--Hey Yanni, Wanna see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?
--Again?
Alexis
Tsipras, one time star of student government and summer stock before
graduating to bourgeois government and dinner theater, has pulled off
what one of his predecessors could only dream of doing: posing the demands of
the EU for the impoverishment of current and future generations as a
referendum for the "people" to vote upon.
George Papandreou thought
he would put those terms in a referendum back in 2011 only to get
called to Cannes and on the carpet by Nicolas and Angela
Sarkozy-Merkel. Good dog that he was, and is, Papandreou abandoned the
idea of a referendum, and his premiership.
Papandreou
thought he was saving his country, first with the referendum proposal,
and then in resigning his premiership. Self-delusion is the most important element of self-aggrandizement.
Tsipras' target is not quite as lofty, but his aim is better. His actions are about saving himself and his party, or rather his position in the party. By calling for the referendum, Slick Alexis avoids a confrontation with the "left" of Syriza and finesses the possibility of split that will lead to a no-confidence vote in his government. The proposal for a referendum is the one action Tsipras can take to the parliament for authorization that does not risk party discipline
The referendum is proposed for July 5, five days after the current memorandum expires, and with it any further release of funds under the terms of that agreement. So....
...all those "left" posers who have been arguing that "there is no alternative;" that Syriza has to negotiate an extension to the memorandum, not matter how painful, or "things will get worse," now have to explain away the fact that apparently there is an alternative, and all it takes is a referendum.
...all those socialist/keynesian/democratic/responsible "leftists" who have been arguing that Greece is a "dependent economy," inextricably tied to, not Europe, but the European Union, will now have to explain that why, if Greece is a "dependent economy," the vote should not be for approving the Troika's demands.
Not that things won't get worse. Not that thing's haven't already become worse. But "getting worse" is irrelevant when the current and future condition of social welfare, of living standards, of health care, of education, was, is, and will remain catastrophic.
So what matters is the action taken by and through the organizations of the class that is forced to confront the continuing catastrophe for what it is-- capitalism.
For the six months of its elected life, Syriza has struggled mightily, in a mirror image of the bourgeoisie's proposals for a "stronger" monetary, fiscal, and economic union, to "ringfence" the issue of the sovereign debt: to separate the debt from the preservation of capitalism. The Troika was having none of that. They knew that no such separation exists-- that the debt is the product of dependence; is the connection of Greece's economy to the European Union; compresses the entire history of Greece's relations with the "Great Powers" of Europe.
Syriza is a failure. The referendum is Syriza's admission of failure. The referendum should not be boycotted. It must be converted from a vote on the Troika's demands into a repudiation of the debt in its entirety; a repudiation of the European Union for what it is-- a bloc of the bourgeoisie; the repudiation of the euro for being what it is-- the means of transferring wealth from the weak to the strong; the repudiation of Syriza for being what it is-- a vehicle for obstructing the social revolution against capital.
June 27, 2015
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
trouble with a small-case p
In response to this, published by the International Marxist Tendency:
That's some Marxism, all right. "On your knees," says the unrepentant proyect. "Eyes on the floor... or else."
Or else what? Pensions are going to be cut more? Unemployment is going to go up? More hospitals won't be able to obtain more supplies? Exactly what is going to begin that hasn't already begun? Exactly what "troubles" are going to be inflicted that have not already been visited upon the population? And what troubles will not be intensified if Greece reaches an agreement with the Troika?
I'd label proyect a social-democrat, but there's no evidence that proyect does or says anything for any reason other than his need for self-aggrandizement. He lacks the empirical knowledge, and the ideological coherence to even qualify for the Socialist International. Proyect's a dissembler intent on acting out his fantasy of creating a party that acts as the political equivalent of a "socially responsible" investment fund.
Of course, the IMT, while calling for a "break with capitalism," hedges (take a lesson, proyect, you wannabe CFA) in that IMT does not call for a decisive break with Syriza, the current capitalist government, advocating instead "the only policy which could rekindle the enthusiasm which existed in the initial days of the government [emphasis added] both in Greece and throughout Europe."
There can be no decisive break with capitalism without a decisive break with Syriza.
June 22, 2015
In reality, the only alternative to the utopian strategy of searching for an agreement with the lenders is what the comrades of the Communist Tendency of Syriza call a “socialist rupture”. That is, to repudiate the debt and take measures to expropriate the capitalist, bankers, landlords and ship owners, so that the wealth of society can be put in the hands of those who produce it, under a democratic plan of the economy. Breaking decisively with capitalism is also the only policy which could rekindle the enthusiasm which existed in the initial days of the government, both in Greece and throughout Europe. That is the only way forward.Louis proyect, the genuflected Marxist, has produced this:
In reality, this is where their troubles would really begin.Priceless. GDP down by a quarter, pensions reduced by half, municipal services stripped bare, along with the countryside, unemployment at 40 percent for those under 25, if the economy were at a dead stop that would be a vast improvement, and the troubles only really start if the debt and the debt memorandums are repudiated; if capital is expropriated.
That's some Marxism, all right. "On your knees," says the unrepentant proyect. "Eyes on the floor... or else."
Or else what? Pensions are going to be cut more? Unemployment is going to go up? More hospitals won't be able to obtain more supplies? Exactly what is going to begin that hasn't already begun? Exactly what "troubles" are going to be inflicted that have not already been visited upon the population? And what troubles will not be intensified if Greece reaches an agreement with the Troika?
I'd label proyect a social-democrat, but there's no evidence that proyect does or says anything for any reason other than his need for self-aggrandizement. He lacks the empirical knowledge, and the ideological coherence to even qualify for the Socialist International. Proyect's a dissembler intent on acting out his fantasy of creating a party that acts as the political equivalent of a "socially responsible" investment fund.
Of course, the IMT, while calling for a "break with capitalism," hedges (take a lesson, proyect, you wannabe CFA) in that IMT does not call for a decisive break with Syriza, the current capitalist government, advocating instead "the only policy which could rekindle the enthusiasm which existed in the initial days of the government [emphasis added] both in Greece and throughout Europe."
There can be no decisive break with capitalism without a decisive break with Syriza.
June 22, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
Reasons To Be Uncheerful
Three months ago, the Hellenic Parliament in Greece decided to establish the Truth Committee on the Public Debt to examine the origin of the accumulation of that negative value, of capital's anti-matter called debt, that has, pretty much, sucked Greece into a black hole.
The "left" welcomed the establishment of such a committee, ignoring the poor record such truth committees have in actually changing anything, which probably explains why the left was so pleased.
Well, the committee has released its preliminary report, which is available in English here. The committee concludes:
1. The "economic adjustment" program (don't you love that? Reminds me of the cop who was going to give me an attitude adjustment once he got his hands on me) "was and remains a politically oriented program."
All that economic stuff, about macroeconomic variables, GDP growth, debt projections, competitiveness? That, says the committee, is all μαλακίες, you should pardon the expression after you look it up.
2. The committee concludes that not only is Greece incapable of paying back the debt; it should not pay back the debt because the debt imposed by the Troika is "a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece....Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious."
The legality of the debt makes little difference. This is not a struggle to be settled in and by a court. The debt is capital; is the expression of capital; is designed to serve capital. This is a struggle of labor with the condition of labor called capital.
The debt can't be repaid, as the bourgeoisie well know, as the committee has concluded. But whether or not it is physically possible to pay the debt is immaterial, irrelevant to the debt collectors. Debt does not always have to be repaid. Debt must always be enforced.
