The Quiet Road

Synonyms for austerity: harshness, strictness, asceticism, rigour (source: dictionary.com).

A little over three weeks from now the people of Ireland will vote in a referendum. At stake is Irish participation in the European Fiscal Compact, a pan-European treaty that attempts to lay down strict budgetary rules for those nations who sign up. The ‘Yes’ campaign is referring to it as “The Stability Treaty”. The ‘No’ campaign calls it the “Austerity Treaty”. While it’s true that I am ideologically opposed to the treaty, I contend that my position is grounded in reality. That is; you can demonstrate – using “facts” and everything* – that the treaty will result in austerity for Ireland, while its characterisation as a “stability” treaty is extremely dubious to say the least.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the Lisbon Treaty? At the second time of asking, we endorsed it in October 2009. The ‘Yes’ camp – the very same people urging ‘Yes’ later this month remember – characterised it as the “Jobs Treaty”. Hmmm, we’ve not had an apology from them on that one yet. But I guess we shouldn’t expect politicians to apologise for completely misleading the citizenry and promising things they’re unable to deliver. Indeed, most of them seem to think that’s actually part of their job description.

What I find really remarkable about modern politicians is their ability to maintain such a breath-taking lack of self-awareness despite living their lives in a media spotlight. They never admit to mistakes; presumably believing they never make any. In other words, believing they are fundamentally better than the rest of us (because god knows we all make mistakes). Moreover, politicians appear so completely unaware of their own limitations as to give the impression that they don’t feel they have any. The vast majority of us over-estimate our own abilities… it’s part of being human… but politicians, whether they are the Left or the Right, do so to such a degree it’s almost beyond parody. Personally I believe I’d do a better job running the country than the current lot we’ve got in the job. But – and it’s a crucial “but” – I don’t think I’d do a great job at it. Just a better one. And given the incredible importance of that job, I’d need to be a self-interested, power-hungry careerist to put myself forward for it unless I thought I could do a great job.

So either the people running the country are just a bunch of self-interested, power-hungry careerists; willing to place their own personal desires and ambitions above the collective good… or they are supremely unaware of their own limitations. Because, let’s face it, it’s hardly a secret that the job they’re doing ain’t that great.

But back to the Treaty

Yes indeed. The posters have started to go up. Far more ‘Yes’ posters than ‘No’ based on a trip into Dublin City today. But that’s to be expected given the financial muscle behind the ‘Yes’ campaign. All three major political parties support the treaty. No surprise there… any suggestion that the Labour Party might take a more nuanced position (especially given the position of the bulk of the Unions) were fanciful in the extreme. Labour donned the neoliberal uniform the moment they sold their principles to Fine Gael in return for a taste of power. Their protestations that they’ve managed to ameliorate some of the more savage cuts proposed by Fine Gael possess but the thinnest shred of truth.

Against the treaty stands Sinn Féin, the Unions (well, most of them) and the leftist parties. Oh, and Éamon Ó’Cuiv. Fair play to Éamon. He may well be the exception to my characterisation of mainstream politicians that proves the rule. And rumours abound that he’ll soon be expelled from Fianna Fáil for his stance. Remarkable really… you can run the country into the ground, you can endorse a Bank Guarantee that transfers massive private debts onto the shoulders of generations yet unborn, you can break a thousand promises to the electorate. All of these things are par for the course in modern politics – commendable even. But to stand by your principles? Apparently that’s grounds for expulsion.

Seriously, you can’t actually be cynical enough about politics any more. It has passed beyond that realm. All we are left with is disbelief, despair and contempt. And hopefully the stirrings of a genuine anger… though I see little enough of that right now in Ireland more’s the pity.

The latest polls seem to suggest the ‘Yes’ majority is being eroded slowly. Unfortunately it seems too slow at the moment to turn the tide come May 31st (though with a bit of luck the election results in France and Greece, along with the failure of the Dutch government to push through the policies of austerity, will inspire us here in Ireland). Personally I ascribe this ‘Yes’ majority to two factors… one: a shamelessly biased media (the Irish Times has been little short of disgraceful on this matter, and RTÉ not much better – once again, we should be thankful for Vincent Browne**… long may he continue to be a thorn in the side of the establishment); and two: the success of the scare-mongering tactics employed by the ‘Yes’ campaign. As I mentioned here before, the campaign was kicked off by a Fine Gael minister insisting that a ‘No’ vote would be “like a bomb going off in Dublin”. That’s the very definition of scare-mongering… comparing my ‘No’ vote to an act of terrorism; suggesting that when I place my ‘X’ in the ‘No’ box, I am metaphorically carrying out an act of extreme violence. Such undiluted nonsense from a government minister should be shameful, but these people know no shame.

On top of that we’ve had government spokespeople assuring us that a ‘No’ vote will “cut Ireland off from external funding”. It took those opposing the treaty over a week to finally wrest a statement from the “impartial” Referendum Commission that this was – in fact – a lie. Plain and simple. A lie. But the Commission’s declaration hasn’t had nearly the same media exposure as the lie it exposes.

