NO MORE APOLOGIES
Sep 8th, 2009 by Conor McCabe
Last Friday on the Late Late Show, Ryan Tubridy tried to get the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, to apologise to the Irish people for the state of the economy. It was an all-too-familiar routine - one that frames the roots of the present crisis in terms of moral failure, and the beginnings of a solution in terms of atonement. The government has done wrong, and needs to admit it, and only then can we begin the process of reconciliation and reconstruction. Cowen says sorry, takes the sympathy card handed by Tubridy that there was a lot of drink taken, and, having admitted his failings, he can now get back to addressing the problem. Ireland has crawled through its five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness, and with a bit of moral courage and fortitude, it can come out the other end bruised but unbowed.
Thing is, the problems facing us today aren’t moral ones. This isn’t about the State at a 12-step meeting, standing up in a semi-circle of plastic chairs and Styrofoam cups and saying “My name is Ireland and I’m a failed economy.” This isn’t about atonement. This is about how the system works. The problems facing Irish society today are not due to some kind of collective moral failure - they have to do with the contradictions inherent to the type of capitalist economy which operates within Ireland, and the class interests which developed out of that economy.
There is a class war going on in Ireland today, but only one side seems to know it. NAMA stands as the most naked act of class aggression this country has seen in decades. This is about a tiny, yet powerful, band of bankers, speculators, and builders, dumping their problems onto the shoulders of the middle and working classes. The only way to stop it is to oppose it through organised strength. NAMA is the first piece of legislation I have come across in my lifetime that warrants a national stoppage, particularly as the Greens will vote for NAMA, whoever modified it may finally be when it faces the Dáil.
This government is hell-bent in getting NAMA through before it collapses. The fact that it (the government) has lost all support means nothing unless those who oppose the government do something about it. Whether the trade unions and political parties are willing to consider a national stoppage is another thing, but appeals to morality or modifications won’t make a bit of difference. It takes a lot more than shouting “stop!” to prevent someone from robbing you blind.
“This isn’t about the State at a 12-step meeting, standing up in a semi-circle of plastic chairs and Styrofoam cups…” I read this, laughed and thought of Jinx Lennon.
This is a great post. We have a group of people governing us who believe that only they hold the answer to “getting us back” to ’stability’. Listening to that Cork developer on the radio this morning exhorting that NAMA won’t work without developers made me think that this whole sorry mess will collapse in the next week or so. Everyone wants in, no one wants to ask why.
Opponents of Lisbon - of which I am not one - have been supporting the notion that the issue is so important it doesn’t matter is COIR/ YD and other right wing loopers are on your side: well I feel the same about NAMA - it needs to be stopped, it’s the one of the biggest, and potentially one of the worst decisions in the history of the state, and it’s been made a government with almost no support except from the very people who stand to make from this outrageous scam.
You’re damn right about resisting the moralisation of this story: it’s not about repentance or atonement, and the very people telling this story are the ones who wish to get away with hijack of the nation, against the interests of nearly all of us.
The morals trap works this way as well: most of us are honest, reasonably hard working, we tend to trust rather than not: and thus we find it hard to believe that those that rule us, and presume to lecture us about our duty in the matter of sharing the pain, are really an even worse shower of self-interested bastards than they look in the worst possible light. As always, Proudhon’s dictum about ‘he who invokes humanity (or ’sharing’ or ‘the national interest’) intends to cheat’ must be cleaved to. They’re out to get us.
I was saying to a friend the other day that NAMA is something that both the trade unions and the small business association could work together in opposing - as it will lacerate the membership of both organisations. NAMA will not help any business based on production and selling. It will benefit bankers and speculators, who don’t make anything.
Spot on Conor.
Definitely. Sums it up completely. And the Fast Show clip too.
Something is going on in the bowels of the land when you hear George Hook telling his audience to ‘Google 1968′.