Today marks 10 years after the historic referendum of July 5, 2015, in Greece. In this referendum, the Greek people by 61,31% voted NO to the continuation of austerity, as proposed by the Troika (IMF, ECB, EU Commission). It was the culmination of the Greek debt crisis, which started in 2008 as an after-effect of the Great Recession, led to unprecedented (during peacetime) austerity measures, which where fiercely resisted by the working class.
Unfortunately, defying the referendum result, SYRIZA went on to agree to more austerity and sign the 3rd Memorandum. The article we publish today was written in 2017, 2 years after the referendum. Its analysis has been vindicated by the events that followed. Since then, SYRIZA was defeated in the elections and opened the way for the right-wing New Democracy government. It has also entered a devastating internal crisis with multiple splits.
The lessons that must be drawn from the Greek crisis and the crisis of the Greek Left have a particular relevance today, as we are facing historic challenges and the revolutionary Left internationally is struggling to map a way forward.
On July 5, 2015, the historic referendum against the Troika took place and gave a tremendous 61.5% majority in favour on NO. Two years later Greek society under a SYRIZA led government is faced with the continuation of the same policies that were applied by the traditional parties of the ruling class, PASOK and ND.
The attack on the living standards and rights of the Greek people is not only continuing but is actually deepening, under the government of SYRIZA. SYRIZA is trying to hide this attack on the popular masses by trying to present “hard negotiations” and “doing everything possible” against the so called “Institutions” (the new name for the Troika). This is fake and very often theatrical. For example the last agreement of June 15 which released 8.5 billion euros (out of which 8.2 will be used immediately to pay back loans) added nothing to the proposals made by the “Institutions” at the Eurogroup of May 22, three weeks before. Tsipras used this time only to make a lot of noise, internally, proclaiming that there will be no crossing of what he (very often) calls “red lines”. The result is always the same: the “Institutions” make it clear that they won’t retreat; if the Greek government does not retreat it will be kicked out of the Eurozone; and SYRIZA’s “red lines” become thin air.
The recent agreement (the “updated” 3rd memorandum) of June 15 puts additional burdens on the Greek masses, of around 5 billion euros, between 2019 and 2022. The initial signing of the 3rd Memorandum, two years earlier, amounted to a total of about 8.5 billion to be to be paid by the Greek people in order to pay back the Lenders, in the period up to the end of 2018 – thus a total of 13.5 bn euros additional attacks on the living standards.
All these of course are intended to go to the payment of the loans agreed under the 3rd memorandum, initially estimated at over 80 billion euros.
The SYRIZA leadership responds to the anger of the masses or the attacks by the opposition (ND and PASOK) by often saying “our austerity is much lighter than ND’s and PASOK’s”. They miss a little detail: their austerity comes on top of the austerity imposed by ND and PASOK between 2010 and 2015!
In more general terms, what the agreement of June 15 entails in practice is that from next year until the end of 2022 Greece will generate “primary surpluses” (i.e. government revenues minus expenses, excluding payment of the instalments of the sovereign debt) to the level of 3.5 % of the GDP, so as to pay back the Lenders. In today’s terms this comes close to 7 bn euros annually. From 2022 onwards the “primary surpluses” which will be generated will have to be at the level of 2% of GDP. This will go on for… nearly two generations, i.e. until 2060!
This, however, is the “optimistic scenario”. Based on this scenario, in 2060, the sovereign debt will be around 60% of GDP. But very importantly, not all the “Institutions” agree on this: the IMF says these “primary deficits” are unattainable and that the debt will get out of control and could even rise to 260% of GDP by 2060 (from between 180-185% of GDP today). As a result there is an ongoing debate between the IMF and the EU about reducing the Greek debt by extending the repayment period to… 2075, and reducing “primary surpluses” to pay for pay for it to 1,5% per annum.
Until the Lenders are paid back, every single policy to be applied by any Greek government, has to be approved by the “Institutions”. SYRIZA has formally signed this clause in the negotiations for the updated 3rd Memorandum. The “government of the Left” is not in a position to pass even one bill through parliament, it is not in a position to change even one clause in an existing law, without the consent of the Institutions!