We need Austerity

See, this is the weird thing. Europe – like the rest of western civilisation – actually needs to radically reduce its consumption. We have created an unsustainable society that we should be scaling back right now (because if we don’t do it, then resource depletion will do it for us pretty soon anyway… and chances are it’ll involve less suffering if we take matters into our own hands on this issue). But, to jump back to the synonyms which opened this post, we need the austerity of ‘rigour’. And what’s being foisted upon us is ‘harshness’. That’s how it is, no matter what the ‘Yes’ campaign might claim (and each time they claim otherwise, remember the same people also claimed Lisbon was the “Jobs Treaty”).

The policies being adopted by our government; the policies that will be enshrined in the Irish Constitution if we pass this dangerous treaty; the policies that Angela Merkel has announced are “non-negotiable” (can someone please tell me who the hell gave the German government the right to tell the rest of Europe what we may or may not negotiate?); these are policies that will be unnecessarily harsh on the vast majority of Europe’s citizens, precisely so that the financial institutions of Europe don’t need to adopt a rigorous approach to their affairs.

This treaty places the interests of European banks above the interests of European people (and those who say those interests are synonymous need to cop on to themselves). It imposes austerity without addressing sustainability. Europe needs a sustainable alternative. It needs a radical alternative. An alternative based on social justice (a radical proposal in itself in these days of neoliberal greed and casino capitalism)… an alternative based on human decency and human dignity. I believe that alternative can be found in a flight away from capitalism. I believe that we should be looking towards the ideas of Bertrand Russell, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Lucy Parsons, Gregory Bateson, Albert Einstein and so many others. People who realised that capitalist society has been shaped by the few, for the few. And that this has to change if we are to create a world worthy and capable of long-term survival.

A ‘No’ vote on May 31st won’t bring the words of those wise few to life. It won’t bring about a Golden Age of social progress. It carries risks and will certainly be met with a punitive reaction from the financial institutions that currently run Europe. A ‘No’ vote will not bring back the Celtic Tiger, because the Celtic Tiger is never coming back. But it will strike a blow against the forces of injustice and inequality. It will halt our own government’s headlong rush into the abyss. And it will demonstrate that – just like the French and the Greeks – we in Ireland are fed up taking orders from the very bankers who destroyed the global economy. Vote ‘No’.

Yesterday over in the UK, David Cameron gave a speech which contained two blatant lies. Firstly he claimed of the company Rolls Royce that “Half the members of its Board started as apprentices.” In fact, to quote the excellent Channel 4 FactCheck blog…

Only one out of the fourteen members of the Rolls-Royce board of directors did an apprenticeship with the company, and that was a sponsored degree rather than a vocational course for a school-leaver.

Cameron also claimed (and prefaced the claim with the immortal words, “I am not making this up”) that the previous Labour government had introduced a GCSE-equivalent course “in Personal Effectiveness which actually involved learning how to fill out a benefit form”. In fairness to Cameron he’s right when he said that he wasn’t making that one up. As the FactCheck blog reveals, he was actually just parroting something that the Daily Mail had made up. Which is par for the course for British politicians of almost every stripe.

Now, what irks me most is not those specific lies. It’s the fact that we have come to accept lies and half-truths from our politicians as though they were the most natural thing in the world. There will be no massive scandal about Cameron’s false claim that the Rolls Royce boardroom is half-filled with erstwhile apprentices who worked their way up from the machine room. Indeed, with the exception of a tiny handful of people who read the Channel 4 FactCheck blog, most people will never know the claim is false.

And tomorrow, or next week, he’ll make a speech with yet more self-serving lies and once again they will be accepted as fact.

Because despite the excellent FactCheck blog, the reality is that the media as a whole does a god-awful job of holding our politicians to account. In a sane world, Cameron’s next speech or press conference would be followed by a dozen questions from the floor asking him why he lied in his previous speech. Why he was content to trot out the vile falsehoods of the Daily Mail as though they were fact. Why, in fact, he was comfortable treating the citizens of his country with such naked contempt.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that journalists should be able to identify the lies as they are told. Fact checking takes time. But if they were doing their jobs in an even half-competent manner, they’d hold him to account for the things he says on the next occasion they got to question him. But they don’t. Instead they are actively complicit in those lies… reporting them without ever investigating them.

The Irish economy is in free-fall. Recent figures suggest we have a 26:1 ratio of jobless people to available jobs (yet the government is planning to penalise the long-term unemployed if they don’t find a job quickly enough). To put that number into perspective, in the UK the average ratio is around 7:1 and they think they have problems. The banks are straining under the weight of their loan books. House prices have fallen steadily for 22 consecutive quarters (yes, property was absurdly overvalued during the Celtic Tiger, but the rapid devaluation has dumped a large proportion of the population into negative equity which creates a slew of problems of its own). Emigration driven by desperation is increasing. Public services are being gutted. Regressive taxation is being increased in a vain attempt to paper over some of the cracks, while the wealth that has accumulated at the top remains untouched. What few public assets remain are being sold off at knock-down prices by a government ideologically hell-bent on a policy of privatisation, despite it clearly playing into the hands of the very people who drove Ireland into the abyss. The meagre wealth generated by our stricken nation is being funnelled rapidly into the coffers of international financial institutions. And all the while we are being led by a sorry bunch of gombeens who either don’t have the intellectual capacity to grasp what’s happening to Ireland, or don’t have the competence to do anything about it (I suspect it’s both).

