Re: [Marxism] [SocialistProject] Bullet: Requiem at an Empty Grave? Syriza's Momentous Day
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 7/13/15 7:36 AM, Michael Yates via Marxism wrote: Louis has said that his interest in Syriza lies only in what lessons it can teach those in the US trying to build a radical party. What I would say is that what is needed is a radical re-conception of democracy, one that takes seriously the development, through both education and action, of the people's capacities to govern themselves. Meszaros and Michael Lebowitz have much to teach us about this. I will be writing something on the North Star website when I find the time about why parties like Podemos and Syriza are important and worth imitating by the American left. It can be confusing for some people why we support that position. A guy named purple just posted this comment on my blog: SYRIZA doesn’t exist anymore. The Left Platform is going to be fired, and Tsipras will take on PASOK types. There won’t be a Left government in Europe for generations because of this rout. People calling for a SYRIZA model should take realistic stock, the party failed at every single one of its goals in a shockingly short time span. The confusion has to do with organization versus program. Groups like the British SWP and the small groups that are organized like the SWP and that have come together in the Antarsya coalition have been correct from day one but they got just over a half percent of the vote in the Greek elections. Having a correct program is only part of the equation. You have to an organizational form and a means of communication that the average worker can relate to. By analogy, it is the difference between the Green Party in the USA and the ISO. When Ralph Nader got nearly 3 million votes in 2000, it represented a tremendous opportunity for the left. To give the ISO some credit, they were very involved with the Nader campaign. Was Nader capable of providing the kind of leadership that an American VI Lenin or a Fidel Castro could provide? Or for that matter Eugene V. Debs? Of course not. But the dynamics of the Green Party in 2000 opened up the possibility of important breakthroughs for revolutionary regroupment. That is the way I saw Syriza. If and when something comes along to replace it, it will most certainly not be Antarsya or the KKE. It will be the same sort of mixture of right and left that will be under the same kinds of pressures that Greece is facing today. Furthermore, as I have insisted all along, a socialist Grexit will likely lead to just as much suffering if not more so than Greece is facing today. The drachma is not a panacea. The Greek economy has been dysfunctional from the 1930s as all Marxist analysis I have read has emphasized. Trying to fix that economy within the framework of capitalism is a challenge of Herculean proportions. To go beyond capitalism opens a Pandora's Box of other ills. Once a Greek government takes power and nationalizes the banks and large corporations, declares a monopoly on foreign trade, and institutes a planned economy, its troubles will first begin. If you need any reminder of what a socialist Greece would have to confront, I recommend Karl Marx's The Civil War in France or E.H. Carr's history of the USSR. _ 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] [SocialistProject] Bullet: Requiem at an Empty Grave? Syriza's Momentous Day
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 agreement reached between the troika and Tsipras puts the absolute lie to the nonsense offered by Leo Panitch. A journalist friend (and former student) asked me for comments on the situation in Greece. He asked specifically about Varoufakis. Here is what I said: With respect to Greece, the deal cut hours ago between Tsipras and the troika represents a total capitulation to the latter. Greece has agreed to austerity measures worse than those recently rejected by Greek voters, and especially by the broad working class. The problem for Syriza is that it did not have what negotiators call a “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” which would have been, in my view, exit from the Euro and the EU. To have such an alternative would have required planning and a mass education campaign to prepare people for such an alternative. This Syriza failed to do. It failed to even try to deepen democracy and to empower those who voted for it. It behaved just like any other modern political party. The consequence now is an admission that there is no defying the neoliberal market gods, namely the rich nations and their richest citizens. Capital rules and as Thatcher said, “there is no alternative.” For the Greek working class, poor, unemployed, pensioners, the results will be more suffering and more death. Greece is in worse shape than the US in 1933, and things will get worse. What growth might occur will be tilted overwhelmingly toward the rich. Greece is now formally a colony of Germany and the other rich EU nations. The troika has taught the Greeks a lesson in power and sent a message to any that would defy them. As for Varoufakis, he was in way over his head, believing that his grasp of game theory would win the day, vastly underestimating what he was up against, a bit too taken with his dashing persona. He didn’t even show up to vote when Tsipras demanded allegiance to his upcoming capitulation. Instead he retired to his summer home. He may now have political ambitions, to the left of Tsipras, but to the right of the left that has rejected austerity all along. We shall see. Louis has said that his interest in Syriza lies only in what lessons it can teach those in the US trying to build a radical party. What I would say is that what is needed is a radical re-conception of democracy, one that takes seriously the development, through both education and action, of the people's capacities to govern themselves. Meszaros and Michael Lebowitz have much to teach us about this. _ 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] [SocialistProject] Bullet: Requiem at an Empty Grave? Syriza's Momentous Day
