Podcast: Is the cure for Ireland’s ills a 32 County Socialist Republic?
national |
anti-capitalism |
news report 
Friday November 26, 2010 16:22
by freelance
kortatu5 at hotmail dot com
Public debate's podcast. 25th November, Belfast.
Organised by Queen's University Students Society Comhdháil Poblachtach.
Is the cure for Ireland’s ills a 32 County Socialist Republic?
Public debate 25th November, Belfast.
Organised by Queen's University Students Society Comhdháil Poblachtach.
150 people from across Ireland and abroad attended. Among the audience there were Republicans and Socialists from many different organizations and none. Unfortunately there were only 10 women in the room.
There was a heavy presence of uniformed police officers inside the venue and outside and a Loyalist bomb threat was ignored by the audience.
Speakers (in this order; 10-15 minutes speech each):
Daithí Mac An Mhaistír- Éirígí
Brian Hanley- Author of ‘Lost Revolution- The story of the Official IRA and Workers Party’
Eoin O’Broin- Sinn Féin and author of ‘Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism’
Anthony McIntyre- Author of ‘Good Friday- The Death of Irish Republicanism’
Podcast (2 hours and 45 minutes): http://www.archive.org/details/IsTheCureForIrelandsIlls...ublic
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3"Is the cure for Ireland’s ills a 32 County Socialist Republic"
The idea that socialism would cure ALL possible ills stems from the concept that capitalism causes all possible ills. And that's fairly obviously not so since human societies have been beset with a variety of ills long before capitalism.
You might want to discuss in what way you would expect socialism to help with your current ills (the sad reality that your desired level of programs costs more than you take in so you need to borrow to keep afloat). Remember, you can't simply assume that you can take the wealth of the few and that distributed would be enough. The problem is that you can take it away form the few (so that they no longer have it) but no guarantee that you then have it available. Much of it could dissipate into nothingness. Wealth isn't something with material existence. Not a fixed quantity of some substance. It's existence depends upon the state of an economy.
In other words, you need to describe your situation as it would be in terms of material goods and services produced, traded for other goods, and consumed. Explain how if not currently enough, socialism will increase THIS quantity.
PS -- this is NOT intended as being in any way, shape, or form an arguement against socialism. There are ills (inequity of distribution of the goods of a society) that socialism DOES address.
Dathaí cleaned the floor with Eoin who for the first time admitted that the Socialism constitutional Sinn Fein refer to is in fact no more than strenous taxation of the rich.
Correctly the Eirigi front man pointed out the potential in the 1% initiative, which O Broin tried to palm off with a disingenious reference to capital being held in German bank accounts and not Dublin mansions.
I had tried to intervene and point out that Eoin's form of 'Socialism' could only last as long as PSF would have powers of taxation, unfortunately there was no time.
Mackers was as sharp as ever despite being half tore and bringing a double whiskey to the top table, politics with style, a great night well worth braving the bomb scares for.
At a recent 30th Hunger Strike anniversary meeting in Cork one of the speakers openly threatened the life of Richard O'Rawe.
The well known Shinner in reply to a question about Ricky's claims that the leadership allowed six strikers to die for political
advantage completely lost the plot and said.
"Richard O'Rawe is taking his life in his own hands, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was found dead some night.''
When he realised that The audience were totally stunned at this comment, he qualified his remark by saying,
"he wouldn't be surprised if someone came up behind Ricky and hit him with a branch or a iron bar on the back of the head."
The speakers were Sile Darragh, Seanna Walsh, and Leo Greene.
Indymedia Ireland is a media collective. We are independent volunteer citizen journalists producing and distributing the authentic voices of the people. Indymedia Ireland is an open news project where anyone can post their own news, comment, videos or photos about Ireland or related matters.