date:20150714


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On 7/13/15 11:28 AM, Michael Karadjis via Marxism wrote:



Paneuropean Gallup International poll, December 2014. 52% in Greece
favor return to national currency.
opinion.co.uk/per…/resources/global-we-tables-weight1-v6.pdf



In small print at the bottom of the 52 percent findings:

http://www.orb-international.com/perch/resources/europeanattitudesresults.pdf

Disclaimer: Gallup International Association or its members are not 
related to Gallup Inc., headquartered in Washington D.C which is no 
longer a member of Gallup International Association.
Gallup International Association does not accept responsibility for 
opinion polling other than its own. We require that our surveys be 
credited fully as Gallup International (not Gallup or Gallup Poll).

For further details see website: www.Gallup-international.com


Plus this:

http://openeurope.org.uk/blog/revisting-grexit-part-2/

First off, it still seems that Greeks want to stay in the euro. While a 
poll at the end of 2014 by Gallup International found that 52% of Greeks 
would prefer to have the Drachma over the euro, this seems to be 
something of a rogue poll. All other polls have consistently shown Greek 
support for the euro.

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[Marxism] Debt campaigners slam Greece's creditors: 'This is imperial politics'

2015-07-14 Thread Stuart Munckton via Marxism

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Leading British campaigners against global debt haveslammed the creditors
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Debt-Campaigners-Slam-Greece-Creditors-20150713-0018.html
over
a deal reached between the European Union countries and Greece, likening
the deal to the imperial politics of the 19th century.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/59470


-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker
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[Marxism] Fwd: 'A national hero': psychologist who warned of torture collusion gets her due | Law | The Guardian


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http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jul/13/psychologist-torture-doctors-collusion-jean-maria-arrigo
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

2015-07-14 Thread Shalva Eliava via Marxism

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Did anyone read my post last night with the subject line Overwhelming Greek 
opposition to Grexit? As Dimitri Lascaris pointed out on TRNN on Sunday, the 
Greek polls re: Grexit are deeply suspect. A series of post-deal interviews 
with people on the street by one of the wire services revealed a chorus of why 
not just exit? (not a poll, of course, but not something to dismiss either).

 14 июля 2015 г., в 7:13, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
 marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu написал(а):
 
 Plus this:
 
 http://openeurope.org.uk/blog/revisting-grexit-part-2/
 
 First off, it still seems that Greeks want to stay in the euro. While a poll 
 at the end of 2014 by Gallup International found that 52% of Greeks would 
 prefer to have the Drachma over the euro, this seems to be something of a 
 rogue poll. All other polls have consistently shown Greek support for the 
 euro.
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Re: [Marxism] Overwhelming Greek opposition to Grexit?


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On 7/13/15 10:50 PM, Shalva Eliava via Marxism wrote:

nd I say that for several reasons. First of all, the polls which are
frequently cited as evidence the Greek people don't want to leave the
Eurozone, many of them if not almost all of them have been conducted
by media organizations or commissioned by media organizations in
Greece that are controlled by the oligarchy. And the polling in
Greece has performed very poorly.


The Washington Post article that I referred to recently indicated that 
the polling was done by the University of Macedonia Research Institute 
that identified respondents through multi-stage stratified sampling. 
What evidence is there that this group is controlled by the oligarchy? 
Do you think they falsified the 5 percent support for a Grexit? A brief 
search on their prior polling results indicates no particular 
ideological slant.

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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

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On Jul 14, 2015, at 7:12 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

 First off, it still seems that Greeks want to stay in the euro. While a poll 
 at the end of 2014 by Gallup International found that 52% of Greeks would 
 prefer to have the Drachma over the euro, this seems to be something of a 
 rogue poll. All other polls have consistently shown Greek support for the 
 euro.

There has been a lot of informed comment in academic circles and in the 
financial as well as left-wing media that Greece would be better off leaving 
the eurozone than continuing to be subjected to the grinding austerity and deep 
depression, with little hope of economic recovery, which characterizes its 
current situation. The argument is that Greece would recover if it were free to 
devalue its own currency - that it could less painlessly recover its 
competitiveness though an “external” devaluation of the drachma as opposed to a 
savage “internal” devaluation based on driving down the cost of labour and 
social benefits. Even the initial shock of the transition to a new currency 
could be eased if Greece were able to negotiate an orderly exit with the 
eurozone powers who, together with the US, have a strategic interest in 
ensuring a stable Greece on their borders. 

Whatever you may think of that argument, this debate has never really filtered 
down to the Greek masses who support Syriza’s social program, largely because 
the pro-euro party leadership has rejected this option from the beginning. This 
is the foremost reason why most public opinion polls skew heavily in favour of 
continued eurozone membership.

However much the two issues are linked, however, the referendum wasn’t about 
continued eurozone membership but about the austerity package. And the deeper 
issue, as always, is: Who decides these life-or-death issues: the people or the 
party, the leaders or the working class?

We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Greeks had voted by 61% to accept 
the austerity package that was proposed to them in the referendum. The Tsipras 
leadership would have had the result it was hoping for, despite its cosmetic 
campaign in favour of a No, and that would be that. It could return to Brussels 
to sign the surrender terms with the mandate of the Greek people securely in 
its pocket. We might still lament the outcome, but case closed. It is for the 
Greeks themselves to decide, not us, not the leaders they elected.

We’re having this discussion precisely because the Tsipras leadership chose to 
ignore the overwhelming rejection of the austerity package. It acted as if as 
the popular democracy did not exist, and the popular classes had not decisively 
pronounced on the issue. It promptly signalled its willingness to the eurozone 
powers that, despite the referendum result, it was prepared to continue 
negotiating the terms of surrender. And it did so in concert with the widely 
despised opposition parties . 

How can we condone this about-face by the leadership, any more than we can 
condone a union leadership arbitrarily and unexpectedly capitulating to the 
employer the day after its members roundly reject an agreement assaulting their 
living standards and working conditions? Even if it were a well-intentioned 
union leadership which considered it was acting in the best interests of its 
poor benighted members who did not really understand the implications of what 
they were voting for?

As an old comrade once remarked to me, “my first loyalty is to the working 
class, then to the party or trade union which purports to act in its name.”




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[Marxism] Fwd: Greek debt crisis: Nigel Farage urges Greek MPs to reject deal and calls for protests in Athens - UK Politics - UK - The Independent


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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/greek-debt-crisis-if-nigel-farage-was-in-athens-hed-be-on-the-streets-protesting-10384714.html


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[Marxism] Guardian: The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed

2015-07-14 Thread Shalva Eliava via Marxism

...The history of British slavery has been buried. The thousands of British
families who grew rich on the slave trade, or from the sale of slave-produced
sugar, in the 17th and 18th centuries, brushed those uncomfortable chapters of
their dynastic stories under the carpet. Today, across the country, heritage
plaques on Georgian townhouses describe former slave traders as “West India
merchants”, while slave owners are hidden behind the equally euphemistic term
“West India planter”. Thousands of biographies written in celebration of
notable 17th and 18th-century Britons have reduced their ownership of human
beings to the footnotes, or else expunged such unpleasant details altogether.
The Dictionary of National Biography has been especially culpable in this
respect. Few acts of collective forgetting have been as thorough and as
successful as the erasing of slavery from the Britain’s “island story”. If it
was geography that made this great forgetting possible, what completed the
disappearing act was our collective fixation with the one redemptive chapter in
the whole story. William Wilberforce and the abolitionist crusade, first
against the slave trade and then slavery itself, has become a figleaf behind
which the larger, longer and darker history of slavery has been concealed.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed?CMP=ema_565

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[Marxism] Fwd: Fear Takes Root in Syriza


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It is a neoliberal world indeed when entire countries are bled dry to 
safeguard bankers’ profits and doing so is presented as the highest 
moral duty. The human face might have been German Finance Minister 
Wolfgang Schäuble in the role of Dr. Evil, but the minister is no more 
than a physical embodiment of powerful social and economic forces. 
Forces of human creation but not necessarily in human control.


So let us not over-simplify and place all blame at the feet of Syriza as 
“opportunists” or whatever word of opprobrium one wishes. Nor should 
there be allusions that walking away from the euro, canceling the debt 
and the resulting cutoff from financial markets would be an easy road to 
take, even if, in the long term, it is the road that should have been 
traveled. Socialism in one country is not possible in one small country. 
Socialism in a single big country would be extremely difficult, if the 
entire might of the capitalist world were arrayed against it.


There are no Greek solutions for Greece, there are only European or 
international solutions.


full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/14/fear-takes-root-in-syriza/
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[Marxism] The Eurogroup's brutal agreement on Greece: A colonialist pact

2015-07-14 Thread Celeste Murillo via Marxism

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Full article:

http://leftvoice.org/The-Eurogroup-s-brutal-agreement-on-Greece-A-colonialist-pact

After only six months in government, the capitulation of Tsipras and Syriza
to the Troika appears complete. No one, not even its harshest critics,
could have imagined the speed with which Syriza crossed every one of its
red lines and ended up accepting a draconian austerity program.

The landslide NO vote of only a week ago seems to be a distant memory.
Because the government called for the referendum with the aim of improving
its position in the negotiations it abandoned all its positions and
accepted a program even more strict that than which was rejected by 61% of
the Greek people.

The strategic impotence of the reformist and conciliatory program of
Tsipras, aimed at keeping Greece in the Euro zone at all costs ended in
spectacular humiliation.

What is not clear yet is what will happen in the Greek parliament over the
next few days. Several Syriza MPs have announced they will vote against the
plan. The Minister of Defense and leader of the right-wing nationalist ANEL
party also declared his opposition to the agreement. A cabinet reshuffle
has been talked about with voluntary or forced resignations of those who
oppose the measures. The Minister of Labor has speculated that new
elections will be called once the economy has stabilized.
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

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bravo

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Marv Gandall via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 On Jul 14, 2015, at 7:12 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
 marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

  First off, it still seems that Greeks want to stay in the euro. While a
 poll at the end of 2014 by Gallup International found that 52% of Greeks
 would prefer to have the Drachma over the euro, this seems to be something
 of a rogue poll. All other polls have consistently shown Greek support for
 the euro.

