Art by Matt Kenyon

By Daphne Lawless (Fightback Aotearoa/ New Zealand), August 21 2015

Greece’s sovereign debt crisis – in effect, the country’s bankruptcy at the hands of the European Central Bank and the German-led power bloc in the European Union – turned that country’s politics upside down. The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) rocketed from 5% of the vote in 2012 to forming a government in the elections of January this year. As recently as June, a whopping 61% of voters in a referendum rejected the demands of the “troika” (EU and International Monetary Fund lenders) for massive cuts in spending and tax rises to pay the Greek debt. Many foreign leftists saw this as reason for hope – that it was possible for an angry popular movement to take on the forces of neoliberalism, and win.

And yet, all that optimism seems to have evaporated. SYRIZA’s Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras resigned on August 20^th and called for new elections, after signing an agreement for a bailot with the troika in some ways worse than what the referendum rejected. His popular former Finance Minister, Yannis Varoufakis, is one of many SYRIZA MPs who broke ranks with the Government in the Greek Parliament, depriving it of a majority.

The amazing thing is – as Dick Nichols reports in Green Left Weekly – that this barely put a dent in the SYRIZA-led government’s popularity, meaning it may be re-elected:

The July 24 Bridging Europe poll put support for SYRIZA at 41.2%, up from the 36.3% it won in January 25. The July 24 Metron Analysis poll reported the same result, while a July 18 Palmos poll put support for the radical coalition at 42.5%.

All three polls had support for the conservative opposition New Democracy (ND) falling by between 4.7% and 6.3% to the low 20s.ⁱ

How to explain this contradiction? It helps to look back at what kind of party SYRIZA actually is, and how and why it won the January election.

Eurocommunism

SYRIZA emerged from a split in the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in the 1960s. The “KKE-Interior”, as its name suggests, was led by those Communist leaders who stayed in Greece during the fascist military regime of 1967-1974, rather than fleeing to exile. They saw themselves as part of what was known as the “Eurocommunist” movement. Led by the biggest Western communist parties in France, Spain and Italy, the Eurocommunists refused to pledge allegiance to the Soviet or Chinese power blocs, or to promote the idea of revolution or “dictatorship of the proletariat” (workers’ power). Instead, they promoted the idea of working within the structures of Western-style democracy to achieve communist goals of equality and justice. Crucially, the Eurocommunists were in favour of the idea of European unity, although critical of the structures which became the EU.

For decades, the KKE-Interior remained about the same size as the “traditionally” Communist KKE, on about 5% of the vote. This didn’t change after the KKE-Interior founded Synapsimos (the Coalition of the Left, Movements and Ecology) in 1993; or after Synapsimos became the largest part of a newer coalition, SYRIZA, in 2004. SYRIZA, as a broad formation of the left, was pulled in two directions; some sections favoured co-operating with PASOK, the traditional Greek “Labour Party”, while others were more interested in work with the Greek social movements which came out of anti-war, anti-spending cuts and anti-capitalist demonstrations. All the while, the KKE were bitterly hostile to the “splitters”.

While the traditional trade union and workers’ movement in Greece maintained its allegiance to the traditional Left parties – PASOK and KKE – SYRIZA grew by attracting newer layers. British journalist Paul Mason explains:

The party … captured the allegiance of many young people, whose lives revolve around precarious and low-skill work, and reaching the magical subsitence figure of €400 a month.

[Leader Alexis] Tsipras crafted Syriza from a loose alliance into a party that is the quintessential expression of the values of this broad-left section of the Greek electorate. All it took was for their natural party, Pasok, to destroy itself. ⁱⁱ

Crisis and cuts

And when the sovereign debt crisis hit in 2010, PASOK did indeed destroy itself. A PASOK-led government joined forces with the conservative New Democracy party in viciously cutting government spending and workers’ wages to pay for this crisis caused by government and banker greed.

Stuart Monckton in Green Left Weekly describes the process:

Greece’s national debt was largely run-up by corrupt, unrepresentative governments in a context where the rich pay little-to-no taxes. For instance, Greece’s shipping oligarchs, who control about 16% of the global shipping industry, infamously pay no tax at all.

Greece’s debt became an issue in 2009 in the context of the global financial crisis caused by the greed of large banks and financial institutions, leading to the collapse of major US banks and causing global panic.

To shore up Greece’s ability to pay its creditors, the Troika offered Greece’s government hundreds of billions in bail-out programs — but at the cost of extreme austerity measures to make Greece’s poor and working people bear the brunt of cost-saving measures.

