[Marxism] on Greece debate
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. * Hans and Michael have put up two thoughtful pieces. My heart is with them. I do so hope that Hans is correct, but my head is with Richard Seymour. he has emerged from twitterdom to post a very good piece. We should bear in mind that Richard (like me) was a supporter, of what I at least thought Syriza represented, a break from the sterile sectarian Leninist madness. Richard's conclusion is very stark. He writes So it is important to be clear: if Syriza supports and implements this deal, it is over. It will not recover. It may exist as a party, but as a force of the radical left it will be all but redundant. It may as well be a centrist, austerian coalition. A left that goes along with this will be committing suicide. And finally, don't put your faith in the idea that maybe if Syriza hangs in there, does what it's told, eventually, after a while, Podemos will come, maybe some other radical left formations will come, and the balance of power will tilt. Even if that *was* how the European institutions work - and they have proven they aren't susceptible to that kind of pressure - this outcome will seriously undercut the chances for the European radical left. On a personal level my Irishness is beginning to assert itself. I am thinking only a bunch of Keynesians could make the Stalinist KKE look good. I am also incubating a hearty dislike for Tsirpas the Traitor. And please, for god's sake, let no one trot out the crappy line that he can't be a traitor for he never pretended to be anything other than what he is. He went into the referendum pretending that it made a difference. Let me now tackle, and I do not intend this in a flame like provocation, the line that is emerging. Green Left Weekly ( my subscription has expired if someone contact me I will renew it) has come out with the slogan Greece needs our solidarity. Michael endorses this and on the surface who can say nay? Well, I do. Greece here functions as a metonym (part stands for whole). My solidarity is with the people of Greece, not the Greek capitalists, not with Pasok, not with To Potami, and no longer with Syriza. Finally, Stuart criticised my questioning of Syriza's Tsirpas' tactics. I respect his subsequent silence. But I would ask him to consider whether he has an inclination to overly put his faith in princes. comradely Gary _ 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
Re: [Marxism] on Greece debate
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 11/07/2015 12:46 μμ, Anthony Hartin via Marxism wrote: If the Left platform doesnt have the weight to turn around the party then its time to gather up as many of the far left forces as possible and look outside While the left platform as a whole is totally unable to do so, it is quite probable for some of its personalities minorities and in particular for DEA. In that case, as usually, there will be fewer leaving than they had entered, and this, on top of the 3 splits to the right they have already suffered inside SYRIZA. Not a positive balance after all and it is to be seen whether they can find the courage to search for what went wrong about. New splits may occur during this painful task and that is no good news for the greek revolutionary left JA _ 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
[Marxism] Greece's debt is immoral and should be wiped
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. * Far from being the beneficiaries of “European generosity”, the Greek people are its victims. With the austerity programs, Greece has also become a laboratory for dismantling all the gains of working people across the industrialised world since World War II. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/59442 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Paul Mason What was the point of Tsipras referendum?
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. * OK, my two cents. I’ve largely kept out of this for most of the year, not out of any grand illusions in the Tsipras-Varoufakis leadership (really, Synaspismos was always reformist to its very bones, but it was the momentum of the split within Synaspismos, the left becoming the core of Syriza and the right becoming the disgusting sect Dimar, that seemed to offer hope), but more from the good old anti-sectarian viewpoint. I am very sympathetic to the idea that Syriza was negotiating between an almost impossible rock and hard place, and given that I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their place, I felt that premature bouts of righteous criticism coming from those of us far far away from the action was not just pointless but presumptious and posturing in the circumstances. That said, my sympathies have always been with the arguments put forward by the Left Tendency, by people like Kouvelakis and groups like DEA. My main difference with groups in the West supporting them, such as DEA’s ISO/Salt allies, was, for the reasons above, I thought there was little point in shouting it loud, and I guess I gave some more credit than they did to Tsipras in particular as a kind of honest radical left “reformist”, for want of a better word. Faced with what is unquestionably outright capitulation in the face of our momentous class victory on July 5, it seems to me the only road we can now support is the road of “rupture” and grexit combined with rapid bank nationalisation and more thorough capital controls. I don’t mean to say that is going to be easy. But for those non-economists among us, we are faced with some very highly qualified left economic experts saying a grexit would be very difficult but still feasible (I take it as a given that we are talking about grexit with a clear class direction), and others saying it would be impossibly catastrophic. Perhaps what we need is good hard discussion about this real issue, rather than mere denunciations of betrayal, no matter how justified they may seem. If it is correct that “socialist-oriented grexit” is just feasible, then I can’t see how it can’t be better than the starving masses being driven further into impossible austerity, at least eventually, and no worse in the short term. It may be off the table if Syriza splits and the right wing tries to implement the memorandum in alliance with Pasok/ND/Potami, but if so the struggle led by the Syriza left and the working masses would be the only salvation. If it is correct that any kind of grexit is impossible and catastrophic, then perhaps the arguments being put forward by Hans Ehrbar here are the best that can be said in the circumstances. But in that case, the Syriza leadership is not blameless for the disaster: 1. If there is nothing left in Greek banks, and so bank nationalisation nationalises air, and so there really is no short-term alternative to capitulation, then frankly the elementary democratic measures of bank nationalisation (done by plenty of ordinary capitalist governments) and rigorous capital controls should have been implemented much earlier. 2. If a grexit is ultimately necessary in order for an elected left government just to carry out its most minimum program it was elected on – and it seems obvious that it is – then Syriza should have been both carefully preparing for the option behind the scenes, and having a frank public debate with the Greek people about it. If Greece at this moment is economically, institutionally and politically unprepared for grexit, then part of the reason is that the Syriza leadership apparently believed its own spin; of course, they were right to try to negotiate with the troika to the bitter end, to try to get the best possible short-term deal, and to demonstrate to the Greek people that they were trying to fulfil their contradictory mandate (ending austerity and staying in Eurozone). Given class reality, however, it was always extremely unlikely that this double mandate could be achieved (only massive pressure by the European working classes could have done this, and let’s face it, it didn’t happen). Surely, if Tsipras-Varoufakis understood this class reality, they would have combined the necessary tactic of honest negotiations with realistic political/economic preparation for the (likely) second option. On the other hand, if they honestly believed they could talk good sense into the EU/IMF blood-suckers, then I guess they wouldn’t prepare – as seems to be what happened. Likewise, with the referendum: it is quite true that it didn’t give an *explicit* mandate for Syriza to leave the Eurozone
Re: [Marxism] on Greece debate
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. * So it is important to be clear: if Syriza supports and implements this deal, it is over. It will not recover. It may exist as a party, but as a force of the radical left it will be all but redundant. It may as well be a centrist, austerian coalition. A left that goes along with this will be committing suicide. Though its painful to watch, what we are seeing is the reformation of a (reformist) party of the ruling class in which the far left is starting to look like a foreign object. That doesnt mean that it was wrong to enter a broad party, just that its time to recognize that the only point of entering a bourgeois parliament is as a manoeuvre to advance the class struggle. If the Left platform doesnt have the weight to turn around the party then its time to gather up as many of the far left forces as possible and look outside _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Paul Mason What was the point of Tsipras referendum?
