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The Greek People Have Been Sacrificed to the Capitalist Gods of Speculation
In Europe, capitalism has persuaded the world that capitalism is the world
The behaviour of the EU states towards Greece is inexplicable in the terms in which the EU defines itself. It is, first and foremost, a failure of solidarity.
'We condemn Greece to misery and poverty to keep Standard & Poor’s off our backs. But we have miscalculated.' (Photograph: Argyropoulos/Sipa/Rex Features)
The "austerity package", as the newspapers like to call it, seeks to impose on Greece terms that no people can accept. Even now the schools are running out of books. There were 40% cuts in the public health budget in 2010 – I can't find the present figure. Greece's EU "partners" are demanding a 32% cut in the minimum wage for those under 25, a 22% cut for the over 25s. Already unemployment for 15-24-year-olds is 48% – it will have risen considerably since then. Overall unemployment has increased to over 20%. The sacking of public sector workers will add to it. The recession predicted to follow the imposition of the package will cause unbearable levels of unemployment at every level.
In addition the "package" demands cuts to pensions and public service pay, wholesale privatisation of state assets – a fire-sale, since the global market is close to rock bottom – and cuts to public services including health, social welfare and education. The whole to be supervised by people other than the Greeks. An entire disciplinary and punishment system.
When we casually use a term like "bailout", it is important to remember that it is not people who are being bailed out, or at least not the Greek people. The bailout will not save a single Greek life. The opposite is the case. What is being "bailed out" is the global financial system, including the banks, hedge funds and pension funds of the other EU member states, and it is the Greek people who are being ordered to pay – in money, time, physical pain, hopelessness and missed educational opportunities. The relatively neutral, even stoic, term "austerity", is a gross insult to the Greek people. This is not austerity; at best it is callousness.
On top of this callousness, we must remember that the strategy itself is nonsense. Every intelligent observer is agreed that cuts do not produce growth. The highest rate of growth in the EU at present is in Poland where massive public investment is driving the economy. GDP is declining or barely moving among the "austerity" nations, including the UK.
In essence, this crisis is a failure of the EU states to show solidarity in the face of an onslaught from the financial markets. At first glance this seems to be a very simple fight. In one corner you have nation states, which have the wellbeing of their citizens as their raison d'être; in the other you have global capitalism as represented by the financial markets, which has the wealth of a tiny few as its raison d'être. But the nation state has, for a considerable time, identified itself with those same markets. States have agreed to see themselves as economies rather than societies. More recently we have been led to believe that the market alone can provide everything the citizen needs and much more efficiently than the structures that the citizens normally rely on and which they have, over generations, erected as protections against the revenge of the market.
This is the triumph of capitalism, that it has persuaded the world that capitalism is the world.
It has led to the undoing of 200 years of struggle between ordinary people and the super-rich. Trade unions didn't appear overnight, they were a response to exploitation. Their defeat has led to the ubiquity of precarious, and now free, labour. Workers are not protected in their workplace by capitalists, they are protected by the laws won by struggle against the capitalist. A sweatshop in China is a direct assault not just on the rights of the Chinese worker but on those of workers in, for example, the UK. Socialist internationalism and solidarity were conceived as a way of defeating that ploy. Old people do not die in the streets not because charity has saved them but because 200 years of struggle has brought us the old age pension and public health. The privatisation of those services is a return to the 19th century. None of this public good would have been won if people had identified with the super-rich of 1812. Now that we have been brought to such an identification, we stand to lose them all over again.
Now we see capitalism at its most triumphant. Greek police beat Greek people in order to impose the will of the banks and hedge funds. The EU member states, including Ireland, are the middleman, the quislings of capital. Rather than reach out a hand of solidarity, we say, "better them than us". As if the global markets will choose to pass on Ireland once Greece has been destroyed. Solidarity is not just compassion for one's fellow man; it is also materialist self-interest. One for all and all for one. We stand or fall together. There is strength in unity.
