<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">peter waterman</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:peterwaterman1936@gmail.com">peterwaterman1936@gmail.com</a>></span><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:small"><div><div><span style="font-size:11pt"><p>By <b>David Renton </b></p><p>February 23, 2015 -- <a href="https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/learning-to-think-like-a-revolutionary/" target="_blank"></i><i>Lives; running</a>, posted at<i> <a href="http://links.org.au/node/4310" target="_blank">Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal</a></i><a href="http://links.org.au/node/4310" target="_blank"> </a>with the author's permission -- When I was young, I used to believe that I knew what a revolution
would look like. </p><p>It would begin with a bitterly unpopular government and
a political system which allowed no space for dissent to be expressed.
Anger with the government would rise and, with it, popular organisation,
until the will of the people would be like a great wave of water
overwhelming every wall put up by the enemy. An alternative
revolutionary government would be formed; it would derive its support
from the workers, winning other classes to their side because of the
wholly principled way in which it would deal with every social question.
</p><p>It would be opposed by the wealthiest people in society and everyone
willing to ally with them. Some kind of civil war would follow between
these two powers. And then, when the triumph of the revolutionaries was
complete within that first, fortunate nation, next they would face, and
hopefully, but without any guarantee of success, defeat the hostility of
the most powerful states of the rest of the world.</p>
<p>The coalition between SYRIZA and ANEL is not a revolutionary
government; and yet the mere fact that its representatives are prepared
to state clearly that austerity is not in the interests of the Greek
people has brought about already a greater challenge for orthodox
politics than anything Europe has seen for years. In the shadow of
SYRIZA it is possible to think as to what a revolutionary crisis would
be like here – if we had a force with equal support and as eager to see
the end of capitalism as <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> is to halt our present epoch of
austerity.</p>
<p>Much of what I used to imagine about a socialist revolution, I find
myself questioning. I no longer think that it would begin within a
political system which had succeeded in closing down any possibilities
for tolerated dissent. The point about neoliberal capitalism is rather
that it allows a certain, limited space to every possible idea, every
desire, even the phantasm of its own destruction.</p>
<p>Therefore, especially in those countries that have seen a permanent
shift towards a form of (albeit limited, capitalist) political
democracy, I find it increasingly difficult to conclude that popular
resistance will be expressed solely in society and not to some extent
also in the state, that is, in part through the emergence of anti-system
parties which stand for office and are part of a revolutionary
alliance.</p>
<p>I do still believe that in a revolutionary crisis people’s anger
against the system can be renewed, and grow, overcoming every obstacle
in its path. Indeed just four years ago, the world saw something like
that with a revolution in Egypt whose supporters stormed police
stations, defeated a president, conquered everything, until eventually
after many months they reached barriers they could not overpass.</p>
<p>The idea that two governmental forms can exist simultaneously for a
time without either triumphing – and that this stasis can be reached in a
single society, cut off from the rest of the world – seems to me to be
an assumption specific to past decades when politics was limited to the
nation state, where it was possible for revolutionaries in America (to
whom the name of Trotsky was unfamiliar) to believe the local fable that
he was a poor tailor of New York origins who had found himself by sheer
fluke at the head of the Red Army. Such is the speed of communication
these days that I no longer believe it is possible for a revolutionary
force to emerge in one society without it already facing antagonists of
international as well as domestic origin.</p>
<p>Indeed the ascendancy of <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> forces those of us who wish the Greek
left well to think through unfamiliar questions about what the
traditional goal of a revolution (i.e. the smashing of a state) means, in
circumstances where a serious left-wing party finds itself temporarily,
seemingly, without domestic opponents and faced with an enemy that
appears to exist only several hundred miles away.</p>
<p>It is a part of the answer to respond that <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span>’s enemies are not
solely overseas. As I write, <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span>’s economists are drawing up – with
many refinements, and under the shadow a troika veto – proposals to
increase the income of the Greek state and reduce its expenditure. To do
this, while at the same time raising pensions and the minimum wage and
halting the previous government’s privatisation program, they
inevitably will have to promise that <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> will suddenly clamp down of
tax avoidance to an extent previously unthinkable in Greece.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span>’s new idea, that if it cannot be a government that gives to
the poor it may at least be one that takes from the rich, might fit
entirely within the formal limits of the politics of austerity (although
I have my doubts that the Eurozone will tolerate even this negative
process of redistribution), but if <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> was to do this seriously, and
properly tax Greece’s shipping magnates – they of course will respond by
funding, to an even greater extent than they do already, any party at
all that promises to bring about <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span>’s immediate defeat.</p>
<p>At this point, <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span>’s present ascendancy, its “Greek spring” where
the leadership can claim the support of 80% of their population in
opinion polls and can promise to govern in everyone’s interests without
offending anybody, will inevitably begin to face much more sustained
domestic opposition. The innocence of <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> – in which it attempts to
rule at first without domestic and then without international opposition
– is therefore ultimately unsustainable. As is any theory which says
that <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> enemies can be reduced to the phantom, distant, figure of
“Germany”. The longer it lasts, the more conscious the <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> government
will be of its enemies at home.</p>
<p>The repressive power of the state has, under conditions of
neoliberalism, been dispersed a little across different kinds of
institutions and relocated to some extent from the national to the
international and from the political to the economic sphere. It follows
that what is needed is a successful struggle against <i>all</i> the
institutions of the rich, Canary Wharf as well as New Scotland Yard, the
European Central Bank in Frankfurt as much as the parliament in Athens.</p>
<p>So what should we do, those of us for whom Syriza’s success seems to offer the chance of a defeat to our own local rulers?</p>
<p>I do not accept that our function is to formulate better negotiating
feints and bluffs than the present <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> leadership. One of the rules
of this new, interconnected left in which we all live is that our
successes and failures are widely shared, they are no longer the
property of any one group but are visited on everyone else.</p>
<p>It follows that you should always start if you can by assuming good
faith in your fellow socialists. They are linked to you and you are
linked to them, and they are entitled to a sympathetic hearing. The
mistake of Yanis Varoufakis is not that he has spent too little time studying
game theory. The problem with Alexis Tsipras is not that power has been thrust
on him unexpectedly; rather he and his allies have spent three years
preparing in their minds of this moment, and they have thought already
as best they could the problems of every eventuality. If, for example,
