Re: [Marxism] Socialist Alliance statement: Greece: This is a coup cancel the debt!
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. * Your reply was thoughtful and, a welcome relief from the rank TINA-inspired apologetics of some people on this list serve and elsewhere. So let me try to answer in a thoughtful way. You seem to accept all the substantive criticisms I make of the Tsipras leadership, and agree that they were not compelled to do what they did, but want to characterize the their failure as a mistake as opposed to a betrayal. But my use of the word betrayal is more than mere indignation and venting. There is an important political reason why I employ the term. If it was obvious to me that the attitude of the Troika would be more or less what it turned out to be before negotiations even began (and I am no genius), why did it never seem to occur to the Syriza leadership, even as one possible outcome, to be taken into account and planned for ? It seems to me that more was involved here than an error in judgment. If, moreover, the leadership were now or at some point in the near future to hang their heads in shame and admit to their disastrous errors in response to criticism, I, in turn, would be inclined to accept your criticism of my harsh strictures. But let me venture another prediction: Tsipras and Co. will not admit the error of their ways in any criticism-self-criticism session of the Syriza Central Committee or at any Party Congress. The same political predispositions that prevented them from entertaining the possibility of a Grexit in the first place will now impel them (no doubt with more hand-wringing) to defend the course they have chosen, to continue upon it, and to defeat and perhaps expel those in their party who oppose it. I make this prediction because I think that the left-reformism you speak of, more than just a set of mistaken ideas, is closer to a class ideology based upon the position of middling layers (small business people, professionals of various kinds, union bureaucrats and party politicians) in capitalist society. And it is, unfortunately, these layers that are most prominent in the Western left today. The petty bourgeoisie (and the labor bureaucrats, who essentially share their outlook) are genuinely horrified by the ravages of neoliberal capitalism, but not to the point where they are willing to contemplate a decisive break with bourgeois institutions or determined popular struggle against them. Their in-between class position makes them too close to the big bourgeoisie to entertain any extremist solutions that might put their own social status in peril. And their social position also dictates their choice of means. They think they can abate the horrors of neoliberalism through shrewdness, game-theory based strategies, clever negotiating tactics and appeals to the humanity of the ruling classes, to whom they feel a certain kinship when all is said and done. The prospect of all-out class struggle fills them with foreboding and dread. They will always capitulate before embarking on that path. Having said that, I should also add that it is hardly enough just to say it. The left and the working class must be convinced that what I have said is true. But to do that will require political realignment, which will in turn necessitate a hard factional struggle against committed reformists who have no intention (apart from perhaps a few well-motivated radicals) of abandoning the methods that reflect their class position. In the present political juncture, I don't think what separates revolutionaries from reformists is whether or not one calls for socialism. I think both revolutionaries and reformists must now make demands which one can call Keynesian. The fight must take place over the methods (class-struggle or negotiations) for achieving those demands, and that class-struggle methods could very well open the way to going beyond demands for relief measures. But I think the fight for class-struggle methods in the left has to be a hard one, leading to a clear political differentiation. I don't believe the left-reformists in this fight are about to change their spots, and we must be prepared for that as much as the left should have been prepared for the Troika's hard line. Jim Creegan On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Michael Karadjis mkarad...@gmail.com wrote: *From:* James Creegan sectaria...@gmail.com *Sent:* Saturday, July 18, 2015 4:25 AM I have had just about all can abide of statements to the effect that Tsipras and Co. were forced to capitulate or beaten into submission. Were they forced to stand on a platform of ending austerity, knowing all the while that they would mitigate austerity only to the extent that the institutions found it acceptable? They had illusions
Re: [Marxism] Socialist Alliance statement: Greece: This is a coup cancel the debt!
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. * Michael Karadjis Wrote: I think this is a very good statement: No holding back about what a monstrous, despicable document has been agreed to by the Syriza leadership, whata complete catastrophe the whole situation is, without feeling the necessity to damn Tsipras and co, virtually beaten into submission by the EU blood-suckers and presented with a choice between arsenic and cyanide, as traitors. The emphasis should be on supporting the ongoing struggle, whoever is waging and leading it, against the new memorandum, rather than getting all hot about denouncing betrayers. On the other hand, calm and constructive criticism of errors and illusions of the Syriza leadership is entirely appropriate in helping us understand what happened and why. _ I have had just about all can abide of statements to the effect that Tsipras and Co. were forced to capitulate or beaten into submission. Were they forced to stand on a platform of ending austerity, knowing all the while that they would mitigate austerity only to the extent that the institutions found it acceptable? Were they forced to oppose in their central committee Left Platform Resolutions calling for a Plan B, and greater emphasis on mass mobilization? Were they forced to call a referendum, attempt to surrender to the Troika before it was even held, and then do exactly what the voters overwhelmingly rejected? Are they now being forced to ram an austerity bill through parliament and act as accomplices to the Troika in driving their people deeper into poverty and national humiliation? If all else failed, they could at least have had the decency to resign! All of the things they are now doing they are doing of their own free will, and must be forced to take the rap. There is no constructive criticism of betrayal! Jim Creegan On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 5:58 AM, Michael Karadjis 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. * Greece: This is a coup cancel the debt! http://www.socialist-alliance.org/news/greece-coup-cancel-debt I think this is a very good statement: No holding back about what a monstrous, despicable document has been agreed to by the Syriza leadership, whata complete catastrophe the whole situation is, without feeling the necessity to damn Tsipras and co, virtually beaten into submission by the EU blood-suckers and presented with a choice between arsenic and cyanide, as traitors. The emphasis should be on supporting the ongoing struggle, whoever is waging and leading it, against the new memorandum, rather than getting all hot about denouncing betrayers. On the other hand, calm and constructive criticism of errors and illusions of the Syriza leadership is entirely appropriate in helping us understand what happened and why. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] Convert to the Drachma – Piece of Cake. Right… | naked capitalism
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: We have a left developing in Greece today out of the disaffected Syriza members, Antarsya and the KKE (not that these people are capable of working in a united front). As I urged a FB friend yesterday, the focus should be on what's next and not on what just happened. ** I'm glad that you finally seem to realize that the future of the Greek left lies in a recomposition of forces, and not with Syriza as a party. But is politically impossible to forget about the betrayal that has just taken place and simply move on. The Tsipras faction of Syriza (which is probably still a majority) is hardly about to roll over and play dead. They will argue that they have not betrayed and that therefore no recomposition of the left is necessary. The KKE leadership will continue to defend its sectarian-abstentionist policies. And many more on the left will be bewildered and confused by what has taken place, not knowing what the future holds or where to turn. Recomposition demands political clarification, which in turn demands a struggle of ideas and political tendencies. I know that branding people betrayers, and the whole notion of a right-left struggle within the left is your idea of a Spartacist nightmare, and is anathema to every bone in your anti-sectarian body. But it is unavoidable at this juncture. Lenin didn't skip over the struggle against Kautsky, and move effortlessly on to the founding of the Third International, letting bygones be bygones. He would not have accepted the excuse that voting for war credits in the Reichstag simply reflected the wishes of the German people (which it did at the time, btw, to a much greater extent than voting for austerity now reflects the wishes of the majority of the Greek people). I know we aren't in the same situation here, and that the issue is a Grexit, not war and revolution, so please do not invoke that straw man. But an event of great consequence is now transpiring, and the left, in Greece or Europe, can't move forward without digesting its implications. Jim Creegan On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 8:41 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 7/16/15 8:20 AM, Marv Gandall via Marxism wrote: Is the suggestion here that all of the peoples in the eurozone are trapped in it because the technical problems of converting to a sovereign currency are intractable, or is there something special about the technological structure of Greek capitalism? Absolutely not. But all this talk about Tsipras should have come up with a plan B while he was in these intense negotiations with the eurozone bigs is nuts. As I have repeatedly tried to explain, converting to a new currency requires a full project life-cycle implementation just as it did moving from a drachma to the euro. I have been involved with 5 such massive projects during my career so I can guarantee you that it would take Greece or any other euro-based nations a full 3 years to effect a change. As Doug pointed out, such a declared intention would have consequences of capital drain. In any case, the challenge is more political than technical at this point. We have a left developing in Greece today out of the disaffected Syriza members, Antarsya and the KKE (not that these people are capable of working in a united front). As I urged a FB friend yesterday, the focus should be on what's next and not on what just happened. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] [Pen-l] Convert to the Drachma – Piece of Cake. Right… | naked capitalism
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. * Mark Lause wrote: Jim urges us to act appropriately *to* this juncture, as though we were historical materialists. But the next lines urge us to follow the example of Lenin's struggle against Kautsky and voting against war credits in the Reichstag. For historical materialists, these are different junctures altogether, no? ** I acknowledge the differences in the respective junctures in the sentence following the text of mine that you select. I might also add to the differences that, unlike the German Social Democracy, Syriza is not, and never claimed to be, a working-class socialist party, and never proclaimed its intention to answer the class enemy with a general strike, as the SPD had pledged to do in the event of war. But the juncture is not *altogether *different. Tsipras it has betrayed every election pledge his party ever made at the cost of untold damage and agony to his people, and is, like New Democracy and Pasok, employing TINA arguments to justify his actions. Any socialist (or even committed Keynesian) must categorically repudiate all TINA arguments A betrayal is a betrayal, in 2015 as it was in 1914, and there must be a political sorting out and assigning of blame before any political realignment can take place. Jim Reply to all Forward On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:56 AM, Mark Lause markala...@gmail.com wrote: Jim Creegan writes, I know that branding people betrayers, and the whole notion of a right-left struggle within the left is your idea of a Spartacist nightmare, and is anathema to every bone in your 'anti-sectarian' body. But it is unavoidable at this juncture. Lenin didn't skip over the struggle against Kautsky, and move effortlessly on to the founding of the Third International, letting bygones be bygones. He would not have accepted the excuse that voting for war credits in the Reichstag simply reflected the wishes of the German people (which it did at the time, btw, to a much greater extent than voting for austerity now reflects the wishes of the majority of the Greek people). Jim urges us to act appropriately to this juncture, as though we were historical materialists. But the next lines urge us to follow the example of Lenin's struggle against Kautsky and voting against war credits in the Reichstag. For historical materialists, these are different junctures altogether, no? ML _ 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] last words on Greece
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: 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
[Marxism] Another Brecht Poem
