International Women’s Day – solidarity and struggle

Maire Drumm

by Maire Drumm

(Maire Drumm is an activist in the Irish socialist-republican party éirígí and a former political prisoner; the article below first appeared on the éirígí site, here)

For many republicans and socialists in Ireland, on International Women’s Day our emphasis is often on the role women have played, and continue to play, in the struggles for national freedom, for social justice and for economic equality for all.

Ireland has a long and noble record of many women who played prominent and leading roles in those struggles. Women such as Betsy Gray, Anne Devlin and Mary Ann McCracken; the Parnell sisters; Maud Gonne; Countess Markievicz, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Winifred Carney and the many, many other less well-known but equally courageous women of those times.

From the original volunteers of Cumann na mBan, formed one hundred years ago in 1914, and the women volunteers of the Citizen Army to those who, in more recent decades, played a full part in a struggle for national liberation – the resilience, determination and valour of all those women remains an inspiration today.

In Ireland, women have had to constantly to fight on multiple fronts – to fight for national independence but also to fight against old-fashioned prejudices to demand equal status in the liberation movement and in society and to gain a voice in the political decision-making processes.

When Mairéad Farrell stated that Irishwomen had been oppressed both as women and as Irish people, she spoke an undeniable truth.

It is always worth reminding ourselves that International Women’s Day had its roots in the socialist movement of the early 20th century. It was a

The real meaning of International Women’s Day

Russian women (and men) celebrate International Women’s Day in the early years of the revolution

by Terry Bell

Saturday, March 8, was International Womens’ Day (IWD).  And it was celebrated around the world, mostly in a manner that would have the founders of the day spinning in their graves.

The history of this day has its origins in the labour movement and this has largely been lost or distorted.  What began as a struggle for human emancipation has today become yet another commercialised celebration of specific gender improvements within the status quo.

The major IWD website, sponsored by banks and energy companies BP and e-on maintains that “the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration”.  This is because there are “female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women. . . have real choices”.

As such, many trade unions will join with politicians and big business in hailing greater gender equality in parliaments, boardrooms, even the military, as the aim and success of IWD.  But the fact that some women have broken through “glass ceilings” to claim equal status with men in no way reduces the wage and welfare gap, the horrendous conditions under which

Is capitalism past its use-by date?

by Michael Roberts

Back in September 2012, I wrote a post on whether capitalism is a mode of production that just suffers a series of crises, booms or slumps, or is instead (or also) a system that will eventually break down and collapse when it passes it ‘use-by’ date.  I think I still hold to my tentative conclusions in that post
(http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/crisis-or-breakdown/).

In that post, I referred to a paper by Robert J Gordon, a professor at North-Western University entitled, Is US economic growth over? – see http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 and http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-economic-growth-over.

In that paper Gordon argued that the rapid technological progress under the capitalist mode of production in the last 250 years is now over.  Growth in real GDP per capita, at least in the US economy, will be slower that in any extended period since the Civil War.   Gordon argued there are six headwinds that will slow future innovation: an

New Zealand parliament crawls up Nuland’s arse

by Don Franks

On March 4th, New Zealand’s Parliament unanimously backed a motion from Foreign Minister Murray McCully expressing “deep concern” at the Russian Federation’s “violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

He said it was in breach of its international obligations and called for steps to de-escalate tensions including the withdrawal of Russian troops back to base, and the “promotion of dialogue among the affected parties”.

As a small country, New Zealand depended “on good institutions and rules to promote constructive international conduct”, Mr McCully said. “What has happened in the Crimea in recent days challenges basic concepts of acceptable international behaviour.”

Indeed.

Except that our united parliamentarians have forgotten one little detail in their rush to express deep concern.

We have the word of none other than US undersecretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, Victoria Nuland, that Washington led the charge to twist the internal affairs of Ukraine. Last December Nuland admitted

Solidarity with the women of Iran

by Yassamine Mather

This year March 8, International Women’s Day, coincides with the 35th anniversary of the first major protest by Iranian women against Iran’s Islamic regime in 1979.

Although women played a crucial part in the revolution that overthrew the shah in February of that year, Iran’s clerical rulers wasted no time attacking the little that existed in terms of women’s rights and imposing new forms of gender repression, including legalisation of polygamy, temporary marriage (sighe), forced veiling, segregation. . .

The following years saw violent attacks against what Islamists called ‘poor’ or ‘bad’ hijabs, which were deemed to insufficiently cover the hair – Hezbollah thugs even took to throwing acid in the face of women they regarded as too

Marx’s critique of classical political economy

Adam Smith and David Ricardo: the giants of political economy

by Geoff Pilling

It seems hardly necessary to stress the fact that Marx was among the warmest admirers as well as the keenest students of that trend in economic thinking for which he invented the term ‘classical political economy’. It is important to remember that Marx used this term in a way radically different from that of many later writers, in particular Keynes. By classical political economy Marx meant to designate that strand in economic theory originating in France with Boisguillebert (1646-1714) and in Britain with William Petty (1623-87) and reaching its high point with the work of Smith and Ricardo (1772-1823) who ‘gave to classical political economy its final shape’ (Marx, Critique of Political Economy). It is important to keep this definition in view because the term ‘classical economics’ has often been used in a much broader sense – for Keynes it was a school embracing all those who, following Ricardo, subscribed to one version or another of Say’s Law, who believed, that is to say, in the self-regulating nature of capitalist economy.

On such a definition, classical economics culminated with Marshall and Pigou. (For Marx’s characterisation of classical economy, see Marx, 1, footnote.) Marx was always conscious of the enduring achievements of this school when contrasted with the work of the ‘vulgar school’, which emerged in the period following Ricardo’s death. In Marx’s estimation, classical political economy constituted a decisive stage in the investigation of the capitalist mode of production; around 1830 this phase begins to draw to a close, a close intimately bound up, for Marx, with the appearance of a new social and political force increasingly conscious of itself, the working class. Marx did not, of course, mean to imply that in a somewhat mystical manner the modern working class ‘killed’ political economy. Rather he wished to stress that the methodological limitations of classical political economy increasingly paralysed it in the face of this new phenomenon.

The ahistorical nature of political economy

The fact that political economy was unable to grasp the significance of the emergence of the working class and the implications of its struggle against capital only underscored, for Marx, the grave methodological and philosophical weakness which he detected in the work of Ricardo. For Marx’s considerable respect for the classical economists should not blind us to the fact that he saw in them a series of weaknesses which were to prove fatal. It is, of course, the case that the attack upon Ricardianism after 1830 was increasingly inspired by narrow ideological and political considerations, a point rightly stressed by Meek (1967). And such attacks were sharpened by the fact that a trend within the emerging working-class movement (‘Ricardian Socialism’) tried consciously to deploy Ricardian theory as a weapon against the capitalist order. But this is by no means the end of the story. For it is also undoubtedly the case that the opponents of Ricardo (Bailey is a good example) were able to seize upon real, unresolved, contradictions

Labour gains, workers lose

by Don Franks

The more I consider Matt McCarten’s appointment as Labour’s Chief of Staff, the more upset and angry I feel.

The prospect of any unionist promoting the fortunes of a smarmy, pampered careerist like David Cunliffe is chunderous, but that is the least of it.

The most prominent left union official in the country has signed on with the main political force in the country binding workers to capitalist ideology.

Matt is now charged with helping to spread political deception which will hurt the working class. Such as the Labour lie that universal super at 65 is unaffordable.