Winning the New World
The Crisis is one of history’s great catalysts for social, political and economic change. The Black Death begot the gradual decline of feudalism and the slow replacement of an aristocratic ruling class by an ascendant merchant class that would become the industrial bourgeoisie. The First World War set the scene for an array of historical revolutions, not least our own (incomplete) Irish revolution and the Bolshevik revolution. When the established order of things begins to unravel during a time of crisis, an opportunity arises for new ideas, new people, and new systems to fill in the void left by the old order.
It is not, however, a historic rule that the more enlightened or more socially progressive ideas get to redesign the post-crisis world. There are plenty of instances where crisis has ushered in forces of reaction. In Germany, the dual crises of the Great Depression and the failing Weimar Republic begot the rise of Nazism. Likewise, a global crisis of capitalism in the mid-1970s begot not the rise of socialism, but instead the unpicking of the post-war social democratic compromise and the rise of neoliberalism.
There is, however, a historic rule that does generally indicate as to who gets to redesign the post-crisis world. It is this; the faction within society that is the most organised usually wins.
This is simultaneously true of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and the Chicago School Boys and the global neoliberal movement. It is true of the Irish republican movement’s triumph over constitutional nationalism. It is also true of those who brought in the post-war social democratic compromise, the FDRs and Clement Atlees of this world. Now, I want to be very clear that I am not drawing any moral equivalence between any of those characters or movements, just highlighting that it was superior organising ability in times of crisis that propelled them into power and allowed them to put their ideas into action.
History favours the organised
The superior organisational skills of Vladimir Lenin and others was the decisive factor that led the Bolsheviks to triumph over Menshevik, Socialist Revolutionaries, social democrats, liberals, the Provisional Government, and the Whites alike, all of which were vying for control of Russia in the crisis-ridden early 20th century. It wasn’t the mere correctness of Lenin’s ideas that led to success, it was the groundwork of organising through the labour movement, inside the armed forces, and knowing how and when to act in order to propel the Bolshevik movement into power in a time of crisis where all the other factions in Russian society were struggling to decide what to do.
(Note; the use of Bolshevik control of the transport and telegram system via unionised workers was key to Bolsheviks’ ability to coordinate a revolution over the vast Russian Empire, something that was emulated by the Irish republican movement’s influencing of Irish organised labour, namely the use of the ITGWU to hamper the British war machine during the Tan War.)
Likewise, Adolf Hitler, despite having positively abhorrent, evil and objectively incorrect ideas, exercised a superior organisational ability to the other competing groups within Germany that allowed Nazism to exploit a crisis and grab power through a combination of electoralism, paramilitarism and the infiltration of the institutions of the Weimar Republic by Nazi sympathisers.
Throughout the 1970s, a crisis of capitalism threatened when the post-war economic order of the capitalist world that had up to that point been underpinned by the recycling capital generated by the colossal trade surplus of the United States back into other capitalist economies. This system essentially guaranteed the United States’ hegemony. However, a series of economic crises started to threaten this system. Rising international competition, spiking energy prices, declining productivity and profitability, and soaring inflation and unemployment threatened this system and therefore Pax Americana.
Into the gap created by the crisis, a radical school of free market capitalist thought stepped in; the neoliberals. They preached privatisation, deregulation, financialisation, the ceding of the powers and role of the State to the market, and the inversion of the post-war global economic system so that instead of US trade surpluses being recycled into the rest of the capitalist world, profits from the rest of the world would be sent to the financial markets of New York, London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, etc., creating a major new boom in the capitalist cycle.
Neoliberalism didn’t drop from the sky. From the ‘50s onwards, an extreme school of capitalist economics that opposed socialism, social democracy and the traditional ‘patrician’ form of capitalism had been laying the groundwork for a global takeover. Inspired by economists like Hayek and Friedman, a network of neoliberal think-tanks arose throughout the capitalist world (financed by sympathetic prominent business figures), and neoliberal converts slowly gained influence within liberal and conservative parties around the globe.
A prominent group of neoliberals known as the Chicago Boys (having studied economics under Milton Friedman in the Chicago School of Economics) used the brutal CIA-backed military coup in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet as an opportunity to experiment with neoliberal economics to transform a previously socialistic economy. This experiment formed the basis of neoliberal programme that was then rolled out throughout the globe; providing the blueprint for the world’s Reagans, Thatchers, Haugheys and FitzGeralds.
