Comprador Theory: Lets The Irish Rich Hide

Why would you let the Irish rich hide? That’s what the theory of them being a “comprador” class does. This theory says that the Irish bourgeoisie are “mere” servants of multinational capital and extract profits from the Irish workforce into the pockets of foreign capitalists. The problem with the theory is not the fact that the Irish rich do work hand in hand with multinational capital but that the theory hides the role the Irish rich play in exploiting workers in Ireland and around the world to fill their own pockets. They are junior partners.

Let’s be clear - it’s not about denying the skewed nature of the Irish economy. Around 70 US companies employ more than 200,000 people, with a further 168,000 indirect jobs in the supply of products and services. That’s still a minority of jobs but it’s significant and the Irish government has become over reliant on tax revenues from those multinationals, which they use to build up the local rich. The Irish rich work hand in hand with the multinationals and there are several key multinationals that are Irish owned and exploit workers across the globe. So the Irish rich don’t just extract profits from workers in Ireland and hand them over to foreign capitalists. Our bosses exploit workers everywhere and often help to realise profits that have actually been produced around the world and just booked in Ireland.

The bourgeoisie of the 26 counties are a small but self-standing capitalist class that have their own autonomous state machine and they have to be overthrown by a workers’ revolution. You see, the secret of the “comprador” theory is that it’s a reformist attempt to leave open the prospect of alliances with sections of the local boss class against multinational capital. The UCD academic and author Conor McCabe explicitly ends his book “Sins of the Father”, which heavily relies on the comprador analysis, with a call to emulate the failed Greek radical left party Syriza by electing a social democratic government that would focus on building up a native industrial base.

Let’s look at the theory and see if it’s backed up by the facts of the Irish economy. In the 1970s Sinn Féin argued that Ireland was a “neo-colony” and was dominated by British capitalism. They also argued that the Irish rich were a comprador class merely administering the country for the British capitalists and therefore it was possible to have a “pan-nationalist” alliance consisting of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and the SDLP. This allowed the Irish rich to hide their own economic and political power while leaving open the prospect of alliance with the party of the Irish capitalists, Fianna Fáil, whose grassroots consisted of small Irish employers.

At the time former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams set out this position Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Europe but the structure of Irish capitalism and its role in the world had changed since independence and has changed since the 1970s. It’s true that Ireland’s industrial advances had been crushed by British Imperialism over centuries. Irish industry was growing in the 1700s but by the early 1800s competition from British industry had wiped out Irish industry, while British landlords extracted massive rents from the country. They made Ireland into an agricultural appendage of industrial Britain brutally policed by the forces of the Empire.

But the Irish rich existed even at that time and cooperated with the British occupation to help the British fill their pockets but also to fill their own pockets too. The eventual battle for liberation from the Empire saw men from opposite sides of the class war both demanding their own visions of liberation. For Irish employers like William Martin Murphy it was an Ireland where the exploitation of the workers and peasants was conducted by men like himself. For socialist hero James Connolly the Irish workers wouldn’t be free until they owned everything themselves. The Irish employers applauded the execution of Connolly. After all, they’d fought his campaigning tooth and nail during the Lock Out of 1913.

There weren’t many like James Connolly and he left behind no political party of revolutionaries, the Labour Party was a pale pink shadow of radicalism. The War of Independence saw workers take mass militant action, with general strikes in Belfast and Dublin and the declaration of the Limerick Soviet, but the Irish boss class came out on top of the cross class movement for independence. Partition was a means to weaken the working class and was accepted by the incoming and authoritarian Cumann na nGaedheal government, who shot republicans without trial and used British guns during the Civil War.

At this stage the faction of the Irish bourgeoisie that was in power did act as an agent of British capital in Ireland. Only 4% of workers worked in industry and most exports were agricultural. Cumann na nGaedeal wanted a free trade policy that would allow the big farmers to export to Britain. But when Fianna Fáil were elected in 1932 they fought to expand a centre of Irish capital accumulation. They wanted to defend local employers and keep workers quiet by offering jobs and housing. They stopped paying land annuities to Britain, brought in tariffs and introduced the Control of Manufactures Act - which ruled out foreign capitalists owning the majority shares in a company in Ireland or having the majority of seats on any company board.

The government did have the right to grant licences to foreign companies though, with just 74 licences granted between 1932 and 1941. The tariff and company control policies initially led to some moderate industrial development. There had also been an “economic war” with Britain from 1932 to 1938 with the British, weakened during the World Wars and facing revolt in colonies like India, writing off the land annuities. In 1935 Fianna Fáil had signed the “Coal-Cattle Pact” with Britain, showing that you could only build on what you’ve inherited from the past. The Irish economy was changing but was still skewed towards agriculture.