Let’s be clear about something; the global financial crisis was an inevitable result of politicians across the world placing the demands of unregulated capitalism before the needs of their citizenry. It was idiotic and it was greedy but it was also a huge error of judgement. Essentially… they screwed up. In contrast, the crisis currently engulfing Ireland is being deliberately engineered by those same politicians as part of an attempt to safeguard the capitalist system they represent. Mass Irish unemployment, emigration and the destruction of our public services are not the result of anyone screwing up. They are the result of a calculated decision to make Irish citizens suffer in order to protect the very people responsible for that original error of judgement. The Greeks and the Portuguese too of course; but as I live in Ireland that’s the perspective I’m writing from.

Now, because the collapse is occurring at such a pace, there are stories worthy of note in the paper literally every day. Thankfully I’m actually quite busy at the moment, so I don’t have time just now to comment on every single one. However, I stumbled upon a story linked from Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev’s blog* (True Economics) that I felt worthy of a few moments of public reflection. The story appears on the U.S. financial website, Bloomberg, and is headlined: Ireland Told by EU It May Need More Budget Cuts to Meet Targets. In a few short paragraphs it perfectly summarises the plight of this country.

It seems that – for the second time in four months – the German Parliament is deciding Irish budgetary policy. I know, of course, that’s not what’s officially going on, but only the terminally naive and/or members of the Irish government believe otherwise. Around the time of our last budget it was revealed that documents from the Irish Department of Finance outlining the budget proposals were being discussed in the Bundestag prior to being presented to the Dáil. There was – quite rightly – a degree of outrage here in Ireland. It is perfectly acceptable for EU member states to discuss the budgetary policies of other member states. However, I don’t think it’s at all acceptable for it to be happening before those policies are announced to the Irish parliament. The correct order should be: Dublin, Strasbourg, Berlin/Paris/Rome/etc. Not Berlin, Strasbourg/Paris/etc. and then Dublin. That essentially makes a mockery of Irish democracy and it’s a mistake that should never have happened.

That it has now happened a second time, however, reveals a pattern that should make the Irish very wary indeed. Remember, the only reason Ireland is in this nightmare is because German, French and British private financial institutions recklessly loaned money to Irish private financial institutions who in turn recklessly loaned that money to Irish private property developers. That’s where the problematic debt comes from. Sure, the Irish government stood idly by while this unregulated insanity was happening. But so did the German, British and French governments. In fact, and let’s not forget this, the Irish government was almost unanimously praised by their European counterparts for their lack of interference in the cocaine-fuelled casino that the financial sector had become. George Osborne – now the British Chancellor of the Exchequer – famously insisted just a year before it all came crashing down, that “Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policy-making.”

Once it became clear that the financial sector had run up unsustainable debts all across Europe, the European Central Bank told the Irish government in no uncertain terms that they must nationalise that debt rather than allow the private institutions that had generated it to suffer the consequences of their recklessness. It was the Irish people, came the order, who must bear the burden. I’m constantly hearing free-market economists insist that they oppose this policy because that’s not how the free market should work. Truth is, they are deluded. They are yet again failing to distinguish the map from the territory. Here in the real world, the free market and the capitalist system have always worked, where possible, to externalise any and all costs. That’s what they do. When provided with an opportunity to offload debt, this oh-so-wonderful free market will do just that, and social justice be damned. These economists who insist that what’s going on in Europe “isn’t what the free market is all about” need to sober up and stop trying to live their lives in a bloody economics text book.

Let the people decide

But there is one final obstacle between the institutions of international capitalism and their complete ownership of Ireland and her people. And that’s the referendum on the European Fiscal Compact that will be held here in the near future. I will inevitably be writing quite a bit about it over the coming months. Already though, the ‘Yes’ camp have begun their campaign of shameless scaremongering. We’ve had a government minister suggesting that if Ireland fails to sign up for this treaty it will “be like a bomb going off in Dublin”. Seriously. I mean, isn’t that almost the very definition of scaremongering? A ‘No’ vote will be akin to an act of terrorism! Both government parties as well as the main opposition party are campaigning for a ‘Yes’. It’s up to Sinn Féin and the leftists to argue the case against.

And jaw-droppingly, the first opinion polls on the issue appear to suggest a comfortable, if not massive, majority for a ‘Yes’ vote. I must admit to being slightly disbelieving of those polls – they just don’t chime with my own sense of what Ireland is feeling right now. If true though, if the Irish are really willing to endorse the policies of the people who are actively engineering the destruction of the social fabric of this nation, to voluntarily relinquish the last shreds of their sovereignty and collaborate in the asset-stripping of their own home… if we Irish are truly that spineless, then perhaps we deserve all the debt that’s being immorally piled upon the shoulders of our children and grandchildren by financiers giggling at our complicity.

