Red Writers

An Open Letter To The University Philosophical Society

2011-09-14T22:28:00.004+01:00

Fellow debaters,

It is with disappointment that I write to complain about the University Philosophical Society's irresponsible decision to invite BNP leader and Holocaust denier Nick Griffin to speak at a debate on immigration. Griffin's ultra-right racist political views and involvement in fascist organising are well-documented, and undoubtedly well-known to the committee. The threat he and his party pose to immigrants, ethnic minorities, queer and trans people is both real and pressing. While in the short term, the BNP is unlikely to gain power and carry out their policy of forced deportation of blacks and Muslims, even modest success is enough to encourage hate crimes both by members of the BNP and others on the far-right, both in the UK, and in Ireland. The sense of legitimacy afforded by an invite by a debating society, particularly one as prestigious as the Phil, directly contributes to the momentum of these groups. Moreover, appearances by far-right speakers in events such as this are strongly correlated with increases in the incidence of hate crimes in the surrounding areas. These dangers are particularly acute in times of economic crisis, where 'blame the immigrants' rhetoric offers an easily-understandable explanation for complex socio-economic processes.

'Free speech' controversies such as this occur with depressing regularity in the debating community, and play out in a ritualistic manner: Some debating society, in an attempt to assert their commitment to freedom of speech and/or provoke a debate about the limitations of freedom speech (or, if I'm being cynical, to stir up controversy for the sake of publicity), invites a well-known fascist to address the house. Predictably, anti-fascist, anti-racist and immigrant groups come out strongly in opposition. The debate itself is of little importance as a debate (since an interesting, informative and nuanced debate would not involve Nick Griffin) but rather as the centrepiece of a dramatic narrative with the society's committee in the centre defending the open society against the illiberal forces of unfreedom - immigrants, racialised minorities, and the anti-racist movement - with the fascist playing the hapless victim who just wants the opportunity to present his opinion. This inverted ontology, in which racialised minorities become the oppressors and the racists the victims, is a recurring trope of racist discourse - the ordinary white man as victim of imagined multiculturalist hegemony - and is a consequence of the elevation of abstract principles ('freedom of speech') over concrete realities (people's lived experiences of racism).

Of course, we are always told, the fascist will not be given an uncontested platform, but rather will be robustly challenged by invited guests and society debaters. Having invited the fascist to speak regardless of the views of minorities and anti-racists, the debaters now adopt the pose of anti-fascism (white knights to the rescue!) and (rhetorically) confront the fascist as principled defenders of multiculturalism. By taking on both the anti-racists and the racists, the debaters consolidate their self-image as supremely rational intellectuals, through their performance elevating themselves above the vulgar irrationalism and illiberalism of the antifascist struggle, brave defenders of universal values against the murky contingencies of subjective struggle. If only these minorities would rationally argue that they shouldn't be deported en masse to the Third World because of their ethnicity, rather than trying to undermine our free speech utopia!

This is a perspective steeped in privilege. It's easy to be in favour of free speech for fascists when you're not the one whose humanity is called into question, and when you're not the one whose life and safety is under threat from the growth of far-right groups. Posturing aside, there's nothing particularly brave about forcing other people to take the risk in order for you to maintain your consistency in applying an idealised schema of rights and freedoms. Only in a worldview that invisiblises racial hierarchies does it make sense to conflate the 'right' of fascist groups to organise with the concept of freedom.

In any case, have we not been here already - dozens of times? Have we not already had the meta-debate about the limits of debating? Have we not already explored the boundaries of freedom of speech through the performance art ritual of the fascist in the debating chamber? Can we not have a debate about a complex issue like immigration with descending into Marilyn Manson-esqe transgressive theatrics? There's plenty of people with important things to say whose perspectives we're ignoring because we're too busy focusing on the fringe lunatic, not least those for whom racism is a daily lived-reality rather than an opportunity for a publicity stunt

Complaint to TV3 Re: 'Ireland's Bogus Beggars'

2011-08-16T14:53:00.003+01:00

The following is the text of my complaint to TV3, following the broadcast of 'Fiddling The System: Ireland's Bogus Beggars'. I'll post up their reply if/when it is received.

To whom it may concern,

I wish to register a complaint about the irresponsible decision to broadcast 'Fiddling The System: Ireland's Bogus Beggars', on a number of grounds:

1. The dehumanising, animalistic, racist language used to refer to Roma beggars throughout. Roma women were described as travelling in "packs" or "swarms", terms which usually refer to dogs and insects respectively, rather than in "groups", and the city was described as "teeming" with Roma beggars, a term normally reserved for vermin and microbes. Precisely this kind of language is used by racists to dehumanise and otherise members of ethnic and racial minorities, and should not be used by journalists/presenters.

2. The uncontested platform given to members of far-right hate groups. The programme devoted substantial airtime to White Nationalist (i.e. Neo-fascist) Michael Quinn, of the Democratic Right Movement and Ted Neville of the Irish Solidarity Party, in which to promote a racist anti-Roma agenda. Michael Quinn was allowed to call for all Roma immigrants to be denied entry to the country and all Roma currently living in the country to be deported, purely on the basis of race. The "robust" challenge to these views by the programme's presenter, of which other complainants were assured, failed to materialise. Simply asking whether a member of a White Nationalist hate group is racist is wholly insufficient. Their comments amounted to incitement to racial hatred, and should not have been broadcast.

Predictably, the DRM have been encouraged and emboldened by the free publicity given to them by your station. A post on the DRM's forum today read:

"Michael did well, I can see people who are sick of Roma typing "democratic right movement" into their web browsers and see what we're about. If they are truly sick of what going on in Ireland we have won a number of extra supports.

We've already received a few positive emails, and it nice that it's another kick in the backside for those who try to silence us just because we want to keep Ireland for the Irish."

3. The exclusivity of the focus on the Roma. While the closing frames of the show may have said that there are no longer any links between Roma "begging gangs" and other forms of organised crime, the racist stereotype associating Roma with agressive begging, with choosing begging as a lifestyle, and with criminality was throughly reinforced by the programme based on flimsy evidence.

From the outset, a distinction was drawn between Roma beggars - who were cast in a sinister light - and white Irish beggars - who were presumed to be in legitimate need, and who were never associated with aggressive or organised begging. No investigation was attempted into whether white Irish beggars were involved in this kind of begging, rather, it was assumed to be exclusively a Roma phenomenon.

Moreover, the evidence used to prove that this specific form of begging is endemic to the Roma community did not support that conclusion, and it was only through careful rhetorical and cinematographical framing that the programme was able to give that impression. The sequence where the presenter was seen to be harassed by a group of Roma women took place after the presenter deliberately sought to engineer a situation of conflict in order to support his predetermined conclusion. Similarly, the use of hidden cameras to provide evidence of organisation did no such thing; the fact that a group of Roma women leave and return to their home at the same time proves nothing other than that they know each other, and that they leave the same place at the same time to carry out the same activity. To draw any deeper conclusion is merely supposition, based on a thoroughly unscientific methodology, which should not have been presented as fact.

I look forward to your reply,

Sincerely,

Aidan Rowe

TV3's reply

Dear Mr Rowe,

Thank you for your correspondence regarding Fiddling the System: Ireland's Bogus Beggars. We have investigated your complaint regarding the content of the promotion in question and the programme to which it refers.

We believe that the programme itself was fair and balanced. We are aware of the reputation of the individuals about whom you are complaining and would like to state that they were not afforded a platform to promote their agenda in an unchallenged manner. We feel their views were adequately challenged by our journalist. In order to create a balanced programme we must allow all sides of a debate to air their views, however disagreeable they may be.

Furthermore, the programme's focus was on organised begging, not the Roma community in general. However, the programme contained frank interviews with members of the Roma community to allow them an opportunity to dispel the myths that surround their culture and way of life. A full investigation into the background of the Roma community and historical prejudice towards them would have been inappropriate in the context of the focus of the programme and to cover that issue would have taken up time enough for a programme on its own.

You will note that the conclusion was not "predetermined" as you assert, in fact that the conclusion of the programme was that there was no criminal activity involved.

We note your comments in relation to the DRM, however considering the conclusion drawn in the programme we cannot see how the DRM can feel that they have achieved anything from their appearance on the programme.

TV3's coverage of this issue was in compliance with law and internationally accepted standards.

Regards,

TV3 Complaints

On Provocation, Israel, and Gaza

2011-06-29T17:45:00.007+01:00

Last May, when a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza was attacked by Israeli commandos, killing nine people, the response from the general public was one of mass anger and condemnation of what was correctly perceived as a heinous crime. The Israeli propaganda machine seemed to have been caught on the back foot, and was only able to respond with a series of crude and racist smears: These murdered humanitarian activists were Muslims, so, of course, they were terrorist sympathisers determined to drive the Jews into the sea.

Now, once again, a flotilla of ships plans to defy the illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip, and Israel is determined not to suffer another propaganda defeat. Across the world, establishment politicians are lining up to defend Israel in advance of whatever measures the IDF takes to prevent the ships from reaching their destination (already, one of the ships has been sabotaged in a Greek port, while another has been prevented from sailing based on spurious accusations that it isn't seaworthy). US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already declared her support for Israeli soldiers exercising their "right to defend themselves" against "flotillas that try to provoke action by entering into Israeli waters." (source) One need only remember Operation Cast Lead to understand what the Israeli exercise of their "right to defend themselves" means in practice. Meanwhile, "senior Israeli sources" are claiming that "extremists" on board were planning to "spill the blood" of Israeli soldiers, despite the floatilla's commitment to non-violence. (source) The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said that the flotilla aimed to "promote an agenda of provocation" and "warned ahead" that the sail could "only spell trouble". (source)

In Ireland, Labour Councillor Richard Humphreys, parroting the Israeli propaganda line, said: “I fully support the call by Tánaiste Eamonn Gilmore that all sides must avoid the completely unjustified violence associated with the last flotilla. In my personal opinion, the responsibility for that violence rests with the Turkish terrorists who attempted to kill and injure members of the Israeli Defence Forces in front of their colleagues. No defence forces anywhere in the world that are worthy of the name would have responded to that murder attempt with anything less than immediate and potentially lethal force.” The fact that those Israeli soldiers were attempting to illegally seize a ship in international waters seems to be besides the point in Humphreys' "personal opinion". (source)

In short, then, in the eyes of the political establishment, Israel is entitled to enforce its Naval Blockade of Gaza, and anyone who attempts to defy the blockade are trying to "provoke Israel" and presumably deserve what they get, even if that includes being murdered.

But of course, in official doctrine, the right to defend oneself in the face of provocation only works one way. When a group of human rights activists attempts to deliver vital supplies to a besieged people, that is an act of provocation, but when a group of heavily armed commandos attempt to illegally board a ship, no right to defend oneself exists. - the occupants of the ship must simply go along with the instructions of the IDF-pirates, and hope they don't end up being tortured in an Israeli prison. Nor can the blockade itself, declared illegal by the numerous UN resolutions, or the illegal occupation, or the illegal building of settlements in the West Bank, or the theft of Palestinian water resources, or the annexation walls, or the use of white phosphorous, or the regular kidnap of Palestinians, or any of the other crimes of the Israeli State ever be discussed as provocations of the Palestinian people, who have no right to self-defence, non-violent or otherwise.

Update: The Irish ship to Gaza MV Saoırse was attacked by Israeli divers earlier who tried to sabotage her. Dr Fintan Lane said an Irısh Shıp to Gaza press conference wıll be held at tomorrow mornıng (Thursday) to present evıdence of the (lıfe-threatenıng) sabotage of the MV Saoırse by Israelı dıvers: 11am, Buswells Hotel, Dublın. More detaıls wıll be released then.

Reform or Revolution (reflections on the ULA)

2011-06-27T01:18:00.037+01:00

This is a partial response to some of the concerns raised in this article by the communist party of great britan. The piece is worth consideration on the grounds that the misconceptions within are endemic on the left. The author (Anne McShane) correctly claims that Ireland needs a new revolutionary party; the ULA (it is argued) provides no such scope. The SWP in particular are credited with attempting to prevent the ULA establishing itself as a revolutionary organization; ''In essence the SWP wants a “radical” (non-socialist) party which is “broad and democratic”. The SP, on the other hand, wants the ULA to adopt a “a socialist plan and a plan for economic development”. The insinuation that the SWP tact towards reformism is based on a common misapprehension which il address here.

McShane highlights an important tactical difference between the SP & SWP; but draws an incorrect conclusion about the objectives of the latter. The SWP; advocate a united front; ie. aim to create a space for leftists to partake in struggle & develop their ideas through interaction with the revolutionary left. To this end the SWP urge against an explicit revolutionary socialist program. The consequence of this tactic will be to establish a broad membership; with an expanding socialist nucleus which radicalizes more moderate elements. McSahne needs no reminder that this is how the bolsheviks advanced within the RSDLP. The SWPs (long term) aim is to develop the front into a vehicle for revolution; but this will only become possible once we ascertain enough support to advance on that basis. In order to ensure this, we need to remain as open as possible, resisting the tendency to erect barriers through the imposition of ultimatums on those who can (and will) move towards socialism through struggle.

The communist party (like the SP) take a formal approach which can lead to isolationism. They propose that the ULA establish itself on a revolutionary program. This however would hinder its capacity to engage broader sections of the population. While a formal orientation towards revolution might seem radical at face value; it would (in practice) alienate many who through a broader configuration could move towards socialist ideas over time. In this respect; the sort of abstract revolutionism advocated by the communist party is a dead end; it would sacrifice our ability to radicalize large numbers on the alter of tactical purity. This is an error made by many on the left; who stagnate under the dead weight of their own morality. Ordinary people wont be convinced of socialism through an abstract document; rather the development of a full program will be the consequence of concrete experience.

The immediate task facing revolutionaries is to convince people to fight for concessions that the current system is incapable of providing. Trotsky referred to such calls as (transitional demands). McShane (due to her failure to differentiate between reformism & transitory propaganda) misconstrues the SWPs approach as a type of ''reformism'' when she claims that ''the last thing we need is a neo-Keynesian attempt to construct ‘socialism’ in Ireland''. In actual fact; the appeal & application of transitional demands leads to a revolutionary juncture. Economic initiatives to cancel the debt; socialize developers assets; nationalize key industry & impose capital/price controls are transitional demands insofar as they cannot be gained within the constraints of the current system. To this extent certain ''reforms'' are revolutionary; & therefore disqualify as exhibitions of''reformism''.

McShane criticizes the SP/SWP for supposedly failing to inform non-party ULA members on developments. The ULA (while in its preliminary stages) has moved towards monthly branch meetings where members are kept up to speed on all issues. McShane goes on to accuse the SP/SWP of being ''united in denying the ordinary membership any real voice''. It is claimed by McShane (& others) that the SWP/SP are holding back the development of branch activity; however as clarified at the recent ULA national forum (which McShane attended), the SWP propose ULA branches organize meetings as frequent as they see fit.

It is also claimed that the predominantly SP/SWP makeup of the ULA steering committee reflects some aversion to democracy; nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that the SP/SWP have a majority on the SC reflects the fact that the majority of active members where members of those tendencies when it was set up. The SWP advocates one person one vote with respect to electing the SC; this is the most democratic method. Unless McSane is proposing that SC positions be apportioned according to factions (an anti-democratic suggestion) - her accusations have no real basis. The ULA will move towards a conference where SC/branch structures are decided; but until then the leadership are representatives of the majority.

Ian McDonnell (SWP Maynooth/ULA North Kildare)

This Is What Class War Looks Like

2011-06-17T22:04:00.002+01:00

If you look up the definition of 'war' in the Oxford English Dictionary you will learn that it is "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." The famous military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz notoriously described war as "the continuation of politics by other means." I have no doubt that at the forefront of Clausewitz’s mind was the form of war defined above by Oxford when he pronounced his aphorism, however I believe that his view of war can be just as perfectly applied to a form that does not include armed conflict, but instead relies on acts of economic aggression to achieve its aims. The war that I am speaking of is of course class war, and it is occurring all around us.

The ongoing crisis of capitalism has exposed in vivid clarity just what a class war looks like. It involves the capitalist class aggressively fighting to maintain its strategic position in society, with the working class being beaten down by the effects of the buzzword of 2010, 'austerity.' The lack of recognition in the mainstream media that this class war is occurring is the result of the propaganda assault that the political agents of the capitalist class in national governments and supra-national organisations, such as the IMF an ECB, have been waging on a daily basis. Their mantra harks back to the era of Thatcher and Reagan, with their slogan of "there is no alternative". The result has had the effect of normalising the economic war that is going on around us, and disguised the true nature and intent of it.

Article 2 of the UN Convention prohibits the threat or use of force, and the prohibition of the threat or use of economic coercion has been included in subsequent amendments. However, the threats of economic Armageddon that have been fostered on the working class from the agents of capitalism, unless they accept the burden of bondholder debt, are commonplace and without mention. We are led to believe that if we do not shoulder the burden of the debt and default, a dystopia of cashless ATM's and rummaging through bins awaits us. It is through these threats that the capitalist class have kept the working class scared and subservient to its economic agenda. But all of this is just words, what is the evidence of this class warfare I hear you say. Let me provide you with some facts.

In Britain, at the height of the financial crisis the 1,000 richest people increased their collective wealth by 18 percent in the past year and are now worth 395.8 billion pounds. Contrast this with the 83 Billion budget cuts announced there last year which will lead to half a million job losses, cuts in social welfare, huge university fee rises and cuts to NHS services. The UK government had choices about who should pay for the capitalist's crisis. It hit the working class and left the massively wealthy alone. This is what class war looks like.

In the USA, last September Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans, and their combined net worth climbed 8% to $1.37 trillion. Contrast this with the number of people living in poverty in America, which rose by nearly 4 million to 43.6 million in 2009, the largest figure in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available. The US has a current unemployment rate of over 16%, yet the ultra wealthy will not invest to create jobs in the economy, preferring instead to speculate on the bond markets. The rich continue to grow their wealth whilst the levels of poverty grow. This is what class war looks like.

In Ireland, the top 300 wealthiest individuals have a combined wealth of 57 Billion, with their wealth increasing by 6.7 Billion in the last year. In 2009 (when the economy was nose diving into recession) 181 residents in Ireland each had investable assets of more than $30 million totalling 5.4 Billion. This wealth is not being invested to create jobs, and sits idly by in bank accounts. At the same time 440, 000 people are unemployed (14%) and 1,000 people are emigrating per-week in search of work. Almost 30% of young people under the age of 25 are unemployed. The Irish government has signalled that it will fight tooth and nail to retain a low corporate tax rate of 12.5%, not daring to touch the profits of MNC's that amounted to close to 30 Billion last year, most of which will be repatriated to their home countries. They insist on tying billions of bondholder debt like a noose around the necks of the working class, whilst at the same time implementing cuts in health, education and social welfare, hitting the working class hard, while leaving the rich free to grow their private wealth further. This is what class war looks like.

In Greece, successive speculative market attacks on Greek bonds, raising their cost of borrowing to unsustainable levels, has left the country on the brink of default and revolution. The solution from the EU? To save its rotten system, the EU proposes a further 'bailout' for Greece, plunging the heads of the Greek working class deeper under a sea of debt that is not their own. Of course, "comments by Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy signalled to banks and bondholders that they will not be made to incur losses on Greek debt." In Greece, like elsewhere, the working class will take the pain, while the wealthy remain untouched. This is what class war looks like!

Derek McKenna

The Queen and Obama: Good for Tourism?

2011-05-17T00:12:00.004+01:00

Opinion piece originally written for the WSM site.

At the moment, the predominant view in the Government , the media and in business circles is that the two large, high-profile state visits by the Queen and Barack Obama will give a massive boost to Ireland, both in terms of increasing tourism and in terms of improving Ireland's current image of a bankrupt and disfunctional isle in the eye's of the world's media.

However, is this viewpoint accurate? It seems to me to be a naive and ill-thought out endeavour, without thinking seriously about the facts and implications.

Currently Ireland is already incredibly well-known in the tourist market. We're loved the world over by prospective holiday-makers, and the majority of our tourists actually come from Britain (52%)¹, with the next significant chunk coming from mainland Europe (31%)². We host a huge number of European students during the summer months, and we are an adventurer's paradise (admittedly this aspect of our tourist industry and infrastucture could be improved, though I doubt we'll see the Queen surfboarding in Dingle!) The fact that someone might see their head of state walking around the place and think "hmm, that looks nice, I think I'll go there" isn't really realistic in our case. The UK is literally just across the water, they know all about us and what we have to offer, and they also know the downfalls of coming here (which I will cover below).

In fact you could argue that the only affect on tourism from the Queen's visit could be that tourist numbers from the UK could drop after the inevitable ruck with the cops that will accompany the visit of the Queen, and from that an unfortunate "anti-British" portrayal that would be broadcast on the news channels abroad (not to say it that anti-British sentiment doesn't exist but it is marginalised).

The idea behind the visits and the bolstering tourism dialogue ignores the main reason that tourism has dropped for the past few years : Ireland is very expensive and people don't have disposable incomes anymore! In a survey published by Fáilte Ireland (the National Tourism Development Authority) covering 2009 it showed that 49% of British tourists surveyed³ said that Ireland was "Poor/Very Poor" in terms of value for money, with 38% of US tourists⁴ giving the same opinion. While I agree with the fact that Ireland is way too expensive and needs to be cheaper for the good of both tourists and ourselves who live here, I doubt I would agree with the ideas that would be put forward by the lads in IBEC as a solution, who would most likey argue for more "competiton" to drive down prices, i.e. lower wages. No thanks, how about less of a profit margin for yourselves good sirs? The fact that that during the visits the city centre and several key tourist sites will have restricted access/be closed isn't exactly beneficial to the tourist industry either. Likewise, is a thriving tourist industry necessarily a good thing if the workers in the industry continue to be paid on low wages while their bosses rake it in?

There may be some truth to the idea that Obama visitng his ancentral home of Moneygall, Co.Offaly would encourage Americans to come over and trace their own heritage, but I think that a large proportion of Americans who would be inclined to come and look up their roots do this anyway if they can afford it (he's hardly the first US president with Irish ancestry). North Americans made up 12% of the market share⁵ of tourism in 2009, and I reckon that they're never going to be a significantly bigger share, simply because the US is literally half the world away and will always be expensive, difficult and time-consuming to travel from.

The cost of the security for visits will total €30 million⁶, which seems quite a lot to pay for useless visits when apparently "we're broke as a country" and are cutting back on essential services such as Special Needs Assistants. Seems a lot to gamble for improving the tourist industry.

This article doesn't really touch on the political or moral reasons why the visit of the Queen or Obama might be right or wrong (though who thought it would be a good idea to have the Queen in Dublin on the anniversary of the Dublin/Monaghan Bombings?), but is purely to conteract the predominant idea that having heads-of-states visit from countries already well-disposed and aware of us as a tourist destination would in any way bolster tourism.

Which they won't.

WORDS: JW

References:
1: Page 4, http://www.tourismireland.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=f800ac4c-05f0-4...

2: Page 4, http://www.tourismireland.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=f800ac4c-05f0-4...

3: Page 9, http://www.failteireland.ie/FailteCorp/media/FailteIreland/documents/Res...

4: Page 8, http://www.failteireland.ie/FailteCorp/media/FailteIreland/documents/Res...

5: Page 4, http://www.tourismireland.com/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=f800ac4c-05f0-4...

6: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-irelan...

Thought-Terminating Clichés

2011-05-14T01:34:00.007+01:00

Arguing with liberals, while often mind-numbingly tedious and frustrating, is an inevitability for most people on the left. In this piece, I'll be dealing with some of the more trite and clichéd arguments that liberals fall back on when they're losing the argument, from the point of view of someone who spends more time than most arguing politics with liberals. This is an ongoing project, and I'll be adding more bad arguments as I come across them.

Liberal democratic capitalism is the worst system except for all the other one's we've tried.

A.k.a. If capitalism is so bad, why don't you move to one of the many successful socialist countries?

This argument is essentially a way of conceding that your critique of capitalism and/or liberal democracy is basically correct without appearing to back down, allowing them to accept that the entire political economy of the world is inherently flawed, without the accompanying responsibility to do something about it. That way lie gulags.

