tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post167017508745143564..comments2024-01-08T04:16:25.601-08:00Comments on Ché (What You Call Your) Pasa: How the Real Left Sees the Greek (and Euro) CrisisChé Pasahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-68786452133545545032010-05-11T19:18:48.872-07:002010-05-11T19:18:48.872-07:00Thanks, Ché.
Will watch them for sure.
Excelle...Thanks, Ché. <br /><br />Will watch them for sure. <br /><br />Excellent analysis even in your response to my note. <br /><br />"Paying with a reduction in their standard of living."<br /><br />Very true. Americans don't associate that with anything the government did under liberal rule. They can't really think of social services as having anything to do with standard of living. That, to them, can only come from the private sector. But even there, they don't seem to get that their wages have been suppressed for nearly 40 years. They see extreme wealth on TV and throughout the media, so that connects them with it somehow. <br /><br />Steps. I think people forget about all the steps that were built before them to get them to their current level. Which makes it easier for them to think they can do without government entirely, because they either have amnesia or they're too young to know all the work that came before, trying to mitigate the effects of unchecked capitalism. <br /><br />I think you're right about Europe having a better chance to fight back than we do, but even there, they forget. They forget all of the steps taken before them. <br /><br />It's just a hell of a lot easier to dismiss the need for something when you're sitting on top of the foundation others built. <br /><br />I fear for future generations. I probably won't be around to see the really horrific stuff happen, but our sons and daughters will. <br /><br />Hang in there . . .Cuchulainnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-29435370015245924902010-05-11T18:48:45.391-07:002010-05-11T18:48:45.391-07:00If you get a chance, I urge you to watch the two v...If you get a chance, I urge you to watch the two videos on the history of the "Internationale." It's very moving to see so many workers all over the world united in their struggle against the ruling class through this song. <br /><br />And of course, all that's gone now, and the "Internationale" is a quaint artifact from the Old Days that is performed for historical interest (and a big fee) by the Red Army Choir. And I can see why Soviet pensioners get <i>verklempt</i> and pine for the days of Stalin.<br /><br /><br />I cannot watch the Alistair Hulett video without choking up. Hulett died suddenly in January, and I look at this video as a striking tribute to something that is... gone.<br /><br />The ICFI is a throwback, too, "quaint" in its own way, but I really appreciate their news and analysis at the WWSW. And of course it's always nice to see a real manifesto! <br /><br />That kind of genuine Socialist critique is almost completely absent from today's political and economic dialog. It isn't there at all. Yet there is much that is valid in it. Marx was wrong about many things, but not everything, and "seeing" with a Marxist perspective is if anything more important now than ever.<br /><br />Their critique of Europe's social democracy is devastating, and it looks for all the world like the People of Europe understand fully what is happening to them and what they are in for now that the Big Bailout is a done deal for all of Europe. They know what it's for -- to pay off the gambling debts of the banksters -- and they know who will have to pay it, themselves, through a severely reduced standard of living. <br /><br />Kind of like what happened to Russia when the Soviet Empire fell.<br /><br />Americans still don't get it, not even the loudest TeaBagger. They're still obsessed with distractions and minutiae. It's horrifying.<br /><br />I was watching the BBC today as Gordon Brown resigned and David Campbell hightailed it over to the Palace to kiss the Queen's hands. There was some talk of the economic disaster that is Britain today, and how the Tory-LibDem coalition will have to deal with it, and how -- as everyone knows -- it will require severe spending cutbacks, there is no other way, to satisfy the "markets." Everyone agrees, there is no dissent. Nick Clegg is on board with Campbell most importantly about the need to cut public spending... No alternative is even considered.<br /><br />Same thing here. Same thing throughout Europe. All of it driven by the need to pay off the banksters. There is no other choice. They must be paid. <br /><br />Same sort of thing was going on in California during the Enron-driven phony energy crisis. And when someone stood up and said no, the energy cartels were thieves and robbers, don't pay them, they were shot down, most prominently Gray Davis, for trying to go against them. <i>They had to be paid.</i> <br /><br />And they were. Billions and billions, bankrupting the state. Now the same sort of extortion is going on, to the tune of trillions upon trillions, with the masses required to pay it through severely reduced living standards. <br /><br />Europeans understand what's really going on and they are fighting back, so far as they are able. And I will predict they will preserve a good deal more of their comfort when the chips are down than Americans will. Americans seem to be oblivious...Ché Pasahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-19078550047699643512010-05-11T10:33:57.229-07:002010-05-11T10:33:57.229-07:00Ché,
Very strong statement. It's more than a ...Ché,<br /><br />Very strong statement. It's more than a shame that many social democratic parties in Europe have succumbed to neoliberalism/Thatcherism. It's actually a catastrophe. <br /><br />Tony Judt talks about that in his excellent <i>Ill Fares the Land</i>. Though he is more inclined to fight for social democracy and not for a world socialist revolution. <br /><br />I'm still processing data, analyses, agendas, etc. etc. Still learning. But I do think many on the old left, like the folks at Dissent, who have tempered their youthful radicalism (too much at times), make some valid points. <br /><br />A big one is that the left will not be successful if it ignores the power of patriotism. <br /><br />(Gramsci understood it. As did Silone.)<br /><br />Like it or not, the working class in general is highly patriotic. Appeals to internationalism, much less cosmopolitanism, generally fall flat. Even though the goals of international socialism are laudable (I share them), and it's rational and logical to believe isolated nations can not hold out against internationalized capital . . . . the devil is in the details of the human heart. <br /><br />The left is going to have to find a way to appeal to the working class's natural sense of home and hearth, its belief in national myths of origin and the essential goodness of its country. <br /><br />The left can never do so, ever, via a return to Stalinism, which was reprehensible to the nth degree. Obviously. The one nation approach was doomed to failure, as the internationalists correctly predicted decades ago. <br /><br />(Great that the ICFI was never aligned with the Stalinist left)<br /><br />But it is going to have to find a way to appeal to the values of each nation, show the gap between those values and reality, and not appear to be some outside force trying to do "regime change." Nothing gets the working class to rally their wagons like a perceived "enemy" from outside its borders. They will do this even when their own ruling class oppresses them. <br /><br />It's going to be a tough road to hoe regardless. <br /><br />Hope all is well.Cuchulainnoreply@blogger.com