As another year opens out in front of us, we wish our families, friends and neighbours happiness and prosperity. For very many of them, however, our good wished are overshadowed by foreboding of hard economic times and the hardship and stress that this means.
Government Ministers assure us that the Irish economy ‘has turned the corner’ and that ‘the worst is over.’ They lie. These cynical assurances are to convince working people to accept the savage cuts in jobs and living standards which the government and the economic establishment have prescribed especially through the Budget in December.
The reality of what really lies in store can be clearly seen in the hard economic statistics emerging on a regular basis. In 2009 a record 1,406 companies went into liquidation. The expectation is that a similar number will go under in 2010. At the same time 400,000 people are out of work with a shocking one third of men under 25 now unemployed.
Morgan Kelly is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin. Some years ago while government spokespersons, other economists and many media outlets were assuring us that the ‘fundamentals’ of the economy were sound, and confidently predicting a ‘soft landing’ in the property sector, he pointed to his study of dozens of OECD countries where property booms had ended in a crash in every single one of them. ‘Why should it be any different in Ireland?’ he and a few others asked. They were right.
Morgan Kelly’s prognosis for Ireland 2015 is a long way from that of the government and its propagandists. Jobs and debt will haunt us, he predicts. Right again. You simply cannot cut swathes through the living standards of substantial numbers of workers and those depending on Social Welfare and pretend that there will be no consequences. There will be, especially in the shape of the thousands more joining the dole queue who, otherwise, would be providing the goods and services to those whose spending power will now be crippled.
Mass unemployment and the poverty that follows it take a terrible toll on society especially in working class communities. Those who lived through the 1980s with their eyes wide open to the social phenomena of the time will understand.
We saw swathes of our cities turned into desolate areas of hopelessness and despair. Anti social criminality and heroin addiction flourished as a certain cohort of young people gave up hope and fell into a vortex of nihilism. Others who could, escaped abroad, taking their talents and their invaluable educational qualifications with them.
To worsen matters in 2010 there are very many who cannot meet the monstrous mortgages forced on them by developers during the profit fest that was passed off as an economic boom. Already the banks and the vultures in the sub prime lending institutions are tightening their nooses around their homes.
The chilling prospect of these social ills being visited on our society, but at a far more serious level than in the 1980s, is inevitable if the policies of the economic and political establishment continue to dominate. But it is not inevitable they should continue to do so.
This New Year should mark the beginning of a mass revolt against those policies and the establishment that is foisting them on society. That revolt should be driven by a determination that society will not go gently into years of economic depression and social darkness involving crisis and suffering for so many. That means we should stand and fight.
To begin there needs to be clear recognition that it is capitalism that plunged society into the present mess. Those prescribing the supposed cure of swingeing cuts in pay and services and those cheerleading them are the very ones who prescribed and cheerled the property speculation that crashed the economy. Why should they be afforded any shred of credibility now?
We urgently need to advance a debate on the alternatives. How can we organise an economic system to meet the needs of people, to provide the goods and services for a decent life while protecting the environment and utilising the talents and energies of all to achieve this? Replacing the stranglehold over production and employment by private corporations driven solely by the maximisation of private profit would be the most crucial first step. The replacement is democratic control and management by the majority.
While working toward such a democratic, socialist model of society, workers, public and private, should unite in a campaign of massive opposition to the savaging of pay of low and middle income public sector workers and social welfare recipients as well as rejecting closures of factories and other enterprises. 2010 should mark the beginning of the fightback. Otherwise the economic crisis will result in a social nightmare.
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