A ‘No’ vote will doubtlessly have some negative consequences. But right now this small nation is being run into the ground so that international banks can continue to avoid the consequences of their own insane greed. A ‘Yes’ vote is no more and no less than an endorsement of that state of affairs. And no matter how much our bought-and-paid-for politicians try to use fear to motivate us into bowing to our new free-market masters, we must use this one last opportunity to stand up and shout “No!” We’ve had enough of paying for the mistakes of others. We will not accept punishment in their stead. We will assert our right to bear our own debt and no more. And we will say ‘No’ to those who would try to scare us into doing otherwise.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. Oddly enough, there don’t appear to be any high-profile celebrations of this milestone. No fireworks, no street parties, no parades through streets lined with flag-waving children. Instead there’s an almost embarrassed silence. Certainly the Greeks are in no mood to party. Even if they were; what with sky-rocketing unemployment and an unprecedented increase in urban poverty; it’s unlikely they’d be in a position to spend much on bunting and streamers.

Here in Ireland the mood is similarly sombre. It seems like every week the news brings us a fresh story about poverty becoming more widespread, companies shedding jobs, or another public service becoming even less fit for purpose. And as bad as these stories tend to be, they are made even worse by the accompanying tales of bondholders syphoning yet more money from the pockets of those who never owed them anything. Or new government plans to inflict further suffering upon the vulnerable while trotting out insultingly transparent nonsense about why the wealthy are being coddled.

It would be entirely wrong to blame the disaster on Europe. The original goal of European integration was – as I wrote when I discussed the Maastricht Treaty over at On This Deity last year – a noble one. It was a well-conceived and entirely sensible response to half a century of conflict which had seen some of the worst atrocities in history perpetrated on European soil. After two world wars which had visited horrors upon the continent… the horrors of the trenches, the targeting of civilian populations in massive aerial bombing campaigns, and the concentration camps… after all that, Europe wanted peace. And they wanted to make sure it lasted.

Which is why, within a few short years of the end of second world war, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed a treaty that essentially marked the beginning of what was to become the European Union. It was a remarkable decision and even as the EU strains under the weight of morbidly obese financial institutions determined to bleed the continent dry while externalising their every mistake; and even as our political classes permit this obscene injustice – nay, encourage it; even now, despite all of these things, we should applaud that decision back in 1950 to set aside the enmities of the recent past and work towards a shared future.

And it’s fair to say that while mistakes were made in the decades that followed, the closer integration of the European economies was a positive development. There was a stability and a strength in the union. Resources were redistributed from wealthy areas to those suffering poverty. Human Rights were placed at the centre of the political agenda, and as internal borders began to dissolve, so did much of the distrust and suspicion that had festered in Europe for so many years. It didn’t disappear completely of course, and like so much of the gains made during those early decades, we seem determined to undo that particular achievement. Nonetheless, the original spirit of European Unity was a profoundly positive one, and we should work hard to salvage what we can of it, even as it is undermined by those who hijacked the European project for their own personal gain.

Which is the problem we face today. I’m not claiming that a united Europe was ever an explicitly socialist project, but it had at its heart a yearning for justice, for greater equality and for a kind of collective progress… a road that led away from poverty and war. That yearning is still there, but it has been sidelined by an unregulated rampant capitalism that threatens to destroy any good that emerged from half a century of work. Our political leaders – perhaps deliberately, perhaps through incompetence – have allowed a financial elite to infiltrate the corridors of European power and redirect the entire project. The European Union now works in their interests and explicitly against the interests of the majority of European citizens.

Instead of leading us away from poverty, we watch as wealth is drained from the general populace into the hands of reckless gamblers who lost their own money and then somehow convinced our representatives to give them ours. Instead of leading us away from conflict, we are forced to watch the rise of the Far Right in a number of European nations, to watch as suspicion of The Other sees a resurgence in our society, and to watch as the Irish and Greeks blame the crisis on an undemocratic French and German economic assault on their citizens, while Germans and French blame the crisis on the profligate spending of the peripheral nations. And all the while the real culprits continue to gather the spoils.

I have a quick word of advice for the German, Dutch and French populations… be very very careful how you handle this situation. Once the financial markets have bled Ireland, Greece and Portugal dry; once they have stripped our assets and plunged us even deeper into poverty; they will move on to fresh fields. There is no limit to the greed that has seen them subvert the political institutions of Europe. Out here on the periphery… we were just the softest targets; easy meat. Once they’ve picked our bones dry, they’ll move on to Spain and Italy. And then… then it’s your turn.

Which is why, in the end, there is a need for European Union now more than ever. Where once it was the horrors of the past we sought to escape; now we must unite to ward off the horrors of the future. This rampant capitalist beast cannot be tamed by Ireland. Or by Greece. Or by Portugal. Even together, the catastrophically weakened economies of the “bailed-out” nations simply can’t do anything about it. It’s not within our control. Sure, we could simply turn our backs on Europe altogether, and while I fear it may yet come to that; would it not be better to face down this destructive enemy rather than allow it to run roughshod over that original European ideal?