Instead we have decided to sacrifice the Greek people to the market in the hope that our sacrifice will appease the gods of speculation. We condemn them to misery and poverty to keep Standard & Poor's off our backs. But we have miscalculated. Firstly, the communist left currently stands at 42% in the polls, Pasok at 8%. Pasok (the leading party in government) will vanish and a combination of real leftwing parties will win the next election. They will not bend the knee and put their necks on our block.
It seems to me now that Greece will withdraw from the euro and default on its debt. Who knows what will happen to it then, but it can hardly be much worse than what we want from them, and at least it will be something of their own choosing. The speculators will then take a little time to consider which of the other economies to bet on. Perhaps then the Irish government will regret its lack of solidarity. Whatever happens, our behaviour and that of our EU compatriots has been shameful.
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Show All"But we have miscalculated. Firstly, the communist left currently stands at 42% in the polls, Pasok at 8%."
Why haven't I read that in the American press? Will the Greek army take over to enforce the imperialist demands? Obama would spin that into a great win for democracy and the "progressives" and "liberals" would swoon in joy at his Nobel peace prize demeanor.
I think your predictions are accurate, unfortunately.
People can, of course, reject the point of view of events that is now supported by almost half of the Greek people. But what justification is there for the people here being prevented from even hearing that point of view?
Statement from the KKE about the crisis:
The responsibility now lies with the people. It is necessary for the worst to be prevented. For this to be realized, the basic direction of the people’s movement must be the overthrow of capitalism. The only way out is the working class popular power with disengagement from the EU and unilateral cancellation of the debt. There is no other solution for the people.
In this course of intensifying class struggle, the overthrow of the government and elections will be a link in the class struggle and beneficial for the people, provided that they use it as a weapon to cause an even greater rupture in the political system. Now the question for the people and every worker, for the unemployed, the self-employed, the poor farmers, for young people and women who belong to the popular strata, for every individual is not just their liberation from the parties of the plutocracy, but their support for the KKE. In this way will the rupture be substantial.
Any other political choice does not frighten them, does not make life difficult for them, but facilitates a political solution which will come in succession so that the massacre of the people can be implemented. It will facilitate the promotion of new reserves for the bourgeois political system, possibly of new parties or party alliances, which will seek the most effective deception and subjugation of the people. Only the alliance with the KKE can serve the people’s interests, because a pro-people political line can exist only in people’s power. But this is not enough; today workers must not consider themselves merely as voters. They must be active, contribute to the unions on a daily basis, to the struggle committees in the workplaces, to the people’s committees concerning every problem of the people so that the anti-people offensive meets a practical answer till the final confrontation for power.
http://inter.kke.gr/News/news2012/2012-02-16-metra/
I lived in a country under martial law. The soldiers scare even the respectable people, because they walk around in groups armed to the teeth, demanding papers, etc. I used to always carry money in my passport (about $5 in the local currency), and when they would demand my papers they would take the money and leave me alone. You would get stopped constantly. Driving from one city to another involved stops by soldiers. Really unpleasant even for the well off, but truly terrible for the poor, because the soldiers just shoot them with impunity.
You just don't get it. The law of the USG is lawlessness and you along with 10's of million USAn's don't even know it or even want to know it.
Some analysis of the Greek Left.
Stathis Kouvelakis, "The Greek Cauldron" New Left Review
"The Greek radical left, for its part, has found itself in a paradoxical position since the beginning of the debt crisis. On the one hand, its position in the electoral landscape has been strengthened, from levels that were already high in a European context. Its activists have a prominent presence in popular mobilizations, even if the ‘movement of the squares’ highlighted its difficulties in widening its influence to social layers beyond its traditional base. However, it has struggled to intervene strategically in the political situation, or to propose any credible alternatives to the barbaric policies being enacted in the face of such widespread opposition.
Two factors weigh particularly heavily in this context. Firstly, the deep division—or rather state of virtual civil war—between the radical left’s two main components. The KKE is doggedly committed to a sectarian and nostalgic Stalinist line, which still dominates its electoral activity and grass roots. Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left—a grouping of ten parties and organizations, of which the main one is Synaspismos—
advocates a united approach; but it has been unable to make its various factions cohere, and tends to fall back on minimal declarations of unity founded on a simple rejection of austerity.
