Thursday, June 30th:
Wherever I go these days, it's a riot! Literally so, it would seem. Vancouver two weeks ago to attend the NDP's national convention in Vancouver, just in time for a disgraceful hockey riot. And then, this weekend, Athens for a Council meeting of Socialist International -- just in time for two more days of rioting, as the social democratic government of Greece wrestles with the bitter fruits of conservative misrule in this country.
As is fit and proper in any setting, the best poll is the "cabbie poll". The cab driver from Athens airport had much to say about things in his country.
On the rioting in Athens: "what was happening in the square in front of Parliament for weeks and weeks was a perfectly peaceful demonstration that people were taking their children to," he said. "People were there with their grandparents and their children, it was a family occasion and totally peaceful. And it was making our points. And then for just two days, the new ones showed up and started throwing bricks and rocks. It's disgraced the country. It's embarrassing. It's not Greece."
A familiar theme. Again and again, powerful and peaceful demonstrations by citizens are hijacked and disempowered by the violent. The same thing happened in Toronto during the G8 last summer. This is a serious challenge for progressives around the world -- to find a way to mobilize the power of civil society and peaceful protest, without losing that power to the lust for violence of young men of a certain sort.
On the Greek national debt: "Yes, maybe we borrowed some of that money and maybe we should pay some of it back. But not all of it. For some of it, maybe they need to go and look for the Swiss bank accounts and the tax havens in the Caribbean. People here are taking 25 per cent pay cuts, and losing their pensions and their jobs and we didn't see anything from all of that money. 'They' put it in their pockets and 'they' should pay it back."
People in Greece are acutely aware of the criticism being leveled at them in Europe and around the world. Like citizens in Iceland and Ireland, they are having a hard time understanding why a crisis that has its roots in a different kind of lust -- the lust for limitless wealth and power, which caused those who control the financial system to drive the world economy over a cliff -- means that ordinary people are morally bad; must pay much higher taxes; must take deep pay cuts; must retire into poverty; and must do without education and health care, in order to keep the party going for bankers and speculators.
Advertising
That isn't all that needs to be done, alas, as we were going to hear the following morning.
Friday, July 1st:
George Papandreou addressed the opening session of Socialist International in an unmistakable Canadian accent. It isn't as widely appreciated in Canada as it should be that we are the current Greek Prime Minister's second home. His family found refuge in Toronto during the former military dictatorship in Greece. His father led PASOK to victory once democracy was restored, leading the first Greek social democratic government. Prime Minister Papandreou led PASOK to a second, majority government in the most recent Greek elections.
Just in time to confront the reality of a €230-billion national debt.
He is a quietly inspiring figure, George Papandreou. In the teeth of a first-class financial, economic and politic crisis, he took his place in the chair here (Papandreou is president of Social International), and opened the meeting with a calm, thoughtful, and determined overview of what he was dealing with.
Perhaps his most important words were his final ones: "we will survive, and we will win."
That will surely be true. But the road to survival will be a long and bitter one. "Greece is not a poor country but it was a mismanaged one," he acknowledged frankly. And so, confronted with an overwhelming financial crisis, his government took "patriotic decisions to save our country."
The details have been well covered on globeandmail.com. It is Papandreou's conclusions about the future that merit thinking about next. "Are we too weak to deal with the financial and banking system?" he asked. "Are we too weak to deal the need for transparency in the financial markets? Are we too weak to deal with the ratings agencies? Are we too weak to fight tax havens?" He noted that bond rating agencies could destroy Greece's financial plan with a single additional downgrade. They have more power over the future of Greece than its people or its Parliament, "and that is totally unacceptable."
Precisely so -- which is why responsible social democrats in all jurisdictions are, and should be, allergic to excessive reliance on debt to finance government.
This is in stark contrast to conservatives in their modern form, eager as they are to finance tax cuts for their friends and other reckless spending through public debt. Doing so provides a perfect pool shot from their perspective. The rich get richer, and government is destroyed. Perfect!
But what we are seeing on our television screens from Athens is the inevitable consequence.
Which is why, in the 100-plus countries represented in Socialist International, moderate, responsible, mainstream progressive parties are putting forward the sensible, realistic alternative to conservative misrule. The British Labour Party; the German SDP; the French Socialists; Australian Labor; the Scandinavian social democratic parties; the New Democrats, Canada's new official opposition; PASOK; and the many other progressive parties meeting here are broadly of like mind on these issues.
The immediate financial crisis -- so similar in its essentials all around the world, triggered by neo-con recklessness and misrule, and the limitless greed of financiers and speculators -- needs to be addressed.
Countries around the world need to be put back on their feet -- to survive, and to win, as Papandreou says.
And the root causes of all of this madness needs to be addressed in the style Prime Minister Papandreou is using to address the crisis here in Greece, against overwhelming odds -- calmly, thoughtfully, and with determination.
This article was first published in the Globe and Mail.
Thank you for choosing rabble.ca as an independent media source. We're a reader-supported site -- visited by over 315,000 unique visitors during the election campaign! But we need money to grow. Support us as a paying member (click here) or in making a one-off donation (click here).
Brian, I find it ironic that the Greek Government, which is in the process of selling off the country's assets, reducing workers' salaries, and increasing their taxes at the same time, is a "Socialist" government. This same socialist government is taking these actions to keep bankers and international investors happy (and rich).
