http://socialistaction.org/greece-2015-lessons-of-the-defeat/
Greece 2015: Lessons of the defeat
Published August 11, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Aug. 2015 Gr. Antarsya 2
By JEFF MACKLER
The classic definition of Greek tragedy from the times of Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides 2500 years ago applies with a vengeance today.
The Greek working masses have suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of
Europe’s imperial economic and political powers—tragically, with the
full complicity of the reformist, that is, pro-capitalist, Syriza party
(Coalition of the Radical Left).
Tragedy in the theater is defined as an unfolding drama in which the
main player is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow especially as a
consequence of an innate flaw or inability to cope with unfavorable
circumstances.
Today, without doubt, the “unfavorable circumstances,” an understatement
if there ever was one, lies with the Syriza government’s “negotiating
partners”—the brutal, bullying, and crisis-ridden European capitalist
elite embodied in the “Troika” (the European Central Bank, the European
Commission, and the International Monetary Fund). This is the same
Troika that has reduced Europe’s weaker and debt-ridden capitalist
states—Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Greece, among others—to
subordinate status, rendering them increasingly incapable of effectively
competing on the globalized world markets that are dominated by the most
technologically, financially, and militarily advanced imperialist powers.
All the hype about European unity, the sanctity of the euro, “following
the rules” of the European Central Bank, and fiscal responsibility pales
before the fact that European capitalist unity inevitably takes a back
seat to the incessant and inherent drive to maximize the profits of big
capital, represented in the most powerful European states. Were it
otherwise, were the smaller and weaker nations treated as equal and
harmonious partners in a humanistic endeavor in which the interests of
peoples were prioritized above all others, the present European and
world crisis would instantly disappear.
Pipe dreams aside, no self-respecting capitalist sees it this way. The
cardinal rule of the corporate game is to destroy your opponent to
maximize your own profits. Drive the lesser competitors out of the
marketplace! Monopoly! “Dog eat dog!”
At best the European “dis-union” was conceived as a necessary or
potential bloc to counter the weight of U.S. imperialist economic
hegemony, to at least partially combine the economic and natural
resources of Europe to withstand the U.S. onslaught from without. But
this never happened. It was doomed to failure at the outset as the
conflicts between the ruling-class elites of all European states
inevitably drove them to prioritize their own interests.
The grand scheme of European unity stands in ruins as all agree that the
weaker, less competitive states have been driven to near bankruptcy and
massive indebtedness at the expense of the stronger. The capitalist
playing field will never be made level.
EU tops threaten Greece with shut down
Greece today, as with all capitalist states, is ruled by an elite ruling
class that long ago established the fundamental rules that govern social
relations. Its highly profitable shipbuilding industry and related
merchant-marine manufacturing stands second or third in the world. Yet
these industries are virtually untaxed by the state. The same situation
exists with virtually all major Greek private capitalist corporations
and financial institutions.
In significant aspects, Greece is an underdeveloped nation; it stands
among the poorest of the European capitalist states. Its technological
infrastructure, agriculture, and therefore its industrial capacity are
inferior to that of most European countries. It is thus subjected to
unequal terms of trade, including prices for agricultural and other
commodities it produces. Its capacity to obtain credit to renovate or
modernize its largely obsolete manufacturing infrastructure is extremely
limited.
Like most poor nations, Greece’s imposed underdevelopment renders it
nearly incapable of competing with the more advanced capitalist nations.
As with most of the rest of the world, it is subordinate to the dictates
of the great world powers. A world capitalism in crisis requires
victims, not equals—and certainly not vibrant competitors who threaten
to or are capable of undermining imperialist hegemony.
The smashing of the Syriza “experiment” was a conscious decision—a
message to all oppressed people of Europe and beyond that “leftist”
rhetoric and the election of “leftist” governments of the reformist
variety cannot and will not alter the relationship of forces in favor of
the oppressed masses.
Greece, as with all nations on earth, including the United States, where
capitalist rule requires ceaseless attacks on every aspect of
working-class life, has no solutions within the unequal parameters of
the capitalist order.