Necessary for united action, this has proven insufficient when it comes to posing an alternative to the ruling powers. Within Syriza—and especially for Synaspismos—the majority line is that the debt should be renegotiated at EU level, without halting repayments. The questions of the Euro and of the antidemocratic, indeed quasi-colonial, structure of the EU are minimized or put off until some indefinite point in the future, when a ‘European social movement’ will supposedly have changed the entire EU system.
Faced with this impasse, elements of Synaspismos—notably the ‘left current’ led by Syriza’s current parliamentary spokesman, Panagiotis Lafazanis—and members of Syriza who have reformed as the Front for Solidarity and Rupture, led by one-time Synaspismos leader Alekos Alavanos, are breaking with the Europhile consensus. They advocate a ‘Kirchner-style’ renegotiation of the national debt, involving cessation of payments, accompanied by exit from the Euro and nationalization of the banking sector; this would allow for devaluation of the currency, offering a way out of the logic of ‘internal devaluation’—essentially a dramatic reduction in labour costs—that has been imposed by the high priests of
austerity.
Such a break with European institutions, without an immediate
exit from the EU, is necessary on political as well as economic grounds, in order to release the country from Troika supervision and restore its basic democratic functions. This agenda, strongly argued for by the London-based economist Costas Lapavitsas and colleagues, is already promoted
by the extra-parliamentary far-left group Antarsya, as the basis of a programme for an anti-capitalist rupture. However, despite some important convergences and its growing audience, the ‘anti-EU pole’ of the radical left is finding it difficult to coordinate and gain greater visibility.
Within the KKE, the situation is more sterile still. Traditionally hostile to the EU, the party has long favoured a Greek exit from the Union. But it has nonetheless been cautious on this subject since the start of the debt crisis, stressing that none of the problems the country confronts can be resolved until the ‘power of the capitalist monopolies’ has been overturned and ‘popular power’ established (under the party’s direction, naturally). This ‘leftist’ rhetoric in fact serves to justify a quietist practice when it comes to mobilizations, concerned above all to avoid joining any unified actions of the left, and to portray Syriza and Antarsya alike as ‘opportunist forces’ that are ‘playing the game of the bourgeoisie and of the EU.
In truth, the KKE leadership, like that of Syriza, make use
of a radical but disembodied discourse, one eye always on the polls. They seem content with the role of passive repositories for popular rage, a shared position which has created a strange complicity, beyond the virulent polemics. In both cases, albeit for opposing reasons, what is excluded is the idea of an alternative built on transitional objectives, responding concretely to the crucial problems raised by the crisis: the debt, Eurozone membership, the economic model, the need for democratic reconstruction, the questions of national independence and the relationship with the EU.
This perverse complicity explains why Papandreou’s referendum proposal placed both Syriza and the KKE in a difficult position, above all when it seemed that the question of the Euro, and the idea of an escape from the EU’s iron cage, would both be raised. Though they ended up calling for a ‘No’ vote, both Syriza and the KKE have now chosen to make the call for early elections their watchword, hoping to convert their high opinion poll scores into seats.
This routinized handling of a situation that is extraordinary in all senses of the word is fraught with risks. The formation of the Papademos government, which sets the seal on the common front of the Greek and European ruling classes, presents a formidable test for the Greek left. Far from being a marginal force, consigned to the role of witness, it is now invested with a historic responsibility: the construction of a social and political front capable of taking up the challenge presented by an adversary that is unstable, and thus even more dangerous. If the left shrinks from the task, revealing itself unable to alter the status quo, it could well be swept from the scene, as have all oppositional forces in countries that have already suffered ‘shock therapy’. "
Obama is not even mentioned. Did you even read the article? Your premise makes no sense.
Actually my premise makes a lot of sense. The communists have 42% of the popular support, a huge number in a parliamentary system. They will form the next government. The USA and the EU will not accept that. They will insist the Greek military take over the country to enforce their dictates. Obama and Merkel will frame it as saving democracy from the commies, rather than stealing it from the people.