All this shows is that the market system in Greece is not in crisis; it is working exactly as it should, enriching the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. The lesson I take from this is that the redistribution of wealth in post-WW2 was an aberration in the history of capitalism. Now that the middle and working classes in the west are seeing their wages, salaries, and pensions shrink, and their working conditions deteriorate, it's time to shed the myth that we can make the market work for all of us.
I hope the left in Canada will heed the warning from Greece and find the backbone to challenge, not only Stephen Harper, who is also in the process of selling off OUR assets, but also the economic interests who put him in power. To that end the NDP must do more than merely keep the word 'socialism' in its constitution. It must redefine what socialism means in the current stage of history and pursue a modern, relevant, socialist political programme.
For Brian Topp to side with Papandreou as if he were some kind of victim is absurd and despicable. His government is responsible for failing to stand up to the neoliberal onslaught that has devastated Greece and will continue to impoverish millions for years to come.
Papandreou's latest capitulation to global imperialism is his extension of the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza to Greece, where the Greek government is refusing to allow the Freedom Flotilla II to leave port for Gaza. His "moderate, responsible, mainstream progressive" party is no model for anyone else to emulate.
This is the way all capitalist economies go. In fact every time you have an economy that uses money as a scarce commodity, it will degenerate into this. That is it's dynamic structure. To get out of this, you have to switch to a plentiful money economy, like the LETSystem, or a no money economy. I write about it in my paper "The Secret of Money: Beyond Socialism," which is online at, <http://www.fredwilliams.ca/thesecretofmoney>
We need to establish a different economy, possibly but not necessarily local economies could do that, but the larger the alternative economy is, the more effective and stable it will be. This is the job for socialist governments now. The more we use money and serve it, the more it will rule us. Even a total Jubilee and debt forgiveness, only resets the insanity. We need an economy that doesn't reward the rich and powerful with more wealth and power! That's the forcing function on the economy that leads to the classic problem we are now facing. It's not a recession nor a depression. It's the collapse of an economy that has run it's course. We need a different system with different dynamic responses. If we can design a system where money doesn't make more money, then we'll not only have a system that is more egalitarian, but a system that is more stable and doesn't destroy itself. This is how empires fall. If we can let it fall and rebuild without the intervening bloody revolution, we'll be much better off, and so will the rest of the planet. If we can't, then we may be doomed.
By the way, has anybody else noticed that this conventional economy that we've been using seems perfectly suited to psychopaths?
This article is an embarrassment, I hope, to our very own NDP. The notion of presenting the complete and unnecessary capitulation of this "socialist" government to the forces of international capital as some sort of heroic move is appalling. Clearly, when the smoke of Stephen Harper clears, Topp sees the NDP as doing exactly what Jean Chrétien did. Fix the deficit, move the goalposts to the right, and set things up for the next set of neocon pillagers.
I hear you Gonzaga. I am a member of the NDP and I'm on my provicial riding executive. Generally they're a great bunch of people, but don't ask me to explain why the federal arm voted along with the CRAParty to continue our mission in Libya. Even the U.S. is backing away from that one. However I give them top points for holding up the back to work legislation. Even if you know you're going to loose in the end, it's good to stick to your conscience and values. If you loose those you have a slave mentality.
Long term I expect at some point the NDP will cave in. There is considerable pressure going to be brought against them I expect. Even here is NS, they are really committed to balanced budgets, but there is less and less money available to governments just as there is less and less money available to poor people. At some point the system breaks. If we don't have something better with which to replace it, then we merely start the whole insane game over again. We have to do something more than press the "reset" button. We really need to change the system to something better.
Governments can always raise money by increasing the tax on rich people. But don't count on the NDP to do that.
Well, I know what I would do, and increasing tax on the rich is only part of it. I can't speak for the NDP, only myself, of course, and I don't dictate party policy. You know the basic dynamic, I'm sure of taxing the corporations, (rich), and then they move to even poorer third world countries because it's easier to exploit their workers. Leaving Canada with a lower tax base and more unemployed people. It's the classic "race to the bottom."
The Venezuelan and Argentinian model of workers taking over the factories and creating cooperatives is a good counter to this, but workers have to be educated in the techniques and culture of cooperatives. We've got workers out there who think that they'd be in big trouble if they formed a union. They have little or no concept of how the economy works. Economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of a few, that political power is eclipsed and the government, any governemnt, is handcuffed if they stick to conventional solutions within the economy. This is the problem facing us.
There's no Chinese wall between economic power and political power. Economic power IS political power.
Capitalist governments do what's good for corporations and rich people; the politicians are funded by them and are put in power to enforce their economic rule. Elections are just for show, to give the illusion that ordinary people can choose governments that will be responsible to them.
And BTW a tax on rich people is not the same thing as a corporation tax. Are rich peole going to move to China to excape Canadian taxation?
Depending on how you define "rich people," and I define them differently depending on the context of the topic. Here, it's about people who are rich enough to have influence with the government and that usually means they hold corporate power and sit of many boards of directors and so on. By taxing the corporations, you're not taxing the poor. Poor people don't own corporations. Regardless, tax the rich and corporations both, if it makes you feel happy, just stop taxing the poor. Poor people don't have any money.
The best option is to change the game all together, so that we eliminate class distinctions.
Not all rich people sit on the boards of corporations.
But that point aside, taxing corporations allows them to pass on at least some of the tax cost to the rest of us in the form of higher prices or to move offshore, as you yourself pointed out. Taxing rich people personally through the income tax system is much more effective.
It's also the best way in the short term to take steps toward eliminating class distinctions, while we all work hard on changing the "game".