The Timidity of the Irish Left/Liberal/Progressive
Sep 3rd, 2010 by Conor McCabe
Following on from Donagh’s comment today.
New York Times yesterday:
“Ireland’s gross domestic product did grow in the first quarter of 2010, but that was not the good news that many news media and officials claimed.
This misunderstanding stems from Ireland’s success as a tax haven. Many years ago, Ireland cut corporate taxes to attract business. This created one of Europe’s most impressive tax havens — it is possible to set up a corporation in Ireland, channel sales through that head office (with some highly complicated links to offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying Irish tax) and then pay a minuscule corporate profits tax. Ireland boasts a large industry of foreign “tax minimizers” that do this, but these tax minimizers hardly employ any people. Nearly one-quarter of Irish G.D.P. comes from the profits of these ghost corporations.”
Full article is here.
Miichael Burke covered the same ground here for Progressive Economy.
Michael Taft as well.
Worldbystorm on Cedarlounge discussed it here.
We had a variation on this theme here.
Now, it’s doubtful that that the New York Times came across these posts and went “aha!”, mainly because it doesn’t have to.
The scam that is Irish service export figures has been public knowledge for years, as we highlighted here.
Yet, despite this, the voices pointing this out are a minority not only in Ireland but among the Left/progressives in Ireland.
I just wish that Irish progressives would be a bit more forthcoming with the problems faced by Ireland’s economy, instead of treating this stuff like “shhh… did you know?”
The usual response I hear, when I raise this argument, is, “They also spend money hiring law and accountancy firms”. Typically, this comes from a lawyer or an accountant. The employees of said firms then spend all their money here on second homes, large cars, and over-priced meals. Naturally, this is supposed to keep the world going round.
I expect the IT to run an opinion piece in the next few weeks citing the above and claiming that it’s only a good thing. I also expect that most will shrink from identifying this -correctly- as ‘Trickle Down’ economics.
What frustrates me at the moment, Rosencrantz, is the fact that the lie isn’t even challenged - sorry, it is challenged, but not here. In circles outside Ireland the claims of service-export led growth for the Irish economy are treated as a joke.
I don’t particularly care what a right-wing newspaper such as the Irish Times thinks, but it makes me bang my head against the wall to see and hear the Irish left-wing, in the main, accepting these economic lies. At best, they give these lies a pass, and I won’t know why. I genuinely don’t know why Irish left/progressives are walking on egg-shells when it comes to the export bubble. I really don’t, because in the rest of the world, they aren’t.
By the way, the money they spend is wiped-out by the tax breaks they receive for spending that money. Dublin has some of the highest office rents in the world, the reason is that the companies aren’t paying those rents. They get grants and tax breaks to help them pay those rents, so the rents go up. It’s a transfer of taxpayers money to rentiers, pure and simple. The companies are just conduits.
surgery wards are being closed in Navan in order to help foreign companies pay exorbitant rents on Dame Street.
Someone who isn’t walking on egg shells when it comes to talking about Ireland as a tax haven is Richard Murphy. He’s commenting on the Irish Times piece today, calling it Ireland’s failed business model:
And Richard Murphy works in England and was brought up and educated there. My point is that, in the main, left/progressives WITHIN Ireland are ignoring this reality. They know it’s going on, but are silent about it while the rest of the world steals a march on it.
And the problem with that approach - letting others do our criticism for us - is the fact that they are not talking about Ireland per se, rather they are talking about the use of Ireland by the Right as a great example of a country taking the hard choices.
Ireland as a metaphor for right-wing economic policies is what is being discussed by Murphy and the New York Times, which is fine because that suits what they are talking about, but the problem for us is that Ireland is NOT a metaphor, it’s where we live.
