Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality

Dick Nichols writes that with Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality.

In this situation it is important to keep present that the basic reason for the signing of the Eurosummit deal was the SYRIZA-led government’s isolation. The energies of the left outside Greece are therefore best devoted to doing everything we can to strengthen understanding of Greece’s predicament and solidarity with its struggles, and to exposing the complicity of conservative and social-democratic governments in the European establishment’s ongoing war on the Greek threat to “There Is No Alternative”.

Greece has lost a battle—most probably unavoidably—but its courageous struggle against capitalist austerity continues. It must not be left to fight alone.

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Without a revolutionary movement, the Greece people were destined to be crushed. There are very few options under Capitalism for survival. Greece was given none.

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Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism

Ted Rall writes that Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism.

Boiled down to its essentials, the argument of would-be conservative reformers like Brooks is that it sure would be swell if capitalism could be made fairer. But the thing about capitalism is that unfairness isn’t an unfortunate side effect of this particular economic system. It’s a core feature.

Capitalism without unfairness and built-in inequality isn’t capitalism; it’s socialism. You don’t have to be Karl Marx to have been able to personally observe the tendency of power and money to aggregate into fewer and fewer hands over time, what we call monopolization, and to leverage those advantages in order to gather an even greater share.

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Redistribution of income. And wealth. That’s the ticket to solving income inequality. When the time comes, however, I’m going to trust my local Communists — who have been pushing for and thinking about it forever — a hell of a lot more than the reform conservatives who think Ronald Reagan, who trashed the social safety net, was some kind of hero.

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Not strictly true. The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is about who owns and controls the means of production: Capitalists or workers. In this advanced stage of Capitalism, the struggle is between the bankers and the workers.

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Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers

Ted Rall writes about Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers.

What is the point, from the standpoint of Greek voters, of electoral democracy, if elected “representatives” are elected with clear messages, reinforced by clear mandates delivered via referenda, who then ignore those popular directives when they feel squeezed by the so-called “great powers” in distant, fancy conference rooms?

If a national desire as clear-cut as that delivered by the Greek public — No. More. Austerity! — can be shrugged off just like that, it becomes clear that there is only one route left to effect real change: violence, revolution, violent revolution (which are one and the same).

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Revolution without a revolutionary party to guide it is likely to fail.

SYRIZA is not a revolutionary party. It wants to work within the system as do the majority of the Greeks.

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Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans

Mike Shedlock writes that Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans.

Idiotic "thought police" attacks on the constitution come from the right and the left.

Wesley Clark, like countless Republican constitutional hypocrites has just thrown his hat into the ring for perpetual war.

Don't like it? Then you belong in an internment camp until you do.

Is Clark's position any different from what happened in Nazi Germany or Iraq? What about China, or for that matter ISIS?

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Are the elites so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see it is their actions and attitudes that are radicalising people?

All we need is someone to say Let them eat cake.

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Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie

John Pilger writes that Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie.

An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week's landslide "No" vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a "bailout" that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

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For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and "the dung of the devil". The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

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The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind — but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as "liberal" or even "left", Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, "schooled in postmodernism", as Alex Lantier wrote.

For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza's luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but "better terms" of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with "identity politics" and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. "Mainstream" political life in Britain exemplifies this.

This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

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Betrayal — that is a harsh word.

We must smash the lie of There Is No Alternative. We must do this daily through experience, reflection, and action. Then repeat.

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Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people

Kate Hudson writes for Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people.

Since its election in January, the SYRIZA-led government has been caught in a contradiction: it was elected by the people to oppose austerity but to keep Greece in the Eurozone. That has been a consistent theme throughout, even during and after the referendum which saw over 61% voting No to the terms of the bailout. The government has tried through negotiation to fulfil that mandate but that has clearly not been possible. The EU states and institutions will not allow a radical left government to succeed. A successful challenge to neoliberalism by Greece would have opened the door wide to further challenges across Europe, including Spain, which has seen recent electoral victories for left coalitions. TThe EU states and institutions have recognised the challenge and are waging class war, not only against Greece and its people but against all the peoples of Europe.

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Let no revolutionary misunderstand: there is no path to Socialism outside of revolution. The Capitalists have consistently demonstrated that they will ruthlessly and relentlessly defend Capitalism against all-comers.

Socialism is not won through the ballot-box. A socialist government, such as SYRIZA, can get into office, but the institutions of Capitalism will prevent it from implementing its election promises.

