By Takis Fotopoulos
A month ago, just before the Greek elections, I stressed the following about the SYRIZA party in Greece, (whose victory was widely predicted at the time) and Podemos, its 'brother party' in Spain:
Given the commitment (of SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain to the EU and the Euro there is no possibility whatsoever that they will take any of the radical steps required to really alleviate the appalling economic condition of the majority of the population in both countries, and particularly in Greece, within the constraints imposed by the EU and the constitutional Treaties that institutionalized neoliberal globalization at the European level.[i]
Clearly, this conclusion was contrary to the prevailing view among the 'globalist' Left and its numerous publications all over the world.[ii] This is the Left which explicitly or implicitly takes globalization and its institutions (e.g. the EU) for granted and only aims for their improvement 'from within' (we used to call this kind of "Left" reformist in the past to distinguish it from the antisystemic or anticapitalist Left). However, the strong anti-globalization movement that developed in the late 1990s, on both sides of the Atlantic, was largely an antisystemic movement, which was crushed by the combination of state violence (Seattle, Genova etc.) and the systematic effort of the globalist Left that developed at the time, with indirect support of the mass media controlled by the Transnational Elite (i.e. the elites mainly based in the G7 countries). In fact, the role of globalist Left was crucial in eventually managing to emasculate the anti-globalization movement, from an antisystemic movement into a reformist one.[iii] The inevitable result was the demise of the entire antisystemic movement against globalization, to the great delight of Transnational Corporations, which were obviously behind this huge campaign.
The main difference between the globalist Left and the antiglobalization movement, which was not explicit at the time but became evident later on, concerns the very object of social struggle.
Thus, for the antisystemic movement against globalization, the cause of the growing concentration of economic power in a few hands is globalization itself that has led to the present unprecedented inequality, which, on current trends, means that by next year, 1% of the population will own more wealth than the other 99%.[iv] Furthermore, globalization, as I tried to show elsewhere,[v] in a capitalist market economy can only be neoliberal. That means that neoliberalism, contrary to the mythology of the globalist Left, is neither a "doctrine",[vi] nor the 'bad' policy of some baddies controlling transnational institutions like the EU, as Syriza and Podemos assert, in an obvious attempt to disorient working people.
No wonder Tsipras and other Syriza cadres have actually participated in the globalist Left, in the form of the World Social Forum, which was the main organ used to emasculate the antisystemic movement against globalization! No wonder also that Thomas Piketty, the great new star of economics, who is massively promoted by the TE media, like the Financial Times as a kind of 'new Marx' fighting against inequality, is a prominent member of the same globalist Left explicitly stating "if we don't find a way to convince people that everybody can gain from globalization the risk is that a growing faction of the population will turn away from it, against globalization."[vii] However, at least Piketty, as far as I know, did not have the effrontery to call himself a "Marxist", unlike the new 'pop star' of economics, again massively promoted by the same TE-controlled media, who is also (both in theory and in practice) a prominent member of the globalist Left. I refer of course to Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Syriza, who calls himself a 'libertarian marxist', but, as I shall show below, had no qualms about playing a leading role in breaking the pre-election commitments!
In fact, Varoufakis theory and practice has nothing to do with either Marxist or left libertarian theory and practice, as one could easily conclude from his self-presentation, massively promoted by The Guardian (the well known flagship of the globalist Left which supported all the wars of the TE in the globalization era). In effect, he is a 'liberal pseudo-Keynesian (i.e. the theoretical version of social-liberalism which is of course utterly incompatible with Keynes' work!)) and a fervent globalist, as statements like the following show:
What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the eurozone, of the European Union itself, when European capitalism is doing its utmost to undermine the eurozone, the European Union, indeed itself?[viii]
Yet, all this did not prevent Counterpunch, a leading organ of the globalist Left to publish an article under the eloquent title "Ironman Varoufakis's Revolutionary Plan for Europe", clearly showing the utter bankruptcy of this sort of "Left", which did not have any qualms about concluding that Varoufakis plan is "Revolution from within. Just don't tell anyone in Berlin"! [ix]
Greece: between Scylla and the Eurozone
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