 There has been a lot of informed comment in academic circles and in the
 financial as well as left-wing media that Greece would be better off
 leaving the eurozone than continuing to be subjected to the grinding
 austerity and deep depression, with little hope of economic recovery, which
 characterizes its current situation. The argument is that Greece would
 recover if it were free to devalue its own currency - that it could less
 painlessly recover its competitiveness though an “external” devaluation of
 the drachma as opposed to a savage “internal” devaluation based on driving
 down the cost of labour and social benefits. Even the initial shock of the
 transition to a new currency could be eased if Greece were able to
 negotiate an orderly exit with the eurozone powers who, together with the
 US, have a strategic interest in ensuring a stable Greece on their borders.

 Whatever you may think of that argument, this debate has never really
 filtered down to the Greek masses who support Syriza’s social program,
 largely because the pro-euro party leadership has rejected this option from
 the beginning. This is the foremost reason why most public opinion polls
 skew heavily in favour of continued eurozone membership.

 However much the two issues are linked, however, the referendum wasn’t
 about continued eurozone membership but about the austerity package. And
 the deeper issue, as always, is: Who decides these life-or-death issues:
 the people or the party, the leaders or the working class?

 We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Greeks had voted by 61% to
 accept the austerity package that was proposed to them in the referendum.
 The Tsipras leadership would have had the result it was hoping for, despite
 its cosmetic campaign in favour of a No, and that would be that. It could
 return to Brussels to sign the surrender terms with the mandate of the
 Greek people securely in its pocket. We might still lament the outcome, but
 case closed. It is for the Greeks themselves to decide, not us, not the
 leaders they elected.

 We’re having this discussion precisely because the Tsipras leadership
 chose to ignore the overwhelming rejection of the austerity package. It
 acted as if as the popular democracy did not exist, and the popular classes
 had not decisively pronounced on the issue. It promptly signalled its
 willingness to the eurozone powers that, despite the referendum result, it
 was prepared to continue negotiating the terms of surrender. And it did so
 in concert with the widely despised opposition parties .

 How can we condone this about-face by the leadership, any more than we can
 condone a union leadership arbitrarily and unexpectedly capitulating to the
 employer the day after its members roundly reject an agreement assaulting
 their living standards and working conditions? Even if it were a
 well-intentioned union leadership which considered it was acting in the
 best interests of its poor benighted members who did not really understand
 the implications of what they were voting for?

 As an old comrade once remarked to me, “my first loyalty is to the working
 class, then to the party or trade union which purports to act in its name.”




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[Marxism] What a Bombshell Report Tells Us About the APA’s Abetting of Torture


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Chronicle of Higher Education July 13, 2015
What a Bombshell Report Tells Us About the APA’s Abetting of Torture
By Tom Bartlett

The American Psychological Association gave psychologists involved in 
the often-brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and 
elsewhere a free pass. The association tweaked its ethics code for the 
convenience of the U.S. military. For years it failed to investigate 
serious complaints of unethical conduct — and when it did investigate, 
its efforts were laughable. Officials seemed more interested in currying 
favor with the government than living up to the high standards of 
ethics the APA proclaims as integral to its mission.


The association not only didn’t meaningfully object to torture committed 
under the administration of President George W. Bush; it aided and 
abetted that abuse.


That’s the verdict of the 542-page independent review prepared by David 
Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor, at the request of the association.


The fact that psychologists participated in the so-called 
enhanced-interrogation program is in itself not a revelation: The 
complicity of psychologists has been known for years. A 2007 article in 
Vanity Fair spelled out how two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce 
Jessen, had helped create interrogation tactics that amounted to 
torture. Even then there were questions about whether the APA had 
secretly given the military its approval, though the association denied 
doing so repeatedly.


James Risen’s book Pay Any Price, published last fall, provided some 
evidence to back up those long-held suspicions. Mr. Risen, a reporter 
for The New York Times, concluded that the APA’s cooperation, 
particularly its willingness to loosen its ethics code, was essential 
to the Bush administration’s ability to use enhanced-interrogation 
techniques against detainees.


The Hoffman review was commissioned in response to Mr. Risen’s book, 
which the association had criticized for peddling innuendo and 
one-sided reporting. Presumably APA leaders believed the review would 
uncover the facts Mr. Risen had supposedly twisted and perhaps polish 
the association’s besmirched reputation.


It did not. Instead the review, which was leaked on Friday to The New 
York Times, bolsters the allegations of Mr. Risen and the handful of 
very vocal psychologists, like Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner, and Jean 
Maria Arrigo, who had worked for a decade to persuade the organization’s 
leadership that participating in cruel, coercive military interrogations 
was unethical. While much of what’s contained in the review has been 
reported or at least hinted at before, the new details, taken as a 
whole, are damning.


Close Coordination

The star — some might say the villain — of the Hoffman review is Stephen 
Behnke, who had served as the association’s director of ethics since 
November 2000. (Mr. Behnke was terminated for cause as a result of the 
Hoffman review.) It’s clear from the emails that the APA provided to Mr. 
Hoffman, which are now published online, that Mr. Behnke made certain 
each step of the way that government interrogators wouldn’t be hampered 
by the association’s ethics code. He coordinated very closely with Col. 
Louie Morgan Banks, then the chief psychologist with the Army Special 
Operations Command, keeping him informed of discussions within the APA, 
getting his advice on specific policies, and working with him to craft 
language on restrictions.


According to the Hoffman report, Mr. Behnke made sure that the ethics 
code did not contain a simple mandate to do no harm. Instead, the code 
included watered-down guidelines to take care to do no harm and to 
minimize harm, wording that provided psychologists with the military 
and the Central Intelligence Agency the wiggle room they desired.


Mr. Behnke regularly forwarded emails to Mr. Banks, who is now retired 
from the military, asking for advice. When a reporter from Washington 
Monthly started asking questions about psychologists’ involvement in 
interrogations, in July 2006, Mr. Behnke sent a draft of his response to 
Mr. Banks, asking him: Please let me know where I’ve gone astray. Also, 
if you think there are other points I should make, I can do so. I hope 
I’ve done a good job here.


Mr. Hoffman writes that the two were teammates and that Mr. Behnke 
turned to his partners and friends in DoD [the Department of Defense] 
to craft a unified response to critics and to ensure that the APA and 
military media strategies aligned in message and theme.


Indeed, reading the correspondence between the two, it appears that the 
common enemies of the APA and the military

[Marxism] Fwd: Call for solidarity with Kemal Ördek

2015-07-14 Thread A.R. G via Marxism

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- Amith

-- Forwarded message --
From: Sinan Gökcen sinan.gok...@errc.org
Date: Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:52 PM
Subject: Call for solidarity with Kemal Ördek
To: ERRC er...@errc.org, Interns inte...@errc.org, Monitors 
monit...@errc.org
Cc: Sinem Hun sinem@errc.org


 FYI



*From:* Mr. Valery Novoselsky [mailto:valery_novosel...@yahoo.com]
*Sent:* 14 Temmuz 2015 Salı 14:49
*To:* civil-society-upda...@googlegroups.com
*Cc:* Kemal Ordek
*Subject:* Call for solidarity with Kemal Ördek
*Importance:* High



*CALL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH KEMAL ÖRDEK*



Dear All;



We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who demonstrated their
support with Kemal Ördek – a trans, sex worker and a human rights defender,
who became a victim of sexual assault, theft, threats and insults on 5 July
2015 in hir house by 3 men. Please see the detailed account of the incident
by Kemal Ördek at:
http://lgbtinewsturkey.com/2015/07/09/raped-and-assaulted-lgbti-activist-kemal-ordek-says-im-not-well/



This call is for local, national, regional or global human rights NGOs. We
kindly request you to support Kemal Ördek in following ways:



a)  *URGENT - IMPORTANT*! Send your protest letters to the following
authorities, with letterheads and signatures/stamps:



1 - Mr. Sebahattin Öztürk

İçişleri Bakanlığı (Ministry of Interior)

Bakanlıklar, 06580, ANKARA, Türkiye



Please refer to the ill-treatment that Kemal Ördek suffered together with
hir lawyer at Esat Police Station (ANKARA), lack of effective investigation
and that you will follow the investigation process as well as whether they
will effectively protect Kemal Ördek against the threats.



2 - Mr. Ahmet Davutoğlu

T. C. Başbakanlık (Prime Ministry)

Vekaletler Caddesi Başbakanlık Merkez Bina P. K. 06573 Kızılay – ANKARA –
Türkiye



Please refer to the case Kemal Ördek has gone through and kindly ask
whether the Turkish Government is planning to ensure the basic human rights
of trans people and sex workers. Please also mention about your concerns
about the safety of Kemal Ördek and protest the attitude of Esat Police
Station.



b)  OPTIONAL! Send protest letters to Turkish embassies in your
countries and/or arrange meetings with the Turkish missions.



c) *IMPORTANT*! Mobilize relevant bodies of Council of Europe, European
Union, United Nations and OSCE to take steps to get in touch with the
Turkish Government in regard to Kemal Ördek’s case. Letters from such
bodies are very important in pressurizing the Turkish Government and to
fasten the legal process.



d)  *IMPORTANT*! Mobilize your governments to contact Turkish
authorities to ask the situation of Kemal Ördek and to express their
concerns regarding the human rights situation of trans people and sex
workers in Turkey.



e)   *IMPORTANT*! Visibilize the case of Kemal Ördek within media
circles in your countries if possible. Visibility of Kemal Ördek’s case is
very important as this pressurizes the judicial and political authorities
in Turkey.



f)  *IMPORTANT*! Issue press statements in support of Kemal Ördek and
send them to us.



g)  OPTIONAL! Organize demonstrations in front of Turkish embassies.
Please kindly send us the photos or press releases from your actions to us.



h)*IMPORTANT*! Follow us on Facebook -
https://www.facebook.com/kemalordekinyanindayiz?fref=ts

AND on Twitter - https://twitter.com/kemalyanindayiz



Spread the links and make more people become aware of the situation.