Unsurprisingly, extreme spending cuts drove Greece’s economy further into recession, while creating mass suffering on a scale not seen in a First World nation since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate now exceeds 30% (50% for youth) and 20% of those with jobs live under the poverty line. … child malnutrition rates reached levels not seen since World War II. ⁱⁱⁱ

It is worth emphasising, though, that this is not a question of Greece “going broke” and being foreclosed on by private lenders. Greece’s private creditors – the big international bankers – had most of their debt bought out by the EU and the International Monetary Fund. The only thing which stops the EU states writing those debts off, and saving Greece a lot of pain, is that it would set a bad example for the other heavily indebted periphery countries – particularly ones like Spain or Ireland, where radical left parties are threatening in upcoming elections. The defeat and humiliation of Greece is bad for Greece, and bad for economic stability in the Eurozone generally – but it is essential for the political stability of the neoliberal EU project.

PASOK was punished for its treachery by being reduced from one of the two major parties to a mere 6% of the vote. Meanwhile, the KKE – convinced that they and they alone could successfully lead the movement – offered no alternative to the new forces mobilised by the crisis. In contrast, SYRIZA’s appeal to new, unorganised layers had great appeal at a time when the Greek working-class was becoming increasingly disorganised itself. Bue Rübner Hansen in Jacobin explains:

Given the high rate of unemployment, the livelihood of many Greeks is extremely contingent and the population is one of the most “disorganized” in Europe. The daily order of wage labor and familiar habits have been destabilized by the crisis. This has both lead to a rise in illegal and irregular activities and economies, and to new forms of self-organization.… Well-known examples are the campaigns of auto-reduction, where people refused to pay the electricity bills through which the government levied a direct tax imposed by the troika; the occupation and workers’ self-management of the Vio.me factory; and the many solidarity health clinics. ^iv

Paul Mason describes SYRIZA activists organising food banks called “Solidarity Clubs” in villages hardest hit by the cuts. He quotes one SYRIZA member: “We go out and help people. When they tell us something, we listen. When they ask for help, we are here. You never see Pasok or New Democracy.”

SYRIZA’s programme

The programme adopted by SYRIZA in the Greek city of Thessaloniki in 2013 called for such modest reforms as increase the tax-free threshold to 12,000 euros, a large real estate property tax, reinstating the Christmas bonus for pensioners receiving less that 700 euros a month, raising the minimum wage and the unemployment benefit. Nathan Bolton commented on the British website rs21.org.uk:

Even before the election it was noted by some commentators that despite the epithet “far-left” so often attributed to Syriza, these policies were not radical, let alone revolutionary… However as has been widely reported, Syriza repeated its intention to remain in the monetary union and avoid political unilateral decisions. It saw its salvation occurring within the EU, so not only saving itself but the political ideal of European integration with it. ^v

This commitment to “Europeanism” should not have surprised anyone who understood the largest bloc in SYRIZA and its origins in the Eurocommunist movement, rather than a commitment to revolutionary rupture. However, a more radical programme was offered at the time from the Left Platform, which held 30% of the seats on SYRIZA’s central committee. Left Platform leader Antonis Davanellos argued:

First, the political project of SYRIZA must be supported with a grassroots mobilization of the working class and the popular masses. Second, the radical character of the SYRIZA program should be assured by emphasizing cancellation of most of the debt, nationalization of the banks and reversing the privatization of state enterprises. Finally, the only political alliances for SYRIZA must be found on the left. ^vi

This last point became important following the January 2015 election when, finding itself just short of an overall majority in Parliament, SYRIZA formed a coalition with the Independent Greeks, a right-wing but anti-austerity party. This coalition made it clear that Tspiras’ new government saw itself as governing on behalf of “the nation” as a whole, rather than for the working classes or from the Left. Again, this was foreshadowed by the practice of the Western Eurocommunist parties of the past, including the French Communists participating in a coalition government from 1981-4.

Six months in government

The outcome of six months of SYRIZA-led government, however, has been disappointing to say the least. The European Central Bank more or less held the Greek government hostage by refusing to provide “liquidity” – that is, cash for everyday spending purposes. This led to tight control on bank withdrawals, to the point where public transport in Athens became free because no-one had any small change. More seriously, vital supplies of medicines which could only be paid for in euros were running out.

As explained above, the deal struck between the Tspiras government and the Troika to accomplish this has been labelled a “capitulation” by most on the Left, including SYRIZA’s own Left Platform. Paul Mason mentioned in February that “many people who voted for SYRIZA are privately up in arms over the scale of the retreat”, but also argued that most of them “blame Germany first, Europe second and their own government a long, long third,” arguing that Tspiras and Varoufakis had done everything that they could. Hence SYRIZA’s continued good showing in opinion polls.

