CLASS AND IRELAND (p.3):RECORDS OF A FLOATING LIFE
Sep 30th, 2008 by Conor McCabe
Night is gone, a dawn
comes up in birds and sounds of the city.
There will be light
to live by, things
to see: my eyes will lift
to where the sun in vermilion sits,
and I will love thee and have pity. (Michael Hartnett)
I’m sitting on the small fenced stone wall that surrounds the central bank on Dame Street, drinking coffee from an oversized flask, waiting for my friend Colm to arrive. He works across the street and we’re meeting up for lunch on the occasion of my birthday. I’ve come from the library, where I’m going through the regional newspapers from 1920, looking for coverage of the local urban elections that were held in January of that year. The Labour Party executive started planning for the election in October 1919 with a two-day conference in Dublin, out of which came an election manifesto and a set of rules and criteria for all candidates. It went on to win 324 seats (22% of the total), with a presence on most of the urban councils on the island, and a commitment to improvements in housing, health, sanitation, water, and employment. The elections and the results have been all but forgotten by Irish historians. Indeed, the most recent history of the Irish Labour Party fails to mention it altogether. The election, it seems, is an irrelevance, a blip, of interest only to those who sit in the midday sun on Dame Street, drinking cups of instant coffee from oversized flasks, waiting for their friends to arrive. And, well who am I to argue?
Colm shows up. I put away my flask, and we go and get something to eat on Fownes Street. I talk about the 1920 elections and how they have been forgotten. I tell Colm that I feel like the guy Woody Allen jokes about in Annie Hall - the one who has recently turned forty, “with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism.” I’ve just turned thirty-nine and although I don’t have a shopping bag, and I’m not drooling just yet, I’ve got the socialism screaming down pat.
We finish up lunch and as we’re leaving Colm hands me over my birthday present. It’s two Billy Bragg LPs that he had picked up in Oxfam - Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, and Talking to the Taxman about Poetry. “Do you like Billy Bragg?” he asks. I nod and say “yeah!”, and give him a bear hug before I let him go back to work. For myself, I walk back to the library and clock in a couple more hours in the 1920s before packing up my stuff around five. I get to Dawson Street and start waiting on the 140 to Finglas, but it’s not long before I give up and decide to walk. It’s my birthday, and I feel like a ramble. Thanks to Colm I now have my shopping bag to go with my head-full of screaming socialism. The saliva, I reckon, can wait till next year.
The research on the 1920 elections is interesting enough, but the thing that has wrapped itself around me these days is class and class analysis. It seems strange to be concerned at this time with such an abstract idea as the historical interplay of class relations in the Irish Free State from its formation in the 1920s up to the 1990s. I mean, the almost hourly reports of European bank failures, American Senate rejections, and hastily-scraped-together nationalizations are enough to give even a hippo the shits, but there’s little to be done in the short term except see how it all plays out. In the meantime I’ll just keep on wandering.
And reading, of course. A couple of weeks ago I came across the work of the Australian anthropologist Dr. Chris Eipper of La Trope University, Australia. During the winter of 1974-5 Chris lived in Bantry Bay, Cork. The town - and the local oil terminal - piqued his curiosity enough for him to return in late 1975 in order to undertake participant-observation fieldwork. He stayed for a year and a half, living in the community, undertaking interviews - in general, immersing himself in the environment. The interviews and observations formed the basis of his 1980 doctoral thesis, which was later adapted to book form in 1986 with the publication of The Ruling Trinity: A Community Study of Church, State and Business in Ireland. This is what Hilary Tovey and Perry Share have to say about Eipper’s analysis in A Sociology of Ireland (2nd ed. 2003):-
Eipper has perhaps been the most successful at constructing a theoretical perspective on class in Ireland that integrates the three key dimensions of class analysis: interests, cultural meanings, and political action… [He] argues that class analysis has to combine the analysis of two forms of class relationships:
1. People who act as the ’social agents’ or representatives of economic class locations, for example, as the representatives of the interests or owners of capital.
2. They are acting subjects, real people living a distinctive way of life within a given social habitat.
Both ways of acting involve struggles for power and control, particularly for control of people’s class consciousness ‘which is the acme of class struggle, of class formation… As Eipper argues, class is not a static category, but an historical one [My emphasis]. It is linked to social change: classes change society and social change alters classes and their relations. As Eipper points out: ‘It is not the evolution of classes as such, which explains change, but the evolution of the processes forming classes; it is the processes which create classes more than the classes themselves which are important.’
