"After just ten days in office, the new Greek government’s leftist pretensions are collapsing like a house of cards. Syriza has dropped its demand for a write-off of Greek debt and watered down its social program. Instead, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis are traveling across Europe to assure governments and banks that they can rely on Syriza, in Varoufakis’ words, to “push through the deep reforms of the Greek state that governments before us refused to do.” Read more.It was obvious from the beginning. If they didn't act boldly and leave the euro and go back to the drachma, it was all just empty talk.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Just as I predicted, the Greek government is caving to the Troika
Just as I predicted right after the Greek elections and with the appointment of Greece's new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece would cave to the EU. All the big talk about abandoning austerity and renegotiating or demanding a cut in debt; the new Greek government is just putting its tail between its legs and capitulating to the Troika's demands.
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I think this is quite wrong, and don't see any new evidence in the link.
Some links that enlightened me on Syriza's overall strategy of "absurd reasonableness", which I think is exactly right, smarter than immediate Grexit: Greece’s duty to negotiate with Berlin: Part B of an interview with Roger Strassburg and Jens Berger, of NachDenkSeiten . Confirms a summary of Greece's position by Frances Coppola at Forbes here:
Greece has no intention of leaving the Euro or the EU. (But others might force it out)
Greece has no intention of defaulting on its debts to primary official creditors. (But others might force it to)
Greece is committed to pursuing policies that promote the economic stability and recovery of Europe. (But others might not be)
Finally, this puts paid to a wrong answer often enough heard on the first question to ask about Grexit: Greece could feed itself, says farmers conference.
Love you mike, buy WSWS can be a bit off the rails sometimes
Reading the whole article, WSWS is criticizing Syriza from the left as a pseudo-left party, which is true. The Syriza leaders are not bomb throwers but it's not over until the fat lady sings. Let's see how things turn out before we wring out hands. But WSWS is correct, the outcome will be bourgeois rather than proletarian. The question is how relevant the outcome will be to the precariat.
The WSWS is in favor of one thing and one thing only: a world communist revolution of the working class. That's the only tune they sing, and any group that doesn't sing it with them is an evil capitalist lackey in their eyes.
Syriza is not "pseudo-left". They are a coalition of various left-wing parties whose center of gravity is democratic socialism. They are also an actual political party attempting to be responsive to the voters who voted for them, voters who - guess what - are not big boosters on the whole of the idea of a world wide communist revolution on Trotskyist principles leading to an anti-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
The whole idea of a "bourgeois" class vs. a "proletarian" class is a plate of drivel served up out of 19th intellectual century leftovers that do not apply to the 21st century.
Nonsense.
Many working people in the modern western middle class also have some characteristics of the bourgeois classes of the 19th century. They are often invested in the means of production through their retirement plans and other instruments, and so receive some capital income in addition to labor income.
"They are often invested in the means of production through their retirement plans and other instruments"
Which is, of course, merely an illusion to try and make it out that the working class own some of the 'means of production'.
They don't. Retirement plans are a waste of time and effort and do little other than provide a job guarantee for those in the finance sector, and prevent the real solution to retirement (an earnings related state pension) from arising.
Owning the means of production is a matter of power. When you do get a bit (as I did during the IT boom of the late 1990s), and can start dictating rates, then the real owners of production lobby the state to have you taken down a peg or two - normally by opening up immigration channels or changing the tax code to target your operations.
Reading the whole article, WSWS is criticizing Syriza from the left as a pseudo-left party, which is true.
Tom, WSWS is criticizing Syriza from the planet Mars. It's the Red Planet, which is the only thing Red / Marxist/ Socialist / Communist about what they are saying. The bourgeouis / proletarian divide - aka Rich / Poor, aka Germany / Greece is relevant enough though. Spent a long time today digging through Marx, Engels & Hegel (Holy Family, Phenomenology) for a couple apt passages.
Syriza & Greece - with plans announced to transform the Eurozone & stamp out austerity everywhere - is the closest thing seen to the good ole world communist Revolution of the working class in a long time, and thus the least pseudo-left party in the world. WSWS & others should abandon their ludicrous pseudo-left opposition to Syriza. Or maybe they are trying to bring Marx, Engels. Lenin, Luxemburg & Trotsky back to life as being more restful than spinning and laughing so hard in their graves.
Tom consider that all that Marxist stuff was born out of indignation due to the constant injustices present when we had govt institutions operating under the metals...
and as such civil govt was very limited in ability to impose economic justice as the authority was upside-down with the authority of the metals then above the authority of civil govt ....
