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Wednesday, May 23rd 2012

The Irish entrepreneur as middleman is firmly, and fatally, entrenched in the way the economy functions

Author: Donagh of Dublin Opinion

Published: July 13th, 2011

Section: Articles, Economy

Discussion: 3 comments ↓

Possibly Related: , , ,

Conor McCabe has a new article on Journal.ie. It’s broadly based on Sins of the Father, but provides a very good summary of how power works in Ireland, how the economy was kept as an agricultural exporter to Britian for so long only to be replaced as an importer of FDI where the only benefit came to those who provided contruction, financial and legal sercies. It also explains why the banks failed to provide credit to help develop indiginous industry, (including a proper argicultural industry) and why instead banking got on the back of the only commercial enterprise that was encouraged, property speculation. As Conor points out, it’s the legacy of the middle man as entrepenure which has been so firmly entrenched in Irish commerical life that has us in the current crisis.

I gather that the title of the Journal piece belongs to the journal.ie rather than Conor, before people start to complain about the use of the royal ‘we’. Here’s an extract.

***

THERE HAVE BEEN more than a few attempts to explain why the Irish banking crisis developed the way it did, and the argument that it was due to a breakdown in moral standards is quite a popular one.

The Irish Times talked of a “frightening lack of morality” within Anglo Irish Bank, the most indebted of the Irish institutions, and how the actions of its chairman “cast a shadow over the ethical culture of the bank he ran for most of the past 33 years.” The newspaper’s senior business correspondent, Arthur Beesley, said that the directors of Irish Life and Permanent inhabited an “ethical cocoon in which the sense of right and wrong is at odds with standards in the outside world”, while the economist Brian Lucey talked of the immorality of the Government’s actions in pouring money into Anglo Irish Bank in a desperate attempt to keep it going as a business concern.

Yet, the banking crisis in Ireland was not caused by pockets of immorality in an otherwise reasonably well-functioning system. The ruthless pursuit of profit is not personal; that is the way business works. And what is condemned as immoral in times of crisis, is often praised as savvy and pragmatic in times of prosperity.

You can read the full article here.

Discussion

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  1. Comment by: Eoin O'Mahony

    Jul 13th 2011 at 10:07

    If might be a little off topic but it struck me this morning that, with the establishment of the state in 1922, this particular group of people were joined by professionals who acted as mediators state power in place of Catholic priests, who had considerable power in state mediation in the latter part of the 19th century. Chapter 4 of Taylor’s “Occasions of faith: an anthropology of Irish Catholics” lays it out reasonably well. Secularisation then is as much about this displacement as any narrative of ‘the decline of faith and practice’ that is written so much about.

  2. Comment by: Donagh

    Jul 13th 2011 at 13:07

    I don’t think its off topic at all. I’m not as versed in this as Conor, but I’d recommend you read Ruling Trinity, Chris Eipper’s book that Conor has mentioned a number of times as being a big influence on his analysis.
    http://dublinopinion.com/2011/07/11/sins-of-the-father-b-sides-and-out-takes-the-ruling-trinity-a-community-study-of-church-state-and-business-in-ireland-by-chris-eipper-1986/

    It talks directly about the role the church as part of the trinity of power blocs within Ireland. As the book deals with a community study of Bantry Bay, it looks at the relationship between the Church, state and business at the micro level, but there’s a very interesting chapter on the role of the church and their relationship with government at the national level too.

    It’s possible that there is a displacement, and this might be reflected in the tensions that existed between the church and state. This part from the introduction of Ruling Trinity might be relevant:

    In practice, the main outcome of this sequence of processes was that the church, state and business became the major supports of a new class field of force in Éire. Because of the interlocking of the nationally autonomous institutions of church, state and business, class power in Éire became inextricably tied up with the dominant position of the bloc itself. That is to say, since classes always wield power through key institutions - remaining beholden to these institutions and dependent upon their successful functioning - the reproduction of the bloc itself became central to (though not necessarily essential for) the maintenance of class power.

    Contrary to what social scientists sympathetic to theories of power elites might want to argue, the autonomy exhibited by church, state and business in Éire does not necessarily indicate a weak form - let alone an absence - of class domination. Indeed, it may well be a measure of its strength. Given that this domination has been structured institutionally as a trinity, we would not expect relations within the bloc to have been necessarily harmonious. Rather, we might expect them to be tension-ridden and constantly renegotiated as changing circumstances have had differential effects upon the members of the bloc and the society over which it has ruled.”

    Also, I’d refer to you page 4 of the Just Society document written by Declan Costello that WorldbyStorm put up the other day.
    http://dublinopinion.com/2011/07/11/fine-gael-and-the-just-society-1965/

    I’m pasting in an image of the section here which outlines what informed FG’s social and economic thinking (apparently).

  3. Comment by: Eoin O'Mahony

    Jul 13th 2011 at 15:07

    Thanks Donagh for that considered reposonse. I remember that D.O. post very well and I’m hoping to get to Eipper’s work this summer. That jpg above just about captures it: FG technocracy replacing other mechanisms of social control.

This article is also being discussed on the following websites:

  1. Aug 17th 2011

    Sins of the Father – Rape of a Nation.

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Sins of the Father

Sins of the Father:

Tracing the Decisions

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by Conor McCabe

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