With Greece tottering ever closer to the economic brink, and following
Syriza’s January 2015 election victory, the Troika’s top European
players, Germany and France, engaged Syriza’s leading “Marxist”
economist professors and political leaders in six months of futile
“negotiations.” Europe’s smug elite team, headed by Germany’s Wolfgang
Schauble and backed to the hilt by German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
offered not a single revision of their third and most devastating
“bailout” package—a series of proposals that would further reduce Greece
to an occupied or vassal state of European capital.
Syriza’s chief negotiator and finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, stated
following the early July breakdown of negotiations, and without
exaggeration, that during his six-month stint in Brussels and in talks
across Europe, not a single counterproposal to his numerous revisions
was ever made by the Troika! “Take it or leave it” was the top European
banksters’ first, last, and only offer—and if you leave it, we will
immediately stop all credit flows to Greek banks and effectively shut
them down, leaving essentially bankrupt Greece with no means to conduct
the business of running the state!
Indeed, that is precisely what the Troika did almost immediately—17
hours after the resounding 61.3 percent “no” vote in the July 5 snap
referendum called by Greek Prime Minister and Syriza leader, Alex Tsipras.
At the time, Greek banks were on the verge of collapse. There was not
enough cash in their ATMs to sustain the meager withdrawals by
pensioners and the unemployed. Factories were quickly exhausting their
last stocks of raw materials, and preparing to cut work shifts. There
was a risk that the country would run out of food stocks by the end of
the month.
A portrait of Syriza
Here we are compelled to frankly evaluate the other side of the Greek
equation, the tragic side—the fundamentally flawed political
perspectives of Syriza. We begin and end with the proposition that the
capitalist system in its fundamentals cannot be reformed, a proposition
that is rejected by the reformist Syriza-led government.
The almost unprecedented and ever intensifying catastrophic conditions
of life that confront the world’s working classes today—massive and
Great Depression era austerity, poverty, starvation, endless wars,
impending life-threatening global warming, racism, sexism, homophobia,
slave labor and sex trafficking, scapegoating Islamophobia, and racist
attacks on immigrants—are inherent in the operations of the capitalist
system of plunder and profit.
These are not accidental policy decisions made by right-wing governments
(“left-wing” reformist governments do the same), but rather brutally
imposed and “necessary” measures to guarantee the exploitation,
oppression, and subordination of the world’s people to the dictates of
the crisis-ridden capitalist world order.
While revolutionaries fight for any improvement or positive reform in
the quality of life of working people, we have absolutely no illusion
that temporary gains achieved in the course of struggle—and these are
increasingly few and far between—can be maintained for long if the
capitalist system as a whole remains intact. Advocacy and the struggle
for socialist revolution—the abolition of capitalism based on the
organization and engagement of the vast working class majority—is the
prerequisite requirement to ending the horrors of capitalist minority
rule and ushering in a new world order, in which the fulfillment of
human needs, full equality and the elevation of all to the highest and
richest standards of education, health, and culture are realistic and
attainable goals and objectives.
The greatest contradiction of our times is that between our present
technological capacity to achieve all of the above and the rule of the
tiny but powerful minority elite that stands in our way. With this is
mind, we offer the following evaluation of the decisive events that have
transpired in Greece since the January election that allowed Syriza to
form a government:
Syriza is a reformist party, not a revolutionary party. It is largely an
electoral coalition of various radical and reformist socialist groups,
many with lofty aims but lacking the perspective of organizing the Greek
working class for a challenge to capitalist rule and a struggle for
state power. Most of the components of Syriza are made up of former
members and/or leaders from the Eurocommunist tradition, a reformist
current that “broke” with many of the “official” policies of the long
Stalinized and counter-revolutionary Communist Party of the Soviet Union
but never with its overall anti-socialist and reformist politics.
Both Eurocommunists and the more orthodox variety of Stalinists inside
the USSR routinely supported participation in electoral coalitions
around the world with openly capitalist parties and, when these
coalitions were “successful,” participated in coalition capitalist
governments—taking ministerial posts and otherwise aiding in the
administration of the capitalist states.