The so called “left” government of SYRIZA capitulated to the devastating conditions demanded by the Lenders, under the threat of being kicked out of the Eurozone and as demanded by the Greek ruling class. As a result, is imposing a new wave of austerity and anti-working class policies, in addition and on top of those already imposed by ND and PASOK.
Thus it has further increased income tax for all layers of the population; it has voted in parliament (ND and PASOK voting against) to impose income tax even on those earning around 400 euros a month (it used to be around 700 euros under the ND government before); it increased indirect taxation on everything, raising the price of even the most basic goods like Greek coffee and the traditional “souvlaki” by between 10 and 20%; it cut pensions above 700 euros a month by an average of 9%; and furthermore it is applying measures that ND and PASOK found impossible to get through. Such measures are the huge impetus to privatisations (the biggest privatization program ever); the stabbing in the back of huge struggles like “Skouries” (the gold mines in Khalkidhiki in North Greece) but also “Elliniko” and “Goudi” in Greater Athens by succumbing to the demands of private capital/multinationals; even allowing for work on Sundays which had been the case in only very limited form under ND and PASOK.
At the same time the labour market remains a “jungle” where the huge majority of workers in the private sector are owed many months of wages and have been stripped of their most basic rights on a massive scale: no social insurance (for health, pensions, etc) is being paid, workers are forced to work overtime without being paid for it, insults and degradation are the rule, layoffs can take place any minute and on the spot, on many occasions sacked workers receive no compensation, exploitation has reached unprecedented levels.
As a result of all the above, the prevailing feelings in the Greek working people are mass anger and, at the same time, mass demoralization. The idea that politicians are crooks and liars is dominant in society. In the past this used to be the case with parties of the establishment, ND and PASOK who have been ruling the country in arrears since 1981. Now it is the case with SYRIZA as well. The rise of SYRIZA from a small party of around 3% to a mass force winning over 36% in January 2015 and September 2015 was a result of the huge convulsions of Greek society, which, faced with the attack by PASOK and ND, turned to the small party of the Left, developed it into a mass force, only to see it turn against it and continue the same policies.
The situation that working class activists, left activists and Marxists in particular are faced with, raises a number of issues which can help in the preparation of the future class and social struggles which will inevitably return to Greek in due time. Such questions are: What were the factors that enabled SYRIZA to grow in contrast to other forces of the Left, particularly the KKE (Greek Communist Party)? Was SYRIZA’s capitulation predictable? Was it inevitable? Why did the rest of the Left (particularly the KKE, and the “anticapitalist alliance” ANTARSYA) fail to cover the vacuum that was created by SYRIZA’s surrender? What are the prospects for the re-emergence of a powerful left alternative in Greece in the next period?
The general historical background
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 created an entirely new objective situation on a global scale. Among other things we had the creation of a huge vacuum on the Left, as a result of the collapse of the Stalinist so called “Communist” parties and the speeding up of the process of bourgeoisification of the Social Democratic parties which fully engulfed the ideas of the free market and abandoned any pro-working class reforms. Our forces predicted that this vacuum would inevitably give rise to attempts to create new left formations, new parties of the working class, in order to provide political representation to the working class and to play a role in the development of its struggles.
In Greece, the period 1989-1990 caused a massive split up of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). The outcome was three parties: KKE, NAR and SYN.
NAR was based on the split off of the official youth of the Communist Party (KNE) which left the party en masse – about 15.000 members in total – in 1989.
SYN (short for “Synaspismos” which can be translated into “collaboration” of the Left) was made up essentially of the small forces of the old Eurocommunist party of Greece (“KKE Internal” which later changed its name to EAR) which united with a section that split off from the KKE in 1991.