The flaw in this line of thinking is a combination of three faulty premises:

The present system is the best system that there will ever be. The idea that we'll ever be able to have iPods and Happy Meals and freedom of expression and the like without the requirement for a massive global underclass is hopelessly utopian.
The fact that the Russian Revolution et al ended in butchery and totalitarianism is an inherent flaw in the idea of communism, and not a product of the unique historical circumstances in which the revolution took place, nor of flaws in the form of revolutionary organisation practised by the Bolsheviks. All future revolutions are doomed to repeat this pattern.
The history of communist revolutions that ran up against the restraints of a predominantly capitalist world can be used to predict what would happen in a communist world.

You protested against X, why didn't you also protest against A, B, C... Y and Z?

Rather than deal with the actual point of a protest, a common tactic is to think of (or usually Google) another analogous thing that the left didn't mobilise for, in order to imply some kind of hypocrisy or ulterior motive.

Implicitly, this argument assumes that it's actually really easy to organise a mass protest - that getting thousands of people onto the streets is just matter of sending a text round - and thus the only reason why the left doesn't protest every injustice equally is because we're hypocrites, and probably racist, rather than because we have finite time, energy and resources and have to pick our battles.

This argument also misunderstands the purpose of political protest. It's not supposed to be some kind of box-ticking exercise to demonstrate some kind of intellectual consistency in some future debate. It's not about being able to say you've made your point. It's about trying to make some kind of concrete difference in the lives of real people, and encouraging people to take action for themselves in resisting the particular oppressions they live under.

Your ideas are great, but I'm a realist.

I'm sure slavery abolitionists heard this one a lot. Since no-one can predict the future, determining what's realistic is based entirely on certain subjective and utterly unscientific judgements. Given that some much of our picture of reality is generated by media outlets owned and run by the wealthy, one can hardly be surprised that what people tend to perceive as realistic just happens to coincide with the system that keeps those wealthy people at the top.

I want what you want, but through parliamentary reform.

A.k.a. If people agreed with you, they would vote you into power and there would be no need for a revolution.

This argument requires a leap of logic that would be incredible were it not so mundanely widespread: seemingly, the ultra-wealthy capitalists who control the vast majority of the worlds economic power, who are able to determine, through the movement of capital the fate of entire countries, who are able to collapse economies through capital flight etc. have allowed a situtation to exist where their power and class privilege could simply be voted out of existence.

Of course, in reality, this is untrue. The capitalist class in fact have a whole range of mechanisms to prevent precisely this from happening. Through their ownership of the organs of popular opinion (the mass media), their funding of pro-business parties and lobby groups, through corruption, and the ability to influence markets through the movement of capital, the wealthy are in practice able to prevent any threat to their power manifesting itself through parliamentary means, all the while maintaining the semblance of democracy.

Yeah, but under your system how would we decide how to distribute almonds in mountainous regions during light hail?

This one is particularly annoying. Under the guise of open-minded 'hearing out' of your alternative, the liberal will then proceed to delve deeper and deeper into the minutiae of everyday activity in your imagined post-revolutionary society, until they find something that you haven't thought about before and suddenly the whole system collapses because you don't know whether a non-capitalist society would continue to produce tricycles*. This is usually an improvisational process, where every plausible answer you give opens up a thousand new avenues of questioning to be stumbled down randomly like a drunk in a hedge maze until you eventually admit you don't know.

Of course, from the outset, you're accepting an unfair burden. The shaping of a post-revolutionary society is the collective action of all of society, and will require the creativity and intelligence of everyone to develop modes of organisation that create the best possible living standards for everyone without recreating the exploitation and hierarchy of capitalism. The fact that you can't do that after a few pints in the pub no more undermines communism/anarchism than the fact that a twelve-year-old science student doesn't know Schroedinger's equation undermines quantum mechanics.

* They probably would.

You can read words and write coherent sentences. You're obviously some middle-class intellectual in an ivory tower. The working-class will never listen to you.

In other words: it doesn't matter how right or wrong you are, the working-class are too stupid and ignorant to understand you.

Of course, it's true that the left has trouble expressing its ideas in forms that are understandable to those less well-versed in left-wing theory, or to those with less education, with simple ideas often obscured by esoteric academic-speak. But the idea that working-class people are incapable of understanding the reality of their own lived-experiences of oppression is ridiculously classist and patronising.

The Royal Visit and the Security Spectacle

2011-05-13T20:05:00.004+01:00

The impending visit by Queen Elizabeth, like the Royal Wedding before it, is clearly designed, as a show of force by ruling elites, a reaffirmation of the power and authority of the state, and a demonstration of the state's ability to enforce its rule in the face of political dissidents and recalcitrants.

In Britain, the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was accompanied by a massive security operation, with the aim of suppressing any potential dissent against the institution of the monarchy, against class privilege or against the austerity measures being imposed upon the British working class. A wave of pre-emptive arrests (which activists dubbed 'precrime' arrests in reference to Philip K. Dick's dystopian short story 'Minority Report') targeted hundreds of activists, including anarchists, republicans and anti-cuts activists, with the flimsy justification that some of them might have been involved in violence or property destruction during the TUC march, with police being granted sweeping stop and search powers on the day of the wedding itself.

In Ireland, a similar crackdown on dissent has already begun. The Gardaí and Dublin City Council have begun tearing down posters advertising protests, and removing political stickers from lampposts (including, oddly, tearing down posters for the un-related Anarchist Bookfair, which had been erected with council approval) in a clear example of political censorship. 10,000 Gardaí are to be drafted in to guard the Queen, with large areas of Dublin, Cashel, Kildare and Cork being closed off at various times to facilitate the monarch, including, oddly, Dublin Zoo (perhaps the Real IRA are planning to release penguins to confuse the Queen, or something). As in Britain, Gardaí will be stopping and searching potential protestors. As the Irish Times reported: "Officers on foot will stop and search people and those questioned will be asked to indicate their destination. Checkpoints will also be set up and motorists will be questioned. Road users will also be asked to explain the purpose of their journey." Tens of thousands of people have already had to suffer intrusive Garda calls at their homes.

Of course, to complain about the erosion of civil liberties would be to miss the point. Civil liberties are nothing more than privileges given to us by the state in return for our obedience, which can and will be taken away the moment they are used to threaten the interests of the powerful.

When viewed through the prism of austerity politics, the purpose of this security spectacle is clear. The ability of the state to close off half of Dublin, to hassle people on the streets and in their homes, and to muster 10,000 cops to batter protestors off the streets if needs be, in order to parade an unelected parasite and symbol of imperialism around, like the unprovoked violent response to the student protest last November, is a clear message to the people of Ireland: this is what's in store for those who attempt to stand up to a government intent on robbing the working class to pay off the debts of the wealthy.

Join the march on Dublin Castle on the 18th May, starting at St Catherine’s Church on Thomas Street at 17:30

Default Now And Throw Off Our Chains

2011-05-10T22:16:00.003+01:00

The recent Morgan Kelly article in the Irish Times, “Ireland's future depends on breaking free from bailout”[1] has caused much debate in the Irish media. In the article, UCD economist Kelly suggests that Ireland should walk away from the EU/IMF deal. In this regard Kelly is totally right, however the solution to the crisis that he proposes is wide of the mark. More austerity is not the answer. It is only through the promotion of economic growth through public investment and job creation, progressive taxation and nationalisation of our resources that Ireland will start to emerge from the crisis.

The fact that Ireland now has the debts of the banks on its books means that our national debt will rise to over 250 billion by 2015. This figure reveals the dream world that establishment politicians in Ireland and Europe are living in when they suggest that a recovery is possible. To illustrate how deluded these people are, by 2014 Ireland will be paying approximately 10 billion per year in interest payments alone on our borrowings. This is more than the current total yearly spend on education in this country[2] According to current figures[3], Ireland is taking in approximately 31 billion per year in taxes. The fact that by 2014 we will have to pay 10 billion in interest payments on our loans, before we even try to reduce the actual debt, reveals the deluded nature of those who want to ‘ bury their heads in the sand, keep their fingers crossed’ and hope for an economic recovery.

By taking on the debts of the banks, the last Irish government has committed economic treason. They have tied a noose around the necks of a generation of young Irish men, women and children. The only solution is to separate our national sovereign debt from the back debt that was taken on after the bank guarantee in 2008[4]. After this, we must default on the bank debt, because it is not our debt. The only reason that the Irish working class is being made to pay for the gambling debts of bankers and speculators both here and in Europe is that we have a spineless political class who are afraid to stand up to their European puppet-masters. A quick read of John Bruton’s response to Morgan Kelly’s article reveals this[5]. So what would this all mean for Ireland?

By separating our national sovereign debt from the bank’s debt, we would be removing a huge anchor from our prospects of moving forward. However, we on the political left must also be realistic; a default would not be without its consequences. A default on the bank debt would lead to reprisals from the capitalist classes and the financial markets. It is quite obvious that after a default, the cost of borrowing on the bond markets would be too huge for Ireland to engage in. Also, let us not forget that it has been the rising cost of borrowing on these bond markets that has pushed Ireland and others towards financial Armageddon. However, by Ireland only having the sovereign debt that we have accumulated, minus the bank debt, the picture of the future would already be brighter. In his article, Morgan Kelly sticks with the views of the establishment in prescribing more shock doctrine based austerity to reduce our budget deficit. There are other less painful ways to return Ireland to financial stability.

By not being able to borrow on the international markets, Ireland would need to seek out finance from other sources to balance the books. Firstly, to bridge the gap between what we are spending as a country and what we are taking in, Ireland would need to seek out friendly states who understand our plight. To suggest that money would not be available on a bilateral basis is nothing but scaremongering from the capitalist class and the political elites in Ireland and Europe. Through diplomacy and favourable trading with friendly states, Ireland could gain bilateral loans and bridge a portion of our current deficit.

Secondly, there is a necessity to cut our public service costs. This is something that many of my comrades on the left will disagree with, however it is in the higher echelons of the public service, and not those on low pay that need to be targeted. It is those who are earning over €100,000 per-year that should be the subject of cuts to pay. Also, there is much wastage in the public service. There should be a root and branch reform of all public services, with savings that are identified pumped back into the frontline services that matter most, such as health and education.

Thirdly, capital must be made to pay its way in Ireland. For too long, Ireland has been soft on making capitalists pay a decent tax on the profits they make. In this regard, the corporation rate must be raised to a level that is comparable to other European countries[6]. Also, the tax breaks that financial institutions, developers and multinational corporations have benefited from in recent history must be eliminated. A progressive capital gains taxation system must also be introduced to fairly redistribute the massive wealth that still exists in private hands in this country.

Fourthly, we must invest to create jobs and indigenous industries in Ireland. A public works scheme should be initiated to put the 100,000 or so construction workers back into employment, building much needed schools, hospitals, roads, a 21^st century broadband system and other infrastructure to move this country forward. Investment must also be made to grow Irish industries. For too long the Irish economy has over relied on foreign direct investment to grow its economy. This has led to the current situation where the state has been held to ransom over the corporate tax issue, and has been reluctant to take any measures to upset the international capitalist class. Stimulus measures such as these and the knock on effect they would have on all sections of the economy would help grow it towards recovery.

Finally, Ireland must take all its natural resources back into public ownership. The huge reserves of gas that Ireland has off the west coast that were flogged off in a fraudulent deal by corrupt Fianna Fail ministers, must be taken back from Shell. Ireland must also nationalise all major profit making industries, including the banking sector, and use these resources for the public good and not for private profit. It must also be recognised that all of these measures are only part of a transitional programme. The only way to truly solve Ireland’s crisis of capitalism is for Ireland to break away from the chains of the capitalist system and form a democratic socialist Ireland. Ireland could not go on this path alone and would require the backing of other socialist countries. By taking a lead and showing other countries how to take the path towards socialism, and moving away from the exploitation of capitalism, Ireland would be held up as example to the working class of the world as a way to throw off their chains. The path to economic freedom starts with an immediate default and Ireland walking away from the shackles of the EU/IMF deal.

Derek McKenna.

[1] http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0507/1224296372123.html

[2] http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0907/breaking18.html

[3]http://www.accountingnet.ie/recession_resources/Government_s_revenue_projections_back_on_track_following_tax_overshoot_in_April.php

[4] http://www.ntma.ie/IrishEconomy/bankGuaranteeScheme.php

[5] http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0510/1224296602550.html

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe

Anarchist Bookfair 2011 at Liberty Hall

2011-05-09T13:04:00.003+01:00

The 6th Annual Dublin Anarchist Bookfair is taking place this Saturday (14th May) in Liberty Hall. In previous years, the event has seen visiting speakers as diverse as historian Martha Ackelsberg and former Black Panther turned anarchist Ashanti Alston and this year, once again, it promises to be an interesting event - "a day out of the ordinary", as an old leaflet for a previous year's bookfair stated.

In particular, the "Peripheral Visions" discussion, featuring anarchists from the four "P.I.G.S." countries (that's Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) is an exciting prospect, offering radical perspectives from four countries going through similar experiences of harsh austerity and uncertain futures.

As well as the talks, there will also be the bookfair itself, with stalls from AK Press, Rebel County Books, the Irish Labour History Society, the Anarchist Federation, Shell to Sea, RAG, the IPSC, the Provisional University, the WSM book service and more.

Visit the Workers Solidarity Movement website for more details on the event or visit the Facebook page. The after-party in O'Byrne's also comes highly recommended.

I'm missing the whole lot, unfortunately, due to the impending disaster of final exams...

Springtime: The New Student Rebellions

2011-05-01T19:30:00.004+01:00

Book Review: Springtime, the New Student Rebellions (Edited by Clare Solomon and Tania Palmieri. Verso, March 2011.) Originally appeared at Irish Left Review.

The autumn and winter of 2010 saw the sudden and dramatic re-emergence of radical student movements, with mass student uprisings taking place across Europe and the United States in opposition to both the austerity measures being levelled against ordinary people as a result of the crisis in capitalism, and the neoliberal restructuring of education to the needs of capital. Across the Western world, governments are introducing measures to transform universities into “factory of precarious workers” - institutions devoted to the production of graduates equipped with the skills and ideas desired by industries increasingly reliant on immaterial and mental labour, turning ideas into profits, and who are willing to work in increasingly precarious situations, either entirely unpaid, or for increasingly low wages on increasingly short-terms contracts - a transformation that is increasingly meeting resistance from both students and academic staff, and which has only accelerated since the present crisis began. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, students have played a key role in the mass uprisings to topple Western-backed thugs such as Zine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

Springtime is a collection of writings from those at the forefront of the student resistance in the UK, Italy, France, California, Greece, and Tunisia (with brief mentions Algeria and Egypt) - a kind of scrapbook of resistance, from a diversity of perspectives and political backgrounds - featuring both first-hand accounts of the student protests, and more theoretical writings on the changing character of education, labour and student politics, as well as some historical flashbacks, in which, unsurprisingly, May 68 features heavily.

In each section we get a flavour of the peculiarities of the student movements in various countries. In the UK, we encounter the raw anger of a generation of young people betrayed by the political system - first by Labour and then by the Liberal Democrats - who suddenly find themselves faced with the trebling of tuition fees, the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance, and future of indebtedness and precarious work, if they’re lucky, and unemployment if they’re not. In France, on the other hand, the youth are well aware of their power as political actors, having defeated right-wing government reforms on several occasions; but we also encounter a working-class divided along racial lines, with occasional clashes between the immigrant population of the banliues and the proportionately more white/middle-class student movement. In the US, unlike most of Europe, student occupations of their campuses are met almost immediately with swift and brutal police repression: with beatings and mass arrests. In North Africa, then, we encounter student resistance against the crude and brutal face of capitalist imperialism: the Western-backed thugs and their repressive authoritarian regimes whose role is to maintain Western influence over some of the largest energy reserves in the world.

The Italian section, in particular, merits careful reading. In one particularly excellent piece, we are given quite an in-depth discussion of the Bologna process, which is changing the character of higher education across Europe: directing universities towards the production and normalisation of precarious labour (a process in which students are simultaneously treated as consumers of a product, and raw materials being transformed into commodities), devaluing degrees, turning universities into psuedo-corporations run by business elites, and pushing a greater and greater debt burden onto students and their families. In order to fulfil the dual tasks of producing more graduates for industry and maintaining the university’s role in sustaining class privilege, “diversified inclusion” mechanisms are employed to create a two-tier system,with the best opportunities being made available to the children of the wealthy.

The thread of Counterfire (a UK Trotskyist group that broke away from the Socialist Workers’ Party in 2010) politics runs throughout the book, which brings an unfortunate element of sectarianism into the mix. In the introduction, for example, “fashionable sections of the left” (i.e. anarchists and autonomists) are decried for denouncing the state, while a substantial part of the UK section is devoted to arguing that the successes of the spontaneous, leaderless and decentralised student movement will come to nothing if they fail to adopt Leninist forms of leadership and organisation. Additionally, too much space is devoted to historical contextualisations, which often amount to little more than nostalgia for May 68, Students for a Democratic Society et al., with very tenuous links to the modern day student rebellions, which are beautiful and inspiring entirely in their own right, and not as re-enactments of uprisings from over forty years ago.

But these are minor criticisms of what is ultimately a fascinating, stimulating and inspiring collection of texts. Where Springtime is most powerful is not in the complex theoretical and ideological discussions which the Left so loves to preoccupy itself with, nor in the rhetorical flourishes and analysis-poetry of some of the book’s more stylistically accomplished sections, but in the simple stuff: the individual experiences of betrayal, abandonment, despair, anger, radicalisation, and hope - of a generation abandoned by their supposed leaders both in mainstream politics and the supposed counter-power of the trade and student unions and the official left learning to stand up for themselves together. As one young British Further Education student put it:

“I used to moan at people who said politicians were all liars and were all as bad as each other. I realise now how naive I was. Protesting against tuition fees has not only allowed me to express my opinion, it has allowed me to grow up.”

Visit free-education.info for more on the fight against the neoliberalisation of education.

The media and the Garda rape remarks

2011-05-01T19:25:00.003+01:00

Originally written for Workers Solidarity Issue 121

The media narrative regarding the Corrib Garda rape remarks played out with sickening predictability. Sticking as closely as possible to the Garda Press Office line, the news media decided that this was an isolated incident: yes, it was inappropriate for Gardaí to joke about raping captive women, but the matter is under investigation, and anyway it's all just a bit of private banter between colleagues. No need for a wider discussion about societal attitudes towards women, or about the militarised policing of political protest in North Mayo and elsewhere. Up popped Kevin Myers to explain why men are the real victims here, oppressed by the 'politically-correct' thought police, while Vincent Browne informed us that rape jokes “are just part of the lingo of Irish males” and that's that.

But, of course, these Gardaí didn't make their comments in a vacuum – they made them at a specific time, in a specific place and within a specific cultural context. They are reflective both of a culture in which sexist and patriarchal attitudes and structures still pertain, and of a police force which is given free reign to act with extreme brutality in the repression of protest around the Corrib project.

In an Irish Independent piece on April 10th, we are told “no one was ever in any danger of being raped. You can't get raped by a joke.” The problem is that jokes are never just jokes. Banter is never just banter. Jokes help to create a culture in which men have power over women, to reinforce sexist attitudes in men, to dehumanise women, and to trivialise the horrendous crime of rape which, overwhelmingly, is committed by men against women. We live in a society in which women are expected to laugh politely when crude sexist jokes are aimed at them for fear of being labelled a “humourless bitch”; where comedy clubs are thronged with “edgy” comics each trying to be more offensive that the other, using misogynistic language while hiding behind the defense of “irony”, and if women complain, it’s because they're not sophisticated enough to get the joke. Casual sexism, of which rape jokes are an extreme form, creates a context in which men feel superior to women, in which some men feel entitled to rape, and in which raped women are afraid to report the crime because of the prevalence of such attitudes. Only about one in 10 women who are raped report the crime, and just 7 per cent of the reported cases go to court.

Meanwhile, speaking at the Garda Representative Association conference, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter accused Corrib protesters of “exploiting” the controversy “for their own political ends... with the aim of undermining trust in the Garda Síochána and of compromising the policing of the dispute.”

Dublin Shell to Sea spokesperson Caoimhe Kerins said: “This is a bizarre outburst from Mr Shatter. The people who have undermined trust in An Garda Síochána are those Gardaí who have, for several years now, resorted to violence, intimidation and abuse to deter peaceful protest.”

The Garda comments, seen in this context, are clearly not “just a joke”, but part of the atmosphere of intimidation and violence that surround the State's policing in defence of Shell, which has lead to countless people being injured, some seriously. Willie Corduff, one of the Rossport Five jailed for his opposition to the project, was beaten up in the dead of night inside a Shell compound, while leading campaigner Pat O'Donnell had his fishing boat seized and sunk by masked and armed men at sea. Also, former security employees from the Shell compound travelled to Bolivia to take part in an attempted coup (with one of them, Michael Dwyer, being shot dead by police).

This is not the first time threats of sexual violence have been used against female activists by Gardaí, with the wife of another leading local campaigner, John Monaghan, having also been a victim. The failure of the media to treat the Garda remarks as anything other than an isolated incident of inappropriate banter, and to raise important questions regarding either the sexist attitudes which pervade Irish society (and specifically in the “canteen culture” of the Gardaí), the violent policing of the Corrib protests, or indeed the giveaway of billions of euros worth of oil and gas, is entirely consistent with their role as the servants of the wealthy and powerful, and their established pattern of ignoring or downplaying the violent actions of the Gardaí and the private security working for Shell in North Mayo.

Terrible right-wing novel to become terrible right-wing film

2011-04-04T08:09:00.006+01:00

Denizens of the internet, prepare yourselves for a new wave of insufferable psuedo-intellectual teenage-Objectivist keyboard-warriors, because Ayn Rand's philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged is being made into a trilogy of films, the first instalment of which is due to be released later this month.

Part overblown literary trainwreck, part grotesque ultra-capitalist ultra-individualist philosophical text, Atlas Shrugged describes a world that is in crisis because wealthy capitalists (whom Rand calls the "men of mind") don't have enough wealth and power, and expounds a philosophy (called Objectivism) under which poor people deserve to be poor, rich people deserve to be rich, the working class are powerless because they are stupid and lazy, and in which the right to own property is the most important and fundamental of all human rights.

Much loved by right-wing "libertarians" and narcissistic middle-class teenagers alike, Atlas Shrugged is essentially the 645,000-word story of strike by capitalists which causes the US economy to collapse, teaching the reader that the capitalist Übermensch (who are "exploited" by the "parasitic" welfare state), rather than the workers who actually make everything, are the ones who sustain industrial society.

"...Atlas Shrugged is not merely a novel. It is also (or may I say: first of all) a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society... You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you." - Ludwig von Mises, in a letter to Ayn Rand

What's really interesting, however, about this film is its timing, coming, as it does, in the middle of a crisis of global capitalism - a period in which more and more people are questioning the ideological underpinnings of the capitalist system, asking if this really is the only way for the world to be, a period in which ordinary people across the world are taking to the streets in open revolt - with a seductive message that greed is good, one's only responsibility is to one's own self-interest, that the crisis which we are currently living through is the result of not enough unrestricted capitalist greed, selfishness and profiteering.

Lets hope it's a massive flop.

Civil Partnership Cards

2011-03-21T02:28:00.009Z

While browsing in my local Tesco for a deliberately inappropriate card to give a friend for his 21st, I came across these "Civil Ceremony" cards:

It's not something I'd ever given any thought to, and I must admit my initial response was something like "Oh, how progressive." But looking more closely I noticed four things:

The cards are deliberately labelled "Civil Ceremony", and not "Marriage" or "Wedding" (or even "Civil Partnership"), drawing a clear distinction between gay relationships and heterosexual marriages.
They are the special gay cards, in a sea of heteronormative cards depicting traditional heterosexual marriages, with the implication surely being that gay relationships are other, different, distinct.
The message inside is a rather perfunctory and impersonal "Congratulations", while many of the cards for straight people had messages about love and other similarly romantic/marriagey ideas.
The couples depicted on the cards are plastic dolls. Without wanting to go down the Slavoj Žižek reading-too-much-into-things road, are plastic dolls not symbols of falsity and fakeness?

In other words, these kind of cards, which are presumably the socially acceptable thing to give a same-sex couple at a civil partnership ceremony, are actually rather othering and exclusionary. The message is that same sex relationships are different/abnormal, and should be treated differently, as a separate category.