All rejected the independent organization of the working class in a
struggle for socialism. All, without exception, in both the advanced and
underdeveloped counties, subordinated the organization of the working
class for socialism to coalitions and agreements with local and
international capitalist powers at the expense of the interests of the
working class.
John Pilger’s harsh but accurate Syriza description is noteworthy (“The
Problem of Greece Is Not Only a Tragedy. It Is a Lie,” Global Research,
July 13, 2015): “The day after the January 2015 election a truly
democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro
leaving the country, repudiated the ‘illegal and odious’ debt – as
Argentina did successfully—and expedited a plan to leave the crippling
Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be ‘at
the table’ seeking ‘better terms.’”
Pilger continues: “The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined
and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than ‘leftist’ or ‘far
left’ or ‘hardline’—the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s
international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheerleading
reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these
‘radicals’? What do they believe in?
“The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind—but their
revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic
and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with
neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that
of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug. Like
the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among those former
social democratic parties still describing themselves as ‘liberal’ or
even ‘left,’ Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged,
educated middle class, ‘schooled in postmodernism,’ as Alex Lantier wrote.”
For revolutionary socialists, participation in capitalist elections is a
sometimes useful educational tactic, but it is always subordinate to the
ongoing organization of workers to challenge capitalism itself. For
reformists, like the various social democratic parties and former
Stalinist/Communist parties around the world, and Syriza in Greece,
elections are a strategic orientation aimed at winning government posts
to administer the capitalist state.
Today, in an era of capitalist crisis, such administration necessitates
imposing the massive austerity measures that capitalism requires for its
continued functioning. Thus, every social democratic and/or social
reformist government on earth today has become the willing and often
preferred tool of capital, including the “left” capitalist governments
of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.
Syriza, elected on a pledge to refrain from all future austerity
measures and to seek reversal of those implemented by the previous
government, won the January 2015 Greek election with 36 percent of the
vote and 149 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament—one vote short of
a formal majority to form a government on its own. To achieve this
constitutionally required majority, it formed a coalition government
with ANEL (Independent Greeks) an openly right-wing nationalist,
anti-immigrant capitalist party. This, in and of itself, amounted to an
ironclad pledge that Greek capitalism’s essential prerogatives would not
be challenged! As part of the deal, the Syriza leadership granted ANEL
ministerial posts to help administer the new government, including the
post of head of the Greek armed forces.
Syriza’s new parliamentary majority voted to designate former Minister
of the Interior and Public Order Prokopis Pavloupoulos as president of
Greece. Pavloupoulos is a current Central Committee member of New
Democracy, Greece’s main capitalist party and the party in power prior
to the January 2015 elections. Pavloupoulos’s election to the Greek
presidency, a largely ceremonial post, was nonetheless a conscious
statement to Greek’s creditors that Syriza’s objective was a negotiated
debt settlement as opposed to a challenge to Greek’s creditors and
capitalist institutions at home and in Europe.
Prime Minister Tsipras said that Pavoupoulos has “a proven democratic
sensitivity, a high feeling of national conscience, and … enjoys broad
approval in society and parliament.” These are kind words indeed for a
leader of Greek capitalism and a proponent of austerity and
privatizations. Syriza further sought to insure its credibility as a
reliable capitalist government administrator by including in various
government positions members of the discredited and former governing
capitalist PASOK party.
In the year or so prior to the Jan. 15 election, the Greek masses
engaged in an unprecedented number of strikes, including 33 one-day or
two-day general strikes against the New Democracy and PASOK governments’
implementation of sweeping austerity measures. Following Syriza’s Jan.
15 election victory, however, the number of such strikes against
capitalist austerity dropped to zero!