With PASOK moving speedily to the right, in the 1990’s the parties of the Left were faced with a massive contraction of their forces. The KKE, was down to 4 – 5 % but still retained its roots in the working class, particularly the private sector blue collar workers. SYN was struggling, from election to election, to get the 3% minimum so as to enter parliament – but not always successfully. NAR represented a lost historic opportunity. Leaving the KKE with 15,000 members, 4 to 5 times the number of SYN members, it could have acted as a catalyst to change the landscape of the Greek left. But it moved in a sectarian direction, investing heavily if not entirely on the student field (where its forces were mainly based) and thus acquiring even more strongly petit bourgeois characteristics.
Things began to change towards the end of the 1990s. SYN was the only one of the above mentioned parties/formations which was not sectarian and was able to intervene in the anti-global and anti-war movements around the turn of the century. Being open to collaboration and alliances, it began to attract around it a number of other smaller forces and together created the “Space of Dialogue and United Action” which developed into SYRIZA in 2004. Xekinima took part in the proceedings of the “Space” but decided not to join SYRIZA. The reason for this was that SYRIZA was “put together” hastily and only for electoral reasons, while the programme on which it was based was in no way radical – it was a right wing reformist programme which could not have any appeal to the masses. Xekinima of course maintained “friendly” political relations to SYRIZA in the context of our united front approach.
SYRIZA did very badly in the 2004 elections and the then right wing leadership of SYN decided to kill the project. Thus SYRIZA ceased to exist, but it re-emerged in 2007, again in order to stand in the elections of that year – the difference this time was that there was a change in the leadership, with Alekos Alavanos becoming chair of the party and beginning (and reflecting at the same time) a process of pushing the party to the left. In the 2007 elections SYRIZA inched forward, approaching 4.5%!
This was the beginning of major changes as the impact of the global crisis that hit Greece in 2009 increased the vacuum on the Left. PASOK was elected to government in the autumn of 2009 with a huge majority. But very soon, in the beginning of 2010 it became the agent of Troika applying the 1st Memorandum. Thus PASOK didn’t last long – in June 2012 ND won the elections and began the implementation of the 2nd Memorandum.
The massive attacks launched by both the traditional parties of the establishment, in combination with the huge social struggles that swept Greece particularly in the course of the years 2010 to 2012, laid the basis for the rise of SYRIZA to fill the huge vacuum that had been created.
Social convulsions
The rise of SYRIZA went hand in hand with the tremendous mobilizations and movements that shook Greece in the above mentioned period. From the spring of 2010 the Greek Trade Union Confederations (GSEE of the private sector and the public utility companies and ADEDY of the “narrow” public sector) began to call general strikes. In total around 40 general strikes were called between 2010 and the rise of SYRIZA in 2015.
A lot has been written about the struggles of the Greek masses in this period so there is no particular reason to expand. It should suffice to say that the Greek working class fought with exceptional determination, self-sacrifice and heroism against the slaughter of their living standards and rights. Wages were cut by an average of 40% but for some of the better paid workers in the wider public sector, like the Athens bus drivers, the reduction of their wages was in the region of 60%! Hospital beds were cut by 50%! Mass layoffs took place in the public sector, making the state apparatus impossible to function and putting indescribable pressure on workers to respond to their duties – particularly workers in the health sector. Suicides of desperate poor became a daily phenomenon. Malnutrition became widespread with elementary students in the class complaining of being hungry and fainting at school. In the summer of 2012 the EU estimated that by EU standards 60% of the Greek people lived below the poverty line.
A number of general strikes brought out up to half a million people on the streets of Athens. On one occasion, in February 2012 the CNN estimated that 800.000 were out demonstrating. The state attacked the mass mobilisations with unprecedented ferocity.
The general strikes were married with many sectoral strikes and occupations some of them lasting for many months. In the autumn of 2011 there was hardly a governmental building in Athens that was not covered with huge banners saying “under occupation”. Coupled with strikes there were other extremely important social and local movements. Like the struggle of the people of Keratea against a land fill to dispose of garbage in their “neighborhood”, like the struggle against the Skouries gold mines in Khalkidhiki, Northern Greece, like the “No pay” (mainly road tolls, but not only) in the winter of 2010 and the “Occupy” (“Enraged”) movement of the Summer of 2011. Though by the middle of 2012 the signs of a serious tiredness of the movement were evident, after a series of defeats, still some struggles of historical significance were given like the ERT (National Broadcaster) workers in 2013 and the VIOME workers who were (and still are) able to keep their factory running.