While I'm no fan of the institution of marriage, or of queer mainstreaming (broadly speaking, I support the idea of Gay Shame), I was interested to see what the response of the greeting card industry to the emergence of same-sex partnerships has been. A cursory Googling would indicate that the response has been either to pretend gay relationships don't exist, and to carry on depicting only heterosexual couples - as exemplified by Hallmark - or to produce the kind of cards described above, the worst example of this I came across being:
which not only others gay people, but also plays up to rather crude stereotypes (what is a "big gay wedding" other than some stereotypical camp extravaganza?).

While clearly this is not some huge issue, it is worth contemplating what role these kinds of cultural traditions play, both in reflecting and simultaneously shaping societal attitudes.

Why I'll be protesting the Queen's visit

2011-03-16T13:12:00.006Z

The upcoming state visit by Queen Elizabeth II, the first in 100 years, will certainly be an historic event. For the political establishment and the obsequious Irish press, it represents nothing less than the end of Irish history: a sign that we have reached political maturity as a culture and can accept an empty and meaningless apology for the oppression we suffered under the bootheels of the British Empire with good grace and finally consign Irish anti-imperialism to the dustbin of history. Meanwhile, for the various dissident republican sects that inhabit the fringes of the Irish political landscape, it provides an opportunity to smash shit on the streets of Dublin not seen since Love Ulster (because, of course, the bank guarantee, NAMA, or the IMF/ECB bailout, weren't worth a riot, as they didn't involve loads of Protestants walking down O'Connell St.).

Of course, it's easy to dismiss the "800 years" brigade as brainless, clichéd, anachronistic and, at worst, bigoted (and not without justification) and to forget that, more that just an empty slogan, that "800 years" is shorthand for Ireland's long and bloody colonial history under the British Empire - a history characterised by brutality, poverty and subjugation, which continues to shape our culture, economy and identity today^* - a part of our collective memory which cannot simply be annihilated. As a symbol, the British Queen is the physical embodiment of that State, that Empire and that history. Moreover, Elizabeth herself was head of the British Armed Forces while they carried out atrocities in the Six Counties, and notoriously decorated the Parachute Regiment after Bloody Sunday. Her troops are still garrisoned in the Six Counties, and the threat of a return to British direct rule still hangs like Damocles' sword over the proceedings in the Stormont Parliament.

Outside of Ireland, then, her armed forces still continue to engage in aggressive, illegal and imperialist warfare - albeit now playing second fiddle to the US - leaving a trail of destruction, death, torture and violence in their wake, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps quite soon in Iran, which has punctuated the history of the 21st Century. Additionally, as a hereditary monarch, the Queen is the physical embodiment of privilege, inequality and the class system: a wealthy parasite on the British working class and a symbol of working people's subjugation everywhere.

So, far from being a sign of maturity, this state visit by the Queen represents the ultimate victory of British imperialism over the Irish people, the rehabilitation of the British Empire by the fawning Irish political class, the reduction of our anti-imperialist history to abstract words on a page (a past which we have supposedly somehow transcended), the tacit acceptance of the permanence of partition and British military presence in the Six Counties.

In short: Fuck imperialism. Fuck the class system. Fuck the Queen.

(eirigí's No Royal Visit's facebook page)

Poster/Facebook profile pic, for those who want it:

* To take a concrete manifestation of this, consider why it is that Ireland never industrialised, has no indigenous industry worth speaking of, and is consequently dependant on foreign direct investment and the whims of the global markets.

Greek migrant hunger strike highlights inhumanity of immigration system

2011-03-10T10:13:00.001Z

This blog has written previously about the racism and inhumanity of anti-immigration laws.

Yesterday (Wednesday 9th March) the hunger strike of 300 migrants in Greece ended in victory after key concessions were made by the Greek government. The 300 undocumented migrants, who lived and worked in Greece for years, usually at a fraction of the minimum wage, had been on hungers strike for 44 days, after being told that, due to the economic crisis, they were no longer wanted and must either leave voluntarily or be deported.

The strikers, dozens of whom have been hospitalised in states of near organ-failure, were demanding nothing more than the basic recognition of their humanity in the face of brutal and dehumanising immigration laws - for the most minimal of labour protections and living conditions in a system that sees them as less that human simply because of who they are and where the come from.

Following the government's concessions it has now been agreed that:

The time limit for application for permanent residence in Greece has now been dropped from twelve years to eight years.
Work credit has been diconnected from the application for permanent residence.
All 300 migrant hunger strikers will be allowed to apply for 6-month rolling permits until they reach the 8-year limit in order to gain permanent residence.

These reforms, while moderate, represent a major victory on the part of the hunger strikers, who have now paved the way for thousands of migrants to live in Greece without fear of being undocumented.

Can we talk about gay racism now? - Johann Hari and liberal racism

2011-03-04T01:22:00.011Z

It's easy to be anti-racist these days. Most of us, having grown up, or lived most of our lives in a society that is, officially at least, tolerant of racial minorities - which has embraced multiculturalism (in rhetoric at least) - find it relatively easy to denounce old-fashioned vulgar racism, and assume that racism is an anachronism: something which only old people and the ignorant working class take seriously.

But there is a much more slippery form of racism, but one which is no less pernicious, underlying much of modern liberal (and sometimes radical leftist) thinking. This is a racism which sees racial minorities not as being ipso facto bad, but rather sees immigrant communities (and Muslims in particular) as being a threat to the supposed progressive values of white/Western liberalism. In Western countries, so the narrative goes, we have embraced feminism, LGBT rights etc., and it is only the dark-skinned barbarian immigrant hordes which pose a threat to the safety and freedom of our precious women and gays.

Far-right and crypto-Fascist groups such as the BNP and the EDL in Britain, Geert Wilders' PVV in Holland and the National Front in France have already begun to embrace progressive language in order to create fear and hatred of Muslims and to create a sense of us-and-them, of a profound and inescapable cultural conflict. Across Western Europe, far-right parties are calling for bans on the burka and the hijab, which are portrayed as inherently oppressive of women and a creeping threat to our newfound feminist values (rather than simply being signifiers of another culture with which they are not comfortable). Simultaneously, overtly and deliberately racist depictions of the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, and Geert Wilders' anti-Islamic film Fitna are defended as the last bastion of Western free speech against the Muslim menace. (See here for more.)

The English Defence League, in particular, has been successful in recruiting outside of the far-right's usual all-white ultra-masculine football hooligan base, even going so far as to set up an LGBT division, and has used the language of LGBT and women's rights to build "the most significant far-right street movement since the National Front". (See (1), (2), (3), for examples.)

It is in this context that we should read liberal gay journalist Johann Hari's bizarre and irresponsible article 'Can we talk about Muslim homophobia now?', in which he claims:

East London has seen the highest increase in homophobic attacks anywhere in Britain, and some of the worst in Europe. Everybody knows why, and nobody wants to say it. It is because East London has the highest Muslim population in Britain, and we have allowed a fanatically intolerant attitude towards gay people to incubate there, in the name of "tolerance".

Its a sad irony that Hari has chosen to adopt the stance of 'saying the unsayable' in the face of the politically-correct establishment favoured by right-wing racist journalists like Richard Littlejohn, particularly given that Hari once famously took Littlejohn to task for helping to "create a culture in which groups like the BNP can spread." Worse, like Littlejohn, Hari adopts the tactic of exaggerating and distorting the facts in order to attack an immigrant population. As it turns out

Police figures show that over last year there was a reduction in attacks on lesbians and gays in London boroughs with the largest Muslim populations—Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest. (H. Dee, Fighting homophobia: Attacking one form of bigotry with another is a dead end, Socialist Worker)

But crucially, by singling out Muslim homophobia as being especially worthy of attention, Hari helps to create the us-and-them, Same-and-Other dynamic in which Fascists and racists thrive. Homophobia becomes a characteristic of the Other, another way in which Muslims are not like us, in which they pose a threat to our identity, while simultaneously allowing us to ignore the ways in which Western societies are homophobic. As Hari puts it: "It is "Muslim culture" today to be bigoted against gay people. It was British culture to be anti-gay thirty years ago." (Implicitly, then, British culture must now have entirely embraced queer identities in all their multifarious forms.)

This is not to say that the Muslim community (like any religious community) does not have to confront the attitudes of its members towards LGBT people, but rather that this struggle can only be a struggle within that community, rather than by white Westerners against the community. Moreover, it is important to understand the class antagonism underlying Muslim homophobia. It is no coincidence that the areas which are displaying the worst of this intolerance are among the worst slums in Britain. As pointed out by Slavoj Žižek (writing in relation to the Netherlands):

What effectively fuels the Muslims' animosity is their perception of gays as part of a privileged elite which exploits them and treats them as outcasts. Our question to the gays should thus be: what did you do to help the immigrants socially? Why not go there, act like a Communist, organise a struggle, work together? The solution of the tension is thus not to be found in multicultural tolerance and understanding but in a shared struggle on behalf of a universality that cuts diagonally across both communities, dividing each of them against itself, but uniting the marginalised in both camps. (S. Žižek, Living in the End Times, pp.138)

In other words, the creation of oppositions between communities (and particularly between the Westerner and the Immigrant) can only increase animosity and tension between communities. It is only through a shared struggle for a common humanity (i.e. through class struggle) that the walls of division can be broken and our mutual humanity can begin to be recognised.

Ivana Bacik, gender equality, and the inadequacy of liberal feminism

2011-03-02T02:57:00.009Z

One of the most entertaining battles in last week's election was the three-way fight between outgoing Fianna Fáil TD Mary Hanafin, Labour Senator Ivana Bacik and People Before Profit Councillor Richard Boyd-Barrett for the last seat in Dun Laoghaire. It was nail-biting stuff, but after 11 counts and a partial recount, Boyd-Barrett was elected by a relatively narrow margin.

A short time later, in an interview for RTÉ's election programme, Boyd-Barrett was asked, among other things, whether he felt bad for winning a seat at the expense of two female candidates. The implication of this question, as well as much of the discussion on gender-balance during the election coverage, was that having more female voices in parliament is in itself a good thing for women, regardless of what those voices are actually saying. So, for example, it would have been better for women for right-wing anti-choice ultra-Catholic Mary Hanafin to have been elected than a pro-choice socialist who happened to be a man.

This is liberal feminism: an ideology that seeks an abstract on-paper 'equality of opportunity', which does nothing to improve the lives of the vast majority of women. Bacik herself is very much the archetypal proponent of this ideology: she has strong views on gender equality in politics, abortion rights etc., but is nonetheless perfectly happy to be a member of a party which will spend the next five years imposing savage austerity measures on Irish women and their families. Under the Fine Gael/Labour regime, the actual lived reality for working-class women in Ireland will be one of wage cuts and job losses; of collapsing public-sector infrastructure, which will increasingly struggle to provide adequate healthcare, education etc.; of an increasingly desperate struggle to make ends meet while maintaining a decent standard of living; and the heartbreak of watching their children emigrate one-by-one.

To take another example, the election in 1997 of Mary Harney as the first female Táiniste is widely seen as a victory for women. The fact that as Minster for Health she was responsible for a devastating and concerted attack on public healthcare, which has caused and will continue to cause the needless death and suffering of countless women, is somehow irrelevant.

In this context, then, the inadequacy of 'equality of opportunity' as a goal of feminism is clear. Having more women in the Dáil chamber, or the stock-exchange floor, or the boardroom does nothing to change the lives of the vast majority of women, whose lives are characterised by exploitation, alienated waged-labour and powerlessness. In particular, the Bacik brand of liberal feminism, which embraces neoliberal ideology, can offer nothing in the struggle against the expansion and normalisation of precarious labour under the neoliberal project (in which women are significantly over-represented*), other than to suggest that more men should be subject to precarity. Nor, for example, can it adequately deal with the sex industry, whose primary cause - the existence of (comparatively) wealthy men who can use their economic power to coerce women into sex - is ultimately rooted in the class structure of our society.

Clearly then, feminism, properly understood as the struggle to improve women's lives in the face of oppression, exploitation, violence and misogyny, is necessarily a class struggle. As feminists, we should not fight for greater representation of women in the upper echelons of inherently oppressive and exploitative institutions, but rather the abolition of these institutions and the creation of a society based on genuine equality, freedom and empowerment for women and men alike.

*For more on the gendered nature of precarious work see the 'Precarious Work and Women' section of Global Action Against Precarious Work by the International Metalworkers' Federation

Ireland is open for business - reflections on the election

2011-02-27T00:58:00.009Z

So much has changed so that everything remains the same.

The historic collapse of the Fianna Fáil vote (and to a lesser extent the annihilation of the Green Party) has the appearance of a seismic change to the landscape of Irish politics: the party which has dominated Irish politics since the foundation of the Irish State, and which has been in government for the past 14 years has been all but wiped out. The Fianna Fáil "brand" has suddenly and dramatically transmuted into electoral kryptonite.

But, after our old-enemies have been banished to electoral oblivion, as the dust settles over the battlefield, the emerging Fine Gael/Labour behemoth is set to continue Fianna Fáil's work of imposing savage austerity on ordinary Irish people for the benefit of wealthy elites, now armed with two potent propaganda weapons: the psuedo-legitimacy of a massive electoral victory and the ability to excuse their austerity policy as cleaning up the mistakes of Fianna Fáil and the Greens.

Already, Labour are signalling that they are willing to sell out on their moderately progressive positions (such as "free fees") in negotiations with Fine Gael, with Education Spokesperson Ruairi Quinn telling RTÉ that "There have been no red lines drawn that I'm aware of."*

Predictably, then, the Fine Gael/Labour coalition will continue to make the Irish working class pay for the crisis in Irish capitalism, simultaneously using the crisis as an opportunity to speed up the neoliberalisation of the Irish economy: the undermining of workers wages and conditions, the normalisation of precarious and unpaid labour, and the privatisation of public services. This much was implicit in Enda Kenny's repeated claim that "Ireland is open for business".

* He also made similar intimations when he signed the USI pledge on fees, saying “I wouldn’t say anything is a deal-breaker as such." http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0221/breaking30.html

The merits of electoralism

2011-02-25T18:22:00.031Z

As a member/activist of the SWP, a composite group within the United Left Alliance, I thought I should respond the previous RW article on parliament/elections. The prior post starts with a credible analysis, namely that political decisions under capitalism are subject to the dictates of those who monopolize key sections of the economy. Irrespective of which party we elect, an (unelected) group of proprietors determine national policy through their control of finance. It follows therefore that any political group which accepts the baseline of a capitalist economy (private monopoly over socially generated wealth) will necessarily pursue an agenda that puts the interests of those who own/control capital before the rest of society. The three main parties are essentially subsidiaries of the IMF, ECB & IBEC in this regard.

This much we agree with, however to take the above argument as reason enough to abandon electoralism altogether is flawed. Socialist political formations (such as the ULA) understand parliament not as a mechanism to usher in legislative reform, but rather as a platform to air socialist views & instigate protest counterposed to right wing policy. The dail provides the left with access to state media through which we can disseminate our views more widely than would be the case through our own publications. The pages of the Socialist Worker might reach a few thousand people per month, however through RTE we can reach an audience of millions.

Another allusion of the previous article is the notion that participation in electoralism itself legitimizes parliament as an institution. This is an autonomist abstraction of the worst variety, its like arguing that shopping in tesco legitimizes the exploitation of the companies shareholders. The simple fact is that having socialist TDs in the dail better situates us to expose the bankruptcy of capitalism (and parliament) than would a handful of activists alone. Moreover, protests & elections aren't mutually exclusive, parliament provides us with a sufficient base to build broader demos than would be the case if we where to abstain. Finance is also an issue, elected ULA TDs will channel funds in excess of the average wage back into party initiatives.

Surrendering available media space to establishment parties allows them to project us as ''economic illiterates with no viable policies'' a powerful narrative that alienates us from potential support. Taking advantage of the mass media allows us to counteract the anti-socialist propaganda so often proliferated by the right & their ''social democratic'' acolytes. The ULA will be able to address issues such as the deficit & debt repudiation while working consistently to expose the leaders of the ''labour'' movement as collaborative agents of the same defunct elite who brought us to the current juncture.

I would sincerely urge people to get involved with the ULA. ULA are running 20 candidates nationwide & should be able to take 5-7 seats from which we can build on. The workers party took years to achieve 7 seats, however the ULA are poised to take a similar number after only 3 months of activity. Real change may well come from mass direct action in the streets & workplaces, but in order to imbue people with sufficient confidence to partake in such emancipatory action the left needs a platform.

Why I won't be voting (and neither should you)

2011-02-19T02:23:00.012Z

Over the past two years of economic crisis, we've seen massive and sweeping austerity cuts, the transformation of private banking debts accumulated by ultra-wealthy bankers and property developers into the debts of the working class, and the agreement of a 'bailout' with the IMF/ECB, which will amount to several more years of misery, hardship, unemployment and emigration for the ordinary people of Ireland. All of these decisions were made by wealthy elites in Leinster House for the benefit of even wealthier elites in financial institutions both in Ireland and around the world, without even the most tenuous of democratic mandates or the most perfunctory of public consultation. In other words, the liberal state, despite its supposedly 'democratic' forms and rhetoric, is quite clearly not functioning democratically: huge decisions which affect the lives of every woman, man and child on this island have been taken without any participation by the ordinary people whose jobs are lost, whose wages are cut, whose social protections are eroded, who are forced to emigrate.

And now, after all the major decisions have already been made, after the debt burden has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the Irish working class, democracy is to be restored, as if by magic, through the ritual of the General Election. After a month or so of faces on lampposts, empty and dull TV debates, trite photostunts, and politicians calling to our doors to shake our hands and pretend to care about our opinions and the day-to-day reality of our lives, we will get to decide which of the three centre-right, pro-IMF/ECB, austerity parties we would like to represent us. We're sick of green austerity - should we try red austerity? Or maybe blue austerity? Enda's a bit stiff and impersonal, maybe it would be better to have Gilmore's firm but smooth velvety voice tell us we're all living beyond our means and should accept cuts or fuck off to Australia.

This election, then, is a grotesque parody of democracy: a wafer-thin veneer of popular decision-making to mask the reality that we have no control of our lives, a superficial change so that everything remains the same, the mystification of the actual power structures and decision-making processes of globalised capitalism. Sure, the schadenfreude of watching Fianna Fáil and the Green Party collapse into electoral oblivion will probably be quite sweet - it may even feel like poetic justice - but once the feeling of vengeful joy subsides, we will be faced with the same austerity measures, the same massive debt burden for us to carry, the same bleak reality of a stolen future, albeit with a different set of faces in Parliament, and slightly different rhetorical flourishes to justify the further erosion of our living standards, now backed-up by the pseudo-legitimacy of a recent election.

Change won't come from the ballot box. It never has, and it never will. Change will only come about when we begin to demand a world where democracy means that ordinary people have control over the decisions that affect their lives, rather than ceding our power to 'representatives' who claim to take decisions on our behalf and in our interests. Don't participate in this farcical theatre - organise to fight for a better world.

Joe Higgins Bingo

2011-01-20T21:09:00.008Z

With the general election on the way, we should be seeing a lot of Joe Higgins on our TVs in the near future. The first person to fill their card wins 10 class consciousness points and a kebab.

This can also be played as a drinking game. (Click on the image for the high-res version.)

The myth of post-ideological politics

2011-01-02T20:50:00.010Z

This article is, in part, a riposte to Derwin Brennan's article 'The Left/Right Divide' from TeaAndToast.ie, which is a fairly representative specimen of the 'post-ideological' liberal thought.

The idea goes something like this: the 'old politics' of left and right are no longer useful or relevant. Instead, we should seek a politics that transcends ideology - a technocratic pragmatic centrism that focuses solely on policies that 'work'.

As Derwin puts it:

[I]ts adherents refuse to be tied down by ideological solutions to society’s ills. [They] tell us not that there needs to be more state solution or more private solution as a sine qua non to improvement. They will tell us it needs to be more efficient and will try to follow whichever route leads to an efficient outcome. If it is private solution that works a centrist will go private... and if more state spending is needed it will be granted where possible.

This, of course, is ideology at its purest: the elevation of one's subjective viewpoint to the status of universal truth (as if observing human society from the outside) - the belief in Western liberal democracy as "the final form of human government" (F. Fukayama, The End of History and the Last Man), whose objective perfection places it above base ideology.

The 'de-politicised' pragmatic language of 'post-politics' attempts to mask the underlying ideology of its adherents. The metric by which we judge whether a policy 'works' (leads to an 'efficient outcome') is based on a series of subjective value-judgements. For example, privatisation of state services leads to tremendous efficiency in increasing their profitability, but at the expense of both democratic control over the institutions of society and the provision of services for the 'public good'. (And, of course, the idea that 'solutions' that involve neither the state nor capitalism should be considered is dismissed as the fantasy of ultra-left ideologues.)

We see, therefore, that the current period is not the age of post-ideological technocracy, but rather is characterised by the hegemony of Western liberal democracy. This has been accompanied by a shift in the character of mainstream political discourse, with establishment parties of the left and right struggling to stake out a space in the increasingly crowded centre. In most European countries, the left-right polarity has largely been replaced by a series of largely interchangeable pro-globalisation liberal-centrist parties, each with a slightly different image/branding and a slightly different position on issues of government spending, market regulation, tolerance of minorities etc. The negative space is then occupied by an anti-globalisation nationalist populist party (such as the BNP in England, the National Front in France etc.) and, perhaps, a handful of radical-left electoralists and reformists (e.g. Die Linke in Germany).

However, while the mainstream political discourse (i.e. the image of reality presented to us by the mass media) may have moved beyond the left-right dichotomy, the class antagonisms which underly the traditional left-right divide remain. Working people are still exploited daily, their wages and living conditions attacked, their employment becoming ever more precarious, robbed of the product of their hard-work and creativity, atomised and isolated from one another, and left bored and disaffected by a culture in which the endless acquisition and consumption of consumer goods is presented to us as the zenith of personal and spiritual fulfilment. Power still remains concentrated in the hands of the few - the capitalists whose will is enforced through the mechanism of the financial markets - with democracy for the masses reduced to an empty spectacle.

As Jacques Derrida said, in riposte to Francis Fukayama's end of history fantasies:

At a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. (J. Derrida, Spectres of Marx)

Moreover, the rapid emergence/growth of popular resistance movements (particularly those in Greece, Italy, France, the UK, and Spain) in response to the financial crisis (which exposed the class tensions in society - the ruptures in the social fabric - for all to see) shows that the old battle between left and right, between people and power, between humanity and capital, is as relevant as ever.

HSE service plan 2011

2010-12-31T23:27:00.011Z

“We are asking the health service to deliver at least the same level of services next year with less staff and less money'' Mary Harney

The HSE recently released its 2011 service plan, which outlines how the health service will be re-configured so as to cut €1.4 billion from the total budget by 2014. Under the motto ''more for less'' the government plan to cut the amount of skilled nurses through a cap on recruitment while both increasing the workload of remaining staff & transferring additional duties to social care volunteers. The plan aims to save €242 million in pay related expenditure by the end of 2011 through the removal of 2,250 staff & proposes a further reduction of 6,000 staff by 2014 1. Ireland already suffers a relative shortage of skilled physicians, with the number standing at 2.8 per 1000 people as against the OECD average of 3.8 per 1,000. The Irish health system also suffers a shortage of acute care beds, with only 2.7 beds per 1,000 people compared to the OECD average of 3.8 per 1,000 2.

Patient fees will also be increased under the new plan, hospital service charges which already cost an average of €75 per day will be increased by 3%.Meanwhile, student nurses are being subjected to vicious attacks as the gov plans to abolish their pay entirely by 2015. Currently fourth year student nurses are entitled to 80% of a qualified nurse’s salary3. The governments plan will (by 2015) have nurses in their final year work intensive full time shifts for 36 weeks of the year with no payment whatsoever. The gov plan to reduce salaries gradually from 60% in 2012 to 50% in 2013 to 40% in 2014 to 0% by 2015. Meanwhile, the CEO of the HSE Cathal Magee receives €350,000 per year in addition to a car allowance of €20,000 4.

Liam Doran of the INMO hinted at industrial action, claiming that the proposed cuts may ''subject to the agreement of the student body, involve the disruption to clinical placements''3. The INMO plan to hold meetings on the issue through the new year, HSE staff should attend these meetings & argue for industrial action. A further €3.7 billion was awarded to AIB over the Christmas holiday & Fianna fail are determined to make ordinary people foot the bill. Unionized workers in particular have the potential to turn back the tide provided they mobilize & put pressure upon the conservative union leadership to engage in action.

