Leader column: Let’s politicise the economy

In the lead-up to the budget finance minister Brian Lenihan has stated that despite a slowing in Ireland’s economic decline, the government will continue with its planned assault on public sector wages and service provision.

In an economy such as Ireland’s there are only two possible reactions to contraction: accept a reduction in living standards including pay cuts and mass unemployment or argue for the amelioration of these attacks. Both strategies are negative in tone, constrained as they are by the limitations of the political landscape of the day. It could be no other way. Despite their increasing volubility, the anti-government forces in the political and media realms offer nothing but a minor reformulation of the same strategies already in use by the government. It’s opposition Jim, but not as we know it.

The reality is that genuine opposition has completely disintegrated.

Political opposition springs from the discontent of people who recognise they are not getting what they want. Both who those people are and the content of their demands are vital. Without such an understanding, any calls for an end to austerity can be – and indeed have been – dismissed as mere ‘sectional’ complaints.

In Ireland today, discontent with the ruling coalition is channeled primarily into the opposition parties and the trade unions, but not one of these once great institutions any longer has the ability to actually act beyond attempting to secure the immediate needs of the people they represent, if they can even manage that.

Neither Fine Gael nor Labour actually represents a clear break with the policies of Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the erstwhile Progressive Democrats. While each party quite clearly represents different sections of the elite, some of whom are suffering in relative terms, none is capable of transforming Ireland’s economy because it is not in their interests to do so in the first place. Had it been, they would have already done so.

Ireland’s failure to sufficiently modernise and develop industry was initially a policy of British rule – no significant non-agricultural industry ever existed outside the north-east of Ireland – but the failure of Ireland to develop post-1921 is entirely the fault of the failure of the forces that demanded independence in the first place. Accepting partition in the name of stability resulted in a backward state, led by a post-revolutionary elite who proved incapable of leading the country.

By 1994–1997 the Republic of Ireland had sufficiently developed to be considered a modern country, but vital infrastructure was still missing – and, in fact, remains underdeveloped as a result of lack of capital investment and uneven distribution through the likes of the National Development Plan.

At various points in recent history the political left threatened the stability of Ireland’s elite. Not so today.

The old structures of the labour movement do continue to exist and are increasingly boisterous, taking to the streets of Dublin and other cities and towns. The threat of widespread industrial action, in particular in the public sector, is looming. This does not mean, however, that we are likely to see a re-run of the labour versus capital battles of the past. For the moment at least, the working class, as a political entity, does not exist. What has replaced it as the primary expression of discontent is liberal outrage. (1)

This is not to agree with liberal ideologues who argue on the basis of cultural signifiers such as choice of consumer goods and rising expectations during the boom years that the middle class is now the universal class. Instead it is to say that the political significance of the working class was not god-given but a result of conscious organisation and clearly worked-out programme for economic development.

That this fact has thus far escaped attention is unsurprising. The level of political discourse in Ireland is appallingly low. While David McWilliams received plaudits for his musings on “deckland” and breakfast rolls, few stopped to notice that these phenomenon were not only perfectly normal and mere surface trends, they were also not a serious study of economics. But McWilliams is not a fool, merely a messenger.

As the government has retreated from its traditional role of managing the economy – regardless of what one thinks of its ability, this has been its primary function – it has, at the same time, increased its reach into hitherto private realms of consumption, behaviour and, in the form of cod-psychology, even our thoughts. This surrogate for political debate may sound significant but it reduces what is at stake to mere personal matters. Similarly, the containment of the conflict in the North has further added to the depoliticisation of politics. Listen to the radio or open a newspaper in Ireland today and you could be forgiven for thinking the country was obsessed with politics, but the content of the debate matters more than their form. In Irish social life politics is simultaneously everywhere and it is nowhere.

Whatever solutions we might want to see to the present crisis cannot be simply plucked from history, nor will they fall from the sky. All of Ireland’s political parties, across the ideological spectrum, are agreed that the next decade will see a prolonged austerity drive.

The answer lies not in examining imports and exports or debt as we might actuary tables. The answer is politics.

(1) Concern about poverty does nothing to address real economic need, Jason Walsh, forth, November 12, 2009