Yanis Varoufakis
The biggest threat to Greece's
left-wing coalition is itself.
SYRIZA, a
growing political party in Greece, is an acronym that stands for “Coalition of
the Radical Left.” For Americans, the idea that a party on the radical left
could gain power is unthinkable, and it was for Greeks, too—until very
recently. But the harsh austerity measures that the European Union imposed on
Greece after its economic collapse have created extreme conditions in Greece:
six in ten young people are unemployed, wages and pensions have been cut,
national income has fallen by one quarter.
Europe is
currently caught in a negative feedback loop, from which the established
political process is unable to escape. For three years now, an endless stream
of spending cuts and tax hikes has dominated the Greek Parliament’s agenda. A
SYRIZA win may be the jolt that Europe needs: a victory by a pro-European party
committed to keeping the country both in the Eurozone and in the European
Union, but a party that, importantly, because of its radical disposition, is
prepared to open up the conversation at the level of the European Council so
that, at long last, European leaders address the problems they have been
ignoring over the past five years. Back in June, in a New York Times op-ed, James K. Galbraith and I alleged
that “SYRIZA may be Europe’s best hope,” and six months later this still holds
true.
Though
SYRIZA has existed in some form since the early nineties, its popularity has
exploded amidst the Euro Crisis, now polling somewhere between 20 and 30
percent. Since June, it has begun to take a lead in opinion polls, as the
governing coalition’s promises of ‘Greek-covery’ are turning sour. Elections
are not due until June 2016, but the present government has a wafer-thin
majority that may dissolve after a likely electoral defeat in the May 2014
European Parliament elections. If a general election is called, SYRIZA could
become the largest party in Greek Parliament.
The question
then arises: what effect would such a victory have on SYRIZA itself? Can a
radical party of the left maintain its cohesion in the face of neoliberal
central bankers and their conservative counterparts in Germany, the
Netherlands, Finland, France, and Spain? Under such circumstances, any
government of the left would be short-lived. If European officials and
political leaders anticipate the power SYRIZA might have, SYRIZA’s capacity to
bargain, to forge new alliances, and to shatter the eerie silence in the
European Union’s Brussels headquarters will be severely circumscribed.
A brief
history of SYRIZA
SYRIZA’s
history can be traced back to the Red Army’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968, crushing the so-called Prague Spring. At the time, Greece was in its
second year of a neo-fascist military dictatorship, and the Communist Party’s
leaders were geographically divided: most were in the Eastern Bloc countries,
but many languished in Greek prisons. Ideological division followed, as most of
the imprisoned leaders opposed Soviet invasion of Prague, while those on the
other side of the Iron Curtain toed Moscow’s hard line. By the time the Greek
dictatorship collapsed in July 1974 and the Communist Party was legalized, the
two groups had totally fallen out, and Greece acquired two communist parties:
the anti-Soviet, pro-Europe Communist Party of the Interior, whose leaders were
inside the country during the dictatorship, and the Communist Party, referred
to by its counterpart as the Communist Party of the Exterior. SYRIZA is,
roughly, the heir to the Communist Party of the Interior.
Of course,
since the mid-seventies, the political landscape has changed completely. In
1981 the socialist party of Greece, PASOK, came to power, led by the
charismatic Andreas Papandreou. Its platform was considerably to the left of
any of Europe’s social democratic parties, advocating, among other things,
Greece’s exit from the European Economic Community (EEC), from NATO, the
removal of all U.S. military bases, a program of mass socialization of
industry, and large increases in public spending. The two communist parties
struggled to find ways of positioning themselves against PASOK, which
threatened to usurp their monopoly on the Greek left.
By the late
eighties, PASOK’s agenda became watered down. It abandoned the ideas of exiting
NATO and the EEC, and only socialized companies that had already gone bankrupt
in the wake of the global recession in the early 1980s. The Communist Party and
the Communist Party of the Interior forged an alliance called Synaspismos (meaning
‘coalition’), hoping to benefit from PASOK’s fading popularity amongst
left-wing Greeks. The general election in 1989 resulted in a hung Parliament,
and the new Synaspismos party, which had risen to around 15 percent of the
national vote, forged an opportunistic coalition with the right wing party, New
Democracy, on the foundation of a shared antipathy toward PASOK and Andreas
Papandreou.
This temporary
alliance lasted only a few months, during which it set out to drag Papandreou
through the courts on paper-thin evidence of embezzlement. Once acquitted,
Papandreou made a comeback, and Synaspismos began to fade in the polls. Soon
after that, the leaders of the Communist Party within Synaspismos decided to
pull out of the coalition, causing yet another major split in the Communist
Party, as many of its leading members chose to stay in Synaspismos.