Both the ERT and VIOME provided excellent examples of how workers could run production democratically without need of a boss or appointed directors.
Why did SYRIZA rise and not some other party of the left?
In this period SYRIZA grew by leaps and bounds. It was a time when only the left could provide a way out of the crisis. Of course the same conditions provided for the rise of the far right, in the form of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn – the danger was there and it was real. In reality only two forces grew by leaps and bounds in this period – SYRIZA on the one hand and Golden Dawn on the other. However, the purpose of this article is to discuss the experiences of the Greek Left, so the issue of neo-fascism will not be developed.
Before the onset of the crisis and in its initial period, the party of the Left with the bigger appeal was not SYRIZA but KKE. ANTARSYA was stagnant at around 1% in the polls, SYRIZA showed signs of a significant increase in support but it had big fluctuations. KKE was more stable, rising from its traditional 7 – 8 % to 10 or 12%.
One of the main differences (not the only one, of course) between the three left formations was that KKE and ANTARSYA were sectarian, rejecting in the name of “revolutionary authenticity” the ideas of a United Front of all the Left and all the forces of the mass movement, whereas SYRIZA was very positive to the idea of united action.
SYRIZA was involved in all the struggles taking place. KKE not, following an extremely sectarian path of refusing to collaborate, work, even be on the same demo as anybody else on the Left or in mass movements! ANTARSYA did try to be involved in the struggles but always from a distance and in an attempt to develop its own “broad” committees of “revolutionary forces”. It too was sectarian though not to the extent that KKE was and still is.
SYRIZA took part in the struggles, in any struggle taking place, although the party as such was never in a position to make proposals of how the struggle should develop. Thus struggles tended to develop spontaneously from below and SYRIZA simply joined without any real plan. It was essentially left to the initiative of the rank and file individual members to do and act in the way they thought. Despite this huge deficiency, for the mass of the population SYRIZA was a party that was taking part and providing support to all struggles taking place.
The breakthrough for SYRIZA took place in the elections of 2012 – which took place in May and were again repeated in June. In May SYRIZA received around 17% of the electorate and KKE around 8%. In June SYRIZA received 27% (KKE fell to around 4.5%) and narrowly lost the elections to ND which received 29%.
What is very interesting however is to note how the relative strength of the two major parties of the Left evolved in the period prior and in the course of the election campaign.
From December 2012 onwards polls gave SYRIZA and KKE similar percentages – around 12%. In the initial stages of the electoral campaign, ie up to three weeks before the elections of May 2015 the two parties stood at around 12% each.
Then Alexis Tsipras made an open appeal to the KKE for a joint government of the Left. The reasons for this “turn” by Tsipras are not clear. In the previous period, actually all the years since the onset of the crisis Tsipras refused to raise this slogan despite the pressure by sections of the Left, like “Xekinima” (who had a close collaboration with SYRIZA, with a certain section of our membership being members of SYRIZA at the same time) who were campaigning for the need of a government of the Left parties on a socialist programme. Whether Tsipras’ call was accidental, or a calculated maneuver is not clear. What is clear is the impact of this call. The Stalinist and utterly idiotic leadership of the KKE immediately responded by rejecting any kind of a joint government with SYRIZA, as a matter of principle! They even went so far as to state that even if SYRIZA was in a position to form a minority government they would not give it a vote of confidence in parliament. In other words they’d bring it down.
This “debate” within the Left immediately tilted the balance. SYRIZA won and KKE lost. If we look at the result of the May 2012 elections we see that the left vote in total (17% + 8%) is more or less the same as what the polls gave two weeks and a number of months before the elections (i.e. 12% + 12%). This shows the significance of the United Front approach for the broad masses, something which unfortunately is entirely beyond the conception of the KKE and the huge majority of the organisations of the Greek Left.
