“My country has suffered a humanitarian catastrophe that is unprecedented during peacetime, but we are also the country that is closest to reversing the policies that have brought us to this point”, said Alexis Tsipras before the January 2015 elections in a talk with the magazine Transform! (http://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/alexis.tsipras-interview-syriza retrieved 15.02.2015). About the same time, Pablo Iglesias – the young General Secretary of Spanish anti-austerity party Podemos, who later shared the dais with Tsipras in the main election rally in Athens – tweeted: “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe. We will start in Greece. Let’s go Alexis, let’s go!”

With his party actually emerging victorious, Tsipras told thousands of cheering supporters gathered in Athens: “Greece leaves behind catastrophic austerity, it leaves behind fear and authoritarianism, it leaves behind five years of humiliation and suffering”.

As the suffering, struggling Greeks celebrated their victory, greetings flew in from all across the globe. From Latin America, the forerunner in the global battle against neoliberal onslaughts, several governments expressed firm solidarity. Equally warm was the Cuban response. Venezuela’s foreign minister Elias Jaua tweeted: “The Greek people, after a long and historic battle against neoliberalism, has crowned itself a wonderful victory. Syriza is fresh air for Europe!”

The pan-European and global perspectives have been firmly embedded in the Greek vision too. To quote Tsipras once again from the source cited above, “[O]urs is a struggle for political change across Europe. We don’t think of ourselves as existing in a separate sphere — we’re a part of the European Left, and together with all the parties of the Left, we face a common struggle. … our joint successes will be the only way to achieve the results we hope for, both in the medium and long term.”

Apart from the Left, broader sections of democratic opinion have also welcomed the victory of Syriza in the context of the European debt crisis. A reader’s comment in The Economist, 27 January, is representative: “... for the first time in this crisis, there is a counter-proposal on the table, and it comes from the country that has suffered the consequences of the EU’s mistakes, as well as its own. For the first time in five years, there is a government that wants to stop the “pretend-and-extend” tactic of Brussels and actually look for a moderate alternative that will save everyone money in the long run. That’s why it matters, and that’s why it deserves attention.”

The good sense expressed here has been endorsed by a good many people, including Nobel Prize winners in economics Joseph Stiglitz and Chris Pissarides. Vladimir Putin was quick to congratulate Tsipras on his victory, and Russian state television observed that Syriza’s landslide meant the end of the EU’s hold over Greece, which “brought the country nothing but unemployment and misery”.

In sharp contrast to all this, lender countries and institutions voiced their concerns and warned against debt default, even as markets in Greece took a heavy battering and the corporate media started a malicious campaign against the new government. The White House chose not to greet the democratically elected Prime Minister, congratulating instead the country for successfully holding the elections.

The message from Greece is loud and clear. After Latin America, now Europe too is challenging the ‘There is No Alternative’ (TINA) narrative, and is reasserting the Left. When on 31 January thousands upon thousands of people, drawing inspiration from the Syriza victory, joined a demonstration in Madrid called by Podemos to mark the beginning of their campaign for the municipal and general elections due this year, it was clear that the European ruling elite’s fear of “contagion” was not unfounded.

Popular Verdict and Uneasy Coalition

In the January 2015 election, SYRIZA got 36.5% of polled votes and won in 99 seats (plus 50 that is awarded to the highest scorer, to make the total 149). The performance of other parties, arranged from high to low vote shares, is as follows: New Democracy -- 27.8%, 76 seats; Golden Dawn -- 6.3%, 17 seats; To Potami -- 6.1%, 17 seats; KKE (Communist Party of Greece) -- 5.5%, 15 seats; ANEL (Independent Greeks) -- 4.7%, 13 seats; PASOK -- 4.7%, 13 seats; others not elected: 8.6%.

