Has the crisis proved Marx right....

[Tetro Kornbluth]

... in regards to his quote about all great events in history happening twice, first as tragedy and then as farce?

I was thinking about this while reading this article from the great Jacobin magazine: http://jacobinmag.com/blog/2012/06/what-are-the-bankers-up-to/ and started to compare this period mentally to the last 'crisis' period of roughly 1978-1984 and the push towards "neoliberal" type reforms in that period. While I don't totally agree with the all of the article, I'm strongly leaning towards answering my question as "yes". Any thoughts?

(And yes, the thread title was really an attempt at troll bait. Especially of those serious, respectable types of posters. You know who you are).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

That quote was always something of a truism, in that events will naturally reflect/harken back to previous sets of events.

Sshh... Don't ruin my perfectly good troll bait.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Decent trolling, but I guessed what you would be referencing from the thread title.

Anyway, since you say that you're trolling I will assume that you were as amused as I by the lack of understanding in the article you provided (I'll grant that it's really hilarious when people who don't know the first thing about a subject think they uncover something).

I've viewed this crisis as a bit farcial but then again I view most things through that lens. Makes things easier. If it really turns bad that will be harder, of course.

The article is silly in places, yes, but I think the general point still stands. What the ECB is doing more driven by ideology than it is by any notion of economic rationalism, and so the notion that greater European federalism by-itself is necessarily the exit route out of the crisis is nonsense. See: Greece.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yes, of course. But so far it has been demonstrated that in reality "structural reform" means wage cuts, social welfare cuts and busting unions. Improving tax systems, reducing corruption... well, due to the lack of money in the system, the opposite is happening, Greece's transparency international rating has actually floored in the last two years, for example. To defeat these things need investment, not constantly shouting "structural reform" while impoverishing everyone, which so far seems to have been "standard" strategy.

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Well, that proves that they haven't been paying attention. There has been, since 2008, almost zero reform towards how to prevent this for happening again (I'm talking about the banks, which in the Irish and Spanish case is the sole reason for either country having a sovereign debt crisis). The European debt crisis has acted as smokescreen in which the regulars can noisily beat their drums about "painful reforms" (which, of course, are painful for nearly everyone else but themselves) while ignoring anything that inconveniences their view of the world.

Neoliberals are ridiculous purists. In true old-school Marxist fashion, the problem is always that the system wasn't applied sufficiently. Therefore, the problems of Greece, Spain, etc (let's ignore the large differences, shall we?) were the fault of Crony Capitalism (Is there any other kind?) or Unions or some other ridiculous obstacle to a purely liberal economy that has never existed anywhere except in the minds of ideologues who have spent too much time reading economics textbooks.

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What bis "reform"? How do we achieve this?

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No, it's just to the writers of the article, that debate is irrelevant and obscures what is really going on.

Again, I repeat myself, for all the talk of 'reform' that so far has not actually meant anything other than "punishing people for the sins against liberal dogma"* (without thinking of any practical proposition to solve the issues of corruption, public sector waste, etc). "Structural reform" has just become a catch-all phrase used to replace anything that resembles thought.

* (and don't dare that this sort of sadism hasn't been driving part of general Eurozone policy towards, at least, Greece.)

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So basically you are arguing that what was said it in the article is completely correct but doesn't matter but it doesn't fit into your "economic arguments" and "everyone knows that anyway". Yeah, whatever, and you wonder why I have grown to dislike your posts.

Also what Beet said.