Joe Higgins brought to Dail Eireann a sense of the real anger felt by many working people. Joe used the Dail as a platform to raise genuine socialist ideas as opposed to the grey uniformity of all the parties be they right or so called left.

Workers' Rights

Going right back to 1997 building workers were engaged in protests against the black economy. Workers were not receiving proper pensions and health benefits. In that struggle two building workers were jailed. Joe Higgins brilliantly highlighted their struggle in the Dail when he stood up in the Chamber with his hands handcuffed in protest at the imprisonment of the workers. His protest resulted in a suspension from the Dail.

GAMA

Joe Higgins also raised the plight of migrant workers. This brutal exploitation was graphically highlighted by him when he exposed the slave wages and working conditions of the Turkish workers employed by the construction firm GAMA.

The use of Dail platform enabled Joe Higgins to put the government under ferocious pressure on this issue and that coupled with determined struggles of the GAMA workers forced the company to pay back most of the money they had stolen from the workers.

Against Imperialism and War

Joe Higgins was to the fore in the challenge against the government’s support for the war in Iraq and their willingness to allow US troops use Shannon. In 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq under his suggestion the Technical Group gave three hours of private members’ time over to the issue. Compare his absolute and resolute hammering of the Irish government’s participation in the slaughter of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Green Party’s slavish capitulation on the same issue in return for two Cabinet seats!

Big business, corruption and Bertie Ahern

Most people remember Joe’s unrivalled ability to wind Bertie Ahern up in the Dail. He regularly made Ahern squirm by constantly exposing the links between Fianna Fail, big business and the construction industry. He exposed the government for allowing the massive property speculation and profiteering in housing. He brilliantly ridiculed Bertie Ahern’s claims to be a socialist and when the issue of Bertie’s whip round by his rich friends came up, unlike the rest of the opposition who didn’t want to deal with the issue in case it lost them votes, Joe didn’t hold back.

Jailed

In 2003 he was imprisoned in Mountjoy along with Cllr. Clare Daly for a month for protesting against the bin tax and refusing to abandon the people who elected him.

Natural resources

Joe was also a strong supporter in the Dail of the community in Rossport who have long campaigned against the Corrib gas terminal. Joe Higgins was the lone voice in 1998 to condemn the criminal decision of the FF/PD government to give away a valuable gas resource to the multinationals.

These examples are just a few of the ways that Joe Higgins was able to use his position as a workers’ TD on a worker’s wage to fight for the rights of the working class in Ireland and internationally. Joe Higgins will continue to be a leading figure in the struggles of working class people and on his re-election as a TD will be a thorn in the side of whatever capitalist politicians are in government.

Inherent Contradictions of Capitalism
Capitalism is first and foremost an economic system based on the production of commodities for profit. Different corporations and countries fight each other for markets. For capitalism, profits are essential in order for corporations to be able to re-invest, improve productivity and competitiveness. The development of the productive forces, of new techniques and therefore investment is an integral part of the system. If a capitalist doesn’t do this they simply will not be able to compete and their potential to make profits collapses.

Karl Marx scientifically analysed capitalism through the method of dialectical materialism. It was proven that the working class (not just the stereotypical blue collar factory worker but any individual that has to sell their labour in order to survive- from industrial workers to bank tellers, office workers, teachers and engineers) produces the wealth in society in the form of goods and services but a large portion of this wealth is taken by the capitalists (those who own the means of production or massive amounts of capital in another form) for themselves and for investment purposes.

Capitalism is a cyclical system; it goes through periods of boom and recession. The reason behind this is due to the crisis of over-production;
Competition between capitals-whether individual capitalists, companies or nations-each out to grab the largest amount of profit leads to the formation of a general rate of profit. Competition also gives rise to a tendency for the general rate of profit to fall. Better, more efficient ways of producing commodities are introduced; labour is made more productive and slashed to cut costs. However commodities are not produced based on planned societal needs. They are produced, placed on the market to see how demand and supply interact and what’s left over is retained so as to keep prices artificially high keeping profits intact. Hence the EU food mountain created to keep the price of agricultural goods high, while more than 700 million people starve in the developing world. Over-production thus means too many commodities have been produced to realise an adequate profit for the capitalist. Markets collapse, businesses shut down and people lose jobs. Prices rise as investment is more risky, unemployment rises and those who are still employed are usually on a lower wage. This results in less discretionary spending for consumers, less investment and less income for business and so on and so forth.

Capitalism reverts to a position where investment will become profitable once again only through increased unemployment, lower standards of living, cuts in wages and benefits etc. Therefore it is the working class that pay the price for the inherent contradiction within this system, not the capitalist class (who are a very small minority).

Socialism
If the problems society faces flow from the ownership of wealth by a tiny minority, then the alternative is to socialise the ownership of the productive forces. Capitalism itself has created the basis to end all economic problems as it has developed techniques to such a level that human labour can produce far more wealth than any one individual needs in order to have a decent life.

A socialist economy would have to be a planned economy. This would involve bringing all of the big corporations and financial institutions, which control around 80% of the Irish economy, into democratic public ownership, under working-class control. Of course, it would not mean bringing small businesses into public ownership or taking away personal ‘private property’. It would be necessary to draw up a plan, involving the whole of society, on what industry needed to produce. At every level, in communities and workplaces, committees would be set up and would elect representatives to local, regional and national government –these representatives would be held accountable for their act