The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Patsy McGarry incites class war… against the state. August 21, 2009

Reading Patsy McGarry’s thoughts a week or two ago I was struck again by the concept of hegemony and again also the manner in which the McCarthy report has now become the perceived yardstick against which all else must be measured. Now, two preliminary asides.

Firstly it’s telling, is it not, how the jocular references to An Bord Snip have seemingly fled much of the news media. That’s not to say they’re not there, but as the weeks since the report was issued have lengthened the more sober ‘McCarthy’ report formulation has come into play. I could suggest very hesitantly that the reason for this is that the casual, almost informal, nature of the ‘An Bord Snip’ term was useful in advance of the release of the report, both normalising its function while also rather diminishing or reducing its seeming impact. And afterwards that air of levity seemed inappropriate for something that was and is put forward as, if not quiet holy writ, certainly the answer to our woes. Perhaps I’m over-analysing it, but I suspect I’m not. Political language is loaded at the best of times. These aren’t the best of times. While it is highly unlikely that focus groups are parsing every word there are dynamics at play and a certain sensitivity, or, what am I saying – considerable sensitivity – to language.

Secondly there is the notion that McCarthy will almost certainly not be implemented in anything like full. We know already that the government was seeking lower than the 5.3 bn that he recommends. The ESRI has argued for 2.5 bn. The eventual figure will, most likely, be closer to the ESRI, thereby affording considerable political cover as the most egregious excesses suggested in the Report are avoided and the Government can turn to a – perhaps – slightly-grateful populace and say, ‘look, we’ve smoothed down the rough edges’.

Anyhow, McGarry buys into McCarthy almost lock stock and barrel. And quite a few other tropes. For example…

I love my country dearly but we have been so badly let down. Our ruling class, whether of church, State or in finance, etc, has rarely been more than mediocre since we got our independence but none of its membership through the decades has shown quite the same expertise at enriching itself as the current one.

Among it I include not just our politicians and members of the temporary government but the very many who make up the backbone of permanent governance in this State.

So, let’s get this straight. He’s being quite literal, talking essentially about the ruling elite beyond capital (with the populist dig at ‘finance’… but what is ‘finance’ but the expression of capital?). One doesn’t have to be Marxist to find that a rather suspect analysis.

Their extraordinary vanity [that of our ruling classes] would be hilarious were it not so ludicrous, as illustrated through the inflated salaries and outrageous expenses they believe are their due, making us poor suckers the laughing stock of the developed world. This, despite their repeated profligacy and lack of foresight.

That this privileged class is aided and abetted by trade union leaders on six-figure salaries and with more directorships in their back pockets than they care to remember, simply heightens the farce in it all.

How many trade union leaders have that many directorships? But more concretely… what is he implying, that the trade unions are complicit in all this? That sounds unlikely given that their stated policies are – even if we allow for the nonsense of social partnership as currently formulated and which some unions appear far too wedded to – actually opposed to government policies. Indeed as was pointed out to me yesterday in a conversation with an astute observer of such matters, it’s notable how the unions are being raised into the adversary in this contest of wills by the right and its media.

But note again that his definition of ‘class’ is almost entirely within the orbit of the political classes. One might even argue that he’s talking about what is termed ‘civil society’. Odd that.

Our ruling class showed similar self-belief throughout the Celtic Tiger era. That continues, despite so much evidence to the contrary. Just this week, for instance, the Department of Finance was shown once again to have got its projections for State income wrong. This is a skill perfected in the only way possible, through practice. The department got such practice throughout the Celtic Tiger period when its projections were wrong with a consistency which suggested genius. For this its officials were rewarded with ever-increasing salaries and generous bonuses.

All of them?

Hmmm…

What though of the cheerleaders for business, both in their representative bodies, such as ISME, SFA and IBEC? Or that legion of the rear-guard in the media whose shrill boosterism through the best of times was accompanied by the most breathless rhetoric in business and property supplements. Ah… [strokes chin, thoughtfully] property supplements.

Still, none of that for Patsy. For him no need to look behind the curtain for the strings. He’s taking on the puppets.

Our ruling class must be brought to book if the people of this State are to accept the pain necessary to get us all out of this awful mess. It must be seen to shed its vanity and lead by example. Colm McCarthy has shown how, in sections of his report which have attracted far too little attention.

So what does McGarry agree with? Well, what’s interesting is that he says…

He recommended that 17,000 public servants should go, and I would suggest that as many as practicable of these come from the “Sir and Lady Humphrey” level. A new income tax band for all on more than €150,000 a year should take care of the rest, including the judiciary and their “because we’re worth it” attitude. Further, no sitting TD should be allowed draw a pension of any sort until he or she retires.

