Syriza
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I found the ex-Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne to be quite informative on Syria and foreign policy…but he did have to resign in the end because of the owners editorial influence regards the bankers corruption.Worse than the Telegraph is the hypocrisy of the pretend liberals of the other broad-sheets and the worse of them all is the BBC.Speed the day when the Socialist Standard becomes a daily journal and our blog has real journalists and correspondents reporting the news on the hour
Sorry for all the links but now another onehttp://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/yanis-varoufakis-speaks-out-for-first-time-since-resigning-as-greek-finance-minister/Varoufakis Speaks Out
According to Nigel Farage, and also Robert Peston on the BBC (who's echoing who?), the deal imposed on the Greek government "shows that national democracy and membership of the eurozone are incompatible"(today's Times). Others, from the left as well as the right, have made the same point, but it's misleading. If Greece withdrew from the Eurozone – or if Britain withdrew from the EU – the trappings of 'national democracy' would be restored, but what its 'sovereign' government would be able to do would still be restricted by the pressures of capitalism in a slump. Austerity would still be the order of the day, only it would now be by an independent decision of a government exercising unrestricted 'sovereignty'.Less of an affrnt to 'national dignity' perhaps but who cares about that.
There is an article by our theological friend Chris Hedges on the Greek crisis, plagiarising JC’s worshipping of money, with his ‘Corporate profit is God’. At least he places the perspective for the working class in general as one of ‘international solidarity’ ? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42357.htm And one from John Pilger who has clearly picked up the “the dung of the devil” quotation via the WSM forum. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42358.htm
This article makes what seems to be a balanced view and suggests some sort of future for Greecehttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Greece-and-the-Union-of-Bullies-20150714-0017.html
https://www.byline.com/column/11/article/164A good rebuttal to armchair warriors:
Quote:Seen as a sort of Helm's Deep, this defeat for the Greeks is monumental, irredeemable. It is the "all is lost" moment. Seen as one opening battle in much larger war, it is hugely valuable. It has drawn the enemy out into the fore, exposed its strengths and weaknesses. It has provided intelligence to others, in Spain and Portugal and Italy, which will ensure they're better prepared. It has been bravely fought. And smartly, because Greece gets to live to fight another day.Frankly, I reckon they should start by formally altering the Greek flag to write:
εκδίκηση
Across it, so that flies above all the EU meetings like a menace.
tsipras has the best deal that can be achieved through negotiations.
Greece has no strike threat, or stick to wield to get a better deal.
What this shows is that you can't beat the capitalist system. The economic laws of capitalism will impose their will one way or another.I know it's ancient history now but just checked the detailed results of the 5 July referendum on wikipedia here.I see that there were 5.8% invalid or blank votes. Surely a significant figure.
ALB wrote:What this shows is that you can't beat the capitalist system. The economic laws of capitalism will impose their will one way or another.Indeed. Vindicating Historical Materialism that the economic base will ultimately assert itself.
Of course, there are options within the realm of the possible:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/01/99/1968_secret_history/244316.stmI imagine something like the above is sitting in the Greek civil service (such as it is): I'm aware that there has been no official contingency planning for a new currency, but I'd imagine somone has looked at rationing, currency controls, seige economy and the like. As the above article suggests, it's politically explosive, but Greece is sufficiently close to disaster that something lik that could work (in fact, strict capital controls and rationing would probably work better, IMNSHO, than a new fiat currency).
Something that Harold Wilson is said to have considered in 1968 may or may not have been feasible but if it had been done it wouldn't have avoided austerity. And that, surely, is the point. Whatever a government decides there is no way of avoiding austerity in an economic crisis.Varoufakis, in the interview with the New Statesman someone mentioned above, also had an alternative plan:
Quote:HL: Right. So there were two options as far as I can see – an immediate Grexit, or printing IOUs and taking bank control of the Bank of Greece [potentially but not necessarily precipitating a Grexit]?YV: Sure, sure. I never believed we should go straight to a new currency. My view was – and I put this to the government – that if they dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without crossing the point of no return.We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek 2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the three things, which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut down our banks.… I was warning the Cabinet this was going to happen [the ECB shut our banks] for a month, in order to drag us into a humiliating agreement. When it happened – and many of my colleagues couldn’t believe it happened – my recommendation for responding “energetically”, let’s say, was voted down.This wouldn't have avoided austerity either of course.He also suggested, in an article for the Guardian on 10 July, that Greece would probably not be able to manage a changeover to a new currency:
Quote:To exit, we would have to create a new currency from scratch. In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the US military’s might, three printing firms and hundreds of trucks. In the absence of such support, Grexit would be the equivalent of announcing a large devaluation more than 18 months in advance: a recipe for liquidating all Greek capital stock and transferring it abroad by any means available.No wonder Tsipras opted for the devil he knew.
Another piece by Paul Mason of interest I think.http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun
Quote:The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information; and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the hierarchy: between old forms of society moulded around capitalism and new forms of society that prefigure what comes next. Is it utopian to believe we’re on the verge of an evolution beyond capitalism? We live in a world in which gay men and women can marry, and in which contraception has, within the space of 50 years, made the average working-class woman freer than the craziest libertine of the Bloomsbury era. Why do we, then, find it so hard to imagine economic freedom?A much grander topic than Syriza, methinks
This is worth a read by Yanis Varoufakis about the dilemma of trying to manage capitalism when the cards are stacked against you.http://www.thepressproject.gr/details_en.php?aid=79355
A cloud with a silver lining One of the biggest losers appears to be John Paulson. After the Greek government, his Paulson Special Situation Fund is the second-biggest shareholder of Piraeus Bank, which is one of the largest financial firms in Greece. Piraeus holds nearly a third of all Greek deposits. Over the weekend, the Greek government closed banks in Greece in order to prevent their collapse. Panicked depositors had already pulled roughly a billion euros out of them. Paulson’s fund said it owned 6.6% of Piraeus at the end of the first quarter, which was the last time the fund filed its holdings. Greece also closed its stock market Monday, so shares aren’t trading. But as of Friday, the bank’s stock price, which had fallen 56% this year, was $0.40. It would certainly be lower today. Paulson could lose as much as $161 million on the investment.There there’s Athens Water. Paulson put $137 million into the utility just a year ago, hoping to cash in on the fact that the monopoly was going private. That didn’t happen. And now Athens Water is having trouble collecting its bills from the government, which is out of cash. Paulson has already lost about $75 million on the investment, and he could lose much of the rest. http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/john-paulson-greece-puerto-rico-hedge-funds/
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