One does not
need to be left-wing to recognize the folly in the logic of forcing a bankrupt
government to take out huge new loans.
The
Communist Party, running separately, returned to an anti-European Union agenda.
Secure in its dogmatic, Stalinist mantra, it fared better than Synaspismos,
scoring an average of 5 percent of the national vote. In contrast, Synaspismos
was engaged in perpetual introspection, attempting to broaden its appeal by
becoming a loose confederation of groups spanning the whole gamut of the left,
including disenchanted social democrats, and green, eco-activist, anti-racist
groups. To pull such disparate, and often recalcitrant, groups together,
Synaspismos became what I jokingly call 'Synaspismos Squared': although already
a coalition of different factions (recall that synaspismos means coalition),
Synaspismos entered into a coalition with groups that did not want to become
part of Synaspismos, but sought a political alliance. Thus in 2004 Synaspismos
turned into SYRIZA, ‘The Coalition of Radical Left.” The emphasis of the party
is on the “radical,” providing the outsiders with a pretext for fusing
themselves with Synaspismos. It is no great wonder that such introverted
shenanigans appealed little to the electorate; from the mid-1990s until very,
very recently, SYRIZA was barely staying afloat, polling between the minimum
threshold (3 percent) for securing parliamentary representation and 5 percent.
That is, until the Euro Crisis hit in 2010.
In the
October 2009 elections SYRIZA won just over 5 percent of the popular vote,
while the PASOK socialists of Mr. George Papandreou, Andreas’s son, won a
crushing 44 percent of the vote, forming the government that was to oversee
Greece’s implosion a few months later. A year after Greece’s bankruptcy,
opinion polls reported that PASOK had tumbled to 10 percent, while SYRIZA was
catapulted to almost 30 percent, vying for electoral victory. When the
political system could no longer avert a general election, the May 2012 poll
confirmed this popularity by propelling SYRIZA to second place, just behind the
right-wing New Democracy. A second election followed a month later, in June
2012, with New Democracy securing 29.7 percent and SYRIZA 26.9 percent.
The economic
crisis has continued unabated and likewise SYRIZA seems to have established a
steady lead in the polls. What might a victory mean for Greece, for Europe,
indeed for SYRIZA itself?
The threat
to SYRIZA
SYRIZA
supporters and activists are concerned that, like PASOK, an electoral victory
may put them on the path of compromises that they are loath to make. Just as
PASOK entered the government in 1981 with lofty left-wing pronouncements, which
it quickly shed on its road to establishment-status, so SYRIZA’s leadership,
under the extreme strains of negotiating Greece’s bankruptcy with Berlin,
Frankfurt, and Brussels, may well discard SYRIZA’s radical agenda for social
and economic change in Greece. It is a well-founded fear that SYRIZA’s leaders
cannot afford to ignore.
Most Greek
political parties, including the present ruling coalition between New Democracy
and PASOK would agree that the terms and conditions of Greece’s so-called
bailout programs are unfair and that the troika of lenders (the European
Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) are
imposing conditions on Greece that are permanently damaging the country’s
social fabric and are impossible to fulfill. One does not need to be radical,
or even left-wing, to recognize the folly in the logic of forcing a bankrupt
government to take out huge new loans on the condition of savagely reducing
national income (since this is unavoidable result of harsh austerity during a
deep recession). Yet, the governing coalition is acting like a model prisoner,
obeying the troika’s instructions while, on the side, pleading for a rationalization
of the imposed policies, terms, and conditions.
SYRIZA’s
position differs from this in two important ways. First, SYRIZA believes, I
think correctly, that the only way of getting the European Union to treat
Greece reasonably and raise the punitive austerity measures is to spearhead an
immediate re-think of the ‘Greek Program’ through, first, the unilateral
suspension of policies demanded by the troika, and, second, via the use, or
threat of using, its veto power in the European Council.
Secondly, SYRIZA
wants to combine this tough bargaining line with a radical agenda for social
change in Greece, including a major shift in the tax base, the re-introduction
of a decent minimum wage, and more funding for social security and public
health provisions. Above all else, SYRIZA activists want a government that
breaks away from the cozy relationship between political operators, big
business, and European ‘technocrats’, which, based on the bailout funds, is
building a new kleptocracy in the country.
In this context,
SYRIZA activists’ greatest fear is that an accommodation in Europe, following
an initially tough SYRIZA line, may be won at the expense of abandoning its
radical domestic agenda. Such fears naturally feed into tension between the
various groups that make up the SYRIZA confederacy, some of which have not
fully accepted the leadership’s commitment to keeping Greece in Europe’s
monetary union. While last summer SYRIZA members voted overwhelmingly to
convert their loose coalition into a unitary political party, nevertheless
SYRIZA’s leadership faces two tasks that many think of as contradictory. On the
one hand, it must avoid turning SYRIZA into the sort of party its current
supporters do not want to belong to; and, on the other hand, it must attract undecided
voters in numbers sufficient to render the party not just electable but
powerful enough to bargain with the European leaders effectively.