1.http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Publications/corporate/nsp2011.pdf
2.http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1208/breaking68.html
3.http://www.inmo.ie/DesktopModules/Articles/ArticlesView.aspx?ItemID=8851&mid=18168&TabID=459&ParentTabID=8&TabIndex=7
4.http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0726/1224275467314.html

Bad Right-Wing Journalism Awards, 2010

2010-12-20T17:48:00.018Z

As the year draws to a close, Red Writers presents you with a brief reminder of some of the worst pieces of right-wing journalism from 2010.

#8: Lazy minds seek solace in Marxist clichés

John Waters, Irish Times, October 8th

The 1% Network's walking tour of Dublin in October attracted the ire of slightly unstable right-wing Catholic journalist John Waters.

Waters decided that, by drawing attention to the vast wealth accumulated by the top 1% of the Irish population, the (predominantly anarchist/libertarian) 1% Network was indulging in "gobshite-Marxist clichés", rather than dealing with the real issue: "The poor – nowadays deemed to include all those on incomes up to approximately the average – [who] pay little or nothing [in tax]."

Clearly enraged by the vulgar Marxist classism of those who point out that it's mainly working-class people who are bearing the brunt of the economic crisis, Waters launched a stinging attack on the 1% Network - one which mainly involved copy/pasting text from the 1% Network's website and putting it in inverted commas to imply sarcasm (like he imagines Oscar Wilde or Johnathan Swift might do).

#7: Religious freedoms under attack from equality laws

David Quinn, Irish Independent, February 5th

David Quinn thinks about gays a lot. When he's not busy rushing to the defence of priests and bishops who cover up child abuse, the main focus of his energy seems to go into rewriting the same article about the threat posed to religious freedom and the sanctity of traditional heterosexual marriage by the gays and their pesky "rights".

Apparently, the freedom to discriminate against homosexuals (which, clearly, is fundamental to any civilised society) is under threat from gays (and "left-wing pressure groups") who want to get married and raise children.

[T]he upcoming Civil Partnership Bill, which will give marriage-like rights to same-sex couples, will also attack religious freedom... For example, under this legislation a church hall that refused to rent itself out to a gay couple wishing to celebrate their civil union there could be sued. Its ethos wouldn't matter a jot.

Seemingly, the fact that you won't be able to get away with homophobic bigotry because you say the word "ethos" is a massive a erosion of our civil liberties.

First they came for the homophobes...

#6: Evolutionism is just another belief system -- but one that depends on a great deal of science

Kevin Myers, Irish Independent, September 15th

Kevin Myers is either an idiot or a genius: He's either an idiot, who really believes all the offensive, racist, misogynistic, anti-worker, poorly-researched, ignorant things he writes; or he's a genius who's managed to find a way to make a lucrative career out of saying things that are obviously wrong.

Either way, its piss-poor journalism. The article I've chosen is just one example that particularly annoyed me, in which Myers argues that "evolutionism" (whatever that is) is just another religion - an argument he supports by employing the standard creationist tactic of randomly selecting facts from biology and then saying "how does your evolution explain that, science boy?"

#5: Shinners storm the Dáil

Kevin Doyle, The Herald, May 12th

Remember the Right to Work march where Sinn Féin stormed the Dáil? Me neither.

According to The Herald, though, that's exactly what happened. Except these Shinners were all in Eírigí, and all happened to be holding SWP flags for some reason...

(Skip to about 3:10 to see the Shinner uprising.)

#4: Students lash out at violent 'hijackers'

Catherine Halloran & Kevin Jenkinson, The Star, November 4th

In the wake of the Garda violence outside the Finance Department during the student protests on November 3rd, the mainstream Irish media seemed to be competing with one another to see who could most gratuitously misrepresent the facts of what happened, spurred on by USI President Gary "Vote Fianna Fáil for Jobs" Redmond, who condemned the protests as "anti-social behaviour".

By a nose, the winner of that contest was the Star, whose article on the protests carried the subtitle: "Far-left thugs blasted for causing chaos". But then again, what would you expect from a newspaper whose website doesn't contain any actual news?

(Come Here To Me! have archived the various hysterical reactions the next day by the nation's media here.)

About a week later, RTÉ finally decided to show the footage they and the rest of the media had been studiously ignoring, showing the full extent of the the violence:

#3: It's not racist to say 'sorry, we're full'

Ian O'Doherty, Irish Independent, July 9th

As a rule of thumb, when you feel the need to preface what you're saying with the phrase "I'm not racist but...", its probably something you should keep to yourself.

Unfortunately, Irish Independent journalist Ian O'Doherty (the poor man's Kevin Myers) didn't seem to be aware of that rule when he decided to submit his poorly-researched fantasies about the "asylum gravy train" for publication.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, claiming that "refugees/asylum seekers, or whatever you want to call them" should go elsewhere because we "cannot afford to accommodate any more people who, through [receiving] free accommodation, free legal advice, food, clothing" and other basic necessities constitute "a burden on the State" and who "will only ever take from a system they never contributed to in the first place," is definitely racist, which probably explains why it was picked up by a pro-BNP blog.

#2: So-called 'do-gooders' provoked the Israelis

Ian O'Doherty, Irish Independent, June 4th

Worse still was O'Doherty's attempt to trivialise the murder of nine humanitarian activists, or "murderous fanatics" as he calls them, by Israeli commandos. Apparently, by trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, these "do-gooders" who O'Doherty asserts were actually terrorist sympathisers "provoked the Israelis" and got what was coming to them.

#1: Harney's paint raider, the baby she brought on marches and a drug addict dad; Extremist Louise Minihan was already glorifying IRA murderers in Junior Cert

Cormac McQuinn, Mail On Sunday, November 7th

Today, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal Miss Minihan's extremist past - how, as a teenager, she took her infant son on republican marches and how the child's father was a drug addict who died of an overdose.

Published in the wake of the "attack" on Mary Harney with a bucket of red paint, this is one of the worst pieces of crude muck-raking gutter-journalism I've ever had the misfortune to read.

In praise of Mary Harney

2010-11-13T02:10:00.001Z

If there’s one occupant of the Dáil I really, sincerely admire, it’s Mary Harney. She is – I assert this entirely without ironic intent; there will be no punchline – probably the most honest politician in Ireland. I take umbrage on her behalf when allegations of cronyism are directed towards her by opponents on the left, on account of her husband’s involvement with IBEC and his private healthcare-related lobbying activities. I genuinely believe such grubby personal vices to be beneath her.

There is a purity to her vision, to her earnest determination to put herself where she can do most damage to the welfare state and stay there, which partakes of the intoxicating clarity of fascism that appealed so strongly to former generations. Her ongoing tenure in charge of the Department of Health is already widely held to have been an abject failure; she herself would consider it anything but, and would be correct to do so.

She will indeed, as her critics protest, leave behind a health service stripped to the bone, critically shorn of staff, demoralised and defeated, in which ability to pay is the greatest arbiter of life and death. To suggest that this constitutes failure on her behalf is to imply that she ever intended it to be otherwise.

Cowen, Lenihan, even ideologues such as McCreevy, Cox and Sutherland, all act simply to preserve an order of the world which they have internalised by undiluted osmosis. The methodology may be systematic, but the impulse is instinctual. George Bush didn’t care about black people. Brian Cowen doesn’t care about poor people. Geraldine Kennedy, deep down, doesn’t really believe they exist.

Mary Harney, on the other hand, really, truly and dispassionately believes that they must be made to suffer. But not through malice borne of hatred; it’s not pathological, nor is it an unthinking prejudice. It’s a cold, rational belief that the poor are unworthy, parasitical and an impediment to progress and a just ordering of the world.

It is one thing to evince indifference to suffering through ignorance, stupidity or contempt (one might call it Pat Kenny Syndrome if claimants to the title were not quite so numerous.) But to inflict suffering, without malice, without passion, on the scale that Harney achieves with almost her every act in office; that is an awesome capacity which most people simply cannot hope to comprehend. Her closest analogue is Colm McCarthy, but the comparison does her little justice.

Her single-mindedness is staggering. In the history of the state, no one individual (I include Taoisigh in this) has ever left so personal an imprint upon the lives of so many. She has her foibles, of course (arrogance and a short temper), but studiously prevents these from interfering with her mission.

She has endured the disgusting petty corruption and opportunism of a bumbling coalition partner, has even had to hold her nose and compromise with unions she despises in order to keep her project on track. She is, I would venture to suggest, the most hated woman in Ireland and the most hated member of the most hated government in history. To knowingly place oneself in that position without retreating an inch or even feigning regret bespeaks a singularity of purpose which only the truly great and the truly wicked ever attain.

The defining moment of Mary Harney’s career was its coup de grâce. Greater depredations will be inflicted upon the poor and sick in years to come, but they’ll issue from the pen of an IMF bureaucrat or the mealy mouth of a Labour minister. Harney’s final flourish, however, will echo through the generations. Her insistence upon a 50 cent charge per item dispensed to medical card holders was a magnificent and magnanimous curtain call.

The charge as it stands will strain the wallets of only the most wretchedly vulnerable; that, however, is merely a propitious side-effect. It could equally have been set at 20 cents, or 1 cent. The goal was simply to establish the principle of paying for prescriptions. It was a gift to her successors; from here on, the charge can only move in one direction. She herself will not be around to reap the benefits. She will not endure the quiet, desperate opprobrium of pensioners forced to choose between heating their homes and staunching their pain, though none could endure it with more poise.

It was an act of selflessness, of far-sightedness and of cool, clear-headed, rational cruelty. Mary Harney is an honest woman, a visionary and an idealist. May we never see her like again.

David Begg blames workers for union weakness

2010-10-26T14:48:00.005+01:00

According to a story in yesterday's Irish Times, ICTU General Secretary David Begg "has rejected criticism that unions failed to organise mass protests against the Government’s handling of the financial crisis."

Apparently this highly-paid union bureaucrat feels that its workers themselves who are to blame for the lack of union militancy: "Irish people are not the same as French people, [they] are much more conservative... [M]ost Irish workers would not thank me for creating havoc in Ireland as they would see it."*

Of course, this is completely self-serving. While it might be convenient for a pampered bureaucrat on a six-figure salary to blame the workers whose interests he is supposed to represent, the reality is that workers have on several occasions shown that they have the willingness to fight the government's austerity agenda. Most notably, over 250,000 workers took part in a one-day general strike on November 6th last year. What is lacking is a union leadership that they can trust not to sell them out.

In March of last year the Irish Congress of Trade Unions announced a national strike in response to government attacks on workers’ living standards only to call it off at the last minute when the government invited them back into talks, completely destroying the momentum they had built up. Then, in the wake of the November strike, union leaders negotiated the infamous Croke Park Deal, which was, in reality, a capitulation to the government's demands. They then proceeded to bully and frighten the workers into accepting the sell-out deal.

The problem in this country is not that workers are too conservative (although it is certainly true that the political spectrum here is further to the right than most European countries), but rather that the petit-bourgeois union leadership represents the interests of the establishment of which they have become part, rather than the workers whose interests they are ostensibly supposed to advance.

*Bizarrely, he also claimed that trade union mobilization in this country would create a "fascist backlash”.

Pink PDs: Beyond GUBU

2010-10-25T21:20:00.003+01:00

I want to treat this morn of a little local difficulty with a certain amount of national resonance. With the pollsters continuing to dole out dollops of percentage-based bliss to Gilmore and his Pink PDs, there remains a stubborn misapprehension amongst some on the Left that this represents, in spite of the party's avowed policies, some sort of material advance for progressive politics in this country.

Examples are legion, but I single out Workers' Party president Michael Finnegan's rather pitifully desperate shout-out to Eamon Gilmore in the latest edition of the excellent Look Left. One would expect the WP, of all parties, to have been rudely disabused of the persistent delusion that the slithering creepy-crawly of electoralism can ever blossom into anything finer.

For the purposes of this post, I want to transport you back to the halcyon days of summer 2010, a time when the sun cast shimmering shadows upon pavements resounding to the soft-shoe shuffle of the dole queue and the plangent, trailing hoot of the vuvuzela.

In the North Dublin suburb of Ballymun, the hundreds of families still stranded in dilapidated flats by a bungled regeneration programme were without functioning lifts. This in itself was not unusual, lift maintenance being one of those little optional trimmings of dignity which are habitually withheld from those in their power by Dublin City Council for fear of giving them ideas.

In this instance, however, lifts were grounded by industrial action pursued by the TEEU on foot of a clear breach of normal redundancy procedures enacted by the (what else?) contractor, Pickerings Lifts. Dublin City Council reacted with typically underhand serpentine cunning by discharging Pickerings from its contract rather than thrashing the issue out, thus pulling the rug from under the picket lines.

Or so they thought. When the council sought to top off its treachery by taking an injunction against the TEEU's ongoing picketing of a site now handed over to Dimension Elevators, they received an unexpected shock. High Court Justice Mary Laffoy was forced to concede that an oversight in the otherwise watertight anti-union legislation of 1990 rendered picketing of a former employer's business legal, provided the dispute was a legitimate one (as the Labour Court had deemed this to be.)

Now what, comrades, do you suppose was the reaction of the local Labour Party to all this? To excoriate the bureaucrats for their deviousness? To insist that DCC take up the union's offer of emergency coverage? To ask why the council was willing to waste time and money on a High Court injunction (the TEEU was awarded costs) while residents suffered and services were decimated across the board? (I spoke to some with mobility issues whose lives had effectively been on hold since February, when the dispute began.)

Nope, instead the clarion call that issued forth from the fuzzy rubicund ranks was "Send in the scabs!" I was unaware of this, having been unable to keep apprised of the minutiae of the issue during the summer, but just came across this Labour Party freesheet printed at the height of the dispute whilst tidying up some other rubbish.

Another scene of urban misery, another Labour photo op.

Note the absence of any passing reference to the chicanery of Dublin City Council, and the framing of the dispute as a purely legal matter. Now, I'm sure Cllr. Lyons would defend his appeal to the army (who were indeed called in and predictably ballsed everything up, being, like, an army, and not a trained lift maintenance crew) on the basis that people were suffering and needed an instant resolution. We'll call it the Passport Office Gambit for the nonce. Bear in mind that the only possible utility of introducing the army was to break the union, end the picketing and allow Dimension Elevators to take up the contract; the army, as any half-wit would know, is simply not capable of providing this service. Why would they be?

It's funny how the POG is never applied when the Gucci's on the other foot, though, isn't it? The suffering caused by privatised and streamlined-to-oblivion services is never an argument for actually, properly providing those services. Hard-headedness must rule, except where the hard heads are wearing hard hats.

That, in microcosm, is what Labour represents. It's why a stable Labour/FG government with an unassailable majority will deliver nothing less than an apocalypse to the working class. And it's why the immediate task of Irish socialism is to forestall that eventuality at any and all costs.

Further reading on the rampant assholery of Dublin City Council: This excellent article by Cllr. Cieran Perry via the ISN (neither of whom I'd endorse categorically on all issues, but both of whom are doing good work.)

Book Review: Crack Capitalism

2010-09-23T17:02:00.018+01:00

Author: John Holloway

John Holloway is one of the predominant voices within the anti-globalisation movement. His last book: Change the World Without Taking Power (released in 2002) sparked much debate. Following the autonomist tradition, Holloway proposes in Crack Capitalism that state power should not be assumed, rather it should be avoided. He argues that in assuming state power, the traditional socialist movement condemned itself to reproducing the forms of exploitation that it sought to abolish. Holloway proposes that socialist struggle ought not to be directed towards the seizure of the institutions that dominate our lives, but rather against the 'concept' of wage labour that solidifies their hold over us. We must carve out 'cracks' in the existing system; social spaces where the logic of capital is to some extent suspended. However Holloway in Crack Capitalism, as in his last work, fails to acknowledge the extent to which the state (particularly in the era of neo-liberalism) seeks to commodify space and time, closing the available ‘cracks’.

Post-industrial society?

Holloway deals with the development of modern capitalism and its implications for the class structure in chapter 24. He highlights the increased financialisation of the global economy, the relative decline in manufacturing and the increase in service jobs. Holloway quotes the Italian autonomist Paolo Virno: “Post-Fordism is the surpassing of the society of labour within capitalism itself; a society in which wealth is produced not by the work of individuals but by science or the general intellect; a society in which there is no longer anything that distinguishes labour from labour time.” While Holloway admits that there remains (for the vast majority) a clear distinction between wage labour and ''other forms of doing'', he proposes that the economy is largely ‘post-industrial’. Holloway echoes the argument made by autonomist writers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, that today ‘immaterial labour’ is dominant, that is, labour that does not produce a material product, particularly ‘services’. Holloway expresses the same opinion though using different language; for him there is a crisis in ‘unitary labour’, the traditional concept of waged labour.

The Global Economy

The late Chris Harman (SWP) in his 2002 polemic against one of the seminal works of the contemporary autonomist movement 'Multitude' (by Hardt and Negri), argued that the modern economy is not ‘post-industrial’ but in fact still largely characterised by industry. While the total number employed in manufacturing through the developed world has decreased since the 1970s, on the whole it is 25 million higher than in 1951. Within many advanced nations industrial employment is actually higher than in the ‘70s; Japan and the US being two examples. In 1998 the number of US workers in industry was nearly 20% higher than in 1971. While Industrial employment has, as a fraction of the global economy, declined, this is due to technological advances leading to an increase in productive output, not a decline in the significance of global manufacturing.

Moreover, it’s important not to see the relocation of capital from places like the UK to peripheral regions as being indicative of some massive decline in industry. The growth of the service sectors in Europe or the US serves to provide money to buy the commodities being produced through Chinese Industrial expansion. The proportion of employment in manufacturing in the Chinese economy is higher than ever, and continues to increase.

Many autonomist and post-modern scholars attempt to support their argument that immaterial labour has become dominant by recourse to the fact that employment in the service sector continues to rise as a percentage of the global economy. However, people who put food into tins are considered to be employed in manufacturing, whereas those who put burgers in boxes in fast-food outlets are in the service sector; but the activity is no less ‘material’. Waged employees in both service and industry, according to Harman account for about 2 billion people internationally, with an equal number of semi-waged workers (peasant labourers etc). In all, the waged working class, together with non-waged agricultural producers, are still the cornerstone of the modern economy.

Labour's Dual Character

In chapter 13 Holloway deals with Marx's theory of primitive accumulation. He then illustrates how the distinction between labour and leisure varies through different economic systems. In the process he provides a romanticised portrait of hunter-gatherer societies, pointing out that aboriginal tribes in the 19th century would ''obtain in two or three hours a sufficient supply of food for the day, but their usual custom is to roam from spot to spot, lazily collecting it as they go along''. In another passage he states that fifteenth century Europe was in comparison to the puritanical epoch ''one long, outdoor party, punctured by bouts of hard labour''. The idea that medieval peasant life was, between harvesting and sowing crops, ''one long outdoor party'' is naive to say the least. His analysis of pre-capitalist society is supposed to remind us that ‘unitary labour’ is not the only way to understand work, yet he fails to provide any suggestions as to how wage labour is best abolished in concrete terms.

The Zapatistas

One of Holloway's favourite examples of autonomism in action is the Zapatistas/EZLN, and he draws upon them as an example of “cracking capitalism” throughout the book. The EZLN are a revolutionary peasant movement situated in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Holloway attempts to project the Zapatistas as something new, a post-left movement free from the dogmatic constraints of traditional socialism. The Zapatistas newest venture is their ‘other campaign’, an initiative designed to gain support beyond their indigenous base. Holloway writes that: “We try to give it shape as the other campaign, for example, and it surges in other forms that do not fit our institutional preconceptions.” However, the Zapatistas fit our existing understanding of institutional struggle very well.

The EZLN do not adhere to the organisational pluralism that Holloway (and other autonomist scholars) attribute to them; rather they work according to a strict unitary programme. Their latest strategic document (the sixth declaration) must be accepted by all who wish to participate in their ‘other campaign’. Within the ‘other campaign’ exists a body known as the ‘sixth commission’ whose task is to ensure that the campaign does not deviate from the EZLN's tactical line as set out in the 6th declaration. As explained by a leading member of the EZLN: “The Sixth Commission is the spirit of the Other Campaign, because if the Other Campaign goes ahead and we abandon the Sixth Declaration, comrades, we will end up like sand scattered by the wind and everyone will be abandoned, and this way we won't succeed, because the Sixth Declaration contains certain ‘recommendations’.'' (Comandante Zebedeo, Monterrey, Mexico, May 5, 2007). This appears to be a clear warning against the brand of theoretical and organisational pluralism that Holloway advocates.

Strategy

Holloway exhibits a certain post-modern antipathy towards ‘grand narratives’. He also considers any unified strategy necessarily authoritarian. His perspective is contradictory, however. He disagrees with unified strategy only within the context of larger struggle, although he has no problem with the unitary nature of the Zapatistas. Most organisations have set foundations, and coherent strategic aims. Autonomism as an intellectual trend tends to glorify ‘small strategy’ and denounce larger strategy on the basis that it negates various smaller perspectives through subordinating them to a set ‘totality’. However, numerous perspectives are negated when decisions are being made within any organisation, irrespective of size.

The Party

The capacity of a polymorphous movement to resist state and market expansion is minimal. While localised struggle may be able to temporarily suspend neo-liberal encroachment, disparate organisations are unable to de-construct the means by which the market expands. In order to neutralise capital accumulation, the question of state power needs to be considered. As explained by Lenin (in State and Revolution) the structural mechanisms by which the market imposes its domination rest in state institutions, the courts contain the laws which allow for the exploitation of the working class, and the police/army exist to enforce those laws. It therefore follows that any popular movement which aims to democratise the economy needs to appropriate the institutions of capitalist power and to do this requires a revolutionary party for the necessary interaction.

What is to be done?

Isolated movements of peasant smallholders, students & the unemployed, while conducive to anti-capitalist struggle, are not enough. Various struggles need to unify with the workforce. The special significance attributed to workers within Marxism is not due to irrational snobbery; rather it is a matter of who has both the interests and, vitally, the power to overthrow the capitalist system; the unskilled unemployed can’t take over/run factories or transport but can combine with workers who can. The working class play a pivotal role insofar as they generate the wealth required to fund capitalist state repression and this situates them in an advantageous position to end it. While Holloway is committed to overthrowing the capitalist system his ideas on how best to approach this task practically are significantly flawed. Crack Capitalism should be read with these criticisms in mind. Cracking capitalism means the seizing of state power by the masses so class society and the need for a state can be dismantled by them; rather than hoping the capitalist state will simply fade away by itself.

ESB Privatization: Price hikes and disconnections

2010-08-23T23:47:00.016+01:00

The Government is set to further increase electricity costs with a 5% levy. This is despite the fact that soaring bills have already led to a dramatic rise in the number of people being disconnected in 2010. An ESB spokesperson recently confirmed that: “In the last year, ESB customer supply has ‘de-energized’ an average of 900 customers per month and this must be seen in the context of a total customer base of 1.5 million”1. According to the Commission for Energy Regulation, 2,604 people had been disconnected by March this year. New arrivals, Airtricity and Bord Gais are also disconnecting customers who cannot pay their bills on time & despite the advertised ‘discounts’ 11,000 people have had to use repayment plans for electricity bill arrears in 2010.1

Profits

The ESB made €580 million in profits last year, despite the recession. Why then are energy costs so high?2 Some media commentators have attempted to blame wage increases for ESB workers as the cause of price hikes. However, payroll costs only account for 16% of the ESB’s entire budget3. Blaming wage levels for high prices has no bearing whatsoever in reality; reducing wages would have no significant effect. The real reason for high electricity bills has to do with the government policy of privatization. Currently, the Commission for Energy Regulation keeps the ESB’s prices artificially high to create ‘market competition’. Bord Gáis and Airtricity are induced to undercut the ESB with ‘discounts’ to get their customers in a ‘big switch’. The aim is to generate private growth in the energy sector.

Cheaper Electricity

It would be much cheaper for the ESB to run a monopoly and provide electricity directly to consumers as was the case prior to 2000. In 2000 Ireland had the third cheapest electricity prices in the EU. Since then, the Government’s ‘liberalisation’ program of breaking up the ESB has meant prices rising at over four times the rate of other EU countries. As a result, in 2010, Ireland has the third most expensive electricity in Europe3. In effect, ordinary people are subsidizing the profiteering of companies we don’t need.

