Two weeks ago, DEA, the Trotskyist group that helped establish Syriza and is now a key part of its Left Platform faction, held a central committee meeting. The meeting proceeded under the premise that a new memorandum was about to be signed by Tsipras, signalling a surrender to Greece’s creditors and crossing a red line which neither DEA nor many other Syriza activists could endorse. Two days later, the referendum was called, and DEA put aside its misgivings and threw itself into a gigantic united Oxi campaign.
But the conversations held in DEA, and in all manner of smaller groups which constitute Syriza’s left wing will be relevant again now. The content of the Memorandum going through the Greek parliament today is worse than anything previously imagined: unprecedented privatisation, loss of sovereignty, the forcible reversal of progressive measures introduce by the government, hikes in VAT, cuts and free market reforms. In the early hours of Saturday morning, the DEA’s MP was one of only two MPs in the Syriza parliamentary group to vote against the initial capitulation sent by Tsipras to the Eurogroup; today, a much greater rebellion is anticipated.
The scale of the surrender and the absurdity of the political situation may be a little overwhelming for an outside observer, but this is a moment for which many on the Greek far left have been practically preparing about for months, and theorising about for years. Most thought that Tsipras would sell out sooner. In explaining why he didn’t buckle in the last round of negotiations, and pushed on for the referendum, everyone – from party activists to the anarchists you meet in social centres – cite popular pressure.
Syriza’s right wing – a collection of politicians such as the Deputy Prime Minister Dianis Dragasakis and economy minister Georgis Stakathis – initially opposed the calling of the referendum. But the result has by coincidence played a pivotal role in their strategy: it took the energy and public pressure, formulated it around what was essentially a confidence vote in the government which the left had to rally around, and delivered what could be interpreted as a mandate for a new deal to keep Greece in the Euro and the government in power, at any cost.
Tsipras has essentially fallen in with this logic, and the sudden shift in Tsipras’s political role has left some Syriza supporters disoriented, as well as burned out from the referendum campaign. At an anti-Memorandum protest on the steps of the parliament on Monday night, one Syriza activist described him to me as a “victim” of the current situation who was “detached from reality by those around him”. How long this patience lasts remains to be seen.
For the vast majority of people we’ve met, the referendum gave precisely the opposite mandate: that Greece would not accept austerity, or at least nothing like what is now being proposed. They have a point: Syriza won the January election on the slogan “no sacrifice for the Euro”; it then won a 61 per cent majority for rejecting a deal whose core terms – and many other terms which are far, far worse – are now being rammed through the Greek parliament. Popular pressure will be in full swing again today, as a massive strike of Greek workers by calls on parliament to reject the Memorandum.
The strategy of Syriza in power has been consumed by the task of finding a deal: as many party supporters complain, it has been slow or absent in enacting many of the social reforms and tax policies it promised. The Tsipras administration has refused – either in terms of technical measures or in terms of making a political case – to prepare the ground for a Grexit, and the government continues to cling to the idea of a Euro membership compatible with its mandate, even as it is driven humiliatingly off a cliff. Those Syriza MPs that vote for another memorandum do so on the basis that rupture with the Eurozone – and further confrontation with the right in Greece – should be delayed. That delay is now turning into a permanent retreat.
This week may well witness the destruction, from the European left’s point of view, of the most promising political project on the continent. Whether or not Tsipras remains Prime Minister, the Syriza government has already fallen. It has been replaced by a new parliamentary majority, composed of some Syriza MPs and the whole of the old, and supposedly vanquished, political order – Pasok and New Democracy.
For all that this may be tragic, it could also be part of a process. The internal fight, or externalised split, that is to come will expose some of the contradictions in Syriza’s strategy and open up windows, at least in theory, for a set of political forces to Tsipras’s left. The prospects for the factional struggle inside Syriza is difficult to predict, partly because the internal structures of Syriza have been functioning so unreliably since it took power (the Central Committee last met months ago and has focussed entirely on reviewing rather than determining government decisions), and partly because of the uncertainties about the fate of dissident MPs and activists, whose expulsions and resignations hang in the balance.
Whatever the outcome, what happens next in and around Syriza matters. Both the mainstream media and many on the British left have focussed obsessively on the party’s relationship with the EU and the Euro, but this is less than half of the story. Projects like Syriza were supposed to represent the future of the European left, with their unflinchingly radical programme, openness to social movements and internal democracy. Tsipras’s failure has stemmed not just from his unwillingness to break with the Eurozone, but with his refusal to contemplate the radical measures that it would have necessitated: the nationalisation of the banks, seizure of assets and a massive redistributive tax programme. The route to rebuilding the dreams that Syriza represented – in Greece and elsewhere –will lie in reclaiming the radical and democratic spirit that once characterised it.
Content from our partners
Related
