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On Jul 12, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Hans G Ehrbar via Marxism
<marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
> Syriza thinks Greece will be the salvation or similar for Europe, which
> can easily be dismissed as self-serving propaganda. No, it was not; the
> Eurozone has to be reformed, and Greece was justified to expect that the
> critical situation of Greece would be considered in the framework of
> broader reforms.
This is an illusion, Hans. If it were possible when Syriza was elected to
entertain the notion that the eurozone, as presently constituted and under it’s
current leadership, could be reformed, the events of the past six months have
put paid to that pipedream with a vengeance. If anything, it is Syriza which
has been “reformed” from a party committed to its anti-austerity Thessaloniki
program to a governing party which has assured its creditors it is prepared to
continue implementing the essential features of THEIR program: rolling back
pension and trade union rights, privatizing important public assets, practicing
fiscal restraint, and raising regressive consumption taxes.
According to the Guardian, this is the list of the latest demands Syriza is
being asked to accept or face expulsion from the eurozone:
• Streamlining VAT
• Broadening the tax base
• Sustainability of pension system
• Adopt a code of civil procedure
• Safeguarding of legal independence for Greece ELSTAT — the statistic
office
• Full implementation of automatic spending cuts
• Meet bank recovery and resolution directive
l• Privatize electricity transmission grid
• Take decisive action on non-performing loans
• Ensure independence of privatization body TAIPED
• De-Politicize the Greek administration
• Return of officials from its creditors to Athens
I have to assume you, Louis, Leo Panitch and other hard-nosed realists will
urge the Tsipras government to sign off on these demands, and will praise its
“courage” for doing so.
I hope it rejects those demands and seeks to negotiate instead an orderly exit
from the eurozone, one which sees Germany, the US and the other NATO powers
agreeing in their own self-interest to ease Greece’s transition to a new
currency so that it doesn’t become a strategic “failed state” on Europe’s
doorstep.
You may well discover in the coming days, weeks, or months, that negotiating an
orderly Grexit has all along been a more realistic and better option for
Syriza, as its left wing has urged, than chasing the utopian dream of turning
Wolfgang Schauble’s eurozone into something it cannot possibly become.
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