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> On 26 Jul 2015, at 17:41, Louis Proyect via Marxism > <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > > So much for Syriza's capitulation dampening the anti-austerity struggle. > > Right. Given that the Socialist Party has been staking out an anti-austerity line for *years* now, and given that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is a right-wing nutter who is always massively over-stating leftwing insurgency in order to feed Little England fantasies that Europe is about to be drowned in a sea of red, I fail to see what is actually novel here. Syriza’s capitulation - and I’m glad no one is pretending that it is other than that now - has had one very notable immediate effect, and that is to shift the balance of forces in the leadership of the state to the Right. It has strengthened the Dragasakis wing, while resulting in a purge of the Left (though, notably, ANEL ministers who voted against the government retain their positions). It has also, of course, brought the troika’s inspectors back in, thus anchoring the ministerial departments to austerity. In sum, the government's entire raison d’être has been sacrificed and there is no sign that it has any strategy whatsoever for doing anything other than continuing the capitulation. This realistically leaves only one possible basis for renewed resistance, and that is a new social movement akin to 2012. If Syriza’s leadership has its druthers, however, there won’t be any social resistance to its implementation of austerity. Tsipras has already laid out the basis for the blackmail in his attack on the Left: to resist the implementation of austerity is a betrayal of socialist solidarity. And to the extent that Syriza has a base and can speak in a language that its leftist and working class supporters understand, it has a higher chance of dampening the resistance that does come, as the effects of austerity max filter into daily experiences. Certainly, if its union stewards are blackmailed into supporting the government, then they will probably align with New Democracy and Pasok stewards to block strike action. Indeed, my understanding is that this did happen with the planned teachers’ union strike on the day that One can only hope that the Left Platform and its allies kick up a considerably greater stink than they have, and start pulling the argument to the Left. Unfortunately, that won’t be helped by apologists pretending there is nothing to argue about. _________________________________________________________ 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
