The challenge to, and the predicament of struggle in Greece is not one of "good" or "bad;" nor of "electoralism" versus "anti-electoralism;" nor of parliamentary, or ministerial, cretinism vs. anti-parliamentary popular power (in this last case, not yet).
The challenge is to identify the forces that are driving the conflict in Greece.
1) Is
the situation in Greece, the predicament of capitalism, and impoverishment of the population, part and parcel of an overall international capitalist predicament-- which is made manifest by overproduction, impaired accumulation, declining profitability-- that can only be
resolved through either a) the abolition of capitalism or b)
destruction, and on a large scale of the means of production and living
labor-power?
2)Or is it the case that Greece represents an isolated condition,
amenable to solutions outside the establishment of dual power by a class
opposed to capitalism and the bourgeoisie?
3)Can "anti-austerity" be decoupled from anti-capitalism? Can the welfare of the population be restored without repudiating, in its entirety, the debt obligations of Greek capital?
If (2) or (3) then go right ahead and jump on the Syriza bandwagon. Join the Syriza party. Lobby for a position in the Syriza government. Pretend Syriza represents something like Chavez in 1998, not Chile 1973, while Venezuela itself tumbles backward towards 1973.
But if the answer is (1), then Syriza is, on the basis of its
organization, policy, and program, an obstacle and will, as all of its
"popular power" predecessors have, only serve to enable 1(b).
February 13, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Study Guide For those applying to the School of Anti-Economics
Rumor has it that our GameBoy, Yanis Varoufakis, Minister of Finance and VIB (very important blogger) somewhere said something like:
" Marx’s first error, the one that I suggest was due to omission, was that he was insufficiently dialectical, insufficiently reflexive. He failed to give sufficient thought, and kept a judicious silence, over the impact of his own theorizing on the world that he was theorizing about. His theory is discursively exceptionally powerful, and Marx had got whiff of its power. How come he showed no concern that his disciples, people with a better grasp of these powerful ideas than the average worker, might use the power bestowed upon them, via Marx’s own ideas, in order to abuse other comrades, to build their own power base, to gain positions of influence, to bed impressionable students etc.?
To give a second example, we know that the success of the Russian Revolution caused capitalism, in due course, strategically to recoil and to concede pension schemes and national health services, even the idea of forcing the rich to pay for masses of poor students to attend purpose-built liberal colleges and universities. At the same time, we also saw how the rabid hostility to the Soviet Union, with a series of invasions as the prime example, stirred up paranoia amongst socialists and created a climate of fear which proved particularly fertile for figures like Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot. Marx never saw this dialectical process coming. He just did not consider the possibility that the creation of a workers’ state would force capitalism to become more civilised while the workers’ state would be infected with the virus of totalitarianism as the hostility of the rest of the (capitalist) world towards it grew and grew.
Look, if I thought what this self-aggrandizing, superficial, strutting, pompous fuck said about Marx made a milligram's worth of difference in the class struggle, I would be really, really, really upset.Marx’s second error, the one I ascribe to commission, was worse. It was his assumption that truth about capitalism could be discovered in the mathematics of his models (the so-called ‘schemas of reproduction’). This was the worst disservice Marx could have delivered to his own theoretical system. The man who equipped us with human freedom as a first order economic concept; the scholar who elevated radical indeterminacy to its rightful place within political economics; he was the same person who ended up toying around with simplistic algebraic models, in which labour units were, naturally, fully quantified, hoping against hope to evince from these equations some additional insights about capitalism. After his death, Marxist economists wasted long careers indulging a similar type of scholastic mechanism, ending up with what Nietzsche once described as “the pieces of mechanism that have come to grief”. Fully immersed in irrelevant debates on the transformation problem and what to do about it, they eventually became an almost extinct species, as the neoliberal juggernaut crushed all dissent in its path."
But it doesn't, and he doesn't. He's playing a part in the recuperation, the re-composition of capitalism by the loyal pretend-opposition. He flaunts his ignorance of Marx as "Marxist economics" when in fact Marx's work is the end of "economics," as it was the end of "philosophy." He thinks he, the minister to finance, embodies the prospects for an "enlightened capitalism" when he embodies the oxymoron that "enlightened capitalism" is, was, and always will be.
Somebody who takes this former economist-in-residence for the Cartoon Network or Casino.Com, or whatever it was, more seriously than I do might ask him what exactly he means not by "insufficiently dialectical," but rather what he means by "dialectical"? What are the expressions, components, features that identify things, thoughts, relations as "dialectical"? What expressions, components, features that identify things, thoughts, relations as "dialectical" are present, utilized, and demonstrated in Marx's critique of capital?
Somebody who took GameBoy for something other than he what he is might ask him what constitutes the "dialectic" of capital, and where is it located, in the critique of capital or in the actual processes and relations of accumulation, of the production of value? That's just for starters.
Then somebody might point out to GameBoy that rather than being silent or indifferent to what his "followers" did or might do, Marx's correspondence, his work in the International Workingmen's Association, his programmatic writings are in fact reports of his battles with those who would "abuse other comrades, build their own power base, to gain positions of influence..." Wait a minute... did GameBoy, our fresh-faced Minister of Finance, really criticize Marx for the actions of those who use Marx's name and claim allegiance to Marx's work in order to "gain positions of influence" ?
Like maybe getting a top position in a government ministry?
Yes, he did: "Karl, you procrastinating bastard. You undialectical son-of-a-bitch. You didn't anticipate what I would do. It's your fault. I'm all your fault."
