The Labour Party: A Party Of Lies And Broken Promises

A recent Facebook rant  made from the profile of Labour Youth (Dublin South-West) on a ULA event page caused a bit of embarrassment to the national leadership of that organisation, who moved quickly to have the comments removed and went on to issue an apology on their national Facebook page. A young man named Sean Glennon also went onto the national Facebook page to say it was he who had posted the comments, and that he was not a member of Labour youth and did not agree with their values and policies.

However, since then it has emerged that the young man who posted the comments was in fact a prominent Labour Youth member, and was an administrator on their Facebook page. While the comments could be passed off as juvenile naivety, I believe that the whole debacle provides a deeper and more disturbing insight into the policies of the current Labour Party in Ireland.

Debunking The Myths Of Irish Capitalism

There is no alternative. We must rely on foreign direct investments and on the private sector to create jobs. Private is more 'efficient' than public. An entrepreneurial spirit will drive economic growth. These are just some of the mantras that we are exposed to on a daily basis from economic commentators, whom our mainstream media promote as 'experts'. They have a monopoly over our airwaves and newspapers, and use it to espouse their ideas as if they were common sense facts that are irrefutable. However, with a serious analysis of Irish capitalism it is quite evident that their mantras are neither common sense nor facts, and are very refutable indeed. A look through the figures on the Irish economy reveal a very different picture to the one painted by our government and the economic 'experts,' who argue that an economic recovery based on real job growth is to be achieved through attracting foreign direct investments (FDI's) into the country, and a strong Irish entrepreneurial spirit.

This Is What Class War Looks Like

If you look up the definition of 'war' in the Oxford English Dictionary you will learn that it is "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." The famous military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz notoriously described war as "the continuation of politics by other means." I have no doubt that at the forefront of Clausewitz’s mind was the form of war defined above by Oxford when he pronounced his aphorism, however I believe that his view of war can be just as perfectly applied to a form that does not include armed conflict, but instead relies on acts of economic aggression to achieve its aims. The war that I am speaking of is of course class war, and it is occurring all around us.

The Capitalist Way: Work Longer For Less

When I’m old and grey at 68, and my weary body can’t take any more of the working life, I will look back and curse the current Fine Gael / Labour government for having the shameless audacity to put me to work for three extra years before retirement.  The Social Welfare and Pensions Bill, 2011, was passed through the Dail on June 8^th by a massive 107  to 25 votes, in an instant doing away with years of hard fought struggle by the labour movement.  This bill will have huge repercussions for all workers, yet it hardly raised a whimper in the mainstream media.

The Irish Dream. Time To Wake Up!

I was pondering recently just why it is that us on the left seem to be consistently correct in our economic and social analysis, yet many in the mainstream consider us to be uninformed loonies or economically illiterate. It was then I remembered a video I had seen of the late and great George Carlin entitled “The American Dream” "Video Clip" and I realised that Irish Society is living in a collective dreamworld, and needs to wake up fast.

A Critique of the IMF

Recent years have seen growing criticism of the International Monetary Fund. What are these criticisms and are they justified?

“It is important to note that IMF programmes are not designed to increase the welfare of the population. They are designed to bring the external payments account into balance.... The IMF is the ultimate guardian of the interests of capitalists and bankers doing international business” (Kari Polanyi Levitt, cited in Torrie, J. 1983, Introduction).

Ireland's Future. Lessons From History

Since early 2007, the world capitalist free-market economic system has been experiencing a systemic crisis.  A report circulated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2008 stated the crisis was caused by “global macro policies affecting liquidity and by a very poor regulatory framework that, far from acting as a second line of defence, actually contributed to the crisis” (Blundell-Wignall et al, 2008, p. 2).  As a small and open free-market based economy, Ireland was caught in the contagion from the unfolding crisis of world capitalism.  However, far from being an innocent victim of conditions in the world economy, the Irish state’s economic problems were the result of both international and domestic factors. 

The Seductive Folly of Power

So as the dust settles on the 2011 Irish general election and the formation of a new government of Fine Gael and Labour has been decided, both camps are claiming victory in the content of the programme for government.  A quick read over the document reveals that it has the print of a neo-liberal agenda all over it, yet the Labour Party seem intent on claiming it as a victory for their negotiators. However the reality is that Labour will be propping up a neo-liberal government just to get a sniff of power. So what does all this mean for the ordinary punter?