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. * Since Louis is so fond of quoting Brecht about electing another people, I thought I might send along this Brecht poem, containing echoes of those who speak of the possible perils of a Grexit: Guatama the Buddha taught The doctrine of greed’s wheel to which we are bound, and advised That we shed all craving and thus Undesiring enter the nothingness that he called Nirvana. Then one day his pupils asked him: “What is it like, this nothingness, Master? Every one of us would Shed all craving, as you advise, but tell us Whether this nothingness which then we shall enter Is perhaps like being at one with all creation, When you lie in water, your body weightless, at noon, Unthinking almost, lazily lie in the water, or drowse Hardly knowing now that you straighten the blanket, Going down fast –whether this nothingness, then, Is a happy one of this kind, a pleasant nothingness, or Whether this nothingness of yours is more nothing, cold, senseless and void.” Long the Buddha was silent, then said nonchalantly: “There is no answer to your question.” But in the evening, when they had gone, The Buddha still sat under the bread-fruit tree and to the others, To those who had not asked, addressed this parable: “Lately I saw a house. It was burning. The flame Licked at its roof. I went up close and observed That there were people still inside. I entered the doorway and called Out to them that the roof was ablaze, so exhorting them To leave at once. But those people Seemed in no hurry. One of them, While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows, Asked me what it was like outside, whether there was Another house for them, and more of this kind. Without answering I went out again. These people here, I thought, Must burn to death before they stop asking questions. And truly friends, Whoever does not yet feel such heat in the floor that he’ll gladly Exchange it for any other, rather than stay, to that man I have nothing to say.” So Gautama the Buddha. But we too, no longer concerned with the art of submission, Rather with that of non-submission, and offering Various proposals of an earthly nature, and beseeching men To shake off their human tormentors, we too believe that to those Who in face of the rising bomber squadrons of Capital go on asking too long How we propose to do this, and how we envisage that, And what will become of their savings and Sunday trousers after a revolution We have nothing much to say. This was published in 1949 in “Kalendergeschichten”, a collection of stories and poems which _ 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 Problem of Greece is Not Only a Tragedy: It is a Lie
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. * John Pilger on Greece http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/13/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie/ _ 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] last words on Greece
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 struggle is over, the boys are defeated, Old Ireland's surrounded with sadness and gloom, We were defeated and shamefuIIy treated, And I, Robert Emmet, awaiting my doom To continue: Hanged, drawn and quartered, Sure that was my sentence, But soon will I show them no coward am I; I die for the love of the land I was born in; A hero I lived, and a hero I'll die. How opposite is the spirit of Emmet from those who now act in that of the Reichstag deputies who voted for war credits on August 4, 1914--a day that will live in infamy, along with July 13, 2015. One might also appropriately quote the lyric of Dominic Behan's The Patriot Game: And now as I lie here, my body all holes, I think of those traitors, who bargained and sold... Why don't Panitch and Gindin go to Athens and hand out their nauseating apologetics to striking workers on Wednesday? I think more is involved here than just wrong opinions on their part. They are obviously in the counsels of many union bureaucrats and reformist politicians, no doubt including Syriza. It makes a pair of aging academics feel like they are political players--a sentiment no doubt exploited by the politicians who use them to put a respectable face on their betrayals. 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] RE Greek Deal Prospects Slim as Crisis Talks Resume
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. * Marv Gandall wrote: Congratulations. You now understand the position of the left critics of the Tsipras leadership (including Jim Creegan) who argued from the beginning that the government should be mobilizing and educating the people and preparing the state administration for a Grexit, rather than doggedly reinforcing illusions that a voluntary or involuntary departure from the eurozone was wholly unthinkable. Instead, Syriza’s ineffectual leadership expended precious financial resources and time prostrating itself before its creditors. The result is that it has rendered the country far more vulnerable to its predators than when it took office, and far less equipped to deal with what everyone understood was going to be a painful transition to a sovereign currency and resuscitation of the economy under public ownership if events happened to move, as they have, in that direction. Louis Proyect wrote: Making your axis of intervention based on what Syriza should have done is pointless. That is like urging Bernie Sanders to run as an independent, excoriating Hillary Clinton. That of course is what a socialist should do. I can see writing one or two articles or emails to that effect but repeating it for six months is just obnoxiously repetitive. Creegan's problem was not his ideas but his imitation of a phonograph needle stuck in a groove. I love Beethoven but who would want to listen to the first five notes of his fifth symphony repeated for hours on end. * I was baited as a Spartacist sectarian in response to the first critical remarks I made about Syriza over six months ago, not only after several iterations. It is the fact that I criticized Syriza at all that you can't stand, not any repetition of my criticisms. Your only argument against me in December was that Syriza had lots of followers, while nobody was listening to me. Maybe not. But you can bet that very few people will be listening to Alexis Tsipras for very long now, either (not to mention the people who apologized, and continue to apologize, for him). You threaten to banish me from Marxmail because I might alienate those timid souls who regard any expression of strong views as sectarian. Ban me! History has already absolved me! (Not to put too coarse a point upon it.) Jim Creegan _ 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
[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] Greek Victory
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've never been so happy to be wrong in one of my predictions. In fact, I am happy, period. I have not had such encouraging news in a very long time. The Greek people's spirit of resistance and defiance is unparalleled in recent decades. They voted as they did despite a propaganda barrage from the oligarch-controlled media, threats from employers, personal interventions from top EU officials and government heads, economic blackmail and the vacillation and panic of Tsipras and the Syriza leadership. Their courage will resound throughout Europe, and beyond. TINA died a long overdue death in Athens yesterday. The consciousness of the Greek working class may not yet be revolutionary, but its fighting spirit is the stuff out of which revolutionary consciousness can emerge. Jim Creegan _ 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: Greek 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. * -- Forwarded message -- From: James Creegan sectaria...@gmail.com Date: Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 11:49 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Greek Referendum To: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com Yes, I caught on to the Louis Proyect theory of leadership a long time ago: If people are confused and ambivalent, it is the task of leaders to... reflect their confusion and ambivalence. Now dear friends, unto the breach (if it's not too dangerous) Give me liberty, or give me a reasonable alternative! *De la prudence, de la prudence, et encore de la prudence, et la nation est sauvee.* **There may be nothing to fear but fear itself, but fear itself can be awful scary! We will fight them on the beaches (weather permitting) Let's take stock Sunday night or Monday morning. I hope my prediction is wrong. On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: But don't you get it? The Greeks voted for Syriza because the party reflected their own indecision. Polls reflected support for remaining in the eurozone even if you and the Spartacist League and the Socialist Equality Party knew better. Maybe some of these poor benighted souls will stumble across the Marxmail archives, read your rock-ribbed Bolshevik analysis and the scales will fall from their eyes. Jim Creegan saves the Greeks and then the planet. Hallelujah! On 7/4/15 6:41 AM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: I will be very surprised if a majority of voters, in the face of all these contradictory moves, mixed signals and panic from their leaders, nevertheless decide to vote No. Such an outcome would represent a truly heroic act of defiance. The Geeks will have chosend to risk entrusting their future to leaders of demonstrated indecision and weakness rather than knuckle under to the debt lords. _ 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] Greek 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. * It will be a miracle if the Troika is rebuffed tomorrow in its attempt to bring down Syriza and humiliate Greece. When people are faced with a leap into the unknown, as a No vote would surely be, they usually require the reassurance of leaders who are competent and determined. Tsipras and the people around him have shown themselves to be anything but. Displaying all the ambivalence, vacillation and hesitancy of the middle class layers they immediately represent, they are presenting to Greek voters not with a clear choice, but with a confusing muddle. Having made repeated concessions, Tsipras apparently concluded that negotiations were going nowhere, and called a referendum. But no sooner had he taken this seemingly bold step, than he turned around in an eleventh-hour attempt to capitulate. The Troika rejected his capitulation and withdrew its terms, having become convinced that a referendum offered a decent chance of unseating Tsipras and Syriza. I think they made a good bet. The Greek people are fully aware of Tsipras's last-minute climb-down. He called the Troika's terms blackmail, and then attempted to submit to them! They also can't be anything but confused about what a No vote would mean. What sense does it make to reject terms the Eurocrats say are now off the table? A rejection would be no more than symbolic. Would No mean a Grexit? Tsipras says it won't, that he is only trying to strengthen his negotiating hand. The troika says it will, because no more generous offer is forthcoming. Why can't Tsipras accept the fact that the Eurocrats aren't bluffing? They would rather see Greece out of the Eurozone than soften their terms. Does the Syriza leadership have a plan in the event that an exit becomes necessary? None that I or anyone else has been able to discern. Meanwhile the Troika, by withholding emergency bank funds, is deliberately creating a panic on the ground. I will be very surprised if a majority of voters, in the face of all these contradictory moves, mixed signals and panic from their leaders, nevertheless decide to vote No. Such an outcome would represent a truly heroic act of defiance. The Geeks will have chosend to risk entrusting their future to leaders of demonstrated indecision and weakness rather than knuckle under to the debt lords. Jim Creegan _ 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] Victory in Ireland
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: Casement was a gay British diplomat of Irish descent who took up the cause of both the Congolese people and the Putumayo Indians in Peru who were dragooned into harvesting rubber as virtual slaves. He was hung in 1916 for trying to raise an Irish Brigade using funds from the Germans. ** Corrections: Roger Casement was not of Irish descent. He was an Irish Protestant, born in Dublin and raised near Belfast. He was not hanged for his recruitment efforts behind German lines in WWI, but for his attempt to smuggle a cache of German rifles into Ireland by sea in aid of the Easter Rising. His ship was intercepted by the British. During Casement's trial in London, the British government circulated the so-called Black Diaries, which they had discovered in his lodgings. They contained graphic descriptions of his various sexual encounters with young men. Until recently, the Irish republican movement and government denounced them as forgeries. We now know they weren't. Jim Creegan On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Ken Hiebert 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. * This victory takes me back to a discussion we had on this list about the influence of religion. Religion is a powerful influence in people's lives. But it is not all-powerful and it is not the only influence. ken h _ 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
[Marxism] Weekly Worker
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. * Now not only Lars Lih, but also the CPGB's chairman, Jack Conrad, has entered the lists against me (and Trotsky). Conrad's real name is John Chamberlain (a matter of public record; I'm not betraying anyone's identity), and I've heard it said, though I haven't confirmed, that he is the grandson of the same-surnamed Neville. An unlikely lineage, you may think, but only slightly more so than that of the Redgraves. People went through some heavy changes in the 60s. Lars Lih will be speaking on a panel at the Historical Materialism Conference at NYU on Saturday. His topic will be Was There a Moderate Bolshevism in 1917--of direct relevance to our debate. I plan to attend. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/ Jim Creegan _ 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] April in Petrograd - Weekly Worker
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 latest in my back-and-forth with Lars Lih: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1054/april-in-petrograd/ Jim Creegan _ 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] Yanis Varoufakis: Presenting an agenda for Europe at AMBROSETTI
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. * This post clearly demonstrates that, even after the February negotiations rout, Vafoufakis continues to have his head firmly implanted in the wrong place. He persists in presenting wonkish policy proposals aimed at a social Europe and a European New Deal. He fails to perceive the class reality behind the Eurozone and EU, and thinks the problem can solved by rational policy discussions among more enlightened sections of the elite. Committed liberals like him in the leadership of Syriza are quite clearly an obstacle to any further advance along the road of popular mobilization against the austerity regime. On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Ken Hiebert 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. * In the early 1950s, the United States led Europe's revivification with the Marshall Plan. Wikipedia - The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. I don't think this is a big mistake. The plan went into effect long before Varoufakis was born. Nowadays, not only heads of state, but finance ministers as well, are typically much younger than I am. ken h _ 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