But Yanis isn't done. Marx after all didn't see the coming of the "welfare state," the "workers state" (deformed, degenerated, or otherwise; with or without peasants); Marx didn't see how the creation of the "workers state" "would force capitalism to become more civilized."
Right, Marx was not clairvoyant, and he did not foresee events 34 to 132 years after his death. But "more civilized" after the creation of the "workers state"? I don't know what GameBoy counts as more civilized in his auditing of capitalist development, but let's see: after 1917 we have-- the massive slaughters and population "exchanges" in Greece and Turkey; we have the Great Depression; we have Japanese capitalism's assault on China; we have World War 2; we have the immolation of millions; we have nuclear immolation of hundreds of thousands; we have famine in India; we have famines in Africa; we have the Contras against Nicaragua; we have Rios Montt in Guatemala; we have death squads in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa; we have crack inflicted upon African-American communities in the US; we have Yeltsin; we have the "Natasha trade;" we have Israel expelling and terrorizing Palestinians; we have failed states. We've got pretty much everything but none of it amounts to capitalism becoming "more civilized."
Clearly, GameBoy doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't have to know, because his trade, his profession, his business, has been and is now to keep others from knowing. So we get GameBoy's next "criticism" of Marx: namely that Marx crippled the struggle for...(what? more civilized capitalism?) by his use of schemes of reproduction. Somehow this dependence on mathematics made blunt the razor of Marx's critique of capital. Except...except Marx never published his schemas of reproduction. Marx never utilized schemes of reproduction to prove the specific, historical conditions that gave rise to capitalism, and that capitalism had to recreate in its every process. Marx utilized schemes of reproduction to examine the problems that beset capitalism as a mode of reproduction that had to expand itself in order to survive.
These problems were in fact expressions of the conflict, the opposition at the core of capital; the conflict that gave capital its very existence and therefore determined its every limitation; the conflict between labor and the condition of labor; the conflict between labor as the means, the relations, for the development of social beings through the satisfaction and creation of needs and labor-power compelled to exist as a commodity; as a value, as value-producing, having no other use for the laborers than as a means of exchange for subsistence.
GameBoy, knowing nothing, conflates Marx's schemes of reproduction with the "transformation problem" that became an issue of debate for other professors of economics. He can then blame all-- Marx, Marxists, Marxist economists-- for the triumph of so-called "neo-liberalism." (See previous comment about not knowing but only needing to prevent others from knowing).
As if... as if it wasn't Pinochet's coup that crushed the working class in Chile, as if it wasn't the crushing of the working class that gave the Chicago Boys a field to play on; as if it wasn't the refusal of the UP government to break the military discipline by introducing class struggle into the very core of the armed forces that allowed the military to function of, by, and for the bourgeoisie. Nope, it was the fault of "Marxist economists" worried about the transformation problem.
Well, here's a newsflash, GameBoy, not a single economist in the Unidad Popular government was worried about the transformation problem. Many of them were quite worried about the cordones industriales acting outside the control of the government. Many of them were quite concerned about "alienating" the "middle class."
The real "problem" Yanis has with Marx isn't about dialectics, or "civilization," or expanded reproduction. For Marx there is no "economics." There are no "problems of economics" that can be resolved outside the emancipation of labor and without class struggle. That's Yanis' problem.
February 12, 2015
Monday, February 09, 2015
Greece: GameBoy at the PlayStation
1. Road Trip
All dressed up in his Roy Batty best, the new finance minister of Greece, Yanis "GameBoy" Varoufakis was on the road. Laptop, Ipad, and PlayStation all synched, linked, and tethered, he was a man in full in that great digital daisy chain of bankers, academics, politicians. and entertainers.
Fast Yani played a couple of warm-up games with Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and France's FM, Michel Sapin before moving on to Frankfurt to take on Snake Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, and Germany's FM, Wolfgang "Rollerblade" Schäuble.
Tables were reserved, menus decided, bets were down, deals off. "Send in the clown," said Snake.
"Fresh meat," was all Rollerblade would admit.
2. Kill Shot
GameBoy didn't make out too well in Deutschland. Snake and Rollerblade ran the table on him, sending him back the way, and the way, he came-- empty handed and pocket empty. Snake put an exclamation point of the victory by decertifying Greece's sovereign debt as acceptable collateral for those banks seeking to secure loans from the ECB system. "Fresh meat," as Rollerblade said.
GameBoy had declared that he wanted to put an end to the charade of extend and pretend. Snake, as head of the ECB, is an accommodating sort, and so he gave GameBoy what he had said he wanted.
Greece's sovereign debt, Snake declared, would no longer be accepted as collateral. No collateral, no loans.
The financial markets reacted, of course, but markets are inherently inefficient, slovenly, and shallow. They are unable to comprehend the predicament they are in-- not until they are in it--but precisely because they are in it.
The other shoe had been dropped. If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable collateral, then the secondary market for the debt was done, gone, finished. Dead meat. If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable collateral than the existing loans backed by that debt could not be refinanced. If the existing loans could not be refinanced, then their value could not be realized, and had discounted value only in their prospects for rapid liquidation, in fools finding bigger fools.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then could it count as "core capital" for banks to use as an "offset" for exposure to "risk"? Obviously not.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then could it be exchanged by banks in overnight repo markets to meet liquidity requirements? Obviously not.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then what does that mean for the Greek sovereign debt held by.......the various governments and institutions of the European Union?
Who are the major holders of Greece's sovereign debt? The previous private holders of the debt had all been, more or less, bought out, hair-cutted, but mostly paid-off by the second bailout effort concluded in 2012.
