Liberal regimes usually involve claims about the rule of law, human rights and constitutional government. Marxists believe that it is not the law that rules but people, a ruling class; that human rights are ignored when it suits the state, as British complicity in the genocide in Gaza amply illustrates, and that constitutions don’t determine the nature of society, the state or regime but reflect them.  The work of socialists involves disabusing people of their illusions in all of  these.

This should be the starting point for consideration of the proposed amendments to the Irish State’s constitution.  In a previous post I noted the illusion of expecting changes in the constitution to be any sort of a solution to the housing crisis.  Now the government parties are proposing changes relating to the family, and to the care provided within it, while removing some archaic and sexist text based on reactionary Catholic teaching.

It’s all supposed to reflect the new progressive and enlightened Ireland that is no longer bound by such views: “It’s important that our constitution reflects the Ireland of today” says Minister Heather Humphreys. In fact, the wording shows how shallow this is and actually contrasts with the world outside the document.  The Church still controls almost all primary schools and will be given ownership of the new national maternity hospital. The state continues to subsidise the Church by paying for the claims arising from its abuse of children, while the Holy Orders drag survivors of abuse through the courts hoping they will get lost.  It drags its feet on paying up its much reduced liability, just as it also does with its promised divesting of patronage of schools.

The argument to approve the proposed changes on March 8^th thus confirms that constitutions reflect and do not propel society.  The wording in the changes is so anaemic even supporters are calling it symbolic, but the symbolism is revealing – symbolic of the emptiness behind the claims.

They are welcomed as a step forward for those in non-marital relationships and for those who provide care within the family.  The main argument for voting yes is that the existing provisions are so bad that they discredit the constitution and thus reflect badly on the state and country.  In terms of their impact on state welfare payments the Minister responsible, Roderic O’Gorman, has stated that the constitutional changes will have no effect:

“It must be noted that the proposed amendment does not create an express constitutional entitlement to specific measures of support such as grants or allowances. The Government and the Oireachtas retain the power to define both the types and levels of supports, and the criteria in respect of eligibility for those supports.”

Changes to grants or allowances will continue to depend on political decisions partly reliant on economic realities so that changing these are what matter, not words on a page reliant on the good intentions of a state that has no good claim to have them.  This makes the argument by People before Profit that it is a “shame that there is no firm commitment to the women, children and men who are the carers” something of a complete delusion about what the capitalist state is willing and able to do. 

As to what the existing articles reflect, hypocrisy remains rife, and they remain as a standing reminder of the role of the Irish state that socialists have no reason to see either forgotten or provided with a facelift.

The first involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1 and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1. The proposed changes are:

to change Article 41.1.1 to include the text in bold:

Article 41.1.1 “The State recognises the Family, whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”

and to change Article 41.3.1 by deleting text shown with line through it:

“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”

In the first change to article 41.1.1 the state promises to recognise ‘durable relationships’ it hasn’t been able to define: a politically correct, right-on gesture that is immediately shoved aside by the wording of the second, Article 41.3.1.

Much criticism arises from what ‘durable’ is supposed to mean: ‘capable of lasting’ is held to not necessarily meaning ‘enduring’ or permanent, while of course nothing is permanent, and enduring is an observation at a point in time. ‘Capable of lasting’ invites interpretation of two other words, as does the word ‘relationships’.  In attempting to impose the state on human relationships it is found that its mechanism of the law cannot define and thus delimit the expansive nature of these relationships.

The growth of capitalism means that family production as the basis of society (by peasant holdings or small family farms) has been destroyed or marginalised and the attempt to encompass all the fragments of familial forms that have arisen ignore the worst effects of capitalist wage labour in its freeing workers from their means of production and consumption.  Free wage labour is the basis of capitalist society and the myriad forms in which workers attempt to provide love and security to each other in their relationships are subordinated within it.

This is reflected in the care or neglect of children, in their education and protection.  It is reflected in the services provided or not provided to workers such as health and social services, housing, child minding, and transport and the jobs and income they can obtain.  These all have decisive impacts on how people, including within families, are able to live.  Most workers know that what they can do for themselves and those they love depends on their own efforts.  It is just a pity many have so little comprehension that this has a class and political dimension and not just an individual one.

The family, in all its forms, thus really is ‘a moral institution’, demonstrating that what is moral is only as virtuous and good as the reality it is based on.  Families are often the grounds of domestic abuse, primarily against women and children, and not havens from the big, bad world outside.  Their rights are not ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’; they are often subject to state or other social interference, for good or ill, with their presumed prerogatives sometimes taken away, again for good or ill.  They are subject to social circumstances and the institutions of the state and its laws.

The hypocrisy of the Irish state’s claims to ‘recognise’ ‘durable relationships’ in their different forms is illustrated by the treatment of those seeking refuge in the State.  Demonstrations against the accommodation of international protection claimants have targeted single males, while the government has accepted this by withdrawing the accommodation from them and accommodating women and children instead.  But do these men cease of to be members of families because they are separated from them, potentially because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’?

The promise to protect the institution of marriage is not provided to the other ‘durable relationships’.  Perhaps this doesn’t matter, in which case the absence of such words calls into question the importance of their inclusion and the point of the changes.  At the very least it calls into question the claim of the National Women’s Council that a “Yes vote will value all families equally,” whatever valuing means.

Forward to part 2