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Brutality towards Greece

Let no one misunderstand: the brutality shown to Greece is meant to be a lesson to everyone. There is no alternative to following the dictates of the bankers.

As Sinn Fein condemns treatment of Greece as 'alarming', says EU framework shattered, Gerry Adams says that:

“Today could well be the day when all pretence of a Europe of equal states and people was lost and replaced by a Europe of the powerful and the wealthy.”

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Kenneth Thomas, in Impending disaster in Greece, writes that:

The Germans, it would appear, have decided to push Greece from the eurozone. But demanding an end to Greek sovereignty and austerity as far as the eye can see is simply evil. Moreover, it negates the long-successful stand of European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to keep the eurozone intact. The ECB’s reputation would be damaged greatly should crisis recur in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc., now that the world knows the ECB will not do “whatever it takes.” This is a recipe for a new recession in Europe spreading from the EU periphery.

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Kevin O'Rourke says that 'Negotiating with Germany is a Waste of Time':

…I don’t suppose that any other left wing party that may come to power in the future seeking to challenge the current European economic policy mix will be as feckless as Syriza. The lesson that they will draw from this debacle is: negotiating with Germany is a waste of time; be willing to act unilaterally, be willing to default unilaterally, have a plan for achieving primary surplus if you haven’t already achieved it, have a hard default and euro exit (now possible, thanks to the Germans) option in your back pocket, and be willing to use it at the first sign of hassle from the ECB. A deal could have been done today that would have strengthened the Eurozone, but instead it has just become a lot more fragile.

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Bill McBride comments on Greek Deal:

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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Greece Over the Brink

Mark Thoma posts an excerpt from Greece Over the Brink, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times.

Don’t be taken in by claims that troika officials are just technocrats explaining to the ignorant Greeks what must be done. These supposed technocrats are in fact fantasists who have disregarded everything we know about macroeconomics, and have been wrong every step of the way. This isn’t about analysis, it’s about power — the power of the creditors to pull the plug on the Greek economy, which persists as long as euro exit is considered unthinkable.

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Greece is witnessing a power struggle between an elected government and the unelected bureaucrats of international financial institutions. This is a proxy struggle between workers and the financial capitalists.

The Capitalists know that defeat in Greece almost assuredly means defeat in Spain. They will pull out all stops to make the expected 'NO' vote on Sunday to be irrelevant. Democracy must not allowed to prevail over the Capitalists.

Workers will have to realise that victory in Athens, or even in Madrid is not the end of the story. It is not even the beginning of the end. Only by joining the struggle to raise ours and others political consciousness can we make this the end of the beginning.

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Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack

Tony Iltis writes that Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack.

The Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria was attacked on June 25 by forces from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, which crossed from Turkey. This was the first significant IS attack on the town since a five-month siege was repulsed in January.

The attack appears to be a Turkish-backed response to recent military gains made by the Kurdish-led forces of the Women's Defence Units (YPJ) and People's Defence Units (YPG).

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The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Kurdish-led forces as “terrorists”. Pro-government Turkish media has spread false allegations accusing the YPG of ethnic cleansing, which have been repeated by pro-Turkish Syrian opposition groups and some Western media.

Erdogan opposes the Administration of Democratic Autonomy-aligned forces because of their ideological ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a liberation struggle in Turkish Kurdistan, and to the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).

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Once again, the Capitalists want the world to know that “There is No Alternative”. They are prepared to use their enemy, IS, in attempt to destroy what they see as a far-greater threat: that of an alternative, functioning society based on grass-roots democracy and socialist ideals.

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Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!

Mark Thoma excerpts from Francesco Saraceno writing about Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!.

What the past week made clear is that this, and only this was the objective of the creditors. This has been since the beginning about politics. Creditors cannot afford that an alternative to policies followed since 2010 in Greece and in the rest of the Eurozone materializes.

Austerity and structural reforms need to be the only way to go. Otherwise people could start asking questions; a risk you don’t want to run a few months before Spanish elections. Syriza needed to be made an example. You cannot survive in Europe, if you don’t embrace the Brussels-Berlin Consensus. Tsipras, like Papandreou, was left with the only option too ask for the Greek people’s opinion, because there has been no negotiation, just a huge smoke screen. Those of us who were discussing pros and cons of the different options on the table, well, we were wasting our time.