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. * Tsipras: “We are confronted with crucial decisions. We got a mandate to bring a better deal than the ultimatum that the Eurogroup gave us, but we weren't given a mandate to take Greece out of the eurozone,” So this is the crux of the matter. What Tsipras refuses to see is that the #OXI was a no to more austerity in general, not one particular version of it. Oxi was a rejection of the whole process of humiliation over the last 5 months of negotiation with the troika the last 5 years of economic barbarity. Moreover the referendum was one of the most stunning working class votes for decades - not to recognise and build on that is criminal. Tsipras was at last honest to the electorate in the week leading up to the referendum. Now he should say that the troika makes it impossible to both oppose austerity stay in the eurozone. Tsipras can try and sell his version of austerity - but when his administration sends the police to smash up the next round of anti-austerity protests, he is objectively the class enemy. Thats not some form of abuse but just the reality when you join forces with ND Pasok remnants to impose a new round of austerity privatisation The Left platform has effectively split but whether it stays to try and overthrow the centrists, or it looks to make a new formation with Anatarsya - the heart of the street movement (I have no hope for the KKE) remains to be seen _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Paul Mason What was the point of Tsipras referendum?
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 11/07/2015 09:51 πμ, Anthony Hartin via Marxism wrote: The Left platform has effectively split but whether it stays to try and overthrow the centrists, or it looks to make a new formation with Anatarsya - the heart of the street movement (I have no hope for the KKE) remains to be seen Yet it is a pitiable harvest for the comrades of the revolutionary left inside Syriza. DEA, for example, has spent 15 years inside SYRIZA to obtain just two negative votes against a (parliamentary) Coup d'état which transformed the 61,3% of the working class NO to a parliamentary majority of 88,7% in favor of YES on the same question. The irony of the history is that the SYRIZA government is about to be the first so far left government to fall because of its OWN Coup d'état! JA _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Paul Mason What was the point of Tsipras referendum?
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. * ioannis aposperites wrote: ... The irony of the history is that the SYRIZA government is about to be the first so far left government to fall because of its OWN Coup d'état! The other great irony is that it may be the troika itself which prevents Tsipras selling out despite all his efforts. As Varoufakis argues, the Germans want to crucify Greece to serve as a lesson of discipline to the French From the Frankfurter Allgemeine: ' The EU, IMF and ECB are “cautiously positive”, says the report but they want any new bailout programme to contain “structural benchmarks, milestones and quantitative benchmarks” for the future. And the reforms are not enough to meet primary surplus targets given the “significant deterioration in macroeconomic and financial conditions. ' _ 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
[Marxism] Fwd: Syria Op-Ed: The Deadly Consequences of Mis-Labeling Rebels | EA WorldView
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. * A statement from a leading Islamist group. http://eaworldview.com/2015/07/syria-op-ed-the-deadly-consequences-of-mis-labeling-rebels/ _ 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
[Marxism] Fwd: Greece draws up drachma plans, prepares to miss IMF payment - Telegraph
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[Marxism] Crises forcing us to see things dialectically
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. * Gary (and others) may be interested in the following methodological reflection. In order to understand the Syriza crisis, it is helpful to think in terms of causally efficacious absences. This posting enumerates several concrete cases where it is more instructive to think in terms of what did *not* happen, than in terms of what actually happened. This is a kind of dialectical thinking. One absence: why did the institutions not give any concessions to the Syriza negotiators? Because they wanted to force Syriza to act against their mandate, so that the disappointed Greek voters would vote them out of office again. I think Tsipras saw this and his reaction was apt. Through his actions he said: if you want the masses to lose trust in us, then let us ask them directly whether they still support us. He called the referendum combined with an offer to let others continue the negotiations. This caused the other side to panic and deliver another instructive absence. When Tsipras announced the referendum, the negotiation partners did not say: we understand, we all derive our power from the popular mandate, and we gladly give you the ten days of time necessary to hold a referendum. Instead they took offense. They withdrew their offer and broke off the negotiations, and caused a closure of the banks in the week leading up to the referendum. This cracked the democratic veneer of the Institutions and revealed that there are two different conceptions of democracy: carrying out the mandate of the voters on the one hand, versus mining the consent of the voters in order to impose disaster capitalism on the other. It also cracked the unity of the Institutions: the World Bank released a report supporting the position of Syriza that the debt burden was unsustainable. After the landslide win of the oxi vote, the ECB and Schauble repeated their dismal performance. Instead of finally offering small concessions, they tightened their negotiation position even more. This is not only immoral and undemocratic but also irrational, and here one has to wonder if they were still in control of the situation (another absence) or whether their hand was now forced by their own earlier propaganda: that Merkel would not get parliamentary majority if they offered concessions. Tsipras's conciliatory offer shows that he is the only adult in the room. He tries not to be the trigger forcing Germany to irreversibly damage the European project. He tries to act as a force for the better, similar to what the Soviet Union often did in the past. Greece may be forced out of the Euro nevertheless, but I think this effort should be counted to Tsipras's credit. We can no longer consider politicians to be representatives of their own country only, especially inside the EU. He acted as a EU citizen as much as a Greek citizen. (Obviously I do not think the EU should be smashed. The EU is the world leader in sustainability and de-carbonization, it is needed for a livable planet in the second half of this century.) Here is another fundamental