Irish Left Review - Joined up thinking for the Irish Left

In the presence of the gentry, Old Kenny the peasant, doffed his cap, crooked his knee, arranged his face in an expression of obsequious servility and said: ‘Savin’ yer presence, yer honours, but sure ’tis all our own fault, for we’re a feckless nation an’ not used at all at all to the ways of such as yer honours and when we got the few shillings, sure we went to the divil altogether, for such drinkin’ an’ spendin’ an buyin’ an’ sellin’ as you’d niver see in a dacent place like yer honours do have. What’ll we do at all? Aren’t we the terrible crowd altogether! Have pity on us, yer honours, for we’re only savages, we’re heathens for the drink an’ buyin’ up land an’ houses. Our only salvation is if yer honours could see yer way to punishin’ us for to make dacent people of us agin. Ochón is mo bhrón, but we’re the divil’s own people.’

The gentry looked on in distaste at this example of unregenerate sycophancy and hypocrisy and afterwards agreed that a nation so fatuous and servile deserved to be led by Old Kenny and his like. One gentleman repeated the old truism that ‘a people gets the government it deserves, not the government it wants’. In this case, observed another, they got both. Yet a third, this time a lady, was heard to ask the question: But didn’t somebody tell me that old Kenny was fond of saying things like ‘We are a proud people’…?

Translation of an article by Manuel Castells, originally published in La Vanguardia, 21st January 2012.

The indignados movement that burst forth in 2011 in Spain, Europe and the United States is a breath of fresh air in a world that smells rotten. They set out in social networks and in acampadas what many people think: that it was banks and governments who created the crisis and it is the people who suffer as a result, that politicians only represent themselves, that the mass media represent vested interests and that there are no channels for social protest to translate into real changes because in politics everything is nailed down securely so that those who always pay keep on paying, and those who reap the rewards do the same. This is why for months tens of thousands of people participated in assemblies and demonstrations and this is why the majority of the citizens (up to 73% in Spain) shared their criticisms. And all this in a peaceful way, except the violence that resulted from wild police baton charges, which have led to those responsible being brought before the courts. The movement had the maturity to lift the acampadas when it sensed that the occupations were stewing in their own juices and the daily assemblies where only getting attended by activists.

But the movement did not disappear; rather it spread out into the social fabric, with neighbourhood assemblies, defensive actions against injustices, such as opposition to evictions of families, and the spreading of alternative economic practices such as consumer co-operatives, ethical banking, exchange networks and many other such forms of living differently so as to live with meaning.

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There was no need for Mario Draghi’s words to understand that the crisis has already reached an irreversible threshold in Europe. A crisis of “systemic dimensions” was what Jean-Claude Trichet said a couple of months ago. Now Draghi, his successor at the European Central Bank, tells us that “the situation has worsened” (January 16th).  It is difficult to understand what the worsening of a crisis of “systemic dimensions” might mean.

What is certain is that the scenarios for the coming months are quite dark, not only for those who have already been paying for the crisis for years and the medicine that aliments it - austerity or, more “soberly”, economic rigor. Even consistent sectors of capital and European ruling classes are starting to doubt that, in the gigantic process of global readjustment of the equilibrium of power underway, they risk becoming one of the losers. The specter of “decline”, even if it hasn’t stopped haunting American metropolises, has started showing up in Europe’s squares more persistently - or at least in entire European regions. And there is no lack of pundits that foresee military reasoning behind the actions of rating agencies, the first maneuvers in a “global debt war” where the goal of saving the dollar as the sovereign currency on a global level (consequently maintaining the current command centers of financial markets) can justify disintegrating the Euro. In the background, the news coming from the Strait of Hormuz reminds us that, facing a crisis of this profundity and length, war can always be an attemptable “solution” not only through finance and “sovereign” debt.

Let’s say it clearly: the European Union, as we have known it until today, is finished. This is not something to be happy about. We ourselves have thought from time to time that struggles and social movements could find a more responsive framework of reference for citizenship and governance than national political structures in the growing European institutions, a space inside and against which the construction of campaigns and the articulation of assertive political platforms could be experimented. Well, that space doesn’t exist anymore.

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Media outlets are reporting a new crackdown on the unemployed.  Apparently, the Department of Social Protection intends to introduce new regulations whereby ‘target-dates’ for exiting the Live Register will be set for different categories of unemployed.  If someone remains on the Live Register past that target-date, they may be subject to a new set of interviews and investigations which could lead to reductions or even ending their unemployment payment.  This, no doubt, reflects the Minister’s description of unemployment as a ‘life-style’ choice for a growing number of jobless, especially young jobless.

This also reflects a new twist in victimising the unemployed for a crisis not of their making.

This is also reflects a policy mind-set that is detached from the reality of the labour market and even from the Government’s own employment projections.

First, Eurostat produces a ‘job vacancy rate’ which measures the number of job vacancies in the EU economies.  Using this we can estimate how the number of job vacancies compares with the actual number of unemployed.  What is the ratio of unemployed per job vacancy in Ireland?  26:1. Let’s ‘reflect’ on that for a moment.

• There are 26 unemployed people for every 1 job vacancy.

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There is much to dislike in the former IMF chief economists Peter Boone and Simon Johnson’s prognosis The European Crisis Deepens about the prospects for the Eurozone, particularly one of the three parts of their recommended solution being much deeper austerity for the next 10 years in countries like Ireland. Their assessment is inevitably a right-wing one (for example, there is no mentioned of the need for investment or increasing tax on corporations or those higher incomes) but still I think its worth reading if only to reinforce the understanding that creating the Euro in the first place was a very bad idea - one driven, as John Ross has shown, by the needs of economies that due to the scale of modern production needed a fixed exchange rate area right across their main market.

Boone and Johnson’s analysis also bolsters John’s original argument that a fixed exchange rate across vastly different economies simply will not work. However, at the moment this failure is being paid for by ordinary people. It’s also worth bearing in mind while reading the following quote an earlier point made in a section called Economics of Austerity May Fail.

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Statement from Repudiate the Debt Campaign

Once again the Government is handing over public money, this time €1.25 billion, to pay off the bond-holders of Anglo-Irish Bank. This callous, odious and unjust debt is taking a heavy toll on the Irish people.

This odious debt imposed on our people by the EU and ECB is simply costing the lives of the sick and of children.

There is no other solution than the complete repudiation of this debt. No tinkering with promissory notes or the like will address the simple fact that this is not the people’s debt, and it is not their responsibility to pay it through massive transfers of wealth from our country and our people, with a callous “austerity” programme and cuts in health, education, and social welfare, all just to save the German and French banks.

Repudiation of this debt is they only way to stop the savage attacks and the heavy price tags forced on our people.   The governments strategy of no bondholder left behind is killing our people.

Paul Doran

Co-ordinator

087 6837650