The neoliberals organised for a takeover of capitalist countries throughout the world with impressive coordination. They organised themselves to take over institutions like the World Bank, which was previously dominated by Keynesian economists. They used the power of the state throughout the world to suppress the power of organised labour through restrictive laws, media spin and the ruthless use of physical force via the police and intelligence services; they knew in advance that a strong trade union movement would pose an obstacle to the implementation of their programme. Neoliberal economic thought gained a quasi-constitutional status in some of the world’s most powerful organisations, such as the European Union. Neoliberalism organised, and it organised well.
As much as superior organising explains the success of all the above, a lack of organisation can also explain some of the great political failures of our time. In particular, the failure of the international left to take advantage of the opportunity posed by the 2008 global financial crisis. Due to a combination of factors – third-wayism dominating the world’s major social democratic parties, the aggressive disempowerment of the trade union movement, the reduction of the international left to an incoherent mess via factionalism and sectarianism – the Left was in no position to offer answers in the wake of the financial crash. As Eric Hobsbawm observed;
‘“Capitalism is bankrupt, what comes next?” the left had no answers. A ripe moment to challenge the faltering capitalist system was lost.’
As a consequence of the Left’s lack of organisation, the global response to the financial crash was designed by the only political faction that was sufficiently organised to put their ideas into action; the neoliberals. Even though the global crash had been a direct result of the inherent flaws of the neoliberal system, and by rights should have been a moment of departure from a failed ideology, instead, the very movement that was the handmaiden of the Great Recession was the one that designed the response to it.
We all know the result; our early lives were defined by it. Across the world, national governments, international financial institutions, and supranational organisations introduced brutal austerity measures which stripped back what was left of the socialised services of the State, privatising yet more valuable State-owned industries, and at the same time drew up almost unfathomably large national debt to bail out the global financial institutions that played such a key role in causing the crash in the first place. Private equity outfits known as vulture funds swooped in to use the concentrated wealth of the world’s wealthiest to buy up the distressed assets (homes, businesses, etc.) of those who fell victim to the crash on the cheap. This programme represented an incredible transfer of wealth from working people to the wealthiest people in the world; while living standards crashed all over the world, some of the richest people on earth got a whole lot richer in the wake of the crash.
The COVID 19 pandemic – terrible, terrifying and cruel as it is – has presented to us something that is rarely seen throughout history; a second chance. It has created a fresh opportunity for the international left – including the left in Ireland (read; us) – to provide the answers and to shape the future post-crisis order.
So, what answers should we put forward? And more importantly, how do we organise to make sure that it is the Left that gets to put our ideas into action?
In a nutshell; an international move away from disastrous neoliberal boom and bust economics towards economic democracy, international cooperation and sustainable green economic models. In Ireland, this is an opportunity to deliver a united Irish Republic that truly lives up to the vision of the Proclamation and the Democratic Programme, and in which the economy is directed in the best interests of our people and our planet, not in the best interests of international capital.
This means a democratic socialist state. It means taking a greater part of our industry under the control of democratically accountable State bodies, in which the industries are managed in line with societal objectives - such as the reduction of carbon emissions and the creation of dignified, gainful employment - and in which the profits generated are used for the public good. It means direct control and ownership of enterprises by Ireland’s workers, creating genuine economic democracy and decent, well-paid employment. It means a huge national reconstruction of the all-Ireland economic system and its infrastructure to achieve a green revolution; moving decisively away from carbon-burning modes of production and transport towards carbon-neutral models.
Opportunities for change created by this crisis
We’ve seen already how in the emergency response to the crisis many measures were put in place that we had been reliably informed were impossible (legally, constitutionally, physically) not two months previously by the very Government that introduced them. A rent freeze and a cessation of evictions. The mandatory takeover of private hospitals. A programme of housing Ireland’s homeless in the empty AirBnB properties and hotels for the duration of the crisis. All of these measures and more were introduced with a stroke of a pen without so much as a whimper from the judiciary that we had reliably been informed would go berserk.
Although the above are all essentially temporary emergency measures, it is proof of the transformative potential this crisis has to wash away some of the old sureties of the Irish system. What follows is a list of the opportunities posed by this crisis as I see it. This is not an exhaustive list, and if the reader can think of any other opportunities that I may have missed here, I’d be very interested in hearing it.
The expected financial crash will have a profound effect on the still fragile Irish economy. Successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil governments have based their economic strategy on attracting international capital (Foreign Direct Investment) with measures such as low corporation tax, soft-touch regulation amenable to tax avoidance, and a cheap, “flexible”, yet highly skilled workforce. This pandemic already has seen some of the multinationals (Facebook and Google in particular) signalling a potential new post-crisis restructure of the company in response to the new normal of remote working. In a nutshell, that would mean that these companies wouldn’t need nearly as much office space, their workers could instead work from home in their own countries, meaning that the entire rationale of the Irish economic strategy to attract these multinationals could well be wiped out by this pandemic.
That’s not necessarily something to be feared. As mentioned above, this strategy relied on low taxes and on low paid, precarious yet highly educated workers. This means that economic growth was essentially achieved at the expense of the quality of life of Ireland’s workers. This focus on FDI also distorted the indigenous Irish economy. While on paper Ireland’s GDP and GNP was booming, in fact two parallel Irish economies existed; the FDI-based Irish economy, which was booming, and the actual indigenous economy where the vast majority of workers are employed, which saw much more modest rates of growth, especially in Ireland’s rural areas and towns, which has in fact been in sustained decline.
This crisis gives the opportunity for a left-wing government to reorient the Irish economy away from multinationals and towards our indigenous small and medium sized enterprises. That means a stronger, more self-sufficient Irish economy that’s not dependent on the whims of international capital and is better able to withstand international crises. Instead of offering cheap skilled labour, it means making sure Irish workers are well paid, well protected, and are both highly trained and empowered within the economy (via a greater degree of worker-ownership of the economy).
The pandemic will see a projected drop in consumer spending of around 14.8%. For context, in 2009 at the height of the crash consumer spending only fell by 5%. Consumer spending is not expected to return to normal levels until 2022/23. SIPTU economist and researcher Michael Taft has said that it is abundantly clear that what is needed is a “consumer recovery”. This makes it an absolute priority to boost consumer spending quickly. This means putting as much money into the hands of the groups within society that are most likely to spend any extra income they receive: low paid workers and average earning workers with children. Austerity measures which lessen the spending power of such workers would be disastrous and would see consumer spending drop even further; a catastrophe for both the indigenous economy and for the human beings whose living standards would fall dramatically.
Therefore, this pandemic provides an opportunity for a new deal for workers. We’ve heard an awful lot about how low-paid essential workers are our frontline heroes. Well, now is the time to make sure that all low-paid workers are properly remunerated for the vital work that they do. It means setting the minimum wage in line with the Living Wage rate. It means giving workers a legal right to collective bargaining (the southern state is currently one of the only OECD states without such a right) in order to empower workers themselves to achieve the best wages and conditions in their employment via workplace democracy. It means using powerful sectoral employment orders to raise wages and standards for workers across each sector. It means the State strengthening the ‘Social Wage’, socialising the cost of living via an Irish national health service, free public transport, free childcare, and the creation of social and affordable housing. In short, it means a massive democratic socialist programme both within the government and within the trade union movement.
Another opportunity posed by the pandemic is to achieve direct worker ownership and control of enterprises via the promotion of worker cooperatives. The pandemic will mean that many businesses will be struggling to reopen. There is every chance that many productive, valuable, indigenous enterprises will close up shop permanently, resulting in mass unemployment. Many of these businesses will be closing down not because they were no longer viable enterprises, but that for a variety of reasons the owner(s) may decide on selling or liquidising. For example, one can understand why an owner near the end of her working life might opt to sell up rather than make a major investment of money and resources necessary for the business to survive this pandemic.
One of the measures we can take to avoid viable enterprises closing down is to change the law to give workers a right to buy out the owner. This would allow workers to buy the business from the owner and to run it in common as a worker collective. Sinn Féin’s Paul Gavan is the leading advocate in the Oireachtas on worker cooperatives, and for the curious has written an extensive policy document available on here (https://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2019/Workers_Co-operatives.pdf).
While worker cooperatives are a radical approach to the crisis in an Irish context, they are actually quite a regular feature in many similar European countries. Scotland, France, Spain and Italy have all made extensive use of the worker cooperative in their domestic economies, to great effect. These enterprises have been shown to be a highly productive, highly resilient and very competitive business model. As commonly owned, democratically controlled enterprises, worker cooperatives pay significantly higher wages than non-coop enterprises in the same sector. Encouraging and promoting the worker cooperative model in Ireland would be a win-win in terms of waging wages and strengthening indigenous enterprise.
Still another opportunity in this crisis can be seen in the effects it is already having on the Irish property market, both commercial and residential. The Irish property market had previously been categorised by exuberant land value, sky-high rents, chronically unaffordable houses and a commercial property bubble that was allowed to develop by the Fine Gael government. Well, that bubble has just popped. With remote working becoming the new normal and multinationals talking up an officeless future, it is nigh on impossible to see how the hugely inflated value of Irish commercial properties isn’t going to fall.
Likewise, the exit of thousands of AirBnB landlords from the short-stay lease market means that it is likely that the Dublin rental crisis could come to a halt; that is, if the State responds in the correct way. Preventing these AirBnB landlords from re-entering the short-stay lease market would mean that thousands of properties would become available without having to lay a single brick.
Although harder to predict for certain, it seems likely that both the value of land and the value of housing is likely to slump as a result of the pandemic. This means that Sinn Féin’s plan to end the housing crisis with 100,000 social, affordable to buy, and affordable to rent homes just became that bit more achievable. Also, the problem of finding the necessary work force for a massive constructive programme has also been answered by the return of many construction workers who had emigrated abroad and the sudden availability of many construction workers who had previously been working on commercial properties.
The crisis also is a chance to take key industries into public ownership. The Irish aviation industry, which plays a hugely important role in our economy, is likely to look to the State for a massive bailout. Despite being a multibillion-euro industry, its fragile financial foundations mean that without constant generation of massive profits, the entire industry stalls and fails. This bailout is an opportunity for the State to take a controlling interest in these airlines, and to use that interest to run the industry in line with our societal objectives. In particular, public ownership would mean that the State would be able to manage one of our most polluting industries in line with Ireland’s carbon targets.
It's impossible to talk about a green new deal or a Just Transition in any meaningful way without talking about state-led response. The public good needs to take the lead through a strong, coordinated, planned state programme. In Ireland, that means founding publicly owned industries crucial to a carbon-neutral future. It means establishing a national enterprise for the manufacture of wind and wave turbines while also providing sorely needed industrial jobs in deindustrialised cities like Belfast. It means creating decent jobs in a whole range of works that are necessary for Ireland to achieve a Just Transition; retrofitting homes, building rail and tram networks, designing ever improving strategies to make Ireland green energy ready, etc. The private sector is not going to deliver the necessary change needed; while there is a huge amount of socially and environmentally necessary work to be done, it will not be particularly profitable, and so a market-based approach won’t work. Taking this opportunity to move away from neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism will allow us to achieve a green revolution.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, COVID 19 highlights in stark terms the absurdity of partition. The British government’s deliberately ineffective response has led to Britain having more deaths than any other European country, surpassing even Italy and Spain. Several countries, including Greece, have confirmed their intention to prevent British tourists from travelling when they reopen their economies. The UK’s response to this pandemic has been a catastrophic failure. Throughout this pandemic, the geographical separation of Ireland and Britain has been a significant advantage in Ireland’s own struggle against the pandemic. Both the north and the south have followed roughly the same policies, and as a result have had roughly the same number of cases and deaths.
The advantage of a united Irish approach has been illustrated in sharp terms by this pandemic. Whatever the faults of the response to COVID 19 both north and south, it is clear to any objective observer that this island has had much more success than our British neighbours. As well as demonstrating the strength of an all-Ireland approach, the pandemic has demonstrated the need for a strong all-Ireland national health service. The lack of a proper nationalised health service was a strain on the South’s initial response to the pandemic, requiring the government to take over private hospitals at immense cost due to a lack of public hospital capacity. North and south has seen the advantage of a united Irish approach, and we’ve also seen the need for a united Irish health system.
Getting organised
Sinn Féin is in a fantastic starting position in this race to shape the post-COVID Ireland; we’re in a strong position within the Oireachtas and the Assembly, we’ve an abundance of great thinkers and strategists throughout the party, we’re shaping the public conversation through fantastic use of both traditional and new media, we’re forging increasingly strong links with a trade union movement that is looking to us to re-empower them, and we’re by far the party that is most organised within the community throughout Ireland.
All this means that we’re by far the most prepared, organised party on the left in Ireland at this moment of opportunity. Sinn Féin is on the cusp of leading a left government; even if the old forces of reaction manage to cobble together a loose coalition in the short time, its highly unlikely that the resulting government would last the full five-year term. Using strong opposition within the Oireachtas and working hand in hand with the trade union movement, Sinn Féin is in a good position to mount an effective resistance to an austerity programme, and eventually to force another election to win a Sinn Féin-led left government.
Achieving a Sinn Féin government is just the start of the work. It then falls to our movement to take full advantage of the historic time we’re living through to achieve a democratic socialist Ireland. We need to scrap anti-union legislation and fully empower the trade union movement to use the power of organised labour to secure higher wages, better conditions, and a fair labour share for Ireland’s workers. We need to set about organising for a green new deal and a just transition. We need to deliver a new deal for workers, an end to the housing crisis, an Irish national health service, nationalised childcare, and much more. We need to reorient the Irish economy towards a strong, prosperous indigenous enterprise, encourage worker cooperatives, and take public control of key industries. And we need to set about organising for and winning dual referendums for the reunification of our country.
It’s all within our reach, we just need to remember history’s number one rule; get organised.
le Caoimhín Ó Broin (ÓSF Public Relations Officer)