absence, a big question mark ever since Syriza came to power: why did a leftist coalition, after coming to power, engage in diplomacy instead of building a socialist infrastructure on the ground? I think this absence is simply a matter of time. They are doing as much as they can to build a socialist infrastructure on the ground, win the masses over to self-determination and co-operative production, etc, but this cannot be achieved in a few weeks or months, and until now they did not have the resources to do it at the necessary scale. They have the resources now. If they stay in power without splintering and see it as one of their priorities, they can be the catalyst for profound developments in Greek society, so that an eco-socialist Grexit, or even a stronger eco-socialist current in the EU itself, becomes a possibility later. This is why I find it so important that Syriza stays in power and continues to get the support of the international left. If they do not build this infrastructure on the ground, their failure to do it is generating another efficacious absence: others either in Greece or elsewhere will draw the lessons and do what Syriza did not do. Yes we are learning, the only question is: are we learning fast enough? Hans G Ehrbar. _ 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
[Marxism] Eurozone leaders to Tsipras: You haven't grovelled enough
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. * http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/jul/11/greek-debt-crisis-eurozone-creditors-meet-to-decide-countrys-fate _ 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
[Marxism] The End
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. * The End BY MARK STRAND Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end, Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end, Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back. When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat, When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead. When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight, Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end. _ 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
[Marxism] Fwd: It's official: Latinos now outnumber whites in California - LA Times
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. * http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-census-latinos-20150708-story.html _ 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
[Marxism] Fwd: What were the Greeks thinking? Here’s a poll taken just before the referendum. - The Washington Post
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. * What did they expect from their vote? But knowing who voted no doesn’t tell us why. What did they think would come of their vote? An overwhelming majority of those who voted no– about 88 percent — believed that, as a result of an OXI vote, negotiations would continue, as you can see below. Only 5 percent believed that a no vote would mean Greece would exit the euro zone. full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/09/what-were-the-greeks-thinking-heres-a-poll-taken-just-before-the-referendum/ _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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. * The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T -Original Message- From: Dayne Goodwin via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Sent: Jul 11, 2015 1:04 PM To: Thomas F Barton thomasfbar...@earthlink.net Subject: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza' Syriza. Defeat. Victory. Defeat. by Richard Seymour Lenin's Tomb, July 10 http://www.leninology.co.uk . . . Now, it seems, Syriza has caved and proposed a deal which is even worse than the worst. Cuts. Privatisations. Pension 'reforms'. VAT increases. Recessionary measures. Barely a trace of a progressive agenda left here, notwithstanding the strenuous and heartbreaking efforts of euro-leftists to give it a gloss. In some respects, they have delivered, after months of fighting, a more complete victory to the neoliberal managers of Europe than the latter could have won on their own account. The social catastrophe that has befallen Greece is now going to be prolonged - the suicides, the premature deaths, the medicine shortages, the starvation, the wage losses, unemployment - but without any possible conviction that, say, a new radical left government might be elected and put an end to the misery. What sort of political forces might stand to gain in that terrain is obviously undecided; but we have seen what the worst of it could be. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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. * es. The question of what organized politics offer the possibility of change from below is now very much front and center. The spectacular collapse of parliamentary politics from above throws that door wide open. The quote from Brecht below is most apt. It was written mid-1953 during an uprising in the streets by the East German working class. After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writer's Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? It is often the case that before people, organizations, or a class, can formulate how to go forward, it is first necessary to become conscious of what they do not want and what does not work. Negation of the bullshit. Nobody can yet say what class response, if any, will come in the streets to events of the past few days and the decisions yet to come over the weekend. Nobody can yet say what political tendency, if any, will put forward politics that will begin to gather support to move against the government from below when and if sufficient forces are organized and ready to do so. What is certain is that there has been consistent underestimation of the depth of the rage and resistance among the Greek people in general and the Greek working class in particular to EU insistence on stripping them naked and pushing their faces into the dirt. That may now lead everywhere, or nowhere. Revolutionary organizations have been notoriously awful at predicting the course of short term events. A modern example: general amazement at the outcome of the referendum. The best have been supple enough not to lag too far behind uprisings from below. Solidarity, T -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com Sent: Jul 11, 2015 1:58 PM To: Thomas thomasfbar...@earthlink.net, Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza' So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T _ 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
[Marxism] TRNN, Lascaris on Syriza: one of the worst political debacles in modern European history