Of the "new" "restructured" debt, the troika held approximately €248 billion...with Germany holding approximately €60 billion of that.
After the 2010 negotiations, but before the 2012 agreements, Greece's debt obligations were estimated at €310 billion and 162 percent of GDP.
In 2014, after two years of servicing the debt, the amount outstanding was €317 billion and 174 percent of GDP.
Snake drew a bead on GameBoy and fired. Bulls-eye.
"Scheisse! Ich bin getroffen!" said Wolfgang biting the bullet that had lodged in his mouth.
Word: where ever values are exchanged, force has already been; where ever exchange-- circulation and recirculation, finance and refinance-- breaks down, force is just around the corner.
3. Being There
Somebody told GameBoy that 90 percent of everything was just showing up in the first place, and he believed it. A mistake. Just showing up counts if you've already got something in hand-- a bird, a firearm, a credit card, etc. Yanis had nothing... or rather nothing but proposals. He proposed debt-swaps-- swapping the existing obligations for "new" obligations that paid in proportion with the growth in Greece's GDP.
Snake laughed out loud. "Do I look like I just fell off a truck loaded with zucchini?" he asked. "We did that two years ago when we took over the debt from the private investors, from the commercial banks, from the hedge funds. We provided them with "detached" GDP linked securities to ease the razor-burn of the hair-cut. How do you think that's worked out for them? Good?"
GameBoy had a plan B. He proposed "perpetuity bonds;" bonds without a fixed date of maturity that paid interest forever, or until redeemed at face value by the issuer.
"Who do you think you are?" snorted Rollerblade, spitting teeth. "Great Britain? You want us to accept debt that doesn't rollover because you are unable to issue debt that can rollover? This isn't 1914, and we don't have 100 years to wait for redemption."
4. The Numbers
Greece's economy has contracted by approximately 24 percent since 2009. The average annual rate of growth for the last 5 years has been a negative 4.4 percent. According to the World Trade Organization, in 2013 Greece merchandise exports measured €36.6 million, 3 percent below the 2005 level.
Imports in 2013 measured €62.1 billion, 27 percent below the 2005 mark. The collapse in Greece has been determined not by the "financialization" of assets; not in the accumulation of "fictitious capital" but in the inability of the Greek bourgeoisie to exploit the labor-power of workers in Greece intensely enough to finance the capital flows so essential to Greek capitalism's own margins of profit.
The attempt to remedy the "debt problem" within the framework of capitalism means that every attempt succeeds or fails on the ability to amplify the impoverishment of the population; on driving wages down; on dismantling health-care, education, public transport. There is no solution that "preserves," or complies with, debt obligations that will not reinforce the liquidation of assets, both accumulated and living. There is no program of "growth," of "improved welfare" that can exist without repudiating, first and foremost, these debt obligation.
5. The Game, boy
Yanis, once "economist-in-residence" at Valve, a company that develops and distributes video games calls himself a "decent second-rate economist." He forgot to add he tends toward redundancy. He also doesn't have a clue as to the stakes are in what he thinks is a game.
First, it's no game. Real people, real classes are engaged in a struggle. Secondly, sooner rather than later push comes to shove. Push always comes to shove, and that means this all comes down to the.....military.
Greece's military has benefited mightily from the assumption of debt used to finance the purchase of defective submarines, operable fighter jets, and armored vehicles whose functionality and efficiency in preserving... well, in preserving the Greek military, awaits its live-fire test.
GameBoy says he's "fighting the good fight," but neither he nor his Syriza colleagues are capable of fighting period. They have stitched themselves up into the trick back of "order," of private property, of capitalism.
The single greatest challenge facing the Greek working class is demanding the immediate, unconditional default by the government on the debt. After that, the greatest challenge will be breaking the discipline of the military by winning the ranks to its, the workers discipline; to its, the workers organizations.
February 9, 2015
All dressed up in his Roy Batty best, the new finance minister of Greece, Yanis "GameBoy" Varoufakis was on the road. Laptop, Ipad, and PlayStation all synched, linked, and tethered, he was a man in full in that great digital daisy chain of bankers, academics, politicians. and entertainers.
Fast Yani played a couple of warm-up games with Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and France's FM, Michel Sapin before moving on to Frankfurt to take on Snake Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, and Germany's FM, Wolfgang "Rollerblade" Schäuble.
Tables were reserved, menus decided, bets were down, deals off. "Send in the clown," said Snake.
"Fresh meat," was all Rollerblade would admit.
2. Kill Shot
GameBoy didn't make out too well in Deutschland. Snake and Rollerblade ran the table on him, sending him back the way, and the way, he came-- empty handed and pocket empty. Snake put an exclamation point of the victory by decertifying Greece's sovereign debt as acceptable collateral for those banks seeking to secure loans from the ECB system. "Fresh meat," as Rollerblade said.
GameBoy had declared that he wanted to put an end to the charade of extend and pretend. Snake, as head of the ECB, is an accommodating sort, and so he gave GameBoy what he had said he wanted.
Greece's sovereign debt, Snake declared, would no longer be accepted as collateral. No collateral, no loans.
The financial markets reacted, of course, but markets are inherently inefficient, slovenly, and shallow. They are unable to comprehend the predicament they are in-- not until they are in it--but precisely because they are in it.
