Dave Stockton
In his statements after the agreement with the Eurozone representatives on 20 February, Alexis Tsipras spoke like a typical (bourgeois) politician. He claimed to have won the battle when, in reality, he had lost it. Even the most sympathetic observer would have to recognise that Syriza capitulated to the Eurogroup’s brutal ultimatum which was, effectively, “accept the existing terms or ATM’s across the country will be unable to issue Euros by Wednesday, February 24”.
Greece and its government are clearly back under the supervision of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF. The only “gain” was that these are now referred to as “the Institutions”. On every key issue, Greece, under the Syriza government, faces the same predicament as before; Tsipras has pledged to keep to the agreements made by previous governments, that is, the hated “Memorandum” which led to €62.5 billion in austerity measures between 2010 and 2014.
Here, too, all that has changed is the name. What was the “Memorandum” is now the “Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement”. Like the Memorandum, this rules out any “unilateral action” by Athens, commits the government to achieving primary budget surpluses, although how big is yet to be defined, and recognises the validity of the whole of the existing debt.
Had Tsipras said that this is a terrible deal, that it robs us of nearly all freedom of action and spits on the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of Greek people, that at least would have been honest. It would have allowed people to debate what actions could be taken with a clear head. Instead, he is deceiving the Greek people. He claims the agreement struck on 20 February represented “a decisive step towards leaving austerity, the bailouts and the Troika behind” and that “Greece achieved an important negotiating success in Europe”. Neither statement is true.
The final statement drafted by the Eurogroup, the Eurozone’s Finance Ministers, on Friday stipulated, “The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the [EU, ECB and IMF] institutions”.
All this amounts to is changing the label on the poison bottle, not its contents. No wonder Wolfgang Schaüble, Germany’s hard faced Finance Minister, repaid the insults he has received by crowing in triumph, “Being in government is a date with reality, and reality is often not as nice as a dream”, adding “The Greeks certainly will have a difficult time to explain the deal to their voters.”
Nor is it just a question of one battle being lost. The reason people voted for Syriza, and why its popularity had risen to over 50 per cent since the election, was that Tsipras and his colleagues promised to negotiate a major reduction of the debt, to free Greece from the dictatorship of the Troika and to reverse the drive to austerity, creating jobs, restoring wages and pensions and reversing privatisations.
Now, Syriza’s entire strategy, of trying to win concessions from Greece’s “European partners”, hoping that Italy or France or even the European Central Bank, would be more merciful than Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schaüble, has proved to be an illusion and ended in a complete fiasco.
Italy’s Matteo Renzi, France’s François Hollande and the ECB’s Mario Draghi gave finance minister Yanis Varoufakis a sympathetic reception on his tour round Europe’s capitals, but they proved to be broken reeds, unable and unwilling to support him, when Schaüble and Eurogroup Chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem went in for the kill.
Germany, supported by governments like Spain, Ireland and Portugal, which have victimised their own people and feared a Greek success would encourage leftist rivals at home, bluntly refused all but the most nominal concessions.
True, the percentage of the budget surplus Greece will be obliged to run was not specified. This is about the nearest thing to a concession that Varoufakis can point to; it might be the 1.5 per cent surplus he asked for, rather than the 4 per cent previously specified.
But only might, and only a fool would wager that Germany will eventually relent and allow this in future negotiations. In any event, how could a government that has promised to raise public sector wages, re-employ hundreds of thousands and re-nationalise privatised companies, also run any kind of budget surplus?
The meagre four months’ extension of the bailout agreement, with the restriction that any reforms must be approved by “the Institutions”, shows that the claims to have torn up the Memorandum and sent the Troika packing were empty boasts. People laughed at Varoufakis’ panache when he broke off negotiations with the ECB, the EU Commission and the IMF in favour of talks with individual governments. At the time, Dijsselbloem gasped “you just killed the Troika” and Varoufakis replied “wow!” But the former Dutch social democrat had the last laugh.
