jools posted:oh and with halfway-nationalised oil. i like to call this combination "cheat mode"
obviously SYRIZA should have formed a coalition with IDKFA and IDDQD
TROTS!!!!!
getfiscal posted:
getfiscal posted:TROTS!!!!!
discipline posted:in answer to your OP yes I think he was high
i think he was stone cold sober, maybe a little hungover
discipline posted:why not just call it White Man's Socialism
dipshit420 posted:wait the internet is lying to me?
nope
Urbandale posted:did i make up the preconditions in my head or something?
i think so. everything i've seen from other sources and the KKE themselves is that they rejected any working relationship with syriza out of hand.
And this is where the criticism comes from. That they didn't even make a token overture with some crazy demands which would have at least acknowledged, if not syriza themselves, then the syriza voters as potential allies and converts.
postposting posted:That they didn't even make a token overture with some crazy demands which would have at least acknowledged, if not syriza themselves, then the syriza voters as potential allies and converts.
my understanding is that they made exactly a token overture with crazy demands. that is not to say that they view anyone associated with syriza as being worth the effort.
2 - Has KKE offered Syriza an alliance? If so, which were the conditions for the agreement?
Life has demonstrated that crudely assembled coalitions of parties in the name of the left and intentions to better manage capitalism do not serve the workers. The experience in Greece and internationally, in our assessment, demonstrates that “centre-left”, “progressive”, “leftwing” governments in the framework of capitalism (e.g. in Italy, France, Cyprus, Brazil etc.) also took anti-people measures, were not able to avoid the consequences of the capitalist crisis and actively participated in imperialist wars. Such governments exacerbated the disillusionment amongst the workers, weakened the labour movement and in each case constituted a “bridge” to more rightwing policies.
Our party in a very timely manner had excluded the possibility of participating in or supporting a “leftwing” government of SYRIZA, which promises that there can be a pro-people management inside the framework of capitalism and the imperialist unions. On our part, we did not participate in the spreading of such illusions and place some “conditions” on SYRIZA, because it is obvious that we have a diametrically different approach: SYRIZA seeks the humanization of capitalism, the KKE seeks its overthrow and the construction of another society. However, we promoted our political proposal, which in brief provides for the following: unilateral cancellation of the debt, disengagement from the EU and NATO, socialization of the means of production, central planning of the economy, workers’-people’s power.
I should note that the KKE has its own view about what type of alliances the country needs. We have charted the line of forming the people’s alliance, comprised of social forces, the working class, the poor and medium sized farmers, the urban petty bourgeois strata, whose interests lie in coming into conflict with the monopolies and capitalism. This alliance, which today has taken its first steps, is struggling for every problem the people have, has an antimonopoly-anticapitalist direction and contributes to the concentration of forces in order to pave the way for the construction of the new socialist-communist society.
http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Interview-of-Giorgos-Marinos-member-of-the-PB-of-the-CC-of-KKE-KKE-and-MP-of-the-KKE-for-the-Brazilian-Revista-Opera/
And my point here is not to attack the KKE, whom I have great respect for, but just to straighten out the facts, because a lot of people are saying things that simply aren't backed up by anything.
postposting posted:And my point here is not to attack the KKE, whom I have great respect for, but just to straighten out the facts, because a lot of people are saying things that simply aren't backed up by anything.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist?CMP=fb_gu
daddyholes posted:oh, so i'm an erratic marxist instead of a pseudo intellectual fraud. twitter profile updated.
get this... he might be right!
Marx’s first error – the error of omission was that he failed to give sufficient thought to the impact of his own theorising on the world that he was theorising about. His theory is discursively exceptionally powerful, and Marx had a sense of its power. So how come he showed no concern that his disciples, people with a better grasp of these powerful ideas than the average worker, might use the power bestowed upon them, via Marx’s own ideas, in order to abuse other comrades, to build their own power base, to gain positions of influence?
so, maybe not.
1) that paragraph is just crude signaling, the sort of careful smear of actually existing socialism you see from the ultra-left or left-liberals, it's in there to reassure the reader that the writer really thinks previous Communist parties were either naive or malevolent toward workers
2) any criticism of a social researcher or writer on the topic that asks "why didn't the writer know" or "the writer forgot" or "the writer omitted" something that literally every human being who has ever written or read a sentence knows, like that their work could be abused, is instantly suspect to me. to read people's work we have to take certain things as givens like: people sometimes abuse power, the Earth is real, etc., without being explicitly told that by every writer we read
3) very, very gay
NoFreeWill posted:i agree that his criticism of marx was feeble and his other theory talk wasn't exciting, but his central point that European capitalism must be saved from itself is actually debatable. sliding into fascism/neofeudalism seems entirely possible and probably economic collapse would make the already terrible position of hte left even worse.
if only there was some way to state that european capitalism is in crisis on the verge of descending into (more) fascism without lazily undermining the system of thought that is the solution to the problem... hmmmmm.
NoFreeWill posted:i agree that his criticism of marx was feeble and his other theory talk wasn't exciting, but his central point that European capitalism must be saved from itself is actually debatable. sliding into fascism/neofeudalism seems entirely possible and probably economic collapse would make the already terrible position of hte left even worse.
actually the rise and fall of fascism led to the majority of the world flying the flag of socialism and the furthest advance in human history in China. only white supremacists think that socialism failed in the post-war era because a bunch of western european labor aristocrats wanted their privileges back. fascism is a paper tiger.
babyhueypnewton posted:fascism is a paper tiger.