The global economic crisis of the 1930s was only resolved for the capitalists when the massive destruction of capital during the Second World War led to a post-war boom. The cheapening of capital and workers led to a huge leap in the rate of profit, which only later started to fall again. This two decades long boom across the whole Western world would come crashing down in the early 1970s as the inner crisis tendencies of capitalism asserted themselves again. But the opening up of the Irish economy to this boom transformed the economy. The Control of Manufactures Act was repealed and an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement was signed. The majority of new foreign owned companies were still British, but that began to shift as capital flowed into Ireland and new Irish businesses were born.

When Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973 the world economy was already beginning to crash. Entry into the EEC led to investments from the US and Japan, as companies wanted to get around EEC tariffs. Soon Ireland was the key destination for US capital. At the time, parties like the Workers Party welcomed the US multinationals because the local bourgeoisie were “lazy”. They failed to see how the local bourgeoisie were doing what the capitalists of all small countries did - integrating themselves into the preexisting hierarchies of imperialism as junior partners, not as mere servants. The bottom line for any bourgeois class is profit. Where profit leads, capital follows. Hundreds of new Irish companies sprang up, most small, but some became giants. Others, established in the years before, began to access global markets.

Irish corporation Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) was established in 1970 through the merger of Cement Limited (which was established in 1936) and Roadstone Limited (est. 1949). They now have 80,000 workers in 4,000 locations across 30 countries and had a reported net income of $3.5 billion in 2024 alone. CRH owned a 25% stake in Mashav, the holding company for Nesher Cement, which was Israel’s sole cement supplier for the notorious Apartheid Wall. CRH have interests all over the globe that they want protected and this, not subordination to imperialism, drives the anti-neutrality stance of the Irish rich. They want the EU or the US military to secure the globe for capital accumulation to proceed. They exploit the workers of 30 countries.

The Kerry Group was founded in 1972. They have over 21,000 workers operating in 150 locations across 54 countries. They declared a global profit after tax of €734.4 million in 2024. The company was ranked near the bottom of the “Corporate Human Rights Benchmark”, scoring just 18.4 out of 100. It got just 1.7 out of 10 for transparency in identifying and addressing human rights risks. The Kerry Group’s own internal assessments admit “salient” human rights risks across its global operations including the need to address forced labour, child labour, and lack of freedom to unionise. In Madagascar’s vanilla industry, national surveys in 2011 and in 2012 estimated that nearly 32% of the industry’s workforce consisted of children aged 12 to 17 years old. Criticism has made these corporations more careful in recent years but they draw their profits from an international pool of workers across 54 countries.

Irish company Smurfit Kappa dates back to the protectionist period and was set up in 1934 as a small box-making factory in Rathmines, Dublin. Now called “Smurfit Westrock” they’ve over 100,000 workers in 40 countries. They’ve more than 500 locations and operate 60 paper mills. In September 2025, the company reported a whopping net income for the year of $748 million. Smurfit Westrock was sued in a Milan court by 363 businesses seeking €400 million in damages. The case alleged overcharging resulting from long-term conspiracies in the cardboard market. This followed a €124 million fine imposed by Italian authorities in 2019 for anti-competitive practices and for forming a cartel to push up prices.

They were also up in court in the USA for conspiring with other cardboard manufacturers to coordinate price increases. It was claimed this conspiracy led to a 30% increase in packaging costs over 5 years. They acted as a cartel and the price of all goods that required packaging would increase as a result. The Italian court case shows that our bourgeoisie are somebody else’s evil multinational. To workers in Italy this Irish company is an evil multinational. Workers at their factories in Peru had to strike to get the right to join a union. The Unite Union in Britain had to fight the company for paying workers below the legal minimum wage. They suck profit out of 100,000 workers all over the world.

The company took a court case against the Venezuelan government over the seizure of their operations. In August 2018, the Venezuelan government issued an “Occupation Order” when the state price control agency accused the company of price speculation and smuggling. The capitalist World Bank found this was an “unlawful expropriation” and ordered Venezuela to pay millions in compensation. They’ve been ordered to sell off an oil company to pay up. When asked about Trump’s raid on the country Smurfit said they couldn’t comment but it’s clearly the case that our bourgeoisie are part of the multinational bourgeoisie to the workers of Venezuela. When a government moved against their price fixing they appealed to the World Bank and applauded as the US military acted as a global enforcer for multinational capital.

Irish insulation and flooring manufacturer Kingspan has between 22,000 and 25,000 workers in over 210 manufacturing facilities in more than 80 countries across the world. They reported a record profit after tax of €691 million at the end of 2024. Their factories are located all over some of the poorer parts of the world from Vietnam and Indonesia to South America. They extract profits from all those workers. During a strike by workers in Portadown in 2023, Kingspan flew in scab workers to break pickets. They lied about their insulation to the Grenfell inquiry, after a block of flats burned down resulting in 72 deaths. They were found to have “knowingly created a false market” for their faulty insulation. Are they merely extracting profits from Ireland to fill the pockets of foreigners? No.

