In Interesting Times, what makes sense for Ireland?

international | anti-capitalism | other press Saturday October 04, 2008 23:26 by Terence

Ireland should break from the 'machine'

This is an really interesting article written by Richard Moore for the Southeast Voice in Wexford. In it he asks what Ireland should do in these present times where it is clear huge changes are afoot in the global economy. I would highly recommend people to read the original in full for its insight.

Richard Moore has been writing about global issues for a number of years and has been attempting to truly understand how system works. A few years ago he wrote a book called: Escaping The Matrix and a host of other articles. In more recent times, he has begun to focus on grassroots organising and how to reform communities and democracy from the ground up.

In his article he gives a broad sweep at what is happening and then gets on to what position is for Ireland and what we should do. Ideally it helps to have read some of his previous articles and posts on his own website to understand what he is really saying. Probably one of Moore's strengths is that he takes many issues and ideas on board and while you may think because he covers them, that he is 100% behind them, it would seem that he allows other facts and figures to come in and events to unfold to see if they have any merit. In this way, he avoids getting into ideological traps of not taking on board information that would fit is world view. In general the Left suffers badly from this handicap.

In his opening paragraph he says:

Amazing isn't it, how fast things are happening? In my previous article, the big news was the beginning of a new Cold War, a major historical event. Today, only two weeks later, that news has been eclipsed by the collapse of Wall Street giants, pillars of the American financial system for more than a century. This is another historical event, to be compared to the 1929 crash, which led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Things get more and more 'interesting' as each day goes by, and this is only a foretaste of bigger problems in store for all of us.

Our whole industrial, energy-intensive way of life is simply unsustainable....
After a mere two centuries we are already running into terminal global resource scarcities. Energy and food price rises, and our collapsing economies, are indicators of this – they are how 'the market' responds to such scarcities. Geopolitical conflicts – the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, the emerging conflict between the US and Russia – are also indicators. They show how 'great powers' respond to such scarcities. They are scrambling to secure control over the resources that remain, like hungry children fighting over the last scraps of food on the table. ...That is how imperialism responds to such scarcities ...

Here we see in the article where Moore displays a good understanding of both politics, environmental issues and the limits to growth, but does not fall into the usual trap of naive environmentalist by claiming the problem of too many people which then Left would then normally pounce upon, even though the Left generally dislikes the idea of limits to growth.

It is important to understand that rising population itself is not the reason we are running out of resources. If we began managing resources wisely – using them for actual human needs instead of devoting them to the industrialist profit machine – we could feed everyone on the planet. Of course populations levels do need to stabilize, and this becomes easier to achieve when societies and economies are themselves stabilized in relation to available resources. Countries with higher levels of stability and prosperity also tend to have lower birthrates.

And then he spells out clearly what we have to do:

The reason we are running out of resources is that our profit-and- growth based economic system cannot continue without consuming resources ever-more rapidly. The paradigm of economic growth is a kind of Sorcerer's Apprentice: it is a machine that has been unleashed, which was useful to us for a while, and now it is running out of control, destroying all around it. Humanity has a choice: change the system, or continue into the abyss.

He then moves on to Ireland's response, outlining how Brian Cowan is completely caught out by it and basically helpless at his mercy largely because Cowan and the rest of them have bought in completely to the current status quo.

How does Brian Cowan respond to all this? He has no concept of anything other than the machine. He says we can only watch and see what the machine decides to do, and prepare ourselves to tighten our belts, accepting as inevitable whatever suffering the market imposes on us. Mr Cowan is of course not unique. No leader in any 'advanced' nation has any concept other than the machine. Only in the Global South, as in Venezuela, do we see leadership that is capable of thinking beyond the machine, and able to give economic priority to human needs and sensible development.

How true this is. And then he goes on to the explain that it is time for us in Ireland to begin disengaging from the machine...

...As regards policy, the only course that makes sense for Ireland is disengagement from the machine, from the global market..... When we attach our economy to the global market we find ourselves squeezed between two forces – the market value of our exports, and the market price of our imports. Whether we come out ahead or behind in this exchange is not under our control as a nation. ...

......The way to disengage from the global machine is to begin moving toward national self-sufficiency. This does not mean to stop trading with others, but it means doing so selectively, value for value, and not depending on trade primarily for economic activity. It means taking stock of our resources, not as commodities on the global market, but as the means of our own ongoing sustenance. It means re- building closer links between Irish producers and Irish consumers, and getting rid of the distribution cartels that rob our farmers and gouge us in the supermarket. It means replacing our financial system and the basis of our currency, as the current systems are designed to keep us in debt. And none of this can be begin until we regain our national sovereignty by leaving the EU and abandoning the Euro. The EU, in the final analysis, is simply a conspiracy to compel all of Europe to stay linked to the machine, whether they like it or not.


To read the full article go to either of the two links below:

http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=1436&batch=16...urnal