The Lingering Celtic Communism

Communal Life

Everywhere you look now your life is shaped by the forces of capital. Big business owners mostly control all the means of production you can see, factories, quarries, machines, etc. The vast majority of people spend up to 40 hours of their week selling their labour to the owners of these means of production in exchange for money. Every couple of days you'll make a trip to a shop or market that is stacked with commodities made not for personal consumption by the maker but for retail to give your money back to these business owners.

While the current flow of money and the caste like system of rich and poor classes may seem inescapable and immortal, it is only in the last 200-300 years that this has been the case.

The history of the world has been the history of class struggle as we started off scratching sticks in the mud before rapidly evolving our societies to higher and higher stages that'll stretch long into the future and past our current understanding.

Before the divine right of kings and queens who trampled Éire's soil and forced feudalism on an unwilling population, there was a native proto-communist clan way of life. Technology and science has revolutionised our way of life but the traditional Gaelach way of life provided a rich humanity and long suppressed way of life that valued cooperation and community before gold bars or possessions became the desires of the masses.

Ag, Le, and Ownership

The lands of Ireland have been stolen, and restolen over and over by successive generations of invaders but something intangible they can't steal is a living language. A language passed down from lap to lap. The Irish language holds on with a firm grasp to her proud tradition and mentality that birthed her. You need look no further than the first verb learned by newcomers to a language to see this.

If you learn English, French, Spanish, German, or most other colonist languages you'll be working out the declensions of the verb "to have''.

I have,

you have,

he/she/it has,

we have,

you have,

they have.

A seasoned polyglot from the developed world will be stumped and taken aback to find in Irish that beginners are learning prepositional pronouns.

agam,

agat,

air,

uirthi,

againn,

agaibh,

acu.

In Irish you don't "have a spade" or "have a bit of land", it's "agat" it's "at me". It's by me for now but I certainly can't claim to be the sole minder of this bountiful piece of the earth. Similarly, instead of "I own this" it's "is liomsa é seo" or "it's with me". It's with me now but it'll be with him next week, or with her if she needs to dig her turnips tomorrow.

The presence of this outlook towards ownership characterises the mentality of ancient Ireland. And Ireland where land was shared by all and if there were members of your tribe or gens that were too ill to work they will still receive some of the harvest from the shared plot.

A major step forward from capitalism is the breaking down of private property arrangements. Taking the factories and lands from owners that suck the workers dry and placing these means of production directly into the hands of the workers of that factory to run it themselves. Just like in the clan system the people who work on the land receive the benefit from the land and decide democratically themselves how they want to manage and run it. There is no capitalist taking 50% of the harvest himself having never even set foot upon the turf or turned a single sod.

Aite, Dalta, and Fosterage

Modern teaching can often get bogged down as a teacher just talking at students and lecturing and hoping that the students are listening and understanding. Paulo Freire called this the “banking method” in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.

The ancient Irish showed they had a different and much gentler idea of education. In old Irish the teacher was “aite” (fosterer), the pupil was “dalta” (foster-child), and the education system was “aiteachas” (fosterage). These terms have been kept down through the years and still in use as “oide”, “dalta”, and “oideachas”.

Pearse wrote of this old fosterage mentality in “The Murder Machine” describing it thus

“And is it not the precise aim of education to ‘foster’? Not to inform, to indoctrinate, to conduct through a course of studies, but first and last to ‘foster’ the elements of character native to a soul, to help to bring these to their full perfection rather than to implant exotic excellences”.

Just like a machine the modern education system acts like an assembly line, full of uniformed students marching to the beat of a bell and expected to absorb concepts thrust upon them. There is no room for freedom to learn their own way, to inspire a love for learning and the topics. There is no better way for somebody to learn a subject than to install in them a passionate desire to learn and figure things out for themselves.

What Comes Around Goes Around

Linguistic scientists have argued for decades and shut down the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis that your language can change your physical reality, your language can still change your view of life and how to relate to other people and nature around you.

It’s not enough to have an economic revolution, we must also have a cultural revolution and build towards that. The decolonisation of our minds is a vital step towards creating an independent nation that is able to stand on its own and raise up the people themselves. Let these surviving habits be the base and inspiration to fully reclaim our language, our culture, our habits, and our minds.

The Lingering Celtic Communism

Communal Life

Ag, Le, and Ownership

Aite, Dalta, and Fosterage

What Comes Around Goes Around

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