Fear Takes Root in Syriza

Fear is a powerful human emotion. Fear of the unknown surely played a significant part in Syriza’s humiliating climbdown and surrender of what national sovereignty had remained to Greece.

Fear is a powerful emotion if consenting to become a colony, agreeing to sell off your country and further immiserating millions is a preferable option to taking back your independence.

Perhaps the signal that was not given due consideration was Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ statement on July 10 that “we have no mandate to leave the euro.” The Syriza-led government also had no mandate for the continuation, much less the intensification, of austerity. Five and a half months into an administration that could have been used to prepare Greece for a different path instead marked time in futile negotiations, allowing the country’s economic crisis to develop to the point where the troika could dictate any terms it wanted.

And make no mistake: There is glee in corporate boardrooms, trading floors, banks and the government ministries that serve them that a Leftist government has committed itself to the harshest austerity terms.

A good example of this comes from the late 1990s, when dissident Kim Dae-jong won election as president of South Korea as the first candidate of the Left to win office, only to immediately impose an austerity program imposed by the International Monetary Fund. President Kim’s candidacy had been opposed by the U.S. government, which had supported a series of military dictators, but likely was pleased in the end that he won since it demoralized his supporters and provided a priceless propaganda prop for the idea that there is no alternative to neoliberalism.

Although the agreement imposed on Greece by the troika — the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund — is indeed a coup, as the instantly popular Twitter hashtag proclaims, it shouldn’t be looked at simplistically as a German diktat. That is not because smaller countries like Finland and Slovakia aligned themselves with Germany in the manner of schoolyard kids standing next to the playground bully so as to not be the next target, but because the German government is acting as the European enforcement wing of international capital.

The upside down world of money over people

It is a neoliberal world indeed when entire countries are bled dry to safeguard bankers’ profits and doing so is presented as the highest moral duty. The human face might have been German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in the role of Dr. Evil, but the minister is no more than a physical embodiment of powerful social and economic forces. Forces of human creation but not necessarily in human control.

So let us not over-simplify and place all blame at the feet of Syriza as “opportunists” or whatever word of opprobrium one wishes. Nor should there be allusions that walking away from the euro, canceling the debt and the resulting cutoff from financial markets would be an easy road to take, even if, in the long term, it is the road that should have been traveled. Socialism in one country is not possible in one small country. Socialism in a single big country would be extremely difficult, if the entire might of the capitalist world were arrayed against it.

There are no Greek solutions for Greece, there are only European or international solutions.

Nonetheless, somebody has to go first. Finding allies is indispensable for any Greek turn from the eurozone to have a chance at success. It does not appear that Syriza looked beyond the European Union for allies. In an interview with the New Statesman, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, when asked if the government attempted to work with the governments of other indebted eurozone countries, gave this answer:

“The answer is no, and the reason is very simple: from the very beginning those particular countries made it abundantly clear that they were the most energetic enemies of our government, from the very beginning. And the reason of course was their greatest nightmare was our success: were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal for Greece, that would of course obliterate them politically, they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing.”

Fear of offending the more powerful and internalizing the “moral” hectoring they deliver at every opportunity. Guaranteeing bank profits is somehow more “moral” than the health and well-being of entire countries. Social Democrats have absorbed this ideology as thoroughly as conservatives.

In the same interview, Mr. Varoufakis, recounting that his counterparts, the other eurozone financial ministers, refused to negotiate or even engage intellectually with him from the start, was asked why the government kept talking until the summer. His reply:

“Well one doesn’t have an alternative. Our government was elected with a mandate to negotiate. So our first mandate was to create the space and time to have a negotiation and reach another agreement. That was our mandate — our mandate was to negotiate, it was not to come to blows with our creditors. … The negotiations took ages, because the other side was refusing to negotiate. They insisted on a ‘comprehensive agreement,’ which meant they wanted to talk about everything. My interpretation is that when you want to talk about everything, you don’t want to talk about anything. But we went along with that.”

Eurozone membership or an end to austerity

Yes, Syriza was elected with a mandate to negotiate; that follows from Greek majority popular opinion that the country should remain within the eurozone. But there was also a mandate that austerity be brought to an end. Syriza proved unable to resolve this contradiction: Greece can end austerity or be in the eurozone, but not both at the same time.