Poll analyses indicate that it was the working class of Greece including the retrenched workers, the poor and the unemployed who powered the SYRIZA victory, which was evenly spread over the country, including regions without a Left majority in decades as well as areas traditionally dominated by Pasok. However, at 36.13 percent (representing 3.5 million people, over 1 million more than those who voted for Syriza) the abstention rate was rather high, even after taking into consideration the large number of registered voters who are out of the country seeking jobs. It is also notable that New Democracy and PASOK – the two constituents of the ousted government – together got the same number of seats as SYRIZA did on its own (before adding the bonus of 50 seats) though with a lower percentage of vote-share (32.5 compared to SYRIZA’s 36.5). The Syriza score, impressive as it is, thus leaves sufficient opposition space in society and parliament.
The traditional party of the bourgeoisie, New Democracy, lost half of its seats [2 words deleted]. The social-democratic Pasok, which got nearly 44% of the votes five years ago, got less than 5% this time -- about 8 percentage points lower even compared to its poor showing in 2012. The spectacular rise of SYRIZA is thus mainly at the cost of Pasok. This was the price it paid, like the CPI(M) did in our country, for having administered the neoliberal programme in states under its rule.

Since Syriza just missed the magic figure of 151 seats in a 300-strong parliament, it needed an ally. Unfortunately – and this reminds us of the failure of Nepalese communists to unite in the most crucial hours of the Himalayan nation – the desirable coalition of Syriza and KKE was not even seriously considered. In a MONTHLY REVIEW interview on 26 January, KKE leader Kostas Papadakis put forward their position: “having closely examined what SYRIZA said, we cannot take part in a bourgeois capitalist government, under which this barbarity will continue.  … The EU has no fear of SYRIZA.  SYRIZA is not the oligarchy’s first choice, but it is the new face of social democracy, useful for the system”.

With Communists standing apart, an uneasy post-poll alliance was forged between Syriza and ANEL (Independent Greeks) -- a nationalist, xenophobic, right-wing formation. Their lone meeting point is a strong anti-memoranda (“memoranda” refers to the agreements the previous government signed with the troika -- the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF -- as quid pro quo for bailout) position; on all other issues, including labour and migration policies, differences are substantial. ANEL bargained for, and got, the Defence portfolio in the Cabinet. With his close links with the powerful shipping oligarchs and the military top brass in this NATO member country, Panos Kammenos as Defence Minister can prove to be a Trojan horse [7 words deleted] in a crisis situation.

Whatever the fine prints – important as they are – may tell us, the overriding fact is the installation of the Left-led government, which enjoys immense support at home (recent opinion polls indicate more than 90 per cent popular support, incomparably larger than the combined vote-share of the two parties in power). The victory is an inspiration for movements in India and the rest of the world against anti-people [comma deleted] neoliberal policies.

How did this impressive victory come about? Well, the proximate factor can be traced to an excellent election manifesto (box below) which, while appearing practicable, faithfully reflected people’s aspirations and galvanised the worker-middle class electorate into a solid, politically active social block. But behind this there is a highly instructive story of the political evolution of this new kind of left party in the process of class struggle and attendant realignment of Left forces in Greece over the past ten years.

How Syriza “Happened”

[if this sounds odd, change to -- The Political Evolution Of Syriza or …]
SYRIZA (Greek an acronym of Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás or “Coalition of the Radical Left”) like Podemos, is a product of the turbulent political and social situation and utter betrayal of social democracy in these two countries.

Founded in 2004, its biggest component was Alexis Tsipras’s party Synaspismos, which emerged from a series of splits in the Communist movement, and it also comprised smaller formations including Trotskyists and Maoists. It entered Parliament for the first time in 2004 with 6 seats and 3.3% of polled votes; it won 14 and 13 seats with 5.04% and 4.6% vote shares in 2007 and 2009 elections. The party took a big leap to 16.8% (52 seats) in May 2012 and to nearly 27% (71 seats) in the June 2012 elections by effectively championing the social dynamics of the massive movements rocking the crisis-ridden country. After 2012, it continued to gain strength by voicing people’s discontent against the Samaras government, which pushed harder on the neoliberal ‘restructuring’ as dictated by the big lenders attained first position in the recent elections. Meanwhile in its July 2013 Congress the coalition reconstituted itself as a “unitary party”, although the old name remained.

For a deeper insight into the whole process from an early date, we bring you here excerpts from an interview published in the magazine Jacobin, in February this year, with Stathis Kouvelakis. A member of the central committee of Syriza and leader of its “Left Platform”, Kouvelakis teaches political theory at King’s College London and is the co-editor of Lenin Reloaded and Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism.