*i)*   *IMPORTANT! PLEASE SEND COPIES OF ALL LETTERS THAT YOU WILL SEND
TO ABOVEMENTIONED AUTHORITIES TO US. The address is
kirmizisemsiye.cs...@gmail.com kirmizisemsiye.cs...@gmail.com*





Thank you very much for your efforts to empower Kemal Ördek. We also would
like to thank to you for your continuous support to trans and sex workers
communities in Turkey.



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Re: [Marxism] last words on Greece


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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
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone


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On 7/14/15 9:18 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:

Whatever you may think of that argument, this debate has never really
filtered down to the Greek masses who support Syriza’s social
program, largely because the pro-euro party leadership has rejected
this option from the beginning. This is the foremost reason why most
public opinion polls skew heavily in favour of continued eurozone
membership.



But you can be sure that things will turn around as a result of your and 
Jim Creegan's courageous and principled intervention here. In fact I can 
easily picture the dock workers in Athens right now huddled around a 
laptop beaming with joy as they look at the Marxmail archives saying, 
Now we have the heavy artillery on our side. German bankers, watch the 
fuck out.

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Re: [Marxism] last words on Greece

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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.


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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

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The fact of the matter is that Greek workers ARE watching to see who is
supporting them. I've seen the same thing in solidarity work around the
MENA region and elsewhere: activists in the country concerned always report
on encouraging conversations they have with workers after showing them even
just selfies from around the world supporting their cause.
There are now 2 or 3 dozen cities around the world holding support rallies
tomorrow for the Greek general strike and for a continued Oxi, and the
Panitches are hurting that effort.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:23 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 On 7/14/15 9:18 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:

 Whatever you may think of that argument, this debate has never really
 filtered down to the Greek masses who support Syriza’s social
 program, largely because the pro-euro party leadership has rejected
 this option from the beginning. This is the foremost reason why most
 public opinion polls skew heavily in favour of continued eurozone
 membership.


 But you can be sure that things will turn around as a result of your and
 Jim Creegan's courageous and principled intervention here. In fact I can
 easily picture the dock workers in Athens right now huddled around a laptop
 beaming with joy as they look at the Marxmail archives saying, Now we have
 the heavy artillery on our side. German bankers, watch the fuck out.

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Re: [Marxism] last words on Greece

2015-07-14 Thread James Creegan via Marxism

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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:

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 *

 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

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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

2015-07-14 Thread Richard Fidler via Marxism

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The Troika's dictate to Greece is fundamentally an assault on its national
sovereignty. The Greeks are a proud people. Their No on July 5 was (as
Tsipras himself said in the final pro-No rally) a vote for democracy and
sovereignty. How will the Greeks react now to this decisive proof not only
of the incompatibility of anti-austerity with eurozone membership, but of
the incompatibility of eurozone membership with national sovereignty?

This has been a defeat for Greece, not just for Syriza. But it is not the
end of the war. The votes in the Parliament tomorrow are important. But
let's see what kind of reaction these latest developments spark in the
working class and the wider population before we draw definitive conclusions
as to the current state of Greek public opinion. A lot of things may change
in a very short period. The Greek experience is a huge learning experience
for us all, including the Greeks themselves.

Meanwhile, internationally we need to manifest and build solidarity with the
Greeks, as never before, while they try to cope with the new conditions and
work out alternative courses of action.

Richard

-Original Message-
From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of
Andrew Pollack via Marxism
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 9:54 AM
To: rfidle...@sympatico.ca
Cc: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want
to stay in the Eurozone

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Louis YOU DIDN'T READ WHAT I SAID. I wasn't talking about marxmail, I was
talking about Greek workers seeing photos of SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATIONS
around the world.
Marxmail and Facebook discussions matter because they encourage (or
discourage in Panitch's case) such REAL WORLD MOBILIZATION WHICH GREEK
WORKERS ARE FOLLOWING.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 9:39 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

 The fact of the matter is that Greek workers ARE watching to see who is
 supporting them.


 Oh please. Writing anguished denunciations of Alexis Tsipras on Marxmail
 is not supporting Greek workers. I would describe it more as political
 onanism.


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Re: [Marxism] last words on Greece


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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.
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[Marxism] re Gindin

2015-07-14 Thread michael a. lebowitz via Marxism


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Marv Gandall wrote:
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.


This leaves out Sam's constant involvement in organising left groups 
within unions besides CAW, his centrality to the efforts of the 
Socialist Project and to the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly and to 
ongoing attempts to build a pan-Canadian socialist party. He also has 
been a supporter of LeftRoots in the US. He has a very deep, 
long-standing personal relation with Leo Panitch.

michael

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[Marxism] Fwd: The Occupation of Greece: a Financial Coup d’État


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http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/14/the-occupation-of-greece-a-financial-coup-detat/
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

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Louis YOU DIDN'T READ WHAT I SAID. I wasn't talking about marxmail, I was
talking about Greek workers seeing photos of SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATIONS
around the world.
Marxmail and Facebook discussions matter because they encourage (or
discourage in Panitch's case) such REAL WORLD MOBILIZATION WHICH GREEK
WORKERS ARE FOLLOWING.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 9:39 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

 The fact of the matter is that Greek workers ARE watching to see who is
 supporting them.


 Oh please. Writing anguished denunciations of Alexis Tsipras on Marxmail
 is not supporting Greek workers. I would describe it more as political
 onanism.


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[Marxism] Text of the Eurogroup Diktat, agreed to by the Greek government

2015-07-14 Thread Lüko Willms via Marxism

The text (in english) can be downloaded here:

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/07/pdf/20150712-eurosummit-statement-greece/

7 pages, 72.987 bytes.

There are deep inroads in national sovereignty of Greece.

The establishment of the fund similar to the GDR Treuhandgesellschaft for a
significantly scaled up privatisation programme is well known. To this fund
valuable Greek assets will be transferred to in order to be monetize[d]
[...] through privatisations and other means, with the proceeds going
completely to the foreign money lenders.

This is sweetened a little bit by this fund to be established in Greece and be
managed by the Greek authorities ... but ... under the supervision of the
relevant European Institutions..

Another rule of this a-gree-ment is even worse in my view, putting Greece in a
colonial dependency:

The government needs to consult and agree with the Institutions on
all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before
submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament.

--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Lüko Willms
mailto:wil...@luekowillms.de
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone


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On 7/14/15 9:39 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

The fact of the matter is that Greek workers ARE watching to see who is
supporting them.


Oh please. Writing anguished denunciations of Alexis Tsipras on Marxmail 
is not supporting Greek workers. I would describe it more as political 
onanism.


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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

2015-07-14 Thread Michael Karadjis via Marxism


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Original Message- 
From: Louis Proyect


On 7/13/15 11:28 AM, Michael Karadjis via Marxism wrote:

Paneuropean Gallup International poll, December 2014. 52% in Greece
favor return to national currency.
opinion.co.uk/per…/resources/global-we-tables-weight1-v6.pdf


In small print at the bottom of the 52 percent findings:

Disclaimer: Gallup International Association or its members are not
related to Gallup Inc., headquartered in Washington D.C which is no
longer a member of Gallup International Association.

MK:
Yes, but that doesn't prove that the Paneuropean Gallup International 
poll is wrong. Besides, my post noted two other, more recent polls:


Bridging Europe poll, March 2015. 53% of Greeks in favor of grexit:
https://twitter.com/bridgingeurope/status/578889140684648448

Bridging Europe poll, June 2015, not long before the referendum was
called. 63% not afraid of grexit. Compares very well with the 61.3% no
vote in the referendum which followed.
https://twitter.com/BridgingEurope/status/612669846568968192 

Now of course I have no way of knowing whether these polls, or the polls 
that show the opposite (that most Greeks want to stay in Eurozone) are 
more correct. However, I'm inclined to believe these polls showing 
greater Greek support for grexit. Why? Simply, the supposed *enormous, 
total* contradiction between majority Greek opposition to EU-imposed 
killer-austerity and huge majority Greek determination to stay in the 
Eurozone seems just not realistic. A certain amount of contradiction, of 
confusion, yes, that is possible, and likely; but the total 
contradiction scenario makes it look as if the bulk of Greek people are 
far too naiive, far more than they are. Is it really possible that after 
all this time, after all this evidence of the blood-sucking nature of 
the EU, that a significant percentage of Greeks have not yet understood 
the contradiction between Eurozone membership and no austerity? We talk 
about it every day as if it is just so obvious, and assume that hardly 
anyone is Greece has realised? Entirely unrealistic.


Is it really possible that 61% of Greeks voted to reject the EU's diktat 
and almost none of them figured out that their vote also meant 
potentially a grexit? Not a majority of them, not a significant majority 
of  them, but almost none? No, Greeks as a whole are somewhat more 
politically sophisticated than that. *Separate* to the issue of whether 
or not there was no alternative at this moment (due to Syriza 
leadership's decision to not plan a Plan B), I think it likely that the 
polls showing considerably greater Greek opposition to the Eurozone are 
far more realistic. 


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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone


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On 7/14/15 9:52 AM, Michael Karadjis wrote:


Now of course I have no way of knowing whether these polls, or the polls
that show the opposite (that most Greeks want to stay in Eurozone) are
more correct. However, I'm inclined to believe these polls showing
greater Greek support for grexit.



This will be put to the test soon enough. By all indications, Tsipras 
and those in the Syriza leadership who are aligned with him have thrown 
in their lot with the parliamentary bloc made up of the New Democracy, 
PASOK and To Potami.


If and when the Left Platform breaks with this grouping, it will be up 
to them and whoever they unite with to push for a Grexit. I am 
particularly interested to see how Antarsya fares since this group is 
obviously the one that Marvin Gandall and James Creegan would want to 
belong to if they were in Greece.


Btw, Antarsya means The Anticapitalist Left Cooperation for the 
Overthrow. The acronym is practically the same as the Greek word for 
mutiny (antarsia) according to Wikipedia. This is a group that has been 
blessed by Alex Callinicos so it will be put to the test in the months 
to come. I am fairly confident that they will never be thrust into a 
position of betraying the Greek people. In fact, I don't think that 
there has ever been such a group in the past 100 years that has been put 
in the position where they could sell out anybody or anything. Needless 
to say, this kind of freedom of sin comes at a certain cost not that 
this would make any difference to Alex Callinicos.

