Irish Marxist Review

Family Values

2023-12-12T14:24:28+00:00

The opening sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s famous 1878 novel, Anna Karenina, declares what while “[a]ll happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. In Anna Karenina the greatest factor in determining happiness is1 loving ‘correctly’. For Tolstoy, appropriate love is, familial love, linked in the novel to nature, spirituality, and childhood, experienced within the traditional family structure and centred on the continuation of the family unit. While ‘unhappy families’ undoubtedly provided Tolstoy with the narrative grit required to sustain his 800 page novel, he shows little interest in the invisible substructures that sustain this ‘happy family’ he cherishes so dearly. For the feminist writer Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), it was the reverse of Tolstoy’s dictum that reveals a more profound truth about the family under capitalism. Those who speak of stable, ‘happy families’, Le Guin suggests, conveniently ignore the ‘substructure of sacrifices, repressions, suppressions, choices made or forgone, chances taken or lost, balancing of greater and lesser evils’ that create the foundation of familial happiness. This is not wilful ignorance; it is rooted in structures that mean women often make more sacrifices, harder ‘choices’, in the interests of the wider unit. The happiness of men and children often comes at the expense of women, and as Sophie Lewis notes, the attendant unhappiness can feel unique, but only because its structural quality, like the structure of capitalism, is obscured from view.

Commodity Feminism in Barbieland

2023-12-12T14:44:11+00:00

The commercial success and pervasiveness with which Barbie has entered the cultural zeitgeist is undeniable. As of October 2023, Barbie has made approximately $1.44 billion internationally, making it the highest grossing film of 2023. Additionally, it is the highest grossing film by a female director ever, the highest grossing film ever released by Warner Bros., and the 14th highest grossing film of all time. The film’s impact on sales for Mattel has also surpassed the expectations of analysts, who predicted a large increase in revenue after the release of this film/marketing campaign. The commercial success and pervasiveness with which Barbie has entered the cultural zeitgeist is undeniable. As of October 2023, Barbie has made approximately $1.44 billion internationally, making it the highest grossing film of 2023. Additionally, it is the highest grossing film by a female director ever, the highest grossing film ever released by Warner Bros., and the 14th highest grossing film of all time. The film’s impact on sales for Mattel has also surpassed the expectations of analysts, who predicted a large increase in revenue after the release of this film/marketing campaign. According to their estimates, ‘Sales grew 9.3 percent to $1.92 billion, exceeding projections of $1.84 billion, as shoppers snapped up Barbie dolls and other mainstays like Hot Wheels cars.’ Mattel has devoted a new section of its online merchandise store to products related to the Barbie film where consumers (or more likely their parents or guardians) are able to purchase a wide array of Barbie themed products, from dolls of the main characters in different outfits to the pink Corvette Convertible that Barbie drives in the film. Much like in the narrative of the film, Barbie has given herself (and the brand she represents) a complete make-over, she has seemingly transcended her previous self, both in aesthetics and in character. Indeed, Barbie has come to be considered a symbol of women’s liberation in popular culture, from patriarchy and sometimes, surprisingly, even from capitalism. It is impossible to deny the impact of the Barbie movie. But what does the film really impart to the audience about the condition of women in contemporary society?

Sinn Féin’s Southern Strategy

2023-12-12T14:14:34+00:00

Outside the glare of publicity, Sinn Féin (SF) leaders have embarked on a new project. They are meeting business lobby groups and multinational firms to offer an assurance that a Sinn Féin led government will be supportive. In September 2022, Mary Lou McDonald travelled to Silicon Valley to meet senior executives from Google and Salesforce. She said that ‘winning FDI [foreign direct investment] and strengthening our business relationship with the US will continue as a key component of Ireland’s economic strategy.’ Housing spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin has met landlord lobby groups and builders. Pearse Doherty, the party’s Finance spokesperson, summed up the message when he claimed that big business has nothing to fear from a Sinn Féin government. “They know that Sinn Féin isn’t going to go after them,”

Climate Chaos

2023-12-12T14:36:44+00:00

We draw close to the end of 2023 in a state of ever worsening environmental crisis. CO2 levels are now at record levels, reaching an all-time peak of 424 parts per million in May of this year. We reached a global average temperature record on 3 July 2023. Antarctic sea ice was at its lowest point on record this year. On top of this, we are facing a number of potentially catastrophic tipping points that could cause runaway climate change and environmental breakdown. A Nature Communications study on the Gulf Stream estimates that a collapse could “occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions. The Gulf stream, or Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), is vital in regulating the climate system and its collapse would have “severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region”. Another tipping point is the potential fallout from methane released as a result of melting permafrost in the rapidly reducing polar ice caps. There is potential for methane gas equivalent to 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide to be released, provoking a temperature rise of up to 0.5°C.