These are very interesting questions, and much more important than most people realise. The intellectual incoherence of Celtic Tiger era neo-liberalism is, and was, evident to anyone who casts even a moderately critical glance over its parameters. Denis Hearne and Kieran Allen were two early critics who picked the model apart in the mid to late 90’s. But Irish neo-liberalism as a ‘faith’ as a dogma and a doctrine, is far sturdier. There is some form of psychological mechanism at work in Irish society which refuses to accept the darker sides of our society, and when these darker sides are exposed, it refuses to take responsibility for the consequences and ensuing damage. In fact, the economic orthodoxy and its response to the deepening crisis resembles the Catholic hierarchy’s approach to the abuse scandals. I suspect that the FF-IT-Indo-Sindo-SBP-RTE-Newstalk-ESRI-IBEC nexus will mimic the hierarchy as the bad news intensifies until implosion following debt default. ‘The King is Dead; Long Live the King!’ - expect the orthodoxy to grow increasingly hysterical in its demands for cuts, attacks on the public sector and privatisation of services and the semi-states. The Left’s big mistake is its failure to recognise that the orthodoxy is a faith position; and you can’t debate with or argue with it. Its defenders will destroy everything around them to defend their faith, regardless of its effects on the wider society. The unions, who’ve hitherto grudgingly acquiesced with the orthodoxy need to realise that they really are the last hope of Irish society, as they are the only structural force capable of stopping the destruction. What would the cost of a prolonged general strike be when set against the Anglo bailout and its consequences? The Left needs to stop trying to win the debate in media fora, which it will never be permitted to do. The price of timidity will be impoverishment beyond the imagination of most people living today in Ireland.
Pretty much agree with all the points you made there CMK. I think they’re spot-on.
Who is Denis Hearne? I’m afraid the name is new to me. Can you point me to some stuff he’s written? I’d be interested in reading it.
you’re right about Kieran Allen as well. Whatever about my personal opinion of the SWM/SWP and of Allen (it’s not that great I have to say), his analysis of Irish capitalism and irish society is quite robust. Sometime in the next two years I’m going to get around to producing an Irish Marxist Reader, and a selection of Allen’s work will definitely be in it.
so, with that in mind, Denis Hearne, slightly embarrassed to admit I don’t know who he is, but would like to know more.
I think CMK might mean this guy., but I could be wrong.
http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofSociologySocialPolicySocialWork/Staff/AcademicStaff/DenisOHearn/
Thanks garibaldy. There’s one book listed there on his homepage, looks very interesting:
The Atlantic Economy: Britain, the US and Ireland (University of Manchester Press, 2001)
I must check that out. thanks.
I have a vague memory of reading some of his Inside the Celtic Tiger. It was very unusual in being highly sceptical. Some good criticisms from what I recall about the nature of foreign investment.
I just had a read of the blurb on amazon for the atlantic economy, and he seems to have said back then a lot of what I’m saying now about the nature of the Irish economy over the past 400 years, so I better damn read it!
I just ordered it and sure see what it’s like, but cheers for the pointers, cmk and garibaldy.
Loads of it on google books, though not all. Looks very interesting alright.
I agree with what has been said above. I partly attribute the lack of analysis and challenges to the orthodoxy to an anti-intellectual streak in Irish society. We don’t have a body of public intellectuals who bring different perspectives to the debate. On the odd occasion that one might sneak through, they have to battle against the ‘faith’ that Irish people put in conventional wisdom and ‘practical knowledge’.
We also have a distinct lack of resources from which intellectuals or dissidents can draw from. Both the Yanks and the Brits have think tanks and swathes of literature which they can access. We seem to only have the ESRI and a few anti-poverty agencies here and there.
While I am here I should confess that I have read very little of Kieran Allen’s stuff. His language always turned me off. I have always been wary when people bat around ‘neoliberalism’ in relation to Ireland. It feels like they have just lifted the concept wholesale from American authors and then tried to crowbar Irish policy and history into it. There is -something- going on, but whether it is simply a copy of what happened in the United from the 70s onward is questionable.
That said, I am judging the book by its cover since I have never sat down and properly read one of his books. Are his they good reads? Would anyone recommend one in particular?
“I have always been wary when people bat around ‘neoliberalism’ in relation to Ireland. It feels like they have just lifted the concept wholesale from American authors and then tried to crowbar Irish policy and history into it”
I completely agree Rosencrantz. Neoliberalism in an Irish context is just laziness (analysis-wise). It’s exactly what you said, just crowbarring an American and British analysis into Irish history and society.
with regard to Kiernan Allen, the one I’ve read and liked is his pamphlet, Is southern Ireland a Neo-Colony? I think he has some interesting things to say, and I was quite surprised by that.
http://www.marxists.de/ireland/neocolony/index.htm
And although I think the historical analysis is somewhat flawed, his book on Fianna Fail and Labour is right to highlight the relationship between the Irish labour movement and Fianna Fail, something rarely discussed. with all the caveats, again it’s an important work.