Did the Tspiras government do everything that it could? Yes – within the bounds of remaining within the Euro and remaining within the European Union, which is essential to the political project of the SYRIZA majority. While Varoufakis now claims to have had a “Plan B” up his sleeve to start printing Greece’s own money as a last resort ^vii, that was never something that Tspiras was going to allow – or that, according to repeated opinion polls, most Greeks wanted.

But Grexit from the Euro is a clear demand of SYRIZA’s Left Platform, which has begun the process of splitting from the government. Dick Nichols reports:

Left Platform leader Panagiotis Lafazanis publicly called on August 13 for the creation of a new movement to satisfy “the people’s desire for democracy and social justice”.

In a statement called “No to the new bailout — A call for struggle and popular mobilisation throughout the country”, Lafazanis and 13 other [SYRIZA MP] signatories called for the “political and social formation of a broad, Panhellenic movement” and “the creation of struggle committees against the new bail-out, austerity and the county’s tutelage.” ^viii

Left Platform leader Costas Lapavistas told Der Tagesspiegel in Germany that “the only real opposition in Greece against this ludicrous bail-out is coming from within Syriza” ^ix. However, according to another Left Platform member, Stathis Kouvelakis, several leaders of radical left groups who are not part of SYRIZA have also signed up to the appeal by Lafazanis and the Left Platform MPs. SYRIZA, he says, is “disintegrating with record speed” ^x.

Traditionally, a Greek government cannot survive if it gets less than 120 votes out of 300 on any bill, and only 118 SYRIZA MPs supported the most recent Parliamentary vote on the bailout ^xi. Thus, the Left Platform’s rebellion has forced Tspiras to call new elections – calling their bluff on whether they will actually stand against the SYRIZA majority. If Tspiras once again leads the largest party after the election, he may form a new government with centre-right parties to exclude the left-wing rebels.

Governments and movements

The dead-end faced by SYRIZA in government is something that all radical leftists have to understand. Governments are only powerful in that they can command the State machinery to do various jobs – but there are thousands of other forces in society, internal or external, who can put pressure on that machinery to do otherwise. SYRIZA negotiators seem to have believed that their strong democratic mandate would mean something compared to the determination of Germany, the EU institutions, the IMF and many of their allies among Greek capitalism that it would be Greek workers and beneficiaries who would pay for the crisis. They were wrong.

When it comes to this kind of “brute force” politics, direct action by social forces – whether mass demonstrations in the street, workers striking or seizing control of the workplaces, even mutinies in the armies and police – play a much more vital role than all the government policy statements and democratic rhetoric. However, the massive Greek upsurges of 2012 had died down by the time SYRIZA came to be elected. In fact, it could be argued that it was the very defeat of the mass movement which was channelled into the ballot box as the “next best thing”.

We might draw parallels with Venezuela, where a left-wing government has co-existed for 17 years with a deeply hostile capitalist classs. Although Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, kept winning election after election, a government elected through capitalist democracy and pledged to follow its “rules” cannot create a social revolution. At best, it can “make space” for worker activism and popular uprisings to create one. But in the final analysis, economic power or even brute force decides, not elections. This is why workers and the oppressed need to build their own institutions of counter-power, as well as challenging in the formal sphere of elections.

Oxi No Nein: German solidarity with Greek ‘Oxi’ vote against austerity.

Guest article by JoJo, a Fightback correspondent based in Germany.

In the last few months the development of the left in Greece has been watched with interest by leftists all over the world. The austerity policies against which the Syriza government and social movements tried to fight were imposed on Greece by the other countries of the Eurozone, led by Germany, the imperialist heart of Europe. The economy in Germany is relatively healthy; Germany has emerged as a winner of the crisis, while its government’s policies are worsening the crisis in southern Europe. The majority of the population follows a nationalist consensus and supports their government. In this article, I will take a look at the left movement in Germany fighting under these circumstances.

The new social movements that arose from the student rebellion of 1968 led to many new leftist organisations and activists. Some of them were the so-called “K-groups”, orthodox Communist groups who were often sectarian. In the 1980s activists who criticised these hierarchical structures formed the autonomous movement, which is made up of small local groups and projects such as squats and social centres, rather than big organisations. In the early 1990s the rise of nationalism and neo-nazism which accompanied the so-called ‘reunification’ of East Germany by the West made anti-fascism the main issue for the autonomous left.

