Guerrilla Communists
Socialist Voice Review
February 2026
The February edition of Socialist Voice takes up where the January edition finished – a new collection of opinion pieces, statements and various book reviews etc, with no apparent connective tissue within the editions.
In “Irish Establishment Running Out of Road on Sovereignty and Neutrality” Jimmy Corcoran concludes his piece on imperialism with “The task for socialists is not to choose between Washington and Brussels. The task is to build an independent, internationalist class politics. This means, firstly, unmasking the bourgeois campaign to destroy neutrality as a drive for deeper imperialist integration. Secondly, defending and radicalising the principle of neutrality as a platform for anti-imperialist solidarity, opposing all military alliances and wars of plunder. Finally, organising the working class to challenge the capitalist model itself, which ties us to imperialism. The crisis of imperialism creates not only dangers but also opportunities to break the ideological chains of Atlanticism.”
Naturally, Corcoran does not expand on what the opportunities are or on how to exploit any such opportunities. He alludes to building and organising opposition to imperialism but fails to provide even a hint on how any of these tasks might be started or developed.
In another example of this lecturing without substance Fionn Wallace in “The Transatlantic Alliance Is Alive and Kicking” ends the piece with “The legislation that will bin the Triple Lock, end Irish neutrality, and put our children in harm’s way will be voted on in the Dáil in the coming weeks. Let them know you will know who to hold accountable when the body bags start coming home.”
Again, no hint on how to do this nor any assistance with either encouraging or developing the specified activity.
Similarly, in “Attack on Venezuela: Statement of the Communist Party of Ireland” the article ends with: “We call upon all those concerned with the defence of Irish neutrality and the retention of the Triple Lock to mobilise and intensify our efforts to block its removal and to advance the demand that neutrality be enshrined in the constitution.”
Once again, no hint or assistance on how this mobilisation might be organised. This is a CPI statement, not an individual contributor who could be forgiven for not being able to show a way forward.
Indeed, the lack of urgency in progressing any defence of Venezuela in the article is exposed by the fact that it took the party one month to produce a statement in Socialist Voice on Venezuela after the abductions of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Adela Flores.
There was still no statement on the matter in its website by the date of this publication (26 February) – 7 weeks after the event.
Not to be outdone in the lecture hall that is Socialist Voice, Eugene McCartan in “The Caracas Crisis: Imperial Aggression and the Lessons for the Left” ends an otherwise interesting piece with “Going down conspiracy rabbit holes constructed by the state’s ideological apparatus is of little value; it only allows them to decide what happened and how it happened. It disempowers us and is a victory for anti-working-class forces.”
How might readers gain some empowerment and what might they do with any such power? It is simply unforgivable for a seasoned campaigner to lead people to the top of the hill – and leave them there. Again!
Freddy Anubis in “When a Union Teaches You to Lower Your Expectations” writes about the ineffectiveness of SIPTU in handling a redundancy case. We do not dispute a word in the article but we again remind our readers that Socialist Voice is on shaky ground (as is the CPI) in publishing any criticism of the trade union movement.
Considering the recent abhorrent conduct of leading party members who are also prominent in their trade unions – engaging in secret trials within the party, failing to employ established trade union mechanisms in resolving disputes despite having no such internal alternatives among a litany of other gross misconducts – it takes some neck to publish such criticisms.
In doing so, they again invite us to remind them – and our readers – of their sordid past and their continuing sordid present. It also exposes their apparent oblivion of the concept of hypocrisy.
See: When it all goes wrong Trade Unions and the CPI and Communist Party of Ireland (Groucho Marxist) in disarray
Finally, in “Billionaires Are Not Wealth Creators. They Are Poverty Creators” Eoghan O’Neill tells us that “The billionaire is not a moral aberration or a failure of regulation. The billionaire is the logical outcome of capitalism itself.” He backs up his argument with “…..the idea that billionaires are wealth creators, that their fortunes are justified because without them there would be no jobs, no innovation, no prosperity.
“This belief is not just misleading. It is ideological.
“Billionaires do not create wealth. They hoard it. More precisely, they appropriate it. Their fortunes are built on the systematic transfer of value from those who work to those who own. They do not generate prosperity for society; they capture a growing share of what society already produces. In material terms, they are not wealth creators at all. They are poverty creators.”
And, “Billionaire wealth is therefore not income from work. It is income from ownership. It is the legal right to claim a share of what others produce, year after year, without doing the work themselves.
“This is not a distortion of capitalism. It is capitalism functioning as it is supposed to function.”
And, “Once this is understood, the relationship between extreme wealth and poverty becomes clearer. Billionaire fortunes grow through low wages, high rents, privatised services, monopolies, financial speculation, and global supply chains built on cheap labour. Every increase at the top corresponds to pressure elsewhere in the system: longer hours, higher bills, weaker services, greater insecurity. This is not coincidence. It is how accumulation works.”
And, “The billionaire, then, is not an exception to capitalism. They are its most concentrated expression.”
And finally, “The growth of billionaire fortunes is not evidence of success, innovation, or efficiency. It is evidence that the system is functioning exactly as designed.”
We do not disagree with the essence of the article and we accept that the selected quotes do not provide a fully accurate description of his entire argument. However, the word “China” kept popping up in our heads as we discussed the article.
Of course, the figures we now rely on can be disputed to some degree or other but the fact that billionaires and millionaires exist and thrive in China cannot be disputed. Using the figures we quoted in October, 2025, China had 406 billionaires and 6.3 million millionaires (in US dollars). See A love letter to China
A question immediately presents itself: do the principles applied to billionaires (and millionaires) in capitalist countries by O’Neill apply also to billionaires and millionaires in ‘socialist’ China?