Man Ray's 1922 painting of James Joyce
Caolán Doyle
Staff Writer
We are, once again, a people exploited and oppressed.
In ‘Portrait of the Artist’, James Joyce expressed his frustration at the Irish people and the ease with which we allow ourselves be exploited. After freeing ourselves from the chains of the British imperial system we allowed the Roman Catholic Church to fill their void. And his frustration is clearly still relevant today. As the abuse and exploitation of the church became too much for us, we started to slowly ease them from power. Unfortunately, we were not long finding an adequate replacement.
We once again live in a state outside our own control. With the help of the élite in our society we have welcomed in the ‘Troika’ and allowed them free reign to dismantle our welfare state, in order to protect the interests of those in ascendancy at home and abroad. Once again we find ourselves being exploited by our powerful neighbours – this time with austerity and economic bomb threats instead of guns and bayonets.
What we are seeing is clear and obvious exploitation. Our government has forced us through 4 austerity budgets that target the most vulnerable in our society. Now we face into more years of brutal austerity. The ordinary people of our country are being squeezed to death in order to protect the domestic and international status quo. The politicians, bankers and big businesses, who benefited so richly from the ‘Celtic Tiger economy’, are shielded from most of the cuts. The obnoxious wealth accumulated by the élite was not used to clean up the mess when the ‘economy’ collapsed. Instead it is the working people, the taxpayers, the average citizens who are being punished for the greed of the economic aristocracy that caused this mess.
Salaries of the public sector have already been cut by 20%. Hard-working nurses, teachers, public servants are being held responsible for a crisis not of their making. The most vulnerable in our society are being punished: welfare payments to the unemployed are steadily being reduced, students are seeing increasing fees, and now the pensions of our elderly are in the firing line. Almost 40,000 young people have been forced to emigrate because there are no jobs for us at home.
"The Church justified their oppression with reference to the Bible - our oppressors today justify themselves with the unquestionable gospel of the free-market."
Our political establishment is happy to abide this – as long as the interests of the élite are safeguarded. Retired politicians enjoy up to €160,000 pensions for their ‘service’ to the country. It is quite clear that the Irish political system is broken. Fianna Fáil, draping itself in the flag of nationalist sentiment, was easily corrupted and it wasn’t long after independence that it was running economic policy for a new dominant political class. Today Fine Gael and a Labour Party – who would make James Connolly turn in his grave – are the vanguard of the same neoliberal policy as their disgraced predecessors. Unfortunately, they are all part of the problem in this broken system.
The church justified their oppression with reference to the Bible – our oppressors today justify themselves with the unquestionable gospel of the free-market. The economy, we’re told, is to be dealt with by the experts – too complicated for the public at large. But there’s nothing complicated at all about what is happening. We are once again being oppressed and exploited by the powerful pursuing their interests, and it is up to us to resist it.
Instead of welcoming emigration, we must oppose it. Instead of dismissing the protestors on Dame Street, we must join them. Instead of accepting our ‘economic’ situation we must challenge it. Instead of surrendering to the élite, we must confront them. We must act – this is the demand, the task, the duty of the Irish citizen today.
