******************** 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. *****************************************************************
I followed the links that Lou sent and read Hudson's review of Galbraith. I am surprised that Galbraith was surprised by what the Troika did to Greece. The smashing of Syriza was politically essential for *encourager les autres. *In that it seems to have succeeded because the onward march of Podemos and Sinn Fein has been halted. With Sanders folding and becoming a cheer leader for Clinton, Corbynism seems to be the only remaining game in town. But his position is far from secure, even though he had a resounding victory in the leadership election. His opponents will endeavor to keep him tied down within the Westminster bubble where he is clearly at a disadvantage. His party is mostly treacherous and disloyal. As a consequence, the Government know that when they mock Corbyn in parliament, most of his own party are cheering them on. For Corbyn's political colleagues, their main weapon of choice will be leaks to the media. They will complain that he does not genuinely want to be Prime Minister, while they do all the can to push Labour down in the polls. Out in the constituencies the local party apparatchiks and the MPs will do all they can to choke off the enthusiasm of the new members. Operation Boredom will be the order of the day. So it is a negative stalling and spoiling game that the anti-Corbyn forces will play. Meanwhile the Corbyn camp appears to be listening to the appeasers. "Peace in Our Time" would seem to be the slogan and so the Party bureaucracy, the Old Right, the Blairites and the Soft Left live to fight another day. I watched Paul Mason debating Ed Balls the former Labour Shadow Chancellor who lost his seat in the 2015 election. I was struck by how much Balls was tied to a static view of the world. For him the task is to persuade those who voted Tory to vote Labour. He did not mention the millions who stopped voting out of despair at the rightward drift of the Labour Party. Nor did he seem to take into account the rapid period of change that is on us. The ebbing and flowing and surging and pooling of political time are outside the ken of bourgeois or positivist thought, based as it is on the conviction that what is on the surface, is all there is. Balls and his ilk simply cannot comprehend why hundreds of thousands would flock to join the Labour Party. He dismisses them as a 'mob' and pins his hopes on the millions who voted Tory. They cannot be changed through an ideological struggle. Rather, the Left must accommodate to them. Hence the outcry when Corbyn refuses to attack immigration levels. Polly Toynbee of the Guardian said he has chosen "martyrdom". I remain cautiously optimistic. But I cannot give a coherent reason for that optimism. It just seems to me that the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism is weakening significantly and the next economic shock could be the telling blow. I am of course aware that the economic crisis can give rise to forces on the far right. But a rational decent resolution of the conjuncture should not be ruled out in advance, certainly not by the Left. comradely Gary _________________________________________________________ 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
