CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Without disputing the empirical value of many of the descriptions offered in the literature, here we take issue with those apparently opposed explanations insofar as they both account for the trajectory of the Irish developmental process on the basis of the successful implementation of ?correct? nation-state policies (even if they disagree on the precise nature of those policies). By contrast, this chapter argues that the Irish experience is yet another concrete expression of the further development of the essentially global ?laws of motion? of the new international division of labour (NIDL), as explained in Chapter Three of this book. More specifically, it argues that the ?particularistic-skill-replacing? technical change that characterises the production of relative surplus-value across the globe has allowed capital to integrate not only national working classes which were materially and morally suitable for the performance of the simpler manual tasks initially required by the ?micro-electronics revolution?, but also those with comparatively more ?skilled? but still relatively cheaper labour-power, into the NIDL. Moreover, we show that the very dynamics of the NIDL have later made possible its extension into the more intellectual productive functions of the labour process of capitalist large-scale industry, such as software production. Premised on its origins as a source of latent and stagnant surplus population for the global accumulation of capital, the specificity of the Irish national sphere of valorisation has been determined by those two potentialities of the historical unfolding of the NIDL (that is, the subjection of relatively more complex and intellectual productive functions to its ?laws of motion?). We therefore show that the peculiar state policies and institutions prevailing in Ireland are therefore grounded in this specific form of integration into the NIDL, which they have mediated but not by themselves determined.

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