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. * Debate Rages in SYRIZA Over Austerity Plan Sharmini Peries interviews Dimitri Lascaris The Real News Network, video and transcript, July 11 http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=31Itemid=74jumival=14226 . . . LASCARIS: Well, I think we are witnessing what could fairly be described as one of the worst political debacles in modern European history... . . . LASCARIS: ...The other question is even if you believe that Greece is better off inside the Euro, you disagree with people like Syriza MP Costas Lapavitsas, one must ask the obvious question, will this deal actually prevent a Grexit? And anyone who thinks that this deal, which is going to cause further economic contraction in Greece, further social inequality, further increase, probably in the debt--certainly there will be an increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio. Further unemployment. But somehow magically this is going to prevent a default. I think they need to have their heads examined. If anything, this is going to accelerate a default on the other debts that Greece has. And when that default happens, there will be an end to liquidity assistance by the European Central Bank, assuming that it ever restores the liquidity assistance, and that's going to result in a failure of the Greek banking system and the need to seize the banking system and issue a parallel currency. So as a matter of fact this deal, if it passes, will not prevent a Grexit. Whether you think a Grexit is in the best interest of Greece or not is rather secondary at this point. It won't prevent a Grexit. We're going to be right back having this same discussion in a few months' time, maybe perhaps next year... So ultimately what we're doing here is we're engaging in precisely the game that the Greek government so rightly and eloquently condemned prior to taking power, the game of extend and pretend. That's what this is. It will not prevent a Grexit. It will simply delegitimize the government, drive it into the arms of neoliberal parties who have historically protected the very oligarchy that the Syriza party purports to want to destroy, and rightly so. And simply destroy any sense of hope within the Greek populace, and potentially result in a great deal of social unrest. Effectively Syriza, the leadership, has caused the economy to experience extreme hardship, has set back the economy of Greece quite significantly, to an unknown degree, for nothing. Because they could have gotten this deal without capital controls. They could have gotten this deal without pushing the European Union and the creditors to the limit that they did. PERIES: And what is in the minds of those who are favoring what they have just tabled to the creditors? What are they hoping to do? Is this crisis management, is this a stopgap measure? Is it buying time? LASCARIS: I'm going to be as charitable as I can. I think they are overcome with fear. That's all. That's the--that's the most charitable interpretation... I'm going to be charitable and say I think they're simply overcome by fear and that they actually did want, genuinely wanted to stay within the Eurozone and strike a more humane deal. But even on the most charitable interpretation the way they've gone about this has been a complete and utter disaster from a political and economic perspective. _ 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
[Marxism] Α new Memorandum or Rupture? A double impasse (for Greece, Syriza)
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. * Α new Memorandum or Rupture? A double impasse. by Stratis Bournazos AnalyzeGreece!, July 11 http://www.analyzegreece.gr/topics/greece-europe/item/286-stratis-bournazos (The original text was first published on: Enthemata” Avgis, 11.7.2015) [i think this is the Athens morning daily associated with Syriza and Synaspismos] This is the most difficult piece I have written in twenty years as a journalist. What can I say about this agreement? And most importantly, what must we actually do? If you support the conservatives, the socialists or that “POTAMI” party, “The River” in between, you should have no problem: you rejoice on the failure of SYRIZA anyway, and will continue scheming to overthrow the government. If you support the Communist party you shout ‘ It is only Us who are consistent’. If finally you are one of those venomous voters who long before January ridiculed SYRIZA calling them a priori traitors - again you should have no problem. A new Memorandum? But if, on the other hand you believe that the business of this government is your business , –whether you support SYRIZA or not–, that it is a big opportunity for the Left and also for your country, if you are anguished for the fate of this government – then you are in the dire straits. This line of reasoning is inconclusive; it can be used to support whichever eventuality one is favorably predisposed to: Signing the Memorandum, pursuing a rupture with the Eurogroup or even an exit from the EU. Neither the elections nor the referendum (without underestimating its importance) gave SYRIZA the mandate to pursue a rupture or to sign a new memorandum. A few observations: * The Greek government proposal is, frankly, appalling. It is yet another Memorandum. It is a clear failure of the government and the SYRIZA programme as a whole (who promised abolition of the memoranda, an ‘honest compromise’ etc). It is a personal and a collective failure of everyone who would call himself ‘a comrade’. * SYRIZA has a significant political responsibility for this development: both its analyses and politics proved to be unrealistic. Still, this responsibility is minor compared to that of the creditors. The mouse attempted to wrestle the elephant –that was impossible, if not comical. The situation is critical because here we have a collective failure of Europe as an Institution. * The agreement should not be called ‘just’ ‘viable’ etc. Had Mr. Samaras signed such an agreement, we would have revolted. So let’s underline what is good about it but mainly let’s confess our failure. Let’s say it is the result of an ultimatum leveraged by a financial stranglehold. It is also an aspect of this juncture in history: in Europe social democracy is nearly synonymous with the Right. While the Left and the activist groups are small; their demonstrations are emotional but ineffective. * The main accomplishment of the SYRIZA government is that it brought to the centre stage, under the spotlight, the prolonged austerity in Greece in the context of democracy in Europe. PM Tsipras’s talk in the European Parliament sparked solidarity manifestations throughout Europe. Even some cracks appeared in the European neo-liberal front. What is that ‘rupture’? Finally what is that ‘rupture’? Is it bankruptcy within the Eurozone? Is it the infamous Grexit? Or even exit from the EU? I find disconcerting that each one can understand whatever they want. * If the rupture would happen tomorrow, it would be in the most disorganised, painful and disastrous way: with an unprepared state machine, empty bank vaults, hasty printing of national currency resulting to an economic, social and political mayhem. The word ‘catastrophe’ is etched in my mind. This would, indeed, be the worst case scenario hurting the weakest, as always happens in a clash ridden society. In this case the government would very likely step down. *There is however a more meaningful question: even if the ‘rupture’ was executed according to a plan, in an orderly way, and without a government collapse why would it bring the country to a better position? Why would the lower classes (those on minimum wage and low pensions, the unemployed, the youth) benefit? Would a left government outside the Eurozone, or even the EU, be able to survive the power game, prevail the markets’ pressures and improve the country’s position in the international division of labour? If we failed as members of the Euro because we were weaker than those opposite to us, why would we be stronger outside the Eurozone? How could we achieve better terms when negotiating with old and new creditors? This would only be possible if the country was
