There has been a certain feeling over
the past three or four years that we are living through history, the
sort of history, that is, which people pick over many years into the
future when they try to explain the factors that led to a war or a
revolution for example.
There has been a certain feeling over
the past three or four years that we are living through history, the
sort of history, that is, which people pick over many years into the
future when they try to explain the factors that led to a war or a
revolution for example.
It would be hard to look at the end of the Celtic Tiger, the mass
mobilisations of the working class during 2009, the collapse of Fianna
Fáil, the bailout and the mass unemployment and the emigration without
considering these to be years of massive change and storm and stress in
Irish Society.
The period between 1912 and 1916 in Ireland was also a period of
enormous change culminating in the Rising, which laid the basis itself
for the War of Independence and the Civil war. As Marxists we look at
the big picture first, the crisis of overproduction in the USA, the
collapse of the sub- prime market, the banking crisis, the global
economic crisis, the sovereign debt crisis, the Arab Revolution, the
crisis in Greece and the swing to the left in the recent Greek and
French elections.
But whether you look on the highest global level, or at the way the
crisis impacts on individual workers, young people and their families,
you would have to acknowledge that it is the working class in all
countries, as well as the old, the sick and the very young who have
suffered the most as a consequence of the crisis within the capitalist
system. We didn’t create the crisis, but working people have been
presented time and time again with the bill. We’ve had emergency
budgets, four year budget plans, levies and reform, restructure and
redeployments.
The recent report from Social Justice Ireland reveals the extent of
the impact on the most vulnerable layers of the population in the state.
Basing themselves on official CSO figures the report shows that the
poorest section of the population suffered a drop of almost 20% in their
disposable income during 2010 while the top 10% gained 4%. This is the
figure after taxes and Social Welfare payments are taken into
consideration. The Irish Examiner reports:
"Social Justice Ireland has blamed government policy for continuing
to increase the income of the richest 10% of households and widening the
gap between the wealthy and the rest of society."It says the top 10% of the population receive almost 14 times more
disposable income than the poorest 10% — it was eight times more in
1980."Social Justice Ireland director Sean Healy said the current strategy by the Government was making the situation worse.
" ‘There is something profoundly wrong with government decisions that
produce this lop-sided distribution of income favouring the richest
when Ireland’s poor and middle income people struggle to make ends meet
in these extremely difficult times’.”
Under these conditions it is no surprise first of all that the
previous government fell so far in the February 2011 General Election.
But we would have to ask the question: Under these conditions how can
the Labour leaders justify a policy of further austerity and a meek
submission to the programme of Fine Gael and the Troika?
Connolly and Marx explained that the government in a capitalist
society acts merely as the executive of the whole of the ruling class.
These statistics illustrate just how valid that argument is today. The
austerity is building up tremendous resentment among the working class.
The attacks on the Croke Park Deal and the volatility on a European
level are preparing the way for further attacks on the Irish working
class. These statistics are a warning of what has already happened and
what is to come in the future. More than ever before we need a socialist
alternative!