Why does Obama need to be mentioned in the article before a poster can mention Obama? It is your premise that makes no sense.
Capitalism is fascism --
a criminal enterprise --
Let's stop pretending otherwise --
Most of the world has always known this -- Americans were fooled for a while
because they kept the middle class going during the "Cold War" -- they needed
a middle class then. No longer!
WAKE UP, AMERICA!!
The Greek Generals have ruled Greece just in relatively recent memory. This may be why Greece has been selected 1st, because of its recent history by military rule.
Perhaps part of the problem is a lack of basic morality and empathy by those who seek and are in positions of power and those working in the financial marketplace.
The troika are pushing Greece to violence and civil war. In the past there would be a US supported military coup to enforce the interests of the financial terrorist bankster and corporate parasites. And it could happen again.
This is criminal kleptocratic takeover of Greece. Greece lost its sovereignty. The un-elected Prime Minister of Greece, Papademos is a former (drumroll) GOLDMAN SACHS exec. (Just like Mario "three card" Monti of Italy)
Goldman Sachs worked with the corrupt Greek govt. to cook the books in order for Greece to meet the criteria for entrance into euro currency zone back in 2001-2 (Maastricht criteria)
This sure looks like a set up by the banksters to take over Greece and seize all of its assets.
What's more, is that Merkel and the gang are putting taxpayers on the hook for the bad bets of the German banks. Germany has control over Greece and no weapons or troops were needed. Only weapons of mass financial destruction.
Democracy is also being killed in Europe.
What scares me are factors now in play, specifically along the lines of stoking predjudice for a specific ethnicity, added to that of great fiscal uncertainty. Note the parallel causative factors that led to WWI & WW II. If consciousness does not advance to offset these trends, when weapon systems prove the main items to have evolved, then death tolls could become enormous.
To repeat: There are ominous parallels between what's going on in Europe now, and what led to the great wars. That is not an easy analogy to contemplate. I hope the looking glass lies.
Excellent artcle!
?
Maybe if greeks just bothered to pay their taxes, rather then everyone joining in on the national pastime of tax evasion, they wouldn't be in the mess.
thank you Mr. Murdoch for your in-depth and complex analysis.
As if paying tax makes you special,, tear-gas is pretty equal oppertunity!
>^^<
Paying taxes is a responsibility of every citizen. Greeks seemed to forgot that part.
Hope that enjoy that lovely teargas aroma, cause they've earned it......
WTF? They've earned being tear gassed?
burn your capitol, YES.
How does it feel to be insensitive, and miss the entire lesson related by the article in its call to solidarity? You're the poster child for "I've got mine, so screw you." IF you really believe that type of thing, you'll have a lot of 'splaining to do when you cross over. In that higher realm, national borders mean nothing, while how you regarded and treated your fellow mankind means everything. You could grow now by changing the nature of the collateral you place stock in.
What about the German people? They pay their taxes?
Be interesting to have a few German nationals post their opinion on the EU, Greece and Germany....
care to cite proof of this comment?
Maybe you should educate yourself, as to the intricacies of the fraud brought against the Greek people by criminal banksters and hedge fund assholes who don't pay any f'ng taxes, so you don't make ignorant posts.
Only a fool blames everyone else for their problems. Furthermore tax evasion in Greece has been and continues to be a problem across the entire income spectra.
13 billion per year: http://digitaljournal.com/article/316094
There is little incentive to be honest: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8770940/Greek-tax-evasion-There-is-just-such-little-incentive-to-be-honest..html
Tax evasion by doctors: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010
Using google maps to track tax dodgers: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,709703,00.html
Educate yourself before making stupid posts...
The Myth of Tax Evasion In Greece - Government Propaganda Tool
Tax evasion as a "problem" in Greece is a fiction put forward by successive Greek governments. The purpose of creating this myth is to allow the Greek government to implement oppressive tax rates and oppressive regulations restricting the freedom of Greek citizen in the name of "fighting" tax evasion.
The myth of tax evasion as a problem in Greece is simply a propaganda tool used by Greek governments to suppress, restrict and control the Greek people.
