One of the most annoying aspects of the situation since the January elections is watching both SYRIZA supporters and SYRIZA detractors talk endlessly about "Greek obligations" toward the EU, whether they should be fulfilled, to what extent, and how. No one ever bothers to specify whose obligations these obligations really are and who has paid for them all these years. Old Karl Marx, of course, knew very well what bourgeois "debtology" is all about, for he has ominously remarked (Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31): "The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt."
Using Marx as means of understanding the contemporary situation with "national debt" was the main preoccupation of a book published, to great commercial success, by KKE member and journalist Nikos Bogiopoulos. Its title --It's Capitalism, Stupid (2011; pictured above)-- was nonetheless borrowed from a rather unlikely source, Bill Clinton. Bogiopoulos is extremely well known in Greece for his meticulous documentation of the glaring social injustice hidden behind the myth of "national debt", but as he has the great misfortune of being a KKE member, he is totally ignored by the global pundits of all things "Marxist" in Greece; they are too busy promoting more "convenient" versions of the product from the academic factories of the "global left".
This post is intended to throw some basic light on the reality of the situation, simply by translating data from some of the scores of economic research articles Bogiopoulos published in the last few years. I hope that it will settle once and for all the question: "WHO OWES WHO WHAT?"
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