On Jul 15, 2015, at 9:46 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
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>> On Jul 15, 2015, at 8:59 PM, James Creegan <turbulo at aol.com> wrote:
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>> Am I to take this as an ironic comment on Proyect's idiot posts, or an implicit apology for the horrendous betrayal that has just taken place?
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> You really think it’s all a matter of political will, don't you?
Not wholly or even mostly a matter of political will during relatively stable periods. But leadership can be decisive one way or another in a crisis, at historical turning points.
The much-discussed balance of forces certainly weighed heavily against Greece, but the Syriza leadership’s weak negotiating strategy with its creditors and failure to prepare the country for a possible voluntary or forced Grexit contributed to a further deterioration of the situation.
What really troubled me, however, was its repudiation of the democratic will of the Greek people, as expressed in the referendum, and immediate surrender instead to the austerity demands of the troika. I can no more condone that than I could a union leadership refusing to recognize a massive rejection by its members of a rotten tentative agreement and instead signalling to the employer its readiness to capitulate the very next day.
That’s my red line. As an old comrade once remarked to me, “my first loyalty is to the working class, and then to the party or trade union which claims to act in its name.”