Let us look at the evidence.
In 2010 Greek tax revenue was a massive 39.5% of GDP
In the UK for example tax revenue was only 25% of GDP
This figure on it’s own is enough to demonstrate the massive taxes that the Greek population are exposed to.
http://independence4wales.com/2011/the-myth-of-tax-evasion-in-greece-government-propaganda-tool
A summary of the Greek crisis and people's attitude
Contrary to what you may believe, Greece is quite a wealthy country, considering it's wealth (private+state assets over 2 trillion euros) and low population (11 million). However, since the aftermath of WW2, it is also a country which has been exclusively controlled by the west, through puppet governments.
These puppet governments, and especially those who reigned from 1981 to 1993, took the debt from 25% and skyrocketed it to 115% relative to the GDP. They also de-industrialized the country, enlarged the public sector and generally cultivated a culture of corruption. However, the main problem was the huge debt. Also worthy of mention was the looting of pension funds - insuring that the state will have the pay for this missing money in the future (cost: hundreds of billions of euros). Looting of the pension funds took place in the 80s, 90s and 2000s through various forms like forcing the pension funds to deposit their money with 0% interest (!) when inflation was running at 20-25% rates, buying stocks when the stock market was at high levels (consequently losing a lot of money), toxic bonds etc.
Most Greeks do not understand this whole picture. However, they do understand this: Something wrong has happened with fiscal management, and it's the government's fault, not their fault. They're working harder than any other European (over 2100 work hours per year compared to around 1500 hours for central-Europeans), they're overtaxed and they get the blame for everything. Media will try to spin this back to the people for tax-evading or being corrupt, however in the 70s for example, people were paying less taxes than what they're paying now - yet the state was booming and debts where minimal (<20%) defying even the energy crisis of that period. What's caused this debt is not tax evasion, it was a conscious policy to not extract mineral assets, to enlarge the public sector in a destructive way, to loot the pension funds, to de-industrialize the country etc etc. Even if the state had the incomes from tax evasion, it would just spend these extra money so it can make more deficit and put the country further in debt. That was the policy - and it was evidenced through the tax cuts this last decade. When the country was reaching a point that it could be making more money as to repay debts (late 90s, early 2000s), then there was a huge wave of tax cuts, particularly on the rich and large corporations, banks etc.
http://grcrisis.blogspot.com/p/summary-of-greek-crisis-and-peoples.html
Thousands of Greek Jobless To Pay “Solidarity Tax” for...being Jobless
Thousands of Greek jobless will have to pay ‘solidarity tax' as the law provides that even if they have worked one single day during the current year, they cannot be considered as ‘jobless’ for the genius minds of the national Finance Ministry. According to daily Eleftherotypia, the jobless will have to pay the so-called ‘solidarity tax’ apparently for jobless funds, even if they have no job, no income and no hope. Furthermore they will have to pay an additional 1% 'punishment' for the time between their application fro exemption and the payment deadline, if their application is rejected.
One should not wonder then why the "small fish" still tries to escape taxation either by consuming without asking or issuing receipts for the benefit of a price reduction.
At the same time "big sharks" , i.e. big scale debtors owing the tax offices thousands of euro, get detained, and go free on bail. Their names get public, their 'dignity' is ruined but at the end no euro from tax evasion lands in the state registers.
On another page, the newspaper reports of a case of a businessman that his 4 million euro to state debt was simply written off due to time limitation. "It is impressive how the businessman escaped the law and how the authorities didn’t manage for five years to send to him in time the court invitation for a trial. Now the 4 million Euro had been ‘absorbed’ by the time limitation", the newspaper notes.
http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2011/11/26/thousands-greek-jobless-to-pay-solidarity-tax-for-jobless/
Dodging taxes or dodging the issue?
The constant focus on tax evasion and various forms of corruption ultimately leads to an over-simplified interpretation of Greece’s economic problems.