As for Syriza’s social demands there has been an absolute massacre of these because the continuation of the second bailout only covers the liquidity of the Greek banks and the continuation of payments to bondholders and lenders. Indeed, throughout the second bailout only 11 per cent of the loans ever went to the Greek government’s budget, the rest being pocketed by the lenders themselves, just a click of a mouse in Frankfurt.
So, out goes the promise of 300,000 new jobs in the private, public and social sectors, and the increase in the minimum monthly wage from €580 to €751. Instead there is a proposal to raise it “over time” but in a manner that safeguards competitiveness and productivity. Moreover – “the scope and timing of changes to the minimum wage will be made in consultation with social partners and the European and international institutions.” In short this too at the mercy of the hard faced trio.
The promise to halt privatisations has also been completely abandoned, including that of Piraeus and the Public Power Corporation of Greece. Instead, the government has not only pledged, “not to roll back privatisations that have been completed” but, in addition, “where the tender process has been launched, the government will respect the process, according to the law”.
Some pledges do remain; up to 300 kWh of free electricity per month and food subsidies for the 300,000 families who have no income; scrapping of tax on heating fuel; free medical care for those without jobs and medical insurance, protection for people with mortgage arrears against the seizure of their property.
Such measures are to be the subject of further negotiation but within the context of an ominous pledge to “review and control spending” in every area of government and to, “identify cost-saving measures through a thorough review of spending by every ministry”.
Greek working people will not be fooled for long by spin that presents strategic defeats as tactical victories. They have not forgotten what they voted for all those measures only weeks ago.
Stathis Kouvelakis, a Marxist economist and member of the central committee of Syriza, has been much franker.
“Essentially, the implementation of the fundamental measures of Syriza’s Thessaloniki election program is made subject to the prior approval of the lenders, effectively amounting to the program’s annulment. Additionally, it recognizes the odious terms of the lending agreements, thereby further weakening the Greek negotiating position on the matter. It is obvious that by accepting such a framework as a supposedly ‘honorable compromise’, the Syriza government is having its hands tied.” (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/greece-syriza-backtrack-europe-negoti…)
Interestingly, Varufakis, who describes himself as an “erratic Marxist”, had revealed the strategic contradiction of his vision in 2013, it is one typical of classical reformism or Social Democracy:
“… the Left must admit that we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapsing European capitalism will open up with a functioning socialist system, one that is capable of generating shared prosperity for the masses. Our task should then be twofold: To put forward an analysis of the current state of play that non-Marxist, well meaning Europeans, who have been lured by the sirens of neoliberalism, find insightful. And to follow this sound analysis up with proposals for stabilising Europe, for ending the downward spiral that, in the end, reinforces only the bigots and incubates the serpent’s egg. Ironically, those of us who loathe the Eurozone have a moral obligation to save it!”
This is precisely the reformist syndrome that Trotsky pointed to when referring to a German Social Democrat of the early 1930s who asked; “’Were we joyful heirs waiting at the bedside of a mortally ill capitalism or doctors who should seek to assist its recovery?’ Always, of course these respectable gentlemen decided the second was the case. But these ‘socialist’ doctors, once they have effected a recovery, or at least prevented genuine Marxists from leading the working class in an all out struggle to put an end to the system, are then chased away by the newly robust patient with insults and even blows. As for the reforms the good doctors hope to effect, as a quid pro quo for their services, they are brusquely dismissed as preventing a more speedy recovery.”
It would be no service to the Greek working class to hide the scale of the surrender, no matter how brutal and repulsive those who forced it on the Syriza leaders are. At the same time, we have to stress that the main enemies of the Greek working people are not “the Germans”, nor even the Brussels bureaucrats, but declining capitalism as such. It is thus our first duty to try all in our power to mobilise forces in Northern and Western Europe to expose and thwart their plans.
However, left individuals and parties across Europe are all too ready with their excuses for the Syriza leaders; “what else could they have done?”, “they have gained time for a fight back later”, “they have gained a few concessions”. This is solidarity with the wrong forces. It is not only prolonging illusions but preparing more bitter and destructive disillusion, and in the near future, too.