The other shoe had been dropped. If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable collateral, then the secondary market for the debt was done, gone, finished. Dead meat. If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable collateral than the existing loans backed by that debt could not be refinanced. If the existing loans could not be refinanced, then their value could not be realized, and had discounted value only in their prospects for rapid liquidation, in fools finding bigger fools.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then could it count as "core capital" for banks to use as an "offset" for exposure to "risk"? Obviously not.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then could it be exchanged by banks in overnight repo markets to meet liquidity requirements? Obviously not.
If Greece's sovereign debt was not acceptable as collateral for securing loans from the ECB, then what does that mean for the Greek sovereign debt held by.......the various governments and institutions of the European Union?
Who are the major holders of Greece's sovereign debt? The previous private holders of the debt had all been, more or less, bought out, hair-cutted, but mostly paid-off by the second bailout effort concluded in 2012.
Of the "new" "restructured" debt, the troika held approximately €248 billion...with Germany holding approximately €60 billion of that.
After the 2010 negotiations, but before the 2012 agreements, Greece's debt obligations were estimated at €310 billion and 162 percent of GDP.
In 2014, after two years of servicing the debt, the amount outstanding was €317 billion and 174 percent of GDP.
Snake drew a bead on GameBoy and fired. Bulls-eye.
"Scheisse! Ich bin getroffen!" said Wolfgang biting the bullet that had lodged in his mouth.
Word: where ever values are exchanged, force has already been; where ever exchange-- circulation and recirculation, finance and refinance-- breaks down, force is just around the corner.
3. Being There
Somebody told GameBoy that 90 percent of everything was just showing up in the first place, and he believed it. A mistake. Just showing up counts if you've already got something in hand-- a bird, a firearm, a credit card, etc. Yanis had nothing... or rather nothing but proposals. He proposed debt-swaps-- swapping the existing obligations for "new" obligations that paid in proportion with the growth in Greece's GDP.
Snake laughed out loud. "Do I look like I just fell off a truck loaded with zucchini?" he asked. "We did that two years ago when we took over the debt from the private investors, from the commercial banks, from the hedge funds. We provided them with "detached" GDP linked securities to ease the razor-burn of the hair-cut. How do you think that's worked out for them? Good?"
GameBoy had a plan B. He proposed "perpetuity bonds;" bonds without a fixed date of maturity that paid interest forever, or until redeemed at face value by the issuer.
"Who do you think you are?" snorted Rollerblade, spitting teeth. "Great Britain? You want us to accept debt that doesn't rollover because you are unable to issue debt that can rollover? This isn't 1914, and we don't have 100 years to wait for redemption."
4. The Numbers
Greece's economy has contracted by approximately 24 percent since 2009. The average annual rate of growth for the last 5 years has been a negative 4.4 percent. According to the World Trade Organization, in 2013 Greece merchandise exports measured €36.6 million, 3 percent below the 2005 level.
Imports in 2013 measured €62.1 billion, 27 percent below the 2005 mark. The collapse in Greece has been determined not by the "financialization" of assets; not in the accumulation of "fictitious capital" but in the inability of the Greek bourgeoisie to exploit the labor-power of workers in Greece intensely enough to finance the capital flows so essential to Greek capitalism's own margins of profit.
The attempt to remedy the "debt problem" within the framework of capitalism means that every attempt succeeds or fails on the ability to amplify the impoverishment of the population; on driving wages down; on dismantling health-care, education, public transport. There is no solution that "preserves," or complies with, debt obligations that will not reinforce the liquidation of assets, both accumulated and living. There is no program of "growth," of "improved welfare" that can exist without repudiating, first and foremost, these debt obligation.
5. The Game, boy
Yanis, once "economist-in-residence" at Valve, a company that develops and distributes video games calls himself a "decent second-rate economist." He forgot to add he tends toward redundancy. He also doesn't have a clue as to the stakes are in what he thinks is a game.
First, it's no game. Real people, real classes are engaged in a struggle. Secondly, sooner rather than later push comes to shove. Push always comes to shove, and that means this all comes down to the.....military.
Greece's military has benefited mightily from the assumption of debt used to finance the purchase of defective submarines, operable fighter jets, and armored vehicles whose functionality and efficiency in preserving... well, in preserving the Greek military, awaits its live-fire test.
GameBoy says he's "fighting the good fight," but neither he nor his Syriza colleagues are capable of fighting period. They have stitched themselves up into the trick back of "order," of private property, of capitalism.
The single greatest challenge facing the Greek working class is demanding the immediate, unconditional default by the government on the debt. After that, the greatest challenge will be breaking the discipline of the military by winning the ranks to its, the workers discipline; to its, the workers organizations.
February 9, 2015
Wednesday, February 04, 2015
Thumbnail Guide to Sectarianism
Is there anything more ignorant, petty, pathetic, laughable than the way the "left"-- the so-called "left"-- throws around the word "sectarian," aiming it at most everybody within its domain, and all of us outside?
So let's clarify, using the example of the 1970-1973 situation in Chile:
Refusal to support, participate in or enter the government of the Unidad Popular?
Not sectarian.
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter the cordones industriales because they, the cordones supported the Unidad Popular government?
Sectarian.
Moving the clock ahead some 43, 42 years:
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter the Syriza government?
Not sectarian.
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter assemblies, councils, associations, and/or demonstrations of popular power because already established groups in those assemblies etc. do support the Syriza government?
Sectarian.
Carry this guide with you. Refer to it as often as necessary whenever the hack left and its hack leftists deploy their sectarian drones.
S. Artesian
February 4, 2015
So let's clarify, using the example of the 1970-1973 situation in Chile:
Refusal to support, participate in or enter the government of the Unidad Popular?