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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

2015-07-14 Thread ioannis aposperites via Marxism


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On 14/07/2015 04:39 μμ, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote:


*

The fact of the matter is that Greek workers ARE watching to see who is
supporting them. I've seen the same thing in solidarity work around the
MENA region and elsewhere: activists in the country concerned always report
on encouraging conversations they have with workers after showing them even
just selfies from around the world supporting their cause.
There are now 2 or 3 dozen cities around the world holding support rallies
tomorrow for the Greek general strike and for a continued Oxi, and the
Panitches are hurting that effort.

That's right! It's time for action. An #occupygermanembassy would be 
just fine


JA
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Re: [Marxism] Polls that challenge the mantra that most Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone

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On Jul 14, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

 This will be put to the test soon enough. By all indications, Tsipras and 
 those in the Syriza leadership who are aligned with him have thrown in their 
 lot with the parliamentary bloc made up of the New Democracy, PASOK and To 
 Potami.
 
 If and when the Left Platform breaks with this grouping, it will be up to 
 them and whoever they unite with to push for a Grexit. I am particularly 
 interested to see how Antarsya fares since this group is obviously the one 
 that Marvin Gandall and James Creegan would want to belong to if they were in 
 Greece.

I can’t speak for Jim, but I would have to spend time on the ground in Greece 
to determine which of the various left groups I would support. I do know I 
could never support a party or faction whose parliamentary representatives vote 
for a rotten deal which will force working and lower middle class Greeks to 
further bend the knee and accept a further deterioration of their miserable 
conditions, particularly against their democratic will as expressed in the 
referendum. I assume if you were in the Greek Parliament you would be jumping 
to your feet to cast a vote for this latest, harshest, and most demeaning 
austerity package.

 Btw, Antarsya means “The Anticapitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow”… 
 I am fairly confident that they will never be thrust into a position of 
 betraying the Greek people. In fact, I don’t think that there has ever been 
 such a group in the past 100 years that has been put in the position where 
 they could sell out anybody or anything. 

Could you not say the same about every other Marxist and anarchist group in 
Europe or North America in the period we have been living through? 


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Re: [Marxism] Overwhelming Greek opposition to Grexit?

2015-07-14 Thread Joseph Green via Marxism

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Louiis Proyect wrote:
 The Washington Post article that I referred to recently indicated that 
 the polling was done by the University of Macedonia Research Institute 
 that identified respondents through multi-stage stratified sampling. 
 What evidence is there that this group is controlled by the oligarchy? 
 Do you think they falsified the 5 percent support for a Grexit? 

Maybe you need new glasses. The poll did NOT say there was 5% support for 
Grexit. It said 5% expectations of Grexit, and about one-third of Syriza 
supporters favored Grexit. 

The Washington Post article on the poll stated:

Although the majority of government voters does not want Grexit, the move to 

leave the euro zone would still be endorsed by about one-third of the 
government´s electorate. Moreover, the bank holiday and capital controls have 

already materialized some of the costs associated with Grexit.

If the Tsipras government additionally manages to convince voters that 
Grexit is mainly the euro zone´s fault, the government may be able to survive 

such a development. Incidentally, the sizable support for euro exit in the 
government´s camp might also provide a rationale for the argument that Grexit 

was Tsipras´s preferred outcome from the start.

The 5% figure was about expectations of what the likely outcome would be, not 

about what people wanted:

Only 5 percent believed that a no vote would mean Greece would exit the euro 

zone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/09/what-were-the-gr
eeks-thinking-heres-a-poll-taken-just-before-the-referendum/

The question of mass support is more than a question of polling; it is also a 

question of what the masses are prepared to work for and sacrifice for, and 
what is the state of their mass organizations. It is a question of what their 

mood will be in the future, too; how they will react to future developments. 
But as long as we are are talking about polls, let's cite them properly.


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Re: [Marxism] Overwhelming Greek opposition to Grexit?


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On 7/14/15 12:37 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:


Maybe you need new glasses. The poll did NOT say there was 5% support for
Grexit. It said 5% expectations of Grexit, and about one-third of Syriza
supporters favored Grexit.



You are right. I was wrong to view Grexit as a desire to leave both the 
EU and the eurozone. When the question is on just leaving the eurozone, 
it gets the support of 38 percent of Syriza voters. So the job now for 
those who are persuaded that a return to the drachma, nationalizing the 
banks, etc. will be one of building upon that and putting a government 
into power that will take such a course. Let's see what happens, 
especially since there is so much disillusionment with Tsipras.

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[Marxism] Greece: The Struggle Continues - Budgen interviews Kouvelakis

2015-07-14 Thread Dayne Goodwin via Marxism

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Greece: The Struggle Continues
A definitive account of what has transpired over the last few weeks in
Greece, and what’s next for Syriza and the European left.
by Sebastian Budgen  Stathis Kouvelakis
Jacobin magazine, July 14
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-varoufakis-kouvelakis-syriza-euro-debt


Key Points

*The government was overtaken by the referendum's momentum.
*The ideology of left-Europeanism explains much.
*Remaining unprepared for Grexit was deliberate.
*The government has two main camps.
*The No campaign was driven by class.
*After the vote, Tsipras revived a discredited opposition.
*The Left Platform plans to stay and fight to reclaim Syriza.
*Syriza's leadership would like to purge the party.
*The new agreement is the worst yet.
*It's unknown what resistance will follow.
*Syriza's left made some errors.


Sebastian Budgen is an editor for Verso Books and serves on the
editorial board of Historical Materialism. Stathis Kouvelakis teaches
political theory at King’s College London and serves on the central
committee of Syriza.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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Well yes, in fact, the consolidation of all banks into one means you can
rip out much of the coding. Same for every other sector of the economy
which would be rationalized: the amount of data and calculations of same
required is drastically reduced when you don't have millions of individual
firms recalculating every day their prices, their stocks (both financial
and real), etc.

Greece's solidarity4all network is showing in practice how only the most
rudimentary calculations are needed to keep track of the flow of thousands
of volunteer hours and millions of euros worth of donated goods. A good set
of input-output tables run through computers not much more powerful than
the one each of us is typing on would handle most of the computing chores
required for Greek society as a whole. And even the work needed to do
calculations of foreign trade would be dramatically reduced once the state
has a monopoly on control of such trade. (Plus think of the concentration
of import/export and shipping firms globally in recent decades.)

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 1:51 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

 . I've spent 15 years working with computer systems at a hospital, in
 which a couple dozen systems, some compatible with each other, some not,
 capture all of the patient's demographic, financial and clinical
 information. 50% of that data would be unnecessary in a single-payer
 system, 95% of it in a socialized healthcare sector. The point being
 that the availability of complex computer systems means they fill a void
 that probably didn't need to be created in the first place.


 Got it. Greece has to combine all its banks into a single bank to start
 off. That will make the job of writing 60 billion lines of code a lot
 easier, especially given Greece's enormous pool of IT specialists. (Wake me
 when this Trotskyist fantasy nightmare is over.)

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 2:19 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

Well yes, in fact, the consolidation of all banks into one means you can
rip out much of the coding. Same for every other sector of the economy
which would be rationalized: the amount of data and calculations of same
required is drastically reduced when you don't have millions of
individual firms recalculating every day their prices, their stocks
(both financial and real), etc.


This baloney might impress someone who has never written a program but 
it doesn't impress me.


A typical large scale project in a major corporation takes anywhere from 
three to five years to complete, and that's without consolidating a 
bunch of them into a single state owned firm, which is what you are 
obviously talking about. It is one thing to make such a statement on a 
Marxism list off the top of your head and it is another to create the 
infrastructure, carry out the systems analysis, and then finally code 
and test a complex system. The USA had enormous money and manpower and 
look at what a fiasco Obamacare was before it was debugged. Is it the 
idea that a socialist Grexit will make protection exceptions and program 
loops obsolete? Amazing.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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You've just proven my point.
1. I guarantee you that 95% of the Goldman Sachs overhaul you were involved
in was socially unnecessary.
2. Obamacare's computing snafus are 100% down to creating a Rube
Goldberg-machine system of competing insurers who need data on millions
of independent patients, providers and suppliers (and the latter as a
result needing to find data on the former). The exchanges which took so
much work and re-work to get up and running were only created for the
benefit of insurance companies.
I invite any of the Brits on list to speak to what kind of mammoth computer
systems were needed to set up your socialized medicine system (that's
irony, folks).

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 2:19 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

 Well yes, in fact, the consolidation of all banks into one means you can
 rip out much of the coding. Same for every other sector of the economy
 which would be rationalized: the amount of data and calculations of same
 required is drastically reduced when you don't have millions of
 individual firms recalculating every day their prices, their stocks
 (both financial and real), etc.


 This baloney might impress someone who has never written a program but it
 doesn't impress me.

 A typical large scale project in a major corporation takes anywhere from
 three to five years to complete, and that's without consolidating a bunch
 of them into a single state owned firm, which is what you are obviously
 talking about. It is one thing to make such a statement on a Marxism list
 off the top of your head and it is another to create the infrastructure,
 carry out the systems analysis, and then finally code and test a complex
 system. The USA had enormous money and manpower and look at what a fiasco
 Obamacare was before it was debugged. Is it the idea that a socialist
 Grexit will make protection exceptions and program loops obsolete? Amazing.

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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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On Jul 14, 2015, at 5:18 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 5:09 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
 Why adopt a program incapable, in your view, of even partial realization?
 
 I just got the same question on FB.
 
 My answer: they underestimated the bestiality of the German bankers and their 
 tools in Poland and elsewhere.

My follow-up: So why didn’t they come clean with those they represented and 
campaign for a Yes vote?  Or resign if they could not stomach the bestial 
reforms being demanded of them by the eurozone powers? Why the charade of 
pretending to campaign against the austerity package and then turning around 
the next day to align with the opposition and the troika in accepting an even 
more onerous and humiliating set of demands? These do not seem to me to be the 
actions of an honest and capable leadership.