Oh thank God.
Edited by walkinginonit ()
TG posted:notciaNOTjew posted:They've killed a lot of people for being paper tigers op
Just as there is not a single thing in the world without a dual nature (this is the law of the unity of opposites), so imperialism and all reactionaries have a dual nature - they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time. In past history, before they won state power and for some time afterwards, the slave-owning class, the feudal landlord class and the bourgeoisie were vigorous, revolutionary and progressive; they were real tigers. But with the lapse of time, because their opposites - the slave class, the peasant class and the proletariat - grew in strength step by step, struggled against them more and more fiercely, these ruling classes changed step by step into the reverse, changed into reactionaries, changed into backward people, changed into paper tigers. And eventually they were overthrown, or will be overthrown, by the people.
but as in all things, i was just a conduit for the words of much greater men than i
NoFreeWill posted:i agree that his criticism of marx was feeble and his other theory talk wasn't exciting, but his central point that European capitalism must be saved from itself is actually debatable. sliding into fascism/neofeudalism seems entirely possible and probably economic collapse would make the already terrible position of hte left even worse.
there's no such thing as 'neofeudalism'. that's, like, a petty-bourgeois fantasy about proletarianization in the age of neoliberalism. there's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, and it deploys fascism at will as a tool to primarily carry out rightwing terror in the service of imperial accumulation.
Basically, what people like this are arguing is that we should capitulate (our resistance) to imperialism further so that imperialism doesn't use fascism and further austerity measures to carry out its logic. But it doesn't work like that. Because it follows a logic of accumulation and investment, it's an economic logic which can't be 'saved' from itself. The concessions of the monopoly capitalists to establishing the welfare state in the 20th century were carried out *ONLY* because of the rise of the revolution and the ascendance of the socialist bloc, and a massive drive for neocolonial accumulation resulting in many, many victims (in Vietnam, in Africa, in South and Central America, etc the list of course is long). So you cant, like, go back to these conditions when monopoly capitalists are only increasing their holds drastically, and have now descended into what can only be described 'eternal war.'
The only thing that will 'save' capitalism is to basically establish Socialist states. And, even then, all it will do is stabilize people's lives and general welfare. It won't "save" capitalism, like peace won't "save" genocide. And to establish Socialist states one has to directly dismantle and diminish imperialism (monopoly capitalism). This is exactly what is not happening in Greece, so far they've made no moves to leave NATO, they've signed up for new round of sanctions against Russia, and they're trying to remain in the Eurozone. I think before they fix any of that, however, they need to make moves to establish workers/community militias or maybe recruit from the military (which is actually compromised and full of fascists soo), to combat the eventual coup.
The best that SYRIZA is thus promising to the Greek people is that Greece will attain a higher standing in the imperial order (at the expense of, say, the entire world). So, like, great, but this is actually the promise of the Greek bourgeoisie to their nation that they can still make this monstrous Nazi nightmare work for Greeks. This is nothing to support.
Crow posted:NoFreeWill posted:i agree that his criticism of marx was feeble and his other theory talk wasn't exciting, but his central point that European capitalism must be saved from itself is actually debatable. sliding into fascism/neofeudalism seems entirely possible and probably economic collapse would make the already terrible position of hte left even worse.
there's no such thing as 'neofeudalism'. that's, like, a petty-bourgeois fantasy about proletarianization in the age of neoliberalism. there's imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, and it deploys fascism at will as a tool to primarily carry out rightwing terror in the service of imperial accumulation.
Basically, what people like this are arguing is that we should capitulate (our resistance) to imperialism further so that imperialism doesn't use fascism and further austerity measures to carry out its logic. But it doesn't work like that. Because it follows a logic of accumulation and investment, it's an economic logic which can't be 'saved' from itself. The concessions of the monopoly capitalists to establishing the welfare state in the 20th century were carried out *ONLY* because of the rise of the revolution and the ascendance of the socialist bloc, and a massive drive for neocolonial accumulation resulting in many, many victims (in Vietnam, in Africa, in South and Central America, etc the list of course is long). So you cant, like, go back to these conditions when monopoly capitalists are only increasing their holds drastically, and have now descended into what can only be described 'eternal war.'
The only thing that will 'save' capitalism is to basically establish Socialist states. And, even then, all it will do is stabilize people's lives and general welfare. It won't "save" capitalism, like peace won't "save" genocide. And to establish Socialist states one has to directly dismantle and diminish imperialism (monopoly capitalism). This is exactly what is not happening in Greece, so far they've made no moves to leave NATO, they've signed up for new round of sanctions against Russia, and they're trying to remain in the Eurozone. I think before they fix any of that, however, they need to make moves to establish workers/community militias or maybe recruit from the military (which is actually compromised and full of fascists soo), to combat the eventual coup.
The best that SYRIZA is thus promising to the Greek people is that Greece will attain a higher standing in the imperial order (at the expense of, say, the entire world). So, like, great, but this is actually the promise of the Greek bourgeoisie to their nation that they can still make this monstrous Nazi nightmare work for Greeks. This is nothing to support.
I basically agree with this except for the last sentence. I'm a horrible fucking liberal deep in my heart probably despite myself, but is there really no good from small changes that might lead to improvements in the basic everyday existence of a Greek person over the next few years? Are you saying we should actively counter anything that isn't literally arming everyone and smashing capital immediately?
I'm not saying that isn't a good idea, but like, what about in the meantime.