“Disastrous capitalism” is “poisoning the world”, according to former president Michael D Higgins.
Speaking at a Labour Party event in Galway on Friday evening, Higgins severely criticised the current world order, saying the only regret of his political career was he did not “call out” capitalism more.
While not naming any individuals, the veteran politician made numerous references to the current direction of capitalism and of technology, saying “the biggest danger [facing the world] is technological determinism becoming the new imperialism of our time”.
In an apparent reference to tech-millionaires, Higgins said that “new forms of capital are not shy any more” and that prominent members of the technological and political elite were flaunting their power and wealth “in our face”.
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On the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of work, he said that much of the world’s wealth was being concentrated among “a few hundred people” while the “rest of the people have to wait to see if they will be knocked out of the job because of the advance of technology”.
He also said young people were being told that “you can keep consuming until you blow up”.
Higgins also recalled a trip to Gaza in 2006 and a conversation he had with an Israeli settler in the West Bank who told him that “there is no Palestine”.
Referencing the current situation in Gaza, he said: “We have to bear in mind the depth of hatred that has been created between people whose origins are so much the same.”
Higgins also said it was time for “radical ideas”, saying “it is not small adjustments that will tackle any of the issues” that are currently facing the world.
Without referencing any political leaders, Higgins said the world was facing a “struggle to save democracy” and said “it is not right for a political party to say that they are offering a gentler version of what the right are offering”.
On a lighter note, Higgins remembered how when he first joined the Labour Party in Galway in the 1960s there were only 12 members and they were “all seeking to have each other expelled from the party”.
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik paid tribute to Higgins as a politician with convictions, saying he “stuck to his principles even when it cost him his seat” – a reference to his defeat in the 1982 general election due in part to his opposition to the Eighth Amendment.
Bacik also described Higgins’s wife Sabina as “the greatest political influence in his life” and said that after 14 years as president that “the whole country could be described at Higgins-ites”.
One of the biggest cheers of the night at the event at the Hardiman Hotel was for Helen Ogbu, the Labour Party’s candidate in May’s Galway West byelection.