Not only the KKE but also ANTARSYA lost a historic opportunity at that stage. Before the elections of June 2012 Tsipras and the rest of the SYRIZA leadership approached ANTARSYA and offered them an electoral collaboration. Concretely, he offered them the election of 5 ANTARSYA MPs, who would have an entirely independent presence in the Greek parliament i.e. without any constraints or limitations imposed by SYRIZA. ANTARSYA rejected the proposal on the sectarian grounds that “revolutionaries do not collaborate with reformists”.
The sectarian stand of the KKE and ANTARSYA caused a crisis in their ranks. There can be no official figures but we estimate, based on information we have received from KKE rank and file members, that about 1/3 of the membership of KKE either left or were forced out at that time because they refused to agree with KKE’s refusal to respond positively to SYRIZA’s proposal. Rifts also began to emerge inside ANTARSYA from the autumn of 2012 onwards and they developed into a major split in 2015. A continuous debate over the issue of alliances is still taking place, providing actually a threat to the future unity of ANTARSYA.
Was SYRIZA’s capitulation inevitable?
The capitulation of SYRIZA was not an unavoidable objective development, it was not historically doomed. It was the result of the leadership’s lack of understanding of the real processes taking place. It was the “naive” if not criminal perception that they would “change Greece and the whole of Europe” (as Tsipras idiotically boasted) by staying in the EU and negotiating with Schäuble and Juncker. It was the lack of understanding of the class nature of the EU and the complete lack of confidence to the working class and its ability to change society.
When Tsipras came face to face with the reality of what it means to come into clash with the ruling class he fell into despair and capitulated completely.
The word that was spread around, internationally, by soft leftist intellectuals, at that time, that Tsipras was charismatic with exceptional strategic and tactical skills, was a myth – that turned out vey sour for the Greek masses.
In fact the whole approach was amateurish. Immediately after the January 2015 election of SYRIZA, capital began to flow out of the country in hundreds of millions of euros on a daily basis. Tsipras and his Economics’ Minister, Yianis Varoufakis, did not do the basic: impose capital controls to stop the outflow of capital. They had the example of Cyprus, a little while before, where the Troika itself applied capital controls, but still didn’t dare to do it.
Then they did something even more outrageous. They continued to pay back the debt despite the fact the Troika had stopped providing any new funding of the debt! They drained the economy completely, confiscating every single euro that was in the hands of public institutions like Universities, Hospitals, Local Governments etc. All of this in order to show to the EU that they were loyal, “good boys”. Once the economy was completely drained of all cash in order to pay for the debt the ECB stepped in to freeze liquidity to the banks and thus force them to close down. The economy was on its knees.
Tsipras had one of two choices: surrender and accept all the terms of the vindictive Lenders or change course and go for an offensive. The Greek masses send him the message in the historical referendum of July 5, 2015: fight back and we will be on your side. But Tsipras had already made his decision. He would give in to the demands of the Troika. In our opinion he had actually called the referendum with the aim of losing it or at best having a marginal victory which he could use as an alibi to compromise with the Troika. The result of the referendum had shocked him – he never expected such a landslide. One ought to see his face and listen to his speech at the tremendous rally of Friday July 3, when the center of Athens “sunk” under the uncountable huge mass that came out in support of “No” (OXI): he was not jubilant, he was taken by surprise, was completely confused, uttered a few routine words and went home. Exactly the same was the picture of Tsipras two days later after the result of the Referendum was announced: he looked defeated, not victorious. Yanis Varoufakis, in his recent book “Adults in the room”, actually confirmed the above conclusions that we drew at the time. Tsipras had decided to give in to the demands of the Troika before he called the referendum. In Varoufakis’ own words, he told Tsipras: people are out jubilant and celebrating in the streets and you are preparing your surrender…
There was an alternative to capitulation and this was developed to quite some detail by left organisations like “Xekinima” in Greece. In short: Impose capital controls; Refuse to continue the payment of the debt; Nationalise the banks; Move speedily in the direction of producing a national currency (drachma); Use the liquidity provided by the production of the national currency to finance major public works, to stop the continuous contraction of the economy and put it back on the path of growth; Cancel the debts of small businesses which were crashed by the crisis (about one in two) and provide loans under favourable conditions (cheap funding and long repayment periods) so that they can go back into activity and provide a quick spur to the economy; Nationalise the commanding heights of the economy; Plan the economy, so that it acquires sustained growth and so that it does not serve the profits of a handful of ship owners, industrialists and bankers, but is in the service of the 99%; Create special planning committees in every sector of industry and mining, and put particular attention to the agrarian-farming and tourist sectors which are key to the economy and have huge potential; Establish democracy in the functioning of the economy i.e. workers control and management in every field and level of the economy; Appeal to the workers of the rest of Europe for support and solidarity; call upon them to launch a common struggle against the EU of the bosses and the multinationals for a voluntary, democratic, socialist Union of the Peoples of Europe.
