With tens of thousands of workers feet on the streets in Ireland this past week , North and South, angry with the excesses of capitalism, republican socialism can provide an acceptable alternative and build on the justifiable anger at capitalism. I think workers are becoming more conscious than ever that the "Celtic Tiger" had a sharp tail when it turned and even if there was another 'boom' there would inevitably be another crash and aras aris, aras aris until workers take control to negate the spiral of misery. I honestly believe that Irish workers have come to understand the true nature of capitalism. It took the 'boom' of the 'naughties' followed by slump to help them realise that capitalism creates few longterm winners, an affluent worker during a period of plenty will be a poor worker or an unemployed worker when capitalism takes its course.

If capitalism was personified, it would be a psychiatric patient and it would certainly be someone suffering from chronic Bi-Polar disorder aka Manic Depression! The hypermania of the bi-polar patient in a 'macro' sense is like the boomtimes of capitalism;extreme activity, greed, egotistical, grandiosity only in the financial sense with capitalism. Followed of course by the longer lasting extreme 'depression.' Then mood stabilisers are prescribed to even up the 'see-saw' effect - with capitalism as a 'patient' this could be viewed as the reformist, piecemeal, Fabianist approach of liberals & social democrats but it will not work longterm with our chronic 'patient' Capitalism! Revolutionary action is required, our patient 'capitalism' is subjected to 'E.C.T' and sometimes, in the right epochal conditions, this revolutionary action/shock treatment does work & because of the extreme conditon of our patient Capitalism, revolutionary treatment is needed.

© Iskra November 2009

 “If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle., unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs”.

James Connolly, from Socialism and Nationalism in Shan Van Vocht, January 1897