Podcast: Is the cure for Ireland’s ills a 32 County Socialist Republic?

by The Man - From God knows where Sat Nov 27, 2010 01:53

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.

by Ciarán Murphy - amhránaí Fri Nov 26, 2010 21:17

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.

by Mike Novack Fri Nov 26, 2010 17:01

"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.