Asked to explain Syriza’s sudden electoral success in 2012, Kouvelakis said,
“There are three factors to consider. The first lies in the violence of the social and economic crisis in Greece …

The second factor resides in the fact that Greece — and now also Spain — are the only countries where this social and economic crisis has transformed into a political crisis. The old political system, which was based on a very stable two-party duopoly, has collapsed.

The third factor is popular mobilization. It’s not a coincidence that the two European countries where the radical left has taken off are Greece and Spain, namely the countries that have seen the strongest popular mobilizations in recent years. In Spain they had the indignados movement, whereas in Greece there was a deeper and socially more diverse movement.

Most of the forces that have freed themselves of the traditional forms of political representational binds have turned toward the radical Left, while part of society that has remained outside of this dynamic has turned to abstention, which also rose very significantly since the start of the crisis, or toward the extreme right, namely the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.

And … it has proven concretely and practically able to commit itself to the social movements and collective actions …. It has done so at the same time as respecting these movements’ autonomy, including the most novel and spontaneous forms of mobilization. For example, it supported the city square occupations movements we saw in 2011, whereas KKE denounced this movement as “anti-political” and accused it of being dominated by petty-bourgeois and anticommunist elements.

… Syriza took off in the opinion polls only in the last few weeks of the 2012 electoral campaign. The real breakthrough came when Tsipras focused his discourse on the theme of constituting an “anti-austerity government of the Left” now, which he presented as an alliance proposal reaching out to the KKE, the far left, the parliamentary left, and the small dissident elements of Pasok.

That’s what literally changed the course of the electoral campaign, setting a whole new agenda. That was when we began to hear a stir — it was almost something physical — and Syriza’s polling numbers soared. From that moment onward, the other parties had to react to Syriza’s offer, which had emerged as a concrete political perspective — indeed, one within reach — allowing Greece to shake off the yoke of the memorandums and the troika. …

[O]ne of the most significant initiatives taken by Syriza, between the May and June 2012 elections1, was to call a kind of general assembly of the movements in a dialogue with the leadership of Syriza. It was an absolutely extraordinary event.”

Commenting on a particular organisational feature reflecting its history of evolution, Kouvelakis said,

“[W]ithin Syriza there is a practical approach allowing the coexistence of different political cultures. I would say that Syriza is a hybrid party, a synthesis party, with one foot in the tradition of the Greek Communist movement and its other foot in the novel forms of radicalism that have emerged in this new period.”

Syriza allows factions (e.g., the Left Platform, the International Marxist Tendency) to operate with their respective leaderships and representatives in the Central Committee and they are free to air their differences in public2. This is a new experiment on a large scale. The system will be put to a very hard test now that the party is in power, with erstwhile theoretical debates transforming themselves into practical-political struggles between factions on urgent issues of running the affairs of the state.

A Bold Beginning

For the first time the vast majority of MPs took the civic oath -- not to God but to the constitution. Also the symbolism of the new Prime Minister visiting a monument to communist fighters executed by the Nazis on May 1 1944 and the barricades coming down outside the Greek parliament was really refreshing. The same holds true for the announcement that the state’s luxury car fleet will be sold out and ministers will travel in economy class or use their own cars.

The new government immediately announced a series of policies and measures to reverse austerity and structural reforms while promoting employment and welfare. These include: restoring the minimum wage to pre-crisis levels (750 Euros a month); raising pensions to low-end pensioners; abolition of hospital visit fees and prescription costs; ending the forced sale of homes for defaults in mortgage repayments; scrapping planned privatisations (including the energy sector, airports and docks); re-employing teachers who have been sacked; abolishing the civil service “evaluation” system which was created in order to provide continuous layoffs; reconnecting electricity to 300,000 poor households cut off for non-payment of bills; the re-employment of more than 10,000 civil servants and workers sacked from the public sector; re-opening the public broadcaster Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) and reemploying its workforce; and granting citizenship to children of immigrants born and raised in Greece.

While the Greek communist party (KKE) dismissed the reforms as mere “peanuts”, the masses feel that, at last, their self-confidence and dignity is being restored. However, these policies and measures remain to be passed through parliament; moreover, to what extent they can be implemented and carried forward will largely depend on whether the creditors grant some leeway to the new government.