What we do make of Prime Minister Tsipras declaration, “An end of the blackmail,” issued in late June at the time of his decision to call a referendum on austerity. In his statement, referencing the troika negotiators, he said:

“They asked the Greek government to accept a proposal that accumulates a new unsustainable burden on the Greek people and undermines the recovery of the Greek economy and society, a proposal that not only perpetuates the state of uncertainty but accentuates social inequalities even more.”

The vote went ahead, against direct orders by Europe, and Greeks voted 61 percent to 39 against the terms offered. A week later, the Tsipras government agreed to terms that were worse — the harshest austerity yet imposed. So much for democracy. And make no mistake, this deal is consistent with the “structural adjustment” that the IMF has imposed across the global South.

Prime Minister Tsipras’ final set of concessions in exchange for a fresh bailout was an undiluted structural adjustment. Included in the Greek “reform” package were:

* Allowing greater wage inequality and a fall in wages as a percentage of gross domestic product through 2019.

* Raising the pension age to 67 and increasing the health care contribution of pensioners by 50 percent.

* Gutting labor laws through a “review [of] the whole range of existing labour market arrangements, taking into account best practices elsewhere in Europe.” In other words, gutting worker protections.

* An “irreversible” privatization of the electricity provider.

* Privatization of the country’s ports, airports and much else.

The nearly immediate answer was “No, still not enough.”

The prime minister said the popular referendum would strength his negotiating hand. So in the end, what concession did he extract? The fund that will supervise the fire sale of Greek assets, in which the rules will be set by the troika, will be managed from Greece instead of the tax haven Luxembourg.

Hurray.

The Greek government has committed itself to sell off state assets worth €50 billion, with half the total to be used to recapitalize Greek banks and the half to pay down Greek debts. Not one euro toward social welfare!

Resistance continues

Although the government appears to have the approval of Greece’s corporate parties, including New Democracy and Pasok, it does not have the support of all of Syriza. The latter’s Left Platform calls for a“radical reform” of the banking system, the complete halt of austerity policies, an exit from the euro and a writedown of most of Greece’s debt. Outside of Syriza, Antarsya calls for the nationalization of the banks and an exit from the eurozone. A general strike has been called for July 15. And there is no shortage of ideas on alternatives to austerity.

The online news site Greek Reporter summarizes the Left Platform’s expectations of the benefits should its program be adopted:

“An exit from the Eurozone would generate further benefits according to the proposal. Namely, the restoration of financial liquidity, a sustainable growth program based on private investment, the rebuilding of the internal economy to reduce dependence on imports, an increase in exports, independence from the European Central Bank, its policies and restrictions and finally the utilization of unused resources to create rapid growth so as to protect against the first difficult months following the Grexit. The document also concedes that an exit from the Eurozone should have been prepared by SYRIZA but was not.”

Instead, the prime minister says he is choosing a bad choice over a catastrophic choice. Those are the only two choices that the European project, one in which rule by finance replaces democracy, can offer.

As sure as nature, politics hates a vacuum. If the Left is not going to offer an alternative to the tightening hegemony of the most powerful industrialists and financiers — the “market” is nothing more than their interests — then the gates to the authoritarian Right, even fascism, are thrown wide open. In a separate interview, Mr. Varoufakis gave this warning:

“In parliament I have to sit looking at the right hand side of the auditorium, where 10 Nazis sit, representing Golden Dawn. If our party, Syriza, that has cultivated so much hope in Greece … if we betray this hope and bow our heads to this new form of postmodern occupation, then I cannot see any other possible outcome than the further strengthening of Golden Dawn. They will inherit the mantle of the anti-austerity drive, tragically. The project of a European democracy, of a united European democratic union, has just suffered a major catastrophe.”

Europe’s capitalists, who established the European Union as a mechanism to tighten their control over the continent and force U.S.-style policies on their societies beyond popular control, won’t be ruffled by that conclusion. But will the world’s working people be?

Pete Dolack has been an activist with several groups, most recently Trade Justice New York Metro. He writes the Systemic Disorder blog and is the author of the books What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy and It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment.