Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/13/15 8:20 AM, Lüko Willms via Marxism wrote: Open the books of big business, of the shipping conglomerates (not only Onassis), of the media coporations (which all belong to various corporations or financial conglomerates). Take cumpolsory loans from the super rich. Don't make gifts to the people, but mobilize them to work and to take things in their own hands, increasing their self-confidence, the self-empowerment. With all, for the good of all, as José Martí, the Cuban hero said. I really feel a profound disgust when I read this sort of thing. These words are utterly meaningless. They are simply a sterile exercise in leftist fantasy. Luko and every other comrade here who has been in a Trotskyist party or read their newspapers can put together such formulations for us to read without breaking a sweat. It is called preaching to the choir. What would be of more use is if Luko--a German--can explain what he is doing in his own vulture nation to organize workers to act in solidarity with Greek workers. I doubt that his missive here will be read by very many Volkswagen employees. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * on Samstag, 11. Juli 2015 at 19:58, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: So what kind of party do we need? A party which leads the working people, proletarians (wage earners) and farmers alike, into taking their fate into their own hands. As I wrote already in late February of this year: Datum : Montag, 23. Februar 2015, 19:09 Betreff: [Marxism] Greece: Where is the public works programme? The mobilisation of the unemployed for reconstructing the country? ===8=== Original Nachrichtentext === With a a quarter of the econmically active population being unemployed, and the economy in shambles after years and decades of disrecard for the public infrastructure, a massive popular mobilisation is called for, to take things in their own hands, and build. Build roads, bridges, tunnels, railway lines, and more which will increase the productivity of the country. Organise farmers to produce what they could not sell on the market, because the food industry, the whole salers and the retailers could not make enough profits with it. This will feed the workers in the public works program. And nationalise the banks to stop financial speculation and direct the funds into financing the public works program and other necessary work. Nationalisation does not necessary mean the expropriation of the owners of the banks, but taking control out of their hands, combining the whole financial industry under a common leadership and command for the good of the country. Open the books of big business, of the shipping conglomerates (not only Onassis), of the media coporations (which all belong to various corporations or financial conglomerates). Take cumpolsory loans from the super rich. Don't make gifts to the people, but mobilize them to work and to take things in their own hands, increasing their self-confidence, the self-empowerment. With all, for the good of all, as José Martí, the Cuban hero said. Or is that actually happening? I haven't heard of it. No scandalized uproar in the Corporate News Media... I was disappointed when the previous Greek government ordered the state TV to shut down, and all the workers operating the transmission network followed the order. It would have been so easy to mobilize for a NO, and a refusal to shut it down. Recommended reading: The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, by Lenin at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/index.htm ===8== Ende des Original Nachrichtentextes = I wanted to write implement capital controls, but I didn't know the English word for Kapitalverkehrskontrollen. There is not only a huge mass of unemployed, but also farmers in crisis who close shop because the capitalist market does not pay enough for their produce. Both farmers and workers have to gain by combining their forces and helping each other by a direct exchange of their products. Factories closed in the past years have to reopen in order to produce things needed for the big public undertakings. Undertakings which are in the common interest, not induced by favoring entrepreneurship as the national-front declaration of Tsipras and the bourgeois parties stipulates. The important thing is the to activate people who are now jobless and without income. Them being activily working for their advantage and the common good is what helps them to gain self-confidence. Getting gifts from the government does not. 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. Rebuilding the walls between the European countries which had been lowered by the European Union is not a way forward for working people. Workers have no fatherland is the old truth, and giving up those important elements of the right to free movement as is the Schengen space and the common currency, is really foolish; it only serves the most backward sections of the bourgeoisie. As the history after the no campaign of the French left against the change in the European Treaty a couple of years ago. Today it is undeniable that this reactionary campaign for rising the capitalist borders around France only benefited the extreme right, the Front National. A big question will remain, if the capitulation of the Syriza leadership will result in a setback for the workers movement as