Re: [Marxism] two reports on Greek politics
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. * Elect a new people... On 7/11/15 2:14 PM, Dayne Goodwin via Marxism wrote: For all the resentment of the new bailout plans, Thomas Gerakis of the Marc polling group said Greeks were afraid of being kicked out of the euro zone and aware that painful reforms were the price for staying in. This issue (staying in Europe) needs to be resolved first - the majority of Greek people want that, even with a bad deal or a worse deal, Gerakis said. _ 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
[Marxism] Lawyers, psychologist-torturers, and the heart of darkness of this tale
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. * The American Psychological Association has now made public the law firm report it commissioned confirming that group's complicity with Pentagon and CIA torture programs, as well as the duplicity and manipulations by top APA leaders to enable and protect this criminal conduct by its members. But the report itself pulls its punches, even refusing to call torture by its right name, and turning a blind eye to what should have been its central conclusion, that the association should disband, because one group cannot represent those who seek to practice psychology as a healing art and those who would use their knowledge against the interests of those they study. My take on this at Hatuey's Ashes:The horror is not the monstrous criminality of the APA's leaders, but the very pedestrian venality that made it possible -- and that also led to the emasculation of the report we have before us. Full: http://hatueysashes.blogspot.com/2015/07/lawyers-and-psychologist-torturers.html _ 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
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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. * Syriza. Defeat. Victory. Defeat. by Richard Seymour Lenin's Tomb, July 10 http://www.leninology.co.uk . . . Now, it seems, Syriza has caved and proposed a deal which is even worse than the worst. Cuts. Privatisations. Pension 'reforms'. VAT increases. Recessionary measures. Barely a trace of a progressive agenda left here, notwithstanding the strenuous and heartbreaking efforts of euro-leftists to give it a gloss. In some respects, they have delivered, after months of fighting, a more complete victory to the neoliberal managers of Europe than the latter could have won on their own account. The social catastrophe that has befallen Greece is now going to be prolonged - the suicides, the premature deaths, the medicine shortages, the starvation, the wage losses, unemployment - but without any possible conviction that, say, a new radical left government might be elected and put an end to the misery. What sort of political forces might stand to gain in that terrain is obviously undecided; but we have seen what the worst of it could be. In a way, none of this is surprising. The only possible coherent basis for any alternative to austerity was a Grexit prepared for early on, both in terms of public opinion and effective war-readiness. There was nothing else coming down the pipeline. The dominant forces in the Syriza leadership wouldn't have it. Not for a second would Tsipras, Dragasakis, or the recently appointed negotiator Tsakalotos, allow this outcome. For them, Grexit was worse than austerity. Of course, even if they thought that was true, the failure to even plan for such a contingency, to wargame the possible outcomes and get people in the state apparatuses ready to act, was a huge mistake. . . . So what was the meaning of last week's referendum? Why did they call it, and what happened to 'Oxi'? It is fair to say that the Syriza leadership never expected 61% of Greeks to actually support them. Neither did I. The 'Oxi' rallies were enormous, but the fact of this translating into such a tremendous surge at the ballots, mostly coming from the working class and from younger voters - but actually spread across all the districts of Greece, the rural as much as the urban - bespeaks a revolt on the scale of the 'national-popular'. No one could have anticipated it. So what did they anticipate? We could infer the answer from their behaviour. On the day after the referendum, Varoufakis was relieved of his negotiating duties (leaving aside his generally right-cleaving positions, the creditors evidently hate him), and instead a new team including delegates from To Potami and Pasok was sent to discuss the terms of surrender. Tsakalotos sent a letter pleading for a new bailout, with a promise of a new memorandum. This move would have made much more sense had there been a narrow vote for 'Yes', or even a narrow 'No'. It makes no sense at all now. It is at least plausible that Syriza leaders would have preferred to lose and be forced to resign, rather than take responsibility for this deal. It is also plausible, lest we overlook the option, that the Syriza leadership is utterly at sea, pulled hither and thither by tides and winds it knows nothing of. Whatever the reason, the referendum did happen and the result was astonishing. The majority of Greeks did come out to clearly reject austerity. The public protests and rallies building to it, against the ferocious pressure of the reactionary media and the threats of the Eurogroup, almost had the character of a social movement. If we're fortunate, they were the beginning of one. This introduces a significant cleavage between the government and its base. Objectively, that is the basis of a political split. Whether anyone in Syriza will recognise that remains to be seen. . . . Be clear that we are looking a world-historic defeat in the eye. And act accordingly. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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. * So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T _ 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
[Marxism] two reports on Greek politics