These conditions are now past.
Authority of civil govt is now back above that of the metals.
so our analytical framework has to adjust under these new conditions...
so (albeit at least for now) we see Yanis (self-described "Marxist") and these WSWS people struggling... as their analytic framework doesnt fit the present conditions (eg like Dan says today you have middle class pensioners living off dividends, bond interest, etc...)
So time to move on and engage with an acknowledgement the new present conditions of authority...
rsp,
Mike, It's far too early to make any conclusion about Syriza. As for the WSWS - they would say that wouldn't they?
They say the same about Keynesian and MMT economists too. They are all just apologists for bourgeois capitalism, trying to fix a failing system with a band aid solution.
The Trotsyists seem to think that only they can lead the class struggle. Anyone else but them is in the pay of the capitalists who will sell out at the first opportunity.
Of course, we haven't yet seen the promised world socialist revolution! Which just goes to show they must be right - everyone else but them is just so keen on selling it out! :-)
We don't have to agree with their politics to see that their prediction is likely to be borne out. They made the same call with regard to France's "socialist" party, and they were right.
By all accounts Syriza does not have enough support to take Greece out of the EU. But they were elected on an anti-austerity platform, as were the socialists in France.
We don't have to agree why promises get broken - the point is that voters are being betrayed, allowing austerity to continue.
So time to move on and engage with an acknowledgement the new present conditions of authority...
The options I see to taking on the status quo are historical: extreme right, extreme left, and populist. Until we have "Revolutionary MMT" on the political landscape, we haven't moved on.
Let point out that just about everyone on this blog is bourgeois (accepts the capitalist model of economic liberalism) and is in the 1% of owners of global wealth. So are the people representing Syriza.
The fundamental definition in political thinking between left and right is that the left is based on internationalism and socialism, while the right is based on nationalism-imperialism and capitalism.
The world is now dominant by the right and most workers in the developed world accept the liberal economic model.
The left holds that this will not change by a change of heart on the part of the ownership class and the nations that dominate global politics. In order for the left to replace the right as an international reality, the workers of the world must unit to cast off their chains, which include the mindset that have themselves that keeps them in the situation they find themselves, that is, the owners give them just enough to reproduce workers and not become agitated enough to do much about changing this other than complain in ways that can be managed by the security apparatus.
What passes for left now is anything other than neoliberalism. Social democracy is not homogenous but extends from Marxist-based socialism to liberal socialism that accepts capitalism, and the Third Way promotes a mixed economy based on capitalism.
There is no requirement regarding means on the left other than that workers take the initiative to liberate themselves from a system that operates against their social, political and economic interests and serves class-based interests instead that don't much include the working class or those at the margins resulting from liberalism.
Even Marx agreed that in some places at least reform could substitute for violent revolution. There are few now who advocate for violent revolution as a necessary means in order to be considered a leftist.
continued
Thomas Jefferson was a revolutionary in the above sense, even after the American revolution.
"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787[2]
The Tree of Liberty (Quote)
Actually, this quote is well-known and often repeated on the political right in the US. I have seldom if ever heard it used by anyone on the so-called political left in the US tho.
It should be obvious from what I said above that there is no viable political left in the US other than at the fringe of politics. Europe actually has leftist parties, where the US has rightist parties and partisan doing and advocating things that are outlawed in many European countries (but not Ukraine).
In other words, most people that criticize the left see it in terms of an excluded middle that present a false dilemma — either some version of capitalism, which is bourgeois thinking, or some version of "communism" that is equated with the historical manifestations of communism that have been discredited. In Marxist terminology this is "false consciousness" that plays into the hands of the right and excludes one from really participating in the left.
Here I am not arguing for or against any position, just clarifying positions. My own view is neither right nor left but incorporates all possible views, agreeing with Hegel that "the truth is the whole" and that history unfolds dialectically. Wilfred Desan updated this view in The Planetary Man. I studied Continental Philosophy with him in grad school.
Wikipedia:
Planetary philosophy[edit]
Desan argues[2] that as unique individuals we originate as parts of a larger whole, which he calls the totum, and we are destined to return to this totum through meaningful dialogue, which the whole enables.
Individuals may be unique or unequal, but that does not necessarily have to be the cause of serious conflict among persons or nations. Precisely because of their differences, they can complement each other.