Syriza prioritized six months of negotiations with European capital over
the mobilization of the Greek masses to challenge capitalism at home, a
mistake of epic proportions. Syriza pledged to pay the debts incurred by
the previous government and to carry out the austerity measures imposed
by them while simultaneously seeking modest debt relief with possible
measures such as lower interest rates, extended payment deadlines, or a
partial debt “haircut.” That is, it asked for a measure of forgiveness
of some of the debt on the basis that it was in fact nearly impossible
to collect and that it was incurred by a corrupt government that had
been repudiated.
But Syriza, while agreeing at the bargaining table to not reverse the
previous government’s two previous negotiated austerity packages, sought
funds to “reorganize” Greek capitalism to make it more competitive on
world markets through investments in more efficient technology and
privatization of government-owned “inefficient” industries and other
measures in the framework of maintaining Greek capitalism.
In short, Syriza’s entire negotiating strategy was to pay the $300
billion debt, continue the present austerity, and perhaps moderate the
terms of payment in return for an additional $96 billion in new loans to
avert an impending bankruptcy. About $50 billion of this new loan is set
aside to pay off creditors immediately—in one door and out another!
Varoufakis’ blunt admissions
Yanis Varoufakis’ negotiating counterparts, as he forthrightly stated in
several widely published interviews following his July departure/removal
as Greek’s chief negotiator, did not believe for a second that Greece’s
third bailout in the past five years would be anything other than an
across the board heinous assault on the Greek people. His removal
signaled nothing less than a Syriza/Tsipras decision to make this
absolutely clear to the Troika.
There was an element of reality in the Troika’s position. Europe’s top
negotiators knew full well that, Syriza’s posturing sound and fury
rhetoric aside, Tsipras had sent its negotiating team, hat in hand, with
only a hope and prayer that the conditions of a third bailout might be
slightly less onerous. Indeed, Varoufakis himself later admitted that he
was personally granted permission to establish a secret six-person team
to prepare a “Plan B” when it became clear that the Troika’s insistence
that Greece pay its $300 billion debt in full, with interest, and via
the imposition of even more draconian austerity measures than the two
previous bailouts was the only option.
Here is Varoufakis’s blunt assessment of this matter based on an
interview with Martin Hart-Landsberg, Professor of Economics at Lewis
and Clark College, Portland, Ore.:
“HL: You must have been thinking about a Grexit (Greek exit from the
Eurozone) from day one….
YV: Yes, absolutely.”
“HL: … have preparations been made?
YV: The answer is yes and no. We had a small group, a ‘war cabinet’
within the ministry, of about five people that were doing this: so we
worked out in theory, on paper, everything that had to be done [to
prepare in the event of a Grexit]. But it’s one thing to do that at the
level of 4-5 people, it’s quite another to prepare the country for it.
To prepare the country an executive decision had to be taken, and that
decision was never taken.”
“HL: And in the past week, was that a decision you felt you were leaning
towards [preparing for Grexit]?
YV: My view was, we should be very careful not to activate it. I didn’t
want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t want this to be
like Nietzsche’s famous dictum that if you stare into the abyss long
enough, the abyss will stare back at you. But I also believed that at
the moment the Eurogroup shut our banks down, we should energize this
process.
“HL: Right. So there were two options as far as I can see—an immediate
Grexit, or printing IOUs and taking back control of the Bank of Greece
[potentially but not necessarily precipitating a Grexit]?
YV: Sure, sure. I never believed we should go straight to a new
currency. My view was—and I put this to the government—that if they
dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move
of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without
crossing the point of no return.
We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going
to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek
2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we
should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the
three things, which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut
down our banks. …
I was warning the Cabinet this was going to happen [the ECB shut our
banks] for a month, in order to drag us into a humiliating agreement.
When it happened—and many of my colleagues couldn’t believe it
happened—my recommendation for responding ‘energetically,’ let’s say,
was voted down.”
“HL: And how close was it to happening?
YV: Well let me say that out of six people we were in a minority of two.
… Once it didn’t happen I got my orders to close down the banks
consensually with the ECB and the Bank of Greece, which I was against,
but I did because I’m a team player, I believe in collective responsibility.
