[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Syriza's Tsipras offers reassurances

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Nov 7 15:02:58 PST 2014


Marv G writes: " None of these reform measures, though admittedly bold, can be described as revolutionary both given the context and in that they don’t fundamentally alter the structure of capitalist power or property. In fact, their effect would be to place capitalism on a more solid foundation at a time when it is tottering or hamstrung, as at present, by “secular stagnation”.

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Actually, such reforms _would_ be revolutionary in the sense that they might well trigger _serious_ revolutionary activity in the working class.

There exists no evidence, empirical or theoretical, that economic stagnation (or even virtual collapse) constitutes a threat to capitalism as a system. Marx's prediction in WPP that working-class failure to defend itself would result in reducing the class to a mass of wretches incapable of higher struggle. Austerity is more than an economic attack on the working class: it is a highly efficient form of repression.

If the reforms you mention were not, under present conditions, utterly utopian, I would gladly support any bourgeois party that seriously proposed them.

The objections to the DP are not that it is reformist or opportunistic or lacking in political courage. The objections to it is that the forces which prevail in it are firmly, on principle, committed to a policy of austerity. And that leadership is similarly committed, on deep principle, to engage in whatever means (however brutal) are necessary to crush any resistance, anywhere, to a global capitalism. This includes "resistance" from the "right." Reactionary dictators are fine -- unless they are also, like Ṣaddām and Ghadafi, natioanlists.

Capital (barbarism) has (for the time being) won in the Class War. Resistance at present is scattered and creates no momentum. That may change; we hope it does. But change is by no means certain. And Common Dreams passes on a most depressing proclamation from Nader: " Democrats Not Knowing What They Stand For-Lose." The truth is of course the opposite: Democrats know precisely what they stand for, and are willing to lose rather than even pretend otherwise.

They are not a weak or treacherous friend: They Are The Enemy.

Carrol



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