CONNECT: The market is an essential element in economics, but toooften nowadays it is a dictatorial one in politics and, by implication, in society.
'We are no longer the last best hope of Earth but merely a seedy, imperial state," says Gore Vidal of his native United States. "We are witnessing a Europe swinging back towards the right and sometimes towards the extreme right. And France is no different. Why should it be? Pink Europe is finished," says Claude Allégre, a former French education minister. A "seedy imperial state", already controlled by the rampant right, and a Europe forgetting the horrors of its fascist past? Grim outlooks and a grim context.
In the week of Vidal's and Allégre's pronouncements, Bertie ("A lot done. More to do") Ahern called a general election in our own seedy State. (No doubt there are more corrupt governments, institutions and individuals in other countries, but the Ireland of tribunals and paedophiles is undeniably a seedy state.) Through a combination of public relations, spin doctoring and the application of such market research systems as focus groups, Ahern is expected to win again. Voter apathy, particularly among younger adults, should help him too.
Anyway, we'll see. Reaction to the rise in France of Jean-Marie Le Pen has perhaps been hysterical. None the less, his ousting of Lionel Jospin from tomorrow's decisive vote has incontrovertibly left French voters with a typical US-style choice between right and righter. With Tony Blair as a Thatcher in trousers, Britain has already - albeit less dramatically - adopted the politics of right and righter. Likewise in Ireland, where, because of civil war politics and Catholic Church hegemony, there has never been a seriously influential left anyway.
For decades, the committed Irish left, such as it was, yearned for civil war politics and Catholic Church hegemony to wane. Then the conditions for an upsurge in support for left parties would exist and be exploited. That, at any rate, was the idea. Now however, even with civil war politics and Catholic Church power sinking into history, the Irish left, like its counterparts in most of the rest of the wealthy world, is a very pale pink indeed. Quite simply, the affluent countries are not motivated by any collective objective other than to remain affluent.
Time was when fighting for individual freedom was not considered incompatible with fighting for collective emancipation.
Now though, largely due to marketing - consumerism's propaganda - "freedom" is almost exclusively identified with individual choice without reference to the social consequences. "Because I'm worth it" articulates the marketed narcissism of our times. Private and selfish interests - no matter how oafish the marketing propaganda that seeks to legitimise them morally - have seriously eroded left-wing values.
Of course, times have changed. Even the humiliated Jospin has long acknowledged that "the market is an essential element in economics and perhaps decisive for the purposes of wealth creation", albeit adding "but we cannot accept a free-market society". Certainly, the market is an essential element in economics, but too often nowadays it is a dictatorial one in politics and, by implication, in society. When Fianna Fáil says it's got "A lot done. More to do", you would be wise, if you have not been done yet, to realise that you soon could be.
Fine Gael is, at least, aware of that much. As a result, its campaign stresses the deterioration in the quality of daily Irish life. The party has discovered "community" and argues that the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats coalition promotes a culture of individual greed. Fair enough, it does. Yet Fine Gael remains slavish before the market too and the party's history is such that its belated triumphing of "community" sounds more like a tactical attempt to differentiate it from Fianna Fáil than a deeply held ideological value. Again, right and righter.
Predictably, the Labour Party has had its centrist economic policies attacked by the employers' outfit IBEC and by Seán Barrett, TCD's fundamentalist marketeer. Given that any policy to the left of Attila the Hun represents a hideous red menace for IBEC, its attack is not surprising.
IBEC argues for the competitiveness of Irish business - fair enough - perpetually haranguing us that the more competitive we are, the better for Irish society overall.
Tellingly, however, it studiously avoids adding that the motor of such trumpeted and personally profitable altruism is self-serving avarice. (Must be because they reckon they're worth it.)
Whatever their reasoning, the overarching reality appears to be that contemporary consumer societies, by their nature, compel political structures to adapt to them. Indeed, the end of the free market must be to wipe out politics completely. After all, if the sovereignty of consumers prevails over everything else, there's no point in politics.
Ultimately, the political process becomes a by-product of the market. The rise of the PR merchants, the spinners and the focus groups means that most political argument is about as truthful as most commercial advertising. In that sense, the depoliticisation of young people is perhaps more understandable. Certainly, affluence and narcissism suggest a deepening vein of selfishness among young adults but, savvy to the contemporary world, they have a point when they say they're fed up being fed political lies.
Why more of them are not fed up being fed commercial lies is another matter. It's true that anti-globalisation activists are angered - sometimes fanatically so - by commercial propaganda.
But their opposition is routinely cast as typical of the single-issue politics of the young rather than as a unified critique which recognises that economics have practically devoured politics. As wisecrack slogans go, "It's the economy, stupid" is as crass as it's pertinent.
Anyway, it's as if the wealthy world, having turned dramatically right a couple of decades ago, has become as typically conservative as a wealthy family that has seen the system serve it well. As technology has made the context of our lives increasingly global, class divisions between countries have replicated the kind of divisions which used to animate right/left clashes within individual countries. Ireland, because there's a few bob in the place, is now as economically conservative as it was socially when the Church, not business, was the dominant power.
The Progressive Democrats are keen to flog off the ESB, Bord Gáis and Aer Lingus to IBEC-ites or wannabe IBEC-ites.
Such a move could be expected to be economically progressive for those who bought these companies. It would inevitably be democratically regressive, however. Such "enterprise" seeks to show that markets are economically and morally superior to all other forms of organisation. Certainly, they can generate higher short-term profits and a higher share price, but it's cowboy economics, really.
So, as right-wing political parties throughout Europe seek, out of context, to ape the economic practices of the United States, a "one size fits all" orthodoxy prevails. The US is practically a continent of 280 million people, who share language, government, legal system and internal market. Its companies have produced on a scale unknown in other countries and, as a result, have been able to abide by the rule that the more you make, the lower the cost per unit.
Importing US economic ideology, however, without acknowledging local differences in politics, history and culture is a form of fundamentalism.
Certainly, there are things we can learn from the US. It would be ludicrous to think otherwise. But if even an American, such as Gore Vidal, fears that the reasonable human motivation to turn a profit has now become a mania, perhaps we ought to listen. Right may or may not be all right, but righter - remember they know there are still more of us to do - is not.