3. According to the report, "the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of the public debt in 2010 in order to protect financial institutions."
No shit, Sherlock. The committee members should have been detectives. Next thing you know, the committee will tell us that investment banks and hedge funds are corrupt, greedy, incompetent, and self-serving. Just like government.
That the Greek public debt was unsustainable was well known and known well before 2010. If there's a conspiracy, it must qualify as the worst kept secret; the most open, publicized conspiracy since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Everybody knew the debt was unsustainable. So what? Nothing capitalism does does it do for sustainability. Everything it does it does for profit.
So... the committee findings aren't exactly revelations; and these non-revelations are not about to produce any epiphanies. Do the findings present a "problem" for the Troika? Are the institutions of capital about to reverse course, seek forgiveness, repent of their evil, usurious ways? Forgive Greece its debts? Sure, and people in hell are going to get ice water breaks every ten minutes.
Do the committee findings present a "problem" for the Syriza government? Now that's an interesting question, because a) the findings are the findings of a parliamentary committee and might conceivably be used by some recalcitrant sorts in that body to introduce actions in opposition to payment of the debt b) such actions can become a vote of confidence on the Syriza policies and c) the one thing the report does accomplish, intentionally or not, is that the debt, the memorandums, the Troika, the "adjustment" policies cannot be separated from the larger issues of participation in the European Union, adherence to the single currency; nor separated from the largest issue of all, the maintenance of Greek capitalism and Greek ruling class.
Syriza staked its future on promoting, prophesizing, the separation of the debt issue from the larger issues. It has in its "new vision" merely consumed and regurgitated the dog's vomit of all those separations flogged by faux-Marxists throughout the history of the last 100 years. We've had the opposition of "national liberation" to social revolution; we've had the separation of "productive capital" from "parasitic capital;" of "national bourgeoisie" from "imperialist, international bourgeoisie." We've had the distinction of "entrepreneur" from "monopolist;" "industrial capital" from "finance capital," "fictitious" from "real" capital.
We've had the separation of "speculators" from "producers." And most recently we've had the separation of "oligarchs" and "tax evaders" from....I guess non-oligarchs and tax payers... as the core of the criminal conspiracy against "growth and development."
Back in the 1990s during the Asian economic implosion, evil currency "speculators" were to blame. It was these speculators that brought an entire region to its knees by....doing what the bourgeoisie love to do, trade. Well, look if trade cannot, in and of itself, create value, but can only express the value expropriated the exchange that determines production, then trade in of itself, including speculation cannot create the devaluation of that underlying process. Speculators then, oligarchs now. Same-same. Manifestations, not determinants.
The truth is that the debt represents the compressed whole of capitalism. More specifically, Greece's public debt cannot be separated from its membership in the EU, from its adherence to the monetary union, from its condition of capitalism within the larger network of capitalism, all the PhDs, political economists, Marxist economists, in the world to the contrary not withstanding. That includes you, Varoufakis.
The "truth committee" is a parliamentary committee, so not very much is to be expected in terms of action. But there is an opportunity for action outside the parliament, in the cities which have been subjected to two demands from the Syriza government for the transfer of local financial reserves to the national accounts. For the most part, these demands have been ignored by the local governments, many of which are led by conservative mayors and administrators.
The Interior Minister of the Syriza government has announced that he intends to take punitive measures against those municipal governments and institutions refusing to forward financial reserves in accordance with the national government's demand. Now the "left" the truly so-called "left" which has raised and praised Syriza's banner; which has excused, rationalized Syriza's commitment to servicing the debt, and at the same time applauds the parliamentary Truth committee's designation of the debt as "illegal, illegitimate, and odious" has some explaining to do, like: how can it support the national government's demand on local and municipal agencies when a) since the first memorandum in 2010, national government funding to municipalities has been reduced by 60 percent b) the funds forwarded to Syriza will be used to service an illegal, illegitimate, and odious debt?
While the so-called left tries to explain away its commitment and loyalty to the very agent of the force it thinks it opposes, the opportunity opens for workers' organizations to create popular assemblies with no confidence in either or both Syriza and the existing local governments. These assemblies can organize to protect the remaining municipal services by taking over the local government agencies, and securing the financial reserves through seizure of the financial institutions.
But here's something else: Greece is just the tip of the iceberg that's about to tip over and show the other 83% that was hidden underwater. QE in the EU will not restore "growth." The "emerging market" economies led by Brazil will continue to sink. US manufacturing will lead the US economy into another reversal, one more contraction. We're eight years into this, and we've hardly scratched the surface of that odious thing, I mean relation, called capitalism. We ain't seen nothing yet.
June 19, 2015
The "left" welcomed the establishment of such a committee, ignoring the poor record such truth committees have in actually changing anything, which probably explains why the left was so pleased.
Well, the committee has released its preliminary report, which is available in English here. The committee concludes:
1. The "economic adjustment" program (don't you love that? Reminds me of the cop who was going to give me an attitude adjustment once he got his hands on me) "was and remains a politically oriented program."
All that economic stuff, about macroeconomic variables, GDP growth, debt projections, competitiveness? That, says the committee, is all μαλακίες, you should pardon the expression after you look it up.
2. The committee concludes that not only is Greece incapable of paying back the debt; it should not pay back the debt because the debt imposed by the Troika is "a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece....Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious."
The legality of the debt makes little difference. This is not a struggle to be settled in and by a court. The debt is capital; is the expression of capital; is designed to serve capital. This is a struggle of labor with the condition of labor called capital.
The debt can't be repaid, as the bourgeoisie well know, as the committee has concluded. But whether or not it is physically possible to pay the debt is immaterial, irrelevant to the debt collectors. Debt does not always have to be repaid. Debt must always be enforced.
3. According to the report, "the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of the public debt in 2010 in order to protect financial institutions."
No shit, Sherlock. The committee members should have been detectives. Next thing you know, the committee will tell us that investment banks and hedge funds are corrupt, greedy, incompetent, and self-serving. Just like government.
That the Greek public debt was unsustainable was well known and known well before 2010. If there's a conspiracy, it must qualify as the worst kept secret; the most open, publicized conspiracy since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Everybody knew the debt was unsustainable. So what? Nothing capitalism does does it do for sustainability. Everything it does it does for profit.
So... the committee findings aren't exactly revelations; and these non-revelations are not about to produce any epiphanies. Do the findings present a "problem" for the Troika? Are the institutions of capital about to reverse course, seek forgiveness, repent of their evil, usurious ways? Forgive Greece its debts? Sure, and people in hell are going to get ice water breaks every ten minutes.
Do the committee findings present a "problem" for the Syriza government? Now that's an interesting question, because a) the findings are the findings of a parliamentary committee and might conceivably be used by some recalcitrant sorts in that body to introduce actions in opposition to payment of the debt b) such actions can become a vote of confidence on the Syriza policies and c) the one thing the report does accomplish, intentionally or not, is that the debt, the memorandums, the Troika, the "adjustment" policies cannot be separated from the larger issues of participation in the European Union, adherence to the single currency; nor separated from the largest issue of all, the maintenance of Greek capitalism and Greek ruling class.