[Marxism] Greek Prospects: A Reply to Marvin Gandall
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. * Reply to Marv Gandall: You say you're doubtful concerning my professed wariness about apocalyptic pronouncements of the final crisis of capitalism. I, on the other hand, am still not clear from your reply whether you think a Keynesian revival by more enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie is a possible answer to neoliberalism--an answer more realistic than the prospect of renewed class struggle. Time was when certain factions of the bourgeoisie, and their political representatives, were more enlightened than they are today. The reasons for this are complex. Major reforms took place in the past against the backdrop of systemic challenge from revolution and/or profound economic crisis, but not always as a reaction to immediate threats of extinction. In epochs of crisis, sections of the bourgeoisie are more willing to stand back and give a wider latitude to middle-class social engineers concerned with such things as economic models and maintaining a floor on mass consumer demand. These are not such times. Today we face a capitalist regime that has taken shape in the decades-long absence of any systemic challenge, and is therefore disinclined to give an inch. The boundary between reformist and transitional demands shifts according to what the bourgeoisie considers acceptable. What may have been a perfectly realizable demand for reform in the 1950s can today appear as completely unrealistic within bourgeois bounds, and the difference between a reformist and a revolutionary approach to politics may concern not so much the demands themselves as the political methods by which one goes about fighting for them. The initial Syriza strategy of attempting to appeal to ostensibly more reasonable European bourgeois factions has revealed itself to be utterly bankrupt. This is because the cross of austerity to which Greece is now being nailed is not the result of one policy choice over other possible ones, but of the essence of contemporary European capitalism. In their post-Mastricht incarnation, the Eurozone and the entire EU are systematically designed to roll back living standards and exclude all important economic decisions from public scrutiny, debate and decision-making in the electoral arena . As (I believe) the head of the Eurogroup, Joren Dijssenbloem, reminded the Greeks, a country's financial obligations cannot be cancelled by an election. Tsipras's barnstorming tour of European capitals, aimed at cobbling together the French-Italian-Spanish anti-austerity axis with which he hoped to counter the Germans was a complete failure. Syriza therefore stands at a crossroads. It can either become the left face of austerity, or adopt far more radical, class-struggle methods. You point out that the failure of Syriza's initial gambit appears not to have registered with the majority of Greeks, and that, even if it has, a majority may still prefer remaining in the Eurozone and enduring austerity to getting out. This may be true, but the role of political leadership is actively to persuade the population to a certain course, not simply to reflect current moods. Can Syriza mount an effective campaign to persuade the people as to the necessity of the things that must be done, and the hardships that must be faced, to cease being the vassals of finance capital? Probably not without a political differentiation within Syriza itself, and a realignment of leftwing forces more generally. There are those within Syriza who are committed to remaining in the Eurozone no matter what (whom I suspect include Tsipras and Varoufakis, though I'm not completely sure), and those who are bent upon rolling back austerity, no matter what. A fight between these two tendencies, and perhaps a split, must take place before Syriza (or parts thereof) can be an effective campaigner for further radicalization. A leftwing realignment would also have to involve a fight against sectarians within the leadership of the KKE, who would simply prefer to write Syriza off as a latter-day popular front. A referendum on the Eurozone may eventually be necessary. But calling one without a left that is fighting for a definite program amounts to seeking an alibi in public opinion for surrender. In my opinion, the above is not an instance of far-left know-it-all trying to proffer detailed tactical advice from a distance of thousands of miles. The questions involved are ones of fundamental strategy, about which any serious Marxist is entitled to, and indeed should have, definite views. Jim Creegan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at:
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Leninism? | rs21
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 think Charlie Post's treatment of Leninism is pretty good on the whole, but it does contain a couple factual errors: 1)Charlie seems to think that the Comintern did not advocate a party of a new type until after Lenin's death, or during his fatal illness in 1923. Actually, the hyper-centralized, disciplined party that came to be known as Leninist dates from the 21 conditions of admission to the Comintern, adopted in 1920. The reason for insisting on quasi-military discipline was to ready Communist parties for what was thought to be the immediate task of taking power. 2) Charlie writes that Lenin's concept of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was never formally renounced by Lenin or the Bolsheviks. Not so, as the following quotation from Lenin's *Letters on Tactics *(April, 1917) attests: The person who *now* speaks only of a “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” is behind the times, consequently, he has in effect *gone over* to the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle; that person should be consigned to the archive of “Bolshevik” pre-revolutionary antiques (it may be called the archive of “old Bolsheviks”) Jim Creegan. On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 11:39 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. * Charles Post, very wrong on capitalism and slavery but quite good on Leninism. http://rs21.org.uk/2015/03/08/leninism-2/ _ 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
[Marxism] Greek Prospects
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. * Since Louis Proyect seems incapable of providing any clear statement of his own perspectives on the Greek situation, I will reply to the only person who has done us the favor of stating his views , namely, Marv Gandall, who wrote on March 7: Marv Gandall wrote on 7 March While I'm a great deal more respectful of James Creegan than Is Louis Proyect, I'm in agreement with Louis' focus on the relationship of forces - for me, the central issue in any political conflict - and it seems to me the onus is on Jim to provide some answers. What evidence is there that the Greek and European working class is now prepared to break with electoral politics and establish structures of dual power, as in Russia in 1917? What is their current state of combativity and consciousness? Is there any indicatiion of mutinous sentiments in the armed forces and other repressive state agencies? Jim wants Syriza or forces to its left to prepare the masses for an insurrection, utilizing transitional demands, but is there any doubt that the Greek military and bourgeoisie, backed by NATO, would quickly move to crush any incipient movement in this direction before it could gain any traction? The likelier outcome would be Hungary and Germany 1919 rather than Russia 1917 in circumstances which are far less favorable than those which faced Bela Kun and Karl Liebknecht. Unless circumstances change radically, the most that can be expected, alas, is some loosening of the austerity straight jacket squeezing the working class in Greece and other European debt colonies by a ruling class which has concluded that modest concessions are necessary in the interest of political stability and economic recovery. *** The first thing that strikes me about Marv's thinking is its fatalistic objectivism, which takes present mass consciousness as an immutable given, leaving no role for leftwing agency. To my thinking, if the awareness of the people is inadequate to the existing situation--which in Greece I think it definitely is at the moment--then it is the role of leftists to look for ways to bring subjective awareness up to the level of objective necessity. In my view, the possibilities for overcoming the gap between consciousness and reality are greater in Greece today than they have been in any Western country for a long time due to three circumstances: 1) the people have already taken the momentous step of upending a normal pro-status quo political duopoly; 2) a leftwing party is now in control of the government, giving it an unprecedented ability to shape public opinion (a bully pulpit, in the current cliche); 3) the hopes with which perhaps most people voted for Syriza--that it would roll back austerity and stay in the Eurozone at the same time by means of negotiation with the institutions--have now been clearly exposed by the first round of talks as a dead end. People will be casting about for a new course of action. My main fear is that the Syriza leadership will fail to utilize these opportunities because it is paralyzed by thinking akin to Marv Gandall's. Ever since the neoliberal onslaught and the fall of the USSR, broad sections of the left have abandoned any hope of revolutionary change in favor of restoring the liberal Keyensian policies that prevailed during the glorious thirty postwar years. The route to such a restoration seems to be convincing more enlightened policy makers that neoliberalism is bad for capitalism, and that they should adopt policies aimed at stimulating consumer demand. The more radical neo-Keynesians usually add that such persuasion must be supplemented by popular pressure. Marv seems to partake of this 'post-soviet realism'. Having written off any prospect of challenging capitalism, he seems to be pinning his hopes on a realization by more enlightened bourgeois circles that neoliberal policies are not pulling the Europe out of the economic doldrums. He sees as encouraging signs the adoption of some 'quantitative easing' (i.e. printing money) by the ECB, and suggestions from Hollande and Renzi that Merkel Co. might want to go a little easier on their austerity demands. In some other epoch, under much different circumstances--goes the thinking of Marv and many others--we might be revolutionary Marxists. For the here and now, however, there is no alternative (sound familiar?) but to follow the Krugman/Stieglitz/(Jamie) Galbraith line. I consider this line of reasoning even more quixotic than the thinking of those (like me) who aim for a revival of revolutionary consciousness. I won't say that a return of the welfare state is absolutely impossible. Past proclamations concerning
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Comments on the Alex Callinicos-Stathis Kouvelakis debate | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
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 on his blog: Unlike the more rabid elements of the far left like the WSWS.org or the Spartacist League that urged Greeks to vote for the KKE, Callinicos deems Syriza’s election as “inspiring”. The problem, of course, is that it is doomed to fail as a socialist electoral project because the “deep state” defies dismantling from within the state itself. In other words, the cops, the army and the intelligence agencies have to be “smashed” by the armed detachments of workers councils that arise in the course of struggle, just as occurred in Russia in 1917. The most urgent task in Greece is to create “dual power” that will eventually reach the critical mass necessary to transform Greece. . If nationalizing the banks, dual power, workers militias, etc. correspond to the objective class interests of the long-suffering Greek people, one wonders why they have such difficulty understanding that. In the recently held elections, Antarsya received 39,411 votes, which is 0.64 percent of the total vote. Three years ago they got 75,248, which was 1.19 percent. So as the crisis deepens in Greece and the need for revolutionary action grows, their vote fell by half. *** The obvious answer to the last question is that the people do not always perceive that which corresponds to their objective interests. Allowing to do so is the task of revolutionary leadership. Also, if you reject the traditional scenario of dual power, leading to the conquest of state sovereignty by the working class, it's only fair to ask you what your own expected or desired scenario is. On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 2:00 PM, 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. * Probably the most notable aspect of this debate was the fact that it happened at all. This is obviously a sign that the left has accepted the SWP back into proper society even though its leaders have never retreated, not even one inch, on the question of their handling of an accusation of rape by one of its young female members against a central and older male leader. One supposes that stonewalling is a much more effective tactic in tightly knit Leninist groups than it is in large-scale bourgeois parties. It should be added that Alex Callinicos viewed the wide scale opposition to the SWP leadership over this matter as not really being about the rape but opposition to Leninism from dissidents who favored a Syriza type party. So in a real sense, things have come full circle. With the Syriza leadership forming an electoral pact with ANEL, someone like Callinicos must feel vindicated. What is the rape of one woman compared to the rape of a nation? Of course he would not be so crass as to actually say something like this but you can bet that he thinks it. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/03/05/comments-on-the-alex- callinicos-stathis-kouvelakis-debate/ _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Greece: breaking illusions | Michael Roberts Blog