How SYRIZA
Could Change Europe
If SYRIZA
had taken the advice of several economists from the United States and Britain
and advocated for Greece to exit the Eurozone, its leaders would have been able
to unite all its factions under the soothing banners of autonomy, unilateral
default, and a heroic exit from the web of neoliberal institutions and
constraints that constitute the Eurozone. However, such a platform would
maximize SYRIZA’s internal cohesion at the expense of rendering it unelectable.
After all, a majority of Greeks understand that a Greek exit would bring
unbearable costs for most. So, SYRIZA has chosen the difficult position of
keeping Greece within the Eurozone while struggling to change the Eurozone’s
fundamental incongruities from within. Can a small, poverty-stricken, bankrupt
country stay within the Eurozone while opposing some of its basic tenets? Can a
SYRIZA government fund the basic humanitarian projects that the left is
determined to enact?
A SYRIZA
government would have the right to veto all decisions in the European
Council.
Continued
membership of the Eurozone means that the government will have no capacity to
create liquidity, in the absence of a central bank to back it up. SYRIZA
activists claim that they will find the money by taxing the rich, but the rich
have taken their euros to Switzerland, Frankfurt, London, and New York, while
the middle class has gone bankrupt, no longer receiving income from vacant
properties yet having to pay ever rising property taxes on them.
Meanwhile, a
SYRIZA victory would place the Greek state’s finances and the banking system
under greater strain from the European Union: Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin
are likely to retaliate by cutting off the Greek government’s access to some of
its revenue, like the monies that the European Central Bank returns to the
Greek government for super-profits it has shamefully earned through previous
purchases of Greek government bonds, EU structural funds, etc. In the meantime,
a victory might also cause a moderate bank run among depositors fearing an ECB
suspension of liquidity provisions to the Greek banks.
While a
SYRIZA government might successfully negotiate these financial pressures during
its first weeks in power, it certainly will not be able to fund the programs it
has been promising at the same time. How can it, at that point, not disappoint
its activists, confirming their fears that SYRIZA will sell out, above and
beyond the pale compromises? The only way forward for a SYRIZA government
is to succeed in changing Europe’s economy. This is a tall order, but, I think,
not impossible. Indeed, there is no alternative for SYRIZA or, indeed, for any
other political party in Europe’s periphery that aspires to a stable social
economy.
Europe has
been in denial for five years now. During this period, debts, banking losses,
unemployment, and gross imbalances have been accumulating while Europe’s
leaders whistle in the wind. If London could use its veto power at the European
Council level to shield the City’s bankers from regulation, surely Athens can,
and ought to, do likewise in defense of its citizens. Invoking national
interest clauses, a SYRIZA government would have the right to veto all decisions
until Europe’s approach to the Greek program is re-examined. Such a move may
loosen tongues and kickstart a debate that will, hopefully, lead to
much-needed, rational, modest policy changes throughout Europe (e.g. those thatStuart
Holland, James Galbraith and I have been advocating). These measures can,
indeed, allow parties like SYRIZA to combine a pro-European line with domestic
policies that defeat the old and new kleptocracies, grant working people a
chance to breathe, and, last but not least, restore faith in democracy.
The leaders
of Italy, France, and Spain perhaps do not yet feel desperate enough to break
the wall of silence at the level of the European Council. But Greece is now so
wretched and distraught that its government has a moral imperative to speak,
even to act, out. In the current political scene, only a SYRIZA-led government
could do that. This would give Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and, more
importantly, French officials the opportunity to change the discourse
surrounding Europe’s economic climate. But even if no one follows SYRIZA’s lead
in Europe, a SYRIZA government would still have sufficient bargaining power,
courtesy of its veto, not only to bring about life-saving changes to the “Greek
Program” but also to force the European Union to re-think its systemic crisis
and thereby bring about a radically different, systematic treatment.
• • •
SYRIZA may
have the opportunity to transform Greece and change the course of European
history, but this is a task that makes Odysseus’s journey look like a walk in
the park. It will not be easy to take power while remaining faithful to its
radical agenda and maintaining its cohesion on the ground. It remains to be
seen whether SYRIZA’s leaders can pull off this miracle. I think they can, as
long as they do not issue silly promises before the next election, and maintain
a truly radical agenda aimed at changing Europe by steadfastly standing their
ground, proposing to German, Spanish, Dutch citizens a European agenda that
restores the dream of a shared European prosperity.
πηγή: bostonreview
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