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. * Tsipras says he has mandate for talks after parliament vote Alexis Tsipras claimed a strong mandate to complete negotiations with EU creditors after winning the backing of parliament over a painful new package of reforms. The Times of Change, Greece, July 11 http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/politics/article/tsipras-says-he-has-mandate-for-talks-after-parliament-vote In a statement issued after the vote in parliament, which the government won with the help of pro-European opposition parties, Tsipras said he had a strong mandate to complete the negotiations to reach an economically viable and socially fair agreement. He made no mention of rebels within his own leftwing SYRIZA party who withheld support for the measures but said his focus was on completing the negotiations. The priority now is to have a positive outcome to the negotiations. Everything else in its own time, he said. His last reference was aimed at the 17 dissenters in his own party, who failed to vote Yes in the parliamentary debate on Friday night. Add to those another 15 MPs who issued a statement after the vote saying they voted Yes to the negotiations but will vote No to recessionary measures of a potential vote and you have the picture of a fractured party. Initial reports indicate that the PM will be committing a major reshuffle come Monday, if the negotiations are successful, in order to deal with two of his cabinet ministers (Lafazanis, Stratoulis), who voted present in the parliamentary vote. It is also rumored that if idiosyncratic House speaker Zoe Konstandopoulou doesn't resign her post after voting present in last night's vote, Tsipras will be officially asking for her replacement. Other reports about asking socialist PASOK and centrist The River parties to join a newly reshuffled coalition government, are rather premature at the moment, but all possibilities are open. Euphoria swiftly dissolves in Greece as bailout plan emerges by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos I Kathimerini, Athens, July 11 (Reuters) http://www.ekathimerini.com/199332/article/ekathimerini/news/euphoria-swiftly-dissolves-in-greece-as-bailout-plan-emerges The euphoria felt by many Greeks at telling Europe their country was rejecting austerity for good lasted less than five days. On Friday, the population woke up to discover Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had promised creditors a new bailout package with austerity measures almost identical to those a majority of Greeks had voted against in Sunday's referendum. A cartoon in the Kathimerini newspaper summed up the swift change in the public mood: a group of Greeks joyously cheering with a No on Sunday next to a shot of the same group on Tuesday collectively gasping Oh No!. With the government now ready to implement a package similar to one it had called a national vote to reject, 23-year-old speech therapy student Marios Rozis reckoned the situation had descended into farce. Everybody was happy on Sunday, it was a mature decision against austerity. Today I feel the referendum happened for no reason, he said as he sipped a coffee and worked away at a laptop. It doesn't make sense. His reaction of bitterness mixed with resignation and exhaustion reflects the souring public mood in Greece, where the jubilance of an overwhelming victory by the No camp on Sunday swiftly dissipated in the face of an expected economic collapse before fading altogether as the new bailout plan emerged. Even before the crisis-driven concessions were unveiled, fear had spread after Greek banks closed almost two weeks ago, freezing the economy and creating long queues at cash machines for withdrawals of a maximum of 60 euros a day while pensioners without credit cards besieged bank entrances. Quicksand Under the threat of a eurozone exit, Greece's government submitted the new package of tax and pension reforms to creditors late on Thursday in the hope of unlocking 53.5 billion euros ($59 billion) in aid and the promise of potential debt relief. Newspapers on Friday reacted with a similar sense of drama, with the Left-wing Efimerida ton Syntakton headlining its front page Negotiating in quicksand while the centre-right Eleftheros Typos newspaper went on the attack, estimating the 'No' vote had raised the reforms bill by 4.5 billion euros in five days. I voted 'No'. And of course this new proposal doesn't correspond to that 'No', said Vassilis Sika, a 20-year-old unemployed Greek in Athens' central square. I feel like a slave. They do what they want, and we can't participate. The Communist-affiliated PAME group responded by calling for rallies across Greece on Friday evening, saying: Everyone take to the streets! Battle now
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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 7/11/15 7:44 PM, ioannis aposperites via Marxism wrote: 6. In the middle of all this mess, the greek working class voted for NO at a percentage of 70-80%, resulting to an overall of 61,3% for the NO vote.The question of the referendum had been set by the class enemy and the answer was a clear no to austerity whatever it takes. And in that context whatever meant including grexit. Didn't you read what I just posted from the Washington Post? Grexit was not reflected as the choice of more than 5 percent in the polls by any party on the eve of the referendum, except for ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters who indicated that they would vote no also favored Grexit. The KKE was not included in the poll, for reasons that were not explained. The Trotskyist left and other members of the far left are all for Grexit but the polls continue to indicate opposition to that. Instead of castigating Syriza for not adopting *your* position, you need to do a better job making the case for it. Tsipras and company are too immersed in a certain set of beliefs to now disavow them as should be clear. I run into the same sense of frustration dealing with people on the American left who are for Bernie Sanders. I am not going to waste time attacking them or Sanders. (I do plan, however, to continue write about the history of Swedish social democracy mostly in order to interrogate the Swedish model as much as for my own self-education.) If a socialist Grexit is the answer, the Greek revolutionary left has to do a better job making the case for it. There is a tendency among those educated in the Trotskyist tradition to make exposing of reformists the primary axis of their propaganda. The failure of such groups to ever achieve the critical mass to become important enough to warrant a critique of their own record is ironic. Nobody spends much time blasting Antarsya for selling out, after all. Now I understand why comrades would find solace in existing in a purified revolutionary state but I don't think that this will change Greek society. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'.
