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The Left in Syriza: the key factor in further development

Martin Suchanek, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, Infomail 812

The Left in Syriza: the key factor in further development

Greece stands in the centre of the further development of Europe. Although the leadership of Syriza has repeatedly made clear that it is willing to come to an agreement with the EU and German imperialism, and to sacrifice its own electoral promises to achieve that, the outcome of the struggle is by no means decided. The policy of Schaeuble, the German finance minister, is not only forcing the government of Syriza into the straitjacket of the Troika’s diktats, but also undermining its social basis and, therefore, its ability to implement such a compromise.

Certainly, the government of Tsipras has not yet used up all its credit with the masses. It is still popular and based on the majority of the working class, despite the coalition with the right wing ANEL, despite the election of a Conservative as the state president and despite the capitulation to the dictates from Berlin and Brussels.

The basis for the popularity of Tsipras is clear to see. The nationalist and chauvinist attacks of the bourgeois media and the arrogance of the European imperialist powers are seen by the great mass of people as part of a political and economic attack. When “their” political representatives are treated this way then, basically, all Greeks feel that they are treated the same way. Equally, cynical remarks about the finance minister, Varoufakis, are correctly understood as attacks on the whole population. for voted for the agreement.

That, certainly does not alter the fact that the Syriza leadership has become a servant of the Troika in Greece but it does explain why the Greek working class has not simply broken with this government. The masses do not give up their hopes easily or quickly. Many regard the government as the “last chance” against united European finance capital, after the other left parties were unable to present a credible alternative force for years.

In this situation, the left in the party will play a key role in the further development of the class struggle.

Coalition and presidency

After the electoral victory on January 25, Tsipras quickly formed a coalition with the right wing, racist and anti-Semitic party ANEL. Ultimately, this serves the purpose of justifying political and economic concessions to Greek capital, giving the ruling class a quasi right of veto. It is true that this coalition was criticised by some left deputies, including those of the “Internationalist Worker Left” (DEA) however, when it came to the vote in Parliament, all of Syriza’s deputies, including those of the “Left Platform” and those of DEA, supported the coalition.

Left currents, like the “Communist Platform” sister organisation of “Die Funke” in Germany and Austria and also the sister organisation of the SAV, stood for a coalition government with the Communist KKE or a minority government, even if their steadfastness on this was not put to the test in Parliament.

A majority of the Lefts in Syriza even voted for the election of the New Democracy politician Pavlopoulos as the state president, against the public protest of left deputies such as Gianna Gaitani.

All in all, the Parliamentary left in Syriza did little or nothing to counter the steps taken by the party leadership which, as a whole, signalled its willingness to compromise to Greek capital. On the contrary, a significant section of the Left in Syriza, such as the Parliamentary Deputy and economist Costas Lapavitsas, still maintain that the coalition with ANEL was an unavoidable, if not even a clever, opening gambit.

The agreement with the Troika

Nonetheless, the agreement with the Troika and the capitulation of the Greek government did produce a deep rift. Originally, the government had planned to bring the agreement before Parliament for its blessing, they quickly dropped all talk of that.

In fact, the Syriza leadership only convened meetings of the parliamentary fraction and the Central Committee of the party after the agreement had been concluded.

At the end of February, there was a stormy session of the 149 strong parliamentary fraction. The meeting lasted some 12 hours and on an “indicative” vote there were 10 votes against and 13 abstentions but the majority voted for the agreement. Among the critics were members of the Cabinet such Lafazanis, a leading personality in the “Left Platform”.

On the last weekend in March there was a meeting of the Central Committee of Syriza. At this, the leadership around Tsipras was only just able to carry its position. Representatives of the “Left Platform” brought their own resolution. That read in part, “we express our rejection of the agreement and of the list of reforms which has been agreed with the Euro group. Both of these represent unacceptable compromises for our country and they move away from the key points of the programmatic obligations of Syriza or are even directly counterposed to them.

“Despite the agreement with the Euro group, Syriza should in the immediate future seize the initiative for the continuous and prioritised implementation of its obligations under the government programme.

“In order to pursue this path we must base ourselves on the struggles of the workers and the masses and contribute to the revival and continual expansion of the support of the masses in order to be able to resist any future blackmail and to offer the perspective of an alternative plan for the complete implementation of our radical goals.”

Apart from that, the draft resolution demanded that, in future, decisions of Syriza must first be discussed within the party and be accepted by party bodies.

Although this proposal was defeated, it gained 68 votes on the Central Committee (41 percent) with 92 votes against (55 percent) and six abstentions (4 percent). As well as the representatives of the “Left Platform”, the supporters of the Maoists (previously organised in the Communist Organisation of Greece (KOE) who are close to the Marxist Leninist party in Germany, and supporters of the former leader of the political economic department of Syriza, John Milios, voted for the resolution. For a long time, these two currents both supported the leadership of Tsipras against the Left.

