Greek elections

[frogwoman]

Lots of left leaning and vaguely liberal people I know who a few years ago supported the EU and even britain adopting the euro are saying they don't know how they'll vote in the referendum.

 

[Humberto]

Lots of left leaning and vaguely liberal people I know who a few years ago supported the EU and even britain adopting the euro are saying they don't know how they'll vote in the referendum.

What referendum?

 

[frogwoman]

What referendum?

The one about britain leaving the eu.

 

[Humberto]

The one about britain leaving the eu.

Thought that was just election bollocks. They promised that last time.

 

[MochaSoul]

Lots of left leaning and vaguely liberal people I know who a few years ago supported the EU and even britain adopting the euro are saying they don't know how they'll vote in the referendum.

Good!

 

[frogwoman]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...ron-working-time-directive-eu-referendum.html

Well if this gets through then the argument that EU helps protect our rights will be shown to be utter bollocks.

 

[MochaSoul]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...ron-working-time-directive-eu-referendum.html

Well if this gets through then the argument that EU helps protect our rights will be shown to be utter bollocks.

The EU was not on side with workers in Greece, was it?

 

[free spirit]

Lots of left leaning and vaguely liberal people I know who a few years ago supported the EU and even britain adopting the euro are saying they don't know how they'll vote in the referendum.

I'm in that camp.

What they're doing in Greece now changes everything. The EU was supposed to be committed to solidarity between nations, that's even written into the constitution. What they're doing now, and what they've already done has shown that this no longer applies, it's now every country for themselves, if any country hits major problems then fuck them, kick them while they're down, asset strip them and force them out. Fuck that.

 

[MochaSoul]

trans: In the face of capitalist avarice there's only one route

 

[Humberto]

Scroungers should have voted for austerity if they didn't want to be destroyed.

 

[Lurdan]

US 'financial expert' explains that the KwF/Wolfgang Schauble situation isn't a scandal but simply 'enhanced interrogation'.

 

[gawkrodger]

double post

 

[gawkrodger]

Scroungers should have voted for austerity if they didn't want to be destroyed.

Go and play with your toys now, the adults are talking

edit: apologies Humberto, took that as a serious post! ha

 

[Humberto]

Go and play with your toys now, the adults are talking

Gobshite you've said fuck all

 

[Humberto]

Go and play with your toys now, the adults are talking

edit: apologies Humberto, took that as a serious post! ha

Thought so

 

[MochaSoul]

#ThisIsACoup

 

[MochaSoul]

 

[bendeus]

I'm in that camp.

What they're doing in Greece now changes everything. The EU was supposed to be committed to solidarity between nations, that's even written into the constitution. What they're doing now, and what they've already done has shown that this no longer applies, it's now every country for themselves, if any country hits major problems then fuck them, kick them while they're down, asset strip them and force them out. Fuck that.

This. In spades.

 

[MochaSoul]

 

[phildwyer]

If I were Tsipras right about now I'd overturn the table, maybe punch a couple of fuckers and repudiate all the debt.

I like to imagine/fantisize that's what he's planning to do, and he's just allowing the Troika to bury themselves by showing their true nature first. Let them construct a situation where going full-on Fidel Castro looks like the only reasonable solution. That's what I'd do, but then I'm a genius.

 

[Lurdan]

Interesting text by the Greek group SKyA (Assembly for the Circulation of Struggles). Dated July 4th, the day before the referendum but addressing what follows it.

Guide for collective survival in times of mass destruction

(...)

The content of the pro-SYRIZA vote had characteristics similar to those of that particular cycle of struggle: it was at the same time a class-oriented vote, but also a nationalist and populist one. The ideological surface of SYRIZA’s calls for “national unity” under the “first ever left-wing government” was concocted to underline its electoral victory, and occluded its attempt to express class interests and social relations which were in profound conflict. In essence, it took it upon itself to reconstitute the state as political mediator in times of crisis, ultimately aiming to achieve a temporary social peace.

In order to achieve this, it had to gamble on (and win at a considerable level) the support of workers and unemployed people, as well as on the support of parts of local capital as well as larger fractions of capital. Additionally, it was required to integrate a part of PASOK’s state bureaucracy and political establishment (together with its weakened patronage network), but also to ensure the co-operation of the ‘deep state’ bureaucratic and clientelist mechanisms, by exploiting the willingness of ANEL to form the coalition government. In this way it aimed at the continuity of the state both as a mediator of class interests and as political form.

(...)

There should be no more doubt that the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition is just a continuation of the politics of capitalist restructuring. This doesn’t mean that its approach on administration is identical to the administration of ND and PASOK. First, SYRIZA was willing to make some concessions ensuring civil rights and free up some political space on its left, as long as this didn’t question the core of capitalist restructuring.

Secondly, SYRIZA tried to handle the situation not in terms of a ‘state of emergency’ and mass repression as its predecessors did, but aiming towards social consensus through a discourse of “humanitarian crisis management”. At the same time, it cultivated a public profile of ‘tough negotiator’ in EU bodies, even if at the same time it was gradually retreating in negotiations; inside Greece and abroad it was following a “promises for all” tactics by gambling on EU stability and supposed initiatives for finding political alternatives.

(...)

But whether the developments that follow lead to new elections and subsequent implementation of the EU’s strict memorandum or a ‘lighter’ memorandum enforced by the existing government, the game seems to be lost for capitalist normalcy and social stability. The queues in front of ATMs, the lack of liquidity and the widespread panic is not going to disappear as if by magic. The question posed to us is urgent: how do we manage to survive and keep sane at the same time? How do we stand collectively in the streets next to each other?

