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SYRIZA, ND waver over agreement [misleading title, no SYRIZA - ND negotiations] I Kathimerini, Athens, May 22 <http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_22/05/2015_550297> Having returned from the European Union leaders’ summit in Riga on Friday, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to meet with SYRIZA members on Saturday to brief them on the course of negotiations with the country’s lenders. Tsipras is first due to meet Energy Minister Panayiotis Lafazanis, who heads SYRIZA’s left-wing faction, the Left Platform. He will then attend a gathering of the party’s central committee, which is due to meet Saturday and Sunday. Lafazanis is expected to decide on what stance his faction will take during the wider gathering after he has spoken to Tsipras personally. Speaking in Parliament on Friday, the energy minister insisted that for any deal with creditors to be accepted by SYRIZA it would have to be in line with the pledges the party made before the January 25 elections. The biggest potential challenge to any agreement from within SYRIZA is likely to come from the Left Platform, which has been working with Greek and foreign economists on a proposal regarding alternative sources of funding for the country. New Democracy, meanwhile, remains equivocal over whether it will support any deal that comes to Parliament. Speaking from Riga, where he was attending a meeting of the European People’s Party, conservative leader Antonis Samaras suggested that the opposition party might turn its back on the agreement if it leads to tax rises. “The people who were invoking hope and the country’s salvation are, it seems, about to seriously damage the competitiveness of the Greek economy,” said New Democracy spokesman Costas Karagounis in reference to the government’s plans to increase value-added tax. Petition demands that Syriza implement the popular mandate and abolish the Memoranda http://www.marxist.com/petition-demands-syriza-implement-popular-mandate.htm Written by Communist Tendency of Syriza Friday, 22 May 2015 More than 500 activists responded to the call of the Communist Tendency and signed the petition in favour of the cancellation of the Memoranda, the immediate withdrawal of the new Memorandum and the immediate implementation of election commitments. Amongst them are activists from the entire spectrum of the left wing of Syriza. Among them are 150 members of the CC and party members from 35 cities and 75 local member organisations. The petition will be submitted in the form of a resolution at the meeting of the Central Committee of Syriza this weekend by representatives of the Communist Tendency. The campaign continues, in person and online. call for convening of Syriza national congress by Communist Tendency (w/in Syriza) [Neither ‘honourable compromise’ nor ‘accidental rupture’ – the only way forward is a Socialist policy – part four] by Stamatis Karagiannopoulos IDOM [IMT], May 22 <http://www.marxist.com/greece-neither-honourable-compromise-nor-accidental-rupture-the-only-way-forward-is-a-socialist-revolution-part-four.htm> . . . The situation and the prospects of Syriza From the 2011 movement of the squares onwards Syriza became the main political representative of the masses and the working class. In order to deal with the united front of bourgeois pro-memoranda parties, the working masses turned towards the only party that articulated an alternative proposal for a left anti-memoranda government. The Syriza leadership demonstrated its willingness to fill the political void that was left the complete bourgeois degeneration of the PASOK leadership and the sectarianism of the KKE leadership. However, already from the early stages of Syriza meteoric rise in 2012, the leadership demonstrated that they lacked any desire to create a mass and militant party of activists for the working class and the youth. They had no desire to create a party capable of accelerating the fall of the pro-memoranda coalition and actively and critically support a left anti-memoranda government. On the contrary, the leadership used the party only as an electoral machine and as training ground for the future administrators of the bourgeois state. The best of the new party members had a healthy disgust for the poison of careerism and bureaucratic routine and quickly became disappointed and began to leave the party. Thus, Syriza failed to develop deep organisational roots amongst its best layers, despite the considerable support it received from the working masses. The degeneration peaked at when the local government elections absorbed hundreds of party officers from across Greece into the state administration. These activists entirely abandoned whatever ‘activist’ duties and interests they previously might have had. The rise of Syriza to power sped up this process of degeneration. The leadership, entirely absorbed in the duties of bourgeois governance, abandoned the party whilst it reduced its democratic procedures to the bare minimum out of fear of the criticism from the rank and file. The Central Committee – the supreme party body between the party congresses – has become an entirely cosmetic body that is not called for any meaningful debate or to reach binding decisions, but to confirm the existing balance of forces within the party, and to let off steam with regard to the dissatisfaction felt with the government’s policy, by engaging in discussions that have no real impact on decisions. That said, even in light of the above, Syriza remains a mass party that reflects internally both the processes that take place in the consciousness of the working masses and the increasing pressures from the bourgeois camp. Every step that the government takes towards capitulating to the blackmail of the creditors reflects itself automatically in the party itself with changing balance of forces between the party’s tendencies. This process already begun at the Central Committee meeting immediately after the February 20 agreement when the leadership found itself the more isolated than ever and was subjected to a torrent of criticisms even from within the leadership's own majority block. At the Central Committee meeting before the elections, the Communist Tendency had defended