Syriza staked its future on promoting, prophesizing, the separation of the debt issue from the larger issues. It has in its "new vision" merely consumed and regurgitated the dog's vomit of all those separations flogged by faux-Marxists throughout the history of the last 100 years. We've had the opposition of "national liberation" to social revolution; we've had the separation of "productive capital" from "parasitic capital;" of "national bourgeoisie" from "imperialist, international bourgeoisie." We've had the distinction of "entrepreneur" from "monopolist;" "industrial capital" from "finance capital," "fictitious" from "real" capital.
We've had the separation of "speculators" from "producers." And most recently we've had the separation of "oligarchs" and "tax evaders" from....I guess non-oligarchs and tax payers... as the core of the criminal conspiracy against "growth and development."
Back in the 1990s during the Asian economic implosion, evil currency "speculators" were to blame. It was these speculators that brought an entire region to its knees by....doing what the bourgeoisie love to do, trade. Well, look if trade cannot, in and of itself, create value, but can only express the value expropriated the exchange that determines production, then trade in of itself, including speculation cannot create the devaluation of that underlying process. Speculators then, oligarchs now. Same-same. Manifestations, not determinants.
The truth is that the debt represents the compressed whole of capitalism. More specifically, Greece's public debt cannot be separated from its membership in the EU, from its adherence to the monetary union, from its condition of capitalism within the larger network of capitalism, all the PhDs, political economists, Marxist economists, in the world to the contrary not withstanding. That includes you, Varoufakis.
The "truth committee" is a parliamentary committee, so not very much is to be expected in terms of action. But there is an opportunity for action outside the parliament, in the cities which have been subjected to two demands from the Syriza government for the transfer of local financial reserves to the national accounts. For the most part, these demands have been ignored by the local governments, many of which are led by conservative mayors and administrators.
The Interior Minister of the Syriza government has announced that he intends to take punitive measures against those municipal governments and institutions refusing to forward financial reserves in accordance with the national government's demand. Now the "left" the truly so-called "left" which has raised and praised Syriza's banner; which has excused, rationalized Syriza's commitment to servicing the debt, and at the same time applauds the parliamentary Truth committee's designation of the debt as "illegal, illegitimate, and odious" has some explaining to do, like: how can it support the national government's demand on local and municipal agencies when a) since the first memorandum in 2010, national government funding to municipalities has been reduced by 60 percent b) the funds forwarded to Syriza will be used to service an illegal, illegitimate, and odious debt?
While the so-called left tries to explain away its commitment and loyalty to the very agent of the force it thinks it opposes, the opportunity opens for workers' organizations to create popular assemblies with no confidence in either or both Syriza and the existing local governments. These assemblies can organize to protect the remaining municipal services by taking over the local government agencies, and securing the financial reserves through seizure of the financial institutions.
But here's something else: Greece is just the tip of the iceberg that's about to tip over and show the other 83% that was hidden underwater. QE in the EU will not restore "growth." The "emerging market" economies led by Brazil will continue to sink. US manufacturing will lead the US economy into another reversal, one more contraction. We're eight years into this, and we've hardly scratched the surface of that odious thing, I mean relation, called capitalism. We ain't seen nothing yet.
June 19, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
It Don't Mean a Thing...
...when a columnist for the Financial Times, Wolfgang Münchau, urges the Syriza government to adopt a course far more radical than that government, its "left" wing, and/or all of its "left"supporters propose. It don't mean a thing when the advocate of political economy is more radical than the radical political economists, and with more intent than "accidental" Marxists.
It don't mean a thing because all the "different" solutions offered by Münchau, the left-wing of Syriza, the left-supporters of Syriza, that whole collection of idiot movie-reviewers, sniveling post-graduate bloggers, foot-kissing specialists in solidarity, purveyors of socialist inaction, left forum spectators and participants, presume and require the same thing: paralysis of the working class. There Is No Alternative, and there will be none.
At least Münchau can count. At least he can do the math. At least he calculates the cost of the troika's terms to Greece's economy. That cost is a mere 12.6% reduction in GDP over four years with the debt to GDP ratio rising to 200 percent (not very far from where it is now). For an economy that's lost over 25% of its GDP, that doesn't sound too bad, does it?
At least he knows that, in the abstract terms of political economy, Greece would be better off defaulting on its debt to the troika; that Greece, in the abstract terms of GDP, capital flow, etc. would be better off exiting the eurozone. In abstract terms. But that's what political economy, radical political economy, socialist political economy, Keynesian political economy, Austrian political economy, "responsible" political economy, "irresponsible" political economy is: a philosophy of the abstract that capitulates to the world of the concrete.
In the world of the concrete, the struggle never is a struggle for, of, by policies. It is always and forever a struggle of class relations. Urge away Wolfgang. Apologize away, you unrepentant never- close-to-Marxists you. Plead away, you allied, democratic, left-wing, doctored, independent, international, socialists for your two, three, many Syrizas, because failure is your currency; your means of purchase for participating in the markets. It don't mean a thing.
The bourgeoisie lack many things-- scruples, integrity, imagination, humanity-- but they do not lack for knowing what it took to make them, what it takes to make them, and what it takes to keep them what they are; the ruling class.
That's their goal; their single goal to which entire populations, nations, continents are held as collateral. You don't like the terms of repayment? Too bad. You can't get rid of the debt without getting rid of the bourgeoisie, as Syriza so aptly demonstrates, as Syriza is simply the most current object lesson.
You don't want your pensioners to be any more impoverished than they already are with the 45% cut in pensions? Too bad. Tell them to move, to flee Greece. Tell them to get on those boats we're confiscating from human traffickers and go back to Africa, where we all come from.
What you want don't mean a thing. What anybody wants don't mean a thing until what a class wants is to replace the rule of capital, of capital's organs, economic and political, with organs of its own; until that class is organized, by its own resistance, as an anti-ruling class.
That practical organization of the anti-ruling class begins with forcing the issue of repudiating the sovereign debt in its entirety to the parliament floor; voicing no support for the Syriza government.
It don't mean a thing, unless you're ready to swing.
June 15, 2015
It don't mean a thing because all the "different" solutions offered by Münchau, the left-wing of Syriza, the left-supporters of Syriza, that whole collection of idiot movie-reviewers, sniveling post-graduate bloggers, foot-kissing specialists in solidarity, purveyors of socialist inaction, left forum spectators and participants, presume and require the same thing: paralysis of the working class. There Is No Alternative, and there will be none.
At least Münchau can count. At least he can do the math. At least he calculates the cost of the troika's terms to Greece's economy. That cost is a mere 12.6% reduction in GDP over four years with the debt to GDP ratio rising to 200 percent (not very far from where it is now). For an economy that's lost over 25% of its GDP, that doesn't sound too bad, does it?
At least he knows that, in the abstract terms of political economy, Greece would be better off defaulting on its debt to the troika; that Greece, in the abstract terms of GDP, capital flow, etc. would be better off exiting the eurozone. In abstract terms. But that's what political economy, radical political economy, socialist political economy, Keynesian political economy, Austrian political economy, "responsible" political economy, "irresponsible" political economy is: a philosophy of the abstract that capitulates to the world of the concrete.
In the world of the concrete, the struggle never is a struggle for, of, by policies. It is always and forever a struggle of class relations. Urge away Wolfgang. Apologize away, you unrepentant never- close-to-Marxists you. Plead away, you allied, democratic, left-wing, doctored, independent, international, socialists for your two, three, many Syrizas, because failure is your currency; your means of purchase for participating in the markets. It don't mean a thing.
The bourgeoisie lack many things-- scruples, integrity, imagination, humanity-- but they do not lack for knowing what it took to make them, what it takes to make them, and what it takes to keep them what they are; the ruling class.