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: What's missing in the book is political analysis how to get from the current stage to something better. Negative critique can only go so far. What I keep coming back to is the tendency of the revolutionary left to put forward critiques of the Tsipras's and Hugo Chavez's of the world but an utter incapacity to win the people to its program. Venezuela has its Antarsya, as does Spain. Is mounting a left opposition supposed to change society? Is that what Lenin was about? How is it that groups like the British SWP or the ISO fail to penetrate beyond a certain threshold? If the Tsipras approach is so bankrupt, why is he so popular? I am not asking these questions because I am a Tsipras supporter but because I am opposed to the sterility of left oppositionism. How does Costas Lapavitsas write a 268 page book and include no more than 3 pages about political strategy? For that matter, how does Todd Chretien write an article about differences on the Marxist left about Greece that is filled with pointless lecturing about State and Revolution but fails to address the question of what to *do next*? Yes, the capitalist state has to be smashed. Whoopee-fucking-doo. ** Has it ever occurred to you that there is a marked preference for things that seem easy to do, and a strong aversion to things that are hard. Example 1): Vote for us and we will roll back austerity and stay in the Eurozone: EASY; Example 2) 2) Mobilize in the streets and factories for an assault on capital: HARD. Problem: The easy thing they voted for is impossible. The left critique of the Syriza leadership isn't wrong, it's just that getting people to see the necessity of the alternative is a big job. A majority of Greeks may not like what is now being done to them, and may even be willing to take a chance on an upstart far-left party, but they are still products of postwar European capitalism, which is very different from the capitalism that existed in Europe between the two world wars. Then, whole sections (though not a majority) of working classes in many countries were convinced of the necessity of revolution, and prepared to make the sacrifices revolution entailed. Such workers ceased to exist under postwar capitalism, which was enormously successful. Workers (and people in general) are still far better off today, more individualistic and less self-sacrificing. Revolutionary groups cannot attract large numbers, and those it does attract are mostly middle class intellectual types who, for all their good intentions, are still committed to the pursuit of normal, successful petty bourgeois careers. But the foundations of the postwar miracle' have been eroding for some time, and that erosion has reached crisis proportions in Greece and other peripheral countries. The problem is to rebuild the solidarity and commitment that has been lost. This is no easy task, and will take time, but here are some things that could maybe be done in Greece toward that end. 1) Organize defense squads to guard against Golden Dawn attacks in immigrant neighborhoods; 2) Organize neighborhood committees to resist evictions; 3) Fight in the unions for general strikes which last longer than the lunch hour, and shop floor committees to coordinate them; 4) Take government measures that will mean immediate, dramatic improvements in the lives of ordinary people, thereby cementing popular loyalty to Syriza : an increase in the minimum wage, a moratorium on layoffs, a ceiling on rents.( It was, you may recall, measures like these that Castro took, and that made the Cuban people willing to die for the revolution). I'm not necessarily proposing these specific measures, just trying to give a general idea of the kinds of things that could be done to increase the self-organization and self-confidence of the people in preparation for a more serious struggle. Neighborhood anti-fascist and anti-eviction committees and shop floor strike committees, could then perhaps be woven together into larger councils that could be a basis for dual power. These are the kinds of things that have to be done. Who is to do the organizing? I don't know how prepared groups in the Left Platform are to go beyond parliamentary politics (I suspect not very), but someone once said that if capitalism (and, we might add, present-day capitalist austerity) could be voted out of existence, the bourgeoisie would have abolished elections long ago. And the European bourgeoisie has indeed gone a long way toward taking economic questions out of the electoral arena. We must take politics beyond it. Jim Creegan Jim Creegan On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:53 AM, Louis Proyect
[Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on Greece
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. * From Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb: Syriza has been defeated in the first round of negotiations. After a period of enjoyable defiance http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/01/you-just-killed-troika.html, during which they won the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people - 80% according to a poll taken before the latest deal, published in today's *Avgi* http://left.gr/news/dimoskopisi-public-issue-gia-tin-aygi-80-egkrinei-toys-heirismoys-tis-kyvernisis - they have come back with small change. Pushed to the point where they were at risk of a collapse of the banking system, and unprepared for a Grexit (and thus unable to use it as a bargaining chip), they accepted the most comprehensive drubbing http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/greece-got-outmaneuvered. Tsipras has tried to put the best possible gloss on this, but what he said was delusional. He said that the deal shows that Europe stands for mutually beneficial compromise. No such thing. It stands, as Schauble crowed http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/20/eurozone-chiefs-meet-for-last-ditch-talks-to-avert-greece-cash-crunch, for Syriza being forced to implement austerity against its own mandate. It stands for the crushing of national democracy. Tsipras said that the deal creates the framework for Syriza to address the humanitarian crisis. Not with the commitment to a primary surplus and troika oversight, it doesn't. Not with the agreement that Syriza will not 'unilaterally' roll back austerity, it doesn't. We can admit that a 1.5% primary surplus is better than a 4.5% primary surplus. Yet even 1.5% in a depressed economy is harsh, and coupled with troika assessment of reforms for fiscal sustainability (according to neoliberal maxims), this amounts to the repudiation of most of Syriza's reform agenda. Tsipras said that austerity and the Memorandum had been left behind. That is precisely the opposite of what has happened. The Thessaloniki programme, itself a carefully trimmed agenda shorn of the most radical of Syriza's goals, is what has been left behind. The problem with Tsipras's speech goes further than this, however. Not only is it deluded. It recalibrates the government's language and goals in order to rationalise not just this thrashing but future routs. Having said that austerity and the Memorandum are now left behind by this deal, the government shifts the goalposts and terms of future negotiations. And this is part of the reason why those who speak of 'buying time' are wrong. Time is not a simple quantity that only one side gains from. The EU ruling classes have also 'bought time' and they have the resources and are on the offensive, while Syriza has retreated. There are no grounds for thinking that Syriza's bargaining position will be better in four months time than it is now. It has already weakened its stance, while its political position, after four months of continued austerity, will probably be worse. One can hardly pin most of the blame for this on Syriza. They are in a weak position, and it is doubtful that any government could have obtained better against an EU determined to humiliate Greece. Yet, the line of Tsipras and Varoufakis is simply untenable. Their commitment to trying to resolve this crisis within the terms of the euro must fail. They were simply wrong to think that they would have a single ally or interlocutor in the EU. The southern European governments are even more fanatical than Berlin on this question. Hollande, far from being a friendly face, told Syriza to shove it fairly early on: he made his decision on austerity some time ago. The question of the currency, then, was not simply a nationalist distraction as some claimed: getting an anti-austerity government elected with the specific goal of confronting the EU and struggling to overturn austerity was always going to come to a head on this very question. The alternative, what one might call a People's Grexit, is far from straightforward, as Dave Renton points out https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/when-a-pause-may-be-the-best-that-could-be-acheived/ in the latest of a series of excellent posts on Greece. The economic risks would be considerable. It would require not just economic preparedness, or secret war room gaming, but mass social and political preparedness. It would require the mobilisation of a workers movement that has been relatively quiet since 2012. And it would require a government willing to risk economic and political isolation from trading partners and a fight to the finish with the oligarchs, the Right, and the repressive state apparatuses for the future of Greek
[Marxism] Nocturnal Thoughts on Greece
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. * For what it's worth, my own reading of the Greek situation is that, although the signs aren't good, the decisive point has not yet been reached. Syriza won on a platform of Greece having its cake and eating it too, i.e. ending austerity and remaining in the Eurozone. The latest round of negotiations has proven that this is impossible. In the coming weeks and months, the party must decide which of these two things it deems more important. For now, Syriza has conceded to the Troika the power to veto its economic plans. Continuing on this course would amount to austerity with a human face. Future negotiations would be nothing more than quibbling over the details of the country's continued prostration before Berlin and finance capital. But it's not too late to change course. Much will be decided by developments within Syriza. The left can only assert itself by demanding that the leadership draw up a serious plan for leaving the Eurozone. If the leadership hardens up around what seems to be its current stance--that Greece must stay in the Eurozone no matter what--then the political lines within the party will be drawn, and the party, and ultimately the people, will be confronted with a clear choice. A split, and even the temporary victory of the pro-Euro faction, would be preferable to the current amorphousness. Syriza's left wing, having struck off on its own, would be free to form a bloc with Antarsya, and maybe even the KKE. The leadership, on the other hand, would stand exposed as a slightly less abject version of PASOK. If, however, Syriza's Left Platform proves itself incapable of acting in a concerted way to challenge the leadership, the party as a whole will have embarked on the road to PASOK Mark 2. Jim Creegan _ 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] A Thought on Greece
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 don't know what the internal situation is in Syriza, or if the Left Platform has any seats in parliament. But if they do, they could draw up a list of demands on the leadership, and in the event of further retreats, threaten to resign their seats if their demands are not met. Even one resignation could bring the government down. Then the leadership would have to decide either to toughen up its act or lose power. Jim Creegan _ 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] Sometimes the Bosses Are Stronger
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 problem with the labor-negotiation analogy, as with so many of Louis's bogus comparisons, is that unions go into negotiations threatening to strike if they can't arrive at a satisfactory deal with the bosses. What was Syriza's equivalent of a strike threat? Did they think they could persuade the Eurocrats of the reasonableness of their position? Appeal to their decency and humanity? Louis writes: If they had anticipated the ferocity of the German response, as well as the willingness of France’s “Socialist” Party to back the Germans, maybe they would have decided not to run for office. But was this response so hard to anticipate? On Feb. 1, I wrote in a post to this newsgroup: Let us take stock. I don’t claim to know how things will turn out, but if I were a pro-austerity Eurocrat or banker, I might calculate as follows: “We have within our power an enormous capacity to make the Greek economy scream even louder than it already is, and to underwrite anti-Syriza forces. Greece is a small country whose default, even exit from the Eurozone, is something we can withstand. It therefore makes more sense to tighten the screws and make an example of Syriza now than pursue some genuine compromise that will only embolden Podemos and others. We can certainly offer Tsipras a few sops in return for his agreement to act as the human face of austerity. But, beyond that, what’s to be gained by compromise?” How was I able to anticipate what Syriza was not? Is it because I'm a soothsayer or a genius? No, it's rather because I'm a Marxist, whose political-theoretical training allows me to penetrate all the illusions and verbiage that surround such events as these to perceive the intractable class realities at the core. Others who call themselves Marxists are apparently unable to do so. The reality in this case is that ensuring the domination of the bankers and more powerful states is the essence of the common currency and the EU; that those, like Varoufakis, who peddle the middle calss illusion of the possibility of a social Europe are deceiving both themselves and the millions who are following them. We didn't have to wait for the outcome of these talks to find this out. Maybe Syriza does have an answer to Greece's plight besides further negotiations. Maybe they are simply buying time in order to implement a secret Plan B. So far, however, I see no evidence of it. And if, as Louis seems to think, no Plan B is possible, what then? Should the Greek people resign themselves in advance to a defeat like the one the Sandinistas suffered, which Louis assures us was also inevitable? Maybe the bosses are just too strong to fight. Jim Creegan _ 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] A Deal That Preserves Greece’s Place in Eurozone, and Fiscal Restraints - NYTimes.com
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. * Thought I'd send this piece from the NYT, just in case Louis might forget: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/world/europe/a-deal-that-preserves-greeces-place-in-eurozone-and-fiscal-restraints.html?ref=world_r=0 Jim Creegan _ 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] A Deal That Preserves Greece’s Place in Eurozone, and Fiscal Restraints - NYTimes.com