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T -Original Message- From: Dayne Goodwin via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Sent: Jul 11, 2015 1:04 PM To: Thomas F Barton thomasfbar...@earthlink.net Subject: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza' Syriza. Defeat. Victory. Defeat. by Richard Seymour Lenin's Tomb, July 10 http://www.leninology.co.uk . . . Now, it seems, Syriza has caved and proposed a deal which is even worse than the worst. Cuts. Privatisations. Pension 'reforms'. VAT increases. Recessionary measures. Barely a trace of a progressive agenda left here, notwithstanding the strenuous and heartbreaking efforts of euro-leftists to give it a gloss. In some respects, they have delivered, after months of fighting, a more complete victory to the neoliberal managers of Europe than the latter could have won on their own account. The social catastrophe that has befallen Greece is now going to be prolonged - the suicides, the premature deaths, the medicine shortages, the starvation, the wage losses, unemployment - but without any possible conviction that, say, a new radical left government might be elected and put an end to the misery. What sort of political forces might stand to gain in that terrain is obviously undecided; but we have seen what the worst of it could be. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * es. The question of what organized politics offer the possibility of change from below is now very much front and center. The spectacular collapse of parliamentary politics from above throws that door wide open. The quote from Brecht below is most apt. It was written mid-1953 during an uprising in the streets by the East German working class. After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writer's Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? It is often the case that before people, organizations, or a class, can formulate how to go forward, it is first necessary to become conscious of what they do not want and what does not work. Negation of the bullshit. Nobody can yet say what class response, if any, will come in the streets to events of the past few days and the decisions yet to come over the weekend. Nobody can yet say what political tendency, if any, will put forward politics that will begin to gather support to move against the government from below when and if sufficient forces are organized and ready to do so. What is certain is that there has been consistent underestimation of the depth of the rage and resistance among the Greek people in general and the Greek working class in particular to EU insistence on stripping them naked and pushing their faces into the dirt. That may now lead everywhere, or nowhere. Revolutionary organizations have been notoriously awful at predicting the course of short term events. A modern example: general amazement at the outcome of the referendum. The best have been supple enough not to lag too far behind uprisings from below. Solidarity, T -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com Sent: Jul 11, 2015 1:58 PM To: Thomas thomasfbar...@earthlink.net, Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza' So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Syriza. Defeat. Victory. Defeat. by Richard Seymour Lenin's Tomb, July 10 http://www.leninology.co.uk . . . Now, it seems, Syriza has caved and proposed a deal which is even worse than the worst. Cuts. Privatisations. Pension 'reforms'. VAT increases. Recessionary measures. Barely a trace of a progressive agenda left here, notwithstanding the strenuous and heartbreaking efforts of euro-leftists to give it a gloss. In some respects, they have delivered, after months of fighting, a more complete victory to the neoliberal managers of Europe than the latter could have won on their own account. The social catastrophe that has befallen Greece is now going to be prolonged - the suicides, the premature deaths, the medicine shortages, the starvation, the wage losses, unemployment - but without any possible conviction that, say, a new radical left government might be elected and put an end to the misery. What sort of political forces might stand to gain in that terrain is obviously undecided; but we have seen what the worst of it could be. In a way, none of this is surprising. The only possible coherent basis for any alternative to austerity was a Grexit prepared for early on, both in terms of public opinion and effective war-readiness. There was nothing else coming down the pipeline. The dominant forces in the Syriza leadership wouldn't have it. Not for a second would Tsipras, Dragasakis, or the recently appointed negotiator Tsakalotos, allow this outcome. For them, Grexit was worse than austerity. Of course, even if they thought that was true, the failure to even plan for such a contingency, to wargame the possible outcomes and get people in the state apparatuses ready to act, was a huge mistake. . . . So what was the meaning of last week's referendum? Why did they call it, and what happened to 'Oxi'? It is fair to say that the Syriza leadership never expected 61% of Greeks to actually support them. Neither did I. The 'Oxi' rallies were enormous, but the fact of this translating into such a tremendous surge at the ballots, mostly