The Cedar Lounge Revolution

COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND: STATEMENT: – BANK OF IRELAND JOB LOSES. July 20, 2010

COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND

16th July

STATEMENT: – BANK OF IRELAND JOB LOSES.

The announcement today by Bank of Ireland that it would be cutting its workforce by 750 jobs to be imposed over the next two years is clearly just the beginning. These job losses come on the back of thousands of jobs already gone from the financial services sector and at a time when Ireland is recording record levels of unemployment – even though the experts tell us we are out of the recession!

What is clearly missing from the mainstream media and establishment debate is an historical economic perspective that questions the role played by finance in the economic system, capitalism, today. The same so-called economic experts (that usually work for financial institutions) that informed public opinion prior to the collapse are brought out to propose solutions. Rarely, with a few notable exceptions, do they ask serious questions about the fundamentals that drive the economic system.

This critically necessary debate is being ignored or silenced by a compliant media, a media largely owned by the same people that profit off the current system.

Capitalism is a cyclical boom bust system. The days of competitive capitalism are long over. Today a number of trans-national monopolies operate, invest and create profits across sectors. This has a profound impact upon the accumulation process and has led to the spectre of over-production and over-accumulation haunting the capitalist system.
The productive real economy has been in deep stagnation for some time. Profits globally from manufacturing and non-finance related activities have been on the decline since the 1960’s. Despite the increase in military manufacturing and spending this deep rooted stagnation (due to the capacity of the system to over-produce and its failure to increase market demand) exists and will continue to exist subject to no technological innovations on the scale of the railways or automobile transforming society.
It is in this context that the system turned to finance to become the primary source of investment, capital creation and expenditure for working people and the basis of necessary growth in capitalism. Important to note is that this was not a conspiratorial coup by a number of bankers, nor was it an opted policy choice by Governments. It was the only manner by which the system could avoid its dreaded and unavoidable problem of stagnation.
It is hard to pin down an exact date but safe to say that for the last 20 years debt and speculative finance, with consequential bubbles in various sectors, have been the primary avenue for existing capital to be invested and the primary avenue of profit creation for the system. Wages have dramatically declined with working people being increasingly reliant upon debt to survive or enhance their quality of life. This process, known often as the financialisation of the economy, is key to understanding the action of the Irish Government and the EU.
The function of the so-called bailouts is not the saving of personal friends of Fianna Fail or politicians and shouldn’t been seen in this light as it far more systemic than this. For capitalism to function, to exist, there must be a profitable avenue for accumulated capital to invest in. Finance, financial instruments and debt, are that avenue. The bailout is a required attempt at stabilising the system to enable the accumulation process to continue. To enable capitalism survive.
It is an absolute necessity if ones starting point and primary desire is the maintenance of capitalism regardless of its human or environmental cost.
However, if you are more concerned with jobs, families, quality of life, democracy, justice and equality then there is an alternative route to take. It is not reform of the system because no reform can abolish the fundamental necessity of capital to recreate and accumulate and consequently its need for debt and financial instruments as this avenue. Not reform but transformative.

By transformative we mean economic and social demands that challenge politically the economic system. That challenge the owners of capital and the control they possess over people and society. That mobilise working people to view an economic system as only a means by which society produces and distributes for all and judge the success of a system on this basis.

We believe such an economic system can be built from the struggle of working people for dignity and respect under the current system. No blue print can be provided but the struggle against the massive redistribution of wealth from working people to capital is the starting point.

We propose as some demands for working people:

• The creation of a State Development Bank;
• Planned investment to meet the needs of working people;
• Control over our islands natural resources;
• Utilisation of wind and wave energy supplies; and
• The development of an all-Ireland economy utilising local resources and talents.

A more detailed development of this strategy can be found in the economic pamphlet “An economy for the common good.” published by the Communist Party of Ireland.