Christian Socialism

About the Book

This book is a companion to my book The Theoretical Solution to the British/Irish Problem, which gives a suggested constitution for the Federal Kingdom of Ireland and it recognizes a right, center, and left political structure of the Federation. The left structure is the Irish Christian Social and Democratic Party. Christian Socialism is peaceful in its origins and present form and is opposed to the violence of Marxist class conflict. In place of class struggle, Christian Socialism places class togetherness. Christian Socialism envisages a New Ireland and a New Ireland needs a new economic theory of the left. Georgeist economics fits the bill. George argued that land shouldn’t be owned by individuals but collectively by the people. He held that there should be only a single land tax raised to meet the expenses of the state. This was a popular economic theory in the nineteenth century but was crushed by neoclassical economists such as Marx in the interests of the landed gentry in Ireland and England. Marx condemned the excesses of capitalists in their exploitation of labor but was silent when it came to the exploitation of tenant farmers in Ireland by the landed gentry. Georgeist economics need to be looked at again in twenty-first century Ireland.

About the Author

The author who is now a senior citizen was formerly a teacher working in a school in Belfast run by a teaching order of the Catholic Church. He was also actively involved in a teacher’s union in which he was the elected President of the West Belfast branch. In the school he adopted a high union profile and raised management issues and expressed outrage when it became known that Brother Andrew was a member of the Provisional IRA. This incensed the Brothers who were union hostile and life was made difficult for him in the school so he resigned as a teacher and decided to try politics. ON reflection he reckoned that what Ireland needed was a new written Constitution expressed in the Federal Government of Ireland Act. He began working on this in the privacy of his home but his wife thought he had gone crazy so she talked to a psychiatrist who told her the author was clearly a paranoid schizophrenic. Even so he still felt he should work on the Act but when he did his wife would phone up the clinic and the police would arrest him and have him sectioned. When sectioned in a clinic call Bush he completed the Act to his satisfaction. He now works with The Social Democratic and Labour Party in an effort to convince them of federalism as an alternative to nationalism. Michael Gillespie Federalist