Syriza ftw

ezel wrote:guzi bre!

ostap bender wrote:

Kevin Ovenden
2 hrs · Edited ·

The Athens Metro workers and national rail workers will strike tomorrow.
The Metro workers launched a militant fight two years ago. They were conscripted back to work using Junta-era laws to "militarise" workers in essential services.
The action, and the egregious response by the government, did weaken Samaras, however.
Some saw in that action the end of the cycle of workers resistance. Similarly when high school teachers voted to strike at around the same time.
Mass meetings were attended by 90 percent of union members. They voted by over 70 percent at those meetings to strike. There is nothing more democratic and no greater mandate.
A meeting of the full-time union apparatus and lay officials however called off the strike.
For some, events such as these marked the end of a cycle of labour and social struggle and its "sublation", transference, evolution, whatever, into at the "political" realm. By which was meant the ballot box.
The strike tomorrow is not a sign of a defeated or demoralised working class. That is despite the bitter defeat represented by the government's capitulation - which of course is far from without impact on the workers movement.
Nor is it an apolitical social spasm. At its centre is not the avoidance of the political dilemma. It is the political dilemma. And the strike is not just a protest it is a part of a process of developing a self-aware, political force which can answer that dilemma.
That is - not to run up against the limits of the limited or sectional action by the movement and thence to hand responsibility to others. But for the movement to develop a political subjectivity to answer the questions it poses.
That is not just a more radial politics than those of the government. It is a more radical way of conceiving of and "doing" politics.
(How will we get to the central demonstrations? We will get up even earlier and walk. As I remember us doing on several occasions over the last 20 years.)

Kevin Ovenden
14 mins · Edited ·

Tsipras – the new Lula
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Alexis Tsipras’s interview this evening resembled nothing more than the former Brazilian President Lula after he had capitulated to the forces of capital, domestic and foreign, and abandoned his social reform programme.
For all the talk of coup, tonight’s performance, of over an hour, was a far cry from Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
It seemed aimed not at winning the left of his party, but minimising the scale of revolt. And it had nothing of the popular touch. He was largely not speaking to popular Greece
The deal is not something he likes, he said, but it has to be accepted. Europe has betrayed its democratic ideals with the pressure exerted upon Greece.
He didn’t refute the talk of “mental water-boarding” and being “crucified”, which was widely reported yesterday.
“But who benefits from that reporting?” he asked. One recurring theme of his interview was that he had "bought time" and "opened up cracks in the EU". If there is a bit of economic growth, then the government can return to delivering its social programme.
Three times he tried to defend the new Memorandum on the basis that what was on offer before hand was 18 billion euros over five months, but now it was 82 billion over three years.
The amount per month is, of course, less than before. Tsipras’s argument was that the longer time would bring some stability and allow for “the seeds” planted in the cracks which had emerged in the EU edifice to germinate.
Would he stay on as prime minister? “I have no intention of shirking my responsibility.”
He pointed to the general election in the Spanish state at the end of this year and to Podemos as reasons why the government must hold on. Though he didn't sound any alarm about what might happen if it fell.
This was all in the context of answering a question of whether he faced a coup. He turned that round against the left. He said there were people who wished to bring down the government.
He then mentioned the Left Platform in the party and said they needed to choose whether to bring down the government or not. He cited no one from the right of politics who might like to see the government fall.
His argument against Grexit – in general, not in the specific of who would pay for it – was first that Schaeuble had proposed a negotiated Grexit. This is a confirmation of various stories over the last few months.
But, Tsipras said, “That would mean a Memorandum and currency depreciation – the worst of both worlds.”
He added that Grexit is also the line of the far right, “so it cannot be the line of the left”.
On Varoufakis, he praised him as an economist. He said that he took responsibility for the former finance minister’s mistakes. He was a brilliant economist (who knew more than the other finance minsters in the eurozone) but not a politician.
Over Zoe Konstantopoulou, he said he respected her personally but she had to choose, as an incumbent of the role of speaker, how she should act.
Tsipras said he personally was not in favour of expulsions from the party. At the same time there were “collective responsibilities and mechanisms” for those who do not support the government in the vote tomorrow.
Whether there would be elections or not depended on that vote in parliament.
As for the referendum: “No one can say I did not go far enough [in this fight]. Some may say I went too far. No one can say not far enough.”
He placed great emphasis on his strong working relationship with the leader of ANEL, Panos Kammenos, the right wing junior partner in the coalition. Kammenos has still to answer the simple question of which way he and ANEL will vote tomorrow.
The interview will not persuade the fighting left, either in Syriza or in the social movements.
It did not seem designed to. Where it made a political cut into the parliamentary group was between the Left Platform and the rest.
It deployed arguments from mainstream economists, echoed by Euclid Tsakalotos and his strand of thinking on the left, which painted an exit from the euro as a disaster, under any circumstances.
We will see the popular reaction. It is likely to have a neutral impact there. He was not asked about the strike or popular feeling. The focus was on the parliament.
There, it seems, he has laid the basis for a split in the party. The outcome of that will be seen over time.
As Alexis Tsipras said at the end of his interview, quoting Louis Atlhusser, "History lasts long."

Kevin Ovenden
27 mins · Edited ·

The Left Platform of Syriza met tonight. They decided either to vote No or to vote "present" (an active abstention) in the parliamentary vote tomorrow.
They estimate that the number of Syriza MPs who will vote No is 40 to 45.
They say they will not resign their seats and they will not "split the party".
That challenges the right and the leadership of the party to expel them from the parliamentary whip and from the party.

07.14

Greece: The Struggle Continues

Sebastian Budgen & Stathis Kouvelakis
A definitive account of what has transpired over the last few weeks in Greece, and what’s next for Syriza and the European left.

Velika svetina koju pod kontrolom drži mala, ali moćna sila jeste sasvim obična pojava u našoj vaseljeni. A mi znamo osnovne uslove pod kojima velika svetina ustaje protiv vlastodržaca:
     Jedan: Kada pronađe vođu. Ovo je najneuhvatljivija pretnja moćnicima; oni moraju da održavaju stalan nadzor nad vođama.
     Dva: Kada svetina prepozna svoje lance. Potrebno je svetinu učiniti slepom i neradoznalom.
     Tri: Kada svetina probudi u sebi nadu za bekstvom iz ropstva. Ne sme da se dogodi da čak i poveruje da je bekstvo moguće!