I naively thought thought the party had a plan to defeat the EU elite. But they did the authoritarian job of implementing austerity policies while right populists around the world are now enacting welfare measures. The left must learn lessons from the party’s defeat
The sad fate of Syriza is emblematic of the new situation of the European left.
In capitalism as we knew it, when a severe economic crisis made impossible the system’s normal reproduction, some kind of authoritarian rule (usually a military dictatorship) was imposed for a decade or so till the economic situation was re-normalised enough so that a return to democracy could be tolerated again – recall the cases of Chile, Argentina, South Korea.
The unique role of Syriza is that it was allowed to play this role usually reserved for right wing dictatorships. It took power in a time of deep upheaval and crisis, it fulfilled its task of enacting tough austerity measures, and now it left the stage, replaced by a party called New Democracy, the same party which brought Greece to the crisis in the first place.
The achievements of Syriza government are mixed. It did some good things (which could have been done also by a reasonable centrist government, like the agreement with Macedonia on the change of its name), but overall the result is a double catastrophe. Not only did it do the job of enacting austerity measures – the very task its entire program was opposed to. But the perverse genius of EU bureaucrats was to allow a purportedly radical left party, Syriza, to own it. In this way protests against austerity were minimised. A government of the right would not have gotten away with it so easily.
Even worse, by enacting the austerity measures, Syriza de facto destroyed its own social base, the rich texture of civil society groups out of which it emerged as a political party. Syriza is now a political party just like the others.
When Syriza took over and engaged in negotiations with the EU, it was clear that the moment the only choice was austerity or Grexit, the battle was lost. Accepting austerity measures meant betraying the basic tenet of its program, and Grexit would have caused a further 30 per cent drop in the standard of living and a collapse of social life (lack of medicines, of food etc.) leading to an emergency state. We now know that Grexit was quite acceptable to the European financial elite: Yanis Varoufakis reports that when he mentioned Grexit as a threat to Wolfgang Schauble (at that time the German finance minister), Schauble immediately offered billions of help for Greece to do it.
What was intolerable for the EU elite was not Grexit but Greece remaining in the EU and mounting a counter-offensive there. From Schauble’s reaction, the idea was clear: the collapse caused by Grexit would have served as a good lesson to all leftists not to play with any radical economic measures. The establishment likes a more radical left to take power every two to three decades, just to warn the people what dangers lie ahead along this path.
So everything hinged on avoiding this choice and finding a third way. Naively, we who supported Syriza thought they had a plan. In all the debates I had with them I was assured they knew what they were doing. Yet in spite of all the leftist critique of the brutality of EU pressure on Greece, the EU did nothing unexpected, the Brussels administrators acted precisely as we thought they would – and Syriza was left helpless. So what precipitated the double U-turn in July 2015?
The extraordinary reversal of one extreme into its opposite would bedazzle even the most speculative Hegelian philosopher. Tired of the endless negotiations with the EU executives in which one humiliation followed another, the Syriza referendum on Sunday 5 July asked the Greek people if they supported or rejected the EU proposal of new austerity measures.
Although the government itself clearly stated that it supported “No”, or “Oxi”, the result surprised them: an overwhelming majority of 61 per cent said no to European blackmail. Rumours began to circulate that the result – victory for the government – was a bad surprise for Tsipras himself who secretly hoped that the government would lose, so that a defeat would allow him to save face in surrendering to the EU demands (“we have to respect the voters’ voice”).
However, literally the morning after, Tsipras announced that Greece was ready to resume the negotiations, and days later Greece negotiated a EU proposal which was basically the same as what the voters rejected (in some details even harsher) – in short, he acted as if the government had lost, not won, the referendum.
Here we encounter the truth of populism: its failure to confront the real of capital. The supreme populist moment (referendum victory) immediately reverted into capitulation, into a confession of impotence with regard to the capitalist order – there is no simple betrayal in this reversal but the expression of a deep necessity. It is all too easy to speak of “treason” here, but we are dealing with a much deeper crisis of the left.
