The sixth 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!
European capitalism was exposed in all its weakness earlier this summer. After months of boastful statements, Ursula von der Leyen was forced into a humiliating capitulation in the face of Trump’s threats.
The EU will now have to swallow 15 percent export tariffs into the US market, scrap import duties on US goods, and commit billions to buying American energy and weapons. And you can bet, Trump will be back for more.
This is only the latest episode in the unravelling of the so-called ‘liberal world order’. In just 8 months, the average tariff rate imposed by the world’s biggest importer – the US – has rocketed from 2.5 percent to 18.6 percent, the highest since the Great Depression!
Born of crisis, the mounting tariff war is now pouring fuel onto capitalism’s global blaze. The World Bank forecasts 2025 as “the weakest run for the global economy since 2008, outside of recession years.”
And this is by no means confined to economics. Wars and militarism, the genocide in Palestine, sharpening imperialist rivalries, and mounting social instability are all stoking the contradictions of capitalism, threatening to burst through with full force.
For Ireland – a country so utterly dependent on the world political and economic situation – the implications are dire. The fragile fabric of Irish capitalism is at risk of being torn to shreds.
Ireland and the ghost of crisis
And yet, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, with a straight face, hails how we have supposedly “avoided a damaging trade war” with the US. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig!
Ireland now faces 15 percent tariffs on its biggest export market. Worse still, Trump singled out Ireland’s role as a base for American Big Pharma, threatening tariffs of 150 – even 250 – percent on pharmaceuticals “within a year, a year and a half at most.” That would spell utter disaster for the Irish ruling class.
Indeed, despite the distorted and near-meaningless GDP and export figures trumpeted for 2025, the early warning signs are already visible. From June to July, we saw the sharpest monthly rise in unemployment since the pandemic. It now stands at 4.9 percent – 12.2 percent among the youth. Still, official figures obscure the full reality: the number of people who want work, but are not actively seeking, has surged by 48 percent in just two years.
While still far from the worst days of the debt crisis, the direction the wind is blowing is unmistakable. Behind the facade, the government is clearly rattled. Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe admitted as much: “I’ve never seen the kind of uncertainty we have at the moment.” The ghosts of 2008 are coming back to haunt them.
In preparation for the oncoming disaster, the government is preparing a ruthless offensive against the working class to save their own skins. At the time of writing, they have pledged to scrap cost-of-living supports in the upcoming budget, even as food inflation sits at 4.6 percent, energy prices climb, health insurance rises, and house prices surge by 12 percent in a single year.
The pressure on workers is mounting, while the government, the landlords and the capitalists parade their opulence to the struggling masses. But a stick can only bend so far before it snaps. The ground is being prepared for a reignition of the class struggle across Ireland. The indefinite strike called by school secretaries and caretakers may well be a sign of things to come!
North: revolution and reaction
20 years ago this summer, on 28 July 2005, the Provos announced the end of the armed struggle. Soon after, they decommissioned their weapons, endorsed the PSNI and the St Andrews Agreement, and paved the way for Sinn Féin to enter into power-sharing with the DUP in 2007.
None other than ex-Taoiseach and gombeen-in-chief Bertie Ahern cheered Sinn Féin’s move at the time, chanting about the bright future awaiting the North: an end to paramilitarism, and “prosperity” built on “reconciliation and a final end to violence.” Today, it reads like a sick joke.
The statelet lurches from one crisis to the next. Infrastructure is collapsing across the board. The NHS, as one Derry GP put it, “has already failed and no one has a plan to fix it.” Sectarian riots, racist pogroms, and the continued grip of loyalist paramilitaries demonstrate how shallow the “peace process” truly was.
Meanwhile, the tariffs’ differential between the EU and UK threatens to bring back to the spotlight the question of the border and all the contradictions unresolved since Brexit. Now committed to a constitutional road, Sinn Féin – despite being the most voted party in the Six Counties – can do little but comply with the dictates of Westminster. The only alternative is to break with capitalism and British imperialism altogether, but they are not willing to do that.
The crisis is acute, and the working class is desperately looking for an alternative. However no channel exists for it on the political front, and the trade union bureaucracy is working overtime to bottle it down.
Anger is therefore finding a most reactionary outlet among the extreme fringes of Unionism, with rising racist and sectarian violence. On the other hand, we see radicalisation on the streets, around Palestine, state repression, legacy questions and the continued sectarian nature of the statelet.
As the crisis deepens, the spectres of revolution and counter-revolution grow stronger side by side.
Build the RCI
Revolutionary events will reach Ireland’s shores sooner than many expect. The key task is to build a genuine Bolshevik organisation well in advance of these events.
In the last year, the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland have made some decisive steps forward. We now count more than 60 members, organised in 8 branches across the country, with a growing full-time apparatus. In August, we were voted in as the official Irish section of the Revolutionary Communist International at its World Congress.
As the new academic year begins, hundreds of young people – who have known nothing but crisis – will be searching for a revolutionary channel for their anger. The Revolutionary Communist International is fighting in over 60 countries to build an organisation and fight against imperialism and for world communism.
If you agree with the ideas in this paper, our appeal is simple: join us. Events will not wait.
