The seventh issue of the Revolutionary Communist is now out! Read the editorial of this issue below, and set up a physical or digital subscription now. Or meet us at one of our regular stalls to buy a copy directly from our comrades. Every subscription and paper bought will help us strengthen the revolutionary press, produce more regular articles and analysis, and advance the fight for communism in Ireland!
The ink was barely dry on the last issue of the Revolutionary Communist when a new wave of mass and revolutionary movements erupted in country after country.
The astonishing scenes from Indonesia and Nepal – with the youth fearlessly taking to the streets in mass and even storming government buildings – were soon followed by similar movements in Timor-Leste, Madagascar, Peru, the Philippines and Morocco.
The so-called ‘Gen Z’ revolutions have joined the growing list of struggles that have shaken the world in recent years – like in Bangladesh and Kenya last year, and Sri Lanka before that.
At the same time, the Palestine movement was given a new lease of life in September when, in response to the IDF’s attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla, the Italian working class exploded into a general strike. Millions poured into the streets. The slogan “Block Everything” – born in the struggle against Macron’s government in France – spread like wildfire across Europe.
Mass demonstrations for Palestine took place in Spain and the Netherlands, while Greece and Belgium saw general strikes against government counterreforms. In Ireland, we witnessed the largest Palestine demonstration since Israel’s renewed terror campaign on Gaza. Countries that seemed calm at dusk awoke to record protests at dawn.
The message is clear – and must be a final answer to all those cynics who, like a broken record, lament the so-called ‘passivity’ of the working class. Beneath the surface, the anger of workers and youth is a volcano waiting to erupt. Only a small tremor is needed to set it off.
And make no mistake. Though the process will be protracted and marked by many ebbs and flows – this is only the beginning.
Towards another crisis?
At bottom, beneath these upheavals lies the impasse of world capitalism.
The truth is that seventeen years after the unmitigated capitalist disaster of 2008, none of the underlying problems have been resolved. On the contrary, the squeeze on workers and youth has only intensified.
And now, once again, the situation is turning worrying for the strategists of capital.
Combustible material is piling up at the very foundations of the world economy: in the AI-driven speculative bubble, in the fragile private credit system, and in economies mired by inflation, gutted by overproduction, and chained by unprecedented amounts of debts – all within a fracturing world market.
A new 2008 is well on the cards, but this time it will strike a system already crippled by crisis. If and when that happens, the repercussions for the class struggle will be even more explosive than what we have seen so far.
It is imperative for communists to understand the developing situation and prepare for the struggles ahead. As Trotsky once explained, Marxist analysis gives us “the superiority of foresight over astonishment.”
It is for this reason that the current issue of the Revolutionary Communist dedicates key articles to analysing the state of the world economy and its implication for the class struggle in Ireland.
In particular, we draw our readers’ attention to the centre-page article, “What the stock market bubble can tell us about the state of the US economy.” Through facts, figures, and arguments, it lays bare the stark contradiction between the rapidly inflating AI market bubble and the stagnation in investment, thus revealing behind a facade of unprecedented market prices an economy terminally sick.
As the article concludes: “we are on the precipice of another recession, and nothing is a more striking indicator of that than the stock market.”
Ireland
We believe such analysis is particularly relevant for communists in Ireland – a country so heavily dependent on American capital and, above all, on the Tech sector. To paraphrase an old saying, when the American economy will sneeze, Ireland will catch pneumonia.
The Irish ruling class is already discredited in the eyes of millions of Irish workers and youth. The presidential election, when their candidate could muster only 11 percent of the vote, was a striking illustration of this fact. The emperor is naked.
As explained in the “Presidential election: a thundering rejection of the establishment”, they got a battering from all sides – from record first preferences for Connolly, from a record-breaking spoil-your-vote campaign, and from historically low turnout.
And how could it be otherwise? Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the entire establishment are responsible for the terrible crises destroying the lives of millions – in housing, healthcare, education, and the rising cost of living across the board.
But the situation is about to get much worse.
The government is responding to the frail international situation by attacking workers while handing out even more concessions to bosses and landlords. Yet as we discuss in “Death by a thousand cuts: the budget and the economic storm” this will not solve the underlying problems of Irish capitalism.
In the long run, the government will be left with the worst of all worlds: a deep-seated class fury and an unravelling economy.
What is to be done?
To summarise: at the end of September we witnessed a mighty wave of struggles breaking out as the continued afterpains of the 2008 crisis. But at the same time, a new, much more devastating crisis looms on the horizon. Taken together, it paints quite a picture of the state of world capitalism at the end of 2025.
This can only lend an even more explosive character to the class struggle internationally, and at home. Events happening in Nepal today will happen in Ireland tomorrow.
The first duty of communists in such a situation is to understand the processes at work – the direction of travel of world capitalism and the development of the class struggle. We hope the articles in this issue of the Revolutionary Communist will help equip revolutionaries with the tools needed to begin in this task.
But more than that: we don’t want to be mere commentators on events. Revolutionary communists must strive to become an active factor in the political situation. For that, we need to build a sizeable organisation capable of acting as a lever for the powerful ideas of Marxism.
The RCI is actively fighting all across Ireland to achieve this goal. On the back of the tumultuous events shaking the world, hundreds and thousands are open to be won by the ideas of communism.
In just a few years we have strengthened our organisation from 5 to 75 members. Our immediate goal is to reach one hundred by the spring – and from there, to launch a struggle to become a significant force in Irish politics in the years ahead.