I’m not proposing some sort of radical pan-European anarcho-syndicalist revolution (as much as I’d like to see it happen, I’m realistic about the chances). Instead I’m simply proposing that Europe glance back 20 years to Maastricht. Even though the capitalist infiltration of our project began before that treaty, there’s a sense in which we were never more united than when we met in that Dutch town and pledged ourselves to a greater union. Hell, we even managed to drag the British tories along with us, which was no mean feat. So let’s try and recapture that sense of solidarity. Let’s realise that swallowing the lies of gangster capitalism will only impoverish us all in the longterm. And let’s unite once more to assert our togetherness in the face of an enemy that seeks to divide and conquer.

This time last year, on the anniversary of Bertrand Russell’s death, I published a piece celebrating his life and work over at On This Deity. Russell is rightly remembered for his work – in collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead – on the three volumes of Principia Mathematica (the book has since passed into the public domain and can be downloaded as a very chunky PDF file if you so wish… it’s currently available on rapidshare, or alternatively do a search for “Principia Mathematica PDF”).

However, while Principia Mathematica doubtlessly secured his place in the ranks of the Great Philosophers, it’s a highly technical and specialised book about the relationship between mathematics and formal logic. I recall flicking through it when I was a philosophy undergraduate and instantly deciding that unless I spent the majority of my three year degree immersed entirely in Principia Mathematica, I wouldn’t do it justice. And given that I was, at the time, more interested in gaining a broad overview of philosophy, rather than focussing on a single narrow aspect of the subject, I read a few bits and pieces about Principia Mathematica in Hospers (and other similar volumes) and pretty much left it at that.

However, it wasn’t long before I encountered the name Bertrand Russell once more. This time it was while I was eagerly devouring books on political philosophy… in particular left wing and anarchist political philosophy. So while to this day I’ve still not gotten around to reading Principia Mathematica, Russell’s Proposed Roads To Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism was one of the more influential books on my intellectual development. The full text of Proposed Roads… can be read over at the University of Virginia Library website and is worth your while checking out.

Sadly, as I suggested when I was talking about the work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon recently, the hopes and dreams of Russell in that near-century-old text have been comprehensively ignored by a society which has dedicated itself to the attempted gratification of individual desire through over-consumption. Russell called upon us to overcome these baser instincts and push ourselves onwards, towards a more just and free world. But as he said in Proposed Roads… (echoing the views of Proudhon, half a century earlier) the use of violence to achieve supposedly enlightened ends is almost always self-defeating. The achievement of a better world “requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest”.

Which is why, as well as being the author of one of the seminal works in logical philosophy, Russell is also remembered for being a dedicated peace campaigner. As a founder-member and the organisation’s first President, he gave the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) the intellectual legitimacy it needed to gain a critical mass. And even into his nineties he was active in the movement (as well as organising international opposition to America’s war in Vietnam). Russell firmly believed that humanity held within itself the ability to move past our aggressive selfishness. He saw clearly that violent competition in nature can be – and often is – tempered with a drive towards cooperation. And he felt that we have reached a point – thanks to technology and our global interconnectedness – where it has become imperative that this cooperative drive should now supersede our competitive instinct. Otherwise we risk destroying all we have achieved.

Russell was convinced that the overthrow of capitalism was necessary for us to achieve this evolution. But he was also convinced this could not be done with violence. At least, not if we wanted to replace it with something better. Of course, it’s difficult to see how it can be achieved non-violently, given how entrenched the power of the capitalists has become. However, as he was fond of saying… “we are obliged to give the matter some thought”.

It’s difficult to summon any enthusiasm to write about Irish politics at the moment. Over the past few months I’ve pretty much worn out all the words required to do the subject justice. There’s only so many times you can use words like “incompetent”, “craven”, “absurd” or “destructive” before they start to lose their impact. On top of that, the realisation that the fools and charlatans that comprise our political class have no intention of listening to reason, and are determined to persevere with ineffective policies, like punch-drunk bluebottles convinced they’ll somehow pass through the window if they just keep flying into the glass for long enough… well, it’s just disheartening.

Sometimes I look at a politician on the TV and my heart goes out to them with the same kind of melancholy sympathy that I feel when I see a clumsy child desperately trying to impress those around them with a plucky, if badly executed, attempt at sports. And then I remember that unlike the child in the local park, these men and women are in positions of power thanks to their ruthless ambition and willingness to deceive those around them. And they are being paid huge salaries to completely destroy this country. At that point my sympathy turns to anger and contempt. In Irish politics, as with the Hollywood film industry, people seem to fail upwards.