And if Greece needs to go down to prove it, so be it. If we transform the euro in a club in which countries come and go, so be it.

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The Capitalist's mantra is “There is no alternative”. They set the rules and we have to play by them.

Control is now all that matters to the Capitalists as the system crumbles around them.

Innovation means loss of control. Unions mean loss of control. Democracy means loss of control. All of these must be suppressed for the “Greater Good of Capitalism”.

Capitalism is a wounded giant lashing out in pain and agony as it feels the life-force drain away from it.

Are we ready to form a new society from the ruins of Capitalism? Or are we just going to die as well?

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Managerialism vs innovation

Chris Dillow writes about Managerialism vs innovation.

If this is the case, then perhaps secular stagnation is not so much an aberrant feature of hierarchical capitalism as its logical consequence. I've said that stagnation might be the result of firms' wising up to the fact that a lot of innovation doesn't pay. But it might also be due to managerialism squeezing out the slack space in which innovation can occur.

Perhaps, then, Marx was right: whereas for a long time capitalism promoted growth, it no longer does so. As he put it:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

I say all this to endorse a point made by Mariana Mazzucato - that the Labour party can no longer assume that the economy will grow nicely but must instead put in place the policies and institutions that generate such growth. How compatible such institutions are with managerialist capitalism is, however, an open question — and one which Labour isn't even asking.

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In other words, the current structure of Capitalism is strangling itself through choosing control over innovation. The Capitalists are afraid of losing control as they have run out of ideas. The historic mission of Capitalism has reached its conclusion.

Capitalism is a spent force. Control is the only thing left. To maintain control, Capitalism must give birth to Fascism so the Capitalist class rules through naked force rather than the prosmise of ever-growing prosperity. They are running out of carrots—only sticks remain.

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Dvide and Rule

Stephanie McMillan writes about how Capitalists Divide And Rule.

Many on the petit bourgeois left, with their simplistic and reformist approaches, are slowly becoming the back-up singers for a political orientation that may lead to the realization of a race war as an initial stage of fascism. Progressives may find themselves regretting an orientation that substitutes identity politics and social justice campaigns for class struggle at the center of their strategy for social change. Though the former may gain temporary reforms (which will be inevitably wiped out again by the deepening crisis of capital), only the latter can open a path to the possibility of uprooting all forms of oppression. To wipe out the conditions for oppression, including racism, the fight against it must be situated in the context of class struggle.

Given the lack of an autonomous working class movement in the US, this will be a difficult task. Due to this lack, and making it even more difficult, is the populist tendency among the working class of many social formations (including the US)—a self-defeating right populism that leads workers to blame each other for concessions and losses imposed by capital.

The capitalists are extremely practiced at “divide and rule,” and invent fictional social categories (races, nations) to divide us. When workers accept these capitalist inventions and even base our political line and practice on them, then we are tightening our own chains. Instead of competing with one another for crumbs in a foolish dance choreographed by our exploiters, we must eradicate racism, identity politics, and other bourgeois ideological traps from our ranks, and unite to target the actual source of our exploitation and oppression, our common enemy: the capitalist class.

The act of this killer in Charleston must be denounced for what it is. He is a racist, of course—but he is not simply a racist. On his T-shirt, he had a fascist logo. We must clearly understand that his racism is for fascism, corresponding to the political objectives of specific fractions of capital as they attempt to resolve the current economic crisis in their favor.

For us, there is only one way that the crisis of capitalism can be resolved favorably: by the social force of an organized and united international working class fighting for its interests, which are fundamentally antagonistic to capital, toward the total global annihilation of capitalism. Genuine proletarian revolutionary militants need to strengthen and grow our ranks, construct disciplined, autonomous organizations capable of understanding what is going on under the surface of events and what is driving them, and constantly develop a political orientation (and corresponding line) to shift the balance of power in our favor.

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McMillan is right to be worried about Fascism in the USA and elsewhere. The revolutionary left is very weak. Trade unions are under continual attack and are weakening. And the discontent among the petite bourgeois is growing daily. This is especially seen in the growth of the Tea Party in the USA.

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Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots

Barry Sheppard writes a Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots.

Racism, as an idea, is not the cause of the oppression and exploitation of Blacks, with the result that it is not possible to simply solve problem by changing people's minds. Rather than the cause, racists ideas are the result of Black oppression — and its ideological justification.

