We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Lessons from Greece: The pseudo-left in power

Click here to access article by Joseph Kishore from World Socialist Web Site.

Here is another worthy interpretation of the dramatic turn-about by the Syriza party in Greece when they submitted to European Union's demands. 
This means, first of all, understanding the nature of Syriza and its political co-thinkers, which the WSWS has defined as “pseudo-left.” The actions taken by Tsipras flow inexorably from the class basis of Syriza, a bourgeois party resting on more privileged layers of the upper-middle class. Syriza could not resist the demands of the European banks, because to do so would require mobilizing the working class against the national bourgeoisie within Greece itself, which functions as a fifth column of European imperialism.