[P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: ZNet Commentary: Jérôme Roos: Greek Referendum

[Michel Bauwens]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 9:02 PM, peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> The announcement struck like a bombshell.
>
> Tsipras’ spectacular decision late on Friday to fly back to Athens and
> put the Eurogroup’s final bailout offer to a referendum — with the
> government advising voters to reject the deal — has stunned friends and
> foes alike.
>
> Now, with depositors lining up at ATMs to withdraw cash, the Eurogroup
> refusing to extend the current bailout program, the ECB capping its
> emergency liquidity assistance for Greek banks, and Greece set to miss a
> €1.5 billion IMF payment on Tuesday, the long-awaited endgame is finally
> upon us. After five long and exhausting years, the euro crisis has exploded
> into its dramatic climax.
>
> Those who now lambast the Greek government for its supposed “recklessness”
> in calling the referendum are profoundly mistaken. Yes, as I have argued
> many times before, Tsipras’ and Varoufakis’ belief that they could somehow
> extract an “honorable compromise” from the creditors was always extremely
> naive. But in the end it was the creditors’ utter contempt for democracy
> that pushed Tsipras with his back against the wall, forcing him to sign up
> to an agreement that they *knew* would split his ruling party and
> government.
>
> Deliberately tabling one outrageous proposal after another, the creditors’
> intention was clear from the very start: they were never even remotely
> interested in any positive “deal”; the only thing they would settle for was
> Syriza’s complete and total surrender — ideally followed by technocratic
> regime change inside Greece. Paul Krugman was therefore entirely right when he
> referred
> <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGzNB08H5a0-2F7oLbRs6XGH5XMznf-2Bp5RNoDiodwPt5x0Edvk0LVe1OHm-2B2GiZWtI3DD0cmKfhkH5PtmYp5gGWkiuCq7yJl-2BcH0uL-2BX6dUP7l57kJxR-2B1eo6rGw5yBjljQ0zAEMVoiHJbutrF8VziMJToT-2BW6gnrw5PvGIpBI-2BBeSUM9WjP4pJDwfM6fIoqDeeiPCIsFU2hT2vYuMQ48H-2BekZFqL89bSBoSPqvC90Dy6kFkp9OsY43cydeP-2FiS5OsEVrWvuDREwalngR5dv0Z7dBa_N4B-2Bv1F4-2F1jAyC0cyQWlK1j-2FodWP3k-2B9nh5nJdNMXaIBZzrBReTekjskMOl-2Fj3aUolKUllL6Pc3sfwFZuH1HLXqauTPdzEVEl82tIzGnthpiDCnvSZhZlGoM-2B5DTlg8CnHA0oLcWXuHkLn4YY7H2NY84-2F-2BJPKsLvERUHxHxgmZIYFQYQVrnPRZJBZX6CsXEGu1icps33RWt31K8ZUmczLw-3D-3D>
> to the creditors’ ultimatum as “an act of monstrous folly.”
>
> Backed into a corner by the virulent moves of the Eurogroup and the IMF,
> Tsipras responded in the only sensible way: he rejected the absurd proposal
> that the creditors had put on the table, took the decision to his people,
> and advised them to vote against the creditors’ disastrous ultimatum. What
> is surprising is not that he made this move *per se* — but that it took
> him so long to do it.
>
> For five months, the creditors suffocated Greece, depriving it of all
> liquidity in a brazen attempt to force Tsipras to sign up to humiliating
> concessions that would have condemned the Greeks to years — if not decades
> — of extreme austerity. For five months, they doubled down on their
> cynicism and steadfastly refused to make even the most minimal concessions.
> For five months, they publicly belittled and degraded the
> democratically-elected representatives of millions of Greeks who had
> already suffered untold hardship.
>
> If Tsipras had signed up to this unacceptable deal, it would not only have
> meant political suicide for him and his party; it would also have spelt an
> unmitigated disaster for the Greek people — not to mention the lasting
> damage it would have inflicted upon the political prospects of the European
> Left more generally. If there’s anything reckless about Tsipras’ approach,
> it’s that he even let the creditors get this far to begin with.
>
> It was high time for the Big No — the resounding *OXI!*
>
> For *five years*, European leaders and Greek elites sacrificed this
> beautiful country and its exceptional people at the altar of the financial
> markets to save a handful of reckless speculators inside the European banks
> and to convince international investors that the monetary union was
> irreversible. For* five years*, they punished the Greeks for a
> deep-rooted structural crisis they had no part in creating. For *five
> years*, they kicked the can down the road, hoping that the fundamental
> contradictions of financialized capitalism and the European monetary union
> would somehow magically disappear if only the inevitable moment of
> reckoning could be indefinitely pushed into the future.
>
> This approach has now been exposed as a catastrophic but utterly
> predictable failure. Doubling down on their extreme positions with the
> malicious intent of forcing the Greeks into a self-defeating deal or
> disorderly exit, it was the creditors themselves who brought the Eurozone
> to the brink. Of course they will boast that Greece has long since been
> “ring-fenced” and that the fallout of a Greek default can now be contained,