Not sectarian.
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter the cordones industriales because they, the cordones supported the Unidad Popular government?
Sectarian.
Moving the clock ahead some 43, 42 years:
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter the Syriza government?
Not sectarian.
Refusal to support, participate in, or enter assemblies, councils, associations, and/or demonstrations of popular power because already established groups in those assemblies etc. do support the Syriza government?
Sectarian.
Carry this guide with you. Refer to it as often as necessary whenever the hack left and its hack leftists deploy their sectarian drones.
S. Artesian
February 4, 2015
Monday, February 02, 2015
For Everything Else...
...there's Mastercard. The Telegraph is reporting that Greece's Finance Ministry has hired the investment banking group Lazard to advise it on issues of debt and fiscal policy.
Those of you who are old enough will remember Allende bringing into his cabinet three senior military officers. These officers were co-opted in order to placate the bourgeoisie after their counterrevolutionary attempt at a nationwide lockout had been defeated by the spontaneous and self-organized resistance of the Chilean workers.
And if you're old enough to remember that, you will also recall that Lazard's former but not yet dearly departed managing director, Felix Rohatyn was the man placed in charge of New York City's finances in 1975, when bondholders faced the prospect of the city's bankruptcy.
Guess what? In 1966, Rohatyn had become of member of the board of International Telephone and Telegraph. ITT had had a very comfortable relationship with the Third Reich before and during WW2. The company was a 25% owner of Focke-Wulf, the Luftwaffe's favorite fighter plane producer. In the 1960s, ITT received $27 million dollars in compensation from.......the US government for damage its plants in Germany sustained from Allied bombing raids.
Always the patriot, ITT under Harold Geneen helped the CIA, the AFL-CIO and others pump money into the Brazilian military in order to overthrow the government of Joao Goulart.
In 1973, ITT, owner of Chile's El Mercurio newspaper acted as bank and broadsheet for the agitation against, and the funding of the overthrow of the Unidad Popular government.
Circle complete? Almost..
During Rohatyn's chairmanship of the hilariously named Municipal Assistance Corporation, the city deconstructed itself in the service of debt service-- laying off workers, reducing services, freezing wages, shutting libraries, increasing public transport fares, and initiating tuition charges at CUNY (which somehow had managed to remain tuition free during the Great Depression).
Lazard, I mean Felix, Rohatyn's biggest triumph however was demanding that the city and state employees' pension funds purchase MAC bonds, thereby providing the city government the means to transfer whatever wealth workers had accumulated back into the hands of the investment bankers and bondholders.
Hey Yanis, say hello to Felix, who says hello to Harold, who says hello to McCone, who says hello to Henry, who says hello to Augusto, all of whom say "fuck you" to workers everywhere.
Now the circle's complete. Isn't the world a really small and cozy place?
"Restructuring" Greece's debt with the advice of Lazard is like asking Ted Bundy to cater your daughter's bat mitzvah.
There really is no alternative..... to the need for an immediate and complete default by government on its debt.
Fuck you Yanis, and you too Alexis and the dead horses you ride in on. If there's anything to be "paid back" it's this goddam daisy chain of corporate murderers you bring with you.
Those of you who are old enough will remember Allende bringing into his cabinet three senior military officers. These officers were co-opted in order to placate the bourgeoisie after their counterrevolutionary attempt at a nationwide lockout had been defeated by the spontaneous and self-organized resistance of the Chilean workers.
And if you're old enough to remember that, you will also recall that Lazard's former but not yet dearly departed managing director, Felix Rohatyn was the man placed in charge of New York City's finances in 1975, when bondholders faced the prospect of the city's bankruptcy.
Guess what? In 1966, Rohatyn had become of member of the board of International Telephone and Telegraph. ITT had had a very comfortable relationship with the Third Reich before and during WW2. The company was a 25% owner of Focke-Wulf, the Luftwaffe's favorite fighter plane producer. In the 1960s, ITT received $27 million dollars in compensation from.......the US government for damage its plants in Germany sustained from Allied bombing raids.
Always the patriot, ITT under Harold Geneen helped the CIA, the AFL-CIO and others pump money into the Brazilian military in order to overthrow the government of Joao Goulart.
In 1973, ITT, owner of Chile's El Mercurio newspaper acted as bank and broadsheet for the agitation against, and the funding of the overthrow of the Unidad Popular government.
Circle complete? Almost..
During Rohatyn's chairmanship of the hilariously named Municipal Assistance Corporation, the city deconstructed itself in the service of debt service-- laying off workers, reducing services, freezing wages, shutting libraries, increasing public transport fares, and initiating tuition charges at CUNY (which somehow had managed to remain tuition free during the Great Depression).
Lazard, I mean Felix, Rohatyn's biggest triumph however was demanding that the city and state employees' pension funds purchase MAC bonds, thereby providing the city government the means to transfer whatever wealth workers had accumulated back into the hands of the investment bankers and bondholders.
Hey Yanis, say hello to Felix, who says hello to Harold, who says hello to McCone, who says hello to Henry, who says hello to Augusto, all of whom say "fuck you" to workers everywhere.
Now the circle's complete. Isn't the world a really small and cozy place?
"Restructuring" Greece's debt with the advice of Lazard is like asking Ted Bundy to cater your daughter's bat mitzvah.
There really is no alternative..... to the need for an immediate and complete default by government on its debt.
Fuck you Yanis, and you too Alexis and the dead horses you ride in on. If there's anything to be "paid back" it's this goddam daisy chain of corporate murderers you bring with you.