DCC plc is another massive Irish company. Their diverse operations include sales, marketing, the distribution of energy products, IT and technology distribution as well as health and beauty products. They have almost 17,000 workers operating across 22 countries. They made €256 million in the year up to March 2025. DCC’s manufacturing is mainly located in Britain, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. The Irish boss class extract profits from workers in Ireland and all over the globe. They work hand in hand with multinational capital to fill their own pockets.

Many of the multinationals based here don’t actually extract profits from workers in Ireland, they place profits made elsewhere on their books here to pay less tax. Advocates of the comprador theory agree that the Irish economy operates as a tax haven but that means that profits aren’t generated here but moved here to benefit from the tax haven scam. In 2018, Facebook claimed $15 billion in profit in Ireland - this works out to about $10 million for each of its employees in Ireland. Bristol Myers Squibb recorded close to $5 billion in profit in 2018 too, roughly $7.5 million per employee. Apple moved all of its non-US profits through Ireland and got away with paying just 0.05% tax on those profits. Ireland facilitates the capture of profit from workers all over the world and helps the multinationals hold onto as much of it as possible.

The Irish economy is a place where these multinationals take profits generated all over the globe and move them through their Irish operations in order to claim low tax rates. The Irish government spent over €10 million in legal fees to defend Apple. The European Court of Justice ordered Apple to pay Ireland €13 billion in taxes. This money was from profits generated by workers in other countries. Sales from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India were recorded in Ireland rather than in the countries where the products were physically sold. The products themselves were produced by Chinese, South Korean and other Asian workers. The profit was generated by Chinese workers and sales were global. The Irish bourgeois state was helping the multinational to realise profits generated by Chinese and other Asian workers for a cut in the form of corporate tax revenue they could then use to build up the local bourgeoisie, who generally would have tight connections to the ruling parties.

They didn’t want to frighten Apple off by taking too big a cut though and the Irish government fought a legal battle to prevent the EU from damaging their tax haven scam. When it comes to pharmaceuticals it’s a different story with Ireland accounting for 5% of global production. 5 of the world’s 8 top-selling drugs are manufactured in Ireland. There are over 90 pharma companies operating in Ireland employing about 50,000 workers. Each worker is responsible for the production of €1 million in value every year, yet pay starts at €32,000 to €38,000 a year, although a technician can earn up to €80,000 a year. These products and consequent profits are generated here in Ireland. These mostly US based corporations hire a local management team made up of Irish executives who oversee operations here but are often tied into the boards of Irish companies too.

Many of these Irish executives sit on the BioPharmaChem Ireland (BPCI) Board, a subdivision of bosses’ union IBEC, and they lobby politicians for favourable policies for the sector. Paul Keogh is a formal Director of Takeda Ireland Limited, which is a legally distinct Irish company, even though it is a subsidiary of a Japanese parent. Members of the BPCI board also sit on the board of IBEC where Irish bosses and the representatives of these multinationals sit and coordinate policy demands and lobbying of politicians. The Irish owners of multinationals like Cement Roadstone or Kingspan sit down with the local representatives of US or Japanese based multinationals and demand policies that defend the extraction of profits from all workers, here and abroad. They’ve a common interest in exploiting workers in Ireland, across Europe, in China and in other places all over the face of the Earth.

For example, millionaire Richie Boucher sits as chairman on the board of Cement Roadstone Holdings, overseeing the extraction of profits from a global workforce. He was the former CEO of Bank of Ireland, he also sits as a non-management Director of Kennedy-Wilson Holdings (the global real estate vulture profiting from the housing crisis in Ireland) and is on the supervisory board of Glen Dimplex, an Irish company with manufacturing operations across 20 countries employing 8,000 workers. Rose Hynes is currently the chairman of the Irish Aviation Authority and was previously running Shannon Airport where she advocated for allowing US troops to use the airport. She defended the use of the Airport by imperialist troops as a “lucrative” business. She famously stated that military traffic has been “in the DNA of Shannon for many years,” noting that the airport would continue its 24/7 operations to accommodate US troops.

She was on the Irish Water board, sits on the University of Limerick board and is a lead director at Dole Plc, the world’s largest fresh produce provider. Dole is headquartered in Dublin and operates 250 facilities in 80 countries with over 100,000 acres of land and a global workforce of over 32,000. It’s not difficult to see why she’d be an imperialist. These Irish rich want the EU and US militaries to defend their economic interests across the globe. They are at the table with the international rich, not mere servants. They use this economic power to run public bodies and buy politicians.

A TASC report from 2010 that mapped the Golden Circle found that the Irish bourgeoisie was a tight network of individuals that held multiple seats in many companies both public and private. A core network of 39 individuals held key positions across 33 of the 40 top companies and public bodies. These 39 people held a combined 93 directorships of companies. Over half of them held board positions in at least one of Ireland’s four largest banks. The government appoints members of these bourgeois boards onto state boards because they want “industry led” policies. A more recent TASC report still complained about this tight web of connections at the top of the economy and state.

