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Krugman’s point is that grexit is also an impossible-real that can happen with unpredictable consequences and which, as such, can be risked:
All the wise heads saying that Grexit is impossible, that it would lead to a complete implosion, don’t know what they are talking about. When I say that, I don’t mean that they’re necessarily wrong — I believe they are, but anyone who is confident about anything here is deluding himself. What I mean instead is that nobody has any experience with what we’re looking at.
While in principle this is true, there are nonetheless many indications that a sudden grexit would lead to utter economic and social catastrophe. Syriza economic strategists are well aware that such a gesture would cause an immediate further fall of the standard of living for an additional, at minimum, 30 percent, bringing misery to a new unbearable level, with the threat of popular unrest and even military dictatorship. The prospect of such heroic acts is thus a temptation to be resisted.
Then there are the so-called “left” calls for Syriza to return to its roots: Syriza should not become just another governing parliamentary party, the true change can only come from grass-roots, from the people themselves, from their self-organization, not from the state apparatuses. This is another example of empty posturing, since it avoids the crucial problem, which is how to deal with the international pressure concerning debt, or, more generally, how to exert power and run a state. Grass-roots self-organization cannot replace the state. The question is how to reorganize the state apparatus to make it function differently.
It’s nonetheless not enough to say that Syriza put up a heroic fight, testing what is possible. The fight goes on, in fact it has just began. Instead of dwelling on the “contradictions” of Syriza policy (after a triumphant “no,” Syriza accepts the very program that was rejected by the people), and of getting caught in mutual recriminations about who is guilty (did the Syriza parliamentary majority commit an opportunistic “treason,” or was the Left irresponsible in its preference for grexit), one should focus on what the enemy’s actions. The “contradictions” of Syriza are a mirror image of the “contradictions” of the EU establishment as it gradually undermines the very foundations of a united Europe. In the guise of Syriza “contradictions,” the EU establishment is merely getting back its own message in its true form. And this is what Syriza should be doing now. With a ruthless pragmatism and cold calculation, it should exploit the tiniest cracks in the opponent’s armor. It should use all those who resist the predominant EU politics, from British conservatives to UKIP in the UK. It should shamelessly flirt with Russia and China, playing with the idea of giving an island to Russia as its Mediterranean military base, just to scare the shit out of NATO strategists. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, now that the EU God has failed, everything is permitted.
full: http://inthesetimes.com/article/18229/slavoj-zizek-syriza-tsipras-merkel
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