Neoliberal dogma

The reason for keeping the current system has more to do with adherence to neo-liberal dogma than to any commitment to economic viability. The government’s pathological urge to push through privatisation is costing ordinary people dearly. Fianna Fail plan to further privatize public services through their recently announced ‘State Assets Review Group’. Bloomberg businessweek noted that this group: “intends to divest many state assets in order to relieve the budget crisis and pay down the $115 billion national debt''. With 400,000 people on the live register already in desperate need, increasing energy bills means people have even less to spend, which is further deflating the economy. Needlessly pushing up energy costs, given the current economic climate, makes no sense whatsoever, as it would likely lead to companies firing workers to ‘neutralize the cost’ of the levy. Pharmaceutical Ireland, for example, have said that their member companies may make between 550 to 800 workers redundant to recoup their losses2. Likewise, Irish Cement Limited said the levy would cost them another €1.4m annually. Increases in operating costs will not be absorbed willingly by companies. They will attempt to divert them onto workers through redundancies and wage cuts.

Poverty

The hike in energy costs will also hit the poorest in society. The Central Statistics Office’s (CSO) most recent figures show that 14.4% of the population are living in relative poverty. Pleading for mercy will not move this neoliberal government however. €10 billion of taxpayers’ money was recently pumped into Anglo-Irish Bank and more public service and welfare cuts are on the way. Fianna Fail and their sponsors in the business community are determined to make ordinary people pay for their crisis.

Fight back

The only way to turn this crisis back on those who created it is through large-scale, grassroots organization and tactical unity by the Left. The fragmentation of the Left in Ireland is a serious obstacle. Only through adherence to an agreed plan of cooperation can we generate enough momentum to pose a serious challenge to those in power.

1. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/esb-cuts-off-900-houses-a-month-2297950.html
2.http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1020334.shtml
3. http://www.irishleftreview.org/2009/02/05/sparks-wages-competitiveness-debate/

Soundtrack of the Revolution

2010-07-25T18:42:00.013+01:00

The other day a friend asked me what my 10 favourite "Commie songs" were. So here is the list, which I think represents some of the best in subversive and anti-authoritarian music.

10. Street Fighting Man - Rolling Stones

"Summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the streets."

Recorded between March and May 1968, Street Fighting Man was inspired by the rising tide of student riots in Paris' Left Bank, which eventually lead to the May 68 uprising. Rage Against The Machine did a much more energetic cover version, which is also worth checking out.

9. 09-15-00 - Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Named after the date that the second Palestinian Intifada began, and said by the band to depict "Ariel Sharon surrounded by 1,000 Israeli soldiers marching on Al-Haram Ash-Sharif and provoking another Intifada," this 23-minute instrumental track proves that political music can be haunting and beautiful as well as angry and abrasive.

8. Di Great Insohreckshan - Linton Kwesi Johnson

"It woz event of di year, an I wish I had bin there, wen wi ran riot all over Brixtan, wen wi mash up plenty police van."

A song from reggae dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson about the Brixton riots which broke out in April 1981 in response to operation Swamp 81, a massive police incursion into the Brixton ghettos, involving heavy use of stop and search powers and the sus law.

7. All You Fascists Bound To Lose - Woody Guthrie

''There's people of every nation, marching side-by-side, marching across the field where a million Fascists died."

Anti-fascist tune by folk-legend Woody Guthrie. Whatever you do, don't listen to Billy Bragg's butchered version.

6. Which Side Are You On? - Pete Seeger

"Oh workers can you stand it? Tell me how you can. Will you be a lousy scab or will you be a man?"

An old lefty favourite, originally penned by Florence Reece during the 1931 miners' strike in Harlan County, Kentucky (a brutal struggle between the United Mine Workers and the mine owners) after deputies hired by the mining company illegally entered and searched the Reece family home.

5. Fuck the Border - Propagandhi

"I stand not by my country, but by people of the whole fucking world. No fences, no borders. Free movement for all. Fuck the border."

An anti-borders song by Canadian veganarchist punk band Propagandhi.

4. Do they Owe us a Living? - Crass

"Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do.

Shouty British anarcho-punk, with lyrics that almost beg to be chanted on a march.

3. Union Song - The Nightwatchman

"For the unnamed and unnumbered who struggle brave and long, for the union men and women standing up and standing strong."

After Rage Against the Machine broke up, guitarist Tom Morello released two albums of stripped-down protest folk. This is his paean to the American labour movement.

2. Spanish Bombs - The Clash

"Spanish weeks in my disco casino, the freedom fighters died up on the hill. They sang the red flag, they wore the black one, after they died it was Mockingbird Hill"

A homage to the Republicans of the Spanish Civil War by the greatest punk band of all time.

1. Take The Power Back - Rage Against the Machine

"You are the witness of change and to counteract we gotta take the power back"

I decided before I started that I should limit it to one song per band. That meant I had to somehow choose just one Rage Against the Machine song (although I did kind of cheat by including a cover). Eventually, I settled on this polemic about the eurocentricity of the US education system. (I couldn't, of course, pick Killing in the Name after it became a favourite of every mediocre pub band in the British Isles.)

Immigration, Borders and Dehumanization

2010-07-24T15:30:00.018+01:00

During the past weeks a number of news stories again highlighted the inhumanity of Western immigration policies.

In Mosney, we saw the appalling treatment of asylum seekers who were faced with the prospect of forced relocation to Dublin, without consultation or any apparent concern for the wishes of the people in Mosney, many of whom had lived there for years while they worked their way through the long and tortuous asylum process and had formed communities and friendships both within the centre and with local residents.

The contempt with which the State treats those who come here seeking protection from violence and persecution is obvious. That the State expects people to subsist on €19.10 "pocket money" per week¹ is surely an affront to human dignity. Meanwhile, right-wing reactionaries in the Irish media, such as Ian O'Doherty opined that "refugees/asylum seekers, or whatever you want to call them" (as if those words have no meaning) who are "riding the asylum gravy train" should go elsewhere because we "cannot afford to accommodate any more people who, through [receiving] free accommodation, free legal advice, food, clothing" and other basic necessities constitute "a burden on the State" and who "will only ever take from a system they never contributed to in the first place". Somehow, O'Doherty is able to argue with a straight face that, while he plays up to reactionary anti-immigrant stereotypes in the pages of a national newspaper, the discourse on immigration is being controlled by a bunch of politically-correct "Stalinists" who are able to silence every dissenting voice².

Recently, the Irish Supreme Court shot down the appeal of Pamela Izevbekhai, who is petitioning the Irish State not to deport her and her children to Nigeria where they face the plausible threat of being forced to undergo female genital mutilation (the violent and potentially fatal removal of a little girl's clitoris and labia). Again, no compassion or concern for this woman and her children for fear that a tide of troublesome black immigrants would arrive seeking asylum on similar grounds³.

Meanwhile, in the US, the State of Arizona passed a law placing stringent new burdens upon immigrants, requiring any immigrant over the age of 14 to carry their immigration documents at all times, and allowing the police sweeping powers to harass anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. This is a clear invitation for police to engage in racial profiling of Mexicans. In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, the U.S. Supreme Court found: “The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor.” The Arizona Supreme Court agrees that “enforcement of immigration laws often involves a relevant consideration of ethnic factors.” While both these judgements prohibit cops from using race/ethnicity as the sole grounds for suspicion, the real world impact will be widespread racially motivated police harassment of Mexicans and other Latinos. Other States are said to be planning similar measures.⁴

In all questions regarding immigration, one fact remains immutable and inescapable: as long as we continue to have a massive global underclass who live in subhuman poverty in their native countries there will be mass immigration from these countries in search of "a better life" (what is called "a better life" when referring to immigrants is what we would consider a minimally acceptable standard of living for Westerners).

As we continue to implement harsher anti-immigrant laws, the result will be that desperate people will be forced to go to increasingly dangerous measures in an attempt to flee from poverty or violence. Last week, 73 illegal immigrants were intercepted on the Greek-Bulgarian border by Bulgarian police. They were crammed into a secret air-conditioned compartment inside a truck carrying watermelons. Usually this kind of human trafficking is run by organised criminals, and is closely related to sex trafficking. Every year, hundreds of people die attempting to illegally enter the US and Europe.

The fact that our fellow humans are forced to take such dangerous and degrading steps constitutes a massive violation of human rights and an assault on human dignity. Any system that requires this level of violence to sustain itself is fundamentally inhuman and should be abolished. In any case, the only people who actually benefit from this system are wealthy capitalists who are able to exploit immigrant labour in order to obtain a cheap labour force at wages and conditions well below what would be accepted among the wider working class, which drives down wages and conditions for the working class as a whole.

No fences, no borders. Free movement for all.

1. Meals and accommodation are provided by the State. Asylum seekers are also given €19.10 per week for an adult and €9.60 per week for a dependant child in "supplementary welfare payments". Asylum seekers are not entitled to work. http://www.ria.gov.ie/the_asylum_process/reception_and_dispersal/

2. The fact that I first came across O'Doherty's hateful rant on a blog proudly displaying British National Party logos speaks volumes. http://www.londonpatriot.org/2010/07/10/ian-odoherty-its-not-racist-to-say-sorry-were-full/ For more in-depth analysis of his article see: http://www.irishleftreview.org/2010/07/09/racist/

3. http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0709/izevbekhaip.html

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070

Labour Für Wiederaufbau

2010-07-14T19:19:00.030+01:00

Just in case the prior article outlining Labours proposed wage cuts, reductions in public spending and ''neutrality'' on the croke park deal didn't get the message across, its worth looking into the parties position on state investment/privatization. Labour released its proposal for a strategic investment bank on the 25th March, it was subsequently rejected by Fianna Fail in the Dail. The document proposes to set up a state investment body responsible for providing capital to credit starved SMEs in light of the banks contraction with regards lending. State expansion in the face of market decline might sound Keynesian, but lets take a closer look at what labour are advocating here. The document first concedes that Fianna Fails parameters on Maastricht compliance ought to be respected, even though no serious economist (right/left) considers them realistic. This established, Labour propose an off balance sheet solution

''The SIB would do so by identifying a project or bundle of projects and by then taking the lead role in financing them. It would prepare and issue bonds on the international capital markets and to institutional and retail investors. The private consortium appointed to design, build and operate the project or projects in question would borrow the project funding from SIB (and through SIB from other lenders), for a small margin over the coupon SIB would pay on the bond in order to cover SIB’s costs'' - ''Projects that would be funded by issuing bonds would include those where there was a user charge like roads, public transport, waste, communications and energy, as well as social infrastructure like health, education and cultural facilities where the state pays an annual fee for use of the facility. The private consortium would repay the SIB over the duration of the project from user charges or else from the payments it would receive from the sponsoring department or agency for the construction, operation and maintenance of the project.' (p.5)

Essentially the SIB lends to private consortia who in turn build projects required by the state, the state/taxpayer then pays the private proprietors a rent over an extended contract, and the consortia in turn pays a given amount back to the bank through the ''profit'' generated. This is essentially a proposal for a PFI bank; PFI was initiated in the UK under the Tories in the early 90s, although new labour went on to preside over its expansion. The practice in the UK proved an abysmal failure as it was found to vastly exceed the cost of traditional procurement (state run projects). This occurred in numerous ways, for one - many of the projects ended up with private consortia cutting corners to increase profits. Moreover, projects that where discontinued (for whatever reason) where tied into long term contracts, so for example; ''Balmoral High in Belfast closed six years after it was built, when pupil numbers halved. The Northern Ireland Department of Education now owes the contractor £370,000 a year for the next 18 years''. Essentially the short term gain in terms of lower borrowing costs where cancelled out by the rent expenses 1.

In addition, EU law made it mandatory for the state to pay large sums out to consortia who failed to secure contracts, companies that came second or third would be handed millions due to tendering costs; one failed application for a hospital in Bristol received 6 million. Labour however, make no secret about this factor, stating that ''It is envisaged that the SIB will have the benefit of an ongoing State guarantee for its activities in the funding of public infrastructure projects, either by operation of law (where these projects fall outside the scope of EU State Aid rules) or, if necessary with Commission approval'' p 5. Labour are not unaware of the fact that private companies will in the case of failed applications be bailed out with taxpayers money, given that EU state aid rules (post 2007) entail the requirement to compensate failed bids 2. In a document published by UNISON (what is wrong with PFI in schools), the consequences incurred due to PFI are outlined.

According to Labour ''The SIB would be broadly modelled on the German Kreditanstalt Fur Wiederaufbau, and on the ICC/ACC models that perviously operated in Ireland'' p.3 they go to highlight the kfws role in the reconstruction of post war Germany. However they omit an important aspect of the kfw's history; ''kfws first attempt in the fall of 1949 to raise money on the limited German capital market by issuing long term bonds failed miserably. In the end kwf was left with counterpart funds from the allies, including GARIOA and the Marshal fund money''3 kfw failed to secure funds due to the poor economic climate, and resorted to US aid provided through the marshal fund. With regards ICC/ACC ''Up to the late 80s the agricultural and industrial credit corporations were poor performers in financial terms. Established to provide credit for farmers and the industrial sector both banks focused on serving niche markets and lacked the scale necessarily for increasing their share of the Irish banking market''4 both banks performed poorly in terms of profit until they where aided by the economic upturn of the 90s.

While the Irish Labour party acknowledge the problems associated with the current PPP setup, they propose that the problem of high costs would be negated due to consortia repaying the SIB through profits/subsidies on the part of development agencies. However this is tautological, they claim that the state will save money because borrowing costs will be lower on account of SIB being subsidized by the taxpayer. They provide no actual stats on cost comparison between state/private borrowing & as highlighted earlier PFI tends to be more expensive. PFI through SIB will most likely provide large investors with huge gains at the expense of the taxpayer. Labour's clear aim is to have the private sector plug the gap in reduced public investment, as against increasing state spending on public projects.

Borrowing costs are high, however the state can still avail of credit to fund infrastructure. Given the apparent borrowing limitations, our tax base needs to increased, however modest proposals such as labours 48% rate tax on earnings over 100,000 don't go far enough. In order to re-configure the economy along more socialist lines large scale re-distribution would be required, PBPs alternative economic agenda provides some decent proposals. The gap should be closed to the extent possible through re-distribution, nationalization of resources & repudiation of the bank guarantee; not privatization.

1.http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/15/private-finance-initiative-pfi

2.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1550730/NHS-pay-private-companies-for-failed-PFI-bids.html

3.http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Kreditanstalt-fuuml;r-Wiederaufbau-Company-History.html

4.http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/2262/8758/5/JssisiVolXXXIV1_27.pdf

"Coming up on Frontline: Are all travellers thieving scum or are some of them alright?"

2010-07-07T13:01:00.012+01:00

(I know this is a little late coming, but I couldn't let this pass without some comment.)

For some reason, people in this country see prejudice against travellers as being different in some sense to prejudice against other minorities. Thus it is possible for a mainstream prime time current affairs show (The Frontline, RTÉ, 28th June 2010) to ask a question such as "Public nuisance or put upon minority, what is the truth about travellers?"

What followed was an opportunity for reactionary bigots like Fine Gael Councillor Patrick Kavanagh and "journalist" Ian O'Doherty* to make sweeping generalizations about travellers, perhaps the most ridiculous of which being Kavanagh's claim that travellers were carrying out "ethnic cleansing" on the settled community. Traveller representatives were placed immediately on the back foot and had to refute baseless accusations that travellers were, for example, given preferential treatment in the allocation of local authority housing.

I can't imagine any broadcaster (not even TV3) broadcasting a debate about whether blacks, or the Chinese, or the Jews are a public nuisance or a put upon minority. The transparently racist underpinnings of suggesting that the criminality of some in the black community might be a reflection on the whole would rightly be denounced by all. On the other hand, the question of whether or not Travellers are all a bunch of criminal thugs is considered legitimate debate.

*The same Ian O'Doherty whose claim that the humanitarian workers murdered by Israeli commandos were murderous fanatics who provoked Israel was somehow deemed printable by the Irish Independent. http://redwriters1.blogspot.com/2010/06/reply-to-ian-odoherty-article-on.html

Labouring the point?

2010-06-28T01:14:00.003+01:00

To those few, those happy few, who esteem themselves regular readers of this blog, my views on the Labour Party, and the nature of the "alternative" offered thereby, will be well-known. At the risk of doing what's written in the title, however, I wanted to bring something I just happened upon to (marginally) wider attention.

I've been having a wee dig in various registers of members' interests. Nothing obviously untoward leaps out. Mary Harney owns shares in A.I.B. and B.O.I. Willie O'Dea owns shares in multiple African diamond-mining operations, as well as other oil and mining companies at home and abroad. There are no significant diamond resources in Chad, as far as I'm aware, but it's easy to see how a possible conflict of interest may have arisen for a Minister of Defence elsewhere.

I'll spare the blushes of the Dublin City councillor who, in declaring shares in Cadbury, listed Nature of Business as "Sweets" (ah, screw him, it was Dr. Chameleon himself, Bill Tormey.)

The most striking entry belonged to Ruairi Quinn, and is notably absent from the profile on his website. In the Dáil register, we find the following:

8. Remunerated Position ……. Chair, Fund Advisory Committee: 4th Level Ventures, 75 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.

4th Level Ventures was a new one on me, so I took a toodle to Google and found the following depressing glimpse into the future of education.

The website's masthead reads "Commercialising Academic Research", and the company identifies its role thus:

4th Level Ventures is a €20 million Venture Capital Fund managed by Dolmen Securities. Founded in 2002, we are focused exclusively on investing in companies whose Intellectual Property arises from third level education institutional research. We are sector neutral, our expertise lies in the commercialisation of technology.

Our primary objective is to commercialise the business opportunities that arise from university research. In Ireland, this output is being boosted by Government investment of €2.5bln for science research from 2002-2006.

Ruairi Quinn is Labour Spokesperson on Education and Science.

Should we draw Mohammed?

2010-06-13T17:22:00.018+01:00

The controversy over depictions of Mohammed has been raging for quite some time. In 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's publication of a number of cartoons depicting Mohammed lead to widespread protests across the Muslim world, including riots, which lead to the deaths of around 100 people. In 2007, Swedish artist Lars Vilks released a series of drawings depicting Mohammed as a "roundabout dog" which lead to death threats and ultimately an attempt on his life.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have twice attempted to depict Mohammed (three times if you count the Super Best Friends episode, where Mohammed was shown without controversy as part of a crime-fighting team of religious figures), with Comedy Central deciding to censor the depictions on both occasions because they were "afraid of getting blown up". Following their 200th episode, in which the depiction of Mohammed was censored throughout, an obscure extremist organisation called Revolution Muslim issued a thinly-veiled death threat to Parker and Stone, warning them that "what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like [murdered film-maker] Theo Van Gogh for airing this show", which lead to the word "Mohammed" being bleeped in the following week's show.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, which took place on May 20th, emerged as an online protest to the censorship of South Park, encouraging "everybody" to draw pictures of Mohammed. A counterprotest movement also developed, which culminated in the banning of Facebook by the Pakistani High Court until May 31st.

On the surface, this controversy appears to be a straightforward case of freedom of expression versus religious extremism: a black and white issue. However, we must understand that this is just one aspect of a much wider issue: the relationship between the Western and Muslim cultures.

Muslims living in the West are living in a climate of real hostility and sometimes outright hatred, emanating from reactionary groups within Western societies. Far-right groups such as the BNP and the EDL in Britain, are increasingly able to create a fear and hatred of Muslims under the guise of defending Western freedoms from radical Islam. The EDL, in particular, is succeeding in uniting disparate groups, including football hooligans, neo-fascists and people from beyond the far-right's traditional white Christian base under the banner of Islamophobia (see here for more). All over Europe there are moves to ban the burka and the hijab, usually orchestrated by far-right parties such as Geert Wilders' PVV in Holland and the National Front in France, with several countries already enforcing full or partial bans on this important cultural signifier. Often these reactionary movements take on the language of feminism in order to further their agenda. The Swiss recently took the radical step of outlawing the construction of minarets, to a chorus of cheers from proto-fascists across Europe.

In short, Muslims in Europe are under attack from the far-right who use "defending free speech" as a tool to spread reactionary propaganda such as Geert Wilders anti-Islamic film Fitna. Their aim is to project Muslims as outsiders within Western societies. Protests such as Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, though well-intentioned, have the effect of unwittingly contributing to this agenda. Blaspheming against Islam within a primarily white Christian society is not the same as blaspheming against Christianity within that society, because the former has an exclusionary effect - it is an attack on someone who already feels like an outsider. A cursory glance through the photos on the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day Facebook page reveals a lot of nasty anti-Muslim stereotypes masquerading as satire - in particular, numerous occurrences of the Mohammed-with-his-head-as-a-bomb image from Jyllands-Posten - which mainly go unquestioned by the liberal defenders of free speech. The casual association of Islam and terrorism is particularly worrying.

Radical jihadist groups also benefit from the isolation and alienation of ordinary Muslims within Western society. Such groups rely on the perpetuation of the conflict between Western and Muslim cultures. During the Jyllands-Posten controversy, it became very clear that much of the violent reaction was being orchestrated by jihadists, including producing extra cartoons that weren't included in the newspaper article. Ironically, it is the most reactionary and violent groups within both cultures that benefit most from the ignorance and fear of Islam within Western culture.

So, returning to the title: should we draw Mohammed? My intention with this post is to contextualise the issue and to show that there is deeper discussion to be had - it is not a black and white issue. While censorship is wrong, including self-censorship in response to violence, it is not entirely clear what the value of deliberately setting out to offend and alienate Muslims is. If we simply intend to provoke a violent response from extremists, we must be aware that this is precisely what fascists (both Muslim and Western) want.

Labour & the left

2010-06-10T15:28:00.032+01:00

'Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their "own" country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the "advanced" countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert. This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers. take the side of the bourgeoisie, the "Versaillese" against the "Communards".

Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution'' - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Labour’s economic trajectory: rhetoric vs. facts

As Labours 2009 pre-budget submission illustrates, Labour are firmly grounded in the logic of fiscal consolidation. They essentially present us with a nicer version of Fianna Fails deflationary agenda, on their intentions they note that ''It is necessary to reduce this Fianna Fáil Deficit through fiscal consolidation measures'' & ''the deficit is already at an unsustainable level, and Ireland has no option but to continue the process of fiscal consolidation''1. As we can see Labour's prescription is to ''cut'' Ireland's way out of the recession. This position has led to one of the foremost left wing economists in Ireland, Michael Taft to distance himself from Labours economic stance and advocate Sinn Fein’s agenda instead.

For all Labours talk about the deficit, it doesn't seem to mention the elephant in the room i.e. NAMA. While the submission does at numerous injunctions condemn Flanna Fail for having initiated the project in the first place, Labour present no discernible strategy for scrapping it. In fact their entire submission is predicated upon ''the fairest way'' to squeeze ordinary people for the funds required to bail out indebted developers. I would have thought the more socialist solution would have been to de-construct NAMA/Bank guarantee, but then again this degree of ''radicalism'' is too much to expect of the policy hacks, careerist pedants and other species of overpaid bureaucrat who make up labours powered strata. Nor does the agenda make reference to the €420 billion in oil/gas off the west coast. So while Labour Youth are ''permitted'' to dabble in leftist ideology, such an ''unrealistic'' proposition as nationalizing Ireland's vast resources is considered unworthy of attention when it comes to ''serious policy''.

On public sector wages, Labour provide no guarantees; in fact they go a step further and argue that reductions are essential, stating that ''While it is necessary to reduce the public sector pay bill, this should be achieved through negotiation, and as part of a process of public sector reform, There will be a requirement for significant flexibility in staff deployment to bring this reform about''1. On the Public Sector; Labour have proposed the following measures

• Appointment of a Cabinet Minister with responsibility for Public Service
Reform

• Stronger scrutiny in the Oireachtas of how money is spent based on our longstanding
proposals for Oireachtas scrutiny of public expenditure.

• Flexibility in the deployment of staff, and more openness in the limited
recruitment that will be carried out in the public service.

