In other news, is there any poll results on what the referendum will say? In a way, I can't really blame Tsipras for going to the poll on this one, the Eurozone gave him the choice between two very unappealing options and it seems only right that the Greek get to choose which on they want.
He could've done so a week ago though. Now it's just a sign that someone called his bluff.
raise the corporate tax rate from 26% to 28%
@Helgoland, I am writing the response to your post re: class. It is taking a lot of time.
Cool! I get the impression that I'm better at arguing theoretics than at arguing about realpolitik...
I would hesitate to call it very good argumentation. Here and there you reject the Marxist class analysis in between asking what it is, which to me seems very strange. Perhaps your questions are leading to a more refined representation, but I would not view your argumentation sans the constant and baseless rejection. The questions themselves are good, and helpful to me as well.
In some bad news, my browser crashed after I opened my 76th tab, leading to a wipe of my post. I should have gotten the hint earlier and started writing it in a text editor - the post will be delayed considerably, as I am today also committed to writing about the state of things for trans people in Finland on behalf of my organization, which takes precedence. Here are a couple of links that I was using to back up my post. I will not vouch for all of them, but all of them have been recommended reading (or listening) when it comes to this question of class.
Audio from Kyle Brown on WeAreMany, a source for talks and debates on socialist issuesInternational Socialist Review and Alex Callinicos on the "New Middle Class"Socialist Worker articles:
Why the working class?The disappearing working class?I'll also spoil the central point in why we should use the Marxist definition of class: this theory is not merely for the observation of what's true and apparent, but also for the prediction of capitalist politics, and for the construction of socialist politics. Theories are tools, and they can be fit for varying purposes. When we take, for example, Sheb's way of looking at class through income, we lose a lot of detail on how people are positioned in relation to production. This kind of thinking might be useful for when you want to control exploitation and make the exploitation as fair as possible, but when it comes to revolutionary politics, looking at income levels does not help us very much. To understand why relation to production matters so much, we need to go into what makes history move, and that's further down the rabbit hole in a thread dedicated to something more general, and another reason for us to have a socialism thread -- not that I don't think it's pertinent to European
and global politics, Marxist theory, but still. We are going in-depth into things that might be better preserved, observed and responded to in a thread dedicated to these issues in particular.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.