Racism is a useful tool for the capitalist ruling class to divide and weaken the working class.

The government maintains the system of national oppression evident in the police, courts and jails enforcement of it, but at the same time it pretends the US is no longer a racist society. The result is apparently contradictory government stances.

It is this system that spawns the racism that grips the minds of the Dylann Roofs of this world.

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Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists

Cenk Uygur writes that Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism

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Once again, a white gunman is a deranged individual while a non-white one is a terrorist. Thus, the media continues to construct racism.

And, yet, the threat is always from the non-white people. The objective reality of white terrorism stands in contrast to the subjective reality of non-white terrorism.

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The Education-Deficit Does Not Explain Rising Inequality

Mark Thoma posts an extract from Discussion of Matthew Rognlie: "Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share": The Honest Broker for the Week of June 14, 2015, b J. Bradford DeLong.

So what, then, is going on and driving the sharp rise in inequality, if not some interaction between our education policy on the one hand and the continued progress of technology on the other? Thomas Piketty (2014) has a guess. Piketty guesses that the real explanation is that 1914-1980 is the anomaly. Without great political disturbances, wealth accumulates, concentrates, and dominates. The inequality trends we have seen over the past generation are simply a return to the normal pattern of income distribution in an industrialized market economy in which productivity growth is not unusually fast and political, depression, and military shocks not unusually large and prevalent. …

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So, economists are rediscovering the key insights of Karl Marx about Capital.

What is also missing from Piketty's insight is that the period of 1917-89 was when an alternative political and economic system severely challenged the legitimacy and hegemony of Capitalism. This system crushed Nazi Fascism by destroying its armies at Stalingrad, Kursk, Belorussia, and Berlin.

While this system of Russian Socialism was fatally flawed through the dominance of the bureaucracy of the central planning, it was viable for over seventy (70) years. A feudal country of peasants was rapidly modernised to a point that it could crush the second largest industrialised country in the world: Nazi Germany.

The USSR also challenged the USA in the realm of scientific advance and research. Remember the space race!

The October Revolution was indeed one of the great political disturbances.

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The left, & social change

Chris Dillow writes about The left, & social change.

Perhaps another technology-induced social change is occuring. For example, the collapse in the cost of storing and transmitting information makes dencentralization — worker control — feasible where previously there was hierarchy. And lower capital requirements might be undermining the monopoly power of big capitalism in favour of smaller companies. We can encourage this for example by spending our money at indepedent coffee shops, craft breweries, worker coops or through P2P lending rather than at capitalist firms.  

What I'm saying here is that the transition to a better society might occur not (just) by protesting or waiting for a big bang revolution, but as a result of countless small individual actions, which might have echoes throughout society.  Obviously, I don't know what all these actions should be — but if the left can apply millions of brains to the question, it might find some answers.

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The technology-induced social change that is occurring in the complete automation of Department II. Workers who perform rote tasks are going to lose their livelihoods.

The workers who survive this purge are going to have skills and abilities are difficult to automate, or are of such a nature that automation devalues the product to the consumer. For example, an artist who paints by numbers can be replaced a machine, while an artist exceeds their customer's expectations is more likely to be employed. Another example is a programmer who codes through using Google, can be replaced by a program that does the same thing. Whereas a programmer who solves the problem that a customer has, is more likely to be employed.

I think that the sifting machine of Capitalism will favour the development of workers who think and see beyond their job. Besides being harder to replace by machines, they will develop the ability to stay ahead of the changing game.

The natural selection of the Capitalist workplace will workers develop their consciousness about the world around them as theories are rapidly destroyed in the furnace of Capitalism.

Workers who come together in revolutionary parties will be available to do develop faster through access to tested Marxist theory and practice. As these parties growth, the more ideas are generated and tested against reality until viable roads to Socialism are constructed.

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Liberal feminism's limits exposed

Meave Noonan writes that Liberal feminism's limits exposed.

A key weakness of the book is its relative silence around class, and failure to properly situate women’s oppression within the context of capitalism. A more sustained, overarching emphasis on the intersection of class with sexism, racism and other axes of oppression would help to illustrate the complex ways in which the system of capitalist accumulation benefits from the continued subjugation of women and other oppressed groups.

The changing nature of employment under neoliberalism is an issue which bears heavily on women, and it is therefore somewhat surprising that the book does not offer a more focused discussion of this issue.