In short an anti-capitalist, anti-EU offensive, on the basis of a socialist programme and of class internationalist solidarity was the answer to the Troika’s blackmail.
This was entirely beyond the conception of Tsipras and co. It was also beyond the conception of Yianis Varoufakis. Though it is to his attribute that he did not bow to the masters of the EU, instead he showed courage and boldness, the fact remains that the economic policies applied between January and July 2015 were catastrophic and Yianis Varoufakis has direct responsibility for them. He had, and still has, from what it seems, illusions that he could convince the EU to change their policies and reform the EU.
Why did the rest of the Left fail to cover the vacuum?
The capitulation of the SYRIZA leadership is one aspect of the problems faced by the Greek working masses. The other aspect, in a certain sense more important, is the inability or incapability of the forces of the Left to take advantage of the capitulation of SYRIZA to provide an alternative. This is particularly the case for the two major (after SYRIZA’s transmutation) formations of the Greek Left, KKE and ANTARSYA, both of which speak against capitalism and in the name of the socialist revolution.
The Greek Left, in its vast majority, but tragically so for KKE and ANTARSYA which have the “critical mass”, i.e. sufficient forces to act as catalysts for major changes and upturns in the situation, have a number of “eternal sins” due to the massive influence of Stalinism in the history and development of the Greek Left. Such crucial flaws of KKE and ANTARSYA are the following:
No understanding of the “Transitional Programme”. The need to have a link, a bridge, between the struggles of today and the socialist transformation of tomorrow, so that the two tasks are intertwined into one dialectical whole, is not understood. As a result the KKE speaks about the need of Socialism but only presents it as some aim in the long and distant future which will somehow come about if and when the forces of the KKE acquire sufficient strength. As a result of this pervert conception, KKE refuses to support any kind of demand such as nationalization or even exit from the EU, based on an argumentation of the sort “this is meaningless under capitalism”. ANTARSYA is not as bad but still there is wide confusion in its ranks, some sections supporting a “transitional programme” but interpreting it as a minimum programme, i.e. separating it from the issue of workers’ power and socialist transformation. ANTARSYA is known for its general characteristic of making “loud cries for Revolution” but without concrete proposals of how to get there.
No conception of the United Front Tactic as explained and applied by the Bolsheviks under Lenin and by Trotsky in the 1930s. As a result on every important mobilization or strike there will be different rallies and demos – by the Trade Unions, by KKE, by ANTARSYA, by other sections of the far left, by the Anarchists, the Maoists and more… The mass of the working class think of this picture as “madness” and they are absolutely right. KKE and ANTARSYA never had a united front approach to the masses of SYRIZA – but used to “throw stones at them” to use a Greek expression. Although they did have the understanding that at some stage Tsipras and co. would sell out, they believed that by some magic the disappointed masses will simply turn to them after SYRIZA’s betrayal. The masses who turned to SYRIZA however would not join with forces that treated them with “contempt” in the period before – they went home.
