efforts to take back their territory atGuantánamo Bay and for the SixthInternational Seminar for Peace and theAbolition of Foreign Military Bases, whichwill take place at Guantánamo on 4–6May.

The delegates did not confinethemselves to the conference room. Tworallies were also organised, the first one inO’Connell Street, outside the GPO, wheredelegates gathered to hold a rally. Thesecond peace manifestation took placeinside Shannon Airport. Delegatestravelled to Shannon when theconference ended to show their solidarityand to protest against the continued useof the airport by the US military and forCIA “rendition” flights.

International conference against military bases


Eugene McCartan Not true!!! I was there.

LONDON It was this writer’s privilegeand pleasure to attend the 55th congressof the Communist Party of Britain, held inLondon on 17 and 18 November, as aguest and representative of theCommunist Party of Ireland.

Well attended by comrades fromEngland, Scotland, and Wales, there werealso numerous international guestspresent, including representatives fromthe People’s Republic of China, theSocialist Republic of Viet Nam, the SouthAfrican Communist Party, the ProgressiveParty of Working People (AKEL) of Cyprus,the Lebanese Communist Party, and theCommunist Party of Greece. Greetingswere also sent by video from thePortuguese Communist Party and theCommunist Party of India (Marxist).

With such a wealth of internationalguests, the congress was a reminder thatas communists we operate as part of aglobal family, a worldwide movement ofsocialists striving to build a better worldand vastly improve the lives of workingpeople.

There was also a high number ofYoung Communist League members whoattended the congress. For many this wastheir first congress. Most had volunteeredto be stewards. It was encouraging tohear that their youth movement is thrivingand growing throughout Britain.

The congress opened with greetingsfrom the chairperson of the CPB, LizPayne, and the introduction of anexcellent political resolution, introducedby the general secretary of the CPB, RobGriffiths.

The political debate on the floor of thecongress was spirited and constructive. I

was greatly impressed that, through partydiscipline, they managed to move anddecide on each and every motion in thejam-packed congress agenda.

Comrades gave barnstormingcontributions, lambasting Tory austerity,the destruction of the social security netby means of “universal credit,” May’sbogus “backstop” deal—these were justsome of the motions that comradesdiscussed. Progressive motions were putforward arguing for peace, investment,and a people’s Brexit, and tactics on howto fight for these goals were examined.

A Q&A session was held to discussthe political situation in Ireland, and theroom wherein this event was held quicklyfilled up with British comrades anxious tolearn more about the situation here athome. Comrades were curious to learnabout the stance of the different partieson leaving the EU. They were also keen todiscuss the peace process, and wherethe potential stood for uniting Ireland.

On the Sunday I had the honour ofoffering comradely greetings on behalf ofJohn Pinkerton, national chairperson ofthe CPI, which were met withappreciation and applause. All were inagreement that now more than ever wemust build the relationship between ourtwo parties.

To this end I proposed a jointconference of young communists to bringtogether comrades from the YoungCommunist League and the ConnollyYouth Movement. Let’s bring them alltogether to the Marx Memorial Library fora weekend of education and socialising,to build bridges between our twomovements. This proposal too was metwith much nodding of heads andthunderous applause. H

Successful British communist congress

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PSYCHOLOGY


EMPATHY IS most often discussedin examples of its absence. Theidea of a human as unempathetic

is the stuff of nightmares, horror films,and late-night true-crimedocumentaries: the psychopathmotivated to kill by an innate evilimpulse.

Like most dramatic pop psychology,this is an oversimplification. Psychopathsare as man-made as most other “evils”that stalk this world. As it turns out, so isempathy.

Empathy, simply put, is the ability tounderstand and share the feelings ofanother. It is generally viewed as aninstinctive response in most healthy,neurotypical people—something theydon’t need to think about in order to acton. This trait appears among all culturesand languages and even among differentspecies.

But empathy is a bit more complexthan all this would suggest. It is alsobehavioural: that is, we learn toempathise, or, as the case may be,relearn it and unlearn it.

Neurotypicals react to mostinteractions with a blend of the so-calledinnate, “warm,” emotional empathy and

learned, “cold,” cognitive empathy. Warmempathy is the part of us thatimmediately wants to comfort or protectothers when we see them in distress andthat experiences joy at another person’shappiness. Cold empathy is bestdisplayed by medical workers throughtheir “bedside manner”: it is a copingmechanism that is learned and applied inorder to bring emotional empathy underconscious control.

Using warm and cold empathytogether helps people to arrive at aposition where they can react withemotion but also with a logicalunderstanding of others. Empathy isn’tjust about our feelings, or a knee-jerkresponse dictated by them: it is thetraining that helps us understand thefeelings of others and teaches us how tosee the world from another viewpoint. Itis also what allows us to rationalise forlong-term benefit against our immediateempathic response. The “punching aNazi” argument is one such: punching aperson now to prevent them fromengaging in more substantial violencelater.

