Bank of Ireland Job Loses
Statement from the Communist Party of Ireland
The announcement by Bank of Ireland that it would be cutting its workforce by 750 jobs to be imposed over the next two years is clearly just the beginning. These job losses come on the back of thousands of jobs already gone from the financial services sector and at a time when Ireland is recording record levels of unemployment - even though the experts tell us we are out of the recession!
What is clearly missing from the mainstream media and establishment debate is an historical economic perspective that questions the role played by finance in the economic system, capitalism, today. The same so-called economic experts (that usually work for financial institutions) that informed public opinion prior to the collapse are brought out to propose solutions. Rarely, with a few notable exceptions, do they ask serious questions about the fundamentals that drive the economic system.
This critically necessary debate is being ignored or silenced by a compliant media, a media largely owned by the same people that profit off the current system.
Capitalism is a cyclical boom bust system. The days of competitive capitalism are long over. Today a number of trans-national monopolies operate, invest and create profits across sectors. This has a profound impact upon the accumulation process and has led to the spectre of over-production and over-accumulation haunting the capitalist system.
The productive real economy has been in deep stagnation for some time. Profits globally from manufacturing and non-finance related activities have been on the decline since the 1960’s. Despite the increase in military manufacturing and spending this deep rooted stagnation (due to the capacity of the system to over-produce and its failure to increase market demand) exists and will continue to exist subject to no technological innovations on the scale of the railways or automobile transforming society.
It is in this context that the system turned to finance to become the primary source of investment, capital creation and expenditure for working people and the basis of necessary growth in capitalism. Important to note is that this was not a conspiratorial coup by a number of bankers, nor was it an opted policy choice by Governments. It was the only manner by which the system could avoid its dreaded and unavoidable problem of stagnation.
It is hard to pin down an exact date but safe to say that for the last 20 years debt and speculative finance, with consequential bubbles in various sectors, have been the primary avenue for existing capital to be invested and the primary avenue of profit creation for the system. Wages have dramatically declined with working people being increasingly reliant upon debt to survive or enhance their quality of life. This process, known often as the financialisation of the economy, is key to understanding the action of the Irish Government and the EU.
The function of the so-called bailouts is not the saving of personal friends of Fianna Fail or politicians and shouldn’t been seen in this light as it far more systemic than this. For capitalism to function, to exist, there must be a profitable avenue for accumulated capital to invest in. Finance, financial instruments and debt, are that avenue. The bailout is a required attempt at stabilising the system to enable the accumulation process to continue. To enable capitalism survive.
It is an absolute necessity if ones starting point and primary desire is the maintenance of capitalism regardless of its human or environmental cost.
However, if you are more concerned with jobs, families, quality of life, democracy, justice and equality then there is an alternative route to take. It is not reform of the system because no reform can abolish the fundamental necessity of capital to recreate and accumulate and consequently its need for debt and financial instruments as this avenue. Not reform but transformative.
By transformative we mean economic and social demands that challenge politically the economic system. That challenge the owners of capital and the control they possess over people and society. That mobilise working people to view an economic system as only a means by which society produces and distributes for all and judge the success of a system on this basis.
We believe such an economic system can be built from the struggle of working people for dignity and respect under the current system. No blue print can be provided but the struggle against the massive redistribution of wealth from working people to capital is the starting point.
We propose as some demands for working people:
- The creation of a State Development Bank;
- Planned investment to meet the needs of working people;
- Control over our islands natural resources;
- Utilisation of wind and wave energy supplies; and
- The development of an all-Ireland economy utilising local resources and talents.
A more detailed development of this strategy can be found in the economic pamphlet “An economy for the common good.”
Discussion
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Comment by: Colin Quirke
Jul 20th 2010 at 09:07
“The productive real economy has been in deep stagnation for some time. Profits globally from manufacturing and non-finance related activities have been on the decline since the 1960’s.”
I’m not questioning the veracity of this statement, but can anyone point me to the stats that this is based on? I would like to see the full picture across industries, national economies and activities. Especially as I am not clear what is meant by “manufacturing and non-finance related activities”.
Comment by: Ivan
Feb 9th 2012 at 04:02
The American EMPIRE is dead, long live the American PEOPLE!What is it with eiperms, that they should all have delusions of eternity? The self-proclaimed “Thousand-year old Reich” barely made it to age… eleven.And when Napoleon was crowned emperor, his mother wisely observed, in her heavy Sicilian accent: “Pourvou qué ça doure!” (“Provided it lasts!”). As for the British Empire, which arrogantly claimed that the sun never set on it, it seems that the sun had the last laugh on its pretensions as well.No empire built upon such naiveté, greed, grandiosity and other nonsensical values, can possibly endure. LIFE WILL NOT TOLERATE IT. What stands so crassly against the Laws of Life cannot last long. Only what is in perfect alignment with Life – what Yeshua called “the Kingdom of God” – can possibly endure. The lack of morality, of common decency, destroys all human eiperms from within. Spiritual bankruptcy precedes and precipitates political and economic bankruptcy. As we all know, the first sentence – or preamble – of the Constitution cites “Justice” and “the general Welfare” even before “Liberty”. But “Social Justice” has in this century become a dirty word in America… A very telltale sign that “there is something rotten” in the state of this country. The American Empire is on the brink and at this point, IMO nothing can save it from its own self-destructive madness. But perhaps that is after all the best thing that can happen to what has become a kind of political, economic, social and religious freak: that it implode and destroy itself utterly.Obama had given us hope – false hope, as it turned out – and I for one have become resigned to the fact that the Empire has passed the point of no return and that it is beyond reform or repair. The fall of the Empire will undoubtedly entail a lot of suffering, not only in America but all over the world. Decades of crisis, of uncertainty, of civil strife in the U.S. and in the Western world, which could easily erupt into outright civil war if the rich refuse to share with the poor. And yet, this period of great tribulation which I now see as inevitable will also bring with it great spiritual opportunities for America and the West in general, opportunities which we must translate into blessings.The U.S. will probably never be a major world power again, but it will finally reconnect with its roots and the ideals of the Founding Fathers. And so it may become poorer and humbler in material things but will grow richer in soul and may finally fulfill what Carolyn Myss calls “The Sacred Contract of America”. Let’s face it, folks, the American Empire is in its death throes and IMO we should start planning right now for the period “after” its fall. The American EMPIRE is dead, long live the American PEOPLE who will one day rise from its ashes!