Ultimatism. Linked to the above is the contempt with which mainly the KKE but to a large extent ANTARSYA treated the masses that followed SYRIZA. Particularly the KKE seems to be losing every relation to reality, by the day. In the present phase it acts as a direct copy of the “Communist” (so called – under Stalin) International of the 3rd period, between 1928 and 1933 – accusing all its opponents as agents of the ruling class and even collaborators of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. In a recent example, of last May, in Kefalonia (an island in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy) KKE brought out a leaflet against us, as “Xekinima” supporters won political dominance in the recent elections for the local Union of small shop owners and professionals. In this they claimed that the far left (meaning “Xekinima”) had collaborated with… all the following: the big capitalist corporations, PASOK, ND, SYRIZA and Golden Dawn (!) in order to… defeat the Union faction supported by KKE! One can only raise one’s hands in desperation.
Refusal to face reality as it is. After the July referendum of 2015 and the September elections which Tsipras hastily brought forward in order to win, before the masses could understand what he was really up to, “Xekinima” openly stated that these events represented a major defeat which was bound to have a very serious impact on the movements and the Left in general, despite the fact that for a minority of activists this would enable them to arrive to revolutionary conclusions. The huge majority of the rest of the Left refused to accept the reality of a defeat. They used to continue to call for mass movement to bring down the government, which of course would simply not take place. And then you would have two kinds of responses. One, particularly characteristic of the KKE would be that if the masses don’t come out to fight, it is because “they don’t understand”. In other words, it’s the masses’ fault. A second response would be an exaggeration on the dimensions of the movements – the numbers on any demonstration would be multiplied many fold in an attempt to artificially blow up the dimensions of the movements. Needless to say that these approaches lead the Left to a blind alley.
If these major flaws of the main forces/formations of the Greek Left explain, as they do, why the masses that followed SYRIZA refused to turn to KKE and ANTARSYA, after Tsipras’ capitulation, how about the left inside SYRIZA?
The main opposition inside SYRIZA, the “Left Platform” had control of about 1/3 of the party. It split off in August 2015 and created Popular Unity (PU) to stand in the snap elections of September. Initially the polls gave it around 10% of the vote. But this gradually fell and dropped to just below 3% in the September elections. Now PU is around 1-1.5% in most of the polls.
It is a fact that initially after its creation PU had very significant mass support and that this was falling rapidly by the day – this was something that could be sensed in society irrespective of the accuracy or not of the polls. The PU leadership made a number of crucial mistakes.
The first such mistake is that it concentrated all its campaign on the issue of switching to a national currency. Its “programme” was not only too limited but, also, it was incoherent. It argued in favour of leaving the Eurozone and refusing to pay the debt, but… remain in the EU! Leaving aside the fact that this programme was far from a radical, anticapitalist, socialist, coherent and convincing programme, it actually represented an impossible combination of demands.
The second major factor was arrogance by the leadership and a top down bureaucratic approach. It is a fact that thousands of left activists, in their majority non-aligned, approached PU in the first days of its creation hoping that this could provide a way out. They were disappointed and turned away – they had seen this before and they hadn’t liked it at all: an established leadership (locally and nationally) that accepted no questioning, a pre-set programme that was not to be discussed, a campaign to elect MPs that were appointed from the top and not elected by the rank and file!
In the days before the general election the PU leadership realized that things were not going well. They made a last minute democratic turn, but it was too late.
Apart from PU there were also a number of other splits from SYRIZA, which refused to join PU They represent small forces of some tens of activists and a few hundreds of supporters each. Most of them are still in search of political and ideological identity, trying to survive and play a role in future events.
What are the prospects for the movement and the tasks of the revolutionary left?
Towards the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the 2000’s it was possible to see where the initiative for the creation of a new left formation in Greece (which came to be SYRIZA) was going to come from. Today it is not.
The phase of defeat that the Greek working class is passing through is a very serious one but it is not comparable to the ‘90’s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, not to mention the defeat of the civil war 1945 to 1949, the military junta of 1967 to 1974 and so on.