Eipper has a lot to say about power blocs within Irish society - both national and international power blocs - and his study in general is a fascinating one. He came up with a conceptual framework of class and watched as it interacted with the facts on the ground. The Ruling Trinity looks at class in motion, i.e. it takes a Marxist view of class relations and applies it to the South. What makes the book especially important is that it’s not part of the Irish Nationalist Marxist tradition. Eipper can look at the facts, and not have to worry about fitting Connolly in. And this may seem like a small thing, but the Irish Nationalist Marxist tradition is as dogmatic as a dogma that’s gone to dogma school and has gotten a PhD in dogma. Theoretical discussion is ruthlessly rigid.
having said that, there’s some decent Marxist analysis in the work of Eamonn Smullen, of course, (including that of the oil industry in Ireland) and in parts of the work of Ray Crotty, but really, Chris Eipper’s book is the first one I’ve come across so far that really pulls it all together - class, economy, culture, and society.
Eipper opens up The Ruling Trinity by saying that
No attempt is made to present a complete account of ‘community’; all that is offered is an analysis of important features of class relations in the Bantry area - though they are features common to local communities everywhere in Ireland. Unlike most community studies which take a stratificationist stance (be it Warnerian, Parsonian, or Weberian, in orientation), this one is in the tradition of class analysis. Accordingly, it has a more pronounced historical emphasis than is usual for a community study. Again, few community studies have considered the importance of the localized interventions of transnational corporations, which is a feature of this book. (p.1)
Eipper is an anthropologist and sociologist. His focus is an analysis of a contemporary community and a contemporary society. His approach, however, is ‘in the tradition of class analysis’, and that requires an historical approach. It’s a fundamental point. Again, to go back to discussions on class in Ireland today, the focus is overwhelmingly on class as social stratification, and not on class as a social relation.
This is not an either/or situation - either we use social status or we use class analysis - rather, what I take from this is that in order to analysis class relations you need to take an historical approach. The time framework of an historical study is needed in order to observe class relations in motion. To go back to Chris Eipper: -
Class is not this or that interest, but the friction of interests’ which characterizes the structure of society and its institutions. Conceived in this way, class is not a static strategy. Rather, as a delineation of modes of social relationship, it possesses ‘a fluency which evades analysis’ if not approached from an historical perspective. (p.11)
This idea, that class contains “a ‘fluency which evades analysis’ if not approached from an historical perspective” is one that Eipper takes from E.P. Thompson and his book, The Making of the English Working Class. The paragraph in which Thompson defines class is worth repeating in full:-
Sociologists who have stopped the time-machine and, with a good deal of conceptual huffing and puffing, have gone down to the engine room to look, tell us that nowhere at all have they been able to locate and classify a class. They can only find a multitude of people with different occupations, incomes, status-hierarchies, and the rest. Of course they are right, since class is not this or that part of the machine, but the way the machine works once it is set in motion - not this and that interest, but the friction of interests - the movement itself, the heat, the thundering noise. Class is a social and cultural formation (often finding institutional expression) which cannot be defined abstractly, or in isolation, but only in terms of relationship with other classes; and, ultimately, the definition can only be made in the medium of time - that is, action and reaction, change and conflict.When we speak of a class we are thinking of a very loosely defined body of people who share the same congeries of interests, social experiences, traditions and value-system, who have a disposition to behave as a class, to define themselves in their actions and in their consciousness in relation to other groups of people in class ways. But class itself is not a thing, it is a happening.” (p.939)
In these posts I’m trying to make sense of my own exploration of the subject. And for me it’s the seemingly inane differences that are the most fundamental. Class analysis and theories of social stratification, although by not means mutually exclusive, are not one and the same thing. And as an historian, the conceptual framework of class is better suited to what I want to look at than, say, models of social stratification, which tend to be more synchronic. Class analysis, in contrast, demands a diachronic approach.
As to what would such a piece of work look like, well, there are more than a few glimpses of it in Eamonn Smullen and Ray Crotty, while the most exciting example I’ve come across so far is that by Chris Eipper in Ruling Trinity. What started out six months ago as a daunting, almost overwhelming, task, is beginning to seem that much more possible - shopping bags and screaming socialism notwithstanding.
Happy Birthday Conor ( a day late ) - I assume the present tense in the autobiographical part of the post refers to yesterday (barring WiFi & you having become a speedwalker).
Your birthday would probably explain the record fall of the Dublin Stock Exchange that I heard about on French radio this morning (the inex down 13% they said).
Funny Billy Bragg should come up - sang a version of ‘New Ireland’ (sic) on a trip up to Brittany this WE and the Scouse bloke who also sang a few in the pub (and whose guitar it was) said at the end ‘there aren’t many of us left’ ( Bragg fans ? / salivating 40 yr olds with carrier bags ? ).