Yanis and the Beanstalk
1. Shortly after his cordial meeting with Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijesselbloem Greece's new finance minister, Yanis "Killer Joe" Varoufakis appeared on the BBC show "Newsnight."
BBC interviewers fancy themselves to be a hard lot, equal parts DCI Jane Tennison, Jack Spot, and Reverend John Russell's terriers; always ready to interrupt when the answers don't fit the script; always ready to interrupt because that is the script; Savile Row rather than Dr. Martens but with the same threat to stomp.
And Yanis? Academic, VIB (very important blogger), self-confessed advocate of saving European capitalism from the stupidity of its ruling class, expert in game theory, and a serious self-aggrandizing slickster. In short the perfect person to play the role scripted for him as if it were unscripted.
Who knew what might happen? Hadn't Dijesselbloem, taken aback by the candor of Yanis' remarks, simply removed his earpiece after hearing the translation and left the stage with the whisper "You've killed the Troika"? And hadn't Yanis, taken aback by Dijesselbloem's exit line, responded with a simple "Wow"? Wow, as in "did I really say that?" As in, "is that all it takes?" Wow, as in "you thought I was serious?" Wow as in, "this is fun!"
2. Who knew? Maybe the BBC interviewer Emily Maitlis would ask a really hard question about how Greece intended to maintain its imports and exports if banks would not or could not extend letters of credit guaranteeing the trade? Maybe Yanis would cough up a really slick answer that the government would guarantee the continuity of trade arrangement with its gold reserves.
Maybe Emily would ask a different hard question about military budgets vs. social security benefits, and Yanis would provide a slick answer explaining how Greece's military could be a revenue generator. A la Morales, the government was willing to sub-contract its military out as part of UN missions for the occupation of impoverished countries.
After all, keeping the generals busy in Haiti, or Somalia was better than having them accept full time positions working for Herr Schauble and Frau Merkel, nicht wahr?
Dream on, children. Dream big.
3. Between the interruptions of the finance minister, there were the interruptions by the finance minister. As a matter of fact, the interviewer was being out-interrupted in the interview by the interviewee. Clearly, his stage presence, honed by his years impressing graduate and undergraduate students had prepared him for this moment of melodrama.
In between the protests, corrections, complaints about the equipment, etc. a couple of real jewels dropped from lipster's slicks-- correction, I mean slickster's lips.
The Cullinan diamond of those droppings, one that threw a shiver into the not-quite-yet dead bodies of the Troika members, the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF, was Yanis' assertion that the Troika has been handling a condition of insolvency, bankruptcy, as if it were a problem of liquidity.
The interviewer did not ask the interviewee to repeat that, but Yanis did more or less, which after all is how economists do everything-- more or less. He stated that it was time to end the game of "extend and pretend."
The interviewer did not ask him to repeat that either. Of course not, Jack Russell terriers were trained to not draw blood, particularly when it might be their master's blood.
4. Obviously you don't have to be a Marxist, which Yanis confesses he is not (but always while winking, nodding as if we're all "not Marxists"), to know that Greece's predicament, the predicament of banks and governments, the predicament of European capitalism is a condition of insolvency and not a problem of liquidity. Back in the day, Mervyn King, then guv' of the Bank of England said exactly that in those words regarding the general predicament of Europe.
Any number of newspaper columnists, pundits, prize winners of one sort or another have pointed out the game of "extend and pretend" that has been the policy of the ECB before and with Draghi. After all, what was the Long Term Refinancing Operations before Draghi but a short-term extend and pretend? And what has it been with Draghi except an extension of the terms of pretending that increased liquidity was a solution for the devaluation to zero, the insolvency of the entire mode of accumulation?
Draghi took the LTRO program into a new dimension of space and time, where loans to banks were essentially unlimited, free, and with credit rating requirements waived for the Irish, Portuguese, and Greek sovereign debt posted as collateral by the participating banks.
Wait, let me channel the BBC and interrupt right here. Is that right? Credit rating requirements waived for Irish, Portuguese, and Greek sovereign debt posted as collateral for long-term, free loans to banks?
Bull's-eye, catnip! That's exactly what the terms were. For a short-period, the ECB refused to accept the sovereign debt of Greece when S&P rated that debt as being in "selective default," but that restriction was quickly relaxed.
5. So what gives? Why the relaxed, nonchalant, "I'll pretend not to notice you're insolvent, and you'll pretend you're able to repay me" policy of the ECB towards banks; but the "pay or die"-- actually pay and die policy towards Greece? Actually, it's not a pay and die policy towards Greece. It's a pay and die policy towards the people of Greece. And not just any old amorphous people of Greece, but towards the workers of Greece and their children, towards the poor of Greece and their children, towards the elderly of Greece.
The LTRO of the ECB and the austerity of the Troika are the two sides of the coins of the realm-- the heads I win, tails you lose-- cents of Euro. Both the LTRO and the Troika are designed to preserve the property relations that take their most condensed, compact expression in debt. Debt is made the responsibility of the "public," it is the claim on property by property in order to liquidate the labor already accumulated in the means of production.
Refinancing the banks in the LTRO, the application of liquidity to insolvency, preserves the banks' and the states' ability to demand, impose, and execute that liquidation.
6. When Dijesselbloem put down his earpiece and walked away from the table after Yanis had shaken the Troika's beanstalk, he was voting with his feet. Yanis had let the dead cat out the trick bag that had been constructed by the famous Memorandum of Understanding between Greece and the loan sharks of the Troika. Dijesselbloem knew it was time to take a walk.