That's their goal; their single goal to which entire populations, nations, continents are held as collateral. You don't like the terms of repayment? Too bad. You can't get rid of the debt without getting rid of the bourgeoisie, as Syriza so aptly demonstrates, as Syriza is simply the most current object lesson.
You don't want your pensioners to be any more impoverished than they already are with the 45% cut in pensions? Too bad. Tell them to move, to flee Greece. Tell them to get on those boats we're confiscating from human traffickers and go back to Africa, where we all come from.
What you want don't mean a thing. What anybody wants don't mean a thing until what a class wants is to replace the rule of capital, of capital's organs, economic and political, with organs of its own; until that class is organized, by its own resistance, as an anti-ruling class.
That practical organization of the anti-ruling class begins with forcing the issue of repudiating the sovereign debt in its entirety to the parliament floor; voicing no support for the Syriza government.
It don't mean a thing, unless you're ready to swing.
June 15, 2015
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Prospects and Results
1. We think that the "revolutionary"upheavals of the early decades of the19th century, those confused, awkward, stumbling motions represent a moment of "national liberation," of an emerging bourgeoisie struggling to secure their domestic market and domestic property against...the imperial houses of Castile and Aragon and their rule in the Americas, against the Sublime Porte of the Ottomans and its rule in the Aegean and Black seas; in the Balkans; in the provinces of its empire.
We think these moments were the echoes of the French Revolution clashing against the walls of those houses, banging on those sublime doors that fixed landed property and labor as one, in one, rather than in opposition to each other.
We think we hear something like "liberty, fraternity, equality" in 1820, 1821, 1830, because we want to hear something like liberty, fraternity, equality today and tomorrow.
We know that romance is not history. We know it is not the echoes of the French Revolution that we hear coming from that period, but the defeat of the French Revolution. We know it was the impact of the British industrial revolution, British production choking, suffocating, markets sustained by artisan, handicraft production. We know it was British production commandeering the agricultural markets, ruining the textile export markets, and draining away the commercial lifeblood of the "underdeveloped, not yet and never to be "nations" of the Ottoman empire.
We know by this time "national emancipation" was a scaffold erected upon which the peasantry, the artisan, the village, were to be sacrificed, removed, dispossessed, made itinerant.
We know that even at this early date in its reign, capitalism could only do some, but never all, and only in half measures of its so-called "historic tasks." Capitalism was aces at dispossessing, immiserating, the small, direct producers, but held only the low cards when it came to revolutionizing the mode of production.
We know that developing capitalism, its struggle for markets, its commercial impulse, its compulsion to absorb value whatever its source, was incapable of reshaping the economic territories of empires in its own image.
We know that 19th century capitalism undermined but perpetuated the archaic relations it encountered. We know that 19th century capitalism did that just as 20th century capitalism did that... in Mexico, in Venezuela, in Ecuador, in the Philippines, in Greece.
In its long struggle against the Ottoman Empire, the "Great Powers" of Europe, always Britain, often France, later Germany, at times Russia, found nationalism a most effective weapon. The "independence" of Greece, of the Balkan, or Black Sea, or Danubian provinces was the struggle of the agent, determined to win new clients from the portfolio of.....an opposing agent.
The Porte, organized to limit the power and the possibilities of a landed aristocracy, had bequeathed to Greece an agricultural sector dominated by the small producer, the marginal producer; and an urban sector dominated by the village; by artisans.
The capitalists of Greece in the 17th, and 18th centuries were the trading capitalists, the merchant capitalists. We know that by the end of the 18th century, Greek merchants had a virtual monopoly on illegal cereal exports from the western provinces of the empire to the rest of Europe. The Porte, porous as a sieve, could not even ensure grain security for Constantinople.
In the first decade of the 19th century, the Greek merchant fleet grew to 625 ships and 154,000 tons, employing 37, 500 sailors (Mouzelis, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, Macmillan, 1979 page 10). And in the second decade of the 19th century an "export crisis" devastated the shipbuilding enclaves, the textile centers, leaving both seamen and artisans ruined and itinerant.
With no interest, and no principle, to affect the transformation of agriculture, to make rural production the production of capital, to transform peasants into farmers and proletarians, to make landlords act as improving landlords, to make production the production not just of but also for value, the Greek merchant bourgeoisie defined, determined Greek capitalism as client capitalism, attached to, dependent upon, subordinated to Britain (most of the time).
The great themes and constraints of Greek capitalism-- the persistence of, and persistent impoverishing of small producers; the diaspora bourgeoisie; the massive migrations to the United States; the restricted domestic market; the missing industrial production; the fragmentation of agricultural production-- were established not just as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, but in Europe's confrontation with the Porte. The merchant bourgeoisie mimic, support, synchronize perfectly with their patrons. Greece is the product and the predicament of capitalist underdevelopment.
The Greek nation was formed minus all the centers of Greece commerce. Smyrna, Salonica, Alexandria, Constantinople, all remained outside the boundaries of the new state. The Greek nation crowned its "emancipation," its "independence" by being awarded a monarchy by the "Great Powers," in 1832. The "hereditary sovereignty" of and over Greece is award to Prince Frederick Otto of Wittelsbach, the son of..........King Ludwig of Bavaria:
2. "Configured" by commerce, subordinate to the economies of the "Great Powers," Greece's economy functioned as an enclave within capitalism, where capital as that specific relation, exchange of labor power for a wage, the organization of labor power as value expanding value was itself isolated, constrained.
Where capitalist markets expand, overproduction is sure to follow, and market collapses in currants and tobacco worked to drive the rural producers off the land. This dispossession itself did not transform the mode of production. Throughout the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, agriculture remained the realm of the small producer. Abandoned land was not consolidated,was not capitalized, in that no rural proletariat was created. Share-cropping, and tenant relations, "veiled" wage relations, existed to be sure, but the capitalization of agriculture, that is to say the opposition of ownership of the land to the labor, the ability of ownership to command the labor of others was not the determining mode of production.
The cities, to which the ruined small rural producers migrated, were not centers of industrial production, and the marginalized rural population became a marginalized urban population.
The Greek state, in all its weakness, its inadequacy, its corruption, was the only social body with enough cohesion, that is to say greed with a purpose, to even attempt improvements in infrastructure so necessary to stabilizing the domestic economy. But....the domestic economy was contingent on its service to the world markets. The Greek state could only satisfy that contingency through taking on massive loans from the "Great Powers," and so the economy was right back where it started, between the rock of world market, and the hard place of lowered productivity.
Wars with Turkey won; wars with Turkey lost; territory gained and lost; populations transferred, absorbed, expelled, slaughtered, none of that changed the once and future and eternal truths of the Greek economy: within international capitalism there is no solution to the conflicts, antagonisms, limits of Greek capitalism; without the aid of an international revolution there is no prospect for Greece.
3. The expansionary periods of capitalism in the 20th century had a significant impact on Greece without overcoming the historic limitations. Between 1923 and 1930 foreign capital amounting to 1.2 billion gold French francs flowed into the country (Mouzelis, page 23). By 1939, the horsepower utilized by industrial production tripled, and the volume of industrial production doubled (Mouzelis, page 23). Still, the economy was dominated by the small producer; the artisan. As late as 1958, half of the labor forced was trapped in agricultural production (Mouzelis, page 27). In 1930, 93 percent of manufacturing enterprises employed fewer than 5 persons. In 1958, 85 percent employed fewer than 5 persons (Mouzelis, page 38).
