On Jul 15, 2015, at 3:16 PM, Patrick Bond <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2015/07/15 08:08 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: >> ... The reason why the finance ministry (which Varoufakis was leading >> at the time) did not take it to this next stage was the fear that >> setting up such a government department would harm the negotiations with >> the EU ministers. >> > > This needs clarification. Why would setting up Plan B as an option harm your > negotiations for Plan A? Why wouldn’t it strengthen your hand? Of course, it would. There was enough concern about a Grexit on the other side, including within the German government (perhaps excluding Schauble), that it would have been a credible threat in the way the strike threat operates in the arena of industrial class struggle. When you drop that threat, you are effectively engaging in collective begging rather than collective bargaining. That’s when I lost confidence in the Syriza leadership. The EU ministers, in fact, fully cognizant of the leadership’s loud fearful public proclamations of undying fidelity to the eurozone, then seized on the Grexit threat to strengthen their own hand in their “negotiations” with the government, ultimately forcing its complete capitulation. Someone on some website the other day described Varoufakis and the other Syriza negotiators as “armed with lattes in a gunfight”, and I can’t say that’s an unfair description. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