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 7/11/15 7:55 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Louis can't seem to answer the arguments of anyone who disagrees with him w/o baiting them for other political positions or their political past. I am not interested in answering your arguments. Frankly, of the 33 messages you have posted here since February, all but 3 have been about Syriza. When anybody shows up on Marxmail posting exclusively about some problem or struggle in another country (Ukraine, Syria, etc.), I rapidly come to the conclusion that they are intervening rather than having a conversation. Your cause would be better served if you made an attempt to write about other matters like the disappearance of marine life, gay marriage, disappeared students in Mexico, beat poetry, Godard movies, climate change, the origins of capitalism, the fight for $15, etc. Before you became fixated on Greece, you were fixated on Ukraine. Who knows what you will become fixated on next if Syriza disappears from office. In reality, just speaking for myself, I have the same reaction to your trolling as I do to Sparts at Left Forums. Everybody groans when they begin to speak because they have heard it all before. The Sparts are unsullied while everybody else is a traitor. It is really quite a disgusting behavior calculated mostly to get on people's nerves. Here you are striking poses as if you are the only person on Marxmail who has read Trotsky speaking down to a swamp of reformist slugs, trying to raise them to your Olympian level. It is enough to make one puke. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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 7/11/15 5:00 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Maybe a party that can, at minimum, decide on a rational course of action and campaign for it rather than merely reflect the immediate wishes of the electorate, You mean like the Spartacist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency that you belonged to for 30 years? Or the CPGB with its hammer-and-sickle festooned website whose newspaper you write for on occasion? We are dealing with two types of politics basically. There are those who believe in the power of deeds. That is why I spent a half-decade recruiting technical aid volunteers for Nicaragua and the ANC and the frontline states in the 1980s when you were writing articles calling for proletarian dictatorship in a newspaper that probably had a circulation of about 2 or 3 hundred. You must have believed that your words had some kind of magical power to transform reality. I think that a mojo and a monkey's paw would have had more impact. I created this mailing list as an alternative to the kind of sterile, self-regarding, vaporous formulas that come so easy to you. My advice is to get off the Internet and go work in a soup kitchen or something if you really want to make a difference. _ 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
[Marxism] Goldman-Sachs could be sued for helping former Greek government hide debts
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. * http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-crisis-goldman-sachs-could-be-sued-for-helping-country-hide-debts-when-it-joined-euro-10381926.html _ 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
[Marxism] Fwd: Greece-- Might Be of Some Interest
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. * Forwarded Message Subject:Greece-- Might Be of Some Interest Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2015 23:01:27 -0400 From: S.Artesian sartes...@earthlink.net To: mdriscol...@charter.net http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/2015/05/prospects-and-results.html --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.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
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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. * Proyect wrote; So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. * Maybe a party that can, at minimum, decide on a rational course of action and campaign for it rather than merely reflect the immediate wishes of the electorate, especially when those wishes--to reject austerity and remain within the Eurozone--are mutually incompatible. Eurozone, thy name is austerity! It would have helped a lot had the Syriza leadership been clear on this from the beginning, and not sown illusions about persuading the Eurocrats to become something other than what they fundamentally and irreducibly are. And maybe only 5% of No voters favored leaving the euro, but ALL of them voted against the austerity package that the Syriza leadership is now in the process of ramming down their throats. It is unclear how the majority would have decided if an either/or choice had been clearly put to them, although they overwhelmingly voted No despite threats from the institutions and the Greek media that their choice would amount to leaving. The Syriza leadership is now undemocratically imposing upon the people a course that they have shown themselves to oppose even more than a Grexit. What kind of party does Greece need? Surely NOT the kind of party that Syriza has shown itself to be. Seymour is right. Syriza is now nothing more than a PASOK Mark 2. It is dead! And the future of Podemos is not bright. The best thing that can come from this debacle is the formation of a new party from the leftwing members that will perhaps split from Syriza, and other leftist parties or members of them who do not share Tsipras's view that an indefinite future of poverty and national humiliation are preferable to the trials of life outside the Euro Jim _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
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 11/07/2015 08:58 μμ, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T The facts are stubborn things. The referendum took place under these concrete conditions the week before 5th July: 1. The government which had call for a no vote was clear only to its ambivalence: They were begging the troika for a deal in order to call off the referendum and only after its refuse on Thursday did the referendum became certain, while the majority of SYRIZA's cadres and ministers had disappeared from the media, had made no declarations in favour of the no vote while some of them, like Mardas, had appeared only to declare that they would resign if greece would leave eurozone. 2. The banks were closed and the 1st of July was the pay day for a lot of people including pensioners. Keep in mind that pensioners support their unemployed children out of their miserable pensions. There are many households which have no other income than the pension of the grandfather or grandmother. 3. The whole EU's political personnel and the greek bourgeois parties were chanting in every possible tone that the question of the referendum was fake and that it was about leaving or not Eurozone and EU, while SYRIZA just pretending to claim that it was about a no more existent troika's proposition. 4. The whole media system including the public broadcaster ERT, which SYRIZA reopened, were threatening the public with the supposedly horrific consequences of the NO vote. There will be no wages, no pensions. There will be no food nor medicines. There will be no oil and nothing wouldn't be imported. That's what they had been yielding during the week before 5th July. 5. The political forces which were consistently calling for a NO to austerity had won less than one per cent of support last January, while KKE was calling to a invalid vote. 6. In the middle of all this mess, the greek working class voted for NO at a percentage of 70-80%, resulting to an overall of 61,3% for the NO vote.The question of the referendum had been set by the class enemy and the answer was a clear no to austerity whatever it takes. And in that context whatever meant including grexit. Now, how on earth a couple of questions in a gallop like a. For whom did you vote on January? b. Would you expressed a desire for a grexit? (A slight impulse perhaps?) and the supposed answers to these questions by a couple of hundreds of people, could reveal a truth that was not clear enough by the NO vote? How on earth a gallop can be taken seriously against the 61,3% of the NO vote, against a majority, especially in an unfavourable bourgeois ballot, who have answer YES to the question do you reject austerity even if you risk a grexit? Yes. The facts are stubborn things. Even in front of fake facts like that gallop however accommodative it can be. After all however inefficient may be the parties that proclaim the need of the rupture they are not to be blamed for the bankruptcy of SYRIZA! Maybe they are not good enough, but for sure, a party like SYRIZA is not either. Checked out. JA _ 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
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'.