The worst outcome will be if the Syriza leaders are able to use the immense hope and prestige the party built up between 2010 and 2015 to re-submit Greece to the continuation of austerity. If a Tsipras government becomes the guarantor of a rotten deal with the Germany-led Eurocrats, it will hamper and hobble working class resistance, demoralise a whole sector of the left, and prepare the rise of right-wing forces. Its own fate will eventually be that of Pasok; electoral oblivion.
On a European scale, such an outcome would make the dishonourable and wretched collapse of the left-reformist and left populist parties and groups clustered around the European Left Party inevitable. Whilst it will prove the accuracy of the revolutionary Leninist critique of reformism in all its forms, old or new, euro-communist or social democratic, if it comes at the price of demobilising the Greek resistance, it will be too high a price to pay.
This could lead to similar retreats and defeats in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, where the Syriza strategy has been touted as the answer to austerity and the rule of the Eurocrats. The only winners of a defeat without a struggle would be the right wing populists (Ukip, Pegida) if not outright fascists like Golden Dawn or Jobbik. In addition, the organisers of defeats and negotiators of surrender, that is, the bureaucrats of the major trade union federations and the Social Democratic and Labour leaders would be strengthened once again. If its criticism remains passive and on the sidelines of the struggle, the left will find itself more isolated and impotent than ever and its “I told you so” will be ignored or derided. And quite rightly!
Such an outcome is not inevitable IF the Greek left fights and overthrows this surrender-deal and summons the militant Greek workers and youth to resistance. And IF, too, it gets maximum support from the left and militant workers across Europe who must realise that the Greeks are fighting for them. A major defeat in Greece will be a defeat for all of us fighting austerity, from Ukraine to Portugal.
A major signal for action would be if the left within Syriza, which was too quiescent during the months leading up to the election, fights to reject the deal. In parliament, all left deputies should vote against it. On the streets of Athens and other Greek cities and towns, demonstrations against the conditions imposed by Berlin and Brussels need to grow in strength. The assemblies and action committees we saw in 2010-12 need to be revived and made even stronger. In such bodies, a new strategy based on absolute rejection of the EU conditions and the fulfilment of all the promises in Syria’s programme, needs to be launched.
The perspective needs to go beyond the idea of a parliamentary coalition of the left and the right, to a fight on the streets and in the workplaces for a workers’ government that will renounce the entire debt, and put an end to the misery imposed over the last five years and make the rich pay. This will mean the immediate a nationalisation of the banks and the blocking of all further transfers abroad, the imposition of workers’ control over all the sectors threatened with privatisation, like the ports, and the taxation of the rich in order to provide the relief and work for the unemployed and insecurely employed.
Last, but not least, an appeal should be made now, to the entire workers’ movement right across Europe to take action to force an end to the economic blackmail and threats of a financial blockade of Greece made by politicians, bankers and bureaucrats of the whole European Union.
If Greece is thrown out of the eurozone, returning to the drachma as the KKE and parts of Antarsya argue, will be no easy solution. In a capitalist Greece, the new currency will devalue, wages will be slashed still further and prices spiral upward. The argument that this will stimulate home industries and agriculture is nonsense. Greece is far too small a country to contemplate autarky.
If socialism in one country, the reactionary utopia of the Stalinists, did not work in huge semi-continents like the former USSR and China, then capitalism in one country is even less of solution since Greek capitalists will have to be placated and support sought from alternative imperialist powers like Russia and China.
In fact, it would be necessary to move as quickly as possible to a socialised and democratically planned economy. A Greek revolution would have to spread rapidly, at first to those countries in Europe suffering the same effects of the crisis and the EU rulers’ anti working class “solution”. If it did not, it would be destined to defeat.
For all these reasons, we need to launch a massive movement of solidarity with the Greek resistance right across he continent, linking it to resistance at home against our own ruling classes. Our ultimate aim must be to replace the Europe of the billionaires with a Socialist United States of Europe.