I’ve seen you mentioning that Bantry study before - but I would’ve thought that a study of the only community in Ireland with a big fuck-off refinery implanted in it was fairly UNrepresentative of conditions in general.. Especially in the 70s when there was very little industry on that scale implanted anywhere else in the country.. Wasn’t the refinery also fairly heavily staffed with ex-pats ? (as I remember from the casualties in the disaster there)…
Well, if you get a methodology out of it, as you say, you’ll spare yourself a good bit of drool and a few Tesco bags…
That would apply if Eipper studied simply social status within the community, but he studied class relations, and how they panned out over time. It’s a different thing. The first is the more common view of class - i.e. social status - the other is a study of the power relations within the community. In other words, Eipper didn’t set out to study the economic implications of the oil refinery and the various social status classes that emerged out of it - rather, he looked at the way the oil refinery was set up, the power blocs within the society, and the way that panned out. This isn’t about wage cheques, it’s about the way a society functions, the power blocs within it, the way decisions get made, and the classes those decisions benefit. To use a contemporary example, the pay checks of the CEOs of investment banks are untypical of the banking world, but that’s not what you look at in a class analysis, you look at the process, the power blocs, the the way the system works, rather than just the (multi-billion pay cheque) exhaust fumes.
The setting-up of the oil terminal was not a spontaneous act. It involved all levels of Irish society, and to watch that “in motion”, that process, that’s what Eipper means by Class analysis, instead of just an analysis of social status within a community. There is no break-off point between class relations at a macro and micro level. Class is not an outside force - it is a player in the social relations. (It’s something that Eamonn Smullen did as well in his work on the oil industry in Ireland - one where (sir) Tony O’Reilly looms large.)
This is what I meant when I said that the clearest thing I’ve learned is the difference between class analysis as social status, and class analysis as a class relation. They overlap, but they are not the same. I think what you are talking about when you say that Bantry Bay was unrepresentative of Ireland that you’re talking about the type of workers involved in the refinery. What Eipper is talking about is the process that led to the Oil refinery set up in the first place, the manner in which it was set up, the way the power blocs within Irish society interacted with the community, and with each other, and the way the benefits, or otherwise, of the refinery, panned out. The type of workers involved and the type of wages they were on is more linked to a social status analysis - the political, cultural, and economic forces that were involved in the process of setting up the refinery, well, what’s a class analysis.
Eipper offers a lot more than just a methodology, but in terms of what I’m trying to do, what’s what I draw from it. In terms of Irish sociological studies, his work is seen as seminal - which is what Mary Corcoran, senior sociology lecurer in NUI Maynooth called it in a recent book. This is what Tovey and Share have to say with regard to Eipper, and what he did:
“The work of Eipper… reminds us that class analysis is not only about uncovering the extent and distribution of inequality or poverty (or even wealth) in society, but is also an attempt to understand social dynamics, and the emergence and trajectories of distinctive cultural worlds of being. It is linked inevitably to social change: classes change society and social change alters classes and their relations. As Eipper points out: “It is not the evolution of classes as such, which explains change, but the evolution of the processes forming classes; it is the processes which create classes more than the classes themselves which are important” … Irish sociology has gone a long way in addressing and explaining the sources of inequality in Irish society, but the analysis of social process as class dynamics is still in its infancy.”
What Eipper does is to provide a skeletal framework of power relations and class dynamics within Irish society; then, to analyze how those class dynamics pan out in one community; and he does this by seeing the interplay between both over time, as this is the only way to really get to see class dynamics at work. He does not go into the community, look at the jobs people have, and then draw up a social status structure as in the National Readership Survey and CSO models.
As an historian looking for a national-level analysis , I’m drawn to the skeletal framework of his work, rather than the cultural, social, and economic interplay at ground level. Eipper doesn’t separate them in his work: I have, because I’m taking what I need from it.
It’s a long comment, but I just want to try to make clear that what Eipper is doing is not what must come across in my post (judging from your comment) as what he is doing - i.e. jobs, occupation, social status in an oil terminal industry and then applied across Ireland - he is looking at class in motion, class as a relationship, not as a category. I find that quite exciting as it is certainly new with regard to mainstream Irish historiography, and going by Tovey and Share’s comment, even though the book is 20 years old, it still remains somewhat new in Irish sociological studies as well.
oh. and cheers for the birthday greetings! (I wasn’t fishing for them, honest)
Great post Conor, and a very elaborate way of being reminding us that its your birthday;-) The sort of power relations, the social relations of class that you mention are being laid bare at the moment I think. Where all the rhetoric of how our society is supposed to work is proving to be empty. The risk takers are not risk takers after all, they’re just reckless. A government that talks about cutting back on already strapped public services can find the funds to support the wealthy because, like Charlie Haughey and the AIB, as Ciarán O’Kelly mentioned in ILR last week, they’ve too much to lose if they default. It’s better to prop up an over-inflated industry that has acted irresponsibly and according to their self-interest, than to allow the whole economy to be destroyed.
