Syriza
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Puerto Rico is going to become the Greece of the Caribbean. The government is unable to pay its enormous debt of more than 70 billions dollars, and due to its status with the USA they are not able to obtain a bailout from the Federal government. Many business are closing, or liquidating their inventories, and peoples are leaving
alanjjohnstone wrote:Duncan, you have been on this forum long enough to have read our attitude towards reformism. If you have not been availing yourself of our online articles and archive, exploring our political case, digging deeper into our ideas, then what is the point.You accuse us of being right-wing for holding the position that for the Greek working class there is no light at the end of the tunnel regardless of th path they choose. Several contributers have expressed sympathy for the sincerity of the Greek government to alleviate – NB not remove- austerity policies. Our over-view though is that whatever the referendum decides, it will still be the people paying for the ruling class mistakes and that the only solution is revolution. You can accuse us of being right-wing but it is the actual right-wing nationalists and the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn who also support a No vote…politics indeed creates strange bedfellows while the stalinist and trotskyist groups advocate abstention and are trying to turn the referendum into a vote on EU membership, not about austerity, at all. We try to be a principled party and that means applying our core ideas to current politics, not bending and shaping them to fit a square peg into a round hole in an opportunistic fashion to gain temporary popularity.He is reading too much Counterpunch or ICH. We are not a political party based on conjuncture, we are based on principles, and most of our analysis made since 1903 history has proven that they have been totally correct
John dont you realise what you have said to me has already come out of the mouth of Cameron -millionaire as he stood for re-election . party before people policy before people -aims= party principles before people . You have every right to preach your policies here as this is your website but how can you mentally put aside the suffering in this World and debate the metaphysics of Marxism while 1000,s die daily from the regime you seem to condemn but would rather sit by as more and more the NWO -AKA BB takes over the World ? You mention church I dont belong to any church the bible is a fairy tale made up for the advantage of one race alone who run the IMF it is there to subjugate people into a passive roll and accept evil and lies . The Greek people have done a great thing they have struck a blow against the IMF/World Banksters etc and you refuse to acknowlege that instead belittle it . That is your right but that wont help the poor anywhere . Where has all this got your movement ? the 99 % want action now not political platitudes I cant sit and watch as the poor are made poorer and die. THats why I am attacked constantly by our "services " at least they realise they have more to fear from me saying what I think truthfully and openly to the World on various websites and ALL for the cause of the poor ! REmember I am only replying to your post and should be allowed a reply if I am criticised.
Duncan, you say "Where has all this got your movement ? the 99 % want action now not political platitudes I cant sit and watch as the poor are made poorer and die."Please put everything and not merely ourselves into the same historical pretext.Where has YOUR ideas got us of over a hundred years of application, very often, with the powers of government? The same battles are being fought and re-fought, over and over again. The poor and the helpless and the vulnerable are still dying. Thought must precede action. If you want something changed now, please offer some idea of what will be in its place that will end the despair, the desperation and the distress. You cannot merely create a vacuum because we know nature does not permit such a condition. It will be filled, and a very real possibility is that the right may well be enboldened by the failures of Syriza and the resulting disillusionment with promises that are not fulfilled or kept will provide a recruiting ground for them to step into that void. So far Syriza has been fairly honest…they understand that austerity of some degree must continue, that there has to be some middle ground and concessions given to the Troika. The Far Left, on the contrary, argue for no compromise and seek a siege economy and you, i believe, think that Russia might come to the assistance of Greece, although that is not a guarantee or a given. (perhaps you can answer why China with trillions to spend has not come to Greece's aid) Every member of the Socialist Party sympathises with the problems and difficulties of our Greek fellow-workers. In their struggles to defend their living standards and working conditions , we support them even if only by words. But we don't make forlorn promises, hold out false hopes to them but in all honesty and integrity tell the truth, no matter how painful it is. Syriza won't betray them with treachery but they will eventually accede to the demands of international capital and impose further austerity. They have no choice but they may make the cuts less severe on the poor and old and sick. That is their only option if they wish to remain in power. "Real Politik".
Varoufakis has gone, which is interesting:
Quote:I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with prideA hell of a political epitaph.http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/minister-no-more/In the grand scheme of things, it may not change the need for yet furtehr cuts, but we can at least say that, like good trade unionists, Syriza have negotiated cannily, and may well get the best deal available: our job is to say how rotten the choices were when there is a real alternative available, but that it takes a nmassive movement to achieve it.I popped along to the Oxi demo in trafalgar square, organised by some Greece Solidarity front, it got speakers from all over Europe, and the leader of the Green Party, but only six men and a dog turned up to listen. Still, the horror of what has already happened to Greece, including the drying up of vital medical supplies, was put across.
I'm afraid 'left unity' are naive to believe that the inability or refusal of the ruling class of Greece to pay its debt to the ruling class of another country has anything whatsoever to do with working class interests. As Mcolcolm has pointed out there is nothing new about this. Syriza is in the process of rescuing capitalism and the Greek ruling class and as expected Left Unity is no threat to capitalism as they are easily conned and hoodwinked.
Just finished reading a 2015 reprint of his 2011 book The Global Minotaur. He understands quite a bit about how capitalism works and isn't a currency crank but has written elsewhere that he wants to save capitalism from its present Crisis (with a capital C, as opposed to normal crises) so it can be overthrown later when it's in better health. His argument is that when capitalism is in a Crisis workers just seek and need relief not a revolution which has a better chance of succeeding when capitalism is not in one of its big Crises. He himself has described himself as "an erratic Marxist". Still, he's showing that he's a man of principle. Got to give him that.