coming from the working class and from younger voters - but actually spread across all the districts of Greece, the rural as much as the urban - bespeaks a revolt on the scale of the 'national-popular'. No one could have anticipated it. So what did they anticipate? We could infer the answer from their behaviour. On the day after the referendum, Varoufakis was relieved of his negotiating duties (leaving aside his generally right-cleaving positions, the creditors evidently hate him), and instead a new team including delegates from To Potami and Pasok was sent to discuss the terms of surrender. Tsakalotos sent a letter pleading for a new bailout, with a promise of a new memorandum. This move would have made much more sense had there been a narrow vote for 'Yes', or even a narrow 'No'. It makes no sense at all now. It is at least plausible that Syriza leaders would have preferred to lose and be forced to resign, rather than take responsibility for this deal. It is also plausible, lest we overlook the option, that the Syriza leadership is utterly at sea, pulled hither and thither by tides and winds it knows nothing of. Whatever the reason, the referendum did happen and the result was astonishing. The majority of Greeks did come out to clearly reject austerity. The public protests and rallies building to it, against the ferocious pressure of the reactionary media and the threats of the Eurogroup, almost had the character of a social movement. If we're fortunate, they were the beginning of one. This introduces a significant cleavage between the government and its base. Objectively, that is the basis of a political split. Whether anyone in Syriza will recognise that remains to be seen. . . . Be clear that we are looking a world-historic defeat in the eye. And act accordingly. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/11/15 7:44 PM, ioannis aposperites via Marxism wrote: 6. In the middle of all this mess, the greek working class voted for NO at a percentage of 70-80%, resulting to an overall of 61,3% for the NO vote.The question of the referendum had been set by the class enemy and the answer was a clear no to austerity whatever it takes. And in that context whatever meant including grexit. Didn't you read what I just posted from the Washington Post? Grexit was not reflected as the choice of more than 5 percent in the polls by any party on the eve of the referendum, except for ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters who indicated that they would vote no also favored Grexit. The KKE was not included in the poll, for reasons that were not explained. The Trotskyist left and other members of the far left are all for Grexit but the polls continue to indicate opposition to that. Instead of castigating Syriza for not adopting *your* position, you need to do a better job making the case for it. Tsipras and company are too immersed in a certain set of beliefs to now disavow them as should be clear. I run into the same sense of frustration dealing with people on the American left who are for Bernie Sanders. I am not going to waste time attacking them or Sanders. (I do plan, however, to continue write about the history of Swedish social democracy mostly in order to interrogate the Swedish model as much as for my own self-education.) If a socialist Grexit is the answer, the Greek revolutionary left has to do a better job making the case for it. There is a tendency among those educated in the Trotskyist tradition to make exposing of reformists the primary axis of their propaganda. The failure of such groups to ever achieve the critical mass to become important enough to warrant a critique of their own record is ironic. Nobody spends much time blasting Antarsya for selling out, after all. Now I understand why comrades would find solace in existing in a purified revolutionary state but I don't think that this will change Greek society. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'.
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/11/15 7:55 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Louis can't seem to answer the arguments of anyone who disagrees with him w/o baiting them for other political positions or their political past. I am not interested in answering your arguments. Frankly, of the 33 messages you have posted here since February, all but 3 have been about Syriza. When anybody shows up on Marxmail posting exclusively about some problem or struggle in another country (Ukraine, Syria, etc.), I rapidly come to the conclusion that they are intervening rather than having a conversation. Your cause would be better served if you made an attempt to write about other matters like the disappearance of marine life, gay marriage, disappeared students in Mexico, beat poetry, Godard movies, climate change, the origins of capitalism, the fight for $15, etc. Before you became fixated on Greece, you were fixated on Ukraine. Who knows what you will become fixated on next if Syriza disappears from office. In reality, just speaking for myself, I have the same reaction to your trolling as I do to Sparts at Left Forums. Everybody groans when they begin to speak because they have heard it all before. The Sparts are unsullied while everybody else is a traitor. It is really quite a disgusting behavior calculated mostly to get on people's nerves. Here you are striking poses as if you are the only person on Marxmail who has read Trotsky speaking down to a swamp of reformist slugs, trying to raise them to your Olympian level. It is enough to make one puke. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/11/15 5:00 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Maybe a party that can, at minimum, decide on a rational course of action and campaign for it rather than merely reflect the immediate wishes of the electorate, You mean like the Spartacist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency that you belonged to for 30 years? Or the CPGB with its hammer-and-sickle festooned website whose newspaper you write for on occasion? We are dealing with two types of politics basically. There are those who believe in the power of deeds. That is why I spent a half-decade recruiting technical aid volunteers for Nicaragua and the ANC and the frontline states in the 1980s when you were writing articles calling for proletarian dictatorship in a newspaper that probably had a circulation of about 2 or 3 hundred. You must have believed that your words had some kind of magical power to transform reality. I think that a mojo and a monkey's paw would have had more impact. I created this mailing list as an alternative to the kind of sterile, self-regarding, vaporous formulas that come so easy to you. My advice is to get off the Internet and go work in a soup kitchen or something if you really want to make a difference. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Proyect wrote; So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. * Maybe a party that can, at minimum, decide on a rational course of action and campaign for it rather than merely reflect the immediate wishes of the electorate, especially when those wishes--to reject austerity and remain within the Eurozone--are mutually incompatible. Eurozone, thy name is austerity! It would have helped a lot had the Syriza leadership been clear on this from the beginning, and not sown illusions about persuading the Eurocrats to become something other than what they fundamentally and irreducibly are. And maybe only 5% of No voters favored leaving the euro, but ALL of them voted against the austerity package that the Syriza leadership is now in the process of ramming down their throats. It is unclear how the majority would have decided if an either/or choice had been clearly put to them, although they overwhelmingly voted No despite threats from the institutions and the Greek media that their choice would amount to leaving. The Syriza leadership is now undemocratically imposing upon the people a course that they have shown themselves to oppose even more than a Grexit. What kind of party does Greece need? Surely NOT the kind of party that Syriza has shown itself to be. Seymour is right. Syriza is now nothing more than a PASOK Mark 2. It is dead! And the future of Podemos is not bright. The best thing that can come from this debacle is the formation of a new party from the leftwing members that will perhaps split from Syriza, and other leftist parties or members of them who do not share Tsipras's view that an indefinite future of poverty and national humiliation are preferable to the trials of life outside the Euro Jim _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 11/07/2015 08:58 μμ, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: So what kind of party do we need? One that proclaims the need for rupture? Such a party exists. Actually two of them exist: KKE and Antarsya. But the support for them is negligible. The fact that only 5 percent of those voting no in the referendum expected that if such a vote it would lead to a Grexit, either bourgeois or proletarian, is something that the left has to grapple with. Indeed, the highest preference according to party lines for leaving the eurozone is from ANEL and Golden Dawn. Only 5 percent of Syriza voters expressed a desire to leave the eurozone. Maybe the Greeks should consider Brecht's advice: the government should dissolve the people and elect another. On 7/11/15 1:37 PM, Thomas via Marxism wrote: The naked about face of the Syriza regime is also a huge step forward towards killing illusions that leftish reformist parties like Syriza, or Podemos, have anything to offer Europe’s working classes, other than more misery and disaster, and the political neutering of tendencies who choose to walk into those swamps. That is an important clarification. Hopefully, lesson learned. T The facts are stubborn things. The referendum took place under these concrete conditions the week before 5th July: 1. The government which had call for a no vote was clear only to its ambivalence: They were begging the troika for a deal in order to call off the referendum and only after its refuse on Thursday did the referendum became certain, while the majority of SYRIZA's cadres and ministers had disappeared from the media, had made no declarations in favour of the no vote while some of them, like Mardas, had appeared only to declare that they would resign if greece would leave eurozone. 2. The banks were closed and the 1st of July was the pay day for a lot of people including pensioners. Keep in mind that pensioners support their unemployed children out of their miserable pensions. There are many households which have no other income than the pension of the grandfather or grandmother. 