After WW2, after the defeat of the Communist Party in the civil war by the spent British and the spending Americans, Greece's capitalism retained its enclave nature, with investment focused on textiles, tourism, and shipping. Manufacturing was the slowest growing portion of the industrial sector, trailing construction, transport, and utilities in output. Electricity production expanded tenfold to reach 2.7 million kwh by 1961 from the pre-WW2 mark (Mouzelis, page 25).
The banking structure was highly concentrated with just two institutions, the Commercial Bank, and the National Bank of Greece controlling 90 percent of domestic saving and maintaining significant ownership in the insurance and industrial sectors of the economy.
And then? And then along came the Jones of the 1960s, the rapidly increasing expanding foreign direct investment in the metallurgical, chemical, communications industries. Foreign direct investment which in 1960 had amounted to $11.7 million accumulated to reach $157.6 million by 1966 (Mouzelis, page 28). Greece was becoming an exporter of industrial goods.
The persistent low productivity in agriculture, the persistence of smaller family-owned production units, combined with the technically advanced "islands" of FDI driven production meant that the cities, the urban areas, industry, could not absorb the population moving off the land. Along with industrial goods, Greece once again exported portions of its population
However, the FDI expansion did, almost, reshape Greek capitalism in its own image. Like the advance capitalist countries, Greece featured an acute concentration of capital. The forty-nine largest industrial enterprises employed 1/3 of the industrial work force and accounted for more than half of all capital assets. Enclave monopoly, disassociated concentration were the tell-tales of the economy. The largest 100 industrial corporations accounted for 65 percent of all assets and 68 percent of all profits (Mouzelis, page 38).
Agriculture, which in 1960 had accounted for 80 percent of Greek exports was, finally eclipsed by industry. By 1968, agriculture's share had declined to 42 percent of the total (Mouzelis, page 121).
Greece had arrived. It exhibited all the characteristics of modern capitalism: centralization of finance, concentration of industry, inability to meet the needs of all those moving into the cities; export of population. Greece looked in the funhouse mirror, and saw all of capitalism reflected in its distorted image.
This transformation, and transfer, of the sources of wealth in the economy, destabilized the society and lead to the military coup. FDI, after a brief period of hesitation, resumed and continued to grow.
The threat, to the military, was not so much a threat from the working class, which was just beginning to reorient itself after the decimation of WW2, and the defeat during the civil war. The threat was that Greece might actually become modern.
Marx had thought that the not-yet-capitalist-developed, but market-penetrated, countries of Asia should "look to Britain" for a glimpse of their future. Indeed, but the image to be captured was not the Britain of the industrial revolution, of the cyclic but cumulative growth, or even of the Britain of the "long deflation." Rather it was the Britain of the post long deflation period; the Britain of decay; the Britain where the dispossessed population could not be absorbed by industrial production; the Britain where the expulsion of labor was not only relative, but absolute; the modern Britain of redundancy; the Britain where capital accumulation and asset liquidation raced each other to the bottom line and the bottom line was zero. Underdevelopment is advanced capitalism; capitalism that has run up against the limits of its own foundations-- private ownership.
The coup fell under the weight of the contracting global capitalist economy in 1974. The message in both the coup and its disintegration was the same: within European, and global, capitalism, Greece's economic development would always lead to failure; without a reciprocating European social revolution, the prospects for the revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary opening in Greece were...bleak; still necessary as the only possible path out of impoverishment, but still...bleak.
That's the same message that has been transmitted in an SOS from Greece since 2009.
4. Since February, 2015, articles, debates, maneuvers, denials of Greece's imminent, and immanent, bankruptcy have filled the journals, the websites, the periodicals, the epublications of the world market. It's on again; it's off again. Greece can make it to April, but then... Greece can make it to May, but then....Greece can make it to June, but then..... The last time the players of left and right in this gigantic hedging operation they wish they could substitute for class struggle predicted something to occur so many times in such a short period was when they were all awaiting, breathlessly, the death of Francisco Franco, who managed to keep breathing... to the point where it simply didn't matter.
Like Franco, the demise of Greek capitalism, its bankruptcy, is both a foregone conclusion, and an event not worth waiting for. Syriza pays the IMF? Guess what? It doesn't matter. The payments will not resolve the structural, organic, inadequacies of capitalism in Greece.
Syriza draws "redlines"? Guess what? They don't matter. No matter what Syriza does or does not do, the Syriza government, that is to say the government administering capitalism in Greece will not be able to pay the pensions, the salaries, the bills that are past due.
Syriza privatizes, refuses to privatize, communications, ports, the national lottery? Guess what? It doesn't matter. The revenue generated from privatization, or from continued nationalized operations is inadequate to the needs of the population, and the needs of social development.
Syriza keeps Greece in the eurozone? Syriza takes Greece out of the eurozone? Doesn't matter. The tasks of economic development, of social welfare, are class tasks. The bourgeois class cannot, structurally, historically, meet those challenges. Syriza, not being a class, intent on preserving the existing class relations, can only pose, posture, proclaim. It cannot perform.
A "Grexit" would be "a disaster" for Greece? Hey, exactly what do you think the last 6 years have been? Catastrophic is the word.
Those who argue that Greece, under Syriza, would suffer horribly if it left the Eurozone are simply not paying attention to what has, and continues to, transpire in Greece.
Those who argue that Greece under Syriza must remain in the eurozone are utilizing the exact argument that was used by "leftists" to support the TARP program in the US to prop up the banks; the capital injections by the UK government to its banking sector; the coordinated actions of the central banks to protect capitalism.
"Under," "with" Syriza are conditions, not requirements. Under, with are conditions of capitalism.
The chances for improving the welfare of the Greek people begin with opposing Syriza's program; for declaring "no-confidence" in it as a government, and as a party.
May 30, 2015
We think these moments were the echoes of the French Revolution clashing against the walls of those houses, banging on those sublime doors that fixed landed property and labor as one, in one, rather than in opposition to each other.
We think we hear something like "liberty, fraternity, equality" in 1820, 1821, 1830, because we want to hear something like liberty, fraternity, equality today and tomorrow.
We know that romance is not history. We know it is not the echoes of the French Revolution that we hear coming from that period, but the defeat of the French Revolution. We know it was the impact of the British industrial revolution, British production choking, suffocating, markets sustained by artisan, handicraft production. We know it was British production commandeering the agricultural markets, ruining the textile export markets, and draining away the commercial lifeblood of the "underdeveloped, not yet and never to be "nations" of the Ottoman empire.
We know by this time "national emancipation" was a scaffold erected upon which the peasantry, the artisan, the village, were to be sacrificed, removed, dispossessed, made itinerant.
We know that even at this early date in its reign, capitalism could only do some, but never all, and only in half measures of its so-called "historic tasks." Capitalism was aces at dispossessing, immiserating, the small, direct producers, but held only the low cards when it came to revolutionizing the mode of production.
We know that developing capitalism, its struggle for markets, its commercial impulse, its compulsion to absorb value whatever its source, was incapable of reshaping the economic territories of empires in its own image.
We know that 19th century capitalism undermined but perpetuated the archaic relations it encountered. We know that 19th century capitalism did that just as 20th century capitalism did that... in Mexico, in Venezuela, in Ecuador, in the Philippines, in Greece.