It is easy, for instance, to dismiss tax evasion as being endemic in Greece. Yet, recent Finance Ministry’s figures indicate that the vast majority of unpaid taxes can be traced to a relatively small group of people and companies. Last month, the ministry said that some 900,000 people owe 41.1 billion euros but that 85 percent of this is owed by just 5 percent of the alleged cheats. In other words, just 14,700 individuals, companies or organizations owe 37 billion euros.
Despite this glaring evidence, it remains convenient for some journalists to rely on anecdotes and hearsay, especially when they are egged on by business leaders and politicians in Greece, who have found that this is a convenient method of covering the tracks of their own corruption and timidity.
Also, the view on Greek tax evasion sometimes promulgated by the international, and even local, media tends to reek of prejudice. If a plumber in Greece fails to issue a receipt, it is deemed tax evasion and the kind of irresponsible behavior that has undermined the country. But, if a British, German or American businessman employs a bookkeeper to take advantage of every available tax loophole, it is deemed creative accounting and evidence of a healthy entrepreneurial spirit.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite3_1_29/08/2011_403997
Northern EU countries have comparable tax rates and in many instances comparable population levels and extended gov't coverage for their citizens.
Those citizens pay their taxes and have not fallen down the hole.
Still no German nationals posting their opinion of their southern neighbor......
If you're finished with your repetitive shallow comments, go and dutifully pay your taxes to your government so they can start some new wars and bail out a few more banksters and no-tax-paying corporations.
Which country do you pay taxes in?
We and everyone else knows you don't have the balls to answer that question......
Midget mind still at being absurd. No one whom doesn't pay taxes, legally, doesn't brag about it since it's no one else's business. How nice to claim that with your midget mind you know it all and then continue to insult the rest of us by co-dependently including us in your midget mind. Midget Mind, you're just another shill for the trolls.
I think the Germans offered all of the "opinions" about their "southern neighbor" that we need to see back in the 40s.
Tax dodging in the US and the UK is an art form, praised and rewarded lavishly. There is an entire industry dedicated to helping people, rich people, dodge taxes. The fact that is so many cases the rich write laws for themselves that make their theft "legal" does not change that fact. The idea that the US or the UK has any moral standing to be lecturing the people in other countries about tax evasion is absurd. The idea that the Germans should be lecturing other people in Europe about how to arrange their affairs is equally absurd.
Are we to imagine that every dollar spent on dog sitting in this country is being reported, to cite just one example? How about time swaps, exchanging work back and forth? "You groom my dog, I'll cut your lawn." Or simply being social and helping others out? "You cook dinner for me tonight, I will take you out to eat tomorrow."
Poor working class people do whatever they have to do in order to survive, including trade and barter. Taxes against the poor people - consistently climbing here as well as in Greece - are not about revenue, they are about controlling people and making them more desperate, fearful and dependent. Meanwhile taxes fall on the wealthy, and become easier and easier to evade.
This "tax evasion" malarkey is simply a deceptive "gotcha" way to express hostility and authoritarianism.
I think the Germans offered all of the "opinions" about their "southern neighbor" that we need to see back in the 40s
LOL!!! What a fucking little smugster you are!! The article is about Greece not the US or the UK. See if you can wrap your warped view around that and respond accordingly.
It appears you have resorted to abusive name calling. The most common tactic used when an argument is lost :)
Yep. he is a happy little smugster and I have no shame in saying so.
We need to get the dogs out there to herd those sheep.
: ) I suspect that humans are much more stubborn animals than sheep. BTW, I just read your comments at the latest Hedges article. Have to agree with you, although I will be looking into the Thoreau reference.
The Thoreau speech, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," is simply brilliant and surprisingly difficult to find. I was disappointed that it was not permitted here, as it addresses the current discussion very powerfully. Like Paine, Thoreau has been "sanitized" for general consumption, and his most powerful and radical words ignored or obscured.
Thoreau did not "advocate violence" - far from it. But he makes a strong case in the speech that the calls for non-violence, and the attacks on John Brown, were disingenuous. They were calls for compromise, and they sprang from hypocrisy and moral cowardice. All of his arguments, with the exception of the names of various figures from that time, could have been written today with just as much relevancy.
An excerpt:
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character- his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.
I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death.
"Misguided!" "Garrulous!" "Insane!" "Vindictive!" So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form."
And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his captors, who stand over him: "I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you, so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage."
And, referring to his movement: "It is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man can render to God."
"I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God."
You don't know your testament when you see it.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/johnbrown/thoreauplea.html
Marry me! ;)
woof
Some historical context for Greek taxation issue:
"Why has Greece—rather than, say, one of the newly integrated ex-Communist countries, Slovakia or Slovenia—turned out to be the Eurozone’s weakest link? The answers lie in its longer-term path of historical development, as much as in its euro-era credit boom.
The fall of the Greek Junta in 1974 brought the end of a repressive cycle which had begun with the start of the Civil War in 1946, and arguably dated back even further to the Metaxas regime of the late 30s. The ‘Rule of the Colonels’, who had seized power in 1967, was in that sense merely the final episode of the authoritarian system, marking the agony of this historical sequence. The Junta’s downfall therefore produced a sense of liberation far out of proportion to their seven-year tenure; the period known as metapolitefsi was one of particular effervescence and radicalization in Greek society, a cathartic moment quite different to the post-Franco ‘transition’ in Spain—or, indeed, the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.
Yet the social foundations of the ancien régime remained largely in place, not only under the conservative New Democracy party in the second half of the 70s, but also during the long rule of PASOK after 1981.
Historically, big Greek capital had always had a diasporic-mercantile character. Concentrated in international shipping and banking, it displayed little interest in productive investment at home. At the same time, the devastating defeat of the left in the Civil War meant that post-war Greece possessed nothing comparable to the social compromise forged elsewhere in Europe in the 1950s and 60s: there was no welfare state, no social-democratic party; wage-levels continued to be miserably low and workplace regimes were very repressive. Unionization was all but impossible in the private sector, and the official public-sector unions were kept on a tight rein: the last leaders to be legitimately elected by the rank and file were arrested and shot in 1946.
Greece had also experienced a particularly brutal capitalist modernization: the countryside was dramatically emptied out, in part as an effect of the Civil War; counter-insurgency tactics, applied under close us supervision, brought the wholesale expulsion of villagers. Millions emigrated overseas, while millions more moved to the cities, above all to Athens, which experienced headlong expansion in the post-war period. This largely explains the phenomenal concentration of the population, with nearly half of the national total living in the capital.
The social compact on which Greek governments had rested in the immediate post-war decades excluded the working class and peasantry, instead relying on the support of the petty bourgeoisie—family-run businesses, independent professionals and, as of the 1960s, small proprietors in the nascent tourist sector. This layer was the privileged client base of the conservative parties that ruled the country in the 1950s and 60s, and was offered advantages unavailable to the mass of the population; these included exemption from taxes, access to public-sector jobs—doled out by the main right-wing parties—and a certain level of social mobility through education. Thanks to this compact, the Greek class structure for a long time preserved a distinctive peculiarity compared to other European states: the relatively large petty bourgeoisie meant that wage earners came to constitute a majority of the population only in the 1970s.
The narrow tax base and lack of social welfare systems also reinforced another peculiarity: the reduced size of the Greek state, especially small if we leave aside its hypertrophied repressive apparatus. By the time the Junta left the scene, unemployment had reached chronic proportions, and the defects of the existing model had become evident.
While the tensions and conflict it produced could be contained by the previous regime, under the new democratic dispensation it was no longer sustainable.
Elements of a social compromise were therefore introduced,
first by the conservative government that was installed in 1974; PASOK then enlarged upon these when it came to power in 1981. They included an expansion of the very meagre welfare state; the creation of a national health system; substantial increases in salaries and pensions; an extension of public services, noticeable above all in the countryside; and significant expansion of the education system. PASOK also implemented progressive trade-union legislation and university reforms.
Greece was therefore moving in a social-democratic direction in the 1980s, at a time when most other European states were making a neoliberal turn. However, the PASOK governments of the 1980s did not touch the fundamental pillars of the preceding social compromise.