The lobbying register is supposed to track who is lobbying the government, but it doesn’t prevent a former Minister or high ranking civil servant from taking a board seat at a multinational they used to regulate after leaving public office. Leo Varadkar joined the board of the Penta Group, Simon Coveney took up positions with EY Ireland and robotics firm Reliance. Peter Sutherland, a former Irish Attorney General and EU Commissioner, held positions with Goldman Sachs, BP and AIB. Billionaire Denis O’Brien put former Taoiseach Brian Cowen on the board of Topaz oil in 2014. That board included former AIB CEO Colm Doherty. O’Brien also gave Cowen a seat on the board of the Beacon Hospital. They’re rewarded for playing ball.

The reason we have a tax haven economy and poor services is because profit is God to these people and they will pursue it locally and globally, arm in arm with the multinationals. Karl Marx once described the capitalist class as a “hostile band of brothers”, they fight each other over every last drop of profit but they come together against threats to their rule. Even if the biggest multinationals in Ireland were all Irish owned they’d pursue the same profits and the economy would fail to diversify. The housing bubble of the noughties was an international phenomenon with capitalists seeking quick profits by turning homes into assets. This was driven by a falling rate of profit in the productive economy before 2001. The banking crisis of 2008 was a deferred crisis.

The last 40 years have seen a major decline in public services across the western world as politicians work to help capitalists restore profit rates by privatizations and outsourcing every public service and selling off public assets. In places like Germany and Sweden neoliberalism has led to a dramatic decline in public service provision whereas in Ireland the neoliberal economy has meant we’ve failed to ever reach their levels of public service provision. Under capitalism private investment follows profit. Capitalists don’t care about the overall nature of an economy, whether it is narrow or diversified. They’d turn whole countries into producers of one crop if it was profitable. In Ireland the high profits to be made in pharmaceuticals mean investment chases profit rates. The same goes for property both internationally and here at home.

The comprador theory has also had advocates on the reformist left. It was Greek thinker Nicos Poulantzas who explained the difference between a “comprador” bourgeoisie and a “national” bourgeoisie in his “Classes in Contemporary Capitalism” from 1974. He argued that: “What is traditionally understood as comprador bourgeoisie… is that fraction of the bourgeoisie which does not have its own base for capital accumulation, which acts in some way or other as a simple intermediary of foreign imperialist capital.”

He wrote: “What should be understood by national bourgeoisie is that fraction of the indigenous bourgeoisie which, on the basis of a certain type and degree of contradictions with foreign imperialist capital, occupies a relatively autonomous place in the ideological and political structure, and exhibits in this way a characteristic unity.”

To say that the Irish bourgeoisie do not have their “own base for capital accumulation” would be ludicrous. Or to claim that they are nothing but a “simple intermediary of foreign imperialist capital” is clearly wrong. In many cases the Irish bourgeoisie are foreign imperialist capital to workers of other nations. In fact, he argued that this division was not a suitable way to analyse the bourgeoisie of the “metropolitan” countries (meaning the European nations) because Poulantzas believed that subordination of the whole world to US capitalism had gone so far to make this internal division irrelevant.

While he criticized the French Communist Party for their proposed alliance with a section of the French capitalists, which they justified with talk of standing up to monopoly capitalism in alliance with “sincere democrats and patriots!” Poulantzas ended up taking the same reformist position. You see if power is global then there’s no point focusing on overthrowing your local bourgeoisie. I remember standing up to ask a question at a meeting in East Wall in Dublin where a representative from Syriza was speaking. A speech was given by Syriza’s Kostas Chrysogonos in the Sean O’Casey Community Centre on February 7th 2015. I asked how they would deal with the Greek state when it tried to suffocate their government. He actually replied with: “power is postmodern!” - meaning that power is no longer concentrated in the local state machine but is everywhere and nowhere.

They should have told Greek workers, who were being batoned by Greek riot cops, that the batons smashing their heads were “postmodern”. But this is the same bullshit idea advanced by Poulantzas. In the 1974 essay he still calls for a movement of the people to overthrow their own bourgeoisie; but the logic of his position led him to overt reformism as time went on. By 1978 he was arguing for using the local state to achieve a democratic road to socialism. He rejected Lenin’s view that the state was a weapon in the hands of the rich and argued that the state was multiple institutions and that a long process of rupture and transformation could take place within the state machine itself.

Poulantzas would have claimed he wasn’t a reformist, arguing that in his view the rupture process would only proceed if backed up by workers strikes and protests. This is very similar to the view on left government advocated by parties like People Before Profit. It’s still reformist. The idea that revolutionaries and left reformists could form a parliamentary government that then ruptures the capitalist state from within is nonsensical. In the case of the Hungarian revolution of 1919 the Communists went into coalition with the Social Democrats who used this amalgamation to destroy the revolution. The result was a vicious counter revolutionary dictatorship. This is why Lenin afterwards called the advocacy of this path “imbecilic”. In reality these ideas were used to prevent criticism of Syriza when they came to power in Greece. Syriza ended up introducing austerity budgets and demoralising the working class.