“And then the referendum happened, and the referendum gave us an amazing
boost, one that would have justified this type of energetic response
[i.e., Varoufakis’s plan] against the ECB, but then that very night the
government decided that the will of the people, this resounding ‘no,’
should not be what energized the energetic approach [his plan].
“Instead it should lead to major concessions to the other side: the
meeting of the [European] council of political leaders, with our Prime
Minister accepting the premise that whatever happens, whatever the other
side does, we will never respond in any way that challenges them. And
essentially that means folding. … You cease to negotiate.” [Emphasis
added in italics — J.M.]
“The referendum of 5 July,” said Varoufakis, “has also been rapidly
forgotten—preemptively dismissed by the Eurozone, and many people saw it
as a farce—a sideshow that offered a false choice and created false
hope, and was only going to ruin Tsipras when he later [almost
immediately] signed the deal he was campaigning against. As Schäuble
supposedly said, ‘elections cannot be allowed to change anything.’”
Wolfgang Schauble made a critical point here, one that goes to the heart
of the Greek crisis. From his vantage point as the Eurozone’s top-gun
negotiator, armed with the full powers of European finance capital, the
January 2015 election that brought Syriza/ANEL to government and the
July 5 referendum that rejected his take it or leave it final and
crippling bailout proposal meant absolutely nothing. Schauble and all
the other Eurozone nations had full confidence that Greek’s coalition
capitalist government had no alternative but to accept another austerity
package—elections, referendum results, and political bluster
notwithstanding.
The terms of the deal
The first two Greek bailouts negotiated by the previous rightwing
PASOK/New Democracy government brought Greece to its knees, reducing the
standard of living by some 25 percent, raising unemployment levels to
Great Depression levels exceeding 26 percent—60 percent for Greek
youth—privatizing major Greek industries, and slashing pensions and
social services. The third and most recent bailout, this time negotiated
by Tsipras on behalf of his “left” coalition capitalist Syriza
government and approved by the Greek parliament in mid-July, is far worse!
The New York Times pointed out in a July 14 article: “In signing on to
the deal, however reluctantly, Mr. Tsipras suddenly found himself the
champion of policies he was elected to oppose and the best hope for
de-escalating a crisis he had helped to create. Should he succeed on
carrying out the policies set out in the agreement, he would oversee
just the kind of market-based changes that creditors have been demanding
and successive Greek governments have been failing to deliver for years.”
The July 13 British Guardian’s summary of the new agreement is
devastating. Here’s my own shortened version: Tsipras, some 17 hours
after the July 5 “no” vote, rushed to Brussels for an all-night session
with the 18 representatives of the Eurozone nations and approved a
seven-page agreement that included the establishment of a $55 billion
Greek fund that is to be used to privatize Greek assets—that is, to sell
them to corporate interests at bargain basement prices. Greek planes,
airports, ports, vital infrastructure and communication industries and
banks are slated for the chopping block.
The new measures include a 50 percent increase in the cost of pensioner
health care (almost 40 percent of pensioners live in poverty) and an
extension of the age of pensioner eligibility to 67. New and increased
sales and value added taxes up to 23 percent as well as restrictions on
collective bargaining rights, automatic or triggered social spending
cuts when Greece’s future budgets fail to reach new required surplus
criteria, continued IMF monitoring—if not control—of Greek finances, and
a host of other measures aimed at humiliating Greeks in favor of
capitalist profits were all approved at Syriza’s insistence.
The seven-page agreement mandated that 13 billion euros be cut from the
public purse—4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected
overwhelmingly on July 5 by the majority of the Greek population a week
earlier. And if one believed that the agreement could not be even more
deadly, it affirmed that “the Euro Summit stresses that nominal haircuts
on the debt cannot be undertaken.” On this last point alone Varoufakis
had previously noted, “If the specifics of debt relief are not written
clearly into the overall package, it is not worth anything.”