I note, BTW, that you’ve not challenged my assumption a few posts back that you 
would vote for the bestial reforms were you a member of the Greek parliament. 
Should we interpret your silence as assent?
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[Marxism] Another Brecht Poem

2015-07-14 Thread James Creegan via Marxism

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Since Louis is so fond of quoting Brecht about electing another people, I
thought I might send along this Brecht poem, containing echoes of those who
speak of the possible perils of a Grexit:

 Guatama the Buddha taught
The doctrine of greed’s wheel to which we are bound, and advised
That we shed all craving and thus
Undesiring enter the nothingness that he called Nirvana.
Then one day his pupils asked him:
“What is it like, this nothingness, Master? Every one of us would
Shed all craving, as you advise, but tell us
Whether this nothingness which then we shall enter
Is perhaps like being at one with all creation,
When you lie in water, your body weightless, at noon,
Unthinking almost, lazily lie in the water, or drowse
Hardly knowing now that you straighten the blanket,
Going down fast –whether this nothingness, then,
Is a happy one of this kind, a pleasant nothingness, or
Whether this nothingness of yours is more nothing, cold, senseless and
void.”
Long the Buddha was silent, then said nonchalantly:
“There is no answer to your question.”
But in the evening, when they had gone,
The Buddha still sat under the bread-fruit tree and to the others,
To those who had not asked, addressed this parable:
“Lately I saw a house. It was burning. The flame
Licked at its roof. I went up close and observed
That there were people still inside. I entered the doorway and called
Out to them that the roof was ablaze, so exhorting them
To leave at once. But those people
Seemed in no hurry. One of them,
While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows,
Asked me what it was like outside, whether there was
Another house for them, and more of this kind. Without answering
I went out again. These people here, I thought,
Must burn to death before they stop asking questions.
And truly friends,
Whoever does not yet feel such heat in the floor that he’ll gladly
Exchange it for any other, rather than stay, to that man
I have nothing to say.” So Gautama the Buddha.
But we too, no longer concerned with the art of submission,
Rather with that of non-submission, and offering
Various proposals of an earthly nature, and beseeching men
To shake off their human tormentors, we too believe that to those
Who in face of the rising bomber squadrons of Capital go on asking too long
How we propose to do this, and how we envisage that,
And what will become of their savings and Sunday trousers after a revolution
We have nothing much to say.

This was published in 1949 in “Kalendergeschichten”, a collection of
stories and poems which
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[Marxism] Fwd: Greece and the Underdevelopment of Europe | The Column

Following the referendum in Greece it is time to think further about the
geopolitical sea change indicated by the European economic crisis. There
is tangible shock, even among some conservative commentators, at the
zealotry that is still being displayed by Greece’s creditors, who
continue to refuse the Syriza-led government any alternative to
indefinite debt bondage despite a decisive popular rejection of the
bailout proposals.

That Greece was allowed to miss last week’s deadline to repay the
International Monetary Fund because of the refusal of the ‘troika’
(European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary
Fund) to compromise, was indeed a striking display of neoliberal
dogmatism. Many across Europe have been keen to demonstrate their
solidarity with the Greek people whose living standards are being
decimated under perpetual austerity and whose situation is likely only
to get worse. Yet, perhaps a further, more unsavoury element underlies
our reaction to the Greek crisis. What has really disconcerted
spectators is that the titans of international finance capital are
willing to dismantle not just a nation-state but a European nation-state.

full:
http://thecolumn.net/2015/07/09/greece-and-the-underdevelopment-of-europe/comment-page-1/#comment-1538

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[Marxism] From reformism to struggle and regroument

2015-07-14 Thread John Passant via Marxism

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From reformism to struggle and regroument

If there are two lessons I draw from the surrender of SYRIZA they are, first, 
not to pursue a grand reformist project, especially an electoralist one aimed 
at winning power to manage capitalism, and second to consider how to unite 
those small and disparate forces now on the ground in Australia which 
understand that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the 
working class.  

http://enpassant.com.au/2015/07/14/from-reformism-to-struggle-and-regroupment/
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Re: [Marxism] From reformism to struggle and regroument


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John Passant:
This isn’t a failure of will on the part of Tsipras and other SYRIZA 
leaders. It is an expression of the logic of reformism, the idea that 
you can win power through capitalist democratic institutions and manage 
the beast in the interests not of capital but of labour.


Actually Venezuela indicates that you can. So does Ecuador and Bolivia. 
Early on Sebastian Budgen interviewed Stathis Kouvelakis who said:


And so my view about Greece is, (a) if we had a fifteen-year period 
where there is no qualitative successes but a social transformation, 
that would be great; (b) Greece is of course the periphery, but it is 
the internal periphery of the center, so that means that the 
destabilizing potential of the Greek experiment is perhaps greater for 
the capitalist system than Venezuela; (c) the accumulated political 
experience of the social and political forces in Greece — and I don’t 
want to diminish the tremendous importance of what happened in Venezuela 
— is just incomparable.


Greece has a very rich tradition of social struggle. What differentiates 
solidarity with Greece from previous forms of solidarity is that now it 
is not about expressing solidarity with countries that are 
geographically very far away and have major differences in terms of 
social structure and level of development.


Greece is a periphery, if you like, but it is the periphery of Europe. 
Political processes happening in Greece have an expansive capacity, 
which is far superior and more direct in this part of world than the 
Latin American ones, because the Greek crisis is part of the bigger 
crisis of European capitalism. And Europe, despite its current position 
— which is very different from the position it held in the past — is 
still one of the major centers of the world capitalist system.


full: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/phase-one/

I think that this was overly optimistic, a fatal flaw of the Syriza 
leadership.


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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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On Jul 14, 2015, at 2:53 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 On 7/14/15 2:46 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:
 Of course we will (eliminate the stock market)! Why the fuck would you
 want a stock market under socialism?
 
 What this reveals is the frustration of so many veterans on the left that the 
 Greeks did not live up to their expectations. I thought this summed it up 
 nicely:
 
 It is revealing of the political landscape in Europe - indeed, the world - 
 that everyone's dreams of socialism seemed to rest on the shoulders of the 
 young Prime Minister of a small country.  There seemed to be a fervent, 
 irrational, almost evangelical belief that a tiny country, drowning in debt, 
 gasping for liquidity, would somehow (and that somehow is never specified) 
 defeat global capitalism, armed only with sticks and rocks.
 
 https://www.byline.com/column/11/article/164

This is another straw man erected by those tortuously trying to justify the 
Tsipras’ leadership’s acceptance, reluctantly or otherwise, of the austerity 
program of the troika. No one expected Syriza, a radical democratic party, to 
introduce socialism. There was nothing in Syriza’s program about expropriating 
the Greek bourgeosie, or even for that matter of nationalizing the banks. It’s 
program in opposition was Keynesian - repudiate the debt, increase government 
spending to put people back to work, end the drive to privatize, defend trade 
union and pension rights, tax the rich in lieu of increasing consumption taxes, 
etc. You can refresh your memory here:

http://www.syriza.gr/article/id/59907/SYRIZA---THE-THESSALONIKI-PROGRAMME.html#.VaVxR6Zg34Q

As soon as the Tsipras leadership took office, it jettisoned that program in 
practice in order to satisfy its creditors. It quickly distanced itself from 
the party’s pledge to the Greek electorate that it would implement its 
reconstruction program “as early as our first days in power, before and 
regardless of the negotiation outcome.” That retreat culminated in this week’s 
rout when it agreed to the harshest austerity package to date - this, in direct 
contradiction to the massive democratic vote against such a package on July 
5th. Under a more resolute leadership, events might have forced the government 
and its supporters to take defensive measures requiring it to move beyond 
Keynesianism towards socialist solutions, to a fundamental attack on the power 
and property of the Greek oligarchy. But this has not been a resolute 
leadership nor was socialism ever its starting or end point.

Louis is again wrong in asserting that “the Greeks did not live up to the 
expectations…of so many veterans of the left.” The Greeks magnificently lived 
up - in fact, went way beyond - my expectations, and I’m sure that is true of 
most others on the liberal and radical left as well. It is their leadership 
which has disappointed - not, to repeat, in failing to achieve socialism, which 
was never the expectation, but in failing to defend, much less advance, the 
dwindling rights and benefits of the Greek working class. 


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[Marxism] Fwd: A Tangled Web: The Vested Interests of the EU Right


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A Tangled Web: The Vested Interests of the EU Right
by Admin • 13 July 2015

To understand the Greek crisis and the stream of ever worsening deals 
between the EU and Greece, it is essential to understand just how 
involved the EU main players have been in the creation of this situation 
over the past decade. Across much of the media there has been a focus on 
the character of Syriza as a movement and Tsipras or Varoufakis as 
politicians and economists. Again and again we have seen aspersions 
being cast on the credibility or competence of the left. Curiously, 
there has been little interest in the mainstream on the web of vested 
interests on the EU side. On The Automatic Earth Raul Ilargi Meijer 
celebrated the emergence of little ‘factoids’ which complicate the 
claimed purity of the EU’s financial interests. We thought it would be 
interesting to begin collecting these little factoids, and hope that you 
will help us. As you come across reports of EU actors with vested 
interests in foisting austerity and privatisation on Greece, please post 
them on our Facebook page or in the comments below. We will try to 
update this page with more details as they come in. In the mean time, 
here is some well sourced information on the key players.


Wolfgang Schäuble (German Finance Minister): While the Greeks resisted 
the proposal, one of the key demands was to transfer fifty billion euros 
of assets to an independent fund like the Luxembourg based Institution 
for Growth in Greece.[1] However, it turns out that the Institution for 
Growth is in fact a wholly owned subsidiary of the German KfW Bank, of 
which Schäuble serves as the chairman of the board.[2] We are not aware 
of similar funds existing, so the wording suggests a very big hint at 
where the 50 billion in assets should go. The KfW bank is a German 
institution, where the bank invests 1.5 billion euros, and yields 3 – 4 
billion euro.[3]


Schäuble is no stranger to financial controversy: In 1999, Schäuble took 
100,000 marks from Canadian/German arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber 
for the CDU party. ‘He initially denied in parliament that he had 
received money… but then conceded’ that he had received it.[4] This was 
the scandal that brought down Helmut Kohl as head of the CDU, and paved 
the way for Angela Merkel. ‘The case has never been entirely solved, no 
charges were laid against Kohl or Schäuble.’[5] There were other 
suspicious cash transfers during his time as leader of the parliamentary 
party – including an apparently illegal one million deutschmark transfer 
in 1997.[6]


full: 
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/07/13/a-tangled-web-the-vested-interests-of-the-eu-right/

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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 4:53 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:

This is another straw man erected


I'm glad that Marvin did not speak to the technical issues. That saves 
me the trouble of explaining protection exceptions to him. I used to 
have huge problems explaining what I did to my mom but at least she 
wasn't so fixated on trying to make Greece the lynchpin of world revolution.