The initial set of reforms did not fall from the sky. It is a by-product of the massive extra-parliamentary movements (including the occupy struggles of May -- July 2011, which were brutally crushed; the 500,000-strong demonstration outside parliament on February 12, 2012; and a number of general strikes against austerity) that politically radicalised millions of working people, preparing the ground for the recent victory in the parliamentary arena.

Struggle, Compromise and Challenges Ahead

Inheriting an economy in shambles and with people lining up before soup kitchens, the very first concern of the Syriza led government could only be to try and loosen the noose of austerity and interest-bearing foreign debt, so as to tread the promised path of dignified, pro-people growth. To this end Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis3 undertook a hectic tour of major European countries immediately after they took office, meeting heads of states, finance ministers as well as top officials of multilateral institutions like EC and Eurogroup in Frankfurt, Brussels, Berlin and other centres of international finance capital.

They also sought to use the well-attended press conferences to mobilize public opinion in support of the Greek cause. In Berlin Varoufakis said, “We need the people of Germany on our side … to help us in the struggle against misanthropy.” “Never again”, he added, should a 1933-style depression be allowed “to divide proud European nations.” Referring to the threat of Nazism in the shape of the Golden Dawn in Greece, he observed, “Germany must be proud of the fact that Nazism has been eradicated here …When I return home tonight I shall find myself in a parliament in which the third-largest party is not a neo-Nazi party, it is a Nazi party.”
The proposals they tabled were sufficiently watered down compared to the Thessaloniki Programme, which served as Syriza’s election manifesto. The possibility of a 50% haircut (writing off half the sovereign debt) was not even raised as a negotiating tactic. Rather, the official demand now was to “bind our repayments to our growth,” i.e., only when the Greek economy limps back to a growth track can it be asked to start making significant repayments. As Tsipras put it, “we want to make them [Greece’s creditors] partners to our recovery.”

As an immediate measure, Greece called for a sensible agreement that will work for at least a few months pending renegotiation -- in particular, a six or at least three-month bridging loan that would buy time to move over from the troika-dictated, anti-people economic programme to a new one, presumably [2 words deleted] based on a version of neo-Keynesianism advocated by Varoufakis.

But even these proposals were mostly rejected. Other Eurozone members are afraid that a concession to Syriza would embolden the likes of Podemos and allowing Athens to write off some of its obligations would set a bad precedence, encouraging other troubled countries such as Spain and Ireland to seek similar relief. There are domestic political compulsions too. To take just one example, Germany’s Merkel is under pressure from right-wing forces like AfD, which will exploit the situation if she makes concessions on Greece.

The gap in interests and perceptions was simply too great to allow an early agreement. So the eyeball to eyeball confrontation lingered on till, just as we go to press, there is breaking news. A last-ditch deal has been struck to extend the present bailout, provided that the Greek government submits, by Monday the 23rd of February, its own plan of reforms and that this plan satisfies the troika and the Eurozone member states.

Pending what transpires after Monday, the deal certainly looks like a major climb-down on Syriza’s part. It had to recognise the role of the “hated troika of bailout monitors” – now called “institutions” – albeit in a roundabout way. It has agreed to continue neoliberal reforms, the saving grace being, as Varoufakis insisted, “we are going to write our own script on the reforms that need to be enacted”. Now Greece can ease austerity, but only within the constraints of budget targets agreed with its creditors, i.e., by finding other ways of meeting fiscal targets. Talking to mediapersons after the deal was done, Varoufakis declared he will not implement harsh measures like pension cuts. Instead, the government will meet its budget targets with a crackdown on tax evasion. It is a good idea no doubt, but surely not even half the promises can be met that way.

The deal was immediately greeted by Wall Street with record highs, and the Euro rallied very appreciably. In Greece, it looks like Syriza is going to face a lot of criticism – from within the party, from the aroused masses who have staged a good many demonstrations before the Greek Parliament protesting against the financial bullying by big powers and encouraging – in a way, pressuring – the government to keep up the dignified, resolute stance of the first few days.