You can argue that “Syriza should have taken more radical measures!” But that’s calling for transubstantiation, turning reformist water into revolutionary wine. If Syriza took more radical measures they wouldn’t have been Syriza. “If that mouse was a lion then they wouldn’t be a mouse!” Yeah, but they were mice and they were not going to behave like lions. The “revolutionaries” who were members of factions within Syriza did nothing to stop them attacking the Greek workers. If any alliance of revolutionaries and left reformists comes to power under capitalism, then the reformists will always try to prevent the loss of state power, ultimately defending the capitalist state. Today’s social democrats are even more pro-capitalist than those of Hungary in 1919 and even more likely to throw a spanner in the works of any attempted “rupture” from within the state machine.

The idea that a parliamentary majority of Marxists would form a government on this side of a revolution is silly. In Greece it took 32 general strikes to get moderate and reformist Syriza into power. Filling the Dáil with revolutionaries would mean such a high level of struggle that the decisive confrontations with the ruling class would have already been and gone. Our view, in the Red Network, is that a severe crisis can lead to mass protests and strikes and that the coordination of such movements would require assemblies of workers. This would establish a “dual power” scenario, where the old repressive state was still operating opposed by assemblies of workers. A revolution is when workers’ assemblies break up the old state and replace it with a workers’ parliament.

The capitalist state may have diversified functions, conceding welfare provision and other supports under pressure from the working class, but at heart it’s a machine of repression made up of “bodies of armed men” who will use violence if necessary to prevent the working class from over exercising democratic control over wealth. The core of the state is held in the hands of an unelected bureaucracy loyal to the system. That machine needs to be torn down and replaced. It is not neutral. And as Chile 1973 shows, illusions in that machine prove fatal. Just look at the violence employed against the water charges movement or the Debenhams strike and imagine if our struggle was multiplied tenfold.

The idea that a revolutionary can sit on both sides of the dual power dilemma and call for their own overthrow is a fudge. Of course, having a presence in parliament is vital to help coordinate and amplify workers’ struggle. But this is not the same thing as joining a government. We want a real workers’ assembly government, formed through struggle. The reality is though that all this talk of rupture is just a load of hot air to cover up current strategic objectives. In the case of People Before Profit echoing Poulantzas enables them to call for a Sinn Féin led government, which would necessarily involve Labour and the Greens, and conflate this moderate pro-capitalist formation with their “rupture” schemes. This is just rhetoric to offer a paper thin consolation to any of their members who might have enough politics to question this reformist path. The advocates of the comprador theory end up in the same place as People Before Profit. It’s built into the DNA of the theory.

The election of Syriza was promised to lead to growing struggle as Greek workers saw through their capitalist state and rupture would inevitably follow. In fact, the election of a left government that promised so much and then attacked workers was utterly demoralising for the Greek working class. The Greek equivalent of Fianna Fáil was re-elected. The cycle of struggle was brought to a safe end and objectively, whatever their intentions, Syriza played the role of pacifying the working class, saving the Greek bourgeoisie and their allies in the EU.

The comprador theory, or variations on this theme like the “anti-monopoly” strategy of the French Communist Party, was used by Communist Parties in the mid 1970s to abandon working class revolution and start along the path to what is known as “Eurocommunism”. It offered a justification for alliance with sections of the bourgeoisie, whether that alliance meant tailing certain bourgeois parties or was justification for positing the bourgeois state as a site of battle that could be used to take on the monopoly corporations. For some sections of the republican movement in Ireland it was a justification for linking up with Fianna Fáil. For academic Conor McCabe it was a way to suggest the need for a reformist, Syriza style, government that embarked on an industrialisation drive to build up native capitalism.

The kind of social democratic post war building that was evident to some extent in countries like Sweden was only possible on the basis of the destruction of the war and the high rates of profit in the system at that time. Capitalism now faces sluggish growth rates and a low rate of profit. Decades of neoliberalism prove the capitalists are in no mood to offer concessions. “Reform” under neoliberal capitalism now means taking back reforms. The working class has been on the defensive for quite some time. So the reformist path, which seems like a more “sensible” strategy than working class revolution, is actually just a pipe dream based on a contingent period of boom that is unreproducible without another world war. This cuts out the heart of any social democratic approach to real change. Their policies are dependent on an unreproducible, specific post-war period where profits were high and the bosses were willing to concede reforms.