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. * Regarding the NYT article I just posted: I noticed that the editors rewrote the headline overnight. The story I read last night in the early edition was headlined: Greece's Anti-Austerity Revolution Falls to Cold Eurozone Realities. Jim On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 9:02 AM, James Creegan 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. * Thought I'd send this piece from the NYT, just in case Louis might forget: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/world/europe/a-deal- that-preserves-greeces-place-in-eurozone-and-fiscal- restraints.html?ref=world_r=0 Jim Creegan _ 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
Re: [Marxism] Eurozone chiefs strike a deal to extend bailout for four weeks
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: On 2/21/15 12:40 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Your analogy to Brest-Litovsk is completely misleading and misbegotten. It is absurd to compare the Bolsheviks, who had replaced the old state power with a revolutionary workers' regime, to a non-revolutionary, purely electoral middle class party that was voted in on the basis of a double promise it could not keep: that it would roll back austerity and remain in the Eurozone at the same time. It was not an exact analogy. But it still applies. Sometimes no matter your best efforts, a poor relationship of class forces will determine the outcome. In 2003 there were massive demonstrations against a war in Iraq but the war took place anyhow. If the trade unions were anything like they were in the 1930s, maybe a refusal to load war materiel would have worked but in 2003 the unions were much weaker both in number and in terms of militant leadership. Nobody did anything wrong in 2003 but we still failed. For people like you who attach themselves to sects who never *do* anything, this hardly matters. As long as you can belittle those who take chances from the left sidelines, you remain convinced that you are vindicated by history. It was completely predictable that no clever negotiating strategy was going to budge the Germans and the ECB. (In fact, I did predict this, less than two weeks ago, on this very newsgroup, without the benefit of your extensive research). If it is impossible to maneuver one's way out of this dilemma, which it is, Syriza needs a strategy for a Grexit and a mass mobilization to support it. This would have to be accompanied by an intensive propaganda campaign. There is no evidence that Syriza has such a strategy. A Grexit? Really? Is a return to the drachma going to do the trick when Greece is still locked into global capitalist markets? I hardly imagine that a cheaper two-week vacation to Crete on Royal Caribbean will make much of a dent in the 25 percent unemployment rate but I suppose that will be offset by having a feeling that you have stuck it to the big bourgeoisie. With best regards from the Coyoacan of downtown Manhattan, I only wish that this was a joke. The people who demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq didn't promise anyone they would succeed. Syriza, on the other hand, won on the promise of an end, or at least an easing, of austerity. But you're not going to fulfill such a promise on the basis of negotiating skill. You need some leverage. This is knowable in advance. Syriza's only leverage was (is) a threat to exit the Eurozone. But, if you also know this in advance, why raise hopes that you can end austerity w/o leaving? Syriza promised these two incompatible things because their voting base wanted both of them. But isn't making promises you can't deliver on in order to get elected justly described as opportunism? And cannot raising hopes you can't fulfill lead to political disaster? And if you can see such a disaster coming a mile away, is it being sectarian to sound the warning? I would argue that it is irresponsible not to do so. A Grexit would be an unavoidably wrenching process, and could probably not work w/o some sort of turn toward Russia and/or China. It would also require a careful preparation of public opinion, the imposition of capital controls,and mass mobilization. Again, it is still early, but so far I see no evidence that Syriza is contemplating anything like this. They seem to have no strategy except further negotiations. Your idol, Castro, was a little more prescient. He knew he couldn't defy the US without seeking new alliances abroad and employing the weapons of class struggle at home. Jim Jim *[image: Reply to Louis Proyect l...@panix.com]* *[image: Reply to all]* *[image: Forward]*Forward Edit subject Pop out reply _ 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] Eurozone chiefs strike a deal to extend bailout for four months
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, that was fun. I am not sure what this is supposed to mean but struggles against an adamant and infinitely more powerful state are not walks in the park. If you liken this to a trade union struggle, it is like the attempt to form industrial unions in the 30s or end Jim Crow in the 50s and 60s. In Europe an opposition is in its early stages against an austerity grounded in the particular conjunctural *weakness* of capitalism. If Syriza proves incapable of leading this struggle, other forces that have been awakened will take its place. There is a leftwing in Syriza that will continue to fight against the conditions imposed by the German bourgeoisie. The tragedy of course is that the Stalinists--a word I use advisedly--are in their own way just as psychotically sectarian as the Spartacist League. We are entering the final battles for the overthrow of capitalism in the 21st century, something that will be happening long after my ashes are in a vase in my wife's living room. We are part of this struggle, just as surely as Black Agenda Report understood when it urged the movement here to learn from Podemos and Syriza: http://www.blackagendareport.com/node/14680 We are not five minutes before midnight. In fact, we are five minutes after midnight with twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes to go in this long struggle that will take place in this century against a backdrop of war, austerity, racism and the rise of fascist movements. Stay focused on the long march we face and keep your powder dry. * Your analogy to Brest-Litovsk is completely misleading and misbegotten. It is absurd to compare the Bolsheviks, who had replaced the old state power with a revolutionary workers' regime, to a non-revolutionary, purely electoral middle class party that was voted in on the basis of a double promise it could not keep: that it would roll back austerity and remain in the Eurozone at the same time. It was completely predictable that no clever negotiating strategy was going to budge the Germans and the ECB. (In fact, I did predict this, less than two weeks ago, on this very newsgroup, without the benefit of your extensive research). If it is impossible to maneuver one's way out of this dilemma, which it is, Syriza needs a strategy for a Grexit and a mass mobilization to support it. This would have to be accompanied by an intensive propaganda campaign. There is no evidence that Syriza has such a strategy. Granted these are still early days. But the long haul you anticipate may not be that long, at least as far as the Syriza government is concerned. Keynes's quip concerning the long run comes to mind. The people who voted Syriza into power expect results, not in the long haul, but in the short run. Unless they see some immediate gains, Syriza could easily be voted out (with generous help to the opposition from Berlin and Brussels), and Golden Dawn could gain. Such a result would have a completely demoralizing effect on the anti-austerity struggle for years to come, as the overthrow of Allende demoralized the Latin American left. The idea that such a defeat would automatically propel Syriza's more leftwing factions into power is fanciful, to say the least. Right now, in the eyes of the masses, Syriza represents the left, and a failure on its part is more likely to discredit the left as a whole, not inaugurate a more radical course. Again, nothing fails like failure. If the Syriza left wing wants to save the day,it must put forward, right now, a program for the party as a whole that goes beyond further negotiations and maneuvering with the Eurocrats. With best regards from the Coyoacan of downtown Manhattan, Jim Creegan _ 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] Fwd: Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist | News | The Guardian
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Andrew Polock wrote:
leaving aside the source and present content of his opinions, the Germans
actually told Greece today they should dismiss him as their negotiator!
(this right after telling them that their surrender was inadequate)
**
If I were Tsipras, I'd reply that I might consider replacing Varoufakis if
Merkel were to replace Wolfgang Schauble.
Jim
http://www.chaniapost.eu/?p=16734
On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:
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leaving aside the source and present content of his opinions, the Germans
actually told Greece today they should dismiss him as their negotiator!
(this right after telling them that their surrender was inadequate)
http://www.chaniapost.eu/?p=16734
On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Paul Flewers via Marxism
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:
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Varoufakis also wrote: 'I moved to England to attend university in
September 1978, six months or so before Margaret Thatcher’s victory
changed
Britain forever. Watching the Labour government disintegrate, under the
weight of its degenerate social democratic programme, led me to a serious
error: to the thought that Thatcher’s victory could be a good thing,
delivering to Britain’s working and middle classes the short, sharp shock
necessary to reinvigorate progressive politics; to give the left a chance
to create a fresh, radical agenda for a new type of effective,
progressive
politics.'
If he'd have come up with anything like that at a left-wing meeting in
Britain at that time, he would have been met with brays of ill-mannered
laughter.
As for his 'quote' from Lenin to the effect that the worse things get the
better things are for the left, that really is bizarre. I've seen it used
here, although not as a 'quote' from Lenin, by right-wing hacks who think
that's how we think, but not by any left group. I wonder if Varoufakis
has
some background in a weird left group in Greece that actually believed
that.
Paul F
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Re: [Marxism] A Note on the Spartacist Tendency
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 appended pamphlet, /The Road to Jimstown /(c. 1985), is the most memorable piece of literiture produced by the International Bolshevik Tendency, a split off from the Spartacist League. (I belonged to the IBT for ten years.) Its subject is the degeneration of the Spartacist internal regime, as opposed to its politics. More than simply an indictment of the cult of Spartacist founder/leader James Robertson, it's the best expose I've ever read of the methods of internal control employed not only by leftwing cults, but by cults in general. It makes a good read, even for dedicated non-sectarians http://www.bolshevik.org/ETB/Rtj.html Jim Creegan _ 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] A Note on the Spartacist Tendency
way more than i 'know') - what is Healy's lie that is referred to as the point of rupture w/in RT of early 60s that led to differentiation between SL and WL in the U.S.? On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 8:59 AM, James Creegan 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. * The appended pamphlet, /The Road to Jimstown /(c. 1985), is the most memorable piece of literiture produced by the International Bolshevik Tendency, a split off from the Spartacist League. (I belonged to the IBT for ten years.) Its subject is the degeneration of the Spartacist internal regime, as opposed to its politics. More than simply an indictment of the cult of Spartacist founder/leader James Robertson, it's the best expose I've ever read of the methods of internal control employed not only by leftwing cults, but by cults in general. It makes a good read, even for dedicated non-sectarians http://www.bolshevik.org/ETB/Rtj.html Jim Creegan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/daynegoodwin%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
Re: [Marxism] SYRIZA Verolufakis Confessions of an Erratic Marxist
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: Well, I am not interested in email debates to tell you the truth. What in the world can anybody get out of anything you have written here, messages devoid of data or evidence or statistics or the rich historical and social fabric of Greek society? When I am interested in airing my views, I do it on my blog and usually after having read a substantial amount of material as I did the other day on Syriza. I read at least 25 articles to put together a decently researched article, mostly based on first-rate reporting from Links in Australia. Right now I am researching an article on the Greek economic problems that is based on articles I have already read by Elmar Altvater, Stathis Kouvelakis and Stavros Mavroudeas. I am following up with reading every article that Michael Roberts has written about Greece. When I began writing about Ukraine, it was only after reading books on Crimea and Ukraine and about 20 articles. That is because I take my ideas seriously whether you agree with them or not. Your problem is that your contributions to this forum are superficial and utterly lacking in substance. This would not be a problem if you weren't so god-damned provocative. Not everybody has the motivation to go to a research library or pour through articles on the net to make a contribution but at least they are sensible enough not to pretend that they are making a contribution to Marxism based on a 200 or 300 word email. Provocation can sometimes be in the eye of the reader. Some might say that hurling epithets--sectarian, Spartacist, ignoramus-- as a first reply to what began as a series of angular but fairly polite comments from me, might have had something to do with the escalating acerbity of this exchange. A sectarian is apparently anyone who disagrees with Louis from the left, an ignoramus anyone who ventures to express an opinion without offering a 10,000-word disquisition . Since my previous post did not make it onto Marxmail in its entirety, I will reiterate here that the sectarian Weekly Worker is far less impatient of debate than the dedicated anti-sectarian, Louis Proyect. Louis emphasizes the importance of background knowledge, and his diligence in acquiring information is commendable. As a former computer programmer, he is no doubt data-driven. He seems not to appreciate, however, that data are only useful in so far as they can be deployed within a logical framework. He has thus far failed to bring his factual knowledge to bear within the framework of the questions I have raised and the arguments I have presented.His only conceptual gauge--and basis for political allegiance--seems to be the narrow quantitative one congenial to a man of his metier: the number of followers and/or votes a given leftwing party or personality is able to attract. The facts are indispensable. But a tangle of logically disconnected and undigested facts can obscure rather than reveal. I believe this insight is expressed in a saying about forests and trees. Since this thread seems to me to have run its course, I will make no further postings to it. I would only point out that the question underlying this exchange--one that Louis dismisses as of no interest to anyone but diehard sectarians like me--is one that has preoccupied Marxism since its birth: reform or revolution. If Louis thinks this question has been settled by history in the way that liberal opinion assures us that it has been settled-- by the triumph of neoliberalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union-- he might do us the favor of saying so. Absent such a white flag, it is unclear from what heights of empirical wisdom he deems this question unworthy of discussion or.why, for that matter, he continues to style himself a Marxist. Eduard Bernstein, after all, ultimately discarded the label. For my part, I am convinced that the question remains pertinent, and will inevitably pose itself again in the events now unfolding in Greece and Europe. Jim Creegan Reply Forward James Creegan sectaria...@gmail.com 5:04 PM (3 minutes ago) to marxism-request _ 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] [UCE] Help finding Marx quote
