The Latest Edition of the Irish Anarchist Review is Out + Audio of the People’s Movement’s Raymond Crotty Lecture with Conor McCabe
The latest edition of the Irish Anarchist Review published by the Worker’s Solidarity Movement on the 5th of Oct, is available here.
It includes Paul Bowman on organising to beat the household tax. Kostas Avrimidis writes about Greece and Cathal Larkin reviews the excellent Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937 by Chris Ealham. Cathal writes:
“Mike Davis, a Marxist I believe, calls Anarchism and the City the best book he has read in a decade. I’d come very close to concurring; it certainly does stand out as a fantastic example of how working class history should be written.”
Cathal also has a very interesting long article on Michel Foucault’s examination of power. Eric Hayes writes about participatory economics and Eoghan Ryan reviews Ramor Ryan’s Zapatista Spring (read it online).
This edition however, also includes a wide ranging interview from James McBarron with Conor McCabe about his book Sins of the Father. The full thing is now available on the wsm.ie website, but here’s an interesting excerpt:
“Do you think the overall direction of government policy was thought out on a fairly planned basis, or was it simply a case of vested interests fighting their corner and the consequences flowing naturally from that?
The Irish economy is a planned economy, no doubt about it. It has been since the foundation of the Free State in 1922. The plan has been to serve the interests of the particular type of capitalism which took root in Ireland - that is, a certain kind of comprador capitalism. I’m in danger of oversimpifying here but the type of business activities which dominated the Irish economy in the twentieth century - cattle exports to Britain and financial investmen in London; the development of green-field sites and the construction of factories and office buildings to facilitate foreign industrial and commercial investment; the birth of the suburbs and subsequent housing booms
predicated on expanding urban workforce - saw the development of an indigenous moneyed class based around cattle, construction and banking.
These sectional interests were able to control successive government policy, much to the detriment of the rest of the economy, which had to rely on whatever scraps it could pick up from quasi-committed multinationals and government-funded grants and tax breaks. In 2008 the construction and banking sectors of that class closed ranks in order to protect themselves from oblivion, resulting in the bank guarantee and the creation of the National Asset Management Agency.
There has been a logic to everything they have done, and once we see that Irish capitalism is a ‘meet-and greet’ capitalism, then the decisions begin to make sense. Of course, that is not how the history of Ireland in the 20th century is portrayed. Take, for example, Fianna Fáil.
The image of Fianna Fáil as ruthless and politically brilliant has a long tradition within Irish journalism. The rise of the ‘mohair suits’ in the 1960s - the party’s post-revolution generation - and the apparent sophistication of its most controversial leader, Charles Haughey, brought a new lexicon into play which helped define the organisation in the public eye. Haughey was a republican who lived an aristocratic life. He had silk shirts flown in from Paris and made speeches of stoic patriotism. His party knew him as The Boss; his media advisor, P.J. Mara, referred to him as Il Duce. His protégé, Bertie Ahern,
was described by the master as ‘the most skilful, the most devious, and the most cunning of them all’. The head of Fianna Fáil was often seen as like a Godfather who ruled through a mixture of patronage and (political) assassination. He was Marlon Brando, slowly rubbing his cheek while plotting a murder, immaculately dressed with manicured nails.
However, the proper analogy is not with Vito Corelone or his cold, calculating son, Michael; it is with Fredo, the middle son who is sent to Vegas to make sure all the high rollers are kept happy. It is Fredo, sweaty and unsure, desperately trying to please the powerful, who best fits the role of Fianna Fáil in Ireland. The party spent decades in service to particular business interests in this country, while doing just enough to convince the electorate to return it to office. That was its role because that was (and still is) the type of business that the Irish capitalist class engage in.”
Related to this, Cathal Brennan of the Irish Story was good enough to record Conor’s talk for the second Raymond Crotty Memorial Lecture at the Ireland Institute last Saturday, the 15th of October. The talk begins with a clip from the HBO Cop TV drama The Wire, and involves a conversation between two detectives, Leander Sydnor and Lester Freamon about the case they are working on, an attempt to prove that the state senator Clay Davis is corrupt.
The talk was titled Rancher and Banking Interests in the Modern Irish Economy. Presented by Dr. Conor McCabe. Hosted by the People’s Movement in the Ireland Institute on Pearse Street in Dublin.
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How else can one explain the fact that around a quarter of the package won’t even arrive in Athens but will flow directly to the country’s international creditors? The holders of Greek government bonds are to get some €30 billion as an incentive to convert their old paper into new bonds. The aim is to keep alive the illusion that Greece isn’t bankrupt — after all, the creditors are voluntarily forgiving part of the debt. The financial sector is cleverly manipulating the fear that a Greek bankruptcy would trigger a fatal chain reaction.
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The post Collaboration, with our European partners by Richard of Cunning Hired Knaves summed up in one sentence. For much better sentences and many more urgent points read the post.
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Exiting the euro | Michael Roberts
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