Recently, formerly autonomous groups have begun to confederate into nationwide (or bigger, including groups from Austria) networks or organisations, which could be called post-autonomous. One problem with the autonomous groups was that their informal structures were often opaque, incapable of learning and inadequately organised, while informal hierarchies continued to exist. Meanwhile, the social question became more important with the neoliberal reforms of the welfare system carried out by the social-democratic/Green coalition government in the beginning of the 2000s, and now with the economic crisis and austerity. This showed to focus only on anti-fascism is not enough. Major antifascist groups broke up, with sections joining post-autonomous organisations like the Interventionist Left.

The Interventionist Left is probably the biggest of these post-autonomous organisations. It is very active in social movements and mainly focuses on mass mobilisations for actions of civil disobedience. For these mass actions, the IL tries to build broad movements that go beyond the radical left, including groups from civil society such as church groups. They see themselves as the organising and radicalising part of the left.

The IL was formed as a network in 2004, but last year it started a process to form an organisation. This step probably means they will no longer only work as a campaigning network, but also do more theoretical work and act more strategically. They have published a piece that describes the basis for their politics. Nevertheless, they do not dogmatically follow one theoretical school.

The IL describes itself as antagonist towards the state, however in comparison with other organisations of the radical left it has often been seen as the one that still works closest together with the party DIE LINKE, a left-wing reformist party with some anti-capitalist factions in it.

Another important network that could be described as post-autonomous is the anti-authoritarian communist alliance “…ums Ganze!” (UG – “Everything is at stake!”). It was founded 2006 to make a radical critique of capitalism and oppression visible on an supraregional level. In the beginning, they focused a lot on theory and on criticising mass mobilisations of the left that did not push forward a radical critique, such as the 2007 mobilisations against the G8. However, in recent years they have done more and more work within movements (such as Blockupy), trying to make their critique visible within those. UG has a strong focus on anti-nationalism and is more critical of political parties than the IL. On a European level, they are organised in the platform “Beyond Europe” together with anarchist and anti-authoritarian communist groups from other countries, such as Alpha Kappa (Anti-authoritarian Movement) from Greece.

The “New Anticapitalist Organisation” (NaO) is another organisation of the radical left that is currently being formed. Many groups that are confederating into the NaO do not come from autonomous traditions, but from Trotskyism. However, recently “Antifascist Revolutionary Action Berlin” (ARAB) joined the NaO, so that it is now a merger of post-Trotskyist and post-autonomous organisations. The ARAB played a big role in the left scene in Berlin, for example in organising the Mayday demonstrations. The NaO is still quite new and therefore not that visible and active yet, even though they had a successful campaign to raise funds for the YPG and YPJ, Kurdish self-defence forces fighting Da’esh aka ISIS in Rojava (Western Kurdistan/Northern Syria).

The IL and UG are both active in the Blockupy alliance that organises annual Days of Action in solidarity with the population of Greece and other countries that bear the brunt of austerity policies. So far the Days of Action have mainly taken place in Frankfurt, where the European Central Bank, a part of the Troika that imposes austerity, has its headquarters. Blockupy is a broad alliance with all parts of the left represented. It connects the struggle against austerity in tandem with other struggles, such as against gentrification or supporting feminist or refugee struggles. The Days of Action usually involve blockades of the ECB, decentralised blockade actions against other targets and demonstrations. A climax of the mobilisation was the Day of Action on March 18 this year against the opening of the ECB’s new building. The protests were accompanied by riots, triggering a debate about militancy as some spokespeople of the alliance criticised the militant actions.

It was feared that this debate might destroy the Blockupy alliance. This has been proven wrong, as shown by the many actions organised by Blockupy since March 18. They took part in the demonstration “Remake.Europe” on 20 June in Berlin, and organised demonstrations to show solidarity during the referendum in Greece. Delegates from Blockupy also travelled to Athens during the referendum and the events that followed, and wrote about their experiences and political thoughts on a blog. In October, Blockupy will join the protests against the EU summit in Brussels and for next spring they plan Days of Action in Berlin.

The state of the left in Greece and the role of Syriza, as well as the question of staying in the Eurozone or not, are also debated in the German left. However, these debates might not be that important in Germany, because we should focus on fighting our government. The capitulation of Syriza is also a failure of the left in Germany, which didn’t succeed in questioning the status quo enough and thus allowed the German government the confidence to force Syriza into capitulation. Someone who had asked activists in Greece how Germans could support them told me that they replied: “Do something against Merkel!”.