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 quotation you are referring to appears is an article Marx wrote for the *Deutsche-Brusseler-Zeitung *in 1847, entitled Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality. It appears in Vol. 6 of the English edition of the Marx-Engels Collected Works, p. 320. Jim Creegan On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 8:17 AM, Ian Angus 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. * In Dance of the Dialectic page 77, Bertel Ollman quotes Marx: It is characteristic of the entire crudeness of 'common sense,' which takes its rise from the 'full life' and does not cripple its natural features by philosophy or other studies, that where it succeeds in seeing a distinction it fails to see a unity, and where it sees a unity it fails to see a distinction. The reference Ollman gives is to the Marx-Engels-Werke, Vol 4 page 339. I have been unable to find this passage in the English Marx Engels Works, perhaps because it's a different translation. Several other writers quote the same passage, but so far as I can tell, they all reference Ollman as the source. Can anyone help me locate the original passage, in English? Ian Angus _ 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
Re: [Marxism] SYRIZA Veroufakis Confessions of an Erratic Marxist
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. * But you didn't succeed, did you? Why on earth did you call your listserve Marxmail? Isn't that reference sectarian as well? I'm fully aware that you can't pull things like soviets and dual power out of a hat, and that the postwar period has been characterized by a growth of the middle class, and a Western working class more or less accepting of capitalism. No section of the European population desires revolution at the moment. The above, however, in no way implies that the capitalist classes have become any more reasonable or amenable to a left-Keynesian course. They are more intractable than ever, and someone, like Veroufakis, who tells people otherwise, who dangles before them the possibility of a renovated, more people-friendly EU, is fostering illusions and setting them up for defeat. It avails nothing to lead millions if you are leading them into a cul-de-sac. The purpose of the left must re be to raise popular consciousness to the point where it is adequate to confronting the ruling classes in a serious way. Needless to say, this is not an easy thing to do. But it isn't accomplished by pandering to popular illusions of some peaceful, electoral way out of the current impasse. Creegan On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:29 PM, 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 2/8/15 7:12 PM, James Creegan wrote: What would be the attitude of Veroufakis to any section of the Greek or Spanish people that dared to fancy itself capable of initiatives offensive to left-bourgeois sensibilities ? Is the comparison to Menshevism so farfetched here? Yes, it is. It is just a sign that you are walking around like the film comic figure Morgan with visions of Red Stars and hammers and sickles in his head. It is a fantasy world that you live in. By using the epithet Menshevik, a term that has little meaning outside Russian radical history, you are displaying an inability to deal with the real world in 2015. There are people in Greece with your politics. You have to ask yourself why they got so few votes. Is it possible that unlike 1917, when the Second International had hundreds of thousands of members throughout Europe, many of whom were ready to join the newly formed Communist Parties at the drop of a hat, Greece has different social and political characteristics? If you took the trouble to actually study recent Greek history, you would understand that in the period following the return to parliamentary democracy, both PASOK and New Democracy consciously built up a middle-class layer in the tourist and service industries as it sought to undermine the industrial working class. Entering the EU was part of that strategy. People voted for Syriza to a large degree because they still have illusions in the EU. In your mind, Greece is like Germany in 1921 when it is much more like Greece in 2015. Your problem is that you don't take the trouble to read serious Marxist analysis of contemporary Greece and are content to repeat the vacuous talking points of the ultraleft. Your attitude to the CPGB is also revealing. It appears that any group that attempts to associate itself with the historical legacy of Communism, or its symbols, is ipso facto a sect in the eyes of our unrepentant Marxist? Greeks who invoke memories of their civil war, or Spaniards who recall theirs, may disagree. JC Actually, you put it better than I ever could have. You advocate associating yourself with the historical legacy of Communism when I think that this is absolutely the wrong way to go. That is why I work with a website called North Star and not something called Proletarian Struggle adorned with pictures of Karl Marx, clenched fists, and red stars. In fact I created Marxmail in 1998 just to put as much distance as I could between the people I was trying to reach and people like you. _ 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
Re: [Marxism] SYRIZA Veroufakis Confessions of an Erratic Marxist
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. * This essay by the newly appointed Syriza economics minister is thoroughly confused in its exposition of Marx. It is, however, remarkably frank politically. It states that the socialist goal, while desirable, is impossible in our lifetime. Further, a continuing capitalist crisis in Europe can only redound to the advantage of the far right. Ergo: the only realistic goal is the restabilization of capitalism and the European Union, detestable though they may be. This in turn can only be accomplished by right-left, cross-class alliances, and by trying to convince the capitalist class, or elements thereof, that an economic strategy superior to their current austerity dogmas is the only way to save the existing order. There is never any mention of class struggle. These are not merely the musings of an academic. The essay is a pretty forthright statement of the politics of perhaps the most important member of the Syriza government, apart from Tsipras himself. What do people think? (Hope this post arrives in acceptable form) Jim Creegan _ 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] SYRIZA Veroufakis Confessions of an Erratic Marxist
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. * True to form, you are once again evading the question with one of your indiscriminate, red-herring denunciations of Platonism, sectarianism etc, and guilt by association (e.g. that I belonged to the Spartacist League 30m years ago) Once again, the question is whether you agree with Varoufakis's assertions that attempting to go beyond capitalism is impossible, and the only course for Greece is to help stabilize capitalism and the EU by means of cross-class alliances and superior policy recommendations to the bourgeoisie? My own approach to the situation is most closely approximated by the article by Stavas-Michel at the following address: (although I know nothing of the work of his political group apart from what he says in the article). http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/ BTW: On what grounds to you characterize the Communist Party of Great Britain as a sect? They favor a multi-tendency party. They permit public disagreement by their members with the majority of the group. Their press is open to virtually all Marxist viewpoints, including yours. Otherwise, I couldn't write in the Weekly Worker, disagreeing with them as I do on so many important things. They publish articles by Lars Lih, who is trying to minimize the differences between Lenin and Kautsky Are they a sect merely because they are small? Because they are trying to organize in the name of Marxism and Communism independently of the reformist left? Jim Creegan On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 3:47 PM, James Creegan sectaria...@gmail.com wrote: This essay by the newly appointed Syriza economics minister is thoroughly confused in its exposition of Marx. It is, however, remarkably frank politically. It states that the socialist goal, while desirable, is impossible in our lifetime. Further, a continuing capitalist crisis in Europe can only redound to the advantage of the far right. Ergo: the only realistic goal is the restabilization of capitalism and the European Union, detestable though they may be. This in turn can only be accomplished by right-left, cross-class alliances, and by trying to convince the capitalist class, or elements thereof, that an economic strategy superior to their current austerity dogmas is the only way to save the existing order. There is never any mention of class struggle. These are not merely the musings of an academic. The essay is a pretty forthright statement of the politics of perhaps the most important member of the Syriza government, apart from Tsipras himself. What do people think? (Hope this post arrives in acceptable form) Jim Creegan _ 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] Manichean Anti-Manicheaism
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 submit that Louis's essay, “Against Manichaeism” is itself an example of the Manichaeism of go-with-the- flow. On the one side is arrayed the great global army of all those in combat against (in Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase) the “malefactors of great wealth”, and on the other small clots of sectarian purists, i.e. genuine sectarians and all those who, unlike Proyect, refuse to trade in their critical faculties for a seat in the left-reformist cheering section. Take Syriza. Louis assures us that its victory will “swell the army” of all those fighting injustice around the world, and justifies its coalition with ANEL on the grounds that it is a minor compromise in the service of their larger goal of “beating back” austerity . Now granted that the party’s electoral victory is acting as a major fillip to Podemos and other anti-austerity forces throughout Europe and beyond. But has Proyect ever stopped genuflecting before Tsipras-Veroufakis long enough to consider the prospect that Syriza may just fail? What effect would that have on anti-austerity forces? Let us take stock. I don’t claim to know how things will turn out, but if I were a pro-austerity Eurocrat or banker, I might calculate as follows: “We have within our power an enormous capacity to make the Greek economy scream even louder than it already is, and to underwrite anti-Syriza forces. Greece is a small country whose default, even exit from the Eurozone, is something we can withstand. It therefore makes more sense to tighten the screws and make an example of Syriza now than pursue some genuine compromise that will only embolden Podemos and others. We can certainly offer Tsipras a few sops in return for his agreement to act as the human face of austerity. But, beyond that, what’s to be gained by compromise?” How could Syriza respond? Its base has indicated that it is fed up with austerity, but not fed up enough to leave the Eurozone, and Alexis Tsipras has put himself forward as the political conjurer who can fulfill this self-contradictory dual desideratum. But can he? What would be his options in the face of EU intransigence? Proyect never seems to ask himself these questions, let alone answer them. There may perhaps be a Russian card to play here, in light of the growing Russian-NATO falling out, and Tsipras seems not entirely unaware of this option. But it would also be difficult to imagine an effective counterthrust without strong measures against Greek and foreign capital, which would in turn require mass support and mobilization. But it seems to me that such a mobilization would demand, inter alia, a strong alliance between the Greek working class and the immigrant population—two major groups on the receiving end of austerity. Is such a potential alliance made more or less likely by the coalition with ANEL? Will the hundreds of thousands of immigrants now in detention centers, or under threat in their neighborhoods from fascist thugs, be inclined to regard this nod in the direction of anti-immigrant demagogues as a minor tactical expedient? Will this lash up enhance or retard the possibilities of a unified fight against Golden Dawn, which is likely to supply Greek capitalism with needed shock troops should the confrontation with the Eurocrats move from parliament to the streets? One pole of Proyect’s Manichean political universe obviously consists of non-dogmatic, with-it, up-to-date progressive-ecumenicists like himself, who seize every opportunity to burnish their anti-sectarian credentials with effusive praise for the left-reformist flavor of the month. At the opposite pole are the Socialist Equality Party, the Spartacists, etc., who reflexively denounce any left-tending popular movement for non-conformity to their preordained ‘revolutionary’ script. Joined by the latter at this pole—and virtually indistinguishable from them according to Louis—are all those in the least inclined to evaluate the slogans and promises of left-reformists in the light of past experience and present possibilities rather than simply enthusing. A Manichean universe, if ever there was! Jim Creegan _ 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: Syriza in the Weekly Worker