the need to convene an extraordinary party congress to decide the government programme. If such a congress was necessary before the elections, now - three months later - it is ever more crucial for the very survival of the party. It will also ensure that the working masses are not betrayed. An immediate extraordinary party congress constitutes the only solution to prevent a bitter defeat of historical proportions for the working class and the Left. This is how Greece should handle its crisis by Brett Arends Market Watch, May 22 <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-greece-should-handle-its-crisis-2015-05-22> If you want a great lesson in how to deal with a massive economic crisis, cast your eyes on Greece. Look at its dashing new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras and his exciting Syriza party. Look at what they’ve done since taking office in January. Then do the opposite. Don’t believe me? Check out these four great lessons. *Get your story straight* Is Greece going to “run out of money” in the next few weeks or will it meet its debt-repayment deadlines? Will the government cut pensions or not? Will it shrink the public sector or hire more workers? Will it drop out of the euro or stay? Are government officials confident about reaching an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank or not? If you’ve been confused about any of this in the past few months, you aren’t alone. Tsipras says one thing. Then his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, says something else. Then another person, such as Nikos Filis, Syriza’s spokesman, says a third thing. No wonder the Greek stock market and Greek government bonds have been on a roller coaster. No wonder citizens have been taking their money out of banks and investors have been taking their money out of the country. Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at private European bank Berenberg, now refers to the latest souring of the economy as the “Tsipras recession.” “Trust matters,” Schiemeding recently wrote to clients. “Few policy mistakes are more costly than shattering trust. … That the left-right populists in Athens have annoyed Greece’s international creditors is the smaller of the problems. Much worse is that the government has shattered trust at home. Capital flight of some €55 billion [more than $61 billion] from December to March, equivalent to some 30% of Greek annual GDP, is crippling the economy while a drain of deposits (€23 billion in the last four months) has partly paralysed the banking system, putting it on ECB life support.” When you’re in a crisis, pick one spokesperson, get your story straight, and stick to it. *Throw out the rule book* Yes, “everybody knows” Greece can get out of the crisis “only” by cutting its budget, selling off state assets, getting bailed out by the IMF and ECB, sticking with the euro and cutting its national debt. But as Ronald Reagan once observed, what really gets you into trouble isn’t what you don’t know, but what you think you know that just isn’t true. That’s the case with these nostrums. None are true. None are necessary to solving the crisis. They fall into the category of things that Keith Waterhouse, the late British writer and a legend on Fleet Street, referred to as “made-up rules.” During the Great Depression, “everybody knew” a country had to defend its gold reserves and couldn’t run a budget deficit. If a government closed the banks to clean up their books, they’d never re-open them. Everybody knew these things — until Franklin Roosevelt did the opposite. Greece is in the midst of an economic and social catastrophe. Unemployment is nearly 30%, and over 50% among the young. Radical times call for radical measures. Syriza was elected with a mandate to do that. And yet its leaders are playing little ball with the IMF. The sad thing is that while Tsipras looks to Brussels, individual Greeks are innovating with ideas that might help. Communities like Volos in Thessaloniki, and Chania in Crete have already launched local or “community” currencies to facilitate local trade and activity. Some, though not all, are surprisingly successful, without any official support from Athens. Such things aren’t wacko, crank ideas. Cities and towns in the U.S. did something similar during the Great Depression, for example. Why isn’t the Greek government pushing ideas like this? Officials are too busy listening to what “everybody knows.” *Focus on your friends, not your enemies* Mr. Prime Minister, Angela Merkel is not your friend. She wouldn’t have voted for you, she doesn’t support you and she isn’t going to go the extra mile to help you. That’s also true for the IMF, the ECB and pretty much everybody you meet in Brussels, Frankfurt, Washington and London. One of the biggest mistakes in a crisis is spending far too much time and energy trying to win over opponents and enemies. Sometimes people neglect or hurt their friends to appease their enemies — like, oh, Syriza seizing currency reserves from local communities to pay off international creditors. Wrong approach. In a crisis, your time, energy and political capital are precious. Don’t waste too much of it dealing with people who are part of the problem amd who won’t thank you for trying to appease them. Instead, work with people who are part of the solution — in this case, the people of Greece. *Stop dithering!* Recent opinion polls show views toward Syriza and Tsipras have soured since they came to office four months ago. A growing number are doubting Syriza’s agenda and wondering if the Beautiful People at the IMF and ECB weren’t right all along. No wonder. Not only has Tsipras made all the errors listed above, but he’s wasted four damaging months doing them as well. Greece is now sliding back into recession. In a crisis, the time to strike is when the iron is hottest — and that usually means the moment you’re elected. Franklin Roosevelt declared a banking holiday almost as soon as he took office, and set out to begin rebuilding the economy with a series of bold moves within his first 100 days. Tsipras has already had 116 days. And Greece is probably worse off than before he took over. _________________________________________________________ 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