The Greek working class with its militant and self-sacrificing traditions will be back on the scene, let there be no doubt about that. But of course, the timing, the scale and the precise characteristics of this come back cannot be predicted in advance. This process will be parallel to the attempt to build new formations which will be able to represent politically the mass movement and provide leadership to its struggles.
Working class activists are faced with a double task today. On the one hand, to draw the central political conclusion that stems from SYRIZA’s capitulation: that there is no solution on the basis of the capitalist system, that a revolutionary socialist programme is the only way out of the crisis.
On the other hand, it is necessary to bring together, into a wide river of common action, struggle and resistance, all the various strands of the Greek movements with the additional aim of galvanizing these into a new broad formation with “united front” characteristics.
A broad “united front” is absolutely necessary to make struggles more effective and a “revolutionary core”, is also absolutely necessary to fight for the socialist programme inside the working class, the social movements and society.
Objectively there is a lot of ground for these ideas – the problem is subjective and it is related to the deficiencies of the main forces of the Left. Therefore one can only patiently fight for these ideas aiming at a change in the balance of forces inside the Left and also take initiatives were possible to show the way forward.
“Xekinima” is raising these ideas in discussions with some of the groups that have left SYRIZA and who are open to discussion. It is campaigning in the mass movement and society for these proposals.
“Xekinima” has a tradition of working with different forces of the Left. In the present conjuncture we collaborate both with ANTARSYA and with Popular Unity, on various issues, at the same time as calling on both these formations to work together, stand on common lists in Trade Union elections, take common initiatives for united struggles, have joint rallies and demos instead of the present practice, etc.
This call is always made to the direction of KKE too, of course, though there are no illusions about the response. But it is important for the best elements of the KKE rank and file to know that it’s the KKE’s leadership responsibility for the fact that no united action is taking place at the detriment of the interests of the working class and the mass movement.
In relation to Popular Unity and ANTARSYA, PU is positive and open to united action and this is a positive factor; the main obstacle is the dominant currents of opinion inside ANTARSYA. However the refusal of ANTARSYA to work with other sections of the left unless there is full agreement on its programme (this is the reality of the situation, despite some utterings about the opposite, paying lip service to the need for collaborations – what always counts in the end is not words but practice) is causing continuous divisions in its ranks, not to say crisis, as has been mentioned previously.
As regards the general propositions of “Xekinima”, stressing the need for a United Front and the prospect of a future broad working class alternative, as well as the need for a “revolutionary pole” by forces which are consistent with an anticapitalist-socialist-revolutionary perspective there are forces inside PU, inside ANTARSYA but also amongst the recent splits that emerged from SYRIZA that are open to discussion. These are still at an early stage but we hope that through common experiences and the gradual revival of the movement we can arrived at similar conclusions.
At the same time “Xekinima” is taking its own initiatives that can show the way forward. Results are easier on a local basis, in medium size cities, as Xekinima is not a mass force. There are positive examples in a number of areas, with the creation of local “Left Alliances” or all-city trade union factions (like “Workers’ Autonomy” in the city of Volos). There are attempts to bring together fighting unions on a local level to create some kind of permanent coordination, around which to invite political formations which are in favour of united action. We also have examples of the setting up of local “social centers” which combine, political, social, cultural activities and can involve different sections of the Left but particularly non-aligned (i.e. not belonging to any party) left activists or social movements. In Athens “Xekinima” is developing common campaigns on working class issues even with the anarcho-syndicalist group “Rosinante” – thus sending out the message that we can join forces to fight against the bosses without having to agree on every single political and ideological point, as KKE and ANTARSYA are tragically demanding.
There is retreat in the mass movement and there is demoralization. There are no, or very few major, “central” struggles, but there quite a few small and important ones. At the same time there is thirst for ideas and a search amongst significant numbers of activists. The present phase of lull will come to an end, sooner or later, and a new upsurge will be on the cards. The forces of revolutionary socialism are building on this perspective.
