Congratulations to the Greek left! The movement against austerity....

A good place to start is George Orwell's book Homage to Catalonia, in which he describes having to flee the country not because of the Nationalist victory but because the Soviet-backed Republican faction started purging all the others. Then move on to his essays, which give a good flavour of the intellectual climate of the time. The Lion and the Unicorn is particularly interesting; it is truly a window into a vanished world.

I edited in a load of ****

I haven't done anything. My own preferred political ideology is on the fringe. Where is the worker cooperative movement? Lenin shut down the worker ran factorizes when he got in power. My side has always been loosing.

I haven't even read Das Capitol. I'm not a marxist

The Syriza government has marxists in it yes. But they are not enacting anything communist. They are just trying to do damage control to the version of capitalism being thrust on Greece.

I have read that. Which is what I am saying. The Communists crushed other socialist and communist movements in Spain they didn't like. They were more concerned about the CNT and POUM unions taking over the cities than they were of the Facists. These libertarian socialists were crushed by both the fascists and the Stalin backed lot. This Stalin backed faction had more guns on the streets of the anarchist infested cities than they did on the front that was fighting the Franco forces.

That is my point. When I talk about socialism I refer to stuff like anarcho syndicalism and the general trend towards an organic bottom up way of running politics and economies. I do not support in any way the erecting of an authoritarian Marxist-leninist state with the aim to force the creating of a 'socialist utopia'.

Other books related to that are stuff like Anarcho Syndicalism by Rudolph Rocker which is another anti USSR leftist handbook written in the 30s (I think)

and on the blurb of Homage to Catalonia I am looking at right now it says

"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it." - George Orwell.

He wrote that on the back of his time fighting in the Spanish civil war. Orwell was a socialist. He was a socialist that praised what he saw as the first signs of 'tolerable socialism' he experienced in Spain as well as the cynical betrayal and manipulation the Stalin backed faction you speak of inflicted on those he was fighting with.

If the man that wrote Animal Farm can still be a socialist then so can I. I don't have to apologist for the Soviet Union and I'm sick to death of having to explain this...

gains a clear win.

Owen Jones writes brilliantly about it. This was a victory of hope against the lies of the post-cold war 'consensus' that only neoliberal capitalism can solve our problems and the lie that we have to destroy our public services, the incomes of more than half the population and the lifestyles we've been used to, because capitalism demands it.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/26/syriza-victory-lifted-greek-politics-cynicism-hope

Syriza's victory in Greece should be a role model for us here in the UK. We do not need to accept the Tory/neoliberal/New Labour line that there is no alternative to massive cuts in public services.

Yes, because socialism will solve a completely screwed Greece, won't it?

They need to stick to austerity and invest tax revenue properly.

As you've said, Greece is already screwed. Why not try another tack?

Hardly like austerity has gone to plan.

Yes, when you're in so much debt already, why not turn to socialism and rack up even more debt?

Why would they rack up more debt?

Why wouldn't they default?

If they don't implement a full austerity programme and attempt to rebalance their service economy as a matter of urgency, then they will keep racking up more debt.

If they do default, they'll never see a penny in an EU bailout ever again and their credit rating would be reduced even more, so more fool them if they do.

Do you think Iceland is regretting defaulting then?

They have a completely different economy with a significant financial sector, whereas the Greeks are waiters and waitresses for tourists to eat dinner.

As you've said, Greece is already screwed. Why not try another tack?

Hardly like austerity has gone to plan.

Do you think Iceland is regretting defaulting then?

He always was a socialist. He was probably a Marxist too. He also wasn't (at least consistently) opposed to violent revolution either.

He pointed out that by any humane standard, the Soviet Union was a disaster. That in itself was enough to make him a revisionist and to some extent an outcast from the movement. Today of course his position is the left orthodoxy: because there's no other defensible position, not because this is what the Western left had said all along.

edit: To my mind this is all encapsulated in the ending of Animal Farm. The animals look from the Soviet pigs to the capitalist men, "but already it was impossible to say which was which". Orwell's damning criticism of the Soviet Union - the most damning criticism of the left's most damning critic at that time - was that life there was just like in Britain or America! Stalin was so terrible, he was just as bad as Churchill or Roosevelt! Of course everyone at school, even today, is captivated by the subtle brilliance of this imagery. But a more reasonable reaction might be along the lines of, "Huh?" or, "Err, what?".

I disagree with that interpretation of the ending. I read it as the leadership class of Soviet communism betraying the principles of communism by their very being.

As you've said, Greece is already screwed. Why not try another tack?

Hardly like austerity has gone to plan.

Cut them some slack. They've been fighting Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban and a few others. Yes, they can do more, but at least they're doing something!

Yes, even though the Shah was also a tyrant. It's such a shame that the disgusting revolution happened.

Al Qaeda's main source of funding, as has been said, is Saudi Arabia. When you continue to allow Saudi Arabia to fund one of the worlds largest and most dangerous terror groups, as well as export their islamist ideolgy around the world then any effort you make is going to be peicemeal. The same is true of Qatar and others, if our aim was to fight terrorism then this is where we'd start, but that is not our aim.

It wouldn't have if the British and American governments hadn't overthrown their secular, moderate, democratic leader and brought the Shah to power for trying to nationalise an Iranian oil company.

It's a fair point, but what do you suggest - invading Saudi Arabia?

Who knows. What you can't do is attribute blame for the disgusting 1979 revolution to US and UK bureaucrats of the 1950s who had no idea such a thing would occur and were only protecting the West's economic interests by helping get rid of Mossadegh. The intention there was never to create an Islamic dictatorship.

It wouldn't have if the British and American governments hadn't overthrown their secular, moderate, democratic leader and brought the Shah to power for trying to nationalise an Iranian oil company.