> but investors will draw their own conclusions when they see a full-fledged
> member of the Eurozone descending into chaos. It is no surprise that the
> euro is already tanking in the Asian markets.
>
> The gravest irony is that, all this time, there was a very straightforward
> and socially acceptable way out of the deadlock. The sensible solution
> would have been to write off a significant chunk of Greece’s debt. But, as
> even the IMF has since officially admitted
> <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGzNB08H5a0-2F7oLbRs6XGH5XMznf-2Bp5RNoDiodwPt5x0Edvk0LVe1OHm-2B2GiZWtI3DD0cmKfhkH5PtmYp5gGWkiuCq7yJl-2BcH0uL-2BX6dUP7l5xW-2B1umjhEZz7x9MT8U89-2BPRjU68d-2BsvKkkSPqHt8jWxjRvDMziEOP9xrKiPu1UUJTTAahBOyKsi-2BQp6p4XWldAtzPfYztLnPiLRMzQLfi0-2Bnv9js21A7HM7TzCknWhuQg-3D-3D_N4B-2Bv1F4-2F1jAyC0cyQWlK1j-2FodWP3k-2B9nh5nJdNMXaIBZzrBReTekjskMOl-2Fj3aUysKMQxDKUam0Gx-2Ba3x1UZkceRAr7zvUpCOm0TTYj-2B1zKxhdzuCNrT-2FHCE79A-2B2ov7UTReCYhkZGx-2B8vMq0A7oY9-2FeLSXgumyCe911xhMCsuIDm9R1hQgFJkotykPpngkvy69-2F19U-2FX-2FweKl0UuKHUg-3D-3D>,
> this option was politically unpalatable to Greece’s “partners” from the
> very start. In the early years, the Europeans feared that a debt write-down
> would lead to the collapse of some of their biggest private banks. Now that
> Greece’s debt has effectively been socialized, these same European leaders
> fear an electoral backlash from their Euroskeptical taxpayers, who now
> stand to bear the brunt of the impending Greek default.
>
> In other words, it was the very intransigence of the creditors, the utter
> unwillingness to tell their own voters the truth about the Greek bailout
> and their stubborn refusal to even *contemplate* a sustainable and
> socially just resolution of the crisis, that led us to this dramatic
> apotheosis.
>
> Greece and Europe now find themselves on the eve of a rancorous rupture.
> At the start of a week that will undoubtedly go down in history as a
> make-it-or-break-it moment for Europe’s ill-fated neoliberal project, the
> skies over Greece are already darkening. A full-fledged bank run over the
> weekend forced the government to keep the banks closed on Monday and to
> impose an ATM withdrawal limit of 60 euros per day. The knock-on effects on
> the economy and society will make it very difficult for the Greeks to vote
> in peace.
>
> In this respect, the creditors’ intentions are once again crystal clear:
> shocked and outraged by Tsipras’ unexpected move, they will do everything
> within their power to obstruct the democratic process and influence the
> outcome of the vote. Their goal won’t even be to keep Greece inside the
> Eurozone anymore; their number one priority right now is simply to prevent
> Syriza from being able to publicly claim a victory — for that would risk
> emboldening other anti-austerity forces across the continent, most
> significantly Podemos in Spain. They would rather see Greece go down in
> flames than cut Syriza some slack.
>
> This is why the Eurogroup refused to extend Greece’s current bailout
> program, not even for a few days: they *knew* the ECB would not be able
> to maintain its emergency support of the Greek banks without such a
> program, and they *knew* that without this support the Greek banks would
> not be able to open on Monday. This, in turn, would force the Greeks to
> vote under conditions of extreme financial uncertainty, emboldening the
> terror-campaign of the neoliberal opposition and possibly skewing the vote
> in favor of a fear-induced yes.
>
> Meanwhile, the unelected wing of the Troika technocracy has taken the
> trolling to a whole new level. IMF chief Christine Lagarde argued that,
> since the creditor offer expires on Tuesday, Tsipras is technically
> asking his people to vote on a deal that no longer exists anyway. European
> Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker added on to this by releasing a *new*
> proposal that was supposedly in the works before the Greeks “unilaterally”
> walked out of the negotiations. Both moves are clear attempts to
> destabilize popular expectations ahead of the vote and confuse the
> electorate about the clarity, legality and historic significance of the
> choice that now lies ahead of them.
>
> Make no mistake: Sunday’s referendum will mark a defining moment in
> Greece’s modern history and a decisive turn for Europe’s neoliberal
> project. The choice is very clear. Five years after the people of Greece
> first rose up against the anti-democratic imposition of the Troika’s
> austerity measures, they have finally been given the chance to decide upon
> their own destiny: either they will vote yes to a lifetime of austerity
> within the eurozone, or they will roar back at the creditors’ inhumane
> demands with a proud and resounding “NO!” — thereby opening the way for a
> thousand yeses to a new, democratic and socially just Europe, freed from
> the shackles of debt servitude, the noose of a deflationary single
> currency, and the tyranny of an unaccountable financial technocracy.
>

brilliant, thank you so much for forwarding this Peter!


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