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.
There was no way Syriza was going to get what it claimed it wanted in
the negotiations with the Troika. The neo-liberal elite that had destroyed
social democracy was not interested in bringing it back, not a even a bit. And
the Eurozone Masters were not interested in hearing a rational critique but in
asserting power—class power, as Jack
Rasmus has aptly pointed out—and enforcing compliance.
And, in fact, by the end of February, Syriza had already reneged on its
pledge to start implementing the National Plan “regardless of the negotiations
on the debt,” when it agreed to subject any implementation of that plan to the
prior approval of the lenders.
At this point, Tsipras and Varoufakis, after capitulating on almost
every red line of the Syriza program, have been thoroughly slapped down at the
negotiating table. Now, after five post-election months of nothing but
assurances that a deal to preserve the dignity of Greece was inevitable, they
turn to face a populace completely unprepared for the kind of struggle that would
be necessary to exit the Eurozone and build a new kind of social economy.
As of today, July 1st, with Greece having missed an IMF payment, it's
becoming clear to everyone what a foolish fantasy and devastating betrayal the Syriza
strategy has been, including the upcoming referendum on Saturday which is
nothing more than a cruel hoax.
A lot of well-meaning leftists, who have been dragged along on this
Hellenic hope-a-dope by their own wishful thinking and refusal to hear what Tsipras
and Varoufakis have been saying, want to see this referendum as the finally-really-radical
moment when Syriza stands up with the people and rejects austerity.
Sorry, but more wishful thinking. From the perspective of achieving a
radical break from the austerity agenda, this referendum is a farce.
Really, what could it possibly achieve? What is it even a referendum on?
Tsipras is calling for a vote on a complicated deal that, after the missed IMF
payment, is no longer even on the table.
So a Yes vote is a vote for nothing. And
a No vote, far from effecting some kind of powerful rejection of debt and austerity,
is just going to be used, as Tsipras tells us, to go back to the negotiating
table and beg the banksters to accept the capitulation on nine-tenths of the
Syriza program he has already made, rather than the twelve-tenths they’re
insisting on. Any result of this referendum, in other words, is going to be
used, by Syriza or some other party, as an excuse for accepting compliance with
the neo-liberal austerity agenda.
Indeed, Tsipras, in a pathetic, groveling letter to his European masters
today, says that Greece is “prepared to accept,” “with small modifications,” the
very deal the referendum is supposed to reject. In his address to the Greek
people, he says that voting No on the referendum is not a vote to leave the
euro, but only a tactic to improve his negotiating position.
Similarly, Varoufakis today says “Greece will stay in the euro.” He
renounces “any Greek thoughts of Grexit,” and intones that “Greece’s place in
the Eurozone and in the European Union is non-negotiable…The future demands a
proud Greece within the Eurozone and at the heart of Europe. This future
demands that Greeks say a big NO on Sunday, that we stay in the Euro Area, and
that, with the power vested upon us by that NO, we renegotiate Greece’s public
debt.”
Besides the infinite capacity for blatantly contradictory doubletalk (Say No so we can say Yes!), there seems
to be a stubborn delusion here about what this referendum can achieve. Why do
you need this referendum? Didn’t Syriza win an election decisively, on the
basis of a specific radical left program? Wasn't that a referendum? Didn’t you
claim then, and bring that claim to the Euromeisters, and assure the people,
that that electoral result vested you
with the power to drastically reduce the debt?
And now you’re calling another election—a referendum on some complicated
and moot negotiating tactic, on
whether to accept surrendering nine-tenths or twelve-tenths of the program that
was voted on in the last election/referendum? Because, what? A big NO here will
really, really this time vest you with the power to “renegotiate”? Trumpeting this election result will force the Eurocrats
to change their tune—as the last result was supposed to, but didn’t? When the
only “power” you have, the only “or else,” is precisely the Grexit you have
renounced in advance? What’s left to “renegotiate” when you have already
negotiated yourself into a worse
position of austerity than the predecessor government you so vehemently
attacked? As Michael
Roberts points out:
[T]he Greek government has gone from an original demand for the cancellation of the 'odious' debt to 'debt relief' and then to dropping the reversal of privatisations and the introduction of collective bargaining to the last 'red lines' on no pension cuts or VAT increases on the poor. And those final red lines have been breached by the IMF and the Eurogroup. The deal as it stands would mean fiscal austerity of up to €9bn euros HIGHER than Samaras agreed to last December!