Belated birthday wishes, by the way.
Oh it’s absolutely true. What’s going on at the moment, usually it would be hidden or crouched in some free-market babble, but the nature of the crisis means that it has to reveal its nature. And my God, what a nasty piece of work capitalism really is.
According to the CSO, Ireland Inc. is in debt to the tune of €1.61 trillion. The government’s just gone in as guarantor on the majority of that. By the way, as the CSO states, we shouldn’t worry about the extent of the debt as “much of this external debt is offset by holdings of foreign financial assets by Irish residents.”
So there you are.
“much of this external debt is offset by holdings of foreign financial assets by Irish residents.”
They don’t get it do they?
In fairness to the CSO, it’s a standard form they use to issue the figures, and that line has been on it for years. I should have made that clear. Bit of a cheap shot on my part, but hey!
Superb post Conor. Fantastic. I’ll definitely be looking up Eipper. Smullen was an innovative thinker, and a big loss. Still, shoots of recovery are emerging as this post proves. Can’t wait to see the fuller versions of this stuff.
Cheers Garibaldy. I came late to Smullen’s work - to such an extent that only a couple of weeks ago I was thinking of trying to arrange a meeting with him to ask him more about his work, only to discover that he has passed on. As I said, I’m not taking everything he said on board, but as far as his work and analysis goes, it’s impressive, and in terms of the Irish Marxist canon - if such a thing exists - it’s head and shoulders above almost everything else. Smullen didn’t just appropriate a theory and then throw in the requisite quotes from Connolly: he did the donkey work that nobody wants to do, but which needs to be done in order to get to what is really going on.
And I’d almost say the same about Crotty, although parts of his work border on loopy! Having said that, I’ve found his analysis of the Irish cattle industry invaluable.
Like you say Conor, it’s all about the donkey work (which I don’t do myself of course!). I do think genuinely that the stuff that came out of the old Research Section was important in terms of articulating a detailed alternative to the policies then being followed. No party is doing this today - the smaller ones at this point can produce fairly detailed stuff in areas of interest to particular members, but there is no overarching analysis. I remember talking on Slugger about the Provo clár for their last ard fheis and commenting just how pathetic the economic motions were for a party of government in the north, and an aspiring party of government in the south.
I think it’s partly because of the collapse of the harder social sciences reducing the numbers of people doing this stuff to start with, but also the shift in political and cultural debate to more vague and abstract concepts of fairness etc. Liam Kennedy might be a case in point. Quite a lot of his stuff has moved from hard-nosed economics to analysis of culture. A few more people in smoky backrooms of trade unions working on this type of stuff would do the left not only in Ireland but elsewhere a power of good.
Oh, and agree with you on Crotty entirely.
As part of this research project I had a look through Sinn Féin’s pamphlets, policy documents, etc, and it was actually a bit shocking the serious lack of material on economics.
Then you look at what the workers’ party was producing in the 1970s, and Sinn Féin seemed to have taken a hard-boiled reaction to it all. Gerry Adams bombed (*ahem*) in the election debates last year, precisely because he hadn’t a clue about the economy.
One union which is producing stuff in smoky back-rooms is UNITE, which we get to read via Michael Taft. If only more unions were doing the same.
I wonder if the PSF lack of economics was a response to The WP, or just disinterest in almost anything save the national question. Plus we forget that for most of the Troubles, it was very much a junior partner, and a much smaller organisation. We can hope that the current crisis will provoke the unions to do more, but I won’t hold my breath.
I reckon there’s a lot in that. Just watching the oireachtas debate and Sinn Fein have just sat down, and what they said was fine, but it was quite general. Not quite “won’t somebody please think of the children!”, but not far from it. Definitely, Sinn Féin’s weak spot these days.
It’s surprising, especially when you remember that they now have access to virtually unlimited funds, and the expertise of the NI Civil Service, and can lift stuff from its work for their policy documents. I think one of the main differences is the lack of a strong vision for a radically different society. I think I’ve heard Ruane say “won’t somebody please think of the children”
hehe.
OK Conor - ta for the clarifications on Eipper’s study - did you hit 40 sometime during the typing of that comment - as I’ve only sent off the 39 card ??