Women are among those worst affected by the predominance of insecure work. The at-times outright contempt shown by both sides of Australian parliamentary politics for the disadvantage faced by single, working-class mothers casts the limits of liberal feminism into sharp relief.

The radical potential of feminist thought and action, if it is to achieve meaningful social change for all women, must be connected to the wider aim of creating a more just, egalitarian society.

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This requires the non-capitalists to see past the great national security swindle and be prepared to see why alliances for socialism must be built.

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Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built

Bill Bonnar reflects on Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built.

When Britain had an industrial economy this was a fairly straight forward question. Britain had a large working class centred on industry and organised through the trade union movement. This created the labour movement including a mass party of the working class; the Labour Party or in Italy; the Italian Communist Party.

For socialists the labour movement was the vehicle for socialism and their role was to work within that movement moving it to the left and resulting in the election of a left government. The only tactical discussion was whether socialists should work within the mass party of the working class or build a distinctive socialist party within the movement.

That was then. Today Britain is an archetypal post-industrial society. In Scotland the overwhelming majority of workers either work in the public sector or the retail and financial sectors. Manufacturing industry represents only a small proportion of the economy. The result is that the organised working class is much smaller and less influential than before and has largely lost its industrial base.

It alone can no longer be the same vehicle for socialist change it was in the past. It has to forge alliances with wider social forces seeking to build a broad based alliance against capitalism.

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The question is: how to build a revolutionary party without a proletariat? These days, the proletariat really exists in the developing world. Even there automation is dissolving the proletariat.

Automation is throwing up a new, but predicted, crisis in Capitalism: the extinguishment of profit. Without surplus value from exploited workers, there can be no profits. Without profits, Capitalism grinds to a halt.

Have we missed the revolutionary opportunity to create a Socialist society based on a viable working class? The means of production are becoming robots, and they are property that are owned by Capitalists.

Society has no future need for workers. Without workers, there can be no revolution. Without workers, there are no consumers.

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The great national security swindle

Tony Iltis debunks The great national security swindle.

The number of fatalities from terrorist attacks in Australia is tiny. Even taking into account Australians killed overseas, such as those killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, there are far greater threats to Australian lives.

Safe Work Australia reported: “As at 26 May 2015, 65 Australian workers have been killed while at work” this year, and 38 women have been killed in domestic violence attacks since the start of the year.

The same state and federal governments that find unlimited resources to fund draconian “anti-terror” policing and prosecutions are unable to fund accommodation for women fleeing partner and ex-partner violence. “In March, there were 33,933 people on the Victorian public housing waiting list, with 9556 eligible for 'early' urgent housing, which includes many who have suffered family violence,” the May 22 Age said.

The Abbott government has responded to this threat to Australians' lives by further cutting funding to women's services and housing.

The government's response to the threat to Australians' lives from workplace accidents has been to foreshadow a further round of criminalisation of trade unions, particularly construction workers' unions, for attempting to protect occupational health and safety.

The Abbott government's attempts to convince Australians that they are threatened by terrorists was helped by the opening of the inquest into the deaths of Man Haron Monis and two hostages when he hijacked a Sydney cafe in December.

However, so far the evidence presented to the inquest suggests that Monis was an attention-seeking psychopath with a shotgun rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

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The issues of violence against women and the sacrifice of safety for profits do rank on the Capitalist agenda. The perpetrators are among the supporters of Capitalism: violent men and ruthless business owners. One does not attack one's own supporters.

Yet, the ruling class wants an enemy that we are all frightened of so that we need them to protect us.

We need to discover who the real enemy is.

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Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera

Mike Shedlock writes about Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera.

There is no shortage of labor. There is no shortage of skills either. Rather, there is a shortage of people willing to work for what factory owners are willing to pay.

And with cheap money everywhere you look, there is plenty of money at low rates to buy robots.

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Now, we are entering another crisis in Capitalism: the elimination of profits through the elimination of labour in Department II. Robots cannot be exploited to provide surplus value which is the origin of profit in a Capitalist system.

Robots work as fast as they are able. You cannot force robots to work faster or longer. Robots are unexploitable.

And the reduction in the labour forces means that there are less consumers able to buy the cheaper goods. Thus, Capitalists will find it harder to convert commodities into cash.

In a Communist society, all of these automated factories would be owned by the whole of society and the goods produced would be available to all as needed. Profit is no longer needed to keep the economy going.

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