3. The whole EU's political personnel and the greek bourgeois parties were chanting in every possible tone that the question of the referendum was fake and that it was about leaving or not Eurozone and EU, while SYRIZA just pretending to claim that it was about a no more existent troika's proposition. 4. The whole media system including the public broadcaster ERT, which SYRIZA reopened, were threatening the public with the supposedly horrific consequences of the NO vote. There will be no wages, no pensions. There will be no food nor medicines. There will be no oil and nothing wouldn't be imported. That's what they had been yielding during the week before 5th July. 5. The political forces which were consistently calling for a NO to austerity had won less than one per cent of support last January, while KKE was calling to a invalid vote. 6. In the middle of all this mess, the greek working class voted for NO at a percentage of 70-80%, resulting to an overall of 61,3% for the NO vote.The question of the referendum had been set by the class enemy and the answer was a clear no to austerity whatever it takes. And in that context whatever meant including grexit. Now, how on earth a couple of questions in a gallop like a. For whom did you vote on January? b. Would you expressed a desire for a grexit? (A slight impulse perhaps?) and the supposed answers to these questions by a couple of hundreds of people, could reveal a truth that was not clear enough by the NO vote? How on earth a gallop can be taken seriously against the 61,3% of the NO vote, against a majority, especially in an unfavourable bourgeois ballot, who have answer YES to the question do you reject austerity even if you risk a grexit? Yes. The facts are stubborn things. Even in front of fake facts like that gallop however accommodative it can be. After all however inefficient may be the parties that proclaim the need of the rupture they are not to be blamed for the bankruptcy of SYRIZA! Maybe they are not good enough, but for sure, a party like SYRIZA is not either. Checked out. JA _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Richard Seymour on the 'defeat of Syriza'.
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Proyect wrote: You mean like the Spartacist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency that you belonged to for 30 years? Or the CPGB with its hammer-and-sickle festooned website whose newspaper you write for on occasion? We are dealing with two types of politics basically. There are those who believe in the power of deeds. That is why I spent a half-decade recruiting technical aid volunteers for Nicaragua and the ANC and the frontline states in the 1980s when you were writing articles calling for proletarian dictatorship in a newspaper that probably had a circulation of about 2 or 3 hundred. You must have believed that your words had some kind of magical power to transform reality. I think that a mojo and a monkey's paw would have had more impact. I created this mailing list as an alternative to the kind of sterile, self-regarding, vaporous formulas that come so easy to you. My advice is to get off the Internet and go work in a soup kitchen or something if you really want to make a difference. Reply Reply to all Forward Click I can think of no more apposite reply to Mr. Deeds than to resend my post from December 1: Louis can't seem to answer the arguments of anyone who disagrees with him w/o baiting them for other political positions or their political past. But apart from that, he is right that attempts to organize a revolutionary party in the US and other Western countries have failed in the post-war period, mainly because they can't recruit more than a handful of people, and the idea of revolution is very remote from any segment of the population right now. Any existing energy for change is in the reformist camp. But Louis might pause in his rush to join the left-reformists long enough to consider this fact: left-reformism, even (and especially) where it has achieved its electoral aims, hasn't worked either. Left-reformist governments have come under massive political and economic attacks from the ruling classes, for which they have no answer. They either retreat, or go down to defeat (usually both). This occurs because their politics are explicitly or implicitly based on faith in bourgeois democracy. They believe in the mobilization of the masses solely or chiefly for electoral purposes. Further, when the reformists are defeated, the masses who followed them don't draw the appropriate conclusions and go on to some higher level of revolutionary consciousness on their own. They are instead despairing and demoralized for years and decades after. Nothing fails like failure. True, a much larger number of people are drawn to reformist parties and causes, and this is probably why Louis finds them so much more appealing than the SWP of his younger days. But this doesn't make them any more successful in the long run than minuscule revolutionary sects. . Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why a sectarian like me has been able more or less to predict what would happen well in advance of the event, while a man of deeds such as yourself never seems to have a clue? Jim _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
