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. * On 7/18/15 4:10 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote: And that's because, after all (hold onto your hat, Louis), Synapsismos is a PETTY BOURGEOIS trend in the workers' movement. Another key element of Trotskyist sectarianism is its tendency to turn every serious political fight into a conflict between worker and petty-bourgeoisie. Every challenge to party orthodoxy, unless the party leader himself mounts it, represents the influence of alien class influences into the proletarian vanguard. Every Trotskyist party in history has suffered from this crude sociological reductionism, but the American Trotskyists were the unchallenged masters of it. Soon after the split from the SP and the formation of the Socialist Workers Party, a fight broke out in the party over the character of the Soviet Union. Max Shachtman, Martin Abern and James Burnham led one faction based primarily in New York. It stated that the Soviet Union was no longer a worker's state and it saw the economic system there as being in no way superior to capitalism. This opposition also seemed to be less willing to oppose US entry into WWII than the Cannon group, which stood on Zimmerwald defeatist orthodoxy. Shachtman and Abern were full-time party workers with backgrounds similar to Cannon's. Burnham was a horse of a different color. He was an NYU philosophy professor who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He reputedly would show up at party meetings in top hat and tails, since he was often on the way to the opera. Burnham became the paradigm of the whole opposition, despite the fact that Shachtman and Abern's family backgrounds were identical to Cannon's. Cannon and Trotsky tarred the whole opposition with the petty-bourgeois brush. They stated that the workers would resist war while the petty-bourgeois would welcome it. It was the immense pressure of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia outside the SWP that served as a source for these alien class influences. Burnham was the Typhoid Mary of these petty-bourgeois germs. However, it is simply wrong to set up a dichotomy between some kind of intrinsically proletarian opposition to imperialist war and petty-bourgeois acceptance of it. The workers have shown themselves just as capable of bending to imperialist war propaganda as events surrounding the Gulf War show. The primarily petty-bourgeois based antiwar movement helped the Vietnamese achieve victory. It was not coal miners or steel workers who provided the shock-troops for the Central America solidarity movement of the 1980's. It was lawyers, doctors, computer programmers, Maryknoll nuns, and aspiring circus clowns like the martyred Ben Linder who did. full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/lenin_in_context.htm _ 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] 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. * Louis Proyect wrote:In fact, at the risk of damaging their reputation by my endorsement, my views on Greece have largely been shaped by Socialist Alliance analysis and reporting, particularly from Dick Nichols. ' The complication with the whole Greek debate is that it was bound to happen anyway.If not now...it was a case of when -- because SYRIZA's success was sure to congeal so many tactical issues and any mistakes, disastrous turns, suspect manoeuvrings, or whatever would only serve to agitate many on the offshore left into rushing to pass sentence. I think the Alliance has been very considerate of the fluidity and complexity of the situation as well as the broader dynamics. I think it a pretty good statement that serves to anchor the party's perspectives and promote ongoing solidarity work. When you are out and about in places like Melbourne -- after *Athens* and *Thessaloniki*, Melbourne has the third-largest Greek-speaking population in the world -- with Oxi! GLW covers , I'm sure there is plenty of discussion to be had on the street. dave riley _ 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] 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