That “willingness to deceive” was on show again this week. Our Inglorious Leader, Enda Kenny, spent a few days at the World Economic Forum in Davos. I found myself calling to mind Stewart Lee’s stand-up routine in which he viciously skewers Top Gear and its presenters. In that splendid diatribe, he compares Richard Hammond to the obnoxious little kid we all knew from school who would hang out with the bullies, egging them on and squealing with laughter at their cruel jokes. It’s the sycophantic survival strategy of a coward. This week in Davos, Enda Kenny adopted that strategy. And just like the little coward at school, as soon as Kenny thinks he’s out of earshot of the bullying cabal he want so desperately to impress, he contradicts everything he’s said in their presence and pretends to be our best friend.

For those who have forgotten, let’s step back a couple of months to the weekend prior to our last budget. Enda Kenny appeared on our TV screens like a low budget horror film and gave his State of the Nation address. There’s an oft-quoted line from that speech…

Let me say this to you all: You are not responsible for the crisis.

He looked us straight in the eye when he told us that. It was almost as if he was being sincere. And let’s be clear; it’s the truth; the people of Ireland are not responsible for the current crisis (except in the sense that they voted for the gombeens who brought it upon us, and continue to do so… for that much they must bear responsibility). But whether Kenny believes it or not is open to interpretation. Because this week in Davos, to a rather different audience, he contradicted this position when he announced that the Irish people “went mad borrowing”. It was, he insisted, a collaboration “between people and banks” which created…

a system that spawned greed to a point where it just went out of control completely with a spectacular crash.

Once again, let’s be clear; throughout that dark period when this country was being ravaged by The Tiger, Enda Kenny and his Fine Gael cohort were the biggest cheerleaders of that greed. They weren’t on the opposition benches urging caution. They weren’t denouncing financial deregulation or tax cuts for the wealthy. Far from it! They were on their feet baying for more of the same. The tax cuts and the deregulation didn’t go far enough for Kenny and his ideologically blinded party. He wasn’t calling for The Tiger to be tamed, he was demanding we throw more meat into it’s gaping maw.

Certainly there was a culture of greed spawned in Ireland during those years, but it was spawned at the top and rampaged downwards doing more damage the further it got from those who unleashed it. And the evidence of this is that most of those at the top are not being badly affected by the crisis that is plunging the bottom tier into poverty. And the evidence that this injustice is still being supported by Kenny and his ilk can be seen in the budgetary policy that cuts disability benefit, the winter fuel allowance, child benefit and back-to-school allowances; money that helps keep poorer heads just above water; while drawing a high ring-fence around the wealth of those at the top. All the while his party fills the media with stories that blame the public service and try to make villains of the unemployed rather than those who landed them there.

When Kenny speaks to a gathering of international financiers and political leaders, he immediately falls back on blaming the Irish people for his woes. As though they are his woes in the first place. As though he’s feeling any of the financial pain he and the rest of the political class are inflicting upon the people – not just in Ireland, but elsewhere around the world. It’s the riff-raff that are the problem, he insists. If only they’d have the good grace to go away and keep quiet, then decent people like you and me – here he raises his champagne flute in acknowledgement of his well-fed dinner companions – could get on with the serious work of consuming our lobster salad.

And it goes without saying that once he’d blamed the financial crisis on the reckless greed of the Irish people, he immediately backtracked when confronted by the Irish media. “Our people have been the victims of this situation”, he told an interviewer. So are we the victims? Or are we the mad borrowers, Enda? Are we responsible for the crisis or not? It seems he needs to know what the questioner wants to hear before he can answer those questions.

Let’s get one thing straight. Many Irish people did borrow too much during the boom. In fact, as The Guardian pointed out earlier this week, 15 individuals alone owe Anglo-Irish Bank over half a billion euro each. I guess they’re Irish people all right. But it’s hardly fair to describe them as The Irish People. Certainly I don’t recall borrowing €500 million, and none of my friends or family did. And I doubt any of my neighbours did either, though I suppose they could be keeping it to themselves.

The reality is; it was a small number of politicians, bankers and property developers who created the Irish crisis. And they were eagerly encouraged by European banks and other international financial institutions who bought into the bizarre fiction that the Celtic Tiger could somehow live forever. It was they who destroyed this country and not the unemployed, the disabled or the poor families living in negative equity who are now being hammered by a government determined to make anyone at all pay, other than those who morally should do.

It’s a travesty; an absolute nightmare of a problem. And Enda Kenny’s two-faced attitude tells you all you need to know about the people who are supposed to be fixing it.

So today’s the day. Today the Irish government hands €1.25bn of public money to the unsecured, unguaranteed bondholders of a defunct financial institution. The stated reasons for this transfer of wealth make absolutely no sense. The real reasons are purely ideological. What’s happening today is the logical conclusion of allowing capitalism to remain unregulated.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that this grand larceny flies even in the face of free market philosophy. But capitalism is not synonymous with free market philosophy. Of course, I’m no fan of unrestricted free markets either, but at least under that system – if it was being correctly applied – it would be those who invested in Anglo-Irish Bank who would lose money; not the citizens of Ireland who could have expected no share of the profits had the investments panned out. What’s happened is that capitalism has co-opted the language and appearance of the free market to permit ever greater accumulations of wealth in ever fewer unscrupulous hands. Our system is more akin to the robber barons and gangster capitalists of the late 19th century than it is to some ideal of free market economics where wealth flows efficiently to those who “generate” it. The Anglo-Irish Bank bondholders did not generate the wealth they are receiving today. And as David McWilliams points out; by allowing this insanity to continue – worse, by encouraging it – the Irish government is losing credibility in the markets, not gaining it.