So this will be the challenge for the left in the next couple of years. For this, it is great that Blockupy keeps working and that they move the focus of their actions to Berlin. It is also useful that we have big radical leftist organisations and networks that can fight for an anti-capitalist perspective. These organisations do not replace all autonomous structures, in my opinion. It is still important to have local autonomous groups that can bring new dynamics into the left or that can focus on local struggles such as fighting neo-Nazis in their neighbourhood. We need a diverse movement in order to be strong. When autonomous and post-autonomous groups and other factions of the left join forces and unite different struggles from anti-gentrification to train driver’s strikes and from feminism to refugee’s protests, we might have a chance of changing the power structures of Europe one day. It is necessary.

Auckland

Wellington

Wellington

See also

• Why the TPPA has stalled, and how it can be stopped

Article by Ben Peterson, reprinted from his personal blog leftwin.

Last weekend, negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) broke down. Representatives from 12 Pacific nations had met in Hawaii for negotiations that aimed to create the biggest trade agreement ever. For anti-TPPA activists, this delay is a welcome break. But the trade deal is far from finished. The delay is an important opportunity to up the ante in local resistance to the deal. Looking at how and why the talks have stalled can help to understand its political implications locally, and points towards the resistance that will be necessary to defeat it for good.

Why have the talks stalled
In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the grassroots opposition to the TPPA focuses on issues that will affect the majority of working people:

1. The TPPA will lead to increased costs to important necessities such as medicines
2. The TPPA strengthens the power of international corporations. Democratic processes to regulate against corporations via environmental, health or labour laws are undermined.

These factors will hurt working people in Aotearoa/NZ – but that is not why the NZ government has yet to sign off on the TPPA. For John Key’s government the problem is access to dairy markets. Major countries such as Canada and the US are so far seeking to keep protections for their dairy industries. In New Zealand, dairy is a major industry, and milk a major export. Access to valuable dairy markets in North America is the key gain that the NZ government wants out of the deal, and they are now bargaining hard to get it.

Why this matters
Understanding this helps activists in three ways.

Firstly, this shows who government is working for, and what it hopes to achieve. Some activists have struggled to understand why the NZ government would have anything to do with a deal that will leave the majority of Kiwis worse off. Some then resort to conspiracy theories. John Key is not the puppet of a shadowy new world order based in the US – he represents the very visible rich and powerful at home. This rich and powerful class is happy to sell out ordinary kiwis, if it means they can make more money overseas.

Secondly, this shows that those standing against the TPPA have friends and allies. For the wealthy farmers in NZ, the prize in the TPPA would be the ability to undercut the dairy industry in North America, which could destroy many farming communities there. The NZ dairy mafia in Fonterra have no right to get rich at the expense of farming communities abroad (in the same way they don’t have the right to do it at the expense of the environment at home). These farming communities across the waves in the Americas can be friends and allies in fighting this trade deal – but only if TPPA opponents are focused on the TPPA as a whole and not caught behind the ‘national interests’.

Opponents of the TPPA will only be able to work together with these allies if we keep our focus on the trade deals for the rich. In each of the 12 nations involved in the TPPA negotiations there will be winners. It might be mining magnates from Australia, or manufacturers in South Korea. But in each country, working people will lose.

Finally, it shows how the TPPA can be beaten. The problem is not that the powerful don’t understand. The TPPA will not be stopped by good arguments alone. Powerful people in New Zealand understand the TPPA, and they want it to happen because it can make them richer. The only thing that can stop this money power – is people power. The same ordinary working people who will lose out are the ones who keep the system running. Mobilising popular power can create a political and economic force that can overcome this trade deal, in the same way other treaties have been overcome in the past (for example ANZUS re nuclear ships). This won’t take just rally or petition, and cannot be just through the election of establishment parties, but has to be sustained, vocal and militant. Rather than negotiating a better deal for NZ capitalists, we must reject the TPPA wholesale.

The TPPA NZ Week of Action will be held from the 8th-15th of August. For information on local actions see itsourfuture.org.nz

While there are exciting developments on the Left internationally, here in NZ left activists often feel isolated and the Left seems fragmented. Speakers from a range of Left organisations look at the state of the Left in Aotearoa/NZ, and examine issues such as the relationship between Pakeha leftists and tangata whenua, sexism in the Left and the possibilities for unity.

Speakers: Sue Bradford (Left Wing Think Tank Project) Daphne Lawless (Fightback); Jonathan King (Auckland Action Against Poverty). Entry free but koha appreciated.

7-9pm, Friday August 21st
Grey Lynn Community Centre, Auckland
[Facebook event]