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. * -Original Message- From: turbulo turb...@aol.com To: marxism-request marxism-requ...@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Sent: Sat, Jan 17, 2015 2:12 pm Subject: Syriza in the Weekly Worker I thought comrades might be interested in this exchange, in the last two issues of the the Weekly Worker, regarding the Eddie Ford piece I posted a couple weeks ago. Since I couldn't send these letters as a link w/o sending the entire letters column, I have posted them as text. Jim Creegan Tedsaid so Of course the demandshould be for “Syriza to take power” and “form a workers’ government withsocialist policies” (‘Troika demands more blood’, December 18). Marxist shouldmobilise to get Syriza elected. Now, Marxists understand that Syriza will notcarry out a proletarian revolution - at best it will be a reformist government- but Marxists should support all reforms of the government, and put forwardtheir own programme in contrast to the reforms. The mass of the workingclass support Syriza. If we say that Syriza is going to let us down, then theMarxists will be sidelined. Eddie Ford says: “Surely it is reckless andirresponsible to spread illusions in Syriza. As it is, the party subscribes toa mealy-mouthed left Keynesianism that is utterly doomed to failure.” Surely itis the duty of Marxists to contrast their programme to that of Syriza. Marxistsshould support the left government, but campaign for their programme, therebyexposing the false policies of Syriza. “Quite clearly, a Syriza-ledcoalition, enjoying minority support across the country, would have problems oflegitimacy from the very beginning. It would too come under extraordinarypressure from the markets, and would be relentlessly demonised by the mediadomestically and internationally. Under such circumstances would its leadershipnot be tempted to make all sorts of unprincipled compromises?” Any government thatfought for the working class would come under pressure from the capitalistclass, both in Greece and internationally. Of course, the leadership would comeunder such intense pressure, and they would make rotten compromises. This againwould give the Marxists the opportunity to contrast their policies with that ofthe left reformists. “We argue in thestrongest possible terms that as a general principle the left should avoid thetemptation of prematurely taking power. Till we have a clear majority, tillthere is the strong likelihood of the working class in other countries formingtheir own governments - ie, the conditions where we have a realisticpossibility of fulfilling our entire minimum programme - then it is best toconstitute our forces as those of the extreme opposition. In other words, wefight to enlarge the democratic space available to us in society. Under theseconditions our forces can organise, be educated and further grow.” So if there was a hugevote for Syriza, but they don’t gain a majority, even though they may have themost votes they should say, ‘We will not take power’. This would not go downwell amongst the workers, who would see it as a defeat. As for “enlarge thedemocratic space”, Eddie, you are talking bollocks. The masses learn throughevents, not by Marxists standing on the sidelines slagging off the leftgovernment and putting forward a pure revolutionary programme. As Ted Grantused to say, “Events, events, events will teach the masses”. Alan Morgun email Illusion Thank god Alun Morgan wason hand last week to remind the clueless armchair Marxists of the CPGB of therevolutionary gospel according to Ted Grant (Letters, January 8). “Events,events, events will teach the masses,” reiterates the comrade: don’t bother withthat silly theory business - thinkin’ ’bout stuff and criticising flawed ideasand whatnot - just get on board the endless strikes and walkouts conveyor-beltand all will be right. “Events will teach the masses,” says Ted Grant. Eventslike the Snowden data leaks; events like the endless, self-perpetratingmurder-fests in north Africa and the Middle East; events like the 2008recession and the ongoing instability of the euro zone perhaps? Comrade, we’ve had‘events’ a-plenty. We’ve had events coming out of the wazoo. The reputabilityof the bourgeoisie has been nose-diving, the ruling class has been coming apartbefore the very eyes of anyone who would care to look. Meanwhile, basicfreedoms we won and took for granted are snatched away, because even they posetoo much of a threat. The best answers they can give us is ‘more of the same’ -if we’re lucky, capitalism with a human face. And despite all this, theleft still has failed time and again - and quite
[Marxism] What if Syriza wins? - Weekly Worker
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. * At the risk of becoming the next poster to be proscribed from this listserve, I offer the following article, not identical to my own view, but closer to it than uncritical Syriza worship. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1040/what-if-syriza-wins/ Jim Creegan _ 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] How the German Left Learned to Love Israel
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. * Blumenthal's account of Die Linke incident and comment on the the Antideutsch movement: http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-the-German-Left-Learne-by-Max-Blumenthal-Anti-semitism_Hate_Holocaust_Israel-141202-264.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] Why We Might Think Twice About 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. * I don't agree completely with this article. I'm inclined toward critical support for Syriza, but I think it's a welcome antidote to the mindless adulation of anything even vaguely of the left that abounds in certain quarters. Jim Creegan http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1039/troika-demands-more-blood/ _ 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] We Must All Support 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. * Louis Proyect wrote: I dealt with that at length in an article on species extinction and imperialist war in the Fall 2007 Science and Society. The next time you are in a library, you might benefit from a perusal. David Harvey described it as an eye-opener. I haven't been to a library lately, but I did consult the S S index for 1987-2013. The only item listed under your name is a three-page review of Inventing Western Civilization by Thomas Patterson, from1999. Did you get your publications mixed up? I know your stuff appears in many journals. Maybe you could send a link? Jim Creegan _ 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] We Must All Support 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: Yes, everybody can remember how neo-Nazi guerrillas streamed across the border with Germany and began setting fire to the vineyards in Languedoc. What a terrible time that was. support Syriza and Podemos without undue criticism! I submit that any perceptive reader of this exchange--young, old or in between--will conclude that all your bluster, diversion and Spart baiting does not succeed in covering up the simple fact that you have no convincing answer to the question I have raised. You're right. Your ability to navigate vast portions of the planet covering decades toward the end purpose of rendering a complex reality so simple leaves me breathless. How dare I enter into the debate with our epoch's Leon Tortsky. *** No, but there was a fierce attack on the franc in response to Mitterand's left-Keynesian program in 1981, as well as his inclusion of PCF members in his coalition. Mitterand responded by abandoning the left-reformist platform on which he was elected and leading an austerity drive. BTW, speaking of comparisons: Am I incorrect in recollecting that, about ten years ago, you compared the dislodging of a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male from its nest atop the entrance of an upscale Fifth Avenue co-op to the US invasion of Iraq? Jim Creegan _ 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] We Must All Support 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. * It is only people who are so cocooned from reality such as you, having spent their entire adult lives composing Coyoacan-type communiques in their mind, who can blame the FSLN for selling out the revolution. If you weren't such an absurdly comic figure with your sterile panaceas, I would describe you as a threat to the left. Fortunately, the generation you belonged to--the hammer-and-sickle/Red Star verbal radicalism of the coffee shop smart set--has almost disappeared from the political landscape. It is only by making speeches during the QA period at Left Forums or trolling Marxmail that you can get a shred of attention. - Your reference to Coyoacan communiques seems to put me in a coffee shop smart set I would never have dreamed of including myself in, so I will take it as a compliment. Have you ever considered the contours of the political landscape sectarian smart alecs like me have disappeared from, and in which you seek to thrive? Could it possibly be one that has shifted dramatically to the right, and in which some, while oddly calling themselves unrepentant Marxists, desperately seek absolution from the left-liberal bourgeoisie for ever having done anything--trying to build a revolutionary party,criticizing reformists--that distinguishes Marxists from them? Better, maybe, to call your blog, the Marxist Who Wants to Come In from the Cold. I notice you didn't respond to my query concerning what I recall as your comparison between the invasion of Iraq and the unnesting of Pale Male. Jim Creegan _ 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] Where left populism leads - Weekly Worker
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. * Another view of Podemos: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1038/where-left-populism-leads/ Jim Creegan _ 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] We Must All Support 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: I am not here to educate you about Nicaragua. You make a foolish comparison between Mitterand and Daniel Ortega without taking into account that France was a powerful imperialist nation with a long history as a colonizer while Nicaragua was a country with a population the size of Brooklyn and a GNP less than what Americans spend on blue jeans in a year. And with one elevator in the entire country, with an economy already devastated by earthquake. And you think that the FSLN's problem was that it did not lay hands on the capitalists? How am I supposed to respond to that? It is such a cockeyed notion that it is not worth responding to. I posted a link to my article not for your benefit because you have been irreparably damaged by sectarianism. It is for young people who may have been born after the FSLN took power. I invited you to write something fully expecting you to weasel your way out of actually reading something about Nicaragua. In fact I don't think that mailing lists gain much from 4 or 5 sentence stupid comparisons between France and Nicaragua. If you were a bit more modest, you'd realize that you were wasting bandwidth with such empty bombast. You are not the first person mistrained in Spartacist League sectarianism that we have encountered in this neck of the woods, but the first since Marxmail was born. We had a slew of FSLN critics long ago, like Bob Malecki. It seems like a century ago, thank goodness. * I note that in the article you sent on Nicaragua, you opined that perhaps comparing the Sandinista agricultural policy with that of Cuba was less helpful than comparing it to that of Russia in the 1920s. If I were to have remarked on the absurdity of speaking of two countries like Russia and Nicaragua in the same breath (not to mention the absurdityof the comparison between the Sandinistas and the Bolsheviks), you might have replied that you weren't comparing the two countries in terms of land mass, population, GDP or geopolitical heft,but only in terms of certain aspects of agrarian policy. I think I can similarly reply that I was comparing Mitterand, Allende and Ortega in one respect only: they headed governments that challenged capital in certain ways, but had no strategy for combating the furious reaction on the part of the national and international bourgeoisie that inevitably followed. And when I make the same point regarding Syriza and Podemos, you apparently have no answer, except to say that maybe the masses, having been predictably clobbered by the EU and the Greek or Spanish bourgeoisie, will, on short notice, improvise a revolutionary strategy on their own; and that we shouldn't talk in generalities, but concentrate on the facts, of which you, Proyect, have a superior knowledge, although you don't specify precisely which facts are relevant to the argument at hand; and, further that anyone who raises such a question is a hopeless sectarian, not worth arguing with in the first place. Just shut up, and vote for and support Syriza and Podemos without undue criticism! I submit that any perceptive reader of this exchange--young, old or in between--will conclude that all your bluster, diversion and Spart baiting does not succeed in covering up the simple fact that you have no convincing answer to the question I have raised. Jim Creegan. _ 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] Why We Must Support 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: What a mind-boggling amalgam: Mitterand and Ortega. That convinces me more than ever that Creegan has not evolved much past his days in the Spartacist League. *** There are big and important differences between these two politicians and the movements they led. The differences do not, however, erase a major similarity: they both attempted to introduce a series of reforms objectionable to capital, without even thinking about laying government hands on the major levers of capitalist power. They tweaked the toes of a colossus, and got stomped. The Spartacists weren't wrong about everything. Jim Creegan _ 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] We Should All Support 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: Creegan, don't you know what evidence means? Everything you post here is bereft of historical or economic data. My guess is that you simply don't know enough about Nicaragua in the 80s to contribute something substantial to the debate. I was the president of a technical aid project to Nicaragua and was forced by circumstance to understand