Left on the shelf

Anyone looking to the Irish left for leadership since the recession will have been sadly disappointed. It’s nothing new, though, Ireland’s left has been confused and contradictory for decades.

— It’s economically illiterate

The social democratic left has no answer to the global recession other than attempting to exhume Keynes. This in itself is hardly surprising – economics has never been the soft left’s strong suit, but even the radical left is today calling for a return to state intervention in the economy instead of making a forceful argument for democratic control of the economy. How did this happen? Marx’s Capital is one of the greatest economic treatises ever written. Even the most ardent anti-Marxists recognise its significance. As far as analyses of capitalism go it’s up there with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

It’s certainly possible to take issue with Marx – he was a political economist, not a prophet – but it would be ridiculous to suggest that he was economically illiterate. The left today, though, does little more than point to problems in capitalism rather than offer any kind of detailed analysis of how and why things operate in the way they do.

One of the most serious difficulties facing anyone who wants to put forward an alternative approach to economic affairs is that so few people actually understand how the economy currently works. Instead of trading in over-simplified caricatures of robber-baron capitalism, the left needs to face-up to how the economy really works. State intervention never went away, it was simply redirected into private finance initiatives, tax breaks and other measures that support business both directly and indirectly instead of being used to create full employment. 

— It hates capitalism

Blind hatred of capitalism is worse than useless. Capitalism is a vast improvement on what went before and it has undeniably lifted countless millions of people out of grinding poverty. Despite the presence of obvious inequities, the rising of living standards over the last hundred years are not something that should be dismissed. The traditional leftist argument was that capitalism was inefficient, not that it was ‘evil’ or ‘stupid’.

— It fears development

Conflating the ownership of industry with industry itself is crazy. Industrial development drives not only social development but also raises living standards. Ireland’s late social evolution was late precisely because the country was underdeveloped economically. Wealth creates a freer society and the primary objective of anyone who wishes to see a better world must be to increase efficiency in production. Social battles still need to be fought – economic determinism is an intellectual dead end – but without development any social battles will be lost.

— It’s moralistic

Today’s left has been hijacked by sentimental liberalism to the point where many ‘socialist’ voices in the media, insofar as there are any at all, sound like warmed-over Fabians. Moralistic arguments end in charity, not change.

— It’s desperate

‘Are you a critic of capitalism? Grand, get on board’. So desperate has the left become that it jumps on any anti-capitalist bandwagon that happens to be rolling past. But there’s nothing inherently progressive about criticising capitalism – what matters is what you want to replace it with. French farmer Jose Bové was for a time the poster boy of the anti-globalisation movement despite the fact that his localist agenda is explicitly anti-socialist. Today, ‘sustainability’ is all the range because it appears to be a critique of capitalism. But it’s not. The logical conclusion of the sustainability agenda is simply the winding-down of production to a level that cannot hope to meet even basic human needs.

— It hates freedom

During the 1970s and 1980s the right colonised the language of individual freedom. As a result, the left has run a mile from anything that smacks of freedom. However, apart from the moral case for liberty – which is vitally important – the fact is that the left cannot achieve its aims unless it supports freedom. Strong individuals are the basic unit of any social struggle and without them no battle can be won. There is also the broader, philosophical argument to consider: how can anyone claim universal human liberation as a goal while simultaneously wanting to see more restrictions on individual actions?

— It’s addicted to the state

With the honourable exception of a few tiny left-libertarian groups, the left has come to believe that the best way to improve people’s lives is to have the state intervene. The creation of the welfare state and NHS in post-war Britain is the high-water mark of state socialism and, as a result, many Anglophone leftists think that the welfare state is socialism. It’s not and the state is not the people.

Today, however, things go much further. One does not have to look to the Soviet Union to realise there are big problems with state socialism. Politicians and the state are increasingly interfering in private life and the charge is being led by a left that is deeply suspicious of individuals and their actions. A one-two punch of moaning victimology and a suspicious view of people as pollutants means the social democratic left in particular seeks to have the state mediate as many decisions as possible.

— It’s legalistic

Rather than fighting its battles in the court of public opinion, today’s social democratic left prefers the rarefied atmosphere of the courtroom – particularly the European Court of Human Rights, but short circuiting the argument means never winning it even if you do convince a few judges to change the law.

— It’s afraid of the North

The Irish left was shredded by the outbreak of the conflict in 1969. In the early days of the conflict things were simple: loyalist mobs were burning Catholics out of their homes and the right-wing unionist state was not only hostile to them, but also to the working class. However, as the conflict played-out things got a lot more confused. Some groups such as the IRSP took an ardently republican line, seeing social revolution and national liberation as inseparable. Others, such as Labour, the Workers’ Party and the British and Irish Communist Organisation, took, to varying degrees, a softer line on unionism. Most socialists, however, scrambled around trying to find a middle ground that doesn’t exist. The British left which, since the 1960s in particular, had been supporting any national liberation movement that appeared in the third world ran a mile from the IRA when a violent struggle appeared on its doorstep. Being confused by the conflict is not itself a problem – to this day the history of the situation is murky and unclear. What is not acceptable, however, is ignoring it and refusing to try and work out what should be done. The New Left Review, for example, published just one article on Ireland while the conflict was going on. (The Guardian newspaper, by the way, supported internment without trial and blamed the Civil Rights movement for the deaths on Bloody Sunday). Saying ‘no war but class war’ or ‘a pox on both your houses’ is all very well but it ignored the reality of the conflict in which many of the left’s supposed constituents were both protagonists and innocent victims.