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Proyect wrote: Given the limits imposed by the unfavourable international balance of forces, those of us who argued that the room for manoeuvre inside the EU was a lot narrower than the SYRIZA leadership hoped, and therefore favoured connecting a socialist strategy to Grexit – and always made this view clear to our SYRIZA comrades – could not, however, help but be sympathetic to the dilemmas they faced. Not to have been would have been churlish beyond measure, especially given the socialist left's own political weakness in our own countries. ****************************** May heaven send us a few more churls! Why is it so hard for those who keep rattling on about the 'unfavorable balance of forces' to grasp that more is involved here than an error in tactical judgment concerning the margin of maneuver in the Eurozone? How come churls like me were able to anticipate, before negotiations even started, as I did on this list serve, that Greece's margin of maneuver would be close to zero? And, if Tsipras et. al. were unaware of this at the beginning, why did they insist on clinging to the illusion of more favorable terms after the actual negotiations had supplied a surfeit of evidence that this wasn't in the cards? Why did they continue to treat the Grexit option as a fate worse than the economic death they have now agreed to accept? There is obviously more involved here than a misperception that can be corrected by the ever-so-polite nudgings of academic hangers-on, for whom anything stronger than a few faint clucks of demur would mean banishment from the charmed circle of . The Tsipras team did not face reality, or counsel others to do so, because they obviously did not want to. Any ideas as to why not? Let me offer a few. The Syriza leadership is embedded in a petty-bourgeois social milieu of technicians, bureaucrats, professors, doctors and lawyers who genuinely despise austerity, but despise even more the prospect of what a Grexit would mean for their cosmopolitan lifestyles, travel freedoms, stock portfolios and savings accounts. The events of the last few days have shown us just how far this layer is prepared to go in confronting the big Euro-bourgeoisie: not very. They display the typical class ambivalence of the petty bourgeois, usually resolved in favor of the ruling class at crunch time. But Syriza's base is comprised of more than middle-class professionals. It also includes many from the working-class districts who voted so overwhelmingly against surrender. Most of these people don't own stock portfolios; some rely on pensions that will now be brutally slashed. It includes many young people whose career prospects have suddenly become even dimmer than they already were.The best result one can hope for from this debacle is a more explicit class differentiation within Syriza, and within the Greek left in general. A working class left will also no doubt include middle-class intellectuals who take their politics more seriously than their status. Jim Creegan On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 8:59 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > On 7/14/15 8:48 AM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote: > >> None of which makes his terrible position now a complete shock, but >> still... >> > > What is so difficult to understand? Socialist Register has been a strong > Syriza supporter from the beginning. In fact the inability of comrades to > read what Panitch and Gindin have actually written makes me wonder if there > is a kind of feeding frenzy at work: > > Given the limits imposed by the unfavourable international balance of > forces, those of us who argued that the room for manoeuvre inside the EU > was a lot narrower than the SYRIZA leadership hoped, and therefore favoured > connecting a socialist strategy to Grexit – and always made this view clear > to our SYRIZA comrades – could not, however, help but be sympathetic to the > dilemmas they faced. Not to have been would have been churlish beyond > measure, especially given the socialist left's own political weakness in > our own countries. > > full: http://links.org.au/node/4507 > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/sectarian61%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