The rest of his stuff, leans too much on conclusions drawn from other societies, I feel. And recently, neoliberalism is thrown about like confetti at a whitsun wedding.
Despite having little time for the SWP I think Kieran Allen is an important Irish thinker and intellectual. And, yes, any reader of contemporary Irish Marxism would have to include him.
The Denis O’Heare I referred to is the QUB guy Garibaldy linked. His ‘Insider the Celtic Tiger’ was an interesting read and a corrective to the mania accelerating around 1999/2000.
I think Rosencrantz is correct link the anti-intellectualism rampant here to the inability of alternative narratives and discourses to emerge. The former has a causal relation to the latter. When, as RTE noted today, ten times more people turn out to meet-and-greet one of the most heinous war criminals in recent history, as turn out to protest his presence, well that’s an indication of just how wrong things are.
A pity todays anti-war protest was dominated by Eirigi; I turned up but didn’t partcipate because of their profile. However, I later went into Easons and moved some of the copies of Blair’s book to crime - now sure dewey would approve. How pathetic - where has all my revolutionary fervour gone when I am reduced to this!
Expect the orthodoxy to grow increasingly hysterical in its demands for cuts, attacks on the public sector and privatisation of services and the semi-states. The Left’s big mistake is its failure to recognise that the orthodoxy is a faith position; and you can’t debate with or argue with it.
‘Nowadays’ wrote Marx ‘atheism itself is a culpl levis [minor fault] as compared with criticism of existing property relations’
“I […] moved some of the copies of Blair’s book to crime ”
)
Excellent. (But the True crime section, one hopes.
I’ve now moved all 5 copies of Blair’s book in Eastons at the Airport to the crime section. This is fun and I don’t feel so powerless. Spread the word.
haha! Brilliant. Well done Mary.
thanks Conor but what I really want is for you to leg it into town and do the same!
I’ll hit the local store later on. no prob.
It’s easy to recategorise the book in Easons. I’m having difficulty with reorganising Blair’s books in Hodges & Figgis in Dawson Street. They are everywhere and in such large quantities. Has anyone any ideas?
A nearby skip perhaps Mary ??
Ah shite - I forgot that the Building industry had become extinct…
Mary, if you don’t like Eirigi fair enough, but surely the fact that it was mainly them protesting means the mainstream left is letting the side down? I get the impression that most Irish Labour TDs are so dazzled by New Labour’s success that they couldn’t care less what Blair did in Iraq.
Conor this is one area where I think you’re dead right about the left hiding it’s light under a bushel. There’s no effort at all being made by the left institutionally to combat this stuff. None at all. One doesn’t have to believe in a revolutionary moment occurring any time soon to know that if the LP - for example - articulated just how the S&P news is such poison and how it shows up the vacuity of the government’s policies that that would strongly resonate.
And this isn’t restricted to the S&P stuff, but across the board in terms of the institutional elements of the left and the govt. Of course given that they’re locked in through various mechanisms, most notably Croke Park and social partnership (even now)perhaps this quiet isn’t so surprising. One wonders if a side protocol was ‘we’ll stop hitting you (the unions and the PS in particular) but stay schtum about our approach’.
I find it frustrating to read critiques of Irish society penned by people who have no real connection with our society, being used by the Left in Ireland. It should be the other way around. That’s all I’m saying.
Definitely. I could make a case that part of that was the detachment of social democracy and socialism from Republicanism (in very broad terms) but it’s not that Republicanism did any better (generally) at sorting it out theoretically or concretely.
Conor
If it walks like duck and it talks like duck, then it’s a duck!
Maybe it’s possible you are actually frustrated by your own shortsightedness?
The unions, the ‘lefts’, the ‘progressives’ - all do well within this capitalist system, thank you.
Why would they want to encourage it’s overthrow?
Mervyn