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[Marxism] Guardian: Greece put its faith in democracy but Europe has vetoed the result

2015-07-14 Thread Shalva Eliava via Marxism

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Paul Mason:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/13/greece-bailout-eurozone-democracy-is-loser
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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 5:29 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:

Or resign if they could not stomach the bestial reforms being demanded of them 
by the eurozone powers?


This is exactly what Tsipras should have done. He should have called a 
press conference and announced his resignation in light of the 
German-led coup. At least Allende went out with his machine gun blazing.


Frankly, I wouldn't want to be in Tsipras's shoes right now. He is going 
to be cursed and vilified everywhere he goes. Nobody expected anything 
out of PASOK or New Democracy but when you screw the people who believed 
in you, that is another story entirely.


I think that there will be another left party in Greece but it will take 
a while for the dust to settle. However, if it wins power and carries 
out a Grexit, the problems will continue but in a different framework. 
Europe would have been indifferent to a bourgeois Grexit but a radical 
left Grexit would face all sorts of economic and political subversion. 
As is generally the case with radical governments under siege, they try 
to stamp out counter-revolutionary movements in the same way that 
Lincoln muzzled the pro-Confederacy press in the north or the FSLN 
censored La Prensa. After that happens, Human Rights Watch will jump all 
over Greece just like it did with Venezuela.


The bottom line is that countries that break with capitalism have it 
tough. It is even tougher when their economy is weak to begin with. If 
Venezuela was endowed with bananas rather than oil, the Bolivarian 
revolution might have been crushed long ago.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

2015-07-14 Thread dave x via Marxism

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I dealt with that in my paper a couple decades ago but briefly: in the
first stage of socialism you need computers to track prices of good,
volumes of sales, etc. ALL OF WHICH REQUIRES NO MORE SOPHISTICATION THAN
THE SYSTEM CURRENTLY USED BY WALMART.

I wonder how many millions of lines of code Walmart has. Anyone who thinks
this is simple is deluding themselves.
-dx
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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:57 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 4:53 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
 This is another straw man erected
 
 I'm glad that Marvin did not speak to the technical issues. That saves me the 
 trouble of explaining protection exceptions to him. I used to have huge 
 problems explaining what I did to my mom but at least she wasn’t so fixated 
 on trying to make Greece the lynchpin of world revolution.

There are many clever experienced people in Syriza, including in the 
leadership, more clever and famiiar with the Greek situation than you or I.  
Why, in drafting the Thessalonki reform program, did they not take into account 
the “protection exceptions” you have uniquely identified? Why adopt a program 
incapable, in your view, of even partial realization? 

The problem, Louis, as is so often the case, is less “technical” than it is 
political.


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Re: [Marxism] Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 5:09 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:

Why adopt a program incapable, in your view, of even partial realization?


I just got the same question on FB.

My answer: they underestimated the bestiality of the German bankers and 
their tools in Poland and elsewhere.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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What's your point, Joe? You seem to have missed mine (and Dave x didn't
even make an effort to get it).
My point is that the overwhelming majority of code written today is a
complete waste, because it's written for an economy of millions of
fragmented economic actors. I cite Walmart to show that however many
millions of lines of code they would need to rewrite in a y2k or currency
changeover situation, those millions are qualitatively fewer than would
need to be rewritten for a changeover involving thousands of isolated
retailers.
Institutions change computer systems every so often, and they have to do
tremendous amounts of recoding and uploading and translating data and code.
IT DOESN'T BANKRUPT THEM, anymore than currency changes do or y2k did.
Read the pdf Louis sent (including especially the part about organizational
changes impacting  coding).
And Louis et al., stop hiding your cowardice in the face of bourgeois
politicians behind a surface understanding of the connection between the
social and technological.
On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Joseph Catron via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 6:09 PM, dave x via Marxism 
 marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

 I dealt with that in my paper a couple decades ago but briefly: in the
  first stage of socialism you need computers to track prices of good,
  volumes of sales, etc. ALL OF WHICH REQUIRES NO MORE SOPHISTICATION THAN
  THE SYSTEM CURRENTLY USED BY WALMART.
 
  I wonder how many millions of lines of code Walmart has. Anyone who
 thinks
  this is simple is deluding themselves.


 I think anyone who's ever examined Walmart's supply chain and distribution
 channel snickered a little bit at that. It's incredibly sophisticated, and
 has taken decades of continuous refinement.

 Everyone knows that Walmart's revenues are roughly twice Greece's GDP, yes?

 --
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 lytlað.
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[Marxism] Fwd: IMF stuns Europe with call for massive Greek debt relief - Telegraph


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The International Monetary Fund has set off a political earthquake in 
Europe, warning that Greece may need a full moratorium on debt payments 
for 30 years and perhaps even long-term subsidies to claw its way out of 
depression.


The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need 
for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has 
been under consideration to date,” said the IMF in a confidential report.


Greek public debt will spiral to 200pc of GDP over the next two years, 
compared to 177pc in an earlier report on debt sustainability issued 
just two weeks ago.


The findings are explosive. The document amounts to a warning that the 
IMF will not take part in any EMU-led rescue package for Greece unless 
Germany and the EMU creditor powers finally agree to sweeping debt relief.


This vastly complicates the rescue deal agreed by eurozone leaders in 
marathon talks over the weekend since Germany insists that the bail-out 
cannot go ahead unless the IMF is involved.


full: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11739985/IMF-stuns-Europe-with-call-for-massive-Greek-debt-relief.html?fb_ref=Default

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Re: [Marxism] From reformism to struggle and regroument

2015-07-14 Thread Gary MacLennan via Marxism

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Hi John,

Let's have a friendly non-sectarian non-flame war type debate about this,
because it is very important..  I respect your position but I disagree with
it.

I will begin by trying to unpack the labels reformist and reformism.
These unfortunately have migrated from slow to fast thinking (See Daniel
Kahneman) and have acquired both the status of curse words and a sacred
sayings that have the magic power of preventing the need for critical and
analytical thought i.e. slow thinking.

So what did reformism originally mean?  In what contexts did it originally
appear.?  What was its original political function?
Thankfully there is a good wiki on the word and it points us towards
Bernstein (reflex shudder in horror) and Rosa Luxembourg. There is also
mention of the debate in the 60s within the British Labour Party around
nationalization, which I am old enough to recall.

Briefly, reformism seems to have meant something like a process according
to the Send Law of Dialectics. Quantitative reform piled upon reform will
eventually produce qualitative change in the system. I am inclined to agree
with this and so that would put me in the reformist camp. But, the law or
tendency if it operates in the social sphere is subject to all sorts of
counter tendencies which arise from the struggle between the social
classes. So, I am not naive enough to believe that we would be allowed
simply to pass reform upon reform, and hey presto the workers' paradise
emerges.

But here, and I think this is the crucial point, if one runs up the banner
of reform -say the imposition of a 35 hour week or a job guarantee along
the lines advocated by Bill Mitchell of Newcastle University-  then that is
more likely to get public traction than a campaign build around slogans
such as One solution - Revolution, which I used to chant in the streets
of Brisbane.

The political point is that gaining public traction  i.e. support gives one
a political space to operate in.  That of course does not guarantee victory
but it does allow for maneuvering. The alternative is to stick with the one
anti-reformist line and demand a revolution.  Been there, done that for
years and really it ends up as a kind of self-fulfilling irrelevancy.

That might be enough for my opening salvo.  Hopefully over to you

comradely

Gary

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 7:58 AM, John Passant via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 From reformism to struggle and regroument

 If there are two lessons I draw from the surrender of SYRIZA they are,
 first, not to pursue a grand reformist project, especially an electoralist
 one aimed at winning power to manage capitalism, and second to consider how
 to unite those small and disparate forces now on the ground in Australia
 which understand that the emancipation of the working class must be the act
 of the working class.


 http://enpassant.com.au/2015/07/14/from-reformism-to-struggle-and-regroupment/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Greece: The Struggle Continues | Jacobin


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I know that Budgen's interview with Stathis Kouvelakis has been making 
the rounds but I want to make absolutely sure that comrades read it. It 
is indispensable for understanding what is happening in Greece today.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-varoufakis-kouvelakis-syriza-euro-debt/
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[Marxism] Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics Are Revisited


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NY Times, July 13 2015
Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics Are Revisited
By RACHEL DONADIO

PARIS — Was the paradigm-changing architect known as Le Corbusier a 
fascist-leaning ideologue whose plans for garden cities were inspired by 
totalitarian ideals, or a humanist who wanted to improve people’s living 
conditions — a political naïf who, like many architects, was eager to 
work with almost any regime that would let him build?


These questions, long debated by experts, are at the heart of fresh 
controversy in France set off by three new books that re-examine that 
master Modernist’s politics and an exhibition on Le Corbusier at the 
Pompidou Center here through Aug. 3, commemorating the 50th anniversary 
of his death. In light of the books, the exhibition has been criticized 
for glossing over, in particular, Le Corbusier’s well-documented 
involvement with far-right elements in France from the 1920s to the 1940s.


The polemics in the French news media have grown so pointed since the 
show opened in April that the Pompidou announced that it would hold a 
symposium next year on Le Corbusier’s politics. Antoine Picon, chairman 
of the Le Corbusier Foundation, which manages his archive and helps 
preserve his buildings, said he worried that the debate might affect an 
application submitted this year for various examples of the architect’s 
work in seven countries, including France and Chandigarh, India, to be 
classified as Unesco World Heritage sites. The attacks also come amid 
the rise of the far-right National Front in France and within a broader 
debate on that country’s World War II-era past and the legacy of Modernism.


