In a recent report on Ireland, the International Monetary Fund expressed a concern that the population might be experiencing ‘contraction fatigue’.

The implication was that while the government had been successful in imposing savage attacks in the past two years, the IMF worried that the population might not accept much more.

A similar opinion was echoed by Dan Boyle, the would-be sage of the Green Party who claimed that the government’s target of cutting the budget deficit by 2014 might not be ‘politically feasible’.

There is a growing nervousness in elite circles about the political strains caused by the destruction of living standards. The elite can congratulate themselves that they have pressurised a spineless union leadership to accept their programme of cuts – but even if the union bureaucrats are on board, it does not follow that discontent will not manifest itself in other ways.

Different signs of rebellion are starting to emerge. Despite claims, for example, that there are no protests in Ireland, over 30,000 people have taken part in marches to save local hospitals in the past six months.

Discontent is also growing in the unions and a major defection of key public sector workers from SIPTU now looks as if it is imminent.

The government’s strategy to counter this discontent is to pump up propaganda about a recovery. Sometimes, it appears as if we are living in an old style one party state where a controlled media pushes the same message: Better Times are Ahead – So Keep Accepting Cuts.

A classic example was the RTE report coverage of a recent article by ESRI ‘experts’ on the economy. Academics write article every day of the week, but this was presented as a Very Important Piece.

The RTE report actually started with a statement about ‘Good news from the ESRI’, claiming that a recovery is under way and that, according to their ‘High Growth’ scenario, the economy will move back to full unemployment. The fact that 140,000 people might be forced to emigrate even on this ‘high growth scenario’ was only a minor detail.

The current technique of state propaganda operates in three main ways.

First, there is a deliberate effort to accentuate the positive to promote social acceptance of the cuts programme. There is a return to the motto ‘don’t talk down the economy – it is unpatriotic’.

So, for example, the RTE report did not mention this rather significant excerpt from the ESRI article

‘ Under all scenarios it is clear that the economy has experienced a permanent major loss of output relative to what might have happened if more sensible policies had been pursued over the past decade and the full severity of the recession had been avoided. Output could end up 15 to 20 per cent below where it would have been without the crisis. Income per head is to-day back to where it was in 2000 and, even under our more optimistic scenario, it will be the middle of the coming decade before income per head will be back to its 2007 level. ‘

Or to put that more simply: it will be 2015 before people’s living standards can expect to rise again!

Second, talk of an imminent global upturn is never questioned. The Irish government’s strategy is to cut wages in order to be more ‘competitive’ when that upturn comes – so it must not be questioned.

The real story, however, is growing nervousness about a double dip recession. Yesterday, for example, the US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, said that the outlook for the US was “unusually uncertain”. One of the reasons is the governments have been panicked by financiers and have cut back on their stimulus programmes.

Third, agencies like the ESRI are presented as neutral bodies who are the font of wisdom. In reality, the ESRI – like most Irish economic institutions - are controlled by neoliberal economists whose faith in ‘free markets’ have not be shaken by the Wall Street Crash of 2008. They simply combine two contradictory ideas: government intervention to save economies is wrong; government interventions to save banks are right.

The ESRI is a champion of wage cuts. On the 24^th January 2009, for example, ESRI Professor John Fitzgerald claimed that if there were wage cuts there would be a substantial reduction in unemployment ‘after three or four years’ – i.e. by January 2012 or 2013.

No caveat was entered about emigration – his hypothesis was that wage cuts would bring a ‘substantial reduction’ in unemployment by those dates.

Yet the same learned Professor is now adding in a slight qualification to his prediction: between 140,000 and 200,000 people will first have to emigrate.

Karl Popper once argues that if a prediction is unfalsifiable, it is meaningless. On that criterion John Fitzgerald’s predictions are worse than useless because he keeps adding ‘minor adjustments’ to get the right answer.

The current agenda of the ESRI is to push for a reduction of 40,000 public sector jobs; even more severe cuts to pay for the hand out to Anglo-Irish bank; and forcing people to work until they are 67 before they get a pension.

Clearly, these people are not neutral experts – they are ideological warriors for their class. And the RTE News which reports these sermons from the high priest of capitalism has become a state propaganda machine.

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