Read e-book Up the Republic!: Towards a New Ireland

Fintan O'Toole

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The "ideas" are mostly unobjectionable but are hardly inspiring calls for sweeping action. Ship of Fools and Enough is Enough both gave expression to widespread anger at the policies of the rich and their political institutions and were written with a genuine sense of urgency that something must be done.

However, they were also extremely politically limited given the scale of the crisis embroiling Ireland and the globe in the aftermath of Wall Street's implosion. Unfortunately, the political limitations of his two books dealing with Ireland's economic crisis come even more to the fore in Up the Republic: Towards a New Ireland.

Fundamentally, O'Toole fails to locate Ireland's crisis in the context of the failure of global capitalism.

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Up the Republic!: Towards a New Ireland [Fintan O'Toole] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com * FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In this important book, historians, lawyers. In these essays, scholars address the idea of the Irish Republic. review: Up the Republic! Towards a New Ireland, Edited by Fintan O'Toole.

Up the Republic 's attempt to systematize the Irish meltdown in the generalities of what republicanism means moves further from the problem and deeper into irrelevant abstraction. This at once demonstrates Germany's hegemonic power within the European Union and Ireland's subservient relationship the European institutions.

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It clarified what had been murky It marked the death of an illusion: And it raised a poignant question: This is shocking and true, but surely this is a question that could be asked of any nation-state anywhere on the planet. The Republic of Ireland is a member of the European Union where neoliberal policies for all member states are increasingly determined in Brussels not locally. The tendency during the crisis has been toward more authoritarian government and greater "democratic deficits" in order to ram through state organized bailouts on behalf of bankers, investors and privileged minorities.

Capitalism without democracy is not a contradiction. The European Union is a project in the interests of the continents ruling classes, including those in Ireland, where the goals of increasing capital accumulation and making Europe competitive have intentionally eroded political accountability.

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The mostly academic contributors in Up the Republic take up the question of what "republicanism" means and point toward lofty but well-meaning terms such as common good, citizen participation, equality and justice. However, the limitations of any kind of republic, whether in Ireland or elsewhere, that is dominated by capitalism are not addressed at all. It is the avoidance of any discussion of capitalism as a totality, class and class struggle that gives it an abstract and out of touch feel.

The words on the page have drifted away from the concerns of the real, the living and the struggling.

Civil Society and the Republic," Fred Powell presents a caricatured version of Karl Marx who rejected "civil society" in favor of "Gramsci's perspective" where we are told "the revolutionary task was not about the Jacobin-Leninist of seizure of power, its inevitable violence and totalitarian outcome. Powell's caricature of Marx continues when he tells us that Gramsci "fundamentally changed Marx's economic determinism by adding culture to the cause of revolutionary change.

One wouldn't know from Powell's interpretation that Gramsci founded an Italian Communist Party modeled and inspired by Lenin and Russian Bolsheviks with the goal of a working-class seizure of political and economic power. Surely we can raise our horizons beyond an administration that pushed through austerity and made it easier to fire workers?

Such gushing praise for social democrats in power points depressingly toward the limitations of O'Toole's political vision. Yet, elsewhere he has become increasingly sharp in his criticism's of the Irish Labour Party--now a junior partner of the governing coalition, for their implementation of austerity, the betrayal of their mission and supporters.

The attempt to take up the question of what a republic means and could be in the context of forging "another Ireland" certainly has merit.

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Hardcover , pages. Published November 1st by Faber Faber first published October 30th To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Up the Republic! Lists with This Book. Colin Prendergast rated it liked it Dec 01, Joseph Browne rated it it was ok Mar 15, John Colgan rated it liked it May 28, Randal rated it liked it Jan 28, Jackie rated it liked it Dec 30, Robert rated it liked it Jan 13, Richard rated it liked it Nov 16, Craig rated it really liked it Oct 26, Jamie Burke rated it it was ok Oct 08, Jack O'Dwyer-Henry rated it really liked it May 25, Gerard Melia rated it really liked it Nov 08, Bob Hanks rated it really liked it Apr 18, Ross Malervy rated it liked it Jan 04, Tim Morrissey rated it liked it May 26, Droydicus Malojan rated it liked it Mar 05, Barry Magee added it Nov 10,