In its long struggle against the Ottoman Empire, the "Great Powers" of Europe, always Britain, often France, later Germany, at times Russia, found nationalism a most effective weapon. The "independence" of Greece, of the Balkan, or Black Sea, or Danubian provinces was the struggle of the agent, determined to win new clients from the portfolio of.....an opposing agent.
The Porte, organized to limit the power and the possibilities of a landed aristocracy, had bequeathed to Greece an agricultural sector dominated by the small producer, the marginal producer; and an urban sector dominated by the village; by artisans.
The capitalists of Greece in the 17th, and 18th centuries were the trading capitalists, the merchant capitalists. We know that by the end of the 18th century, Greek merchants had a virtual monopoly on illegal cereal exports from the western provinces of the empire to the rest of Europe. The Porte, porous as a sieve, could not even ensure grain security for Constantinople.
In the first decade of the 19th century, the Greek merchant fleet grew to 625 ships and 154,000 tons, employing 37, 500 sailors (Mouzelis, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, Macmillan, 1979 page 10). And in the second decade of the 19th century an "export crisis" devastated the shipbuilding enclaves, the textile centers, leaving both seamen and artisans ruined and itinerant.
With no interest, and no principle, to affect the transformation of agriculture, to make rural production the production of capital, to transform peasants into farmers and proletarians, to make landlords act as improving landlords, to make production the production not just of but also for value, the Greek merchant bourgeoisie defined, determined Greek capitalism as client capitalism, attached to, dependent upon, subordinated to Britain (most of the time).
The great themes and constraints of Greek capitalism-- the persistence of, and persistent impoverishing of small producers; the diaspora bourgeoisie; the massive migrations to the United States; the restricted domestic market; the missing industrial production; the fragmentation of agricultural production-- were established not just as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, but in Europe's confrontation with the Porte. The merchant bourgeoisie mimic, support, synchronize perfectly with their patrons. Greece is the product and the predicament of capitalist underdevelopment.
The Greek nation was formed minus all the centers of Greece commerce. Smyrna, Salonica, Alexandria, Constantinople, all remained outside the boundaries of the new state. The Greek nation crowned its "emancipation," its "independence" by being awarded a monarchy by the "Great Powers," in 1832. The "hereditary sovereignty" of and over Greece is award to Prince Frederick Otto of Wittelsbach, the son of..........King Ludwig of Bavaria:
Es lebe die co-abhängige, nicht ganz souverän, griechischen Nation!The prince came with a guaranteed loan of 60,000,000 francs. Greece, the Great Powers decided, must pay an indemnity to the Sublime Porte. Nothing forged the chains of debt servitude like national liberation.
2. "Configured" by commerce, subordinate to the economies of the "Great Powers," Greece's economy functioned as an enclave within capitalism, where capital as that specific relation, exchange of labor power for a wage, the organization of labor power as value expanding value was itself isolated, constrained.
Where capitalist markets expand, overproduction is sure to follow, and market collapses in currants and tobacco worked to drive the rural producers off the land. This dispossession itself did not transform the mode of production. Throughout the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, agriculture remained the realm of the small producer. Abandoned land was not consolidated,was not capitalized, in that no rural proletariat was created. Share-cropping, and tenant relations, "veiled" wage relations, existed to be sure, but the capitalization of agriculture, that is to say the opposition of ownership of the land to the labor, the ability of ownership to command the labor of others was not the determining mode of production.
The cities, to which the ruined small rural producers migrated, were not centers of industrial production, and the marginalized rural population became a marginalized urban population.
The Greek state, in all its weakness, its inadequacy, its corruption, was the only social body with enough cohesion, that is to say greed with a purpose, to even attempt improvements in infrastructure so necessary to stabilizing the domestic economy. But....the domestic economy was contingent on its service to the world markets. The Greek state could only satisfy that contingency through taking on massive loans from the "Great Powers," and so the economy was right back where it started, between the rock of world market, and the hard place of lowered productivity.
Wars with Turkey won; wars with Turkey lost; territory gained and lost; populations transferred, absorbed, expelled, slaughtered, none of that changed the once and future and eternal truths of the Greek economy: within international capitalism there is no solution to the conflicts, antagonisms, limits of Greek capitalism; without the aid of an international revolution there is no prospect for Greece.
3. The expansionary periods of capitalism in the 20th century had a significant impact on Greece without overcoming the historic limitations. Between 1923 and 1930 foreign capital amounting to 1.2 billion gold French francs flowed into the country (Mouzelis, page 23). By 1939, the horsepower utilized by industrial production tripled, and the volume of industrial production doubled (Mouzelis, page 23). Still, the economy was dominated by the small producer; the artisan. As late as 1958, half of the labor forced was trapped in agricultural production (Mouzelis, page 27). In 1930, 93 percent of manufacturing enterprises employed fewer than 5 persons. In 1958, 85 percent employed fewer than 5 persons (Mouzelis, page 38).
After WW2, after the defeat of the Communist Party in the civil war by the spent British and the spending Americans, Greece's capitalism retained its enclave nature, with investment focused on textiles, tourism, and shipping. Manufacturing was the slowest growing portion of the industrial sector, trailing construction, transport, and utilities in output. Electricity production expanded tenfold to reach 2.7 million kwh by 1961 from the pre-WW2 mark (Mouzelis, page 25).
The banking structure was highly concentrated with just two institutions, the Commercial Bank, and the National Bank of Greece controlling 90 percent of domestic saving and maintaining significant ownership in the insurance and industrial sectors of the economy.
And then? And then along came the Jones of the 1960s, the rapidly increasing expanding foreign direct investment in the metallurgical, chemical, communications industries. Foreign direct investment which in 1960 had amounted to $11.7 million accumulated to reach $157.6 million by 1966 (Mouzelis, page 28). Greece was becoming an exporter of industrial goods.
The persistent low productivity in agriculture, the persistence of smaller family-owned production units, combined with the technically advanced "islands" of FDI driven production meant that the cities, the urban areas, industry, could not absorb the population moving off the land. Along with industrial goods, Greece once again exported portions of its population
However, the FDI expansion did, almost, reshape Greek capitalism in its own image. Like the advance capitalist countries, Greece featured an acute concentration of capital. The forty-nine largest industrial enterprises employed 1/3 of the industrial work force and accounted for more than half of all capital assets. Enclave monopoly, disassociated concentration were the tell-tales of the economy. The largest 100 industrial corporations accounted for 65 percent of all assets and 68 percent of all profits (Mouzelis, page 38).
Agriculture, which in 1960 had accounted for 80 percent of Greek exports was, finally eclipsed by industry. By 1968, agriculture's share had declined to 42 percent of the total (Mouzelis, page 121).
Greece had arrived. It exhibited all the characteristics of modern capitalism: centralization of finance, concentration of industry, inability to meet the needs of all those moving into the cities; export of population. Greece looked in the funhouse mirror, and saw all of capitalism reflected in its distorted image.
This transformation, and transfer, of the sources of wealth in the economy, destabilized the society and lead to the military coup. FDI, after a brief period of hesitation, resumed and continued to grow.
The threat, to the military, was not so much a threat from the working class, which was just beginning to reorient itself after the decimation of WW2, and the defeat during the civil war. The threat was that Greece might actually become modern.
