The 1950s were an economic boom decade for much of Europe with most countries seeing rapid economic and population growth. There were two European countries however that lost population during that decade: East Germany and Ireland. The East Germany case has an obvious explanation. The Ireland case though is interesting too, and it speaks to current debates between libertarians and the New Right (a motley crew of nationalists and social traditionalists who want to take conservatism in a much more statist direction).
There has been a lot of arguing between these two groups this week over Nippon’s purchase of U.S. Steel with New Right-aligned Senators J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley denouncing the deal. The details of that debate digress from the discussion I want to have here, but if you want to read a libertarian to Vance’s argument, there’s a good piece by Eric Boehm here. Amidst this discussion, Michael Brendan Dougherty said something striking. On Twitter, he argued that:
“The problem for economists is that humans are political animals, therefore in practice we can never reach the utopian white space on their charts which prove that in a world without politics, free trade is the optimal policy. No kidding. World peace is the optimal foreign policy too. Alas in real life there will never just be “the economy” there will always be a political economy.”
In Dougherty’s telling, market enthusiasts -and libertarians more generally- are these psychologically stunted creatures squinting at their charts, oblivious to human emotions, while their critics on the New Right are the ones who really understand humans and their politics. It made me chuckle a little because Dougherty wrote a whole book on Ireland (“My Father Left Me Ireland”) and yet he doesn’t seem to understand that there is possibly no country on Earth whose political trajectory better demonstrates the folly of the New Right and the deep emotional appeal of economic and personal liberty.
Ach tá Rudaí Eile Níos Tábhachtaí[1]
By the late 1950s, Ireland was stuck in a deep economic rut. One potential response, suggested by Ken Whitaker, the Minister of Finance, was to liberalize the economy and in particular to seek greater economic connection with Europe. Aemon de Valera, the Taoiseach (Ireland’s Prime Minister), a man who was the dominant political figure in Ireland from the 1920s to the 1960s, congratulated Whitaker on the economic growth that his plan would produce but added “ach tá rudaí eile níos tábhachtaí” which in Gaelic means “but there are more important things.” By that, he meant Irish nationalism, the preservation of a ‘pure’ Irish culture that he associated with rural pastoralism, and the maintenance of Ireland as a paragon of traditionalist Catholic cultural values.
De Valera and his Fianna Fail party ruled Ireland starting in the 1920s. In many ways, they pursued the exact kind of policies that today’s New Right in America proposes: autarkic economic nationalism married to strident, even repressive, social traditionalism. As soon as it took power, Fianna Fail massively raised tariffs in a drive for national economic self-sufficiency, and then it doubled down on those policies in the 1930s such that Ireland became the single most protectionist country in all of Europe with imports and exports falling by a combined 64 percent.[2] That set of protectionist policies did to the Irish what protectionism tends to do, it made most people poorer via higher prices while making the politically-connected, in this case the landed gentry and the state-connected manufacturers, a lot richer. Meanwhile, because it refused to be in any way associated with the British, Ireland did not enter World War II and then later refused to join NATO; this isolationism made it all the more…..isolated. Ireland would not join the IMF and World Bank until 1957 and would not join the GATT until 1967, two decades after its creation. This political economy approach kept Ireland closed and poor, a backwater by choice.
It was not just in the economic realm that de Valera and Fianna Fail were firmly set against modernity. They held tight to the nationalist ideal of a united Ireland. They clung to a self-image of Ireland as rural and simple. The Catholic Church was allowed, even encouraged, to maintain an iron grip on the education system and on all matters related to marriage, childbearing, child rearing, entertainment, arts, and culture. Censorship was pervasive and stern. The populace was intentionally kept less educated and less free.
And so, what happened? The young and the ambitious left in droves, voting with their feet as hard as they could. In 1957 alone, 1.8% of the population of the country left.[3] Women were particularly likely to emigrate. Eamon de Valera’s vision of Ireland was a proto-version of the New Right -economically protectionist, soaked in romantic nationalism, pastoral, traditionalist, with big roles for the Church and the State- and people couldn’t get away fast enough. They yearned to live somewhere else, anywhere else but there. Those were humans, with emotions. They did not flee because some economist showed them a fancy chart; they fled because the human soul detests poverty and craves freedom.
To Be Free is to Be Human
Today, Ireland is one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. It got there, slowly but surely, by rejecting all of that. First, it pursued greater economic connection with Europe, loosening the stranglehold of protectionism. Then, despite ruthless opposition from the Catholic Church, it began to culturally open up. Finally, with the Good Friday Agreement, it turned its back on the toxic nationalism that had cost it so much in so many ways. The Good Friday Agreement was not just a peace agreement. It was a decision to fully embrace modernity and all that comes with it (globalization, capitalism, technology, greater social liberalism). To the extent that Ireland has economic problems today, it is because it has a housing crisis that is itself rooted in growth-skeptic, pastoralist ideas and regulations about development and land use. Still, Ireland is doing very well, and it got there by embracing openness, change, and greater personal liberty. It was a decision to abandon everything Eamon de Valera prized. It was a decision to look at the romanticism, nostalgia, nationalism, and identity preoccupations that Dougherty reads into the Irish story and say “but there are more important things” (and they’d say it in English because outside of a few enclaves they’ve stopped speaking Gaelic).
Humans, with feelings, in Ireland politically chose this route of openness, change, and liberty. They were not bamboozled into it by soulless economists. They chose this route because of the pain of emigration, the shame of poverty, the despair of The Troubles, the thrill of ambition, the deeply human instinct to want to leave a bright future to our children, and the unstoppable human urge to seek freedom and prosperity. This is the lesson of Ireland for American politics today. A prosperous future can be had, but it requires rejecting walls, stasis, and conformity. In other words, it requires rejecting everything the New Right is selling.
[1] Much of this section draws on Fintan O’Toole extraordinary book “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland” and particularly Chapter 2 “On Noah’s Ark.”
[2] O’Toole. We Don’t Know Ourselves. 30.
[3] O’Toole. We Don’t Know Ourselves. 24.