Labour suggests that recruitment be reduced, and the remaining workforce subjected to increased ''flexibility''. As far as reducing the non pay budget is concerned labour states its aim to ''drive down input costs through measures such as generic prescribing in the health service, lowering utility costs and better supply chain management & lower administrative costs as identified by the Bord Snip report, including selected agency mergers''1; This is vague, but Im not so sure spending less on medical equipment is a great idea: Ireland already spends less on health as a % of GDP compared to its EU-15 counterparts. Labour did however attempt to illustrate how they could claw back a portion of what they would remove from public expenditure. They expressed to desire to cut € 4,346 million out of the economy in 2009 and raise an additional € 2,351 million from measures such as carbon tax ect. Many of labours estimations are however extremely suspect, for instance they proposed that € 100 million could be saved through targeting ''social welfare fraud''. On a more recent note, Labours silence on the Croke Park deal provides an insight into the parties true disposition. Not least considering the deal will (among other things) result in

• a five year pay freeze

• a get out clause that allows for further pay cuts

• a ban on strikes and industrial action

• forced re-deployment under threat of dismissal

• up to 20,000 job losses

Labour's failure to come out against the croke park deal is ironic, considering they are the only main political party who receive yearly ''union affiliation fee's'', est at €60,107 (2007)2. When the above is taken into consideration it becomes apparent that Labour is unequivocally neo-liberal in its economic trajectory, and for this no serious socialist can consider them redeemable. Neo-liberalism is more dangerous when its encroachment is hidden behind a red flag, something we should keep in mind.

The Greek connection:

To understand what Labour have in store for Ireland we need only look at the actives of their sister organization PASOK, who are currently repressing one of the largest workers movements Europe has seen in decades. PASOK came to power amidst a tide of left wing rhetoric. When the party came to office however, they set about negotiating a deal with the IMF, in exchange for a package to pay off debts owed to German banks PASOK would slash wages and cut public expenditure across the board. This caused many people who had voted for PASOK to loose faith, as unions representing 50% of the workforce called a general strike.

Ruari Quinn, Labour TD for Dublin South East in a recent RTE interview expressed his view that Greek Workers ought to ''learn fiscal discipline’’; he commended his comrades in PASOK for following through with their assault upon the Greek people. So while Quinn avails of his €112,000 Per Year3 (expenses aside); he shamelessly condemns the most impoverished people in Europe (on an average monthly wage of €803)4 for not accepting cutbacks. Rather than blaming transnational speculators for cutting off investment (forcing Greece to borrow so as to maintain their public services) and proceeding to push up interest rates so as to precipitate a form of debt bondage, the Labour party (as expressed by Quinn) blame the Greek working class for the situation. Likewise Labour will (in time) blame the Irish people for not accepting the austerity demanded by wealthy proprietors when they embark on their (inevitable) neo-liberal escapade. Labour would, rather than serving to counterbalance Flanna Gaels neo-liberal disposition (as ill informed members generally argue) only exasperate it, and in the case of popular upheaval, blame the victims.

1. http://www.labour.ie/download/pdf/prebudget.pdf
2. http://irishsocialistjournal.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/labour-party-revised.pdf
3. http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1018939.shtml
4. http://www.marxist.com/myth-of-lazy-greek-workers.htm

Kicking Against DPRK

2010-06-10T11:12:00.002+01:00

I don't have much time for the totalitarian/militaristic/nationalistic stylings of the North Korean regime. Most on the left share my distaste, although, like the pornography industry, there's a niche group to cater for every perversion.

Nonetheless, the lazy, reflexive, shibboleth-laden coverage given to the participation of the DPRK football team at the forthcoming World Cup is getting on my Eklands. When combined with the slavish, philistine gushing over Brazilian football which is so typical of the British sporting press, the annoyance dial cranks up to CRITICAL. Behold:

The images projected by the two nations are similarly far apart.

Brazil is synonymous with an unfettered joy of expression, illustrated perhaps most vividly down the years by its football team.

Think of North Korea, however, and thoughts instinctively turn to a political regime, whose military spending and belligerent foreign policy earned them a place alongside Iraq and Iran in former United States president George W Bush's 'Axis of Evil'.

Well, not really. There was a time, in living memory, when to freely express oneself in Brazil meant to end up very much fettered, if not very much dead. Secondly, everyone knows that the only reason North Korea made Bush's Most Wanted list was to disguise the religious crusading nature of the War on Terror.

These perfunctory slanders will be familiar to anyone whose memory extends to the late 1980s, and the heyday of Valeriy Lobanovskyi's Dynamo Kiev/USSR teams (they were effectively one and the same.) Lobanovskyi's teams played a pulsating, swift counter-attacking style of football in which every member of the side was a potential playmaker. In many ways, it was a precursor to the tikki-takki house style for which Barcelona and Spain are lauded today, although played at a faster pace and more exhilarating to watch.

Of course, that wasn't how the Western press saw it. Instead, they wrote of automatons, who knew what to do with the ball before they received it, doubtless as a result of harsh, repetitive, military-style training (as opposed to having their intelligence and technique honed by the scientific coaching methods of Lobanovskyi.) It was somewhat of a blow to this thesis when Lobanovskyi's Dynamo Kiev and Romantsev's Spartak Moscow sides retained and refined this style long into the capitalist age.

So, for all that the constant evocations of the Dear Leader by the coaching staff irk me, and the archaic 5-3-2 system offers little hope, I hope North Korea do well at the World Cup. It will offer the beleaguered people of that nation some little solace (and yes, they will see and/or find out about the results) and piss off a lot of people I don't like.

If nothing else, it might put a stop to stuff like this:

Their domestic media were described as "so suppressed they are non-existent" by campaign group Reporters Without Borders and the few interviews that have appeared from inside the squad have been full of cliches.

Take a moment to savour the rich, delectable irony of that last bit, bearing in mind that it comes from the BBC's dumbed-down-to-death football department. If North Korea's players deal in clichés because they come from a totalitarian dictatorship, what's the England squad's excuse? Maybe Juche is the state ideology of Soho Square. It might explain how Eriksson kept his job for so long...

Reply to Ian O'Doherty Article on Flotilla Massacre

2010-06-04T21:32:00.004+01:00

This is my reply to the article So-called 'do-gooders' provoked the Israelis by Ian O'Doherty in today's Irish Independent. I have no idea if they are going to print it.

Sir -- In attempting to trivialise the murder of nine humanitarian activists, or "murderous fanatics" as he calls them, by Israeli commandos, Ian O'Doherty presents a grossly distorted version of events. He attempts to paint the actions of these activists as being motivated by political posturing rather than genuine humanitarianism, ignoring the fact that the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza is in itself a humanitarian issue. According to Amnesty International, the blockade has reduced the people of Gaza to "bare survival" depriving Gazans of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival.

His claim that the flotilla's refusal to sail to Ashdod to hand over the aid to Israel to distribute through official channels demonstrates that they were more concerned with provoking a response from Israel than with delivering aid. The problem is, these official channels are precisely the cause of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza in the first place. According to Tel Aviv NGO Gisha, the amount of food that Israel allows to enter Gaza is about 25% of the pre-June 2007 figures. In particular, Israel refuses to allow humanitarian groups to deliver the cement and steel that Gaza needs to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed during Operation Cast Lead.

The Free Gaza flotilla are entirely justified in attempting to breach the blockade that is currently strangling the people of Gaza. The rest of us should throw our support behind the cause, despite the protestations of Israeli apologists like Mr. O'Doherty.

Yours etc.

Aidan Rowe

Area social democrat upholds proud traditions of party

2010-06-04T19:52:00.005+01:00

...by posing with a fistful of readies in front of the Jim Larkin statue to promote a gambling company.

I know Lacey rivals Aodhán Ó Ríordáin for the title of Labour village idiot, but even he should have realised that using a hero of the labour movement as a backdrop for an advertisement promoting (a) Dermot Lacey and (b) a massive betting PLC, here personified by a grinning imbecile, was grotesquely inappropriate. Perhaps more tellingly, if any voices of censure have emerged from the party ranks, I haven't heard them.

Lacey would probably cite in his defence the fact that the bet was placed on behalf of The Royal Hospital, Donnbyrook. But before you start besieging John Gormley with demands to bring forward the coronation of this champion of charity, consider the following figures.

Successful €500 bet @ 6/4: €1,250
Paddy Power profits in 2009: €67,200,000

Dignity sure does come cheap in the Labour Party.

Killing of humanitarian workers highlights violence of Gaza siege

2010-05-31T07:24:00.015+01:00

At the time of writing, at least four people have been killed on board the Blue Marmara, which was attacked by the Israeli navy in international waters en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of the Free Gaza flotilla. Al Jazeera is reporting that the death toll may be as high as 16, with dozens more injured.

Whatever the final figures, the killing of civilian aid workers, whether in international waters or not, is a heinous crime. But far from being an isolated atrocity, these killings take place within the context of the daily violence suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state.

Since 2007, the people have Gaza have been suffering under the economic blockade which, according to Amnesty International has reduced the people of Gaza to "bare survival" (source), depriving Gazans of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival. Mass unemployment, extreme poverty and constant food shortage are daily facts of life for the people of Gaza, leaving four out of five Gazans dependent on humanitarian aid. (source)This act of collective punishment, as well as being manifestly immoral, is a crime under international law. A UN Fact Finding mission lead by South African Judge Richard Goldstone said that Israel's actions in Gaza quite possibly constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity.

"Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country, that limit their rights to access a court of law and an effective remedy, could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed." (source)

The Free Gaza flotilla are entirely justified in attempting to breach the siege that is currently strangling our Palestinian sisters and brothers. Israeli claims that it is "an act of provocation intended to delegitimise Israel" are no defense. Israel is delegitimised entirely by its own actions: by murdering humanitarian activists and by persecuting the people of Gaza.

One cannot be neutral in the face of such crimes. A protest against the murder of these activists is taking place tonight (Monday 31st May), meeting at 6pm at the Spire. We will be marching to the Israeli embassy. Please join us.

A sixteen page booklet on the situation in Palestine is available in the current issue of Phoenix magazine, or from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Agriculture, Land & the Irish Left

2010-05-12T04:47:00.011+01:00

(This is written partly as a response to a number of comments made during the 'How do we know who will struggle?' talk as part of the Rethinking Revolution discussion series (audio here) which suggested that peasant struggles (such as those Argentina and Chiapas) have no relevance to the Irish situation. This seemed to me to reflect the urban background of the participants moreso than any objective reality. As an anarchist who grew up in the West of Ireland, I think I should offer an alternative perspective.)

Ireland is somewhat unique amongst developed countries. As a result of our status as a troublesome British colony, Ireland was largely bypassed by the Industrial Revolution. As a consequence, we have historically always had an unusually large class of small farmers, with little in the way of heavy industry.

While manufacturing industry has grown to be a much larger sector in the Irish economy, outside of major urban centres, agriculture still constitutes a huge part of Irish culture. Even those who don't work on farms themselves are nonetheless affected by the influence of agriculture in shaping Irish culture. This manifests itself in a number of ways, among which, most significantly for us, is a fetish for land ownership (the legacy of agrarian anti-landlord movements) and a lack of identification with working class culture and politics, even among those who have recently become members of the Irish proletariat.

This represents an important issue for the Irish revolutionary left; thus far the left in Ireland has failed to engage significantly with this class of small farmers, for a number of reasons. The vast majority of leftist theory and analysis which we are exposed to comes from thinkers from heavily industrialised countries. The traditional Marxist obsession with the proletarian as a revolutionary class does not take into account the specifics of Irish culture and economy. In addition, most people who are drawn to left-wing ideas tend to come from an urban working-class background, and thus would have little experience of rural culture. There is also a small but significant group, particularly among anarchists, who, understandably, but perhaps not helpfully, would rather agitate for the abolition of meat farming than attempt to dialogue with those involved in the industry.

A left-wing discourse focused on the struggle between bosses and workers seems to have little relevance for the Irish farmer. However, the Irish farmer is nonetheless very much a victim of global capitalism, which increasingly forces Irish farmers (along with others in the Third World) into a marketplace in which they cannot compete, while eroding the protections necessary for them to make a decent living. Ireland has never embraced large-scale “factory-farming” to any significant extent, with most of the Irish agricultural sector consisting of small, low-technology farms, leaving Irish farming particularly susceptible to destructive market forces. An important challenge for the left is to convince Irish farmers that their interest as a class coincides with that of the traditional proletarian, and with the overthrow of capitalism.

To take an example, in recent years the price of lamb has soared to the extent that many ordinary people are unable to afford it, while at the same time the price paid to farmers for the same animal has been in steady decline. This clear example of exploitation has arisen in part due to the failure of small farmers to organize along the lines of an organised labour union (the Irish Farmers Association is more of a lobby group for larger farmers), with the result that they have no mechanism to collectively withdraw their labour in order to fight for better conditions. Social movements like the Land League provide historical precedent for farmer organization in Ireland.

The political vacuum created by the failure of the left to do this leaves room for reactionary parties to flourish. At best, this means support for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who will continue to enact the same right-wing policies that hurt the ordinary people of Ireland, both farmers and workers. More worryingly, small farmers, like small business owners etc. who feel disenfranchised by capitalism but who do not identify with the proletariat have often historically been drawn to fascism.

If we are to be a serious political force in this country, the left must look beyond its traditional urban working class base of support. We must recognise that Ireland is not like most other developed countries, both culturally and economically and develop our own analysis and discourse accordingly.

The Capitalist Media and the situation in Greece

2010-05-08T20:39:00.002+01:00

Those who were not completely absorbed by the bourgeois theatre of the UK elections will be aware of the situation in Greece and the mass workers' resistance which we have been seeing on the streets since May Day. One striking (but not particularly surprising) aspect of this was the degree to which the mainstream (i.e. capitalist-owned) press were willing to report events in a manner which served the agenda of the EU and the IMF.

The dominant narrative among the global media has been that the radical left in Greece has been rioting in response to austerity measures necessary to secure EU/IMF loans to prevent the bankruptcy of the Greek economy. Much of the background to the present crisis has been ignored:

The Greek debt crisis emerged as a result of a combination of factors - the collapse of the global financial system, corruption in the Greek political system, irresponsible banking practices, etc. - all of which were beyond the control of the Greek working-class. Despite this, it is ordinary Greek workers who are being forced to bear the brunt of the austerity cuts. Ordinary Greeks who already earn very little are having their salaries cut by up to 20% (or indeed simply losing their jobs entirely) in order to repay the global financiers who precipitated the crisis in the first place.

Greek capitalism generates some of the largest profit margins in the world due to its investments in the poorer Balkan countries, the lack of adequate social protections for Greek workers, the light taxation of Greek business (partly due to a corrupt political culture which allows for widespread tax evasion) and Greece's substantial black economy. Despite this, there is little or no discussion in mainstream circles about forcing Greek capitalists to pay for the crisis for which they are responsible.

Entirely absent from the news coverage is any discussion of the history of the IMF, who have a long and sordid history of using bailout loans as a weapon to impose liberal economic systems on recalcitrant populations. The anti-worker and pro-capitalist character of the Greek austerity measures makes sense only in the context of this agenda of economic and social deconstruction.

Also entirely absent in the mainstream media was any reporting on the extraordinary level of violence exercised by the Greek police against their own people. In the Exarcheia district of Athens, there were reports of police destroying shops and social centres, evacuating squats at gunpoint and brutalising local people who jeered the police.

"According to Ioanna Manoushaka (see photo) she was standing on the front door of the block shouting at the cops that they have made life in the neighbourhood unbearable when policemen attacked her with globs breaking her arm and teeth. She then run up the stairs and locked herself in her apartment, but the riot policemen followed her and tried to smash the door for five minutes, while her and her husband, a well known composer, barricaded themselves. " (source)

Even when video evidence (see below) emerged of riot police smashing the windows of a cafe with customers inside, it went entirely unreported in the capitalist press.

The ordinary people of Greece are fighting for their very livelihoods in the face of an massive onslaught from the EU, the IMF, the global capitalist media and the Greek State. However, we must not see this as an isolated case. Workers in other nations, such as Ireland, which face similar financial crises and whose governments' are pursing similar policies of transferring wealth from the workers to the wealthy are part of the same fight. In Ireland, as in Greece, we must not sacrifice ourselves for the wealthy.

For more on the situation in Greece, including an anarchist response to the firebomb attack that killed 3 bank workers, go to http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/

The Laborious Labours of Mickey D

2010-04-18T11:29:00.002+01:00

So, c'mere to me, I want to ask you a question. Do you or do you not believe in the achievement of an inclusive citizenship with a new form of social economy and universal access to the requirements of citizenship? Because if you do, you're half-way towards qualifying as a coalition partner for the Labour Party.

The impenetrable formulation above was one of two questions party president Michael D. Higgins posed to "those who would do business with us" in the course of a rapturously-received address at the Labour Party conference in Galway on Friday night. For the record, the other was "Do they accept or reject that speculative form of the economy divorced from any social responsibility?" Given the economic programme recently outlined by party finance bod Joan Burton, it's tempting to wonder what answer the question is inviting.

Last night, the Labour blogosphere was abuzz with approbation for Michael D's address. Having viewed it myself, it's hard to understand quite what they were so excited about. Even leaving the politics aside, the import of the address was stifled by academic jargon like the periphrastic circumlocution above. Which probably isn't that surprising, given that the rabble-rousing title Mickey D conferred on his little speechín was Labour - The Real Alternative: Towards a Political Economy Based on an Inclusive Citizenship.

Which is not to say that the speech was entirely devoid of significance. Socialism was invoked just once (tangentially, during an Irish-language preamble on the history of the Labour Party in Galway), and, extraordinarily in the circumstances, neither the ongoing public sector dispute nor even the broader trade union movement merited a single mention.

The present financial crisis was blamed on a "failure of unregulated speculative capitalism"; note the double prophylactic qualifier (just to be sure, to be sure, as the old joke goes.) Higgins never once referenced Fianna Fáil or any other party by name, but instead rounded on the populace at large for electing them.

He was quite baldly explicit about this, re-emphasising the point more than once. Responsibility for the crash, he insisted, lay with the public's "misplaced loyalty and trust in market fundamentalism and extreme individualism", when a Labour government "would have delivered a different Ireland." I guess if anyone is going to evince a sense of wounded paternalism, it should be Michael D., but the comment jarred nonetheless (not least because, as I recently outlined, I don't believe the Irish people have ever endorsed those values.)

Every time Higgins seemed to be winding up for a proper Left hook, the punch was fatally pulled. Thus we had a denunciation of "market fundamentalism" and an appeal for a "social economy", a term notably one linguistic permutation away from the "social market" so beloved of EPP spokespeople.

Even when the decibels cranked up, the message was vague and obfuscated. "What kind of cowardliness in us", he plaintively cried, "stops us from speaking and raging about the alternative that can be created?" (I don't know, Michael, what kind of cowardliness in you does stop you from speaking and raging about the alternative that can be created?)

Towards the conclusion of the speech, Higgins did adumbrate a couple of specific policy points ("lest people think that I speak in the abstract all the time", heaven forbid.) The most encouraging was a clear statement of opposition to reductions in social welfare payments and the minimum wage, particularly in the context of NAMA. This is to be welcomed. He also proposed the establishment of a business and investment bank (which would certainly have been preferable to the NAMA route) before lapsing back into platitudinous gobbledegook with an appeal for the "building of real inclusive citizenship."

And then, just as he was winding down, came the revelatory punchline. The "real inclusive citizenship" motif which had peppered the speech was abruptly decommissioned in favour of "real republican citizenship." Just in case anyone had missed it, he repeated it almost immediately. Suddenly, the major subtext of the speech, which I confess had largely eluded me, became clear.

Just about the only historical figures invoked in the course of the speech had been Michael Davitt and James Connolly (specifically in relation to the decision to commit the Citizen Army to the Rising.) Additionally, Higgins had begun by stating how his father had fought for Irish independence, which independence "had not been delivered." This entire thread of the address was, of course, a plain-as-your-nose shout-out to Sinn Féin.

This was also, undoubtedly, the motivation behind the repeated juxtaposition of "Labour and the left", particularly as the statement that there was "nothing immiseratingly materialist" about Labour's programme was a clear rebuff to radical currents.

So what have we learned from the conference so far? That Labour is not a socialist or even a genuine social democratic party is surely news to no-one. Nonetheless, depressing little vignettes such as The Apostasy of Dr. Cowley (Dr. Jerry Cowley, former independent TD and Shell to Sea supporter, has joined the Labour Party and accordingly dropped his opposition to the pipeline, because "things have moved on") demonstrate just how far right the currents of neoliberalism have carried the party.

Nonetheless, Labour, alone amongst the major parties, continues ostensibly to espouse social justice and resistance to the hegemony of the market, and therein lies the opportunity for the genuine left. Assiduously exposing those who merely talk the talk could help lead left-minded voters towards those who walk the walk. But not to do so until Labour posteriors are furrowing the government benches would be a critical mistake. They must be put beneath the spotlight and forced to unfurl their true colours at every opportunity.

The Socialist Alternative ?: Part 1

2010-04-09T22:24:00.006+01:00

Current situation:

The left has for the most part constrained itself to the role of denouncing unjust gov policy. Most socialist publications/articles are described at best as a mixture of detailed critique, conjoined with some vague allusion to an unspecified model. All to often we hear condemnation of the Gov due its ''unfair tactics'' while being provided with very little in the way of alternative economic proposals. Where alternative positions do exist or are published they often entail little more than some slogan orientated rhetoric of ''tax the rich'' or ''take back the gas''. These are not unreasonable sentiments - however, they fall short of a cohesive framework. If people expressing the wish to re-construct the very basis of society cant come up with something a little more comprehensive than ''jail the bankers'' then the socialist movement cant expect to ascertain any worthwhile increase in its base of support. The left will not grow unless it can provide practical solutions to the immediate problems faced by working/middle class people.

Why is the left incapacitated ?:

The primary reason for the lefts inability to formulate an economic program, originates not in an intellectual incapacity - rather an ideological tendency. There exists within the left a particular strand of thought, which dictates that the proposal of alternatives framed within the constraints of the current system is blasphemous. Fetishism for direct action, together with an implicit rejection of strategic/long term planning will do little more than consign the left to a future of sporadic upheaval with little possibility of lasting change. One prophetic slogan from Paris 68 reads ''Those who make revolutions half way only, dig their own graves''. The new left, inspired in paticular by post-structuralism has in its valorization of spontaneous action, ignored/forgotten the extent to which serious social change requires coherent planning. The Irish left is (unfortunately) in no position to advocate the immediate implementation of communism. Realistically, a semi-peripheral state cannot run an entirely socialized economy. The base of our light manufacturing is predominantly made up of foreign multinationals, and the components required to operate it are largely imported. Furthermore, the state borrows € 71 million a day to fund the public sector 1. In the case of overt socialization Ireland would most likely have trade embargoes set against it, while banks would stop lending or charge astronomical interest rates due to our inability to sell bonds. The country would become an international pariah and end up in an even worse condition than exists at present.

The beginnings of an alternative framework ?:

The left needs to recognize that it is (in the short term) constrained to the proposal of broadly keynesian solutions. However, unlike social democrats we should conceptualize these reforms as transitory mechanisms, means of ascertaining popular support from which we can popularize our long term goals. Such transitory programs have been constructed, to some extent at least. People Before Profit's (Alternative Economic Agenda) is one such example. The document treads a thin line between radicalism and realism, give or take according to taste. There are areas within the agenda that might strike some as unreasonable, however it does provide a number of practical solutions to the current situation. Essentially, it proposes that large scale public works be initiated, funded through borrowing conjoined to an extensive increase in taxation. Indebted developers are to be declared bankrupt, their debt liquidated and the remaining assets taken under public ownership. Standard right wing objections to the tax proposals highlighted in the agenda would make reference to the lafur curve, brain drains and capital flight. With regards borrowing, interest rates/bond sales would constitute the basis of the neo-liberal rebuttal. I will take some of the more prominent right wing counter-arguments in step.

Higher Taxation leads to less revenue overall, considering it will lead to less demand:

So long as re-distribution serves to move wealth from the upper class to lower socio economic groups - consumer demand/revenue on average, will increase. This occurs due the fact that lower socio-economic margins have a higher propensity towards consumption, while higher income groups tend to spend proportionately less of their incomes. Policy which serves to put money into more rapid circulation is good for the economy. The incentive to engage in tax evasion can be negated through stringent regulation/reformation of current laws with regards tax/citizenship. The argument that capital will relocate is subject to the assumption that the legal system remains liberal enough to facilitate such mobility.

Higher income tax's/lower real wages will disincentivise people:

The idea that higher professionals would leave the country in the case of lower remuneration/higher taxation (thereby crippling the economy) is moot. To the extent that this may occur, professionals could simply be out-sourced - Cuban/Venezuelan/Peruvian/ doctors ect. The commonly cited conservative argument that higher remuneration leads to higher quality, serves (ironically) as an argument in favor of outsourcing labor from peripheral regions in the case that monopolized upper-middle class cartels reject a system of equitable wage.