Marx had thought that the not-yet-capitalist-developed, but market-penetrated, countries of Asia should "look to Britain" for a glimpse of their future. Indeed, but the image to be captured was not the Britain of the industrial revolution, of the cyclic but cumulative growth, or even of the Britain of the "long deflation." Rather it was the Britain of the post long deflation period; the Britain of decay; the Britain where the dispossessed population could not be absorbed by industrial production; the Britain where the expulsion of labor was not only relative, but absolute; the modern Britain of redundancy; the Britain where capital accumulation and asset liquidation raced each other to the bottom line and the bottom line was zero. Underdevelopment is advanced capitalism; capitalism that has run up against the limits of its own foundations-- private ownership.
The coup fell under the weight of the contracting global capitalist economy in 1974. The message in both the coup and its disintegration was the same: within European, and global, capitalism, Greece's economic development would always lead to failure; without a reciprocating European social revolution, the prospects for the revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary opening in Greece were...bleak; still necessary as the only possible path out of impoverishment, but still...bleak.
That's the same message that has been transmitted in an SOS from Greece since 2009.
4. Since February, 2015, articles, debates, maneuvers, denials of Greece's imminent, and immanent, bankruptcy have filled the journals, the websites, the periodicals, the epublications of the world market. It's on again; it's off again. Greece can make it to April, but then... Greece can make it to May, but then....Greece can make it to June, but then..... The last time the players of left and right in this gigantic hedging operation they wish they could substitute for class struggle predicted something to occur so many times in such a short period was when they were all awaiting, breathlessly, the death of Francisco Franco, who managed to keep breathing... to the point where it simply didn't matter.
Like Franco, the demise of Greek capitalism, its bankruptcy, is both a foregone conclusion, and an event not worth waiting for. Syriza pays the IMF? Guess what? It doesn't matter. The payments will not resolve the structural, organic, inadequacies of capitalism in Greece.
Syriza draws "redlines"? Guess what? They don't matter. No matter what Syriza does or does not do, the Syriza government, that is to say the government administering capitalism in Greece will not be able to pay the pensions, the salaries, the bills that are past due.
Syriza privatizes, refuses to privatize, communications, ports, the national lottery? Guess what? It doesn't matter. The revenue generated from privatization, or from continued nationalized operations is inadequate to the needs of the population, and the needs of social development.
Syriza keeps Greece in the eurozone? Syriza takes Greece out of the eurozone? Doesn't matter. The tasks of economic development, of social welfare, are class tasks. The bourgeois class cannot, structurally, historically, meet those challenges. Syriza, not being a class, intent on preserving the existing class relations, can only pose, posture, proclaim. It cannot perform.
A "Grexit" would be "a disaster" for Greece? Hey, exactly what do you think the last 6 years have been? Catastrophic is the word.
Those who argue that Greece, under Syriza, would suffer horribly if it left the Eurozone are simply not paying attention to what has, and continues to, transpire in Greece.
Those who argue that Greece under Syriza must remain in the eurozone are utilizing the exact argument that was used by "leftists" to support the TARP program in the US to prop up the banks; the capital injections by the UK government to its banking sector; the coordinated actions of the central banks to protect capitalism.
"Under," "with" Syriza are conditions, not requirements. Under, with are conditions of capitalism.
The chances for improving the welfare of the Greek people begin with opposing Syriza's program; for declaring "no-confidence" in it as a government, and as a party.
May 30, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
A Simple Question
So today's Financial Times is reporting:
Should Syriza make the loan repayment? Should any support be provided to Syriza in its attempts to reach agreement with the Troika?
It's not that simple, someone says? Insert favorite barnyard epithet here: Bollocks It is exactly, precisely just that simple. Opposing capitalism is really simple. It gets complicated once capitalism is overthrown.
Default on the debt. No agreement with the Troika. No support for the Syriza government's attempt to negotiate austerity with a "human face." Don't sweat the simple stuff.
April 28, 2015
Mr Tsipras ruled out defaulting on a €750m loan repayment to theSo here's a couple of simple questions for the very important bloggers; tomb robbers; film reviewers; big I international big S socialists; big S socialist big W workers; former, current, and future Trotskyists; "left communists" and left Communists; autonomists; critical theorists; theoretical critics; moron shock-jock wannabees; progressive political economists; progressive economists; radical political economists; ultra-radical political economists; communiste theoristes; supersessionists; pre-mos, po-mos, and no-mos:
International Monetary Fund due on May 12 even though Athens is
struggling this week to pay pensions and subsidies, which he said must
take priority.
Should Syriza make the loan repayment? Should any support be provided to Syriza in its attempts to reach agreement with the Troika?
It's not that simple, someone says? Insert favorite barnyard epithet here: Bollocks It is exactly, precisely just that simple. Opposing capitalism is really simple. It gets complicated once capitalism is overthrown.
Default on the debt. No agreement with the Troika. No support for the Syriza government's attempt to negotiate austerity with a "human face." Don't sweat the simple stuff.
April 28, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
Different Boy, Same Game
Here's the thing about history: it always, but always, out-goofs me. I mean I've been known to use hyperbole, satire, spoof, sarcasm, exaggeration, and near-drunk hallucination to illuminate the macabre humor, the grinning madness that is the result of, and circulates with value production, but I'm an amateur, a naïf, when compared to what capitalism and its attenuated attendants come up with, and come up with constantly, and with straight faces...unlike me. Example, you ask? Example you get. There's this gem, this perfect, this flawless, this naïf story:
That's classic Marxism, all right. Not sure what school it is, maybe the London School of Economics or the Wharton School, but no doubt about it being classic Marxism. I don't know why Mr. Mason limits the school to the classes of post-1970. After all "compromises" "with capitalist reality"-- preserving and reproducing capitalist property, capitalist values-- is exactly what Marxism has been all about ever since....well, Bernstein for one; Kautsky for another; and Lenin, let's not forget Lenin and Trotsky who, in the "interests of the [Russian] revolution" of course, compromised revolutionaries in Turkey; who more or less, more and less, screwed the pooch as we like to say in the railroad biz, the pooch meaning the task, the task being the overthrow of international capitalism. Germany, anyone? What leaders of "world revolution" would or could allow a murdering moron like Bela Kun to act as an agent of the "general staff"? Case closed.
And beyond that? Puhlease. There's the Third International beyond Germany. In China, in Britain, in Spain, in France, everywhere they could get their hands around the neck of the prospects for revolution. That's classic Marxism too, isn't it?
Not that the 1970s come up short when it comes to, well when it comes to coming up short. We have the classic Marxists of the New Left (alma maters unknown) in Allende's Unidad Popular government. There's a compromise that worked out well for both parties, don't you think? And the ever classic Communist Party Espagne doing what it does naturally, or historically (same-same) in Spain during the waning of the light that was Generalissimo Franco. And Portugal, don't forget the classic Marxist of Portugal, Cunhal, classically trained as a lawyer, and functioning as minister without portfolio in the various provisional governments of and around the MFA in the 1970s. Look at Portugal now, huh? Thing of beauty, that's what I think.
So we are getting a "classical Marxist" in place of an "erratic Marxist" when it comes to cutting a deal and this is a sign of the "seriousness" of a struggle against austerity, and for compromise?
Meanwhile, the Syriza government cuts a deal to finance overhauling weapons for the military and demands that public institutions, including hospitals and pharmacies, deposit all cash reserves (beyond what 15, 30 days of operating expense coverage?) into the central bank so that......so that the government can negotiate extensions with the Troika, pay its own operating expenses, provide an indeterminate amount of cash for pensions, and make payments to the IMF. Now that's classic Marxism, isn't it? Can't you just see and hear the old Moor applauding?
