The following article by Eoin Ó Murchú was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
WE live, in both parts of Ireland, in a dysfunctional system that is manifestly failing to meet the needs of the people. But, while the powers that be indulge their sectarian differences, or subordinate all policy to the profit drives of their class backers, the world around us is changing.
The US and NATO's attempt to reassert itself as the world dominating power has come a cropper, with NATO's failure to defeat Russia in Ukraine and the even more spectacular failure of the US to crush Iran.
It has all backfired, with the US and the Western Atlanticists weaker than ever. The global south is shaking off the last ties that subordinated it to the West, Africa is kicking the French imperialists out and Russia, China, India and Iran are challenging US power as equals demanding a new world order.
But just as Nero fiddled as Rome burned, the politicians carry on with the old squabbles as the world around them changes. This doesn't happen by accident of course. Our politics, North and South, are dominated by the interests of the property owners and profit makers. And it is the workers, North and South, who pay the price and carry the burden.
Yes, Westminster has criminally underfunded the North, giving it just enough to remain a reserve fount of labour and food for the British market, but not enough to allow the working people of the North, Catholic and Protestant, build a society that will guarantee all of us prosperity and proper services.
In the South, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael contemptuously dismiss the concerns of working people. The housing crisis, for example, continues unabated and unresolved. But even worse is the fact that while they talk of increasing the number of housing units (not homes but units) they ignore the need to make these units big enough for comfortable living, and do nothing to integrate the provision of schools, medical facilities, shops, restaurants and sports amenities into new housing areas. This is in stark contrast to the way housing was dealt with under socialism.
In the 1960s the USSR launched a massive housing programme, but in every case the building of homes was matched by the provision of schools, shops and other facilities.
That is what planning – planning in the interests of the working class – can do. Capitalism can't because capitalism is only interested in private profit.
But the deeper malaise is that the certainties that guide policy – for Sinn Féin as much as for the DUP or Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael or Labour – are disappearing as we speak.
Europe is in acute economic crisis, with Germany – the industrial powerhouse of the European Union – now in recession as Europe's lack of innovation leave it trundling in China's wake with the great German car industry cutting back severely as China's electric cars rule the roost.
Sanctions against Russia have magnified the problems – for Europe, not for Russia. Gas supplies from Russia at low prices have been replaced by liquid gas from the US at five times the price. No wonder Europe is in recession. Yet still, our political leaders see no way forward but to grab the coat-tails of a disappeared British Empire (the DUP and other Unionist parties) or those of a disappearing Western imperialism.
The West, especially Europe, is no longer a world power house and any future for the Irish people lies in finding a new way. We should work with Europe and the US where possible, but also with Russia, with China and with the Global South. We should use the respect in which Ireland is held because of our anti-imperialist credentials – the first people to take on and take down the British empire- to win new friends and markets.
But that means fighting for Independence as well as Unity, rejecting the EU as well as Britain.