And he was quite clear eyed:http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/our-no-is-a-majestic-big-yes-to-a-democratic-rational-europe/
Quote:spread the word that the Greek ‘bailouts’ were exercises whose purpose was intentionally to transfer private losses onto the shoulders of the weakest Greeks, before being transferred to other European taxpayersarticulated, for the first time in the Eurogroup, an economic argument to which there was no credible responseput forward moderate, technically feasible proposals that would remove the need for further ‘bailouts’confined the troika to its Brussels’ lairinternationalised Greece’s humanitarian crisis and its roots in intentionally recessionary policiesspread hope beyond Greece’s borders that democracy can breathe within a monetary union hitherto dominated by fear.An impressive list of quite limited achievements.Here's Paul Mason's asessment (presumably written still wearing his Varoufakis tribute t-shirt:http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/yanis-varoufakis-economist-play-politics/4081
Comment from Scottish Socialist Party spokesman -Colin Fox -Greece,s Syriza government has stood up to the Troika,s economic terror tactics and won the backing of the Greek people despite them . He is being magnanimous and can see at least that the people have stood for a principle so much and no more reductions in OAP,s increase in the already massive jobs losses effecting the young in particular and bring the people down to the level of beggers . The leader of Greece is using a wise/sly coarse of action even when 61 % back him (how much has Cameron running the UK ???) at every step he is saying EU help us so that whenever the EU keeps on saying NO ! it looks bad for the EU as even when Greece holds an opposite view to the ECB/IMF it is still willing to reach an agreement as long as it doesnt put the poor into graves for lack of food /shelter but the IMF dont want to know -pay up ! they say making them look like a lot of Shylock,s in the eyes of the World . Putin is doing the same in the face of the upmost agression from the US now on Russia,s borders -via NATO its alter ego pushed constantly to get putin to react so they can say -look we were right Putin is agressive its making them mad that Putin isnt responding in kind militarily . Both those positions are "using the head " against obvious agressors.
Piketty provides perspectivehttp://qz.com/445373/thomas-pikettys-wise-words-on-german-hypocrisy-and-how-to-solve-the-greek-debt-crisis/
Quote:We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents. The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.This is interesting from Varoufakis (and is from his book:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-angela-merkel-crisis-global-minotaur-capitalism-europeHis game theory background is on display here, since he's looking at how Germany's self interest conflicts with itself.
Quote:Interestingly, one of the great secrets of the post-2008 period is that the Minotaur’s death adversely affected aggregate demand in the eurozone’s surplus countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland) more than it did the deficit member states (like Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece). While the sudden withdrawal of capital from the deficit countries brought about their insolvency, countries like Germany saw their “fundamentals” more grievously affected by the crash of 2008. This fact, in conjunction with the terrible squeeze on German wages, explains the deeper causes of the animosity in places like Germany that so very easily translates into anger against the Greeks and assorted Mediterraneans – feelings that are then reciprocated, thus giving the wheel of intra-European animosities another spin, favouring the rise of xenophobia, even Nazism (in countries like Greece, quite incredibly), and thus leading to a wholesale readiness to push all the yellow, as opposed to the red, buttons in sight.i seriously pondered placing this post in the conspiracy thread for its far-fetched conclusions on Varoufakishttp://journal-neo.org/2015/07/03/what-stinks-about-varoufakis-and-the-whole-greek-mess/
Quote:Varoufakis’ role has been to act as the Western bankers’ Trojan Horse inside the Greek government, to prepare Greece and the Greek people for the slaughter, all the while posing as the tire-less fighter for Greek interestsFirst appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2015/07/03/what-stinks-about-varoufakis-and-the-whole-greek-mess/
There's another Syriza government official who once understood things differently: Manousos Manousakis. See his current position here.Under the name of "Manos" and "Woland" he was active in a "communisation group". Since, according to wikipedia, this is what "communisers" stand for, he's certainly changed his views for the worse:
Quote:In communist political theory, communization is the process of abolishing ownership of the means of production, which, in societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production, are owned by individual capitalists, states, or other collective bodies. In some versions of communist theory, communization is understood as the transfer of ownership from private capitalist hands to the collective hands of producers, whether in the form of co-operative enterprises or communes, or through the mediation of a state or federation of workers' councils on a local, national, or global scale. In other programs, such as those of some left communists (e.g. Gilles Dauvé), autonomists (e.g., Mario Tronti), and libertarian communists (e.g. Peter Kropotkin), communization means the abolition of property itself along with any state-like institutions claiming to represent a given subset of humanity. In these accounts humanity as a whole, directly or indirectly, would take over the task of the production of goods for use (and not for exchange). People would then have free access to those goods rather than exchanging labor for money, and distribution would take place according to the maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."The definition on the French facebook page of the group he was a member of says:
Quote:"Communization" is the concept of the abolition of capital, the State, classes and the proletariat by itself in a communist revolution, without a "socialist" or worker-controlled [autogestion] transition.His defection is causing a bit of a stir in anarchist and ultra-left circles.
This article from the New York Times explains the background to the "Greek problem" quite well, i.e without the sensationalisation of most media reports at the moment:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/greece-debt-crisis-euro.html?_r=0
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