Indeed, not only was debt relief/forgiveness in any amount not included,
it was explicitly excluded. This rejection even irked the U.S.-dominated
IMF, whose top echelons knew full well, and stated so in intentionally
leaked internal communications, that without a significant debt
forgiveness as well as a prolonged, perhaps 30-year, extension of the
maturity dates along with interest rate reductions, Greece would be
absolutely incapable of anything resembling a recovery. Greece would
once again rapidly fall into bankruptcy—as it now will—but not before
the new austerity measures take their pound of flesh and line the
pockets of the creditor rich while further undermining the standard of
living of the Greek people.
Schauble understood this well. He crudely and publically suggested an
alternative—that Greece withdraw from the Eurozone for at least five
years and seek relief from other non-troika financial institutions.
Pouring into Greece the amount of debt relief that the IMF recommended
as the minimum to avoid yet another and close to immediate bankruptcy
and bailout—30 percent of Greece’s GDP—would, in his view, be the
equivalent of throwing good money after bad.
For Schauble, and for essentially the entire Eurozone group, a
“voluntary” Greek exit—in reality throwing Greece out of the Eurozone
for non-payment of its debts—would be their first preference. In the end
it was only political considerations that altered their approach. These
centered on their fear that throwing Greece out of the Eurozone might
well trigger a political firestorm among the masses of the other
European debtor nations that would threaten the present capitalist
order. While forcing Greece out was put on hold, no one denies today
that the third “bailout” will fail to resolve anything other than to
postpone the day of reckoning to perhaps a year or so down the line.
Why did Tsipras ignore the referendum results?
Tsipras began his government’s abject capitulation just hours after the
massive “no” vote was announced. As a gesture of “good faith” and to
assure Greece’s creditors that his government had ceased its high talk
about challenging austerity he presented and won the approval of several
initial and devastating measures insisted on by the troika.
A week or so before the referendum, when negotiations had effectively
ended, Tsipras had defiantly reported: “They asked the Greek government
to accept a proposal that accumulates a new unsustainable burden on the
Greek people and undermines the recovery of the Greek economy and
society, a proposal that not only perpetuates the state of uncertainty
but accentuates social inequalities even more.” Yet Tsipras now demanded
its acceptance.
To date there has been but one plausible explanation put forward for
this near instant Syriza reversal—Tsipras fully expected the referendum
to produce a “yes” vote! Varoufakis’ lengthy interview strongly implies
that this was the case. Tsipras, he implies, planned to use a “yes” vote
to immediately go to the parliament to ask for approval of the “people’s
will,” and thus provide justification for acceptance of the ruthless
measures required by the Troika. Nevertheless, a stunned Tsipras went to
the same parliament, throwing the “no” vote into the dustbin and
demanding acceptance.
On July 6, again, one day after the massive “no” vote, he secured a near
unanimous vote of approval from Syriza’s parliamentary delegation,
including its Left Platform. This vote, with only two Left Platform
ministers in opposition—a pre-planned token opposition vote of the
two—was secured based on the fear that if the Syriza/ANEL government
failed to secure a majority of its own members of parliament, Greek law
might require the holding of elections for a new government.
In addition to the almost unanimous Syriza/ANEL vote—minus the Nazis
Golden Dawn “no” votes and those of the opportunistic and sectarian
Greek Communist Party (KKE), which in years past did its own stint in
Greek coalition capitalist governments—the traditional Greek capitalist
parties, New Democracy and PASOK, voted their approval. Varoufakis did
not attend the meeting but sent a note indicating his vote in support of
Tsipris’s proposal!
Varoufakis later commented on the agreement that he had approved,
asserting that “it is the Versailles Treaty for the present age.”
This analogy is a far cry from the truth, however. The 1919 Versailles
Treaty, which concluded World War I, was imposed on defeated imperialist
Germany by its French, U.S., and British imperialist conquerors.
Following a devastating world war that took the lives of millions, the
victors imposed massive reparations on Germany as well as taking
possession of German-populated territories. The Versailles Treaty is
said to have laid the basis for the resurgence of German nationalism and
the rise of the Hitler regime.
