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. * 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/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. * My recollection (never a reliable source :) , but still) is that Sam has always been on the (now-defeated) progressive side of the CAW, was supportive of UAW reformers, and generally comfortable in the Labor Notes milieu. Last time I saw him was a couple months ago when he had driven down to hear Irvin Jim of NUMSA in NY. None of which makes his terrible position now a complete shock, but still... On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 7:14 AM, Marv Gandall marvga...@gmail.com wrote: On Jul 13, 2015, at 11:38 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: I just finished the Panitch/Gindin article and came here to rant (and to bemoan Gindin's participation; I expected better of him given his decades of grassroots labor work), Gindin was research director of the Canadian Auto Workers for many years and then assistant to union presidents Bob White and Buzz Hargrove. I don’t believe he’s had had any “grassroots” union experience as a local activist or organizer. He studied and taught economics and worked as a researcher for the Manitoba NDP before joining the CAW, and, of course, has been closely connected with Leo Panitch and the York University political science department since his retirement. _ 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
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. * On 7/14/15 11:11 AM, James Creegan wrote: 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. Yes, James P. Cannon had the last word on men in corduroy suits. _ 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. * I just finished the Panitch/Gindin article and came here to rant (and to bemoan Gindin's participation; I expected better of him given his decades of grassroots labor work), but Gary and Michael have said it all. Can I quote you both on Facebook? (all these messages are visible anyway on the web :) On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 8:40 PM, Michael Yates 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. * Hear! Hear! Gary. I am afraid that Leo and Sam seem to be getting wronger on so many issues the older they get. Whatever happened to their mantra about building people's capacities, or at least trying to do so? Also, there is lot of what we might call historical amnesia. Too many people say that all left projects have failed because they were doomed to fail. And this is because their adversaries were just too powerful. This is surely an incorrect method of analysis. Why were the Bolsheviks doomed to fail? Why was the restoration of capitalism in China inevitable? Why was Greece doomed to make the most awful capitulations to the troika? It seems that critics of what one man called the ultra-left, meaning not sectarians but all to the left of Syriza, look at everything after the fact, and say, well, no wonder they failed. Not because they failed to make a detailed and sophisticated of the forces at play and plan to find the best was to combat their enemy's power, but because, well, their adversaries were just too damned powerful. As this same guy said, The fucking Germans, man. Best to give in and wait for a better day. Of course, the better day usually never comes, and we find ourselves facing the grave. But let one of us say that they failed to do what needed to be done, and we are accused of looking at things through technicolor glasses. Or told that we didn't read the polls taken to see what people thought at some point in time, never realizing that life is lived in a dynamic and ever-changing context, one in which politicls always comes into play. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/acpollack2%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] 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. * Yes feel free to quote, Andrew. comradely Gary On Tuesday, July 14, 2015, Andrew Pollack 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. * I just finished the Panitch/Gindin article and came here to rant (and to bemoan Gindin's participation; I expected better of him given his decades of grassroots labor work), but Gary and Michael have said it all. Can I quote you both on Facebook? (all these messages are visible anyway on the web :) On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 8:40 PM, Michael Yates 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. * Hear! Hear! Gary. I am afraid that Leo and Sam seem to be getting wronger on so many issues the older they get. Whatever happened to their mantra about building people's capacities, or at least trying to do so? Also, there is lot of what we might call historical amnesia. Too many people say that all left projects have failed because they were doomed to fail. And this is because their adversaries were just too powerful. This is surely an incorrect method of analysis. Why were the Bolsheviks doomed to fail? Why was the restoration of capitalism in China inevitable? Why was Greece doomed to make the most awful capitulations to the troika? It seems that critics of what one man called the ultra-left, meaning not sectarians but all to the left of Syriza, look at everything after the fact, and say, well, no wonder they failed. Not because they failed to make a detailed and sophisticated of the forces at play and plan to find the best was to combat their enemy's power, but because, well, their adversaries were just too damned powerful. As this same guy said, The fucking Germans, man. Best to give in and wait for a better day. Of course, the better day usually never comes, and we find ourselves facing the grave. But let one of us say that they failed to do what needed to be done, and we are accused of looking at things through technicolor glasses. Or told that we didn't read the polls taken to see what people thought at some point in time, never realizing that life is lived in a dynamic and ever-changing context, one in which politicls always comes into play. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%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] 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] 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. * Truly I intend this to be my last contribution to the Greek debate. I am becoming increasingly offended by the attacks on the international solidarity movement.. I now read from Panitch and Gindin that we have been as usual dreaming in technicolor. Earlier, I read we did not care about someone's mother who had only 14 tablets left. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have acted in solidarity with the Greek people, because they believe there is an alternative and they do care. Now we are being told we are like arm chair generals urging the Greek people onto their death and ruin. The death and ruin was plotted and carried out, not by the international solidarity movement but by Merkel, Shauble, Holland, Gabriel, Dijesselbloem et al. Panitch and Gindin have seized and held aloft the Thatcherite banner of TINA and shame on them. They are bringing comfort to the enemy. It is true that we on the Left dream of a better world. We expect, and get, sneers for that from the Right. But we deserve better from soi-disant Marxists. I doubt if Panitch and Gindin will ever read these words, or that I will ever meet them in person, but they can be sure they have my full disagreement and no little disappointment For what it is worth, I support the formation of broad left groupings. I have both a horror of the politics of the sects and a clear understanding that the working class need an alternative to Zinoviefism. But that does not mean that I will refuse to analyse and criticize the leadership of Syriza. For a moment the politics of anti-austerity had a period of hope, a focus and something to rally around. That is gone and Richard Seymour is correct. I now agree it is a terrible defeat and a devastating absence. There is an old Irish folk song of the rebellion of 1803 led by Robert Emmet. It seems all too appropriate for the Greek context 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 comradely Gary _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] 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. * Hear! Hear! Gary. I am afraid that Leo and Sam seem to be getting wronger on so many issues the older they get. Whatever happened to their mantra about building people's capacities, or at least trying to do so? Also, there is lot of what we might call historical amnesia. Too many people say that all left projects have failed because they were doomed to fail. And this is because their adversaries were just too powerful. This is surely an incorrect method of analysis. Why were the Bolsheviks doomed to fail? Why was the restoration of capitalism in China inevitable? Why was Greece doomed to make the most awful capitulations to the troika? It seems that critics of what one man called the ultra-left, meaning not sectarians but all to the left of Syriza, look at everything after the fact, and say, well, no wonder they failed. Not because they failed to make a detailed and sophisticated of the forces at play and plan to find the best was to combat their enemy's power, but because, well, their adversaries were just too damned powerful. As this same guy said, The fucking Germans, man. Best to give in and wait for a better day. Of course, the better day usually never comes, and we find ourselves facing the grave. But let one of us say that they failed to do what needed to be done, and we are accused of looking at things through technicolor glasses. Or told that we didn't read the polls taken to see what people thought at some point in time, never realizing that life is lived in a dynamic and ever-changing context, one in which politicls always comes into play. _ 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