Borrowing is a waste of money, we need to close the deficit:

The assertion that reductions in public expenditure will close our deficit in any significant way is one of the central fallacies of right wing discourse. For example, the ESRI ran a simulation in 2009 illustrating the effect of a € 2 billion reduction in public spending. It estimated, that in year one the deflationary effect would amount to a € 1 billion decline in consumer spending, together with an overall € 1.5 billion reduction in GDP 2. The borrowing requirement would only actually fall by a mere 0.5% in year one. Essentially, whats saved via short term cuts is cancelled out in the long run through a reduction in revenue conjoined with an increase in social welfare payments. The left should be arguing for the gov to borrow/tax so as to maintain employment/invest in infrastructure.

But we cant keep borrowing, its unsustainable - the IMF will come in:

The notion that current borrowing levels are unsustainable is overstated to say the least. The right very often use the IMF as a sort of boogeyman for grown ups ''If you don't shut up and do what your told, the IMF will get you''. This threat has little bearing in reality, Irish debt stood at 82.9 GDP (2010). Our debt/GDP ratio is below that of Belgium, Italy, Greece, Portugal and only 0.3% higher than France 3 . This understood, the fact that other EU states in a similar position aren't being denied credit or facing the prospect of IMF intervention puts things in perspective. Even if interest rates where to increase, Ireland would remain in an advantageous position with regards its borrowing capacity relative to many of its EU counterparts. NTMA bond sales continue to fare well, and borrowing costs remain consistent 4. The notion that borrowing to maintain toxic debt however, entails less risk of default than borrowing for stimulus is ridiculous. Pumping money into zombie banks is just as likely to keep borrowing costs high as is investing in capital infrastructure.

Conclusion:

In all PBPs alternative agenda is quite attractive. Regardless of specifics, PBP can be commended (at least) for recognizing that concrete proposals will generate public support. There are in other areas, signs of progress – the WSM for instance has recently initiated Radio Solidarity, a show dealing in specific with the economy/possible solutions to the current crisis. The project is still in its infancy, but looks promising. Overall, the left needs to enter the debate, it cannot precipitate opposition to the current system while presenting no alternative short of world revolution. On the other hand, we should not confine ourselves to short term reformism, rather be active in the proposal of measures directed towards the establishment of socialism proper on the continent. In the second part of this post I will discuss some ideas as to how a socialist economy might be viable within a pan-euro context, dealing in specific with syndicalism.

1.State now borrows €71 million a day to fund public sector, Daniel McConnell, Irish Independent, Sunday - October 04, 2009.

2.Cutting Public Sector Pay and Jobs - the High Cost of Irrelevance. Michael Taft, The Recession Diaries - March 11, 2009.

3.http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1019462.shtml

4.February 27 Lunchtime: Michael Taft, Irish Left Review - February 27th, 2009.

No Platform, An Anarchist Critique

2010-04-07T01:36:00.001+01:00

Author's Note: I no longer particularly agree with this. No Platform is a valid approach at least in some cases to disrupt Fascist organising.

One point of near-consensus among the radical left is that fascists must not be given a platform from which to spread their views (and thus to recruit), and that any attempt to give them such a platform must be resisted, with violence if necessary. This policy has lead to the cancellation of numerous debates on university campuses involving far-right figures like David Irving and Nick Griffin.

I have never been particularly comfortable with this position, and it baffles me somewhat that it is accepted with virtual uniformity in left-wing circles, for a number of reasons. I therefore present the following critique from what I feel is an consistent anarchist perspective. I'm drawing mainly on the WSM's 'No Platform for Fascists' policy document ¹, which I think is a fairly standard exposition of the idea, for reference, though these arguments apply generally.

The WSM say that: "as anarchists, we believe that there should be a right to free speech, to organise, and to freely express political opinions; and that such rights are extremely important. These rights, however, are not inalienable and there are very limited occasions on which they should be curbed."

The idea that free expression can be curbed and still be called free seems to me to be blatantly self-contradictory. Either we believe that everyone should be free to express whatever ideas they wish, however evil and reactionary, or we believe that some group of people should be appointed to set the limits of acceptable discourse. There is no middle ground between those two positions, and I think we should be very wary about choosing the latter; one of the things that sets anarchists apart from authoritarian communists is that we don't suppress reactionary thought.

If we concede that there must be limits to free expression, then inevitably we are drawn into the question of where to draw the line, and who decides. What makes Fascism such a unique threat to human society that it requires this kind of illiberal response while Western imperialism, or indeed capitalism itself, do not?

The issue is complicated by the lack of a clear definition of what Fascism is. Consider this passage from the Bristol Antifa website:

"It is a mistake to see fascism solely in terms of extreme far-right nationalist political parties such as the BNP, NF etc. While these are the most obvious target for an anti-fascist campaign, many policies promoted by other parties are equally fascist in nature, and demand an appropriate reaction. The media is also guilty of pushing far-right ideology (the tabloid treatment of the issues surrounding refugees for example) and their actions often fall within the remit of an anti-fascist group. We should oppose fascist ideology whatever its source." ²

This passage is symptomatic of a larger problem, namely that it is easy to characterize any authoritarian and/or racist policy as Fascistic; the word "Fascist" has over time lost its meaning. George Orwell wrote that "the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’." ³

The issue is complicated still further by crypto-Fascist groups like the BNP, or the "national anarchists", who hide their underlying Fascist ideology behind mainstream political language in the case of the former, and stolen anarchist, environmentalist and anti-capitalist rhetoric in the case of the latter.

In any case, I'm not sure that the No Platform approach works any more. The BNP seem to actively thrive off the aura of danger and bravado they project, and the No Platform policy only feeds into this further. This is partly because it alienates a lot of left-libertarians who are basically on our side against Fascism, but who are uncomfortable with the suppression of free speech, and shifts the public discourse away from the real issues.

The BNP love to project themselves as the victim of a politically-correct Marxist conspiracy of silence on issues of race, immigration and national identity. They can claim to be the only ones willing to stand up to the liberal intelligentsia and talk seriously about immigration, and thus gain a lot of respect from the disenfranchised working class who see cheap foreign labour undercutting their hard won pay and conditions.

Of course, the race to the bottom is a product of globalized capitalism and not the fault of migrant workers, but unless we engage with and debate against those who would use migrants workers as a convenient scapegoat whenever the opportunity presents itself, then right-wing lies will pervade. Do we really lack the confidence to win this argument?

1. 'No Platform for Fascists', Workers' Solidarity Movement
2. 'About Us', Bristol Antifa
3. 'What Is Fascism', George Orwell, Tribune, 1944

Capitalism: A Love Story

2010-04-03T09:59:00.001+01:00

At this stage, one knows what to expect from a Michael Moore film: a mix of documentary, polemic, satire and self-glorification. Capitalism: A Love Story is Moore's latest offering in which he examines modern American capitalism and the financial crisis.

As expected, the film gives a greatly simplified picture of the situation (in particular, painting Europe and Japan as socialist paradises) to an extent that I found irritating. But then, the film isn't really aimed at me, but rather as an introduction to anti-capitalism and socialism for a mass audience - a function which it fulfils quite well.

In particular, the parts of the film that dealt with worker-owned co-operatives, and with collective action by ordinary people (workplace occupations, re-occupying houses from which they had been evicted) were genuinely empowering, while his discussions of "dead peasant" insurance policies, where companies take out life assurance policies on their own workers in the hopes of profiting from their deaths and for-profit prisons were both poignant and illuminating.

When Moore moves on to broader political issues, however, one cannot but notice that his criticism focusses almost exclusively on Republicans, leaving the Clinton administration, for example, unscathed. This, perhaps, reflects Moore's naive belief in voting (and voting for Obama in particular) as an instrument of social change. Nonetheless, the subversion of democracy by corporate America, in particular relating to the $700 billion bailout is expounded in shocking detail, with a member of congress describing it as "a financial coup d'etat".

As with Moore's previous offerings, we are again treated to a series of lame stunts whose sole purpose seem to be to massage Moore's ego and make him feel radical (this stuntist tendency is an unfortunate feature among much of the left). On this occasion, Moore parks an armoured car outside various banks demanding to be allowed to take the bailout money back to the US Treasury and to carry out a citizen's arrest on various corporate officials before being told to leave by bemused security guards.

Overall, as long as one does not attempt to take Capitalism: A Love Story too seriously, it is an entertaining affair, and is certainly worthwhile, insofar as it brings anti-capitalism and socialism to a mass audience as only Moore and perhaps a handful of others are in a position to do.

On secularism and drinking

2010-04-02T03:44:00.001+01:00

"Why are the pubs closed? I want to be like Jesus and get hammered."

It's Good Friday once again, one of only two days a year that pubs are legally obliged to remain closed, both of which are Christian feasts. This fact alone should dispel any idea that we live in a (socially) liberal secular nation, and there are other such facts: twice a day, the State broadcaster plays a Christian call to prayer; every Sunday, live Mass is shown on RTE; the Irish Constitution states, among other things, that the "homage of public worship is due to Almighty God" ¹ etc.

Many of these issues may seem like trivial anachronisms that don't really cause any practical inconvenience ("One day off the drink won't kill us", "Sure the Angelus only lasts a minute" etc.) but this is far from a trivial issue. In all of these cases, the State is elevating Christianity (and Roman Catholicism in particular) above other belief systems as being worthy of legal protection.

The problem is, the only people who really care about these issues are the reactionary Catholic-right, who tend to vote as a block on precisely these kinds of issue. Both of the major establishment parties rely on these people for votes, which makes the Catholic-right a powerful constituency.

If we want this to change, reasonable people who believe in the idea of a pluralistic, secular Ireland need to make their voices heard. Good Friday should be met not with shrugged shoulders, people stocking up on cans, and calls for exceptions to be made around major sporting events (incidentally, why is it only rugby fans in Limerick who were deemed worthy of the privilege of watching the match in their local?) but rather with anger and protests.

1. Article 44.1, Bunreacht na hEireann

It's time we learned something from Ireland's economic crisis

2010-03-20T18:57:00.000Z

In the mainstream news media, virtually all of the discussion on Ireland's economic crisis has focused on “getting ourselves out of this mess”. We mustn't waste time, they say, playing “the blame game”, which is the term used to refer to any attempt to understand in any depth the reasons why we are experiencing such a crisis in the first place. The problem with this kind of “moving on” ¹ is that unless we understand the background to this crisis we are doomed simply to repeat the same mistakes again.

The picture given to the public is that the greed and corruption of property developers and bankers caused the system to collapse. Under this narrative, the fault is entirely with individuals, rather than with the system; consequently, government policy has been to attempt to wind the clock back five years (by pumping taxpayer money into the banks) and hope we don't mess it up this time.

While it is certainly true that greed and corruption among wealthy elites existed and contributed to the collapse of the economy, the overwhelmingly larger problem is that Ireland's economic system doesn't work in a way that benefits the majority.

While Ireland experienced unprecedented growth during the Celtic Tiger years, capital simply wasn't allocated in a way that bore any relation to social need. Consequently, we now have a surplus of 300,000 empty houses around the country (although the construction industry insists that these are all holiday homes) and families living in half-empty unfinished estates with no infrastructure. All this extra money did nothing to create increased social equality; at present, the top 1% of the population own a staggering 34% of the wealth. For the homeless, the only change is that they now sleep in the doorways of fancier shops, despite the surplus of idle houses.

Rather than trying to re-inflate the property bubble, through the sleight-of-hand of NAMA, the government should be creating an economic stimulus that will really benefit the ordinary person. We should be employing people to build schools, hospitals, flood defences, renewable energy technology, public transport infrastructure and other projects that will benefit society.

But this kind of social investment will not come as a gift from above; people must be prepared to inform themselves about the direction their society is taking and to demand an economic system that works for them, rather than benefiting a small elite. Otherwise we will see the same failed policies employed again and again, with the same disastrous results.

1. Culture of 'moving on' sets us back years, Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times, Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Bill Cullen - a living God, or a jumped up car salesman ?

2010-02-27T11:49:00.001Z

Frontline 22/02/10

The topic of discussion was the current economic crisis and disaffected youth. Among the gurus of the current world order in attendance was one Bill Cullen - a multi millionaire from humble origins who clawed his way into the ranks of Ireland's financial oligarchy. Cullen went on a rather stereotypical tirade about how the youth of today where lazy and spoilt, followed by a rant about how his days of hardship had thought him a thing or two about the value of ''hard work''. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo. Nor was he happy with people playing ''the blame game'' - complaining about Fianna Fail, the banks ect. This is understandable considering Cullen's (Glencullen Holdings) made €13,459 of political donations in 2002 1.Glencullen Distributors donated an additional €2,500 to Mary Hanafin (FF) in 2007 2.

One of the most shocking comments made by Cullen was that young people should be ''happy to work for nothing'' - in order to gain experience. Needless to say, Bills desire to see Ireland's youth engage in slave labor was hardly self disinterested. Cullen is a capitalist, and as such embodies a philosophy marked by a pathological urge to drive down labor costs so as to ascertain higher profits. Far from being a good Samaritan, Cullen is a greedy old man who wants more money at the expense of other people. His prognosis of Ireland's social ills cannot be separated from his own economic agenda.

One member of the audience made a statement in relation to wealth re-distribution to which Cullen was offended. Cullen responded by asserting that he had worked hard for the wealth in his possession, and re-distribution would only serve to penalize his efforts. The underlying assumption is of course that his wealth can be connected to ''his'' efforts. The notion that his companies $350m a year turnover can be attributed to his individual workload is nonsensical. Cullen has merely ascertained a position whereby he is able to make other people work for him, and as a consequence appropriate a large slice of the value that his employees generate. Cullen ''built'' the Glencullen enterprise in much the same sense as the Pharaoh's ''built'' the pyramids. To say that he ''or those like him'' create wealth is little more than a euphemism used to describe the process of speculative appropriation.

Amazingly some of those at the butt end of Bills abuse agreed with his general prescription, one commenting that ''bill is right, we do need a kick up the arse''. Well, if you accept Bills worldview then this might be the case - bend over and let him kick you. Socialists on the other hand understand very well that while kicks up the arse are in dire need of administration, those on low incomes have been kicked just about enough.

1. Car magnate Cullen's .1.5m dividend a long way from penny apples, Brian Carey, Sunday Tribune, July 27 - 2003.
2. Government, Anglo and the developers, Emment Oliver, Sunday Tribune, Jan 25 - 2009.

History, Propaganda and Hypocrisy

2010-02-13T13:16:00.001Z

Among the most cherished rhetorical devices of contemporary right wing propaganda is the assertion that ''socialism has failed'', due to the experience of USSR style command economies. This assertion is most often conveyed via the illustration of of soviet atrocities. The underlying implication is that command economies developed through exponential suffering relative to their liberal counterparts. How realistic is this argument ?. Is communism quantifiably worse than capitalism ?. It seems counterintuitive to think otherwise in a society where we have become so accustomed to a one sided interpretation of history, however the facts provide an interesting counter-narrative.

In terms of human cost - communism is often said to have killed millions, statistics vary from source to source. Lets take one of the most damming condemnations of communism to date - the estimate provided in the ''Black Book Of Communism'' - (a favorite among neo-liberals). The Black Book puts the death toll at 100 million. It could reasonably be argued that the methodology employed by the Black Books authors is flawed - (For instance the 5000 people murdered in the Bulgarian White Terror. 15,000 in the German anti-communist purges. 6000 people in the anti communist Hungarian terror, 70,000 sent to concentration camps. 11,783 in the Finish Terror with 80,000 sent to concentration camps ect, are all ironically attributed to ''communism''. It also factors in all deaths caused by the US invasion of Vietnam ect. However lets just assume that the figure is accurate.

In his compilation - propaganda and the public mind, political theorist Noam Chomsky deals the above argument a devastating blow. Drawing on statistics provided by Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen - he notes that in India alone, the "democratic capitalist experiment" 1947-1979 has caused in excess of 100 million deaths due to famine. Chomsky points out that this figure is higher than the entire history of ''Communism'' everywhere - even compared to the exaggerated statistics provided by ''the black book''. Well, that's just India in the space of three decades. All of sudden the expression ''don't throw stones in glasshouses'' comes to mind. To factor in the deaths caused by European imperialism, the industrial revolution, the extermination of the native Americans (exceeding the number killed in the holocaust according to historian David Cesarani) - would prove quite a task. It begins to become apparent that the while the death toll from states designated as communist is quite high, the death toll of capitalist regimes if calculated would be much higher.

Numerous objections could be leveled against the above argument. Possibly contesting that capitalism isn't actually a single system, according to some there are ''numerous capitalism's''. Proponents of the notion that different capitalist systems have existed throughout history very often support their case by recourse to observation of mercantile practices under prior modes of economic organization. I will deal with the difference between capitalism, and prior economic systems (with capitalist characteristics) in another post.

Capitalism is a singular socio-economic model, nation states regulate the process of exchange in different ways, however the fundamental characteristics of the economic structure are the same. Furthermore, each national economy is tied into a globalized capitalist framework. Can the same rationale be applied to communism?. Can variations of communism be described as being part of the same basic model, in the same way as neo-liberalism and keynesianism are understood as being part of capitalism ?. This depends, for example the Chinese system under Mao was in many ways different from the Russian system under Khrushchev, however both sets of policy where predicated upon a standard centralized command model. Likewise Reagan's policy and Roosevelt's policy although quite different, rested upon the same economic structure. Libertarian and collectivist forms of socialism on the other hand advocate an entirely different economic framework, as such they cannot be understood as variants of command communism.

Another objection could be that its disingenuous to attribute deaths caused by famine to capitalism - well, if that's the case then the liberal condemnation of famine under communist regimes needs to be revised. The imperial acquisition, narco trafficking and slavery that funded the industrial revolution are much a part of capitalism as the famine caused by Maos policies are part of ''communism''.

History presents a complex version of events, state capitalism/state communism being guilty of many of the same crimes, conservatives who point to ''communist states'' as an example of social oppression very often do so under the illusion that ''capitalist states'' developed along a more humane trajectory.

George Lee, The Man, The Myth, The Legend

2010-02-11T09:52:00.001Z

Looking at frontline on feb 8th, while the show was initially supposed to have been about social welfare - it was rescheduled in line with the resignation of George lee. I was struck by the significance given to this mans affairs, media frenzy - and for what ?. I suppose its indicative of celebrity culture, next thing hel be staring in his own reality TV show.

One of things I noticed pretty quickly was that despite the sympathy this man seemed to generate amongst the audience, he wasn't presenting his political views. Whenever Lee was asked about his economic/political trajectory he would respond with a flurry of rhetoric about how Ireland had lost its way and required (strong leadership). Lee would talk about ''the need to get people back to work'' and lack of vision on the part of the political establishment ect. Later that night Lee appeared on Vincent Brown where he received a scalding inquisition at the behest of the great cynic. Brown was Intent on exposing Lees political ideology but to no avail. Lee like all good neo-liberal economists asserted (as he had been trained to do as an undergraduate) that he was ''value free'' - didn't believe in ideology, and considered himself a pragamtist. Along the way Lee made comments expressing his wish to see the poorest in society protected ect. Needless to say, all die hard right wing liberals want to protect the poor, so long as its not at the expense of the rich.

So who is George Lee ? Well, he graduated from UCD, after having studied economics under the late Brendan Walsh - the man who called for a statutory limit on irish borrowing during the 1980s, he was a staunch proponent of low income tax and deregulated labour markets. Lee was most likely entrenched in neo-classical liberal orthodoxy from the moment he stepped foot inside UCDs gates. He studied in a time defined by the monetarist ascendancy and collapse of the berlin wall. Later Lee would go on to work in the financial markets, acting as a Senior Economist with Riada Stockbrokers - an organization that among things, deals in debt exchange. After this he worked with the Central Bank of Ireland - before joining RTE in 1992. His productions included two interesting features, George Lee in China - and - The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Both documentaries provided revisionist interpretations of history and bias conceptions of contemporary events. The primary undertone was however, unmistakable ie. (liberal capitalism has triumphed, everything else has failed - history has ended). It was a telling contrast, that in a time marked by capitalist crisis Lee was making productions built around themes considered central to the ''fall of communism''. Self re-assurance ? who knows.

Unfortunately for Lee, his depiction of Germany as having overcome the evil socialist scourge and walking happily into a reaganite utopia was crushed, when in September 2009, the year after he had finished his production - Die Linke (an anti capitalist socialist party) took 11.9% in the federal election. Virtually every constituency in Eastern Berlin was taken by Die Linke, the area Lee had been filming the year prior, with his smug remarks about the popular embrace of capitalist values among modern residents.

Back in Ireland, Lee upon being accepted into Fianna Gael had outlined some of his economic proposals - they included the privatization of state companies like Bord Gais and the ESB. He also remarked that he''would overhaul the massive public sector quangos like the HSE, CIE and FAS and expose them to more competition in order to deliver vital health, transport and training services more effectively and at less cost to the taxpayer'', In other words - Lee's prescription to the current crisis was to sell off public assets to private holders. Two birds with one stone from Lee's perspective considering 1. it would alleviate the wealthy (his supporters) of a substantial tax burden and 2. further ensure public dependence on private services. His claim that increased private control would result in a lower cost to the taxpayer was nonsensical - privatization invariably results in higher costs. It would be true to say those on high incomes would be spared a deal of taxation under Lee's imagined regime - however the vast majority of working people would need to pay more in terms of higher prices.

So thats it, George Lee was a neo-liberal who joined a neo-liberal party, he left - who cares why. The idea that Lee was bringing something new to the political establishment was nonsense. Neo-classical psudeo scientists (economists) exist in abundance within Fianna Gael, Lee must have thought he was special. Not to worry though - he will most likely be given a position in RTE on around five times the average industrial wage, Im sure hel be feeling better in no time.

Capitalism, Marx and the Mechanics of Crisis

2010-02-08T01:16:00.002Z

Examining the historic course of the market, we see the initial phase of mass industrial development cumulating in a global crisis in the 1930s - with the problem of overproduction caused by a decrease in the rate of industrial profits. To understand why capitalism falls into depression, we should look to Das Kapital. Marx in his main work identified what he called (the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) as being central to the expansionary dynamic of the capitalist system - it is both the cause of periodic crisis and main agent of growth.

First highlighted in capital volume 3, he notes ''the gradual growth of constant capital in relation to variable capital must necessarily lead to a gradual fall of the general rate of profit, so long as the rate of surplus-value, or the intensity of exploitation of labor by capital, remain the same.'' Marx 1894. In other words, capitalists through the process of competition are required to invest ever higher amounts in the technological upgrade of their productive facilities, as a consequence of this increased expenditure they see an overall reduction in the rate of returns - so long as the rate of production/cost of labor remains stable. In order to overcome this problem capitalists may place downward pressure on the social wage or seek cheaper labor markets/resources to exploit through expansion. The former strategy generally leads to a decline in aggregate demand thereby exasperating the situation; the later provides a more steady solution - if entirely temporary.

This is precisely what occurred during the great depression. The US had undergone a reduction of 40% in its rate of profit between the 1880s and the 1920s proceeding the great depression. ''Real wages only rose 6.1% between 1922-1929. The discrepancy was greatest in 1928 and 1929, with output rising three times faster than consumption.'' Harmen (2009). Demand fell relative to supply and crisis of overproduction/underconsumption ensued, food/goods where allowed rot while millions of workers stood idle alongside unemployed capital. Demand in the real sense of the word existed of course - people straving and exhibited high demand for food, however in economic terms there was no ''demand'' considering people where unable to purchase.

In the end the US offset the crisis through the initiation of stimulis, large public works programs where enacted - the aim was to create jobs so as to increase the amount of money in circulation. The main objective was to encourage consumer spending so as to sure up investment in productive enterprise. These policies where enacted as part of Roosevelts - New Deal. Rather than attempting to close the deficit - and deflate the economy, it was decided to drasticly increase spending. It did, for a time offset crisis and generate massive growth.

