This site takes its name from Edmund Spenser’s genocidal tract of 1596, A View of the Present State of Irelande. In his country of origin—the country he returned to when he was forced out of Ireland, the castle he had seized having been burnt down—Spenser is remembered as a poet. In Ireland he may best be regarded as a more than usually violent colonist, being a functionary of the first generation of settler colonists that we suffered, a senior figure in the massacre of natives as well as Spanish and Italian forces sent to assist during the Second Desmond Rebellion. One can get a First in Cambridge for writing about his poetry without even knowing of his violence (unless a troublesome Irish acquaintance alerts you to this fact, which you can then ignore, safe in the knowledge that your Department will not want to hear of it); perhaps in the Cambridge Art History Department one can write of the early twentieth century Austrian painter A. H—r and get a First for that.

There is, clearly, an irony to the appropriation of the name of Present State for this site, as well as the fusion of the name of an Early Modern text with a much later style taken from tedious eighteenth century Periodicals. Macdara has to pass the time, same as anyone else, what can he say? His own ways are a mystery to him. In any case, he offers these thoughts here by way of an aside; what he intends exploring is what he really means when he refers to the Present State. The first two pieces of the site offer some thinking specifically on the Irish locus, but let us take a broader view here of the setting within which Macdara’s interventions are made.

Following the so-called Second World War, Europe entered a period of social protection that was later removed. Now why, with State intervention, did the elites decide to share some of the returns on Capital with Labour? Were they just nice? No, they did it for the single reason that the rich will ever share what they have stolen: fear. 

The existence of the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact represented a standing threat to the Western European countries. Firstly in the sense of being an alternative bloc sharing the continent, a set of armies pledged to work together, inimical to the little treats offered by Capitalism. Secondly in the sense that the Communists represented a force of varying size and influence within most European states of Capitalo-Democracy, and at times, in certain countries, a force of immense size and ethical power. 

To keep internal enemies real, imagined or potential, onside, handing out treats would be insufficient. The Workers wanted part of the meal, sitting at the table. Under duress, the capitalist system, supremely adaptable—though always based on the destruction of the Planet—could accommodate the needs of workers to ensure that they would remain System-syntonic: and so we came to have the famous European social democracy! That is a Western European we, and does not quite apply to Ireland, wherein a corporatist model held sway through decades of under-development and mass emigration; the Workers’ Party, an interesting and eccentric Eurocommunist outfit, becoming an important force only in the final years of the USSR (there was also the matter of the National Question, Republicanism being a sort of displaced Class politics).

To be clear: it was fear alone that facilitated this transformation, which reverted, in the absence of this fear from the nineties onwards, to the natural state of capitalism: the increasing immiseration of the working and unworking poor. The discipline, fraternity and intelligence of the Communist movement, its sense of being an alternative to the State that would be ready to step into and transform the State given the right conjuncture, has been lost. 

It is the opinion of the present writer that this loss can be measured not only in the destroyed lives that have been lived (or not) so far, but also in future lives, given the lack of a social force that could have been mobilised for decarbonisation. The extraordinary economic transformation of the energy transition necessitates the creation of a new type of social creature, one who will make her decisions based on energy expenditure, carbon intensity, wider societal concerns, and who may forego what they want for one of a set of other reasons; it is only the Communist movement that could have mobilised this creature. It is only through the intellectual and organisational force of Communism that this creature could have been created at all. The appeal to equality, to an agency that considers more than just money and pleasure, factoring in multiple values in any calculation of expenditure; this is dystonic to capitalism, and to the greed-based decision-making of democracy as practised in capitalist economies. 

Only Communists were and are accustomed to seeing, say, the blood in the commodities available for purchase in any familiar shop, in the way that we must now consider the blood and carbon associated with each commodity. Only Communists could frighten the corrupt regimes of the West. The lack of any available hope in a Late Capitalist world busy accomplishing the destruction of the ecosystem on which all life on the planet relies, might give rise to a revival of the only movement that can offer such hope; perhaps the exotic quality of the word Communist, its status as near-obsolete, will assist in reviving it. Does it not feel good to say, does it not give a jolt of something—of History, is that it? But fascism is so much easier to wear, and available for free in this economy. Socialism is work—work we need to do, of course—oh but Barbarism is no work at all!