Very positive @VK?

Lol. You see inflection points in US? Worldwide?

A little light reading eh? I think that was the latest recommendation from Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Lol. (Jokes aside, thanks for the recommendation.)

Strikes are better than no strikes, but generally strikes are merely a tool of negotiating. Negotiations that take place with people who immorally/unfairly have the upper hand. It's slaves negotiating with their masters for a few more scraps. More, much more, is needed to achieve a morally correct society.

Interesting indeed. The power and money guys don't stop until they are stopped.

Greece's Parliament has approved the 2016 budget that includes deep spending cuts and tax hikes amid economic recession.

The government forecasts zero economic growth this year and a contraction of 0.7 percent in 2016.

The budget makes 5.7 billion euros ($6.2 billion) in public spending cuts including 1.8 billion from pensions and 500 million from defense. The savings are greater than this year's 1.5 billion euros. It also included tax increases of just over 2 billion euros.

Debt is forecast to grow to 327.6 billion euros ($356 billion) or 187.8 percent of GDP from 180.2 percent in 2015.

If you do not want to solve problems by eliminating capitalism you get this.

Improvements continue

Salaried employment in Greece recorded its second-worst performance of the last 15 years in September, as according to the Labor Ministry’s Ergani database the market lost 13,003 jobs on top of the last few months’ negative balance between people hired and those let go.

Last month was the third in a row where departures outnumbered hirings, coinciding with the period since the imposition of capital controls on June 28. Since July 1 there have been 30,102 more people made redundant than those starting new jobs, although in the first nine months of the year hirings outnumbered departures by 173,021 jobs.

Full-time employment hirings declined from 42.25 percent in September 2014 to 38.15 percent last month, while part-time employment saw its share grow by 15.46 percentage points in one year and shift work added 7.71 percentage points.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/202516/article/ekathimerini/business/labor-market-lost-13000-jobs-last-month

sigh, if only I spoke Russian, I could read my favorite writer, Chekhov, in his native tongue, lavish in the worlds of Dostoyevksy and Tolstoy, and also carry on this most interesting discussion with you

This discussion is quite far away from authors you mention.

and I'm saying that's true when the legal system is corrupted.

It is always true, in any system.

As modern western countries is bourgeoisie dictatorship in the form of "democratic" institutions.

I also don't think it's meaningful to call corruption a "Natural mechanism". Cancer is also a natural mechanism, doesn't make it good thing.

Most natural things are not good or bad, they just are.

@brianl

You think that you say something similar :-) As you tell that lack of patriotism, bad people or some abstract institutions are corruption cause. I am telling that rules are set in interests of ruling class, yet in case of fundamental issues interests and rules come with contradiction with interests of most people (including representatives of ruling class). In normal state it also happens in some areas, but it does not become big issue. Corruption is natural mechanism that allow to break some of this rules or bypass them, sometimes to gain advantage but frequently just to survive or do something normal.

Corruption equals dysfunction. dysfunctional institutions, at any scale, tend to fail.

Corruption is normal properly of capitalism (and not only :-) ). Corruption always become widespread if rules that you must follow are hard or impossible to follow. It is like oil that prevents excessive friction.

So, blaming the corruption is pointless, you must blame the system and class who set the rules.

Greece's social and political institutions are corrupt. That's the whole story right there. RottenCarcass is correct.

No, it is not the whole story, not even relevant at real scale. But mass media actively promote this version in EU and outside.

Some sane view:

The ancient philosopher Heraclitus said “You cannot step twice into the same river”, but some Greeks today seem to be ignorant of this dictum. There is a discussion about the political forces that recently detached themselves from SYRIZA and announced the creation of a new party, Popular Unity (PU). The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, in reference to this development, stressed that “the same scenario must not be repeated at the expense of the people. In any case, the sequel is usually worse than the original film.”

Since the early 2000s and onwards, especially after the assimilation of various groups (Trotskyists, Maoists etc.) and the transformation of Synaspismos into SYRIZA, this social-democratic programme was artfully enclosed in “radical”, “Anti-system”, “movementist” wrapping paper. Something that was reinforced after 2010, with the outbreak of the capitalist economic crisis. The signing of the anti-people agreements (memoranda) of the governments of PASOK and ND with the imperialist organizations (EU, IMF, ECB), which were accompanied by harsh anti-people measures, resulted in the adoption of the blurred “anti-memorandum” line by SYRIZA. At the same time, the rapid collapse of the social-democratic PASOK led to the absorption of many cadres of this party by SYRIZA. The false dilemma “memorandum-antimemorandum” allowed SYRIZA to hijack ideas, to deceive popular forces, promising that the people could be saved from the harsh anti-worker measures while remaining inside the framework of the EU and the capitalist development path, promoting the demand for the reduction of a section of the state debt, i.e. in essence accepting that the debt created by the governments of the plutocracy should be paid for by the people.

In the context of the recomposition of the political scene in 2012, SYRIZA was supported by a section of the bourgeois class and increased its electoral strength enormously, achieving victory in the elections of January 2015. It formed a government with another party, ANEL, the basic core of which came from the conservative ND party and has nationalist tendencies.

After 6 months of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the Greek people came face to face with a new 3rd memorandum, which includes new antiworker-antipeople measures.

If anything has been demonstrated in the most glaring way by the developments of recent months in relation to SYRIZA and its bourgeois governance, it is the complete bankruptcy of the political line which claims that it can serve both the monopolies and the people.

http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/SYRIZA-Mark-2-and-the-new-attempt-to-deceive-the-people/

This is Italy