The Memorandum was not about placing the economy of Greece on the path to recovery; it had nothing to do with relieving the debt. The Memorandum was then and now simply a program of the European bourgeoisie, and its cohorts in Greece, to preserve the bondholders, to liquidate assets, to strip the economy, and torch the workers and poor. The flood of money provided by the ECB to banks in the LTRO is not simply "pointless" or "excess liquidity." It is pointless and liquid like pouring gasoline on a fire is pointless and liquid. It's not pointless when you want to supply the arsonists; when you want to burn the house down; when you want to reduce the residents to ash.
Dijesselbloem knew the cover had been blown. Varoufakis on the other hand was, and is, quite literally playing his game theory. He thinks he can game the EU into debt reduction, with payments pegged to "growth."
The EU, the ECB, and the IMF know--well maybe not know, maybe fear-- that a growth rate adequate to service the debt is unattainable, as the cause of the predicament is in the actual accumulation of capital. The cause is in the massive global overproduction that has overwhelmed the ability of capital to exploit labor at an intensity sufficient to expand markets, at a rate capable of re-valorising the commodities dumped into the markets. Capital's way forward is the path backwards, by devaluing itself, destroying production and driving the price of labor-power below its value, below its cost of reproduction.
7. Capital is and is not acting irrationally, ignorantly, or blindly. It is and is not acting responsibly, with (malice of) forethought, with deliberation. It is acting as capital must act in defense of its property, its property form that encapsulates production; its need to exist as capital.
The issue is not one of "crisis" or "fictitious values" or "national sovereignty." The issue is quite simply has Greece, and Europe, entered a period where the means of production are in conflict with the dominant social relations of production, with the mode of organization of social labor? The answer is yes, and the answer means that Greece, and Europe, confronts a revolutionary condition, and a revolutionary struggle.
"Killer Joe" Varoufakis quite clearly opposes any such conclusion. It his belief that the workers are not "ready" for the conflict and cannot be victorious. The problem is, of course, that a revolutionary condition in society is not determined by the working class pre-existing level of preparation for such a condition. Indeed, how could the workers and poor of Greece, of anywhere, be prepared for the condition, before the moment, the conjuncture erupts? To examine that question reveals the fundamental idealism of the "not yet ready" partisans.
The eruption of a revolutionary condition does not mean the workers are ready to assume power. It does mean that the class has to teach itself the methods of composing itself as a class It does mean that the class has to develop its own organs of power, outside and in opposition to the existing structures of capital: outside and in opposition to its parliaments, outside and in opposition to its executive, outside in opposition to the half-measures of "mitigation" "relief" "adjustment."
For these tasks, the Syriza government is more than inadequate, it will become an obstacle. For these tasks, no "erratic" "confessing" self-aggrandizing slickster is needed.
This ain't no game.
S.Artesian
February 2, 2015
BBC interviewers fancy themselves to be a hard lot, equal parts DCI Jane Tennison, Jack Spot, and Reverend John Russell's terriers; always ready to interrupt when the answers don't fit the script; always ready to interrupt because that is the script; Savile Row rather than Dr. Martens but with the same threat to stomp.
And Yanis? Academic, VIB (very important blogger), self-confessed advocate of saving European capitalism from the stupidity of its ruling class, expert in game theory, and a serious self-aggrandizing slickster. In short the perfect person to play the role scripted for him as if it were unscripted.
Who knew what might happen? Hadn't Dijesselbloem, taken aback by the candor of Yanis' remarks, simply removed his earpiece after hearing the translation and left the stage with the whisper "You've killed the Troika"? And hadn't Yanis, taken aback by Dijesselbloem's exit line, responded with a simple "Wow"? Wow, as in "did I really say that?" As in, "is that all it takes?" Wow, as in "you thought I was serious?" Wow as in, "this is fun!"
2. Who knew? Maybe the BBC interviewer Emily Maitlis would ask a really hard question about how Greece intended to maintain its imports and exports if banks would not or could not extend letters of credit guaranteeing the trade? Maybe Yanis would cough up a really slick answer that the government would guarantee the continuity of trade arrangement with its gold reserves.
Maybe Emily would ask a different hard question about military budgets vs. social security benefits, and Yanis would provide a slick answer explaining how Greece's military could be a revenue generator. A la Morales, the government was willing to sub-contract its military out as part of UN missions for the occupation of impoverished countries.
After all, keeping the generals busy in Haiti, or Somalia was better than having them accept full time positions working for Herr Schauble and Frau Merkel, nicht wahr?
Dream on, children. Dream big.
3. Between the interruptions of the finance minister, there were the interruptions by the finance minister. As a matter of fact, the interviewer was being out-interrupted in the interview by the interviewee. Clearly, his stage presence, honed by his years impressing graduate and undergraduate students had prepared him for this moment of melodrama.
In between the protests, corrections, complaints about the equipment, etc. a couple of real jewels dropped from lipster's slicks-- correction, I mean slickster's lips.
The Cullinan diamond of those droppings, one that threw a shiver into the not-quite-yet dead bodies of the Troika members, the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF, was Yanis' assertion that the Troika has been handling a condition of insolvency, bankruptcy, as if it were a problem of liquidity.
The interviewer did not ask the interviewee to repeat that, but Yanis did more or less, which after all is how economists do everything-- more or less. He stated that it was time to end the game of "extend and pretend."
The interviewer did not ask him to repeat that either. Of course not, Jack Russell terriers were trained to not draw blood, particularly when it might be their master's blood.