Doesn’t the Irish state machine favour multinational capital though? We all know that former Finance Minister Michael Noonan met the vultures. We all know the tax incentives given to US corporations to come into Ireland. We all know that Canadian firm IRES REIT is Ireland’s biggest landlord now. Many Irish companies come into being to service these multinationals. The Irish state acts to defend Irish capitalist interests in a world structured by imperialism, where the Irish bourgeoisie are a junior partner and have an interest in maintaining that global system of exploitation. The Irish bourgeois state attracts foreign capital in the interests of local capital. It’s a symbiosis - not a relation of master and servant. And there are Irish companies that span the world and suck profits out of an international workforce.

There’s a contradiction in some of those who advocate the comprador analysis. They argue that Irish capitalists haven’t built up an indigenous industrial base and therefore are engaged in finance and other non-productive activities. For Marx a productive workforce is one that produces profits for capitalists. Finance and other commercial activities live off the profits generated in the productive sphere. That means that Irish capitalists are merely helping to realise profit that’s actually generated elsewhere in the world. That would make them part of the imperialist framework rather than mere subordinates. The reality is that many workers are dismissed as non-productive when they actually fit Marx’s criteria. Tech workers sitting on a computer are productive of surplus value for their employer. That makes them productive workers.

As I’ve argued the Irish economy combines the extraction of profit locally and globally and the Irish bourgeoisie participate in both processes alongside the multinational bourgeoisie. The state facilitates both processes simultaneously. The role Ireland plays in this global capitalist hierarchy has skewed the economy and Ireland is one of the most foreign direct investment (FDI) intensive economies in the OECD. Foreign affiliates make up 80% of manufacturing value-added, twice the EU average, according to The Economic and Social Research Institute. Production is heavily concentrated in high-tech sectors. In 2023, the pharmaceutical, chemical, and food sectors accounted for 71.2% of all industrial production. The pharmaceutical sector alone represents over 40% of Irish manufacturing value, compared to just 4.1% on average across the EU.

But this investment means that Ireland has a higher level of industrial development than other EU countries, many of whom have lost industries as the neoliberal decades have progressed and capital has moved Eastwards looking for cheaper labour. Research from NERI suggests domestic productivity still lags behind European peer groups, with Irish workers in Irish firms ranking lower in “value-add per hour” compared to Denmark or Belgium. As of late 2023, there were approximately 377,075 Irish-owned enterprises making up the vast majority (96.8%) of all businesses in the country, though they differ significantly from multinationals in scale and productivity.

Market forces dictate investment priorities creating a two track economy with wide differentials in productivity, while the embrace of Thatcherite neoliberal policies means a collapse of infrastructure, public services and state housing provision. But capitalism is always an unplanned and anarchic economy with booms and busts, fits and starts, uneven development. The same could be said of the USA or Britain. The only difference is that the Irish bourgeoisie and their political puppets jumped head first into neoliberalism with the New York Times describing Celtic Tiger Ireland as the “wild west of capitalism”.

In 2023, Irish-owned enterprises accounted for 74.9% of total employment, while foreign-owned firms accounted for roughly 25%. There are approximately 160,700 small businesses in Ireland, employing around 938,000 people. Irish-owned firms employ the vast majority of workers in sectors like accommodation & food services (86.2%) and in construction (91.2%). For 1.88 million workers in Ireland the boss is Irish. But Irish owned multinationals employ over 1.3 million workers across the world. In Asia Irish firms employ 516,000 workers, in the Americas 451,000 workers and in Europe and Russia they employ 364,000 workers. Irish companies employ 118,000 workers across the USA alone. The web of local and multinational capital stretches across borders but companies still rely on a “home” state to defend their interests at home and abroad.

The division between the larger companies, represented by IBEC, and the smaller ones, represented by ISME, is reproduced in every capitalist nation on Earth. The boom bust cycle leads to the companies that fail being bought up by those who survive, this leads to the concentration and centralisation of capital. The giant monopolies that have grown on this basis dominate the globe. Small capital will always struggle to find a place in a market dominated by giants. But these giants grow out of the very workings of the capitalist economy. Monopoly isn’t opposed to capitalism, it grows out of it. Irish owned giant companies treat smaller enterprises in the same way as foreign owned.

Just look at how Larry Goodman treats small farmers. His ABP Food Group controls around 30% of the national beef kill in Ireland. Following the acquisition of a 50% stake in Slaney Foods, he also controls about 40% of the Irish sheep kill. Through a network of over 100 companies, Larry Goodman’s empire spans processing, rendering, pet foods, and international exports. Goodman’s control over feedlots dates back decades; as early as 1981, he built facilities to “over-winter up to 15,000 cattle” specifically to boost supplies when few cattle were available for slaughter and to drive down prices, hitting small farmers. Between 2016 and 2020, combined annual EU CAP payments to his family’s farms typically ranged from €413,000 to €430,000. He’s got millions in grants from the Irish state too.

