Thursday, March 05, 2015

The Shorty Long of It

1.  The Short

--Submit the "reform package" agreed to by Syriza government to the parliament for a vote
--No to the "reform package" agreed to by the Syriza ministers
--No confidence in the Syriza government
--Repudiate the debt, the MFFA, and the reforms in their entirety.

2. The Long

Somewhere along the curve of the universe that is this space-time continuum, Alexander Pope runs into Hungry Joe, King of the Bunco men.  The result of that heroic couplet is a grade A, class 1 mash up of cosmic proportions that goes like this:  Hope springs eternal in the human breast because there's a sucker born every minute. 

No sooner does the Syriza government reverse its "policy" regarding the extension of and compliance with the 2012 agreement and its so-called reforms, than our eternalists take hope from the very bleakness of the situation.  Syriza has "bought time."  To do what, exactly?

The victory/defeat won by the government has a "due by" date of four months.  At the end of four months....

At the end of four months, the final tranche(s) of the bailout money is, or is not, released to the government, and the money, except for €8.2 billion held by the IMF for distribution through 2015-2016 is... gone.  Vanished, disappeared, gone.   The "reforms" however, like the debt, are supposed to last forever, and at €317 billion, the debt is pretty certain to last forever-- or  until it is abolished.

So the eternalists, despite all noises made to the contrary, despite the "emphatic statements" of Prime Minister Tsipras  are, more or less, committed to yet another bailout, because, much more than less, none of the "reforms" will generate sufficient cash flow to sustain the government. Without the guarantee of the guarantors-- the ECB, the IMF, and the European Commission-- the international credit markets, having been compelled to submit to one Greek haircut earlier, aren't about to Sweeney Todd themselves one more time. At least not without charging an interest rate that factors in the price of the haircut and thus consumes more of the meager cash flowing to the government.

Now the "reform package" that is supposed to revive the cash flows and make Greece's sovereign debt instruments marketable requires devaluation, deflation, liquidation of government assets and government obligations.  This liquidation is in direct contradiction with the generation of taxable revenues for the government. 

Much has been made in the press, by the Eurogroup, the IMF, and the Syriza ministers about tax evaders but the fact is that much of the lost tax revenue is lost from people who are too poor, not too rich, to pay taxes.  Nothing in the reform package remedies the raging poverty in Greece.

More revenue is lost as those companies providing basic services on a contract basis to the government  have not been paid, and can no longer provide the service (in particular in the health care sector).  


There is no solution to the predicament of Greece based on the reforms, the current bailout, or future bailouts that preserve the debt.  Yanis Varoufakis, when questioned about a scheduled debt repayment due the IMF at the end of this month said he was prepared to "squeeze blood from a stone" to meet that obligation.  The problem is of course that stones can't bleed; and human beings aren't rocks. 

3. Function: Hungry Joe meets the Alexander Papists

Some take heart from the apparent dissent of Syria's left wing, "The Left Platform," from the reform package.  The depth of the dissent is supposedly great enough that 40% of the Syriza representatives in parliament oppose the reform package. An "amendment" (amending what?) expressing that dissent states:
In the immediate future, SYRIZA, despite the agreements of the Eurogroup should take the initiative of implementing steadily and as a matter of priority its commitments and the content of its programmatic governmental statement.
To go down that road, we have to rely on workers' and popular struggles, to contribute to their revitalization, and to the continuous expansion of popular support in order to resist any form of blackmail and promote the perspective of an alternative plan promoting the full realization of our radical objections.
The main conclusion of the latest developments is the necessity, which is of decisive importance for the course we will follow, that decisions should be taken following a discussion in the leading party instances, which have, jointly with the party and the party branches as a whole, to upgrade their function and play a leading role in the new progressive course of our country.  
Of course, the fact that the "Left Platform" wants these discussions to be confined to the party organization; that these discussions are not conducted "outside" the party structure, in public, and on the floor of the parliament, means that this bloc regards the "workers' and popular struggles" as an adjunct to Syriza, as a "pressure group" rather than the means and ends for a class that must organize itself to take power.

4.  Junction

The inflection point, the moment of transition, for the class struggle in Greece is the emergence of working class organs of dual power.

The strategy for advancing to that transition point is to deprive the institutions of bourgeois power; the parties; the ministers; the parliament of the support of the workers.

The tactic critical to that strategy is to demand the presentation of the package to the parliament for approval/rejection.

--Submit the "reform package" agreed to by Syriza government to the parliament for a vote
--No to the "reform package" agreed to by the Syriza ministers
--No confidence in the Syriza government
--Repudiate the debt, the MFFA, and the reforms in their entirety.

March 5, 2015



11 comments :

  1. Anonymous12:17 PM

    I appreciate your posts. However, something that I am missing in your polemics is precisely what comes next? So Syriza gets a no-confidence vote, then the debt is repudiated, Greece leaves the EU, then socio-economic chaos of sorts follows.

    However, as far as the revolutionary activity/strategy is concerned, from your perspective, how do you see it furthering our, i.e. revolutionary goals and who would be the actors to make the revolution/class-consciousness etc develop further?

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    Replies
    1. Well, the thing is, it's going to take a mobilization of the population to force this to the parliament floor. And any mobilization requires a bit or organization-- so inherent in the tactic is the building of an organization which is of, by, and for the workers as an organ of independent class power (which BTW makes it clear why the formal CPs despite whatever "left" positions they take are anti-thetical to the class struggle).

      That's what's supposed to come next-- those organizations of class power independent of all "established" organizations-- those participating in the government, or who wish to participate in a future government to "save" capitalism.

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    2. But isn't that the million dollar question? How can that happen without a) some kind of hierarchical structure emerging within those organizations themselves, and b) those organizations being inevitably sucked into the maw of "mainstream" bourgeois politics, alliances, compromises etc? This really troubles me, as sure, yes, there have been historical 'moments', 1917, Spain briefly etc but is it structurally possible to extend those moments into a viable political reality?

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    3. It's the anti-million dollar question. Is it structurally possible to extend those moments? Nothing inherent in the organization of the workers as a class for itself requires the collaboration with, or submission to at some point, the bourgeoisie.

      Yes it is possible.


































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    4. So is it therefore reasonable to extrapolate that 95% of those who call themselves Marxists, Left, Communist, Revolutionaries are not in fact such, and are merely Capitalist Reformers? I mean campaigning for increase in workers' pay, improved conditions etc is all good and honourable, but if that's all there is to it, it it seems fairly uninspiring, and seems to boil down to merely wanting a bigger share of the Capital pie. I have the impression that those on the so-called Left have a Stockholm Syndrome style fetish for bourgeois democracy that they continually need to trumpet lest they offend anyone.

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    5. I don't know about 95%, and I know I get in trouble whenever I start worrying about what's reasonable or not. There is supposed to be a process of development and transformation in the class struggle-- 95% of Marxists may in fact be representative of 60 or 70% of the working class at a given movement.

      But it's a moment, and as such, is subject to rapid, even revolutionary, change.

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    6. Ok. I was wondering if I could trouble you with one final question. I've been reading about Amadeo Bordiga and have been impressed by the brief glimpse. Is he worth pursuing? Many thanks.

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    7. Yes, I think he's worth reading-- critically. I think Trotsky's worth reading-- critically. And Luxemburg. And Paul Levi. and Soboul on the French Revolution. And a million others.

      Not worth reading? Lukacs.

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  2. Maybe I'm just naive, but when I see people like Varoufakis talk about "reforming capitalism" and "saving capitalism from itself" and that being echoed by people on the Left like Alex Callinicos etc I wonder if I have Marx all wrong. Isn't the point of Marx the ultimate abolition of Capitalism and not bending over backwards to accommodate onself to it under the guise of "reforming" it?

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, that is the point-- the complete, entire, "whole" of Marx's critique-- the abolition of capitalism; not the mitigation of, salvation of, softening of, humanizing of etc etc etc as if any of those things are possible without, at the exact same time, exacerbating the destructiveness, the severity of, the dehumanizing nature of capitalism.

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  3. Anonymous8:21 AM

    Seems Varoufakis is going to go all 1984: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31780354

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