On Aug 15, 2015, at 6:10 PM, Michael Nuwer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The WSJ misses one point that might be important. > > Alexis Tsipras: "What was the result of the Greek people’s strong > position, against all odds, in the referendum? It was able to > internationalize the problem, to make it spread beyond its borders, to > unmask the image of the European partners and creditors. It was able to > show international opinion the image not of a lazy people but of a > people who are resisting and demanding justice and a future. We tested > the limits of resistance of the eurozone. We had an impact on the > relation of forces." > > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/greece-memorandum-austerity-coup-tsipras-syriza-interview/ Would this were so. The Syriza leadership, as we know, immediately undercut and reversed “the Greek people’s strong position, against all odds, in the referendum”. It is obscene for it to appropriate the No position as its own and to pretend that its blatant rejection of the popular will and subsequent surrender to the troika was really a victory and an inspiration to people everywhere which altered the relationship of forces. This would have been the case had the Tsipras government instead declared its intention to tear up the memoranda and to repudiate the debt - the program on which it was elected to office. In pursuit of this program, it would necessarily have had to mobilize its many supporters through meetings and demonstrations. This would almost certainly have given a fillip to similar solidarity actions organized by anti austerity forces throughout Europe and even beyond. Instead, as we know, the Tsipras leadership concentrated its focus and all of its energies on what proved in retrospect to have been a utopian quest to negotiate an end to austerity and a significant measure of debt relief from the German-led bloc. This required it to give assurances to its “partners” that it was willing to proceed “responsibly”, a code word for promoting stability rather than instability. The Wall Street Journal report simply reflects the gloating within elite circles in the wake of the Syriza leadership’s cap-in-hand approach which was made manifest in February when it accepted the austerity memoranda in principle which paved the way for its wholesale capitulation last month. Such an approach discouraged rather than inspired the “internationalization” of the No movement in Greece and widespread action against the institutional creditors and the eurozone states. Tsipras’ self-serving comment above is nonsense, though for the present it undoubtedly serves as consoling balm for the Syriza leadership and its disoriented supporters at home and abroad. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