In contrast, the Syriza-inflicted imposition of massive austerity on the
Greek people flowed from the fundamentally flawed policies of a
reformist, pro-capitalist Greek government. The government sent its tiny
band of intellectuals to do battle with European capitalism while
leaving the Greek masses standing on the sidelines and—to state the
truth boldly—with never the slightest intention of engaging them in
struggle. This is a strategy doomed to failure and, again, tragedy.
A week or so later, when the full Eurozone/Tsipras seven-page agreement
came before the Greek parliament, some 32 MPs of the Left Platform and
other leftist tendencies voted “no.” But the agreement was overwhelming
approved by the parliament, with some 80 percent of the Syriza
representatives voting in favor and joined by the traditional Greek
capitalist parties. As we have noted, the terms of Tsipras’s negotiated
agreement are harsher by a full order of magnitude than those rejected
by Greek voters the previous week!
The lessons of the Greek experience in the “rule” of mis-named “broad
parties of the anti-capitalist left,” with Syriza being today’s touted
model by those who reject the formation of revolutionary socialist
parties of the Leninist type, is glaring and tragic. The spectacle of
“leftists” in “power,” including “Marxist” professors, ex-Stalinists,
social democrats, and even some who describe themselves as Trotskyists
taking responsibility for and imposing massive austerity measures on the
working class must be a warning to serious revolutionaries.
Syriza’s Left Platform’s alternative Grexit proposal was summarized on
the Greek Reporter’s on-line news site as follows: “An exit from the
Eurozone would generate further benefits, namely, the restoration of
financial liquidity, a sustainable growth program based on private
investment, the rebuilding of the internal economy to reduce dependence
on imports, an increase in exports, independence from the European
Central Bank, its policies and restrictions and finally the utilization
of unused resources to create rapid growth so as to protect against the
first difficult months following the Grexit.”
We must note, however, that this “technical” proposal never once
deviated from solutions based on Greece’s remaining in the world
capitalist orbit via the promotion of a more profitable and efficient
capitalist economy in Greece.
Syriza, and all its component currents, essentially subordinated
organizing the Greek masses to defend and advance their interests to
technical solutions and/or futile negotiations with Greek’s capitalist
predators and their international troika superiors. This undeniably
demobilized the working class! It fostered illusions that socialists
could administer capitalist states without challenging capitalist power
and capitalist rule itself.
Capitalist rule is based on the forced imposition of the will and
interests of society’s tiny property owning elite on the vast majority.
It is based on the deployment of the combined institutions of the
capitalist state to enforce this minority rule, from capitalism’s
legislative bodies, courts, police and army to all other government
dominated institutions. All exist solely to defend the interests of the
capitalist state power, its wealth and unimpeded right to exploit and
oppress its working class victims.
A revolutionary course of action
Some Greek revolutionaries did seek to alter the present relationship of
forces between labor and capital. Revolutionary parties, small as they
were—including the Greek Fourth International section, OKDE-Spartakos
(Organization of Communist Internationalists of Greece)—looked to the
organizations of the working masses and oppressed to exercise their
power in the streets. They encouraged and helped to lead united-front
mass actions that challenged capitalist austerity in all its manifestations.
They acted to defend the rights of immigrants against the fascist Golden
Dawn attacks. They aimed at the organization of working-class
communities and neighborhood groups to fight for their own interests. In
the electoral arena and in united-front mobilizations, they participated
in the relatively small but important ANTARSYA (Anti-capitalist Left
Cooperation for the Overthrow) to pose a mass-struggle alternative to
Syriza’s reformism.
They worked to foster the education and active engagement of the Greek
masses and warned that there are no reformist—that is,
capitalist—solutions to the massive austerity imposed on by Greek and
international capital. Immediately following Syriza’s vote to approve
the third “bailout,” they helped to build a general strike and mass
rally of 15,000 in Athens’ Syntagma Square, which was brutally attacked
by the government’s police, including the frame-up arrest of
OKDE-Spartakos members and other revolutionary activists who challenged
the Syriza sellout.
For revolutionary socialists, politics is the art of organizing,
uniting, and mobilizing the working class for the seizure of power when
the conditions have been properly prepared.