they do not believe that voluntary policies of Eurozone exit are a
panacea, then we do not need to invoke bad faith or the simple label of
“reformism” to explain their failure (especially not those of us who
have long been sceptical of the politics of capitalism within one
country which underpin the Grexit plans).</p>
<p>We do have a duty to supporting them – if your union or party is not already an affiliate of a <a href="http://greecesolidarity.org/" target="_blank">Greek Solidarity Campaign</a>,
it should be. <span style="font-size:11pt">SYRIZA</span> cannot be made responsible for organising giant
protests against austerity in Berlin or London. That is the task for all
the rest of us.</p>
<p>Learning to think like a revolutionary is not about creating a
monument of political purity capable of dismissing every new force
according to its failure to get beyond political categories written down
on paper before our grandparents were born.</p>
<p>There <i>are</i> new ideas, new people; not without grievous setbacks, the international left is at long last renewing itself.</p><p>[David Renton blogs at <a href="https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/learning-to-think-like-a-revolutionary/" target="_blank"></i><i>Lives; running</a> and is a member of the RS21 group in Britain.]</p>
</span> </div>
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<div><ul><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/907" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">David Renton</a></li><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/210" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">Europe</a></li><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/140" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">Greece</a></li><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/647" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">revolutionary organisation</a></li><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/817" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">RS21 (Britain)</a></li><li><a href="http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/328" rel="tag" title="" target="_blank">SYRIZA</a></li></ul></div>
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</div><br clear="all"></div><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><ol><li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-peter-waterman-on-labour-social-movements-and-internationalism-the-old-internationalism-and-the-new/" target="_blank"></font></font><font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "snuproject.wordpress.com" claiming to be</b></font> <font color="#ff0000">2015/1987.<font color="#000000"> The Old Internationalism and the New: On Labour, Social Movements and Internationalism. (A Reader). http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-pete...</a><div style="text-align:left"><font size="1"><span style="background-color:rgb(246,178,107)"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span></span><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"></span></font></span></span></font></div></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><font size="1"><span style="background-color:rgb(246,178,107)"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font color="#ff0000">2014. </font>From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice <span></span>Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalis<span></span>t.</span> <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"></span></font></span></span></font><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"> <a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism_to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/" target="_blank">http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/</a><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000"> <span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">(Free). </span><br></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span></div></li><li><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font color="#ff0000">2014. </font>Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014.</span> <a href="http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/" target="_blank">'Social Movement Internationalisms'. (Free).</a></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000"><a href="http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/" target="_blank"><br></a></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span></b></li><li><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000">2014. <font color="#000000">'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), <a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/" target="_blank"></span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">The Movement of Movements: </a></font></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/" target="_blank"></font></span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">Struggles for Other Worlds <font color="#000000">(Part I).</a><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"> (10 Euros).</span></font></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#0000ff"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,0,0)"><span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000"><font color="#000000"><br></font></font></span></span></span></font></span></font></font></span></b></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span><span><font color="#ff0000">2012. </font>EBook:</span> <a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/" target="_blank">Recovering
Internationalism</a>. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"> </span></span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">[A compilation of papers from the new millenium. Now free in two download formats]</span></font></span><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span><span></span></span></font></span></b></div></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span><span><font color="#ff0000">2013. </font>EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical Explorations <a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/" target="_blank">http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/</a></span></span><span><span></span></span><span></span></font></span></div></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span><font color="#ff0000">2012. </font>Interface
Journal<span> Special (co-editor), November 2012:</span></span><span> </span><span style="font-weight:normal"></span></font></span><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span style="font-weight:normal"><a href="http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/" target="_blank">For the Global Emancipation of Labour </a></span><span lang="NL"></span></font></span></b></div></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000" size="1"><a href="http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf" target="_blank"></font></font><font color="#000000"><font color="#ff0000">2005-?</a></font></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="1"><span lang="NL"><font color="#ff0000"> Ongoing. </font>Blog:</span><span lang="NL"> <a href="http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman." target="_blank">http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.</a></span></font></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></span><span></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000" size="1"><a href="http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf" target="_blank"></font></span></font></span></font><font color="#000000"><font color="#ff0000">???. Needed: a Global Labour Charter Movement<span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font color="#000000"> <span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">(2005-Now!)</a></font></span></div></li><li><div style="text-align:left"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#ff0000" size="1"><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/" target="_blank"></font><font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "www.into-ebooks.com" claiming to be</b></font> <font color="#ff0000">2011. Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a Globalised, Informatised Capitalism </a>(2011) <span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)">(c. 1,000 pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980's-90's).</span></font></font></span></div></li></ol></div><div><table cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr></tr></tbody></table><font size="1">
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