The form taken by this blending ofwarm and cold empathy is shaped by the

society and the social norms within whicha person lives, as well as the codes ofbehaviour of their cultural, social andprofessional groupings.

This doesn’t always work out in abeneficial way. Daniel Goleman, author ofthe book Emotional Intelligence (1996),notes that torturers would need to havegood cold empathy to work out how bestto hurt someone. They would be peoplewho have in effect begun using coldempathy to rewire their warm empathicresponses to stimuli in an anti-socialmanner. Empathy without the empathy: aself-constructed sociopath.

Although Goleman is discussing aworst case—since we do use our“common sense” to handle our empathicresponses—there has to be a deeperexamining of the impact of the socialnorms of capitalism on how we relate toeach other as people. How is this“common sense” manufactured?

Living within an individualistic society,such as that of western Europe or theUnited States, shapes how a personunderstands and acts upon theirempathic response differently from thoseliving in more collectivist societies. SaraKonrath of the University of Michigan

Compassionate communists

Laura Duggan

‘Individualisation effectively destroys any motivation for challenging systemic problems

or solving them in a wholesale way’


suggests that the capacity for a person inthese individualistic societies toempathise effectively is muted orremoved. However, more recent studiesshow that this is a misunderstanding:empathy is merely reshaped forcapitalism’s benefit.

It is a bizarre manufactured empathicresponse that has some Irish peoplegenuinely concerned for the health andwell-being of a monarch in anothercountry but wouldn’t know theirneighbour to say hello to.

In a capitalist society that promotesindividualisation—leaving aside theobvious detrimental role that systemicracism, sexism, classism etc. has toplay—people are taught to relate on aone-to-one level, meaning that they onlylearn to empathise with other individualson an individual basis.

Narcissistic traits, which have beenshown to be increasing among youngpeople in capitalist societies since thelate 1970s, have exacerbated theindividualistic need to overplay oremphasise their own importance andplace a priority on showcasing their ownvalue and talent. This leads people incapitalist countries to the conclusion thatparticipation within groups where a visibleindividual impact is less likely to berealised is ultimately valueless.

“Social loafing” is the phenomenon ofa person exerting less effort to achieve agoal when they work in a group comparedwith when working alone. There are somesmall variants, with women less likely tosocially loaf; but generally people of anindividualistic mentality were found to doso almost automatically, no matter thevalue placed on the work. This is in directopposition to those of a collectiveoutlook, who fully participated in all groupsituations.

Individualisation effectively destroysany motivation for challenging systemicproblems or solving them in a wholesaleway. The cultural expectation makes itmore attractive for them to help thesingle concrete “victim,” for example onehomeless person, preferably in aninteraction that can be filmed, than toattempt to dismantle the capitalistsystem, which commodifies homes andleads to homelessness in the first place.This is the same world view that

promotes the “tragedy of the commons”thinking, which poses the notion that ashared responsibility is no-one’s.

This also means that, in the capitalistworld, a brain with a predispositiontowards anti-social behaviour, throughcircumstance (sociopathy) or genetics(psychopathy), is, in the best case, likelyto become a socially acceptable form ofGoleman’s torturer. In fact the use of coldempathy is often lauded as the means bywhich Wall Street businessmen and CEOsare able to so ruthlessly exploit workersfor their own and often others’ profit. Thisthinking shows how twisted the socialvalues of capitalism are, and howalienated people have become in such asystem.

Empathy is important because it isdirectly linked to pro-social behaviour andwith having a sense of socialresponsibility that enhances the lives ofboth the individual and the broadercollective, such as volunteering andparticipation in local projects andcommunity events, as well as a higherlikelihood of avoiding engaging in anti-social behaviour of all types, from rowdypublic drunkenness and littering tocausing harm to others.

The bystander effect and diffusion ofresponsibility are other social-psychological phenomena that can becombated by pro-social action.

As communists and Marxists weshould not be making base appeals to“man’s better nature”: we know thisbetter nature is a construct andcontingent on the society that constructsit. But using a Marxist analysis of theworld, and by working towards acommunist society, we can and shouldbe reshaping what expectations we placeupon ourselves and others.

It is not just the means of productionthat we must retake but the very way weview and relate to the world. It is notenough for us to state that the world isunfair, unjust, or cruel: we must strive tomake it fair, demand that it be just, andoffer compassion to the oppressed.

We must challenge the capitalistworld view, and we must do so in allareas of our lives, by taking action notjust for the betterment of the one but forthe betterment of all. H

CONNOLLYBOOKSEstablished in1932, it is Ireland’soldest radicalbookshop. ConnollyBooks is namedafter JamesConnolly, Ireland’ssocialist pioneer and martyr. H Irish history H politics H Marxist classics H feminismHenvironmental issues Hprogressive literature Htrade union affairs H philosophy H radical periodicals.