The problem again emerged in the late 70s, however rather than alleviate the crisis through fiscal expansion another tactic was enacted, namely the transfer of investment from industry to finance, conjoined with a large scale assault upon organized labor. In the case of US finance, Harvey notes ''The total daily turnover of financial transactions in international markets, which stood at $2.3 billion in 1983, had risen to $130 billion by 2001. The $40 trillion turnover in 2001 compares to the estimated $800 billion that would be required to support international trade and productive investment flows'' Harvey p.161 (2005). Allen summarizes how this led to a partial recovery, considering that ''In the US, the rate of profit rebounded by 3.6% between 1979 and 1997, after it had fallen 5.4% from 1966-1979, Fred Morseley calculated that it had recovered about 40% of its earlier decline'' Allen p.101 (2008). Downward pressure was also placed upon wages within the industrialized world, so for example in the US ''Since 1973 total productive growth has risen by 83% while the overall compensation package for workers rose only by 9%'' Allen p.99 (2008).

Decrease in the rate of profit - offset through the de-regulation of the Regan era which opened up new sources of accumulation and supressed wages.

The financialization of the market - money being transfered from productive capital, to speculative activity, such as the trade on debt/derivitives ect.

Wage stagnation, due to the defeat of organized labor. Unlike the Keynsian era, wages under the neo-liberal regime do not rise in line with increased productivity.

In order for the aforementioned process to be enabled however, regulatory laws needed to be reformed and in many cases abolished, liberal ideology according to Harvey was utilized as the political justification for the enactment of capital/labor de-regulation. There existed a structural requirement to de-regulate the market and it was facilitated by a shift in political trajectory. This occured both within national governmental spheres and global regulatory bodies such as the IMF/WTO. Stiglitz summarizes that ''In the early 1980s a purge occurred inside the World Bank'' he continues to explain how after the appointment of Ann Kruger as chief economist in 1981 ''Free markets where seen as the solutions to the problems of developing countries''. In response to this shift towards neo-classical ideology many economists left the organization.

On the issue of poverty, one of the central questions concerning developmental economists, political theorists, anthropologists and sociologists alike is, does capitalist globalization of the post Keynesian era deliver on its own terms? Has the period of market liberalization provided an increase in the absolute living standards of the majority? The theoretical premise on which market liberalization was advocated held that liberal economic policy would invariably lead to higher productive output, more profits, cheaper goods and higher living standards. However some years on we see a very different picture having emerged as "The poorest group went from a per capita GDP growth rate of 1.9% annually in 1960-80, to a decline of 0.5% per year (1980-2000). For the middle group (which includes mostly poor countries), there was a sharp decline from an annual per capita growth rate of 3.6% to just less than 1%. Over a 20-year period, this represents the difference between doubling income per person, versus increasing it by just 21%." McKay p.329 (2007).

The structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank have in many cases exposed poorer nations to advanced competition through the maintenance of protectionist policies within the developed sphere. As conveyed by former Chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz ''The western countries have pushed poor countries to eliminate trade barriers, but kept up their own barriers, preventing developing countries from exporting their agricultural products and so depriving them of desperately needed export income'' Stiglitz p.6 (2004) . Oxfam highlights in a 2003 report that ''in 2002, India paid more in tariffs to the US government than Britain did, despite the fact that the size of its economy was less than one third that of the UK - Bangladesh paid almost as much to the US government as France despite the fact that the size of its economy was only 3% that of France'' Chang p.75 (2007). The reality of neo-liberal policy is often hidden through the misrepresentation of figures and ''obscured by the observation that conditions have generally improved under the neo-liberal regime, or by resort to a concept of ''globalization'' that muddles export orientation with neo-liberalism, so that if a billion Chinese experience high growth under export oriented policies that radically violate neo-liberal principals, the increase in average global growth rates can be hailed as a triumph for the principals violated'' Chomsky p.217 (2007).

Additionally there exists the issue of increasing third world debt ''The debt of the developing world, for example rose from $580 billion in 1980 to 2.4 trillion in 2002. In 2002 there was a net outflow of 340 billion is servicing, compared to overseas development aid of $37 billion'' Harvey p.193 (2005). Repatriated profits expropriated from peripheral economies conjoined with massive outflows in debt service constitute a form of upward re-distribution indicative of the neo-liberal system. However although the process of upward re-distribution may have intensified under the post-Keynesian regime, it did exist prior to the shift in trajectory, albeit to a lesser extent - Zinn for example notes that US corporations between 1950 and 1965 ''in Latin America invested 3.8 billion and made 11.2 billion in profits, while in Africa they invested 5.2 billion and made 14.3 billion in profits'' McKay p.389 (2007). What is often called the ''anti-globalization'' movement is largely anti-capitalist, moreover it is more specificly opposed to ''neo-liberal globalization''.

Neo-liberal market reform has invariably resulted in the increased accumulative capacities of the global bourgeoisie, whilst weakening the working class within all spheres of production. It would be incorrect however to assume that Keynesian capitalism is consistent on an internal level. Employment was high under Keynesianism, so as a consequence of increased unionization - wages increased in line with productive output. Capital in response, offset costs in the form of increasing prices to the extent that aggregate demand declined and inflation increased. Inflation provided the justification required for the neo-liberal/monetarist ascendancy. Capitalism as a socio-economic system is wrought with an internal contradiction between its requirement to accumulate surplus value, and its capacity to generate it. This contradiction is both the cause of periodic crisis and the source of a vast expansionary dynamic.

IBEC & Irish Labor Costs

2010-02-06T17:34:00.001Z

There is a steady stream of propaganda being spread throughout the media at the moment in relation to wages. IBEC/FF are determined to push down the wages of ordinary workers. It is argued by the buisness community that Ireland has priced itself out of the labor market through the successive hikes in wage experienced throughout the celtic tiger. Cuts are whats needed in order to attract/retain investment, we should all be patriotic and take our ''hard medicine''. However, do IBECs assertions have any grounding in reality ?

Lets look at the facts:

Irish private sector wages are 1% below the EU-15 average and 14% below our peer group.

Irish manufacturing wages are 2% below the EU-15 average and 16% below our peer group.

Employers in Ireland pay the lowest social security contributions in the EU at 10%.

Public Holidays/Annual leave in Ireland is below the EU average.

Ireland's tax to GDP ratio is the 5th lowest in the EU.

This understood - Ireland is actually quite attractive with regards FDI, the notion that we are uncompetitive is a myth perpetuated by a social class who want to see an immediate profit at the expense of oridinary workers. There is in fact evidence to suggest that wage reductions will only make matters worse - seeing as it would lead to a decrease in consumer demand, cumulate in higher unemployment which in turn would cost the state more in terms of welfare payments/reduction in revenue. Furthermore, wages only make up 8-9% of total enterprise costs - so wage reductions wont make much difference in boosting exports. The price of capital goods has also fallen 1.7% year on year according the CSO. Capitalists might complain about rents ect. however there is nothing stopping the Gov from forcing landlords to drive down rents, instead of providing buisness with an excuse to offset its costs onto employees.

The notion that Irish labor costs are too high simpily has no bearing in reality, unfortunately this does not stop it being repeated throughout the media on a constant basis. The buisness community spew such propaganda in the hope that society as a whole will internalize it - accept reductions in their living standards and make parihas out of those dissedents who complain.

Sources:

EuroStat: Taxation and Customs Union

Michaeltaft - notes from the front.

Central Statistics Office

Book Review: Bad Samaritans (The Guilty Secrets Of Rich Nations) - Ha Joon Chang

2010-02-06T13:00:00.002Z

This is a nice book - def worth a read. Chang sets out to expose how wealthy nations via the main financial institutions act to keep poorer nations in a condition of perpetual underdevelopment. This occurs in numerous ways - not least through the use of debt but also through the way in which trade policy is structured. Institutions such as the IMF make developing nations abolish subsidies on export goods ect. When developing industry within the third world becomes exposed to first world competition - it flatlines. Chang points out what may seem like the obvious ie. subjecting developing economies to the same rules as advanced economies doesn't create a level playing field. Not that this takes a genius to realize - but it does make you wonder why right wing economists have been ignoring the point for last few decades.

Ha spends a fair deal of the book de-constructing the historic mythology espoused by proponents of economic liberalism. Neo-liberals have a particularly nasty habit of arguing that developed nations (in the main) are prosperous due to their relatively low levels of regulation ect. The implication is that free trade = wealth, rainbows and happiness. http://www.heritage.org/Index/

However Chang refutes this argument - illustrating that the most developed nations advanced via massive regulation/protectionism, and only recently have many of them brought down their barriers. This stuff would be brilliant for pissing off Ron Paul supporters on US forums (not that I do that - i have a life...i swear). Additionally, he takes note of the fact that while developed nations may have low average protection - they disproportionately protect products that poor nations export - garments/textiles ect.

Interesting as a the book might be - Chang isn't a socialist. Despite his seething contempt for neo-liberalism, he remains grounded in the idea that capitalism can be reformed. He advocates something called the (infant industry argument) - essentially proposing that developed nations reduce all their barriers - and allow developing countries to engage in rampant protectionism. Fair trade on steroids is what comes to mind. He also seems rather taken with Keynsian style programs ect. In all what Chang stands for seems a fair deal more equitable than the current arrangement - but its still capitalism and as such is pre-disposed to crisis ect. Chang doesn't deal with the structural inadequacies of the system - nor does he highlight the fact that neo-liberal policy was the result of a periodic deficiency within keynesian capitalism.

Capitalism and enviromental sustainability

2010-02-05T22:01:00.001Z

If capitalism does not grow, through the increased production/sale of commodities and appropriation of resources both human and natural it will collapse. Each enterprise must, in order to stay afloat not only generate an increase in its net profit but see an increase in its rate of profit. Environmental considerations so long as they act to decrease the capitalist rate of profit will be averted - so for instance if the perceived risk of engaging in an act environmental degradation is calculated to be lower than the potential gain, then the company will pursue the more profitable course. While its often argued by proponents of ecologism that the former description of capitalist accumulation leads to a situation whereby capitalism is unable to function in an environmentaly sustainable manner - I consider this an over-simplification. It may be difficult for capitalism to overcome the problem of externalities as they pertain to the environment, however there are clear methods by which capitalist nations may address these issues.

The state could for instance, enact legislation whereby capital is unilaterally forced into accepting unprofitable costs where it refuses to act according to an ecologically sustainable framework. The problem presents itself however in the degree to which the state institutions are controlled by big buinsess/TNCs ect - who will in seeking preservation of short term profit margins resist such measures. Given the extent to which modern political parties are effectively sponsored by, and run by the rich, it is perhaps naive to conceptualize the state as being somehow less than an extension of immediate bourgeoisie interests. Even in the event that one particular state decided to enact such measures, they would likely become subject to an outward flight of capital - thereby forcing them to re-consider their policy.This understood, progress in terms of ecological sustainability would most likely come about in the event that it proved a profitable endeavour. One possible event that could initiate this type of structural shift would be the depletion of the earths finite fuel reserves, this would invariably cause the cost of exploration to rise disproportionate to any return in the way of profit.

http://www.unido-ichet.org/ichet.org/fossil_fuels/a_finite_supply/assets/peak_oil2.png

This would likely incentivize capital to consider alternative forms of energy generation. However there is no guarantee that the alternative would be eco-friendly, in fact nuclear energy could conceivably be utilized as a profitable substitute. The degree to which renewable technologies can facilitate current production/consumption levels is debatable, for instance a study by the Stockholm environmental institute carried out in 1993 stated that ''renewables could supply 2.5 times the worlds current energy consumption in 2100, while up to 2030 the biggest contribution would be made biomass - but after that date the amount captured from the sun and the wind would rise rapidly'' Douthwaite 2000. However, in his book (the growth illusion) Douthwaite looks at alternate propositions, citing estimations made by another researcher - Trainer, explaining that ''in 1995 he concluded that renewables would not be able to sustain industrialized levels of world use'' - on biomass he stated that ''all energy stored each year in the earths plant mass is equal to approximately five times present world energy use''. As a result it would take all crop land in the world just to meet the present demand for transport fuel, adding that total biomass growth in the US would only provide 27% of its overall energy requirements'' Douthwaite 2000. An alternative economy of the deep green variety would likely entail either a substantial decrease in consumption, reduction in the population or both.

''Edward Goldsmith has put the global sustainability figure at 3,500 million'' Dobson 2000. In outlining how such reductions in population could be achieved through state mechanisms Dobson cites Irvines propositions that ''tax benefits for children with fewer than two children; sterilization bonuses; withdrawel of maternity and similar benifits after a second child; larger pensions for people with fewer than two children ect'' Dobson 2000. Irvine, nor Dobson however address the fact that the majority of the earths population live in the developing world, in areas where progressive taxation and pension funds are virtually non-existent. Moreover, these are the regions with the highest re-production rates, developed economies tend to have lower reproduction rates due to the availibity of social services ect. large families in the periphrial regions serve as a form of social security in the absence of any state supports.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/World_population_distribution.svg/400px-World_population_distribution.svg.png

Irvine then can only be taken to suggest that the developed world engage in redistribution of capital rather than lower actual production, however this assertion presupposes that the current levels of consumption be maintained. Additionally the notion that the global pop can be reduced by such a drastic amount seems outlandish. Even so, more realistic reductions would present massive problems.

To institue the type of state benifit scheems in periphrial economies that Irvine advocates would require substancial investment on the part of developed nations, either in the form of state aid or private donation in conjunction with some form of debt cancelation. This presents problem considering investment is largely dependent on profitability - so while the developed world may pay out large amounts to periphrial economies this is subject to the condition that the developing world provides an immdediate increase on the return. Zinn explaining the situation notes that while US corporations between 1950 amd 1965 ''in Latin America invested 3.8 billion and made 11.2 billion in profits, in Africa they invested 5.2 billion and made 14.3 billion in profits'' Zinn. Betsy Harmen also expressess the situation of the third world in the eighties as ''today giving more to the industrialized world than it takes. Inflows of official aid and private loans are exceeded by outflows in the form of repatriated profits, interest payments and private capital sent abraod by third world elites'' Bradford.

This understood the concept of an ecologicaly sustainible capitalism runs into problems to the extent that incentivising population reductions would undermine its own productive base. Expendature designed to decrease the mass of third world inhabitants would push up periphrial labor costs relative to returns thus causing a decline in the rate of profit and thereafter lead to economic stagnation. Again, capitalism runs into the problem of short term profitability vs long term collapse - it both requires an ever available mass of surplus labor to keep wage costs in check, while requireing an ever increasing market to buy up its goods.

While I consider it possible for capitalism to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, I find capitalism (in the main) irreconsilable with ecological sustainability. Ecological sustainability would entail either a cap on consumption or a drastic reduction in the population. Each of the aformentioned tactics would require political policy to be put before the process of unhindered accumulation. Ecological sustainibility would require the mechanisms of trade be directed according to the targets of a political project. A green economy could not be based not on accumulation for its own sake - rather based on preservation and awareness of finite resources.

References:

Dobson A : (2007) Green Political Thought (Routledge:London) p.76 - 77

Harvey. A: (2005) Brief History Of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford) p. 175

Balken J: (2005) The Corporation - the pathalogical pursuit of profit and power (Constable:London) p. 33

Douthwaite R: (2000) The Growth Illusion (Lilliput Press: Dublin) p 223 - 224

McKay l: (2007) An Anarchist FAQ (AK Press:Edinburgh) p. 389

Meritocracy, Liberalism and the logic of denial

2010-02-05T14:01:00.001Z

''The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth'' - Ernesto Che Guevara 1965

Those of us on the left are familiar with the liberal tendency to downplay the significance of class stratification. However I feel that this tendency is the result of a fundamental contradiction within liberal philosophy and ought to be examined as such. While liberalism holds that society ought to be predicated upon certain rights of property and trade, it does - in an attempt to differentiate itself from feudal nepotism hold that equality of opportunity is essential. Equality of opportunity acts as a pre-requisite to genuine meritocracy. The liberal justification of class stratification therefore rests upon the notion that unequal distributions of wealth/social power are largely the result of individual merit.

It doesn't take long to realize the problem with this line of reason within the context of modern capitalism. If liberalism holds as a central tenant, that individual rights of accumulation are sacrosanct - then the invariable concentration of wealth/power that occurs under conditions of market competition negate any possibility that opportunity will be equal. The wealthy, are placed in an advantageous position in terms of resources accumulated over time, both material and intellectual. This constitutes the basis of class re-production, seeing as upper class parents generally provide more resources towards their children's education ect.

Example: Participation rates in third level 2004 show us that the offspring of semi-unskilled workers accounted for 0.33-0.40%, while those from backgrounds designated as higher professional accounted for 1.25-1.36%. Likewise the dep of education and science highlight in a 1998 report that only 4.1% of those categorized as being from unskilled manual backgrounds achieved 5 honers or more on the leaving cert - as opposed to 52.9% for those from higher professional backgrounds. To cement the point: these stats on third level enrollment according to Dublin postal codes are revealing: http://www.education.ie/images/8.4_graph.gif

This understood - how can contemporary liberal apologists argue that wealth (in the main) is based on merit ? Put simply, they cant. Liberals must in order to justify their advocacy of capitalism, downplay the significance of class . If their argument is that inequality is legitimate so far as competition is fair, then the fact that competition is tilted in the favor of the wealthy needs to be swept under the carpet. This idealogical contradiction often manifests itself in nefarious attempts to argue that while there is correlation between class-occupation ect. no actual connection can be established. Additionally, we have claims that social mobility acts to justify structural inequality. In other words, its ok to provide the fastest cars with a 15 min head start in all races due to the fact that slow cars win every decade or so. All such arguments are designed to downplay the significance of social structure in the determination of human action.

While more socially conscious liberals might argue that checks and balances can serve as a solution - this perspective poses a fundamental problem. For instance, if you want to increase tax on the wealthy to the extent that there exists a level playing field, then you will need to infringe upon certain rights of accumulation. Considering rights of material exchange are central to liberalism - it is argued that policy conductive to equality would negate more fundamental rights. As such, liberalism proves itself to be nothing more than self-defeating nonsense. The sooner it is projected as such by socialists in the mainstay - the better.

Headshops & Prohibition

2010-02-01T06:04:00.000Z

A classic definition of insanity (attributed to Einstein, among others) is repeating the same action over and over and expecting different results. The underlying concept is not difficult to grasp: if a policy has demonstrably and repeatedly failed to achieve its aim, then to continue to pursue it requires either remarkable ignorance or insanity.

Drug prohibition seems to me to be almost the perfect example of this. As a policy, it is clearly doomed to abject failure, as demonstrated most notably by the ill-conceived attempt to prohibit the consumption of alcohol in the United States in the Twenties and thirties, but also by the related cases of cannabis, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and any other well-known illegal drug you care to mention. Nonetheless, with the partial exception of the Dutch, Western Governments seem determined to persist with this failed policy; the idea that we might pursue a different policy is rarely discussed in serious circles.

One might have thought that the rise of head shops, which sell legal drugs which have similar effects to well-known "street" drugs, would be the final nail in the coffin for the idea that prohibition might work, given that the constant stream of new drugs is virtually impossible for legislators to keep pace with. Instead, the debate on Prime Time and elsewhere is how best to ban these new drugs and shut down the headshops and thus ensure that those who wish to purchase psychoactive drugs must return to the waiting arms of the criminal gangs.

This is not a trivial issue. In their recent documentary on the issue, Prime Time make the valid point that we know virtually nothing about the effects and dangers of the drugs sold in headshops. It fails, however, to make the fairly obvious point that if our prohibition of drugs such as cannabis, heroin etc., about which we know a great deal leads to people using drugs that we know nothing about then the liberalization (and regulation) of these drugs is at least worth considering as a possible solution. (The ability of mainstream intellectuals to fail to see the obvious never ceases to amaze me.)

The commonly cited precedent for banning headshop drugs is the banning of the sale of magic mushrooms in 2006 following the tragic death of a young man who took some at a party and subsequently jumped to his death. It is interesting to note that when someone dies in tragic circumstances as a result of alcohol consumption, as happens regularly, there are no calls for the banning of alcohol. In the case of alcohol, people generally accept the rather reasonable principal that adults are able to weigh up the risks and benefits of consuming alcohol and come to a decision on their own. But when other mind-altering drugs are considered, the simple idea that the competence to decide what substances to put into one's own body rests with the individual and not with the State is thought so ridiculous as to not even be worth mentioning in mainstream discourse. This is an almost textbook example of special pleading.

Attempting to ban headshops is the wrong direction for society to be moving. We should not be continuting the same failed policy of prohibition, and we certainly should not expand its scope. Instead, the government should focus its energy and resources on providing the necessary information to allow people to make informed choices about drug taking.

John O'Donoghue Letter

2009-11-12T19:33:00.000Z

This is the letter in this month's edition of The Print, which is the Maynooth SU magazine.

Sir,

I would just like to respond briefly to "Paddy Irish's" letter on the issue of John O'Donoghue's resignation last issue.

He attempts to dismiss the controversy over O'Donoghue's blatant abuse of the expenses system as nothing more than "political showboating and one-upmanship". Whether or not the opposition parties were sincere in their complaints, or or if it was merely demagoguery is besides the point.

O'Donoghue's expenses are symptomatic of a culture of corruption within the Irish political system, and indeed the country as a whole; one which is not confined to Mr. O'Donoghue, or indeed the Fianna Fail party. He was particularly brazen in the way he went about it, which is why he had to resign. But the key point should be: O'Donoghue was clearly gaming the system, for example spending taxpayer's money on trips to Cheltenham and Cannes, which had absolutely nothing to do with his duties as Minister.

Mr. Irish also attempts to paint a picture of the opposition cynically undermining the impartiality of the Ceann Comhairle in order to score political points. On the contrary, this is a case of the Ceann Comhairle cynically abusing the concept of an impartial chair in order to avoid having to answer awkward questions about his own misconduct, much as he abused the expenses system itself. The concept of an impartial chair exists for a reason, which is not to protect dodgy politicains from democratic accountability.

While it may be essentially true to say that "every TD, Minister or civil servant has expenses which... could discredit them", the idea that this should be in any way an acceptable state of affairs is wrongheaded. The fact that crooks like Michael Lowry and Bertie Ahern (who, for some bizarre reason is being invited to lecture at this very University) can continue to get elected should be interpreted as nothing other than a damning indictment of the state of Irish democracy.

This culture of corruption, and the general public's acceptance of it, is something that must be opposed outright. One way in which students can contribute to this is to get involved in the opposition to Bertie Ahern's appointment as honourary lecturer here and send out a message that the youth of this country will not accept sleaze and corruption within the political establishment.

Yours etc.

Aidan Rowe

Some thoughts on the ICTU Demonstration

2009-11-09T04:51:00.000Z

"Sick of walking, time for action!"

Most of you are probably aware of the ICTU demonstration that took place last Friday. While all the marching, shouting and waving of banners was undoubtedly fun, was anything achieved?

Not according to the mainstream media, at any rate. The consensus among the newspapers which I read the following morning was that ICTU can hold all the marches it wants, but it won't change anything: workers will still have to face the same cuts to their living standards - a view which I agree with, albeit for different reasons.

The standard propaganda line is that these cuts are necessary, and that those who oppose them are out of touch with reality. At the same time €50+ billion must be found to bail out failing banks. In simple terms, money must be taken from the working class to give to the wealthy, and anyone who objects is living in Socialist La-la Land. As Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said "this bank bailout is a simple transfer from taxpayers to bondholders... we see this type of thing happening in banana republics all over the world. Whenever a banking crisis happens, the financial sector uses the turmoil as a mechanism to transfer wealth from the general population to themselves." ¹

Simple economics tells us that wage cuts and tax increases deepen recessions. This fact alone should dispel the myth that these cuts are necessary to "save the country". When capitalism has its occasional crises, this is always a pretext for attacking the hard-won living standards of the working class.

The unions must be willing to fight this. Marching to an empty Dail achieves nothing, except to cost workers a half-day's pay. A demonstration needs to be a demonstration of something more than directionless anger; it needs to be backed up by some genuine threat. In short, Friday should have been a show of strength.

The only real weapon workers have is to withdraw their labour. If workers and their leaders are not willing to do this, then they can have no complaints when the capitalist establishment ignores their shouts. Unfortunately, the union movement in this country has been de-militated by decades of Social Partnership, where union leaders were brought into the Establishment, leaving ordinary workers largely irrelevant to the discussions taking place.

The union leadership needs to take real meaningful action now, to protect the livelihoods of working people. That means that Friday's march must be followed, at the very least, by a national strike on the 24th of November.

1. Quoted in David McWilliams, NAMA is highway robbery, among other places.