I remember how, in the debates around that election in 2015, I warned against the fascination with great public events – all the fuss about “one million of us at Syntagma square, we were all clapping and singing together”. What really matters is what happens the morning after when the drunkenness of the collective trance is over and the enthusiasm has to be translated into concrete measures.
I often mockingly evoked a group of participants who, once a year, meet in a cafeteria at the anniversary of past demonstrations and sentimentally remember the bygone moments of ecstatic unity… but then a cell phone rings and they have to run back to their boring jobs. We can easily imagine such a scene today: members of Syriza meet in a cafeteria fondly remembering the unique spirit of their 2015 mass protests, and then a phone rings, and they have to run back to their office to pursue the job of austerity.
This is our world today, a world in which right populists enact welfare-state measures and the radical left does the authoritarian job of imposing austerity. Will a new left find a way out of this deadlock?
10 comments:
The Left HAS no FAITH in anything other than DOUBT –– PERIOD!
This is their Tragic Flaw. They see everything in purely materialistic terms. If you can't see it, eat it, wear it, drive it, wash it, pet it, squeeze it, lift it, punch it, kick it, weigh it, measure it, store it a cupboard, drawer, box, bag, closet or suitcase, it simply does not EXIST for Leftists.
They tend primarily to be SENSUALISTS.
From what I've been able to see they have a great deal of trouble comprehending such things as Beauty, Honor, Decency, Truth, Love, Creativity, Perseverance, Fulfillment, Reverence, and above all else –– SPIRIT.
And yet they seem motivated primarily by such negative intangibles as Anger, Fear, Doubt, Suspicin, Resentment, Contempt, Derision, Mockery, Spite, and Despair.
To put it whimsically: They eschew The Power of Positive Thinking and advocate, instead, The Power of Being a a Positive Stinker.
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Poor Zizek! Despite having a superficial, teddybearish sort of charm, like all the other leftists in my acquaintance he suffes from a severe case of CRANIO-RECTAL VISION.
It frankly terrifies me that such a figure could have achieved such a high degree of influence in the West –– especially on the Young.
I'm afraid Antonio Gramsci the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School were right.
What the terroristic Bolsheviks could not produce by a horrifying application of Brute Force, the Fankfurters and their army of Deceived Disciples have been able to do wth generous applications of Sophistry, Guile, and the fulsome –– frankly rancid ––blandishments of outright SEDUCTION.
...let's just say that back in the old USSR days, they suffered from no self doubts as to their collective ability to direct the economy.
The Piketty Euro-welfare state has proven itself untenable.... and Democratic Socialism, too scary.
...a social democracy seems to be the "settled" alternative on the Left... which is essentially what we have now.
The next best thing to ownership of the means of production is a fat 401(k)
Enjoying life on whatever terms it metes out is "The Best Revenge."
And no matter what happens:
"Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down."
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And as my rich Uncle George, the son of poor German mmigrants, former Butcher's Boy, and Self-Made Millionaire, said, "Nothing makes you feel any better than a pocketful of money."
Uncle George only had an eighth grade education –– very common in that era –– but he was one SMART dude.
And OH now he HATED Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
"There are many examples. The Nordic model, as explained by Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, summarizes it rather well. Similar ideas are seen in the thinking behind the Great Society in the United States especially in the promotion of college aid during that time.
Is this what people want? Some commentators think so. Mayor Bill De Blasio of New York has stated his belief that, “the message would have won the election" if the Democratic Party had run on Bernie Sander's message of equality and progressivism. In United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition is led by the Labour Party, led by the unabashedly socialistic Jeremy Corbyn, who has retained control of his party despite adversity. Of course, a majority of Americans still wouldn't vote for an openly socialist candidate, and many people think President Obama, a New Democrat centrist, is a socialist himself. This suggests strong opposition to the progressivism demanded by Justice as Fairness."
Obama, a Socialist? Who knew!
Obama surely wished himself a Socialist, unconstrained by practical matters such as "economics".
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