CONNOLLY BOOKS43 East Essex Street, between TempleBar and Parliament Street.Opening Hours: Tuesday to Saturday10.00 to 17.30

Nũgĩ wa Thiong’o turned eighty this year. He has writtenprolifically. Arguably his most famous (non-fiction) book isDecolonising the Mind, about the constructive role that languageplays in national culture, history, and identity.

The reclaiming of African languages as keepers of memory, ofAfrican history, became central to Ngũgĩ ’s post-colonial struggle.

Ngũgĩ’s epic comic novel Wizard of the Crow (2006), set inthe fictitious “Free Republic” of Aburĩria , scathingly describesthe corruption, brutality and self-negation of neo-colonial Africandictatorship. It outlines the experience of the African continent inthe twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the slavery of itspeoples, the colonial legacy as feeding into the neo-colonialpresent:

“The Ruler’s rise to power had something to do with hisalliance with the colonial state and the white forces behind it . . .His friends in the West needed him to assume the mantle of theleader of Africa and the Third World, for Aburĩria was of strategicimportance to the West’s containment of Soviet globaldomination. The Ruler accused the Socialist Party of forming onelink in the chain of the Soviet ambitions. Aburĩria did not fightWestern colonialism in order to end up under EasternCommunist colonialism, he declaimed . . . It is said that in only amonth he mowed down a million Aburĩrian Communists,rendering the Ruler the African leader most respected by theWest . . .”

The leader of the underground resistance is a woman,Nyawĩra, who emphasises a class understanding of society andthe need, and possibility, for change. This courageous personfinds a partner in Kamĩtĩ, whose opposition to the status quogrows over time as he gets to know and love her. Kamĩtĩ bringsto the relationship a tremendous amount of humour, awillingness to hide, heal and mock by impersonating a witchdoctor, as well as knowledge of the medicinal properties ofAfrican plants. Together they forge the main positive and hope-giving force in the novel.

They are supported by other brave people in the community,including some who grow into this role, some who change sides,and also those who do not betray. The most heroic among thoseresisting the many manifestations of the regime are women; infact a women’s court to punish perpetrators of domestic violenceis established as part of the Movement for the Voice of thePeople.

Nyawĩra puts this in Marxist terms: “Those who want to fightfor the people in the nation and in the world must struggle forthe unity and rights of the working class in their own country;fight against all discriminations based on race, ethnicity, colour,and belief systems; they must struggle against all gender-basedinequalities and therefore fight for the rights of women in thehome, the family, the nation, and the world . . .”

Throughout this satirical novel the West’s involvement withthe corrupt regimes in Africa is highlighted, here in particular withthe Global Bank, from which they hope to secure an enormousloan, which in turn will lead to unparalleled austerity. However,the country’s political instability ultimately prevents this. Whenthe country’s autocracy begins to crumble, the West plans amilitary coup.

Yet Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o rejects the Western journalists’favourite image of Africa. “They believed that a news story fromAfrica without pictures of people dying from wretched poverty,famine, or ethnic warfare could not possibly be interesting totheir audience back home.” He underlines the humanity of thepeople. Nyawĩra and Kamĩtĩ’s ability to laugh together at theabsurdity of the regime is in itself a sign of their strength.

By rejecting the generalised Western media Africanstereotype, Ngũgĩ enables the reader to draw parallels with otherdictatorships around the world, mentioning those of Marcos,Pinochet and apartheid South Africa at the very end of the book.

One of the most memorable moments in the novel is whenone of the characters on the government side becomes afflictedby a psychological condition that makes him want to becomewhite. Kamĩtĩ, as Wizard of the Cow, manages to “cure” him, ashe renounces his name and language, in an ironic self-imposedreplaying of the fate of the slaves.

Although the government men are corrupt, superstitious, andparanoid, as well as willing to kill indiscriminately for personalgain, they are not beyond grasping where all this will ultimatelylead to. “The Global Bank and the Global Ministry of Finance areclearly looking to privatise countries, nations, and states. Theyargue that the modern world was created by private capital . . .What private capital did then it can do again: own and reshapethe Third World in the image of the West . . . The world willbecome one corporate globe divided into the incorporating andthe incorporated. We should volunteer Aburĩria to be the first tobe wholly managed by private capital, to become the firstvoluntary corporate colony, a corporony, the first of the newglobal order.”

What is distilled in these extracts is written into the fabric ofthe novel, from where it inscribes itself indelibly in the reader’simagination and becomes much more. The text is enriched withAfrican fable-telling and humour.

And one thing is made perfectly clear: there is no magic. It isa hilarious, exciting and brilliant read; it is a masterpiece. H

NGũGĩ WA THIONG’O


Celebrating an African Marxist writerJenny Farrel

partisan patriotic internationalist h hh number166 ... · eugene mccartan reports p2. the dominant...

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