At the moment we have to wait to see whether the Greek government submits a plan of reforms acceptable to the big European powers and the IMF and, if not, what happens next. What is clear is that the government has little room for manoeuvre in the existing bourgeois setup. The Venezuela government has had the benefit (until recently) of abundant oil money to fund the pro-poor reforms; in Greece the picture is the exact opposite with national debt at a horrifying 175% of GDP. Then there is the menace of capital flight: the banks are losing deposits at the rate of about €2bn a week. A €1bn shortfall in revenues for January – caused by some Greeks delaying tax payments in the run-up to the election – has added to the strain on government finances. The banking system is on life support from the ECB because it is effectively locked out of the international lending markets. Without a deal, the country thus faced the prospect of quickly running out of cash, ultimately being forced out of Eurozone.

The predatory sharks of finance capital made full use of the situation. Syriza was fighting on enemy turf and the rules of the fight had been set beforehand exclusively by its incomparably more powerful adversaries. It scaled down on its demands to remain in the battle and finally went in for a compromise that allows it four months’ time to continue negotiating with its creditors for a relaxation of the other terms of the debt.

Is this “a compromise”, as Lenin wrote in the chapter “No Compromises?” in Left-Wing Communism – an Infantile Disorder, “which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle”, or an unwarranted surrender? What else could have been done in the given circumstances, and what should be done now?

These questions will be debated and settled in the days and months to come, primarily by the people and parties in Greece. At the moment, the country stands on a crossroads and so does Syriza – how it evolves as a ruling party remains an open question. What is more important, however, is: a new war front has been opened in the cradle of European civilisation and that in the midst of definite signs of Leftward shift in countries like Spain, Italy and Ireland. Let us learn from the whole experience and stand up in solidarity with our comrades-in-arms.

Note :
1  While in May the party captured 17 percent of the vote, in the second round of elections the following month, its share increased to 27 percent.

2  Few days ago, three SYRIZA MPs sharply criticized in writing the choice of Propokis Pavlopoulos, a former New Democracy minister, by the party leadership as a consensus candidate for the chair of president of the republic. However, they followed the party line and voted for the conservative leader who was elected with ND support.

3  Professor Yanis Varoufakis, a self-described ‘libertarian Marxist’/’erratic Marxist’, he has been well-known as the author of “Foundations of Economics” (1998) -- a must-read for those interested in the alternative economics discourse -- and several versions of “A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis,” (the final version, released in July 2013, was published jointly with US economist J.K. Galbraith). He was an economic.

Box Matter

The Platform That Won Syriza Massive Support

What the SYRIZA Government Will Do

(The Thessaloniki Programme1, 15 September, 2014)
Excepts

The Context of Negotiation

We demand immediate parliamentary elections and a strong negotiation mandate with the goal to:

Write-off the greater part of public debt’s nominal value so that it becomes sustainable in the context of a «European Debt Conference». It happened for Germany in 1953. It can also happen for the South of Europe and Greece.

Include a «growth clause» in the repayment of the remaining part so that it is growth-financed and not budget-financed.

Include a significant grace period («moratorium») in debt servicing to save funds for growth.

Exclude public investment from the restrictions of the Stability and Growth Pact.

A «European New Deal» of public investment financed by the European Investment Bank.

Quantitative easing by the European Central Bank with direct purchases of sovereign bonds.

Finally, we declare once again that the issue of the Nazi Occupation forced loan from the Bank of Greece is open for us. Our partners know it. It will become the country’s official position from our first days in power.

On the basis of this plan, we will fight and secure a socially viable solution to Greece’s debt problem so that our country is able to pay off the remaining debt from the creation of new wealth and not from primary surpluses, which deprive society of income. With that plan, we will lead with security the country to recovery and productive reconstruction by:

Immediately increasing public investment by at least €4 billion.

Gradually reversing all the Memorandum injustices.

Gradually restoring salaries and pensions so as to increase consumption and demand.

Providing small and medium-sized enterprises with incentives for employment, and subsidizing the energy cost of industry in exchange for an employment and environmental clause.

Investing in knowledge, research, and new technology in order to have young scientists, who have been massively emigrating over the last years, back home.

Rebuilding the welfare state, restoring the rule of law and creating a meritocratic state.

Note:

4  After the Thessaloniki fair, where Tsipras released this document.