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A Time of Change: W hat challenges?

A Time of Change: W hat challenges?. Peadar Kirby Schumacher summer school, 14 th June 2012. Introduction. About the only thing we agree on is that we are in crisis: But what is the nature of this crisis or crises? What are the causes? What should we do about it all?

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A Time of Change: W hat challenges?

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  1. A Time of Change:What challenges? Peadar Kirby Schumacher summer school, 14th June 2012

  2. Introduction • About the only thing we agree on is that we are in crisis: • But what is the nature of this crisis or crises? • What are the causes? • What should we do about it all? • Need to focus on the specific dimensions of the crisis as it manifests itself in this country • Place it in a wider historical context that keeps a focus on the island as a whole • Challenge us to imagine a very different future for Irish society

  3. This talk • In this talk I propose to: • Distinguish various layers of the present situation • Identify the causes • Argue that they signify a time of fundamental historical change • Place these in a wider historical context • Suggest some possibilities that might emerge • Hopefully this will help to inform our discussions and learning

  4. Crisis, what crisis? • Part of our crisis we share with our EU neighbours but a large part is very particular to Ireland • Immediate origins are in a financial crisis which has generated a wider and very deep economic recession • But these crises derive from a deeper crisis of a particular model of development: • A neoliberal or free-market model: • Low tax road to development • Reliance on free market, especially on global capital • State’s role to create an attractive environment so regulation kept very light

  5. What is particularly ours • Two dimensions are uniquely ours: • The crisis of our model has revealed a crisis of our political and administrative systems that have proven incapable of managing change • This crisis coincides with another major crisis deriving from the collapse of the authority of the Catholic Church: • Undermines not just a core institution of our society but our central system of values and identity: who are we?

  6. Causes • A tendency to moralise: • The greed and shortsightedness of elites • Problems with this reading: • Exonerates us, the society, from any blame • Individualises the problem and neglects its structural nature • Encapsulated in arguments for a ‘second republic’ and a developmental social democratic model • On this reading, we need a new beginning

  7. Key challenges • Crises point to a moment of fundamental change: • A new polity and political economy model • Requires a new culture and practice of politics • Begs the question of what are our fundamental values • Brings us back to something akin to nation building again • All in the context of the enormous twin challenges of climate change and peak oil: • These are remarkably absent in public debate but their imperative will become ever more demanding on public policy and on social practices

  8. Historical context • Back to settlement of 100 years ago: • Established a society based on two antagonistic nationalisms strongly based on religious identities: • A Catholic nationalism versus a Protestant unionism • Both are now in terminal crisis for somewhat different reasons: • More fundamental collapse of dominant institutions in Republic: FF, Church, banks • But North faces challenge of weaning itself off British subvention in context of political settlement • Forces pushing both states together may be becoming stronger than those that pushed them apart for 100 years • Fundamental question both face is what model of development might serve them best

  9. Possibilities I • What new identity can bind Irish society? • Difficult to see it based on religion in any central way • Framework for conceiving of how new can emerge: • Ideas: from where are they emerging? • Interests: what models are seen as best serving people’s interests • Institutions: how to build institutions embodying these models • Nexus between ideas, interests, institutions cluster around models

  10. Possibilities II • Main struggle can be conceived of as being between three different models: • Re-constituting the neoliberal model: • State playing a subservient role to private capital, whether national or global • Implies weak social outcomes: poverty, inequality • Moving towards a developmentalist social democratic model: • State playing a more active role to foster an innovative domestic economy generating sufficient resources for robust social development • Create a more equal society and stronger public space

  11. Possibilities III • Peak oil and climate change place huge question marks over viability of these models • Challenge us to develop a new model, moving beyond the model of industrial society • Towards a ecological or ethical socialist model: • Principle of local provisioning • Strong state involvement to restrain market and make it conform to ecological imperatives • Strong democratic and participatory mechanisms to hold state in check

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