Goodman employs 14,000 workers across Europe, particularly in Poland. The state has bent over backwards to help Goodman grow his companies. In August 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Goodman’s empire faced collapse because it was owed roughly £180 million by Saddam Hussein. Charles Haughey recalled the Dáil to pass emergency legislation to save Goodman. Denis O’Brien bribed TD Michael Lowry to get his hands on the state telecoms infrastructure which he then used to build an empire with Digicel having a presence in 25 markets including the Caribbean. Reformists like to argue that the state has some autonomy under capitalism and that these examples of bribery are exceptions. But they’re the rule.

Capitalists have always relied on the state to help them. From the theft of common land in the late Middle Ages to grants and trade treaties. As James Connolly argued: “Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class”. Frederich Engels explained how the state ultimately serves capital but the relationship is not an immediate one, it is mediated:

“Society gives rise to certain common functions which it cannot dispense with. The persons selected for these functions form a new branch of the division of labour within society. This gives them particular interests, distinct too from the interests of those who gave them their office; they make themselves independent of the latter and – the state is in being… It is the interaction of two unequal forces: on one hand the economic movement, on the other the new political power, which strives for as much independence as possible, and which, having once been established, is also endowed with a movement of its own. On the whole, the economic movement gets its way, but it has also to suffer reactions from the political movement which it established and endowed with relative independence itself, from the movement of the state power on the one hand and of the opposition simultaneously engendered on the other… The reaction of the state power upon economic development can be one of three kinds: it can run in the same direction, and then development is more rapid; it can oppose the line of development, in which case nowadays state power in every great nation will go to pieces in the long run; or it can cut off the economic development from certain paths, and impose on it certain others. This case ultimately reduces itself to one of the two previous ones. But it is obvious that in cases two and three the political power can do great damage to the economic development and result in the squandering of great masses of energy and material.”

A state under neoliberal capitalism can either go with the course of economic development accelerating already existing economic tendencies, go against that course, in which case Engels argued “it will go to pieces” (the capitalists will work to destroy it) or it can select which trends to promote and which to suppress with the risk of wasting vast amounts of resources though its mistakes. There’s an identity and a difference between the capitalist class and the capitalist state and both relationships are real. There’s an identity in the sense that the state will defend the capitalists ruthlessly, even to the point of deploying force. And there’s a difference because the government has to represent the totality of capitalists and not any particular capitalist. This can lead to conflicts about the best path forward.

The Irish state supplies a global network of support to Irish companies. Enterprise Ireland operates 42 international offices to advise Irish firms abroad. The government travels the globe on trade missions to leverage markets, resources and workforces for these Irish companies. Enterprise Ireland has a dedicated fund to “scaling up” Irish businesses so they can compete on the global market. There are venture capital programmes, seed grants, research and development incentives and the government is even talking about insuring Irish firms against harm by tariffs. These companies will always complain this is not enough as they all compete to get a leg up on rivals in internal and external markets. If one company buys a politician, another will think it has to buy two.

Corruption is built into the DNA of capitalism as the capitalists employ every means of economic, political and even military coercion to get what they want. The Irish state as a small state can intervene on behalf of Irish capital abroad by signing treaties but they don’t have the military might to muscle in on rivals or leverage raw materials or markets. Hence, their alliance with the EU and US militaries.

In the IDA and Enterprise Ireland strategy documents for 2025 to 2029 they want to use multinational capital to upskill the Irish workforce and leverage the formation of more Irish businesses. The government wants to use corporate tax revenues to grow exports by local companies. The small businesses are complaining that the multinationals can outbid them for office space and that the state’s tax credits for research and development favour the multinationals. The multinationals have better tech and a worker in a multinational is therefore 3 times more productive. Like every bourgeoisie of a smaller nation the Irish bourgeoisie have to negotiate a place in a global hierarchy. They are small mafia gang who cosy up to the big mafia gangs but in their own interests.

What about the political subordination of Ireland? The EU demanded Irish workers pay for 42% of the total EU bank bailout, a cost of €9,000 per person. Fianna Fáil and later Fine Gael and Labour played ball. The fact that Germany and France would try to foist the cost of the banking crisis onto Ireland is exactly the same as one company trying to push its losses onto another. It doesn’t mean that both companies aren’t exploiters of their workers. The EU is after all a “dysfunctional imperialism” - it’s made up of competing nations who feel they have to pool resources to compete with the USA but still despise each other. The bailout was justified by Irish governments on the basis of this external pressure but they were saving the Irish bourgeoisie who were heavily reliant on the banks. The working class in Ireland was being asked to bail out German and French bankers because of the debt run up by Irish bankers. The Irish bankers got the government to pick the pockets of workers to pay those debts.

During the austerity years the government would use external directives to justify measures they wanted to take themselves. For example, water charges were demanded by the EU Water Framework Directive and in the so-called Troika Agreement with the IMF and EU. In 2012, Siteserv - a company with no experience in water meter installation - was sold to Millington, a company owned by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien. The sale, conducted through the state-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (formerly Anglo Irish Bank!), involved a €100 million debt write-off while the company was sold for just €45 million. A 2022 Commission of Investigation found the transaction was “tainted by impropriety”.