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. * Proyect wrote: You mean like the Spartacist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency that you belonged to for 30 years? Or the CPGB with its hammer-and-sickle festooned website whose newspaper you write for on occasion? We are dealing with two types of politics basically. There are those who believe in the power of deeds. That is why I spent a half-decade recruiting technical aid volunteers for Nicaragua and the ANC and the frontline states in the 1980s when you were writing articles calling for proletarian dictatorship in a newspaper that probably had a circulation of about 2 or 3 hundred. You must have believed that your words had some kind of magical power to transform reality. I think that a mojo and a monkey's paw would have had more impact. I created this mailing list as an alternative to the kind of sterile, self-regarding, vaporous formulas that come so easy to you. My advice is to get off the Internet and go work in a soup kitchen or something if you really want to make a difference. Reply Reply to all Forward Click I can think of no more apposite reply to Mr. Deeds than to resend my post from December 1: Louis can't seem to answer the arguments of anyone who disagrees with him w/o baiting them for other political positions or their political past. But apart from that, he is right that attempts to organize a revolutionary party in the US and other Western countries have failed in the post-war period, mainly because they can't recruit more than a handful of people, and the idea of revolution is very remote from any segment of the population right now. Any existing energy for change is in the reformist camp. But Louis might pause in his rush to join the left-reformists long enough to consider this fact: left-reformism, even (and especially) where it has achieved its electoral aims, hasn't worked either. Left-reformist governments have come under massive political and economic attacks from the ruling classes, for which they have no answer. They either retreat, or go down to defeat (usually both). This occurs because their politics are explicitly or implicitly based on faith in bourgeois democracy. They believe in the mobilization of the masses solely or chiefly for electoral purposes. Further, when the reformists are defeated, the masses who followed them don't draw the appropriate conclusions and go on to some higher level of revolutionary consciousness on their own. They are instead despairing and demoralized for years and decades after. Nothing fails like failure. True, a much larger number of people are drawn to reformist parties and causes, and this is probably why Louis finds them so much more appealing than the SWP of his younger days. But this doesn't make them any more successful in the long run than minuscule revolutionary sects. . Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why a sectarian like me has been able more or less to predict what would happen well in advance of the event, while a man of deeds such as yourself never seems to have a clue? Jim _ 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
[Marxism] What now?
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. * I will give Hans' post more consideration and reply later, I hope. It certainly merits that. I am inclined though to agree with him and to disagree with Richard Seymour on the scale of the defeat. It might be very dangerous to think this but the people demonstrated their courage and solidarity and that has not changed. In response to Theo's blog let me quote a line from Yeats - I have never complained of the people. And no one else on this list has either, as far as I can see. It is true that most of us do not speak Greek. But all of us wish the Greek people well, and we have all displayed international solidarity. There have also been many posts which had their origin from within Greece. In this the list has acted in the best traditions of socialist solidarity, IMHO. Solidarity, of course, can be unwanted at times. Many of us are angry and bitterly disappointed at the victory of the Right. Would Theo want us to feel otherwise? I am sure not. Let me repeat again. We are not complaining about the Greek people. My admiration for them is unbounded. *Tsirpas the Sell-out* is something else. I will be complaining about him for as many years as remain to me. Now, he reminds me of the character in *Pelle the Conqueror* who rebels and is about to strike the cruel boss down with his scythe and then is struck in the back of the head by some kind of apparatus that I cannot recall. One's immediate reaction is that he has died bravely and one mourns that he did not get a blow in. Then, later in the film, we see him again. He is sat in the corner of the kitchen alive but brain damaged and drooling. 'Why was he not thrown off the farm?' we wonder at first. After all he was going to kill the boss. Then the answer is bitterly clear. He has become a trophy. Ostensibly he shows the boss's charitable side. In reality, he serves to remind people of the fate of rebellion. Unless I am very mistaken, the new Alexis will be a jewel in the crowns of the Thugs of Brussels. Should events prove me wrong and should Syriza somehow learn from the people, then I will be the first to apologize. But I am not holding my breath comradely Gary _ 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
[Marxism] 43 years in solitary for being a Black Panther free Albert Woodfox
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. * https://rdln.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=12599action=editpostpost=v2 _ 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
[Marxism] Is this authentic?
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 Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 5:42 PM, jamesev...@aol.com wrote: Shocking Letter by Hillary Clinton Revealed Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton last week penned a controversial letter to Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban, a major Jewish donor vowing to offer Israel “total” support in its next confrontation with the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers: Hillary's letter stated: “Quite frankly, Israel didn’t teach Hamas a harsh enough lesson last year. True to form, Obama was too hard on our democratic ally, and too soft on our Islamofascist foe,” reads the letter, obtained by the Guardian. “As president, I will give the Jewish state all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to truly vanquish Hamas – and if that means killing 200,000 Gazans, than so be it.” “We realist Democrats understand that collateral damage is an unavoidable byproduct of the war on terror,” Clinton writes, “and me being a mother, grandmother and tireless children’s rights advocate does not mean that I will flinch even one iota in allowing Israel to obliterate every last school-cum-rocket launching pad in Gaza. Those who allow their children to be used as human shields for terrorists deserve to see them buried under one-ton bombs.” In response to outrage among liberal Democrats and human rights groups following the release of the second letter, the Clinton campaign blamed a typo: “Hillary meant to write 20,000, not 200,000.” _ 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