In the AI of the Beholder

2023-12-12T14:28:28+00:00

There are many readily available definitions of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A simple Google search will provide endless results ranging from the deeply technical and scientific, to descriptions in more understandable language. From TV ads to academia, AI has suddenly become a major talking point. Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google's Bard, it has also taken the world of popular culture by storm. But AI is not new. The concept, science and technology of AI have been evolving since the 1950s. Hollywood movies have played their part in popularising the ‘fantastic’ world of AI, as has the mainstream media. This article looks at the historical context around technological advancement and tries to take stock of some of the hype around it. Will Artificial Intelligence be the game changer it is being heralded as? To what extent will it change our societies? How will it affect workers and work practices? How will it affect people’s lives? None of these questions can be answered definitively, of course, but with so much written on the subject, this article is meant to give readers an introduction to AI in its essentials.

Chile 1970-73

2023-12-12T14:19:49+00:00

On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet, flanked by the leaders of the armed forces of Chile and backed by the Cardinal, appeared on television to announce that they had seized power in a military coup. Hawker Hunter planes had already bombarded La Moneda, the presidential palace in the capital, Santiago, where Salvador Allende, the president elected in 1970, was trapped with his closest supporters. He died later that morning. Part of the political mythology of Latin America is that military coups are frequent. It is true of some countries, but Chile had a reputation as a stable bourgeois democracy, with regular elections and a professionalised army. Since 1973, Chile has become synonymous with repressive military regimes that torture and murder trade unionists, peasant farmers and students, like those of Uruguay and Argentina in the 1970s. Chile, it seemed, was a model to be followed.

Seán O’Casey

2023-12-12T14:39:43+00:00

Seán O’Casey gave a voice to those who are rarely heard: the poor, the dispossessed, the tenement-dwellers, whose lives he shaped into works of art. Their very presence on the stage is their claim to justice and a better future. He was a socialist, a humanist and an exceptional writer who put politics at the centre of his work, insisting that the writer can be a transformative force in society. Exiled to England at the age of forty-six, O’Casey sent his blasts and benedictions across the world for the rest of his life. As Richard Watts has pointed out, however, ‘his anger was based, not on his dislike for mankind, but on his love for it’. 1 Dismissing his political beliefs does O’Casey an enormous disservice as a writer and a human being. O’Casey was one of the most political writers of his generation, constantly exploring the frontiers between literature and politics. Like his friend, George Bernard Shaw, O’Casey wrote for a purpose. His life reflects the history of the early twentieth century, a period shaped by two great political ideals: nationalism and socialism. History and politics were woven into the fabric of his life – they gave him focus and shaped him as an artist.

Science, Capitalism & Catastrophe

2023-12-12T14:32:54+00:00

Given the precarious place our species occupies, Byron’s deathly vision and Wollstonecraft-Shelley’s caution against scientific hubris feel alarmingly apposite. We face extinction threats on multiple fronts: from catastrophic climate change to nuclear annihilation. Indeed, the world Byron describes bears an uncanny resemblance to that predicted by scientific models of nuclear winter. There is good reason for this. Scientists have applied the lessons of volcanic eruptions, like Mount Tambora, to model the likely climactic effects of nuclear war. It is now well understood that even a relatively small nuclear exchange (a regional conflict between India and Pakistan, say) involving only about 0.03 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, would send enough soot hurtling into the stratosphere to cause global crop failures and cataclysmic famine. This is without even considering the blasts themselves or the effects of radioactivity.

Book Reviews

2023-12-12T14:53:47+00:00

"The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798" by Claire Mitchell, reviewed by Jim Larmour
"Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex" by Sophia Giovannitti, reviewed by Sadhbh Mac Lochlainn
"What is Antiracism and Why It Means Anticapitalism" by Arun Kundnani, reviewed by Eamon Rafter

Editorial

2023-12-12T14:10:49+00:00

On October 7, the façade of peace in Palestine was shattered when thousands of Hamas fighters entered Israel, tearing down fences erected to cage them and tearing down the complacency of the Western elites who have ignored the plight of the Palestinians for a decade. The figures for casualties are disputed, but there were certainly hundreds killed, including soldiers and civilians. More than 200 prisoners were also taken. Israel was quick to denounce Hamas as a death cult; a terrorist organisation hellbent on killing Jewish people without any wider objective. In reality, Hamas was reacting to two overriding geo-political challenges – a near twenty year blockade of the Gaza Strip and the immediate possibility that relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be ‘normalised’, leaving the Palestinians ever more isolated and forgotten.