A new General Secretary of the party was also elected at the meeting of the Central Committee; Tassos Koronakisder, who gained 102 of 199 votes. The candidate of the Left Platform, Kalyvis, gained 64 votes. In the election to the 11 person “Political Secretariat”, the majority fraction around Tsipras gained six seats, the Left Platform 4 and the Maoists 1.

All this shows that in Syriza the forces of the opposition are growing stronger and the permanent concessions to imperialism are leading to a strengthening of the left-wing.

The politics of the left wing and the Euro question

Clearly, the votes on forming a coalition with ANEL and for the presidency showed that the Left is very far from a consistent and clear opposition in its programme and class position.

It is itself composed of different currents. The majority of these can be characterised as left reformist. They reject any concessions to the Euro group and rightly criticise Tsipras and Varoufakis for their policy of staying within the Eurozone at any price, which makes it easy for Schaeuble and co to blackmail them.

For this reason, there is increasing support within the “Left Platform” for a “Plan B” such as that proposed by the parliamentary deputy and economist, Costas Lapavitsas.

In his opinion, Greece should leave the euro (but not necessarily the EU) preferably in the context of a “controlled” exit negotiated with the other euro countries. This would allow the currency to be devalued, Lapavitsas thinks by about 20 percent, and the Greek economy could be put back on its feet through a number of important measures such as capital export controls and the nationalisation of the banks.

While he correctly criticises the utopianism of the Syriza leadership, which expects to negotiate a “social” solution for the masses in Greece within a framework set by the EU and German imperialism, he himself speculates that the EU, including Germany, would agree to a “controlled” exit and thereby forego part of the debt.

He comes to such a contorted position because, like the majority of the Left Platform, his starting point is that the socialist revolution and the formation of a workers’ government, that is a fundamental challenge to capitalist property relations, is not possible in Greece today, the time is not yet ripe for that. Therefore he argues in favour of Keynesianism as a short-term solution.

In this, he expresses a fundamental dilemma for the left reformists in Syriza. They believe that the time has not yet come to pose the perspective of workers’ power and socialist transformation. All that remains for them is an “independent”, state-regulated alternative developmental strategy for Greece which, however, would remain capitalist. That is why the question of the euro always comes up in the debates within the Greek Left because it symbolises the question of an independent national development.

We think that this strategy is wrong. Our starting point is the recognition that an independent, autonomous development of the Greek economy, particularly on a capitalist basis, is a utopia. Overcoming the crisis and the devastating destruction of the Greek economy ultimately demands a socialist transformation within the perspective of a United Socialist States of Europe.

That could undoubtedly mean that the ruling classes of Europe would force Greece out of the euro (and a Greek government would then be obliged to introduce its own currency). In any event, it would be accompanied by extreme economic difficulties; inflation and the devaluation of workers’ incomes and the savings.

Mobilisation and government

That, however, is only one of the political weaknesses of the left wing of Syriza, or at least of its leading current. The more left sections in Syriza, DEA, the Red Network, Communist Platform, claim to present their politics in the context of a “transitional programme”. It would go beyond the limits of this article to deal with all of the different conceptions of this idea. We will deal with that elsewhere, along with our analysis of the Left outside of Syriza (KKE, Antarsiya, the anarchists). We can, however, say that the left wing of Syriza, including DEA and Red Network, has itself not raised the necessity of a break from the coalition with the ANEL and the policy of class collaboration in Greece.

If we consider the Keynesian orientation and these weaknesses of the majority of the left-wing in the context of their correct emphasis on the necessity of mobilising the working class and the popular movement again, then this poses a question: given that the masses could be mobilised for the implementation of the left reformist programme against the attacks of the imperialists and sabotage by Greek capital, would this not immediately raise the need for organisations to control the implementation of reforms such as the minimum wage, controls on capital, taxation of the rich, even if these are not directly socialist measures? That would mean the development of a situation of dual power that would challenge the power of the capitalists.

Such a government would immediately have to defend itself not only against the sabotage of capital but also against the intervention by armed reaction; the police, special forces, the Army General Staff, the officer corps, the fascists. That in turn would pose the question of the building of self defence organisations, soldiers’ councils and the formation of an armed workers’ militia.

In short, we would be dealing with a revolutionary crisis. Just to implement decisive reforms would pose the question of building a real workers’ government.

Party

The arguments over such strategic and tactical questions are taking place today in Greece and the whole of the left internationally must follow them. The fact that within Syriza increasing numbers are turning against the leadership shows that revolutionaries should intervene as a revolutionary fraction within it, not with the hope of winning over the reformist leadership and the apparatus but because such a tactic would be the best way to prepare the necessary clarification on the part of the masses, who still trust the Syriza leadership, and thus to lay the basis for a revolutionary alternative.

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