Siteserv (which later became part of Actavo) was awarded the contract to install water meters for Irish Water. This cost the state approximately €539 million, which was €100 million over the initial estimated costs. After massive protests the government was forced to retreat. Denis O’Brien publicly criticized the government’s decision to scale back water charges in 2016. The EU directive was used by the local state to enrich a member of the Irish bourgeoisie. The Irish state batoned working class people in Coolock and Clondalkin when they stood up to meter installation. Every baton charge was on behalf of Denis O’Brien, not just the EU. The EU provided a framework that the Irish government used to justify boosting the income of the Irish rich.

The EU Waste Framework Directive required member states to implement “polluter pays” principles and increase recycling, it provided the legal excuse for the wholesale privatisation of waste collection in Ireland. The Irish rich wanted it, the EU gave them the excuse. Who benefited from this? Not European capitalists, but Irish capitalists. The Beauparc Group is now the dominant market leader in waste collection, controlling 55% of the market in some regions like Dublin. It owns several major brands like Panda Waste, one of Ireland’s largest collectors, which expanded by acquiring Greenstar’s collection business. Greyhound Recycling is the second-largest household collector in Ireland, with 150,000 customers in Dublin. In Ireland, household waste collection alone generates an estimated €350 million in revenue annually for Irish private companies and now local authorities have to spend approximately €100 million each year just to address littering by those who can’t afford to pay the private operators.

When it comes to housing the Irish rich are as parasitic as the multinationals. As of early 2024, there were approximately 103,035 private landlords in Ireland. In Dublin, landlords with 100 or more properties (many of which are vulture funds) manage 22.55% of private tenancies, 13% nationally. Your landlord is more likely to be Irish as was the case at Tathony House where I faced a 2 year long anti-eviction battle alongside 33 other households who were being evicted by a rich Irish man from Blackrock called Ronan McDonnell. He made €5.65 million by evicting 34 working class families from their homes. Luckily by organizing fierce resistance no one went homeless when the building was eventually sold and turned into homeless accommodation. Irish landlords are more likely to be selling up and evicting tenants. That’s why there’s a wave of evictions and record homelessness.

The state withdraws housing supply and capitalists and landlords, both local and international, move in to benefit from this market. Capital follows profit. It’s that simple. If you give them an opening they’ll pour their capital into it to get whatever return they can.The state had thousands of homes in its hands after the banking crash and sold them off to US funds. Meanwhile, the biggest developers are Irish firms like Glenveagh and Cairn. They often use Irish contractors to do the actual building, like John Sisk and Son or companies like Collen Construction. The Irish rich aren’t very diversified in what they make money from. But Irish capitalists don’t care. As Marx once argued, a capitalist that hires a clown to perform for an audience is “productive” of profits. The capitalist doesn’t care where his profit comes from or the long term consequences of forcing an economy onto narrow tracks. The profit rate is all that matters. And one day the whole house of cards will come tumbling down and they’ll once again try to make us pay for it.

The Irish rich are integrated into the global rich and act as junior partners in the imperialist world order. They have an interest in EU and US military power because they want to see their own interests and those of their multinational partners protected. This explains the war on Irish neutrality conducted by the Irish rich and their media mouthpieces. It’s not because they’re mere “compradors” for the international elite. They are integrated into that elite and exploit workers here in Ireland and around the world. The comprador theory is employed by those who want to allow the Irish rich to hide. Abstract talk of imperialism is used to engage in performative actions that don’t actually threaten the Irish state or empower our working class.

From republicans to reformists variations on this theme serve to distract the working class from the necessary path to real liberation from the Irish bourgeoisie and from imperialism. Only mass struggle in the South reaches out to workers across the North and offers a way to end partition, building towards a 32 county socialist republic. There the state is under the bootheel of imperialism. The best thing we workers in the 26 can do for workers in the North is overthrow the Irish state. Our ongoing task is to overthrow the Irish state, as our local pillar of imperialism.

We can only do that if the socialist left is really rooted in workplaces and in working class communities. That means engaging with the working class on all the issues that matter to people and making sure that every campaign leaves behind an organizational legacy so that when the tax haven economy comes crashing down it’s not moderate republicans or reformists, bureaucrats or bigots that shape the way forward but hundreds of class conscious working class activists, who have the ear of fellow workers and can direct social movements and mass strikes towards a decisive confrontation with the Irish rich by dismantling their state.

We need to rise up and put workers in the driving seat of a fully planned economy. Only that guarantees anything resembling real sovereignty and puts choice in the hands of the working people. The Red Network is determined to use every means possible to leverage support for working class revolution, by building local campaigns and by building in all the trade unions, by resisting evictions, by standing in elections on a clear revolutionary platform and while doing all that pulling the mask off the Irish rich and showing them for what they truly are. There’s a lot of hard work ahead. If you’re not afraid of hard work, come talk to us.