This must be where my lack of classical training, committed vulgarian that I am, really shows. I mean if I were facing a throw down with my creditors, and I wanted to protect the meager social services still extant in my charade of a government, I would keep that money out of the hands of the national central bank which is in the network of the European Central Bank and whose actions can be constrained at any moment by instructions from the ECB.
Yes, classic Marxism of the 1970s, available in compact disc format or......8-track tapes. This offer expires soon, so hurry.
Meet the New Left classic Marxism that smells just like the classic Marxism of the old left, always looking for the next way to fuck to death the prospects for workers' power. It's moments like these when I have to say "classic Marxism" does not exist. There is only the critique of capital, which becomes the weapon for its abolition by social revolution.
April 27, 2015
http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/syrizas-reshuffle-step-nonerratic-marxist/3613Got to love it. And I do. I do so much that I'm going to reproduce the whole thing right here:
After a frantic weekend the Greek government sought to break the deadlock in its talks with lenders today by reshuffling its negotiating team.
Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister who made the global headlines in the aftermath of Syriza’s election victory will take a back seat, while the lesser known economic specialist in the foreign ministry Euclid Tsakalotos will lead the talks. Though both men are western educated, fluent English speaking economists, their styles – and politics – are different.
Mr Tsakalotos is a classic Marxist of the New Left who, when he addressed a meeting in the British parliament last month, brushed aside calls by left Labour MPs for Greece to ditch the Euro on the grounds that “national” economic programmes do not work. Mr Varoufakis once described himself as an “erratic Marxist”; Mr Tsakalotos comes from that school of Marxism which learned from the 1970s onwards to make compromises with capitalist reality.
He is not only softer spoken; he is very attached to the idea of Syriza as a reforming left-social government and existentially committed to the Euro. What is more, he is a longstanding member of Syriza, with a surer feel for what the party’s members will accept in the compromise that he’ll have to craft.
But the issue is urgent. Those who’ve seen the books in Greece say the country will be able to pay salaries and pensions this week, but that the cash flow of the government looks bleak in May. By draining the cash reserves of public bodies – local councils for example – Mr Varoufakis has been able to keep Greece afloat, but in a way that saps the resilience of such bodies – councils, hospitals etc – should Greece break decisively with the ECB.
To be clear, Mr Varoufakis remains in charge of the finance ministry, and of the government’s economic strategy. But by placing Mr Tsakalotos – who’s been involved from the start – at the head of the negotiating team, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is sending the strongest possible signal that he wants a compromise to keep Greece inside the Euro.
A sense of the frustration on the Greek side can be got from a briefing document, originating inside Mr Tsipras’ office, which Channel 4 News has seen.
It speaks of “memorandum inertia”, complaining that Eurogroup negotiators have continually tried to unpick the agreement Mr Varoufakis signed on 20 February.
The briefing note states: “There is no agreement on basic topics of the negotiation between the European Commission and the ECB on the one hand, and the IMF on the other. For that reason they plan to draft an internal document writing down their common points and differences.”
The document claims that the ECB is at odds with the European Commission over the framework of discussions – i.e. it wants the old bailout not the 20 February agreement as the basis; and it claims the European Commission is open to ending repossession of people’s homes, and “does not consider massive layoffs to be an issue”.
In a further concession to its lenders, Greece will facilitate the work of EU and IMF teams in Athens: it had insisted all discussions go via politicians rather than officials and it is this – procedural rather than substantial – spat that lay behind the fractious end to Friday’s Eurogroup meeting in Riga.
In years gone by, it would not have mattered to the international bond markets what sub-genre of Marxist they were dealing with: this news knocked several points off Greek bond yields.
It prompted puzzlement among some journalists, who claimed Mr Varoufakis was already “effectively side-lined” two months ago when Mr Tsipras began negotiating direct with the EU.
This misses a vital point: Mr Tsakalotos has decades of political capital with the inner core of a couple of thousands Syriza activists who will have to take the decision on whether to stomach the compromise Greece will need to do.
I don't know about you, but my favorite part is the bit about Tsakalatos being a "classic Marxist of the New Left who...comes from that school of Marxism which learned from 1970s onward to make compromises with capitalist reality."He’ll have to face down the party’s left, which on the last count had 41 per cent of the votes for rejecting any deal with the Eurogroup. Given his non-party background, that was always going to be Mr Varoufakis biggest hurdle; now it will be jumped by someone else.
That's classic Marxism, all right. Not sure what school it is, maybe the London School of Economics or the Wharton School, but no doubt about it being classic Marxism. I don't know why Mr. Mason limits the school to the classes of post-1970. After all "compromises" "with capitalist reality"-- preserving and reproducing capitalist property, capitalist values-- is exactly what Marxism has been all about ever since....well, Bernstein for one; Kautsky for another; and Lenin, let's not forget Lenin and Trotsky who, in the "interests of the [Russian] revolution" of course, compromised revolutionaries in Turkey; who more or less, more and less, screwed the pooch as we like to say in the railroad biz, the pooch meaning the task, the task being the overthrow of international capitalism. Germany, anyone? What leaders of "world revolution" would or could allow a murdering moron like Bela Kun to act as an agent of the "general staff"? Case closed.
And beyond that? Puhlease. There's the Third International beyond Germany. In China, in Britain, in Spain, in France, everywhere they could get their hands around the neck of the prospects for revolution. That's classic Marxism too, isn't it?
Not that the 1970s come up short when it comes to, well when it comes to coming up short. We have the classic Marxists of the New Left (alma maters unknown) in Allende's Unidad Popular government. There's a compromise that worked out well for both parties, don't you think? And the ever classic Communist Party Espagne doing what it does naturally, or historically (same-same) in Spain during the waning of the light that was Generalissimo Franco. And Portugal, don't forget the classic Marxist of Portugal, Cunhal, classically trained as a lawyer, and functioning as minister without portfolio in the various provisional governments of and around the MFA in the 1970s. Look at Portugal now, huh? Thing of beauty, that's what I think.
So we are getting a "classical Marxist" in place of an "erratic Marxist" when it comes to cutting a deal and this is a sign of the "seriousness" of a struggle against austerity, and for compromise?
Meanwhile, the Syriza government cuts a deal to finance overhauling weapons for the military and demands that public institutions, including hospitals and pharmacies, deposit all cash reserves (beyond what 15, 30 days of operating expense coverage?) into the central bank so that......so that the government can negotiate extensions with the Troika, pay its own operating expenses, provide an indeterminate amount of cash for pensions, and make payments to the IMF. Now that's classic Marxism, isn't it? Can't you just see and hear the old Moor applauding?
This must be where my lack of classical training, committed vulgarian that I am, really shows. I mean if I were facing a throw down with my creditors, and I wanted to protect the meager social services still extant in my charade of a government, I would keep that money out of the hands of the national central bank which is in the network of the European Central Bank and whose actions can be constrained at any moment by instructions from the ECB.
Yes, classic Marxism of the 1970s, available in compact disc format or......8-track tapes. This offer expires soon, so hurry.
Meet the New Left classic Marxism that smells just like the classic Marxism of the old left, always looking for the next way to fuck to death the prospects for workers' power. It's moments like these when I have to say "classic Marxism" does not exist. There is only the critique of capital, which becomes the weapon for its abolition by social revolution.
April 27, 2015
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