Each person or nation by itself is considered incomplete (fragmented) in being and in knowledge, and each approaches reality subjectively from a specific angle. Therefore, each can only arrive at partial truths on their own. If true and universal objectivity is to be achieved at the level of noesis, Desan argues that then we must cooperate, in particular by acquiring a globalising viewpoint which transcends our own limited and incomplete understandings, and in this way become "planetary persons" who, realizing the limits of the "angular visions" of each, reach insight in the totum to ensure its survival, considered as the highest good.
The truly "planetary person" is regarded in Desan's philosophy as a saint, and as a diplomat or cosmopolite. For Desan, the planetary person is the savior of the totum because God's work, assuming the divine truly exists, is in fact our own work, and therefore "salvation" (in the secular sense of survival) must be ensured through practical human efforts made toward planetary unification. Using the techniques of phenomenology, he examines the forms and characteristics of the new awareness and the ways of relating that will be required of human beings in a global environment.
Desan's philosophy is deeply committed to the inviolability of the individual, and borrows, articulates or integrates concepts from theology, anthropology and ethics. But his philosophy can be considered as being essentially a hopeful humanism, envisaging the possibility of human beings attaining a higher level of consciousness through their own efforts, adequate to ensure the future of the species. It draws on insights from Continental philosophy and Anglo-Saxon philosophy in a way which intends to overcome some deficiencies of previous liberal, socialist and other emancipatory philosophies, thus doing more justice to the complexity of human situations and the intersubjective meanings which people attach to their actions.
Pretty difficult for workers of the world to unite when they've been conditioned over the past half century to view work as every man for himself. Some nations, however, have labor united better than others. Germany does a far better job of integrating the interests of workers and capital than does the USA.
I live near Chicago and all I hear and read daily is how demonic labor unions are. I almost get physically ill when I hear that horsecrap. I know this is fanciful thinking on my part but I long for the days when labor wasn't bashful articulating the reality of class struggle in America. And, oh, it doesn't have to be the Marxist variety of class struggle either.
MG, the programming runs deep and the outcome is what Marxists call "false consciousness." There will be no lasting change without "consciousness raising," because even if there would be revolution it will quickly fail by slipping back into the accustomed patterns that manifest as institutional arrangements.
Consciousness raising has to take place on two levels. First, people have to come to see the ideological trap and the possibility of a way out. The dangers are discouraging fatalism and utopian thinking that detracts from practicality.
Secondly, for the change to transcend the previous state, there also has to be a raising of the level of collective consciousness toward greater appreciation of universality, which Marx called species-awareness and which Buddhist extend to all sentient beings, and which universalists extend to all beings ecologically. this requires deepening the ability to appreciate the interconnectedness of existence.
Is it utopian to believe that Capital should serve the interests of Labour?
I'm curious Malmo, what would a non marxist variety of class struggle be?
Seems to me if you even acknowledge "class" you are moving into a marxist frame.
I live in the south and I hear exactly the same as you do about unions and much of it comes from transplanted northerners who had dads that were union guys. I really don't get it and it almost makes me ill too.
The notion that class structure and the asymmetries it produces is researched and documented in social studies other than liberal economics, where it is demonized as "Marxist," meaning Stalinist. It's total self-serving BS used to fool the rubes and keep them in line without needing to roll out the security detail that's in the wings.
BTW, anyone that hasn't at least looks at C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, should do so. Written in the context of the Fifties, it's more relevant today than then.
A main inspiration for the book was Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state like Germany. Behemoth had a major impact on Mills and he claimed that Behemoth had given him the "tools to grasp and analyse the entire total structure and as a warning of what could happen in a modern capitalist democracy".[1]
Also Karl Polyani's The Great Transfromation
Polanyi argued that the development of the modern state went hand in hand with the development of modern market economies and that these two changes were inextricably linked in history. Essential to the change from a premodern economy to a market economy was the altering of human economic mentalities away from a non-utility maximizing mindset to one more recognizable to modern economists.[5] Prior to the great transformation, markets had a very limited role in society and were confined almost entirely to long distance trade.[6] As Polanyi wrote, "the same bias which made Adam Smith's generation view primeval man as bent on barter and truck induced their successors to disavow all interest in early man, as he was now known not to have indulged in those laudable passions."[7]
The great transformation was begun by the powerful modern state, which was needed to push changes in social structure and human nature that allowed for a competitive capitalist economy. For Polanyi, these changes implied the destruction of the basic social order that had reigned because of pre-modern human nature and that had existed throughout all earlier history. Central to the change was that factors of production like land and labor would now be sold on the market at market determined prices instead of allocated according to tradition, redistribution, or reciprocity.[8] He emphasized the greatness of the transformation because it was both a change of human institutions and human nature.
