Socialism 2000, No. 3

Many thanks to Joan Collins who forwarded this to the Archive.

This document is reprinted, not because it is difficult to find online, it is available in full in text form, but because the Archive attempts to present documents as they were, in terms of the full printed publications in order to get a sense not just of the content but of the form.

This edition offers a strong critique of the IRA campaign by Ciaran Mulholland. He argues that:

The IRA’s war was strategically destined to fail and was politically a disaster for the working class . No other analysis is or was, from the outset, possible.

In the course of a long and expansive piece that touches on the Marxist analysis of the use of individual terrorism and examples of groups including Red Army Faction and Direct Action Mulholland argues also that the IRA ‘did have significant support’ but suggests that ‘The IRA campaign by alienating protestants totally and strengthening protestant reaction, made it more likely that Britain would stay, not less likely. If the Provos ever had achieved their objective of a British withdrawal the result would have been a sectarian civil war and repartition, not a united Ireland.’

Lynn Walsh examines “international Capitalism’s Economic and Social Crisis’ and suggests that:

All the contradictions of the neo-liberal adventure are manifest in the current downturn. It is not merely, or even primarily, a financial crisis: it is a deeply rooted crisis of capital accumulation, now expressing itself as a crisis of production.

And he continues:

The leaders of the advanced capitalist countries have been plunged into a crisis of policy.

And:

Capitalism will not be able to escape form its fundamental contradictions. Whatever the depth and duration of the coming world slump, however, the world economy will sooner or later, given the political weakness of the forces opposed to capitalism, move into a new period of cyclical growth. This will not allow the capitalist to repair the damage to the system’s foundations, and the ruling class will face mounting mass opposition to its rotten system.

Joe Higgins, then the sole TD of the SP, is strongly critical of ‘Deportations: the Brutal Side of State Racism’ in a short but very pointed piece that concludes:

Fighting deportations is the key task but it is not the only issue we face. There is also the forthcoming government legislation which represents a major assault on immigrant rights in Ireland.

There are two book reviews, one on Drugs and the other of John Pilger’s then latest work. All in all a cogent work that adds to the collection of Socialist Party materials already in the Archive.

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