Revolutionaries operate on the irrefutable premise that no ruling class
in history has ever voluntarily ceded power to the vast majority of the
working masses, who produce all the world’s wealth. When faced with a
serious challenge to their rule, the capitalist elite resort to every
means necessary to sustain it. Their tactics range from electoral guile
(for example, running radical-sounding politicians for office),
restrictive election laws, and stealing elections via their control of
the ballot box to outright repression including mass arrests,
imprisonment, and murder. And finally, when all else fails to stem an
impending mass uprising that directly threatens their rule, they can
resort to outright dictatorships of the fascist type, with rule by force
and violent repression.
Revolutionaries certainly do not advocate isolated groups running wild
in the streets demanding “socialism now!” Nor do we believe that
socialism can triumph in a single country without its being accompanied
by a social transformation worldwide—especially including the most
advanced industrialized countries.
But on the other hand, revolutionaries do not advocate passivity until
the “world revolution” comes. In 1917, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky won
their Bolshevik Party to the task of organizing Russian workers,
peasants, and oppressed nationalities in order to prepare for the
seizure of power to end capitalist rule. They saw backward Russia, in
the context of a worldwide rise in revolutionary struggles and the
devastation brought on by World War I as a critical moment where their
revolution—their example—might inspire workers everywhere to follow suit.
Indeed, they prioritized and helped foster the formation of disciplined
revolutionary socialist parties of the Leninist type everywhere in the
world. They saw their revolution as only the first blow against the
capitalist world order. And they also understood that the alternative to
the organization of the working class for the seizure of power was the
continued rule of capital, including Russia’s continued participation in
a monstrous war, the starvation of the Russian masses, and the continued
oppression of Russia’s colonially oppressed nationalities.
In Greece today, the central question before serious revolutionaries is
not the immediate seizure of power but the prerequisite steps that are
indispensible for achieving it. This begins, in Greece and in all
nations, with the construction of a consciously constructed
revolutionary socialist party of the Leninist type—a deeply-rooted mass
revolutionary party that aims to unite all of society’s millions and
billions of oppressed and exploited people, the vast majority, into an
unbeatable force—the only force capable of defeating the repressive
capitalist state power in all its manifestations.
That this process takes time is indisputable. Patience, fortitude,
conviction, and confidence in the working class are the indispensible
qualities of serious revolutionaries. There is no other way. Socialist
revolution requires the organization of the working masses to rule in
their own name, in their own interests, and through their own institutions.
Had Syriza spent its first six months governing Greece looking to the
working-class masses as its source of strength and power, the result
might well have been inspirational to the workers of the rest of the
oppressed European states and beyond.
But instead of mobilizing its millions to challenge capitalist rule, to
take over the major industries, to tax and/or expropriate the rich, to
national the banks and major corporations, all under the control of the
working masses, Syriza and its sycophants (blind and obedient followers)
envisioned social change as a product of clever negotiations with the
capitalist elite, employing leading intellectuals to press for modest
reforms within the framework of capitalism. Greece’s working-class
masses were shunted to the sidelines by the Syriza/ANEL government.
Many of the “left” argued that this was the only possible choice, that
the time was not ripe for revolution, or that the Greek workers were not
ready to fight back. Some added that Tsipras and Syriza negotiators were
exhausted from their yeoman efforts and should be praised for their
work. They fought the good fight against unbeatable odds!
But nothing could be further from the truth. Reforming capitalism as
opposed to the perspective of abolishing it, formation of multi-class
electoral alliances to administer the capitalist state, and a rejection
of revolutionary party building in favor of vaguely defined “broad”
reformist parties constitute Syriza’s “tragic flaws.” Now this dead-end
strategy has once again ended in defeat.
Those who absorb these fundamental lessons of independent working-class
politics will be best prepared to help lead the coming struggles for a
socialist future.
Photo: Anti-capitalist coalition ANTARSYA takes part in a demonstration
in Athens.
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Posted in Economy, Europe, International, Uncategorized. | Tagged
Antarsya, EU, European Union, Greece, OKDE, Syriza, Tsipras.
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