In my February post on The SYRIZA Moment (and in a revision of that piece,
I pointed out that the leadership, as represented by Alex Tsipras and
Yanis Varoufakis, refuses on principle to have a strategy for “replacing
European capitalism with a different, more rational, system.” In Varoufakis’s
own words, they are “tirelessly striv[ing] in favour of schemas the purpose of
which is to save” the current “indefensible …anti-democratic, irreversibly
neoliberal, highly irrational,” European socio-economic system. All this,
because, as he understands it, “it is the Left’s historical duty…to save
European capitalism from itself.” Varoufakis’s whole negotiating strategy, I
suggested, was centered on persuading the masters and mistresses of the
Eurozone, through his brilliant “immanent critique” of their own capitalist
economic theories, that it would be in their own, and capitalism’s, best
interest to help Greece restore some semblance of social democracy.
Certainly, the left factions of the party sincerely wanted it to be an “anticapitalist,”
“class-struggle” formation that would be unlike “any European social democratic
party today,” and that would have “an agenda of really breaking with
neoliberalism and austerity,” and the capitalist TINA (There Is No Alternative)
consensus. These currents defined Syriza’s 40-Point Program and its Thessaloniki
Program, upon which it ran for election, and which promised a “National
Reconstruction Plan that will replace the [Troika] Memorandum as early as our
first days in power, before and
regardless of the negotiation outcome.”
But even the hopeful left militants recognized that the party leadership,
under Tsipras, was increasingly prone to ignore the base, and cultivated a “creative
ambiguity” about crucial issues. Tsipras’s message to the base was a rejection
of illegitimate and unpayable debt, and a radical break with austerity; his
message to the Eurozone ruling class was a firm commitment to staying in the
Euro and playing by the rules of capitalist finance. The message to the
electorate was: We can do both of those
things. And if we can’t… Well, yes we can!
This was a deeply dishonest deception and self-deception. It was the
worst kind of electoral evasion, promoting false hopes that so many wanted to
hear, and burying the need to prepare for the inevitable fight that was
coming—thus virtually guaranteeing that the fight would be lost.