Socialism is neither dead nor the property of the Taoiseach, writes Kieran Allen. Real socialists would tackle land speculators around Dublin.
What a strange world. Bertie Ahern has found "socialism" and with the zeal of a convert keeps mentioning it in media interviews. Yet former radicals like Patrick O'Dea (Irish Times, December 2nd) cannot stop recanting. He wants a decent "funeral, burial or cremation" because, as a good social worker, he needs a "letting-go ritual".
Bertie Ahern may be a political novice in dialectical theorising - but at least he recognises that socialism did not die in 1989. The regimes of eastern Europe were based on dictatorship, brutality and super-exploitation. Socialism means more democracy, not less.
Under capitalism we vote every four or five years on how "to run the country" - but democracy then stops at the office or factory door. If, flushed with enthusiasm for the democratic process, you dare to suggest that the workers in your job might take some decisions about what is produced and by what method, you will quickly be shown that same door.
Patrick O'Dea must have been acting out his own caricature when he stood outside McDonald's shouting "Down with bunburger ideology". More serious socialists joined picket lines there when workers were denied a right to join a union - just as they also stood outside the Russian embassy to support free independent trade unions such as Solidarnosc.
Instead of belonging to either camp during the Cold War, Socialist Worker ran a masthead: "Neither Washington nor Moscow, but International Socialism." Mr O'Dea thinks we need to embrace the market. But which market? Of the 100 top economic units in the world economy today, 51 are firms.
Companies like General Motors are bigger than whole countries such as Ireland or South Africa. These corporations have the power to subvert democracy, to shape economies and, crucially, to do deals with each other to carve up the markets.
When water companies bid to take over a public service, few people realise that the same firms which act as rivals in one country, co-operate in another country to put in similar bids.
The concentration of wealth means that large firms often blackmail states to get big handouts of "corporate welfare". Remember how Irish taxpayers kept funding the AIB bank after it got into a little difficulty through speculating on the London insurance market.
Adam Smith's days of the "free" market are well and truly over. Real existing capitalism, as distinct from the idealised image found in economics textbooks, brings a fusion of political and economic elites.
Corporations, quite literally, buy political power to enforce a regime of low taxation on profits and hidden subsidies for themselves.
The result is a world of inequalities that have never been dreamt of before. Today three billionaires own more than the population of sub-Saharan Africa. In 1960, the ratio of income of the global wealthy to the poor was 30 to one. But by 1989, this had risen to 59.
Within the advanced Western economies, the gap between rich and poor has also grown. According to Business Week, a CEO earned roughly 40 times the wage of the average employee in 1960 - today the gap has widened to 600 times.
In Ireland there has been a redistribution of wealth - to the wealthy. About 10 per cent of the national income has been redistributed to those who control profits, dividends and rent.
No wonder that our pint-drinking Taoiseach has started to get the message. The glaring inequalities have become just too hard to hide. Socialists may not get huge votes but the causes they champion - opposition to war, to bin charges, a return to strong unions - are popular. As a skilled political opportunist, Bertie senses that the "times they are a changing" - again.
But he will have to do a little more to prove his socialist credentials. As a novice to left-wing causes, we can, perhaps, excuse his initial definition of socialism - namely that the rich and poor have an equal right to enjoy the state-owned Botanical Gardens.
If such a right exists, surely there is an even more powerful right to housing. Yet Mr Ahern's Government has cut back on social housing and left many at the mercy of the market forces that pushed prices beyond their reach. Real socialists would tackle the handful of speculators who control the land banks around Dublin. If ever there was a case for nationalisation, this is it.
Nor would real socialists tolerate a situation where medical treatment depends on the size of your wallet. Socialism surely means universal free healthcare - paid for through taxes on wealth.
Bertie may want to trumpet his more "caring image" by boasting that workers on the minimum wage will no longer pay tax. But real socialists ask the more fundamental question: why are one-third of Irish workers receiving just the minimum wage? After all, workers created the Celtic Tiger by giving record levels of productivity. Isn't it time to end gross exploitation and take key sectors of the economy, such as the banks, into public ownership?
Finally, when the very planet itself is in danger, a real socialist Taoiseach would not allow Ireland to so recklessly disregard the Kyoto treaty by spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Environmental problems cannot be tackled through competition and greed - our very survival as a species requires planning and co-operation. The left tide is coming back - and Bertie will have to keep running to stay ahead.
Kieran Allen is a UCD lecturer in sociology and editor of Socialist Worker