The 2020 General Election in Ireland has been dominated by the idea that the Irish electorate is hungry for change. Whatever happens in the aftermath of the votes being counted, it is likely that the change made possible by the composition of the new Dáil will be incremental as opposed to being revolutionary.
Looking through the various party manifestos, it is striking what is emphasised. Whether the promise is an “Ireland for All” or “A Future to Look Forward To”, most of the agendas appear to offer little by way of change. The talking points that have framed Irish politics in the last decade prevail. When hundreds of thousands of Irish people exist in housing precarity or homelessness, the primary responses proposed are more of the same. Chapter headings literally replicate dreams of the previous generations out of the reach of many – “Owning your own home”. When the single major issue on doorsteps appears to be healthcare, no party clearly commits to abolishing the two-tier system. And while the word poverty occurs here and there – typically around ideas like “fuel poverty” or “funeral poverty”, arguably no party has the experience of being poor as a key concept. 15% of the Irish population suffer material deprivation. There is little sign that change for them is high on the political agenda.
I lead a social research centre called the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice [www.jcfj.ie]. I work at the point of intersection between public policy and Christian theology. My sense as a political analyst is that the deficiencies of the manifestos testifies more to the stretched and limited resources of the political parties in Ireland than to a fundamental failure to care for those who are most marginalised in our society. But my sense as a moral theologian is that the oversight about poverty reveals something basically amiss in Irish society. It is something that Christians should work to change, regardless of the form the new Government takes.
To explain this oversight, I will turn to a voice that few Christians in Ireland seem to have a lot of time for. Adam Smith, the father of economics, is often dismissed in caricature as the fore-father for brutal capitalism. Along with Karl Marx and John Calvin, he is one of those figures that has deeply shaped our intellectual, moral, and political imagination, but is rarely actually read.
Smith is most famous for his two volume tome on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, but that is an extension of his prior work: A Theory of Moral Sentiment. We often get regurgitated versions of the “invisible hand” that guides the market to a stable position but are rarely exposed to the fact that Smith assumes that the butcher, the brewer, and the baker can each pursue their self-interest because their lives are embedded within and only coherent due to the vitality of the rich communities they inhabit.
Thus, when he comes to think about poverty, Smith arrives at his conclusion – that it is bad, very bad – by a different route to contemporary thinkers. If I was to meet a senior civil servant or politician to discuss economic inequality in Ireland I would prepare my comments informed by people like Kate Pickett [https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/sep/18/kate-pickett-richard-wilkinson-mental-wellbeing-inequality-the-spirit-level] and Thomas Piketty [https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/dec/14/inequality-is-not-inevitable-but-the-us-experiment-is-a-recipe-for-divergence] and argue that inequality is lamentable because it weakens democracy or limits potential. Smith arrives at the same destination with different reasoning entirely: poverty is bad because it makes you socially invisible.
Coming back to the Irish election and the failure of any political party to frame their vision for a change in Irish society in terms of eliminating poverty, what we find is an implicit admission that the people who read manifestos are rich. Click into any of them (here are the three biggest parties: FG [https://election2020.finegael.ie/pdf/FG_GE20_Manifesto.pdf], FF [https://www.fiannafail.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Fianna-Fail-General-Election-Manifesto-2020.pdf], SF [https://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2020/SF_GE2020_Manifesto.pdf]) and you find the same polished, featureless writing that is well-known to anyone who has ever occupied a cubicle in a multinational corporation. They are not stirring documents meant to elicit the passions of the reader. They appear to be written by technocrats who think “wonk” is a complimentary term and the reader is trained by engagement with them to imagine that with just the right tinkering, we might make gradual steps towards a better society.
In other words: the change that we are being offered is more of the same. The “moral sentiment” that Smith theorised was a sort of creative empathy with the other, a Scottish common-sense Enlightenment-era adaptation of Matthew 5:41 [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+5%3A41&version=NIV]. Wealth, Smith observes, does not simply mean you accumulate capital. It means you more easily acquire this sentiment. Those who endure poverty however, are not just limited to leaking roofs and stale bread. The tragedy of economic inequality is that “the poor man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel.” The rich, Smith teaches, are as a rule frivolous and fully of vanity. If only they could look and see those below them, they would be forced to change. But if we continue to live in a society where the rich are supreme and where acclaim is associated with acquisition, then we can anticipate the ever-deepening corruption of our moral sentiments.
Ireland is hungry for change, we are told. Christians have the raw materials to approach these questions in a radically different direction. Famously, the Hebrew Scriptures depict the poor positively. The faithfully impoverished, those who are bowed down under the burden of the rich – the anawim – are a category that the writers of the texts return to repeatedly. The New Testament arguably radicalises this trajectory. Readers can search in vain for a single verse that praises the state of being wealthy and will instead find it repeatedly being associated with corruption and a very active threat to our souls. The early church took this idea seriously and found ways to put into practice. While Graeco-Roman societies typically recognised little social responsibility to care for the poor, the Church Fathers and Mothers brim ceaselessly with regard and respect for those who do not enjoy material surplus – John Chrysostom is representative when he declared: “I beg you, remember this without fail: that not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs” [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wealth-Poverty-Saint-Chrysostom-John/dp/088141039X].
Forsaking the mythic belief that more material wealth will lead to richer lives is the first step Christians in Ireland can take to re-centre the conversation on those who are marginalised. In Christian language, such a forsaking is better described as repentance.
Kevin Hargaden
Kevin is the Director and Social Theologian at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin. He holds degrees in Computer Science, Sociology, and Theology and completed his PhD. in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen under the supervision of Brian Brock and Stanley Hauerwas.
He is the author of several books, most recently Theological Ethics in a Neoliberal Age (Cascade, 2018). Kevin works in conjunction with the team to reflect theologically on political and policy issues.