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 Yates wrote (...) Louis has said that his interest in Syriza lies only in what lessons it can teach those in the US trying to build a radical party. What I would say is that what is needed is a radical re-conception of democracy, one that takes seriously the development, through both education and action, of the people's capacities to govern themselves. Meszaros and Michael Lebowitz have much to teach us about this. Here are just two examples from among myriad. I just happened to read this morning these passages from Meszaros, thinking it might be useful to share them, and behold! comes this opportunity. It is no exaggeration to say that with 1989 a long historical phase - the one initiated by the October Revolution of 1917 - came to its end. From now on, whatever might be the future of socialism, it will have to be established on radically new foundations, beyond the tragedies and failures of Soviet type development which became blocked very soon after the conquest of power in Russia by Lenin and his followers. (...) To be sure, historical time - emanating from the dynamics of social interchanges - cannot possibly flow at a steady pace. Given the greatly varying intensity of social conflicts and determinations, we may experience historical intervals when everything seems to grind to a complete standstill, stubbornly refusing to move for a prolonged period of time. And by the same token, the eruption and intensification of structural conflicts may result in the most unexpected concatenation of apparently unstoppable events, accomplishing within days incomparably more than in decades beforehand. Istvan Meszaros, Beyond Capital, London: Merlin Press 1995 at pp. 284 and 283. Then also last night I viewed the debate between Stathis Kouvelakis and Alex Callinicos on Greece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1paxMRddO0M, in which Kouvelakis of the Left Platform concludes his statement by saying, You might know that I work as a political theorist and I have also worked on Marx's theory, and also particularly dear and very central to my work is the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, 'Every time I was mistaken it was because I haven't been sufficiently radical,' and I fully share this quotation - provided, provided - (holding up a finger amidst applause) hold on, there is a catch here, there is a catch. There is a catch, and the catch is that radical, for me at least, doesn't mean the repetition of the old recipes but, as one comrade, actually the speaker of the Syriza parliamentary group and prominent member of the Left Platform Zoi Konstantopoulou said yesterday, 'opening up our wings to the unknown.' Thank you. However, throughout the presentations of both discussants, I kept thinking of something unmentioned, even in some other from, that 90% of Greece's needs, elements of its lifeline in the context of inexorably increasing interdependence, are supplied from outside Greece. And then by way of sober warning, I think of Richard Strauss's tone-poem of Cervantes's epic of the knight-errant Don Quixote, tilting with his sword at windmills, thinking they are giants, whereupon he falls at the first brush against the windmill's sails, shattering his lance. Cervantes tells us about how Don Quixote became who he was: “Through too little sleep and too much reading of books on knighthood, he dried up his brains in such a way that he wholly lost his judgement...“ So, the opening of wings to the unknown, that's beautiful and evocative, but it encounters material reality, implying in the Left Platform's program Grexit and cutting off creditors who supply capital for imports, who when asked for credit after Grexit, demand collateral - and then what? So yes, on the other foot under Tsipras's leadership Syriza conveyed confidence in reform of Europe 'to save it from itself', as the only way to save Greece - a strategic error, and now they seek in disarray to preserve their lifeline to the Euro. Likely, in assuming the role of capital management on behalf of the creditors, aligning with the police and military against the antagonist, labor. Rock and hard place. What lessons learned? I echo Michael Yates and refer one and all fwiw to Lebowitz and Meszaros. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com _ Full posting
Re: [Marxism] [SocialistProject] Bullet: Requiem at an Empty Grave? Syriza's Momentous Day
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. * Andrew says: '... it's hard not to fume when someone like Panitch turns the meaning of events on their head in a way that makes the job of solidarity activists 10 times harder by the confusion they've spread.' I agree. John Passant _ 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