Not only large capital, but even the moderately wealthy and middle layers remained unburdened by taxes. What PASOK did was in effect to add social-democratic accretions to the existing social formation, funded in part by European adjustment funds. Periodic attempts were made to rein in budget deficits; but an unavoidable legacy of public debt remained from this relatively generous social-democratic phase, which helped the country recover from decades of authoritarianism and underdevelopment.
--Stathis Kouvelakis, "The Greek Cauldron"
Thank you for this. As a young traveler in the 70’s, I can reflect on the truth of my experiences in Greece with greater understanding of the circumstances so carefully explained here. The Greek people are wonderful and this greed being visited upon them is an outrage to us all. They should in fact turn out the bankers, financiers... international nothings... who are they anyway?
Are they JP Morgan Chase? Are they Wells Fargo and Citibank? Are they ours doing this to others?
Greece being the birth place of democracy is being used by the financial elites to demonstrate that they have no more use for democracy. Capitalism is all. Just as capitalism has utterly failed and crashed the global economy the corporate elites are using their police forces (governments of all stripes) to enforce austerity and buy up everything at firesale prices. And still the people of the EU and the US won't wake up although the Greeks have fought back.
Tremendous article.
Every perverse hierarchy throught time has thought the people weak. They are not - only patient to a fault - and afraid of "leaping in where angels fear to tread."
But eventually we will call the bluff of the psychpaths in power.
I read in another thread - a poster thought we might finally be able to break this so far unbroken cycle of perverse maniacal hierarchy and peasant revolt and overthrow - that literally a new age might be dawning.
I can only think there is a possibility of this in our seven billion strong and increasingly instantly connected Internet world.
Of course the Internet is now under attack. It is a part of the fight - make no mistake.
"Disaster Capitalism" is being practiced now - as always.
But if all is fair in love and war - and if this is indeed class war - then we can strike back with every and all means at our disposal, from the individual's decision to reject this system outright, to the replacing of the current crop of political misfits with integrity and honor.
Manysummits
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Greece is the perfect storm of mismanagement, every day corruption, and Bankster rip-offs. Factor in conservative press organs in Northern Europe and their reflective governments (particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, & Finland) spinning the 'irresponsible Greeks' narrative, and there you have it. As is ever the case in large scale cases of theft like this, it is the 'little people' who suffer and bear the brunt of the pain while the elite scum who begot this whole go almost completely unscathed.
Yes, and just look up as a few comments in this thread and in a few others show, we have the usual blaming the lazy Greeks for not paying their taxes and it's their own fault that things are like this. Blame the victims as always. The people here and elsewhere, that are trolling to blame everything on the "people" and it's not really the fault of the capitalists/banksters/financial elites who are just doing honest business, are even more despicable. I hope, as SR said above that they get theirs on the higher plain and are made to suffer for such callous regard and treatment of their fellow humans.
All the masters and sages of the ages believe in Universal law and justice. I like to follow in their foot steps, and relay their message to keep the higher truths alive.
"in the hope that our sacrifice will appease the gods of speculation"
Thank you William Wall for the inspiration. So if people want to appease the godz of speckulation, so be it. That will only drive the godz closer to MY doorstep, where I will destroy them with my bare hands. I think more and more people are feeling the same way, and this is good. Liberalism is dying its tormented death this very day. Sun to shine brighter on the better nature!
I agree. They have nothing to lose. They'll be on their own like a Rolling Stone.
I agree and I think a lot of Greeks agree. But will the EU and the US allow it?
Of course they have the option of not taking the money, but the "troika" is pounding into their heads all the propaganda it can dream up to persuade them that borrowing is the only way out (hah!). The Greek politicians don't have the courage to say "No, we prefer to salvage our dignity-- to default and work things out on our own." Default will hurt too, you know, though perhaps not as stingingly as the sadistic austerity package demanded by the EU folks. Does anyone remember when Germany was in a place similar to that of Greece in the 1950s and was given a 50% haircut by its creditors? She seems to have forgotten about the compassion she was shown by being so unwilling to let go of the pound of flesh she demands from Greece.