In a mark of how pathetic Syriza’s position has become, Merkel & Co. are appropriating the strong political stance Syriza should be taking. By
insisting, “This referendum means in or out of the euro,” they are pre-empting
Syriza’s bluff, and signaling their contempt of Syriza’s weakness: Go ahead, have another of your “democratic”
exercises. We know you don’t have the stomach to make it mean anything. Here’s
how you’d do it if you did. We know (and you know, and you know that we know) that
you’ll come crawling back to us.
Of course Greeks should vote No!
in Saturday’s referendum. But that will mean nothing unless the referendum becomes
for them exactly what Tsipras and Varoufakis do not want it to be, and Merkel
& Co fake-insist that it is: a referendum on whether to leave the Euro or
not. It will mean nothing unless left forces are able to replace the Tsipras faction
with a leadership that is capable of leading a fight for a radically different social
economy, rather than walking themselves back to the negotiating table to plead
with financial tyrants who have already told them to fuck off.
Of course, there’s very little chance of that, since the political work needed
to create the conditions for it has not been done over the past five months,
because Syriza has been committed to a feigned fight, at the expense of
the real one. Given that lack of political groundwork, and given the interests
and ideologies of all the major players, it’s virtually inevitable that Syriza (if
it’s a No vote) or some other party (if it’s a Yes vote) will return to the
negotiations to prostrate themselves to the Euromeisters and return to the
Greek people with a capitulation compromise that celebrates the unity
and irreversibility of the Eurozone, and Greece’s demise recovery on a capitalist
basis. Because, for all of them, There Is No Alternative.
No way to avoid it: This would be a capitulation and a failure of the
most promising left-populist movement that has appeared on the horizon in
decades. And, as Stathis Kouvelakis, of Syriza’s Left Faction, remarked in
January: “If Syriza fails then the prospects for the country will be very
reactionary and authoritarian,” since “people are aware, over a much broader
spectrum of forces now, that this is the only real possibility, and that, if we
are defeated, then this will be a defeat for a whole forthcoming historical
period.” And not just for Greece. Syriza’s acceptance of a neo-liberal
austerity program will signal to people throughout Europe that the purportedly
new populist left still believes There Is No Alternative to the bankster plutocracy
that is ravaging their lives and destroying their societies. This will
demoralize whatever real left remains, and leave the field open for a tide of
right-wing, neo-fascist populism that is
waiting to sweep across Europe.
Have you noticed that, when the right wins an election, no matter how
closely, with a blatantly capitalist and anti-popular program, it says: “We were
elected on that program, and now we're going to institute it”? And, indeed,
they go about making it so, decisively—mobilizing their cadres and continually
explaining to the populace the logic and ethic of their radical anti-populist
program. Without calling for a second, discretionary election, just to make
sure it’s okay with everyone.
But, when the left wins an election with a popular, radical, or semi-socialist
program that would benefit the vast majority, it says: “We have to mollify and
reassure our capitalist ‘partners,’ and everyone who has doubts, before we do
anything really significant. Maybe we should have another optional election just
to make sure that it's really okay for us to do what we were elected to do.”
As a friend of mine once wrote, it’s like a boxing match in which one
party is fighting to win and the other is trying to fight and be the referee at
the same time.
There is a class war going on, and its front line today is in Greece,
where, in an all-too-familiar pattern, the political representatives of one
class are fighting it to win, while those of the other are refereeing their own
defeat, negotiating with such intellectual guile that they persuade themselves capitulation
is compromise.
I hesitate to make the comparison, because the world-historical stakes
are incommensurable, but, as an American, I can’t help but notice that Tsipras
& Co are doing to the anti-austerity movement in Europe what Obama did to
public healthcare in the United States: Raising hopes and expectations that a
more progressive way is possible, while actually negotiating the stabilization
and continuity of the old order for “a whole historical period,” and leading
the left into a cul-de-sac that will be even harder to get out of.
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Related post: The SYRIZA Moment: A Skeptical Argument
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