Coming to stand for nothing at all

At a certain brief period in modern history the Right advanced to power. This period carries the brand images of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It represents the triumph of individualism over the social, the unregulated market over the mixed or planned economy, of militarism over diplomacy. It was a time when greed became good, when virtue became soft, when the classical values of equality were watered down to such aspirations as

‘equal opportunity’, ‘first rung of the ladder’ and ‘level playing field’. It was a time when ethical rage seeped away.

Economics became narrowed to a single version. In the pursuit of this project, a process was initiated similar to so many previous exercises in history – not only was a new certainty imposed but all other versions were proscribed, their images destroyed. If, in recent times, the Taliban revealed their appalling insularity and intolerance in the destruction of the giant

fifth century Bamiyan Buddhas, did

the followers of St. John in their

time not rip to pieces the temple of

Artemis at Ephesus.

Trading certainties is as dangerous as living by simplicities in a complex world. The myth of the single version of a successful economy – that of the totally unregulated market – is just that, a myth. Its merits are asserted, not proven. It is an instrument of ideology rather than a conclusion of observation. It is one of the most dangerous myths of our time and it is now destroying us.

After the World Wars in Europe, it was clear that only a state-led initiative could achieve an economic recovery, could rebuild Europe, could give assurances of providing the housing, health and social security to the millions of those who had put themselves – or had been forced to put themselves – at risk for the welfare of others. The wars had, by confronting an external threat, created a sense of community, of society. Welfarism had arrived and led to such innovations as Britain’s National Health Service.

Forty years later, in addition to her basic aim of destroying trade unions and ending socialism, Mrs. Thatcher set out to end a society of citizens with rights, and sought to replace them with anxious shareholders – populist shareholders with neurotic and insatiable consumption proclivities.

Mrs. Thatcher succeeded in making a significant shift in public opinion. Much more, she succeeded in challenging and destroying the notion of the public space. If it was public it had not the mark of ownership on it. It was therefore lesser. The children of Thatcherism were invited to stroll though the public spaces, not in admiration of anything provided for the transcendent value of the public, but rather with a sense of calculation. “I too can have shares in this public asset”, they were encouraged to think. Water, Rail, Electricity, Gas, Road, Public Housing – all were available for the share-holding pack.

Meanwhile in the US and Britain, Annual Reports were replaced with half-year forecasts, then with quarterly projections. Economic life had been reduced to the atmosphere of a betting shop. The greedy shareholders would become the baying pack that would chase profit irrespective of the means by which it was achieved – be that environmental destruction, corporate corruption or child labour.

The Irish genius for imitation, combined with a more modern national inferiority complex among an insecure section of our academic institutions who always kept more than one eye on London, meant that all of this thinking was imported to Ireland. Some prominent people even set up companies specifically structured so that you could invest in privatizations throughout the world. In Ireland, previously public goods were being identified for purchase and sold on for quick profit, in the parasitic manner of Denis O’Brien and others.

Like any elite, anywhere else in time or space, these new versions of ruthless and aggressive modern Ireland ate and drank with each other. They were, however insatiable for attention – an endearing human weakness. Most patronized the safer element in a soft journalism. They even generated the recovery of the social column in the voyeuristic pages of what once were newspapers.

Such people also liked to create an aura of global restlessness, of the cosmopolitan. They were, of course, rather sad failures at this, being closer to the mindless bronzed laddism of a travel brochure than to the cultural diversity we might discover in anthropology, more akin to the messy faces of the children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory than to any emerging culturally sophisticated group. They looked and sounded shallow.

Nothing was safe, however from their influence, when it came to establishing the myth of the single market- oriented version of economics. It was claimed that history was over, ethics was dead, realism had won and we were in a new era – an era of globalization. In Smurfit’s Annual Report a full page photo of Bono is illustration for a chapter entitled ‘Global Player!’ Music and musicians are not safe. Inside the front cover Samuel Beckett’s picture is used. Literature and writers are not safe. Bono has, of course, clarified that he never gave permission for usage of his image by a corporation with such a dreadful American and Latin American reputation in labour matters. He didn’t have to. His and Beckett’s images are commodities in photo storage available for abuse.

Following Thatcher’s lead, Right Wing think tanks came to the fore. Friedrich Von Hayek, whose ideas influenced those who advised Mrs. Thatcher, regularly visited 10 Downing Street to assure Mrs. Thatcher that the markets ‘would do it all for her’. The success above all successes was in the establishment of a narrow version of the economy – extreme unregulated neo-liberal market economics – as a version suitable for the entire European Union. This was to be enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty.

This treaty had superficial attractions for many. Unlike the other members of the triad that dominates world trade – Japan and the US – the European Union trades with itself. The real losers would turn out to be those who had previously enjoyed social protection, those who were served by good public services in health, housing education and transport. The European Union at the moment of this treaty sacrificed the concept of citizenship for the status of consumer. The result is now as horrific as it was predictable.

The issue is not simple. Why should one version of political choice – the Right – have its assumptions written in stone? Is it not democratic, now that such a version of politics has been swept away, that the consequences of unthinking neo-liberal market deregulation be assessed?

For a long year, many believed that the distinguishing characteristic of Europe from the US was the social model of the economy. Is this the ghost of times past? Is it merely a residue of better and more caring times? Or is it, alternatively, as I would like to believe, a model for the future?

The reaction to the events of September 11th in New York has sharpened all of these questions. Corporations, already fearful of shareholder disappointments in conditions of low growth are taking advantage and ‘shedding’ tens of thousands of workers.

It is suggested by the High Priests of the neo-liberal market orthodoxy that state aids must not interfere with the inexorable process of the market. Even if the US has given $16-$18 billion to its airlines, the European Commission is being asked by the likes of Michael O’Leary not to listen to any government case for national airline assistance. The national broadcaster RTE is to be punished as well. Now Irish radio stations can be owned 100% by those with no commitment to Irish broadcasting.

We are not to be citizens any more. We are consumers who listen and view, who are entertained between the advertisements. We are people from nowhere, with no past, no future, just a temporary consumption power.

We are in danger of standing for nothing in so many ways – even in international relations. Indeed, many of our insecure revisionist scribes berate us for not having acknowledged our irrelevant existence, our meaninglessness in the scale of something really big – a global market, NATO, the US. Readers will recall how one hundred and thirty countries voted us on to the UN Security Council. We became President of the Council. In a choice between a rigorous defence of International Law and facilitating the world’s only super power, at what was admittedly a horrific moment, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen chose the latter, the easy way out.

What morality do we stand for now in International Relations? When did we learn to speak more often of war than of peace? Was it when we were selling out, selling everything? Even our souls.

Our life has had a quality of cheapness conferred on it in so many ways. We are asked to live in a world where there is no space to imagine what we have not yet managed to be. None of this is inevitable. Raymond Williams once wrote that it is when the inevitabilities are questioned that we have stirred ourselves for a journey of hope.

And there are inevitabilities to be questioned – none more urgent than the suggestion that we are in an unavoidable, unchangeable phase of history called ‘globalization’. I will mention this in my next piece.

When we stand for something, we can predict and avoid conflicts. We can resolve conflicts. We can use and strengthen diplomacy. We can re-cast our multi-lateral institutions. We can do all of these things when we retain some self respect.

When we stand for nothing anymore, have lost all reflective ability, have shed all personal and national self-respect, have numbed ourselves against true internationalism, have avoided the challenge of true interdependency, when we say little, when we just nod our head for war, it is more than sad. We must make it different. Our very humanity requires it.