There is a number of pressing class and social tasks to which we must respond to immediately, in an organized and collective way, so that fear and (state or diffused) brutality won’t answer first on our behalf. First, we must find a way to ensure we get paid our working wages, claiming what is owned to us directly from our bosses, without accepting any pretenses. Second, we must work to ensure a default from below, so that we do not pay a single euro (or a drachma or a ruble) for telephone, electricity, rent, transportation and healthcare bills.

Third, we must find a collective way to cover the lack of drugs and essential supplies, to impose to bosses their free distribution on supermarkets and pharmacies. Finally, we have to take advantage of the wealth of our social relations to create (or expand already existing) communication and debate networks, empower assemblies in spatial and temporal terms, thus, to achieve real communities of sharing and struggle. We have to support each other, to find direct collective ways to meet our needs, before these needs crush us.

 

[phildwyer]

But seriously though, full-scale debt repudiation and nationalization of all foreign assets didn't serve Cuba too badly. Of course they had the Soviet Union to back them up, but the world is still not entirely devoid of anti-Western powers with decent armies and a few bob to spare. Iran anyone....?

 

[phildwyer]

Though I'd have to say that what we're seeing with Greece does perhaps undermine some of Negri/Harry's 'pyramid' of "monarchy, oligarchy & democracy" concept.

That's Aristotle, not Negri. Those who oppose oligarchy have much to learn from the Stagirite.

 

[phildwyer]

No, we disagree more fundamentally than that. I think that the Greeks must oppose this because I think that tyranny must be opposed.

Precisely. It's a matter of principle now. That's worth a little economic suffering--or even a lot.

 

[phildwyer]

I give up.

Don't do that. It's really quite simple.

What people have been trying to explain to you is that money is not real. It does not exist. Therefore, the idea that the Greek economy can be damaged by something or other allegedly happening in the fantasy world of money is nonsensical. A real economy consists of human labor and natural resources. Greece has just as much of those as it did before this supposed crisis supposedly happened. So in reality there is no problem.

The problem is that economists and their dupes (among whom I fear we must number yourself at least until you can be convinced of certain truths) do not live in reality. They live in hyper-reality, a realm of delusion and illusion, a world in short of Magic. It seems that they must be forcibly dragged out of that world if the rest of us are to enjoy a tolerable existence. The present Greek government is to be applauded for their efforts in that direction.

Is that clear now?

 

[brogdale]

That's Aristotle, not Negri. Those who oppose oligarchy have much to learn from the Stagirite.

Negri (& Hardt)'s exploration of the ancient genealogy of their (post-modern) Empire referenced Polybius.

 

[phildwyer]

Negri (& Hardt)'s exploration of the ancient genealogy of their (post-modern) Empire referenced Polybius.

Yet another reason to skip Empire and go straight to the source. The Platonic-Aristotelian notion of oligarchy is perhaps more relevant today than ever before, as here summarized by Herr Doktor Wiki:

• "The very distribution of political power, which prevents wise and virtuous, but poor, men from influencing public life, whilst opening such possibility to the rich but incompetent ones;

• The instability produced by the class divisions: By its very nature, an oligarchy is invariably divided, in the one hand, between very rich men, its governors; and, on the other hand, very poor men. The poor ones become either beggars or thugs imbued with anger at their condition and a revolutionary spirit which threatens the internal stability of the state. Plato saw it as the state's responsibility to preclude income disparities from widening, namely by implementing laws that forbid citizens from enriching through exploitative contracts, or from becoming poor by wasting around their money and goods. But these laws are never imposed in oligarchies since it's in the nature of the oligarchic state to seek to make inequality more stark in order to feed the material lust of its governors.

• Poor performance in military campaigns: An oligarchy will usually perform poorly in military campaigns because the rich men, who are few, will make a small army, and they are afraid to give weapons to the majority (the poor) due to fears of a revolution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes

 

[two sheds]

I thought this was interesting yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...managed-to-survive-without-them-10382975.html

I recall a six-and-a-half month strike that closed all banks in Ireland in 1970 which was meant to have similarly calamitous results as predicted for Greece today, but in fact had very little destructive impact. Contrary to expectations, Irish people rapidly found other ways of carrying out the functions previously performed by the banking industry. The economist Michael Fogarty, who wrote the official report on the bank dispute, was quoted by the Irish Independent as saying that “the services of the clearing banks proved by no means as indispensable as would have been expected before the dispute”. Others take the example of the Irish bank strike as evidence that much of what banks do is a “socially useless activity”.

 

[Lurdan]

Reports a deal may have been struck.

ETA:

 

[mauvais]

I'm in that camp.

What they're doing in Greece now changes everything. The EU was supposed to be committed to solidarity between nations, that's even written into the constitution. What they're doing now, and what they've already done has shown that this no longer applies, it's now every country for themselves, if any country hits major problems then fuck them, kick them while they're down, asset strip them and force them out. Fuck that.

Me too. I support various elements of the European project, and really think that the UK is better off in overall, but it will be very difficult to vote 'yes' now given this debacle, particularly the behaviour of Germany.

Years of flawed risk management and then the incredible cheek of offering no respite despite bailing out Western European banks, but not only that, in recent days effectively refusing to accept Greek surrender. A sad fucking joke. This might well be the end of the EU yet.