“We were very, very surprised by the violence of the criticism,” said 
Frédéric Migayrou, one of the curators of “Le Corbusier, Measurement of 
Man,” at the Pompidou. He said the architect’s politics were well known 
and the museum never intended them to be the focus of the fairly modest 
exhibition. It draws on Le Corbusier’s post-Cubist sculpture and 
painting to demonstrate how he used the human form as an organizing 
principle in his architecture, from furniture to city planning, a link 
not generally associated with the clean lines of rationalist architecture.


But from what angle did the architect approach the individual? The 
authors of “Le Corbusier, a French Fascism,” by the journalist Xavier de 
Jarcy; “Le Corbusier, a Cold Vision of the World,” by the journalist 
Marc Perelman; and “A Corbusier,” by the architect and critic François 
Chaslin essentially argue that Le Corbusier’s aesthetics cannot be 
separated from his politics, which leaned more to the right than the 
left, despite work he did in Moscow.


“There’s still a myth surrounding Le Corbusier, that he’s the greatest 
architect of the 20th century, a generous man, a poet,” Mr. de Jarcy 
said. That vision, he added, is “a great collective lie.”


Some of the recent criticism has centered on a section of the Pompidou 
show about the Modulor, a human silhouette that Le Corbusier developed 
in 1943, the height of the war, as the basis for a system of proportion 
that he used in his later work. The show’s organizers and many scholars 
see the Modulor as a humanist expression that helped form the basis of 
human-scale architecture.


“For me it’s exactly the opposite,” Mr. Perelman said. “It’s the 
mathematicization of the body, the standardization of the body, the 
rationalization of the body.”


Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret to a petit-bourgeois Protestant family in 
Switzerland in 1887, Le Corbusier was highly complex. He built some of 
his largest projects in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, admired Mussolini, 
and in 1940 and 1941 spent 18 months in Vichy, France, trying, and 
failing, to curry favor with the Fascist regime of Marshal Pétain, which 
ultimately found his ideas too avant-garde.


In 1940, just days before a Vichy ruling banning Jews from elective 
office and other professions, Le Corbusier wrote to his mother: “The 
Jews are going through a very bad time. I am sometimes contrite about 
it. But it does seem as if their blind thirst for money had corrupted 
the country.”


But, scholars note, he also built for Jewish families in Switzerland, 
never publicly denounced Jews and never joined a fascist organization. 
“It’s an error in my view to insist on his anti-Semitism,” Mr. Chaslin 
said. But what he and his fellow authors find more troubling is the 
architect’s involvement in the 1920s with the right-wing elements, some 
of whom saw his well-ordered Radiant City plan for Marseille, France — 
based on the shape of the human body — as a perfect expression of the 
Fascist

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

2015-07-14 Thread Joseph Catron via Marxism

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On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 6:09 PM, dave x via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

I dealt with that in my paper a couple decades ago but briefly: in the
 first stage of socialism you need computers to track prices of good,
 volumes of sales, etc. ALL OF WHICH REQUIRES NO MORE SOPHISTICATION THAN
 THE SYSTEM CURRENTLY USED BY WALMART.

 I wonder how many millions of lines of code Walmart has. Anyone who thinks
 this is simple is deluding themselves.


I think anyone who's ever examined Walmart's supply chain and distribution
channel snickered a little bit at that. It's incredibly sophisticated, and
has taken decades of continuous refinement.

Everyone knows that Walmart's revenues are roughly twice Greece's GDP, yes?

-- 
Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað.
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[Marxism] Varoufakis ABC Interview

2015-07-14 Thread Hans G Ehrbar via Marxism

His first interview after resigning as minister of finance.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/yanis-varoufakis-on-greek-crisis/6616430

Here are the passages I found most interesting:

5:50 Will you stay in politics? Of course I will. I am not a fair
weather sailor, I am going to be here for the course, I am going to
represent (his constituents) through thick and thin. In essence, I am
very much enjoying being a back bencher at the moment, Philip, because I
have a lot more room for maneuver and speaking the truth without having
to worry about phrasing the truth in diplomatic terms.

9:30 This is indeed the politics of humiliation. The Troika made sure
they see to it that he (Tsipras) would eat every single word he uttered
in criticism of the troika in the past 5 years.

16:08 Look, Philip, let me be frank here. These are crucial moments,
critical moments in European history and I don't believe we will be
judged anything other than harshly if we don't speak out at this moment.
Dr Schaeuble wants Grexit. He has been planning for it. (Detailed
elaboration of Schaeuble's strategy.) The reason I am saying this is
not because I have a theory, but because Dr Schaeuble has told me so.

21:36 Asked about a temporary grexit, Varoufakis answered that they
always opposed it. The moment you begin the deconstruction of a
monetary union you then unleash powers that you cannot control. ...
This is why we rejected the proposal. This is a proposal we would never
accept as committed Europeanists. We believed that, setting aside the
very significan cost for the Greek social economy, this kind of plotting
... are part of the process of killing off European integration.

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[Marxism] Across the U.S.: Stand with Greek workers July 15!

2015-07-14 Thread Joseph Catron via Marxism

From Workers World (
http://www.workers.org/articles/2015/07/14/across-the-u-s-stand-with-greek-workers-july-15
):

Say OXI (NO) to austerity, at home and abroad!

Workers and youth in the U.S. are answering the call of Europe Says OXI
(NO) for global actions on Wednesday, July 15, in solidarity with the Greek
resistance to austerity.

More than 50 actions are planned around the world. The day of action
coincides with a 24-hour general strike called by the Greek public sector
workers’ federation ADEDY.

Join one of these actions or organize your own:

Baltimore

5 to 6 p.m., Mckeldin Square

Called by Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly Movement

https://www.facebook.com/events/398657826990092/

Buffalo, N.Y.

4 p.m., Bank of America, Main Street at West Huron

Called by Buffalo International Action Center

https://www.facebook.com/events/680708775363005/

Chicago (Tues., July 14)

7:30 p.m., Halsted and Van Buren

Called by Chicago Greece Solidarity

https://www.facebook.com/events/997444733607440/

Detroit

12 noon to 1 p.m., Chase Bank, Woodward at Fort, downtown

Called by Moratorium Now! Coalition and Workers World Party

https://www.facebook.com/events/699987333439299/

Los Angeles

12:30 to 2 p.m.

Greek Consulate, 12424 Wilshire Blvd.

Called by Los Angeles International Action Center

https://www.facebook.com/events/828485990552833/

Oakland, Calif.

5 p.m., Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th St. and Broadway

Called by International Action Center, Marcha Patriotica Colombia and
Workers World Party

https://www.facebook.com/events/907627909272933/

Philadelphia

5 p.m., City Hall, 15th and Market St.

Called by Philadelphia International Action Center

https://www.facebook.com/events/1611354315802067/

Latest listing of actions worldwide

https://www.facebook.com/events/968923229795124/

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[Marxism] This is what workers' resistance looks like

2015-07-14 Thread Philip Ferguson via Marxism

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https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/this-is-what-resistance-looks-like/

Links to articles on factory occupations, including in Greece, plus France
1968, Chile in the early 1970s and Portugal 1974.
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[Marxism] An open letter to the U.S. Campaign and other Activists for Justice in Palestine

2015-07-14 Thread A.R. G via Marxism

Please consider endorsing this open letter. If you agree with the message,
sign it below and consider forwarding it to your contacts and with peace
and justice organizations to sign on. You can sign by going to the link
below or via the form elements at the end of this e-mail.

I have signed it, so far along with Richard Falk, Ann Wright, Mazin
Qumsiyeh, Edward Peck, and others. If you agree with the statement I
encourage you to sign it as well.

An open letter to the U.S. Campaign and other Activists for Justice in
Palestine.

Visit http://tinyurl.com/stopdivisiveattacks to sign the petition.

As active participants in the struggle for justice for Palestinians, coming
from a variety of ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds, we call for
an end to internal attacks on fellow activists and organizations. These
only impede the work for justice.

We appreciate the important contributions to that cause made over many
years by If Americans Knew, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the U.S. Campaign
to End the Israeli Occupation.

In that light, we are dismayed by the recent unfounded attacks on one of
the top organizations working on this issue, If Americans Knew, and its
dedicated leader, Alison Weir, by the leadership of Jewish Voice for Peace
and the U.S. Campaign. Many of us are members of these groups and are
unhappy at these significant actions made in our name but without
consulting us.

We recognize that important differences among these organizations exist –
each has its own constituencies, approach, and style, as is the case with
the scores of other organizations that together make up the solidarity
movement. Some may disapprove of taking the Palestinian case to people who
don't define themselves as liberals or progressives. Others may
disapprove of working with Zionist groups and failure to state that Zionism
is racism, etc. We have no problem with any group articulating such
differences and even making principled criticisms of another's work – that
is part of the life of any healthy democratic movement.

But we believe strongly that secret dossiers, ideological inquisitions,
double standards, misrepresentations, spreading innuendo, and attempting to
excommunicate groups or individuals one disagrees with from the ranks of
the movement sow unnecessary divisions and distract from what must remain
our primary focus: building the broad united front that's necessary to
change United States policy in the Middle East and to help Palestinians
obtain justice in their homeland.

We also believe that the vitriolic, ADL-like accusations that Alison Weir
is anti-Semitic and/or racist are scurrilous and without foundation. They
are based on guilt-by-association arguments through which numerous
committed activists – including the leadership of the US Campaign and JVP –
could equally, and also incorrectly, be called anti-Semitic and/or racist.

We are painfully aware that there are well funded opponents who spare no
effort to undermine and divide this movement for justice and human rights
in Palestine. We therefore expect those who sincerely share our goals to
be mindful of the potential to fracture the movement and be judicious and
principled in their critique of groups and individuals who make significant
contributions to the movement.

We call for these attacks to cease and for those initiating them to return
to their main task, working for justice in Palestine.

Sincerely,

[The Undersigned]

More Information

Accusations against If Americans Knew:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.html

Messages of support for If Americans Knew:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.html#five

http://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.html#seven

Analysis of Attacks on If Americans Knew:

http://louisproyect.org/2015/06/25/the-jewish-voice-for-peace-attack-on-alison-weir-jvp-loses-its-balance-2/

SIGNATORIES

Affiliations for identification purposes.