4. Obviously you don't have to be a Marxist, which Yanis confesses he is not (but always while winking, nodding as if we're all "not Marxists"), to know that Greece's predicament, the predicament of banks and governments, the predicament of European capitalism is a condition of insolvency and not a problem of liquidity. Back in the day, Mervyn King, then guv' of the Bank of England said exactly that in those words regarding the general predicament of Europe.
Any number of newspaper columnists, pundits, prize winners of one sort or another have pointed out the game of "extend and pretend" that has been the policy of the ECB before and with Draghi. After all, what was the Long Term Refinancing Operations before Draghi but a short-term extend and pretend? And what has it been with Draghi except an extension of the terms of pretending that increased liquidity was a solution for the devaluation to zero, the insolvency of the entire mode of accumulation?
Draghi took the LTRO program into a new dimension of space and time, where loans to banks were essentially unlimited, free, and with credit rating requirements waived for the Irish, Portuguese, and Greek sovereign debt posted as collateral by the participating banks.
Wait, let me channel the BBC and interrupt right here. Is that right? Credit rating requirements waived for Irish, Portuguese, and Greek sovereign debt posted as collateral for long-term, free loans to banks?
Bull's-eye, catnip! That's exactly what the terms were. For a short-period, the ECB refused to accept the sovereign debt of Greece when S&P rated that debt as being in "selective default," but that restriction was quickly relaxed.
5. So what gives? Why the relaxed, nonchalant, "I'll pretend not to notice you're insolvent, and you'll pretend you're able to repay me" policy of the ECB towards banks; but the "pay or die"-- actually pay and die policy towards Greece? Actually, it's not a pay and die policy towards Greece. It's a pay and die policy towards the people of Greece. And not just any old amorphous people of Greece, but towards the workers of Greece and their children, towards the poor of Greece and their children, towards the elderly of Greece.
The LTRO of the ECB and the austerity of the Troika are the two sides of the coins of the realm-- the heads I win, tails you lose-- cents of Euro. Both the LTRO and the Troika are designed to preserve the property relations that take their most condensed, compact expression in debt. Debt is made the responsibility of the "public," it is the claim on property by property in order to liquidate the labor already accumulated in the means of production.
Refinancing the banks in the LTRO, the application of liquidity to insolvency, preserves the banks' and the states' ability to demand, impose, and execute that liquidation.
6. When Dijesselbloem put down his earpiece and walked away from the table after Yanis had shaken the Troika's beanstalk, he was voting with his feet. Yanis had let the dead cat out the trick bag that had been constructed by the famous Memorandum of Understanding between Greece and the loan sharks of the Troika. Dijesselbloem knew it was time to take a walk.
The Memorandum was not about placing the economy of Greece on the path to recovery; it had nothing to do with relieving the debt. The Memorandum was then and now simply a program of the European bourgeoisie, and its cohorts in Greece, to preserve the bondholders, to liquidate assets, to strip the economy, and torch the workers and poor. The flood of money provided by the ECB to banks in the LTRO is not simply "pointless" or "excess liquidity." It is pointless and liquid like pouring gasoline on a fire is pointless and liquid. It's not pointless when you want to supply the arsonists; when you want to burn the house down; when you want to reduce the residents to ash.
Dijesselbloem knew the cover had been blown. Varoufakis on the other hand was, and is, quite literally playing his game theory. He thinks he can game the EU into debt reduction, with payments pegged to "growth."
The EU, the ECB, and the IMF know--well maybe not know, maybe fear-- that a growth rate adequate to service the debt is unattainable, as the cause of the predicament is in the actual accumulation of capital. The cause is in the massive global overproduction that has overwhelmed the ability of capital to exploit labor at an intensity sufficient to expand markets, at a rate capable of re-valorising the commodities dumped into the markets. Capital's way forward is the path backwards, by devaluing itself, destroying production and driving the price of labor-power below its value, below its cost of reproduction.
7. Capital is and is not acting irrationally, ignorantly, or blindly. It is and is not acting responsibly, with (malice of) forethought, with deliberation. It is acting as capital must act in defense of its property, its property form that encapsulates production; its need to exist as capital.
The issue is not one of "crisis" or "fictitious values" or "national sovereignty." The issue is quite simply has Greece, and Europe, entered a period where the means of production are in conflict with the dominant social relations of production, with the mode of organization of social labor? The answer is yes, and the answer means that Greece, and Europe, confronts a revolutionary condition, and a revolutionary struggle.
"Killer Joe" Varoufakis quite clearly opposes any such conclusion. It his belief that the workers are not "ready" for the conflict and cannot be victorious. The problem is, of course, that a revolutionary condition in society is not determined by the working class pre-existing level of preparation for such a condition. Indeed, how could the workers and poor of Greece, of anywhere, be prepared for the condition, before the moment, the conjuncture erupts? To examine that question reveals the fundamental idealism of the "not yet ready" partisans.
The eruption of a revolutionary condition does not mean the workers are ready to assume power. It does mean that the class has to teach itself the methods of composing itself as a class It does mean that the class has to develop its own organs of power, outside and in opposition to the existing structures of capital: outside and in opposition to its parliaments, outside and in opposition to its executive, outside in opposition to the half-measures of "mitigation" "relief" "adjustment."
For these tasks, the Syriza government is more than inadequate, it will become an obstacle. For these tasks, no "erratic" "confessing" self-aggrandizing slickster is needed.
This ain't no game.
S.Artesian
February 2, 2015
Saturday, January 31, 2015
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