‘As many as practicable’. No quibble with the numbers. Just assent, albeit with a populist tilt, writ large as it happens, in regard to TDs. I’ve no problem with the latter idea, indeed I’d argue that if the rest of the PS is being asked to bear hybrid pensions a la McCarthy then the same should hold true for TDs, etc. Although it would be interesting to get a bit more evidence of this ‘Sir and Lady Humphrey’ mindset. It seems to me, and at least one member of the McCarthy group bears this out if you care to examine their approach to pensions and bonuses, that such attitudes existed in the ferment of the early to mid 2000s where supposed ‘commercial’ approaches were meant to be introduced to the PS.

But…there’s no effort to divine whether the job cuts recommendations by McCarthy necessary? I’ve yet to be convinced that we’ve got over staffing in the public sector, albeit there are issues it would seem in the health area. However, note that McGarry cannot or will not dispute the idea that 17,000 public servants ‘should go’ – and what a neat little euphemism that is, whether or not McCarthy seeks outright redundancies or reductions through attrition (and his studied ambiguity, not to say contradictory statements, on that matter bear careful consideration).

Note too not a mention of private sector excess. This is almost all about the state, the public sector…and…McGarry goes further, for he seeks an essentially populist axe-wielding against the representative aspects of our democracy.

McCarthy proposed that local authorities and VEC numbers be reduced to 22 across the State. Who needs town commissions and all those county/city councillors with their hefty expenses? Who needs the Seanad? It costs €25 million a year. For what? All its decisions can be overturned by the Dáil and its tiny electorate of some graduates and all county councillors make it elitist and undemocratic. As McCarthy pointed out, fellow EU states such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Sweden can survive without its equivalent. So can we.

While it is true that the above mentioned countries manage without a bicameral system that doesn’t in and of itself support a compelling case for such a transition. Indeed, whatever about the gloomily predictable political carve-up of the Seanad it is a reflection of particularly Irish conditions. We don’t live in Latvia or Portugal. That’s self-evident and consequently easy comparisons should be eschewed. Or, let’s put it another way. Why not look at those European countries which retain bicameral parliaments. Why is that comparison not as valid?

We don’t need 166 TDs. Scotland, with a population larger than our own, has 129 members of its parliament. Do we even need that number? There is no doubt that any government which went to the country seeking to change the Constitution to reduce the overall number of TDs to, say, 100, would have no problem getting that through.

Scotland isn’t an independent state. The institutional arrangements there are subsidiary ones. Maybe that’s a trivial detail, but somehow I don’t think it is.

And while I’m all for reform of our democracy, over-representation per se doesn’t seem to me to be the basic problem. Indeed if anything I think it could be argued that engagement with representation is a greater problem by far (and for a country that takes at least some aspects of this seriously look at democracy as a facet of US life and where elections occur across a much wider range of areas than here – that throws up both positive and negative outcomes but if we’re talking about democracy…). And by such massive cuts into the level of representation it seems to me the potential for disparate voices to enter the system would be radically diminished. Now some may think that’s a price worth paying, but I tend to the opinion that democracy demands more, not less, voices. And feck it, if they’re divergent and cause problems, well so be it. I’m happier with a Ronán Mullen or a Pearse Doherty or Joe Higgins as our representatives than otherwise.

And then he continues…

After all the USA, which is somewhat larger than us, has just 100 senators, two for each state. Fine, it has 435 members of the House of Representatives – for a population of 307 million. Colm McCarthy’s proposed 22 local authorities could fill that role here.

Now, I’m no expert on the United States, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s a federal state, and that therefore it is impossible to map the House of Representatives onto the Dáil given that within each state of the union there exist representative structures above the level of local government (and by the way, the US has a remarkably complex level of government. It’s a simple mistake to make. It really is.

You see here’s the problem I have with his analysis. We live in a complex capitalist liberal democracy. And all these supposed ‘solutions’ seem to me to be tilted to a sort of reductionism or simplification. I’m innately wary of that. The society isn’t simple, there are no simple solutions, and it’s time people accepted that. If anything it’s going to grow even more complex and in that context I’d hope there were tough sinewy democratic representative institutions that attempted to engage as deeply and widely as is possible. And I don’t believe that can be done by cutting numbers.

But look, that’s almost a side issue given the way McGarry accepts all that has been set in front of him. There’s no questioning of the menu, merely a passive acceptance of its offerings. And, for all the populist touches, in truth what does he seek to alter in terms of the structural defects of this society? Precious little. In all the suggestions he makes I see no evidence that it would tilt the balance towards those with less rather than more. If anything, in what I suspect is a shiny technocratic world that he seems to aspire to, we’d see much the opposite. Fewer representatives. Lesser representation. Efficiency, defined by the prevailing orthodoxy. And an attack not on centres of power but on their manifestations, in some respects the most cosmetic aspects of same. Precious little.