The finance capitalists who are now running our nation from afar have managed to hoodwink and pressure those elected to represent our interests into acting as though our interests were in fact synonymous with those doing the hoodwinking. And they’re not. In reality, they are diagrammatically opposed. And as we hand over our money, I feel certain that the investors can’t quite believe their luck. “Is it possible”, they wonder, “that the Irish people are really as thick as the old jokes implied?” Certainly that sad excuse for a leader we’ve got, Enda Kenny, seems to think so. Today, as he signed the metaphorical cheque, he insisted that Ireland must honour its debts. “We have paid our way and will pay our way”, he told the Dáil.

Here’s the thing, Enda, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t agree that Ireland should honour its debts. The problem we have – and it’s one that you don’t seem to have the wit about you to appreciate – is with honouring the debts of others. Today’s transfer of public wealth into private hands is not paying our way. It’s paying someone else’s way. Someone who not only doesn’t have Ireland’s interests at heart, but whose actions are impoverishing the citizens of this nation; whose greed is laying waste to our society. And although you may equate those reckless fools with “Ireland”, the rest of us really don’t. Your place in history, Enda, will be an ignominious one. Our last government sold us out, and you eagerly embraced their madness.

And that’s not all

There’s yet one further twist in this sorry tale. A twist that would appear to make our government look even more irresponsible. A twist that gives the impression Enda Kenny and his absurd collection of incompetents are actively maximising the amount being paid by the Irish people, even as they claim to be minimising it. Less than three months ago, we handed over €715m to Anglo-Irish Bank investors (you have to understand, the €1.25bn in private debt that we’re paying today is just the latest in a long line of payments that will continue for the next seven years at least and will leave this country crippled with sovereign debt). As we made that payment, Shane Ross (independent TD) made the point that the current bondholders were not the original investors in Anglo-Irish Bank. That in fact the current bondholders bought those bonds on the secondary market during a period in 2011 when the market in Anglo-Irish Bank bonds fell by 40%. They ended up paying a little less than 60% of the face value, and today will reap the rewards when Enda Kenny honours the full amount. As Ross said, quite correctly, the current bondholders “decided the Government was going to sting the taxpayer, rather than sting them, and so they bought”.

Which raises the obvious question… if Kenny, as he claims, was always determined to cover the full amount of these bonds, why in the name of everything that’s sacred did he not instruct the treasury to buy the bonds when the price dropped by 40%? I mean, I don’t think the Irish people should be paying even 1% of the private debt run up by greedy fools, but if our Inglorious Leader is determined to pay those debts, why insist on paying 100% when there was an opportunity to pay 60%. Is it me, or is that just wilful idiocy?

It is being reported in the Irish media that the government is planning yet further savage attacks on the poor and vulnerable. Joan Burton, deputy leader of the Irish Labour Party and Minister for Twisting The Knife, is considering a plan to issue the unemployed with an ultimatum… get a job, or lose your benefits. If there’s one very tiny good thing about this, it’s the fact that the Labour Party are finally abandoning their embarrassing pretence of being concerned with social justice and representing the vulnerable. That they are openly embracing their role as cheerleaders for crony capitalism isn’t particularly helpful, but at least it’s honest.

There is something truly obscene about these assaults by the rich and powerful on the poor and powerless. Indeed, it’s increasingly difficult to see government policy as something other than deliberate cruelty. There’s a quasi-sadism to the decisions to hit the poorest hardest and the richest hardly at all. As Joan Burton is chauffeured around Dublin in her ministerial car, is she insulated from the poverty she chooses to inflict upon hundreds of thousands of less fortunate people? Or does she take a certain satisfaction in it? Well, perhaps that’s going a bit far. After all, I suppose that €170k salary buys a lot of insulation. Enough in fact, that she may be completely oblivious to the oblivion into which she is consigning so many of her fellow citizens.

People in the I.T. sector will be told to find a job within 3 months or risk losing state benefits. Everyone else on the dole will have 6 months. At least, that’s the speculation in the press. But given that the story is likely to have arisen from a judicious leak from Burton’s department with the aim of gauging public reaction, there’s every chance it’s pretty accurate.

And it’s important to put this story into context. There are currently 443,200 Irish citizens in receipt of unemployment benefit. In March 2007, just before the economy began to collapse, there were 156,000 people out of work. That’s close to a trebling in less than half a decade. What’s more, although the rate of job losses has slowed and the number fell slightly in December (by 3,300), the trend is still upwards with more people being laid off than are finding work. This is no surprise really, given that the most recent available figures (for the third quarter of last year) show a drop in the number of jobs being advertised.