* = US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Member Organization

** = Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace

Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton
University, and former Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, UN Human
Rights Council.

Samia Khoury, founding member of the board of Trustees of Birzeit
University and Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, author,
Reflections from Palestine: A Journey of Hope (descendant of Birzeit
University founders).

Ann Wright, retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat turned peace
activist; passenger on 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla; co-organizer and
passenger on Gaza Freedom Flotillas 2011 2015; co-organizer of 2009 Gaza
Freedom March.

Dr. Mazin

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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exactly. But its scope means it has superceded older,  smaller, fragmented
equivalents -- as Engels would say, it has been objectively socialized, and
is there just waiting to be taken over. (Which is why I'm so glad activists
are working in the supply chain.)

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 7:37 PM, Joseph Catron jncat...@gmail.com wrote:

 Only that a system comparable to Walmart's can't possibly come together
 overnight, or cheaply for that matter. It's grown alongside the chain itself
 since 1962, and while I don't know exactly how to measure its costs, or
 whether it's even possible to separate them from other expenses, I'm
 aware they've been tremendous.

 On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrew Pollack acpolla...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 What's your point, Joe?


 --
 Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
 lytlað.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Greece: The Struggle Continues | Jacobin

2015-07-14 Thread annette gagne via Marxism

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Looks like Jacobin has a firewall?

Best Wishes,
- A
On Jul 14, 2015 10:44 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism 
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote:

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 I know that Budgen's interview with Stathis Kouvelakis has been making the
 rounds but I want to make absolutely sure that comrades read it. It is
 indispensable for understanding what is happening in Greece today.


 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-varoufakis-kouvelakis-syriza-euro-debt/
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[Marxism] Fwd: Permanent Revolution: Sectarianism and the Greek working class


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Part I: The WSWS proclaims the defeat of the Greek working class.

The sectarian journalists of the WSWS,  after closing down their 
reporting team in Athens, have proclaimed  that the Greek working class 
has been defeated as a result of the unprecedented betrayal of their 
aspirations by Prime Minister Tsipras and the majority of Syriza.  The 
WSWS artice, titled,
Syriza’s betrayal of the Greek working class, 
[http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/11/pers-j11.html]  makes the 
following statement,


Syriza’s move to impose an unprecedented EU austerity package is a 
serious defeat for the working class.


This is important because in the context of Marxist literature the word, 
'defeat', implies the crushing of the working class by the 
counter-revolution, as for instance the defeat of the working class in 
Germany by Nazism.


Lest there be any question whether the author really meant  defeat,  he 
quotes a passage from Trotsky's writings to drive home the point. Here 
is the quote:


“This impotent philosophy, which seeks to reconcile defeats as a 
necessary link in the chain of cosmic developments, is completely 
incapable of posing and refuses to pose the question of such concrete 
factors as programs, parties, personalities that were the organizers of 
defeat. This philosophy of fatalism and prostration is diametrically 
opposed to Marxism as the theory of revolutionary action.”


Following the usual practice of the WSWS the author provides no citation 
for the quote from Trotsky's writings and fails to provide any context. 
The quote is in fact taken from Trotsky's 1940 essay, The Class, the 
Party and the Leadership. 
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm] The essay 
is a masterful analysis by Trotsky of the causes for the defeat of the 
Spanish working class in the Civil War that lasted from 1936-1940.  Now 
has anything like this happened to the  Greek working  class?  There is 
no question of course that the Greek working class has been terribly 
betrayed by Syriza. But have they lost their fighting capacity? Are they 
in the same position as the Spanish working class was in 1940 or the 
German working class in 1933.  To ask the question is to answer it.  The 
response of the Greek working class to the betrayal by Syriza has yet to 
be heard.


At this moment in time millions of Greeks are in a state of shock, 
hardly believing the news they are hearing that they have essentially 
lost their independence and will be governed in the future by the 
institutions of the troika. We can predict that in short order the shock 
will wear off and there will be massive resistance to this historic 
betrayal, not only in Greece but throughout Europe.  But for the pundits 
of the WSWS, that is of no interest.  They are satisfied to proclaim 
that their perspective has been confirmed, the working class has been 
defeated. Such premature burials are typical of sectarians because for 
them what is important is not the mobilization of the working  class but 
the confirmation that their predictions were correct. They see the end 
of the struggle where the revolutionary Marxist sees the beginning of a 
new phase of the struggle.


full: 
http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2015/07/sectarianism-and-greek-working-class.html

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

2015-07-14 Thread Joseph Catron via Marxism

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Only that a system comparable to Walmart's can't possibly come together
overnight, or cheaply for that matter. It's grown alongside the chain itself
since 1962, and while I don't know exactly how to measure its costs, or
whether it's even possible to separate them from other expenses, I'm aware
they've been tremendous.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Andrew Pollack acpolla...@gmail.com
wrote:

What's your point, Joe?


-- 
Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað.
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[Marxism] The Impact of the Euro on Information Systems


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Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall 1999
pp. 105–116

The Impact of the Euro on Information Systems
Daniel E. O’Leary, University of Southern California

Accounting Information System Requirements Brought About by the Euro The 
introduction of the euro will have a wide range of changes in 
requirements for accounting information systems (e.g., Dekker [1997] and 
others).


1. Legacy systems will require multiple updates. Unlike present day 
relational database systems, many legacy systems redundantly store data 
items (e.g., currency figures). In these systems, all instances of each 
redundantly stored currency data item will need to be updated to the 
same euro figure.


2. Systems must do triangulation. All those systems using processes 
related to currency exchanges, will have to be updated to reflect 
changes in the way conversion is done, using triangulation, rather than 
traditional inversion conversion.


3. Multiple currencies. Since both euro and local currencies can be used 
during the transition period, systems will need to allow recording and 
display of both home currency and the euro for each transaction. 
Inventories of both currencies will need to be kept as long as both are 
used. The existence of multiple currencies potentially exposes a company 
to the risk that payments are made in the wrong amounts of a currency. 
For example, as in Table 3, a bill for 302,706 euros incorrectly might 
be paid as 4,211,213 euros if clerks use the wrong currency amount.


4. Minor payment differences. Systems will need to be changed to 
accommodate minor differences in payments. Since customers can pay their 
bills in either euros or the home country currency, triangulation 
rounding can create a situation where there are differences in the 
equivalent between what is billed and what is paid when different 
currencies are involved. Few systems have been built to accommodate 
differences in payments and what is billed. Further, few systems 
currently accommodate billing in one currency and payment in another 
(Software Echo 1997). In addition, such differences will carry forward 
to the general ledger, which will also have to accommodate minor 
differences.


5. Restatement of financial reports. Firms must restate previous 
financial statements in euros, which raises other questions including 
the following: Who determines whether historical numbers will need to be 
restated? How much of the historical data will be restated? Will firms 
have the restated historical numbers attested to?


6. Inconsistent use of decimals. In some monetary systems, e.g., Belgium 
and Italy, decimal places are not used. As a result, systems designed 
for these currencies will need to be updated to accommodate the euro’s 
decimal places.


7. Number of decimal places. Not only is the existence of decimal places 
an issue, but also the number of decimal places is an issue. In order to 
assure that rounding is done at the appropriate level, six decimal 
places are required to accommodate the euro.


8. Input validation will need to accommodate multiple currencies. Input 
validation will need to change to accommodate the existence of a new 
currency and multiple currencies. Reconciliation tests will need to 
allow for and accommodate differences due to rounding.


9. Internal documents. Typically, most of a firm’s documents, input, and 
output will need to be changed to accommodate the multiple currencies.


10. Reporting capabilities. Reporting capabilities will need to be 
examined closely. For example, reports are often based on currency 
values exceeding some “threshold” amount. In some cases firms will need 
to change the bases of those thresholds to accommodate the euro. In 
addition, reports will often need to have the ability to display two or 
three currencies simultaneously.


11. Currency fonts will need updating. Finally, currency fonts will need 
to be updated to include the new symbol for the euro. Apparently, 
Microsoft has announced that it will accommodate the euro symbol in its 
32 bit applications, but not in legacy applications, such as Windows 3.1 
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/euro.asp). Similariti


full: 
https://msbfile03.usc.edu/digitalmeasures/doleary/intellcont/Impact%20of%20Euro-1.pdf 


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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 2:33 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:


1. I guarantee you that 95% of the Goldman Sachs overhaul you were
involved in was socially unnecessary.


Ah, I see. As part of the Grexit, we will eliminate the Greek stock 
market. Brilliant.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

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Of course we will (eliminate the stock market)! Why the fuck would you want
a stock market under socialism?
I dealt with that in my paper a couple decades ago but briefly: in the
first stage of socialism you need computers to track prices of good,
volumes of sales, etc. ALL OF WHICH REQUIRES NO MORE SOPHISTICATION THAN
THE SYSTEM CURRENTLY USED BY WALMART.
What you DON'T need are supercomputers executing microsecond-fast stock
price fluctuations.

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote:

 On 7/14/15 2:33 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:


 1. I guarantee you that 95% of the Goldman Sachs overhaul you were
 involved in was socially unnecessary.


 Ah, I see. As part of the Grexit, we will eliminate the Greek stock
 market. Brilliant.

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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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On 7/14/15 2:46 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

Of course we will (eliminate the stock market)! Why the fuck would you
want a stock market under socialism?


What this reveals is the frustration of so many veterans on the left 
that the Greeks did not live up to their expectations. I thought this 
summed it up nicely:


It is revealing of the political landscape in Europe - indeed, the world 
- that everyone's dreams of socialism seemed to rest on the shoulders of 
the young Prime Minister of a small country.  There seemed to be a 
fervent, irrational, almost evangelical belief that a tiny country, 
drowning in debt, gasping for liquidity, would somehow (and that somehow 
is never specified) defeat global capitalism, armed only with sticks and 
rocks.


https://www.byline.com/column/11/article/164
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[Marxism] The Problem of Greece is Not Only a Tragedy: It is a Lie

2015-07-14 Thread James Creegan via Marxism


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John Pilger on Greece


http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/13/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie/ 



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[Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist


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http://louisproyect.org/2015/07/14/convert-to-the-drachma-piece-of-cake-right/
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Convert to the drachma–piece of cake. Right… | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist