Rónán Burtenshaw
Deputy Editor
Napoleon once told us that “nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” Of all that we have lost in the wake of our economic catastrophe – opportunity, prosperity, dignity – nothing is more precious than our self-determination.
An entity is not free to pursue a course of action if it is punished for so-doing. During feudal times, under empire and in dictatorships individuals had the ability to speak out against those who ruled them. They were not free to do so, however, because they may have expected to be dispossessed, imprisoned, tortured or killed.
We are similarly unfree in our actions. Our rulers are not kings, emperors or dictators. They are the upper class, international finance and multinational corporations. In punishment we cannot expect to face physical retribution. Instead Irish people face a fate that has always petrified the inhabitants of stratified societies – the fall down the chasm of the classes.
Debt is a subjugator. One of the great achievements of the rulers of the western working and middle-classes in the last four decades has been to liberate them from the folly of savings. The empowerment of individuals who saved to buy and owned their property free from debt subjugation threatened the rulers greatly. And so they attacked wages. For the vast majority of the western world – Ireland, its Tiger and then its Bubblestan being a notable exception – wages adjusted for inflation have stayed about the same for 30-40 years. To fill the gap where the wages should have been a culture of debt has developed which manifests itself in every developed country.
Our debt, although following global cultural trends established to disempower, was not accrued to fill the wage gap. It was accrued through three stages of greed. The greed of international finance – who lent us almost ten times more per person than even the debtocracy of Spain in order to reap short-term gains from the over-inflated bubble economy. The greed of the Irish banks – who borrowed this money to fuel short-term gains that made their management and executives millionaires and who then fudged their numbers when the tide began to turn. The greed of the Irish developer, speculator and wealthy or aspirant property-dabbler – who created the mirage of a sustainable economy based on the recycling of land and boilerplate buildings and then prolonged it far beyond its shelf-life by corrupting the political system and doping our supposedly sober analysts with Celtic Tiger catnip.
When facing a debt problem there should be two options. You can cutback on outgoings and you can increase incomings. But we didn’t read the caveat to our modern day Act of Union. We can only do these things to the working and middle-classes. If we raise taxes on the rulers as individuals we’ll face capital flight. If we raise taxes on the rulers as corporations we’ll face joblessness. If we default on our debts to the rulers (the process of accrual of which their recklessness initiated) our economy will be strangled by international finance. If we attempt to get tough on our rulers in the banks – by regulation and taxation – credit will dry up.
The rulers have their lackies. They will tell you that the essence of freedom is for the rulers to be able to do the following: drive down wages, create an economy where the ratio between management class wages and those of the average company worker rises into the hundreds to one and then escape with this money you’ve bled from the working and middle-classes. The tools of the state, which are in the the hands of the many, are illegitimate. The tools of the market, which are in the hands of the few, are idolised. Such a definition of freedom means only their freedom to accumulate power at the expense of the masses.
This voids our democracy. It creates for the citizens of this state only false choices. You can follow any path that you want as long as it’s austerity. You can have whatever you want for dinner as long as it’s bread and water.
When we went to the polls in February to vote this antidemocratisation was evident. Offered bread and water, our electorate voted for the biggest change in Irish politics in the history of the state. They got a government led by the Fine Gael Party, who had promised to fight with the rulers to secure for us a sandwhich. They came home with the same piece of bread, only a few days more stale. Fine Gael were propped up by a Labour Party who ran a populist campaign built on a promise to fight for the economic rights of the common person. Expecting from them at least some juice for sustinence we found instead a few granules of quickly dissolving sugar in our water. If there’s no power to the people, there’s no democracy.
The majority of those living on this island are under attack. Who among us is not subject to the curse of at least one of the scurges of the age: joblessness, cuts to services, home foreclosures, increased fees & levies, emigrating children & friends? Those most responsible for the domestic catastrophe and the international crisis are not facing the same reality. The giants of international finance – whose crimes initiated the Great Recession – are making larger profits and paying higher bonuses.
We are used to this pattern. The imperial forces used economics to justify starving and enslaving Irish peasants during the great famines of the 1800s – famines of food insecurity alone since the island produced more than enough food to feed its inhabitants. Our present rulers similarly disguise starvation as 
legitimate economic practice – see the IMF in Malawi in 2002 and Goldman Sachs’ role in the 2005-’08 food crisis.
So, why are we not out protesting like the Greeks? Because the derelict structure of the Celtic Tiger still stands in the minds of the people. The memory of its dizzying opulence casts a long shadow on our national psyche. We still believe that we have more to gain by the maintenance of the status quo than by its collapse – despite the circumstances of our debt breaking records for a country of our size. We’ve also given up naïve notions of self-determination, we don’t care if that status quo is of our control or creation.
We have regressed more than one-hundred and forty years in the public sentiment of the nation. We do not support the overthrow of this system. We do not fight it in our fields like Davitt or in our cities like Larkin. We do not even ask, as Isaac Butt and his Irish Home Government federalists did, for some power back from the rulers. Our dichotomal debate predates the 1870s. The majority of those who consider themselves on the right are the Irish Tories – saying that if only we could be more friendly to the rulers, more like them, adopt a little more of their ethos, it would be better for all of us. The majority of those who consider themselves left are the Irish Liberals – not ever challenging the right of the rulers to rule but trying to make that rule more benevolent and benign. The latter may be more dangerous, likely to legitimise and prolong that rule.
The Irish have consented to the rule of every ruler we’ve ever had. Unlike the rest of Europe, where the conversion from paganism to Christianity was brutal and violent, Ireland welcomed our subject status to Rome. The Irish invited Strongbow’s armies to cross the waters in the 12th century. In the modern era we handcuffed ourselves and gave the keys to the troika. The vast majority of those living under all forms of dominance and authoritarianism consent to its rule the vast majority of the time. But this does not make it democratic.
We do it now, as anyone does it ever, because we fear the alternative. We want to live our lives undisturbed. For this we are willing to 
live those lives on our knees. I can understand this position, but I can’t say I respect it. I can’t respect pathetic cowardice – even when pursued by people I admire. I respect the rulers much more. Their greed created a crisis and everyone knows it but they will still emerge from it richer while the average person pays the cost. They pursue self-determination. They’re living on their feet. It’s time for the rest of us to join them.
