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Proyect wrote: What's missing in the book is political analysis how to get from the current stage to something better. Negative critique can only go so far. What I keep coming back to is the tendency of the revolutionary left to put forward critiques of the Tsipras's and Hugo Chavez's of the world but an utter incapacity to win the people to its program. Venezuela has its Antarsya, as does Spain. Is mounting a left opposition supposed to change society? Is that what Lenin was about? How is it that groups like the British SWP or the ISO fail to penetrate beyond a certain threshold? If the Tsipras approach is so bankrupt, why is he so popular? I am not asking these questions because I am a Tsipras supporter but because I am opposed to the sterility of left oppositionism. How does Costas Lapavitsas write a 268 page book and include no more than 3 pages about political strategy? For that matter, how does Todd Chretien write an article about differences on the Marxist left about Greece that is filled with pointless lecturing about "State and Revolution" but fails to address the question of what to *do next*? Yes, the capitalist state has to be smashed. Whoopee-fucking-doo. ****************** Has it ever occurred to you that there is a marked preference for things that seem easy to do, and a strong aversion to things that are hard. Example 1): Vote for us and we will roll back austerity and stay in the Eurozone: EASY; Example 2) 2) Mobilize in the streets and factories for an "assault on capital": HARD. Problem: The easy thing they voted for is impossible. The left critique of the Syriza leadership isn't wrong, it's just that getting people to see the necessity of the alternative is a big job. A majority of Greeks may not like what is now being done to them, and may even be willing to take a chance on an upstart far-left party, but they are still products of postwar European capitalism, which is very different from the capitalism that existed in Europe between the two world wars. Then, whole sections (though not a majority) of working classes in many countries were convinced of the necessity of revolution, and prepared to make the sacrifices revolution entailed. Such workers ceased to exist under postwar capitalism, which was enormously successful. Workers (and people in general) are still far better off today, more individualistic and less self-sacrificing. Revolutionary groups cannot attract large numbers, and those it does attract are mostly middle class intellectual types who, for all their good intentions, are still committed to the pursuit of normal, successful petty bourgeois careers. But the foundations of the postwar "miracle' have been eroding for some time, and that erosion has reached crisis proportions in Greece and other peripheral countries. The problem is to rebuild the solidarity and commitment that has been lost. This is no easy task, and will take time, but here are some things that could maybe be done in Greece toward that end. 1) Organize defense squads to guard against Golden Dawn attacks in immigrant neighborhoods; 2) Organize neighborhood committees to resist evictions; 3) Fight in the unions for general strikes which last longer than the lunch hour, and shop floor committees to coordinate them; 4) Take government measures that will mean immediate, dramatic improvements in the lives of ordinary people, thereby cementing popular loyalty to Syriza : an increase in the minimum wage, a moratorium on layoffs, a ceiling on rents.( It was, you may recall, measures like these that Castro took, and that made the Cuban people willing to die for the revolution). I'm not necessarily proposing these specific measures, just trying to give a general idea of the kinds of things that could be done to increase the self-organization and self-confidence of the people in preparation for a more serious struggle. Neighborhood anti-fascist and anti-eviction committees and shop floor strike committees, could then perhaps be woven together into larger councils that could be a basis for dual power. These are the kinds of things that have to be done. Who is to do the organizing? I don't know how prepared groups in the Left Platform are to go beyond parliamentary politics (I suspect not very), but someone once said that if capitalism (and, we might add, present-day capitalist austerity) could be voted out of existence, the bourgeoisie would have abolished elections long ago. And the European bourgeoisie has indeed gone a long way toward taking economic questions out of the electoral arena. We must take politics beyond it. Jim Creegan Jim Creegan On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 5:53 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > Breaking with the euro will not provide “a chance of properly lifting > austerity across the continent”. Default and devaluation and the > establishment of a new drachma will not mean prosperity for Greece if > Greece’s weak and corrupt capitalist sector continues to dominate the > economy. > > Take Iceland. This is a very tiny economy with only 325,000 people, the > size of smallish city in Europe or the US. It is often presented by > Keynesian economists and others as showing a way out of the crisis compared > to staying in a common currency. The argument is that Iceland defaulted on > its debts and devalued its currency and so recovered its economy (on a > capitalist basis), while Greece remains trapped. > > I have written on the experience of Iceland in several posts and this > story of default and devaluation is just not true (see my post, > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/ > profitability-the-euro-crisis-and-icelandic-myths/) ). Iceland did not > renege on the huge debts that its corrupt banks ran up with foreign > institutions (mainly the UK and the Netherlands). It eventually > renegotiated them and is now paying them back like Greece. > > And devaluation did not mean that Icelanders escaped from a huge loss in > living standards. They have done little better than the Greeks on that > score – although of course, Icelanders started from a much higher standard > of living than the Greeks. In euro terms, Icelandic employee real incomes > fell 50% and are still 25% below pre-crisis levels. > > full: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/ > greece-breaking-illusions/ > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/ > options/marxism/sectarian61%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