And those numbers are made look better than they actually are by a net emigration of 34,100 people last year. Though of course, our Finance Minister cynically – and some might say, contemptuously – suggests that Irish emigration is “free choice of lifestyle” and has little to do with the economic collapse and resultant unemployment… which is weird given the massive net immigration that Ireland experienced during the boom years. Anyone would think he’s just making up offensive nonsense rather than facing reality and accepting responsibility for the failed policies of his government.

In fact, it seems to me that if anyone should have a deadline set, it should be the people who promised to solve the mess and are paid massive salaries to do so. How about we give Joan Burton and Michael Noonan 3 months to create 100,000 jobs or risk losing their ministerial pensions? I mean, if putting people under extreme stress by threatening them with poverty is likely to make them more effective at finding a job, then I’m sure it’ll be just as effective at doing a job properly. Or does it only work with the already poor?

And even though it’s a bit of a tangent, can I also remind you, dear reader, that it was Joan Burton who recently decided to hire a spin doctor on a €128k salary (a former Labour Party adviser and friend of the minister). This is despite the government announcing – soon after they took office in a fanfare of “we’re here to clean up politics” – a salary cap of €93k for private advisers. Burton defended her decision to breach the salary cap by €35k (a figure that by itself is more than the average national wage) by insisting that her new spin doctor had been earning more than that in the private sector. Also, he possesses “exceptional skills”, apparently. In a climate where teachers, doctors and nurses are being cut from front-line services one is forced to wonder how Joan Burton has the cheek to place her public relations brief above the educational needs and physical welfare of Irish citizens.

But hey, maybe that’s the plan for the unemployed masses she’s threatening with extreme poverty… if you don’t find a job within your allotted time, I’ll pay you €128k to say nice things about me to the press.

So, to summarise, Ireland is a nation that is currently shedding more jobs than it is creating. It is a nation in which the number of available jobs is actually shrinking, not expanding. On top of that, every independent analyst of note is predicting 2012 will be a year of significant global recession. And yet, Joan Burton and the Irish Labour Party are considering driving anyone who fails to find a job within an arbitrary time scale into severe poverty. Or overseas. Indeed, it’s already been suggested that this is essentially a strategy being employed by the Labour Party to try and push the poor out of the country.

Quite who they think is going to vote for them once they have deliberately driven out or impoverished their traditional voters is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they’ve bet the Irish Green Party that they can produce an even more spectacular electoral meltdown than they managed. Who knows?

Of course, the timing of this announcement is interesting… just after our IMF / ECB / EC puppet-masters have left the country. I suspect Bruton is actually acting on instruction from her bosses in the troika. And let’s be realistic, it’s too much to expect a Labour minister to put her people or her principles before her pay-packet.

As the year moves on, another anniversary comes around. This time we pause to remember the death of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Last year at this time I published a piece about Proudhon over at Dorian Cope’s wonderful site, On This Deity, and reading it back today I’m reminded of the sense of regret I felt as I wrote it.

Because like so many of the great thinkers of yesteryear, the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon seem more relevant now than perhaps they ever were. I hesitate to suggest that his ideas are “timeless”, for doing so would hint at a fatalism to which I do not wish to give voice. Instead I’d prefer to imagine a future where Proudhon’s revolutionary philosophy is no longer required; a future in which the tyranny he sought to overthrow can no longer flourish.

The ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon could only have been born in a time of oppression. And it is for that reason they feel so relevant today. It was Proudhon, the French revolutionary philosopher, who coined the word “anarchism” in the modern sense. And it was he who first self-applied that label insisting that political tyranny and economic tyranny went hand-in-hand… that one could not be overthrown without also confronting the other.

Proudhon’s most memorable line, “Property is theft”, cuts right to the heart of his philosophy. His greatest ideas were of a radical reconfiguration of the banking system as part of a peaceful overthrow of capitalism; ideas which surely came of age a long time ago. Yet still we struggle under the terrible weight of an inherently unjust system, seemingly willing to remain beholden to banks and other financial institutions whose interests do not coincide with our own. In a supposedly democratic society we allow unaccountable corporations trample us down, all the while assuming that it has to be this way. We seem unaware that we can cast off the yoke and try something new, if only we make that choice. Or if not something new, then perhaps something a century and a half old…

Manning the barricades and being involved in the fighting, Proudhon soon developed deep misgivings about the use of force to achieve political ends. “Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me,” he would write in 1849, “is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.” And he applied that maxim to revolutionary organisations just as he did to the forces of the establishment. He sincerely believed that economic revolution without bloodshed was possible through the self-organisation of workers into local co-operatives along with the establishment of a revolutionary not-for-profit banking system which would provide interest-free credit and levy only such charges as were required to cover administration costs. He believed that capitalism would wither and die without the need for violence should such a banking system, in tandem with a widespread co-operative movement, become established.

The death of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 19th January 1865 | On This Deity

As we fall further towards indentured servitude and watch – with mild frustration but little active resistance – our rights being increasingly sidelined, should we not consider the ideas of Proudhon? Or at the very least, consider some alternative to the madness being perpetrated in the modern corridors of political and economic power?