President on capitalism - A system that fails far too many

“Europe is therefore more than an economic space of contestation in which our citizens are invited or required to deliver up their lives in the service of an abstract model of economy and society whose core assumptions they may not question or put to democratic test in elections.”

- President Michael D Higgins,

European Parliament, Strasbourg, Wednesday

Addressing the European parliament President Michael D Higgins spoke challengingly of the unequal relationship between many European citizens and the economies that define their societies. He recognised how millions of Europeans are trapped, how they are poorly served by a system that they cannot lead, control or reject. He recognised that democracies have been, and continue to be, unequal to the great task of controlling the dreadnought economic forces that shape our lives.

He warned of unsettling and dangerous possibilities if this situation, this system of indentured silenced lives, continues. He did not need to labour this point as history, especially the bloody history of the last century, does it frighteningly and spectacularly for him.

That we have, by one definition, an unemployment rate of around 23% makes his remarks all the more pertinent and pressing. That unions representing 300,000 Government employees have rejected Croke Park II, a central plank in returning to something approaching national solvency, on the very day he made that speech underlines how broken the relationship between Government and citizen is. It will test the skills and diplomacy of all involved if this unavoidable issue is to be resolved without further weakening that link.

That President Higgins made this speech a day before thousands of Irish citizens struggling to repay mortgages found out that a life bordering on genteel poverty would be their sentence, if they are to stay in a home they bought with the full support and encouragement of the very institutions now threatening them with eviction, supports his theory too. That these citizens are all but powerless in that relationship underlines another of President Higgins’ arguments. That they are in this position of servitude because they did no more than want to have a roof over their head points to a systems failure that would be unacceptable in any other sphere of life.

That President Higgins made the speech within weeks of the immoral assertion by the developer Sean Dunne that he regards his multimillion-euro debts to this State discharged because he once paid tax here and once offered employment here proves again that there is one law for the rich and another for mere mortals. That Mr Dunne’s delusion does not make him in any way unique underlines that point again.

On Wednesday, President Higgins gave his theoretical assessment of how today’s top-heavy capitalism has failed so many. As those forced to renegotiate mortgages with lenders, as those public servants facing a further reduction in their standard of living, as those unable to find any work, as those forced to emigrate against their wishes, as those who have lost businesses will confirm the practicalities of that situation are daunting.

Yet there seems little momentum or even appetite — or even a recognition that it is necessary — to remake capitalism so it might sustain even the modest ambitions of the great majority of ordinary people.

Can those in a position to do so really be so ignorant, or indifferent to history’s awful lessons?