I don't know what you guys are looking at, but short of abandoning the euro there's nothing the Greeks can do. Do you think Germany is going to start running large current account deficits? Does Varoufakis think that? And they're not going to give up the euro. They can't. It would take at least a year of preparation to make their banking system ready for a new currency. We'd hear about such plans. There is nothing in the works.
They may be trying to force Germany force them into default/grexit (they cannot force anyone to get out of the euro) or to an untenable position. This would accelerate tumoil in other European nations that are closer to Greece position than to germany. Actually more and more nations are probably secretly in Greece side (even eurocrats), but the tight control of the 'creditors' over the system is difficult to overcome.
A new parallel pseudo-currency along defaulting on their outstanding debt obligations + capital controls could be a plausible scenario.
Tsipras & YV do not seem to back up. Seems an "unstoppable force meets an immovable object" scenario to me.
The key is not how Syriza deals with the eurocrats but whether they stick to what they said they would do about the Greek society and economy. That will determine the outcome.
At some point, they may have to hold a referendum to determine whether the Greek people are on board to do what it takes when and if that time comes.
But I think that Syriza is into seeing this through to the end, and that means that they are either successful in breaking austerity and putting Greece on new non-neoliberal track, or letting another government give it a shot.
Unless the military steps in, of course. They have to look over their shoulders about that.
Greg,
Bakunin, Toynbee and Proudhon et al articulated views on class struggle that differed from a Marx. Since anything Marx is so toxic in the West one can still argue the existence of CS without invoking Marxism.
Bob:We don't have to agree with their politics to see that their prediction is likely to be borne out. They made the same call with regard to France's "socialist" party, and they were right.
By all accounts Syriza does not have enough support to take Greece out of the EU. But they were elected on an anti-austerity platform, as were the socialists in France.
Of course it is likely that Syriza folds. What is interesting is that the Euroblob folding or Grexit is about as likely too! Utterly different situation from France, not in immediate economic crisis, but the heart of bad economics in Europe, not Germany. It is hard to overstate how reactionary all the French political class / intellectuals is. French "Marxists" & socialists - Mitterand or Hollande - were/are waaaay to the right of Keynesians / US liberals - they make Samuelson & JFK look like Che Guevara & Fidel Castro. The French right is to the left of the French left, and has been for a long time. Bunch of relevant papers by Alain Parguez
Ignacio:They may be trying to force Germany force them into default/grexit (they cannot force anyone to get out of the euro) or to an untenable position.
That is something like the strategy that Varoufakis outlines in the link I gave. Better of course for ECB, Germany et al to come to their senses, which is what they want. That it would take a year to change to a new currency is silly. Has happened many times before, on a much shorter time scale. People are so used to stasis - WSWS is luxuriantly comfortable in it! - that they can't recognize the weeks when more might happen than the years before.
Tom:The key is not how Syriza deals with the eurocrats but whether they stick to what they said they would do about the Greek society and economy. That will determine the outcome.
Yup. The government has started presenting its policy statements in Parliament is what they said today.
Well the global markets seem to be saying it's going to be business as usual, and we know markets are never wrong -:)
"It would take at least a year of preparation to make their banking system ready for a new currency. "
No it wouldn't.
Simplest thing that will work remember.
It would simple take the ECB to refuse to honour the peg between the Greek Central Bank and the ECB - at which point to clear in 'German' Euros you have to go via a bank that has a leg in both camps - which would quickly arise since there is money to be made trading the spread between Greek Euros and German Euros. Possibly in good old correspondent fashion.
Always remember that a banking system is simply a set of pegs. The Greeks already print their own notes and coins under the Eurosystem (easily identifiable via serial number and face design) and they already run their bit of TARGET2.
The Greek central bank already clears the Greek banking system in entirety.
All that is required for Greek Euros to float is for the ECB to fail to honour the one-for-one transfer and you get an Instant floating currency.
The Eurosystem is already very decentralised and lightly coupled - hence how they have constructed their version of QE.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be a bit of a mess, but the furore would die down very quickly indeed and the Greek payment system would continue as before.
