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TK Whittaker, RIP, is the closest thing Irish capitalism has to a saint. Which is important for it, since most of its icons, Haughey, Bertie, Alan Kelly, etc are rapacious gangsters & everyone knows it.
The Whittaker hagiography promoted by the ruling class & their propaganda outlets encourages us to believe a huge lie - that since the 1960s & the 'opening' of Irish national resources to unregulated multinational exploitation everything has gone brilliantly for everyone.
Forget about the long & brutal 1980s then. Forget about the last recession - the one that they pretend is over but we know is really only taking a break.
Forget about the fact that we are now more vulnerable to inevitable international economic catastrophes than ever.
Your son isn't really in Australia drinking himself to death in a mining village. Your mother didnt really have to scrub floors in London at the age of 16.
Viewed as a small chapter in the history of globalization, what Whitakker did was partially solve the emigration problem by repatriating the multinational exploitation of Irish workers.
Due to generations of ruling class piracy following the defeat of the Irish revolution in 1923, emigration was so severe in the 1950s that it threatened the very existence of the state.
After TK, no longer, at least some years, did we have to go to London, Sydney, or Boston to make a profit for a rich man - we could help him out right here at home.
He integrated the Irish ruling class into the global system of super-exploitation, and havent they been happy as pigs in a shit-Jacuzzi on a Lear Jet ever since!
And in the decades where despite the miracles of Saint Whitaker we have to emigrate anyway, we can now get a cheap ryanair flight (as long as we dont bring any luggage) instead of a ferry. Thanks TK!
He pioneered the ideology - fatal for so many in its disastrous effects! - that the state should invest more in 'productive capital' & less in 'unproductive capital'. That is, more in multinational tax scams, less in schools and hospitals.
So he set us on the road to where we are today - best place in the world, bar none, for multinational money laundering. And, connectedly, part of what imperialists call the 'Third World' for public health.
As well as stratified along rigidly class lines when it comes to education.
A point worth making is that, although TK Whitakker is endlessly praised for his contribution to Irish democracy, & he was the most powerful man in Ireland for much of his life, in charge of most of the central institutions of the gombeen state at one point or another - central bank, esri, dept of finance - nobody ever voted for him.
He was never exposed to democracy, not for a second, in his 50 years at the top. His power was handed to him entirely from above, by ruling class appointment, to do ruling class jobs.
This tells us all we need to know about 'Irish Democracy'.