the nation's difficulties. I and other Tecnica board members used to meet regularly with Paul Oquist, Daniel Ortega's chief economic adviser. Your understanding of Nicaragua is lifted out of the Spartacist League newspaper. Laying government hands sounds like something out of a Jimmy Swaggart sermon, not an analysis from someone grounded in historical materialism. My analysis of the rise and fall of the Sandinista revolution is here: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/nicaragua.htm I invite Creegan to write his own analysis but doubt that he is capable of writing anything except glittering generalities. ** I think my articles in the Weekly Worker testify to my ability to write more than glittering generalities. But it is your method of arguing that I take issue with above all. You undoubtedly know more than I do about certain subjects. However, it is hardly reasonable to upload a lengthy analysis you wrote some years ago, and invite me to respond with a tome of my own, at least in a medium of this kind, where brief comments are the norm. But if you have so much in-depth knowledge that I lack, why don't you try sifting through it and pulling out a few discrete facts or observations that tend to contradict what I'm saying, and allow me to respond (if I am. . able) with a few select facts and/or observations of my own. That's how a structured discussion could proceed. Instead, you accuse me of being an ignorant Spartacist slogan monger, and try to smother me with an old article on the Nicaraguan revolution that is perhaps of general relevance to what I am arguing, but not specifically responsive to what I have written here. In other words, you accuse me of being factually ignorant IN GENERAL--in itself an overly general way of arguing. Creegan _ 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] Why We Must Support 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. * Louis wrote: The problem is that those who have such insights are largely ignored by the masses. You have a small coalition of Marxist groups that will never have the kind of influence that Syriza does and the KKE, which attacks Syriza from the left but has not provided the kind of leadership that is so necessary. For the past nearly 50 years I have seen formally correct revolutionary critiques of sell-out parties but they never seem to amount to more than propaganda formations. I don't expect Syriza to lead the working class to socialism but it is necessary for it go through the experience of seeing it fail. There are many Greek Marxists who are in Syriza and would expect to see them move toward a more effective class struggle solution to the crisis but that will have to be based on its authority within the mass movement. Standing from on high lecturing the movement about its failings does not work unfortunately. ** Yes, but during that same 50 years we have also seen a host of left-reformist governments ( Allende, Mitterand, Ortega) go down to defeat. The parties that led them there may not have been ignored by the masses, but failed more spectacularly than any sect could have. Did the masses draw revolutionary conclusions as a result of having gone through these defeats? Not that I've noticed. Why is Louis so anxious to trade in one failed set of politics (sectarianism) for another (reformist cheerleading)? One might argue for critical support of SYRIZA. But the operational word here should be critical. Unless there is a party prepared to point out why electoral/reformist strategies are bound to fail BEFORE THE FACT, no one will ever raw the appropriate conclusions from their failure. The existence of such a party may not be a sufficient condition for a revolutionary advance, but it is a necessary one. Jim Creegan _ 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 Views of Podemos
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. * Louis wrote: I have gone through the experience of a small group being built around a revolutionary program and hoping to accumulate cadre until the masses radicalize in sufficient number to flock to the party like iron filings to a magnet. It does not work. So did Jim Creegan when he was in the Spartacist League. I encourage him to continue along those lines since it seems to sustain him spiritually and psychologically. God knows we all need security blankets in times like these. * 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. I think it is important to engage the left-reformists. But to engage them is not to join them. Jim Creegan _ 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 Vews of Podemos
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 think we probably have different ideas about what a liberal trajectory means. But beyond the question of its decision, for example, to scale back some of its more radical proposals, there is another dimension that has to be considered--namely, the class dynamic of a party that has no links to the Spanish bourgeoisie and that is open and transparent. Unlike the British Labour Party or the Democratic Party for that matter, Podemos is much more like the Greens in the USA. If you keep in mind that Podemos represents the next stage of the anti-capitalist struggle in Spain rather than the Leninist party that will ultimately be necessary for total emancipation, then it begins to make sense. The British SWP's mistake is to counterpose a Platonic ideal of a Leninist Party and seduce the innocent into its imaginary ranks. * Louis's habitual counterposition of a Platonic ideal of a Leninist party to the real movement contributes nothing whatsoever to developing a critical orientation to varous left-reformist parties (Greens, NPA, Linke, Siriza, Podemos). This is perhaps as he intends, because developing a critical orientation presupposes the prior existence of Marxists attempting to develop it, and, as far as I can gather, Louis regards any attempt by Marxists to differentiate themselves politically and organizationally from left-reformists as hopelessly sectarian. Left-reformism is by no means a stage in the inexorable development of revolutionary consciousness. Allende's UP was a stage leading to the Pinochet coup, and Mitterand's experiment in left-Keynesianism in 1981 was a stage leading to a rightwing about-face by the Socialists when confronted with an economic counteroffensive by the French and European bourgeoisie. A revolutionary outcome requires organizations who propagate its necessity and fight for it at every stage. Fighting for such an outcome doesn't necessarily involve writing off left-reformists, but precludes total identification with them. Jim Creegan _ 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 Views of Podemos
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. * Marv Gandall wrote: It is easy to condemn these parties for not mobilizing the masses and pushing back against these pressures, but this fails to take into account that the balance of power between the classes and the level of consciousness of the masses in bourgeois democracies have never provided the necessary conditions for such struggles to unfold. It?s only in conditions where democratic rights are absent and the masses don?t have peaceful electoral channels to vent their grievances, or where wars and other catastrophes lead to a breakdown of social order and mass deprivation, that the property and power of the bourgeoisie has been challenged through insurrection. And these insurrections have been more often quashed by the armed forces of the state than have succeeded. I don?t like to sound these notes, but this is the course history has taken to date. *** You no doubt dislike sounding these notes because they imply that there is no way forward: thoroughgoing reformist initiatives are bound to be defeated by bourgeois reaction, and revolutionary attempts to mobilize the masses against reaction are impossible because the masses, under bourgeois democracy, refuse to be mobilized. Both reformist and revolutionary politics, in other words, lead to a dead end. This has been true up to now, but, in the case of a democratic country where revolution came closest to happening--France, 1968--the established party system had become dysfunctional because there was no one to play the role of the Democrats or Social Democrats. DeGaulle monopololized bourgeois politics to the extent that the only alternative was the PCF (which ultimately played a role akin to social democracy, but was never trusted by the ruling class). It can be argued that bourgeois democracy, for different reasons, is becoming dysfunctional today. Never has the political class of all major parties, in all Western contries, been perceived as so remote from the realities and concerns of ordinary people, and as so beholden to moneyed interests. Might this not present new opportunities for exposing the limitations of electoralism? Jim Creegan . _ 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] Effacing the radical tradition in the American Jewish Community
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. * One watershed event omitted from Cohen's piece is the teachers' strike in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (NYC) in 1968, which followed closely upon the '67 war . An SDSer at the time (and a college kid who didn't know all that much), I supported the black community against the strikers--a position I now believe to have been wrong. Upon subsequent reading, I concluded that the Rockefeller Foundation, under McGeorge Bundy (remember him?), was deliberately (and successfully) using slogans of community control to pit blacks against unions. But, whatever the rights and wrongs of that dispute, it did mark a certain turning point.Jews, many of whom had previously considered themselves not quite white, began increasingly thereafter to think of themselves as another white ethnicity. Jim Creegan _ 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] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * Isn't this really one of those terms that has been so severely misrepresented and abused--by its advocates as well as critics--that the most honest solution would be to set it aside in the interest of clarity? All political vocabulary drifts and smudges itself in the press of events. Time just exaggerates the process. And it's all particularly true of terms that aren't defined in the concrete practices and policies of institutions with power behind them. So, what do the defenders of Leninism and advocates of the Leninist party mean whey they use those terms? The same as Bob Avakian? Jack Barnes? Lenin? ML Why not say the same of Marxism? Is it what Kautsky said it was? Lenin and Trotsky? Kim Il-Sung? The fact is that, from 1903 to 1917 and after, in Russia and abroad, Lenin waged a fight for a certain kind of politics and party. We may legitimately debate the relevance of his fight to contemporary conditions. But there are nevertheless a number of political positions and practices which were distinctively his, and quite justly associated with his name. Would not dropping the term Leninism be a step toward depriving Lenin of his rightful historical place? Jim Creegan _ 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] Stephen Kotkin on Stalin
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. * In his new biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin goes even farther down the road of bourgeois pro-Stalinism than Montefiore or anyone else. This according to a review by Richard Pipes in the current New York Review of Books. Kotkin, it seems, denies the entire rift between Lenin and Stalin in 1922, dismissing Lenin's testament and other documents as a likely forgeries (although even Stalin never made such a claim, and the testament was included by Moscow in Lenin's Collected Works after 1961). The agenda here is transparent: to establish Stalin as Lenin's true heir, just as Stalin himself attempted to do. The only difference is that Stalin wished to pose as Lenin's heir to bolster his authority, whereas Kotkin and his ilk want to use the idea of unbroken succession to blacken the name of Lenin. This revisionism is too much for even an arch reactionary like Pipes, although he treats it as a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent biography. Jim Creegan _ 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] Understanding Stalin--Anne Applebaum--The Atlantic
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. * Sorry I forgot to clip my original post. Take two. This is a good example of the self-satisfied ignorance that abounds in Soviet scholarship these days. Assertions like these can pass as serious scholarship--even in respectable journals--only because few among contemporary academics are informed or disinterested enough to challenge them. Yet there is method in this ignorance. By arguing that Stalin was intelligent and a committed ideologue, scholars like Montefiore and now Kotkin intend to prove that Stalin was a true representative of original Bolshevism rather than its perverter. Yet how can consistency be imputed to anyone who claimed that socialism could only be established on an international basis, and, contrarily, that it could be built in one country--all in the course of a single year (1924)?; who could pose as a friend of the peasantry, and paint Trotsky as the peasant's enemy in 1926, only to turn around and savage the peasantry in the brutal collectivization that began in 1928?; who could claim that capitalism was i n stable equilibrium in 1926, and claim, with no relation to the facts, that it had entered a third period of revolutionary upheaval in 1928? Weres any of these abrupt turns ideologically consistent because they were couched in pseudo-Marxist phraseology? Did it ever occur to anyone before Montefiore and Kotkin to call Iago or Richard the Third intelligent because their petty duplicity was effective in achieving short-term ends? And if Stalin was so true to the Leninist legacy, why did he find it necessary to finish off not only every living member of Lenin's general staff, but their wives and children? And can anyone who has read both Trotsky and Stalin, with his static formulae and leaden prose, seriously argue that the two were anywhere even remotely on the same intellectual plain? The mind boggles! Jim Creegan _ 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] Benjamin Kunkel reviews ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ by Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer · LRB 3 July 2014
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Outstanding review of Piketty in current London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n13/benjamin-kunkel/paupers-and-richlings?utm_source=newsletterutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=3613hq_e=elhq_m=3268286hq_l=7hq_v=7962d93b12 Jim Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