And given that the HFSF has huge stake in all the Greek banks, and is a private entity under Greek law, it would be pretty easy to make sure all the losses in German Euros ended up on the HFSF balance sheet and put that into liquidation to write them out.
It won't be easy, but it isn't impossible. The Eurosystem is already built on a complete lack of trust between supposed partners, so it comes apart really easily.
Calgacus: Thanks for the Alan Parguex link!
The AlaIn PargueZ link is also good. :)
Check out the last paper, "Out of the Euro strait-jacket —
The economics of a Man-made catastrophe —
The true nature of the Euro zone crisis and how to escape from the race to the abyss"
Wonder if Yanis has read it.
I like the conclusion:
The anomaly vanishes. Normality is restored, instantaneous depreciation of the Euro.
xS again converges on xR. II2 vanishes . It is replaced by the normal curve dominated by I which is restored !
The new Verdi opera ends.
Italy is free.
Indeed, it should be free of his political elites ; appointed not by Vienna but by Paris, Germany and the new capital of the new holy alliance; Bruxelles. It happened once . It must happen again.
Like Keynes, Heidegger, Sartre and before, Hegel, I do believe that ultimately the forces of life, the essentia of the being always win. The shameful collapse of the Monti-regime , simple administrators of poverty law is a warning !.
The reader could be stunned by such a call to philosophy but he (she) should remember the title of Sir Isaac Newton book "mathematical principles of natural philosophy".
"Mike, It's far too early to make any conclusion about Syriza."
Amen!
Frankly, as a Marxist, I hope Syriza manages to achieve what they promised: to put an end to austerity and cut the debt. Personally, I have no other expectation, and I fear they won't be able to deliver even that (but, I repeat, it seems too early to say).
Incidentally, I fear that because, among other things, that would boost the position of the Golden Dawn.
They didn't promise revolution and they shouldn't be judged on not delivering it. Neither did they promise to leave the eurozone, btw.
I'd rather have all that, but it never was in the cards, and is not in the cards right now.
This is the WSWS error.
And, to avoid a flames war with the trotskyites of the right (and, boy, there are plenty of those around) I better leave things at that.
It is hard to overstate how reactionary all the French political class / intellectuals is. French "Marxists" & socialists - Mitterand or Hollande - were/are waaaay to the right of Keynesians / US liberals - they make Samuelson & JFK look like Che Guevara & Fidel Castro. The French right is to the left of the French left, and has been for a long time.
Hollande et al. did a decent job of mouthing anti-austerity rhetoric until the public was bamboozled into electing them.
The WSWS considers pseudo-left organizations to be disingenuous, and I agree. Until they abandon these labels, they deserve criticism.
Bob, anything by Parguez on the history, like those papers I linked to (h/t financial matters) one in Eastern Economic Journal and especially this 2008 one in Challenge are must reads. Parguez & Bliek were proved correct:
Abstract: Will the French economic policy of the new president likely be a replay of the deflationary policies of the early 1980s? These two economists believe it may. Oddly, they argue, the policy reflects the traditions of an Austrian influenced right-wing economic philosophy and a Marxist ideology grounded not in John Maynard Keynes but in principles very similar to the right's.
Magpie:
"A revolution is made by a nation, not a party." (Marx)
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." (Orwell)
So a nation (Syriza + other parties left & right, even Golden Dawn, forming a great majority of Greeks) telling the truth is acting revolutionarily. :-)
Calgacus,
Syriza has not told the truth as MMT sees it. That would be too revolutionary for the conventional wisdom crowd to digest. It remains to be seen what role they will play. If they end up continuing austerity, they are as disingenuous as any French "socialist".
According to the link I posted at the top, Varoufakis & Tsipras put ending austerity above remaining in the Eurozone. Varoufakis says that if Merkel & Schauble don't change: " In that case, the Eurozone is going to bid us farewell." Ending austerity is the essential "MMT" truth, so they are telling the essential truth, especially if they follow the strategy above.
Of course they are saying a lot of contradictory things. That is the nature of politics.
If they end up continuing austerity, they are as disingenuous as any French "socialist". Well, that is a judgement of their intentions. I wouldn't call them disingenuous even if they cave. Parguez's point was that decades of evidence shows the French "socialists" never had any intention of anything but austerity.
I think the problem is that Varoufakis etc, but not say Costas Lapavitsas, a new Syriza MP, also an economist, are irrationally pessimistic on the damage of a Grexit. But in that case it speaks well of their courage to "threaten" it as much as YV did above.
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