Ten years on, what went wrong?

Ten years ago, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called on the Greek population to reject through referendum the debt management programme imposed by the EU and IMF [4]. Yet SYRIZA ignored the ’no’ expressed by more than 61% of the population and implemented a ’yes’. Why do you think the Tsipras government accepted the EU’s conditions against popular will?

This impressive volte-face has been explained politically in multiple ways, from “adaptation to the reality of a supposed TINA (There Is No Alternative)” to SYRIZA’s “reformist inadequacy” or even its “bureaucratisation”. However, whatever their interpretive value, these explanations must be integrated into the more fundamental question of the working-class response to the capitalist crisis. Indeed, the immediate issues, the “debt agreement”, were merely the expression of a Eurozone crisis that sought to violently transfer value created by labour to capital, through the management of so-called “public” debt – and, of course, a weakening of labour relations.

This conflict reached its peak in the “Southern countries” [5], particularly Greece. Despite relative intentions, there was no unification of working classes at the European level, unlike what happened with their ruling classes, even on an institutional level. Trotsky and Gramsci’s observation that emancipation would be more complicated in the West than in the East [6], due to the meanderings and tentacles of the state, is reinforced by this dimension of a ruling class organising beyond its national parcels. In this context, where the threat of Grexit [7] acquires immediate materiality, only programmatic clarity and class unity, beyond bourgeois borders, can respond, even transitionally. At both these levels, the inadequacies were evident!

What role did the radical left play at the time?

The inadequacies mentioned are true even for the radical left, especially as in terms of volume and weight, it was relatively strong. Its main weakness was its fragmentation, although one part, ANTARSYA [8], aspired at the beginning of the crisis to constitute itself as an anticapitalist political actor, and another part joined SYRIZA’s left wing.

The role played by these different components differs, even if the search for radical breaks with bourgeois society seems to be a common objective. For the Greek left, with a largely Stalinist tradition, with a strong KKE (Greek Communist Party) [9] and without consideration for class unity, its political proposals did not raise the question of workers’ unity within the framework of an existing “left government”.

The radical left’s correct reflexes, such as during the referendum for ’no’, were not enough to build political discourse and, above all, action from a unitary anticapitalist perspective. Even on tactical questions, such as establishing a debt audit commission, its responses were multiple and divergent. To some extent, its different components found themselves trapped in the theatrical competition of bourgeois politics and its predictable failure without building sufficient balance of forces to respond to the blackmail of unified European bourgeoisies. However, the defeat is not Tsipras’s alone, it’s all of ours.

How has the Greek economic and social situation been impacted by austerity measures imposed by the EU?

The third memorandum [10], signed by Tsipras with the Troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) in 2015, only deepened the neoliberal line of the two previous governments. It was even ratified by the government that had initially contested it. Beyond perpetuating the debt, the dismantling of labour relations, privatisations, suppression of part of social protection, permanent and extensive reduction of wages and especially pensions continued and intensified. More importantly, Tsipras’s promise that he would manage to “soften” austerity proved to be an illusion, even a lie – and this is perhaps the objective reason for his decline and political disappearance after 2019.

How is Greek society faring 10 years later?

Economic recovery seems real, but mainly at business and profit levels, centred on a few sectors like tourism or construction. Compared to the enormous economic contraction imposed by the memorandums and crisis, it may seem euphoric, even if we don’t see any fundamental take-off! The price has been paid by a society that has suffered a radical drop in living standards, but also a decomposition of social bonds.

The generalisation of flexible work and individualisation has benefited business well, but has also considerably reduced defensive and demanding potential, especially at trade union level. Moreover, this has affected collective action more broadly, especially as a special institutional and state arsenal against any form of collective action has gradually been established, particularly by the right-wing government of New Democracy [11] (and its far-right wing).

What impact have SYRIZA’s decisions had on the left in Greece generally? Where does this party stand today and the left more broadly?

What can we say about SYRIZA? Perhaps it no longer exists? If we ignore those who left it after 2015 (its left tendencies, its youth, or even personalities like Zoe Konstantopoulou [12] or Yanis Varoufakis [13]), SYRIZA has formally split into three small parties, what is called SYRIZA, the “New Left” – composed of political figures who managed the SYRIZA government – and a part around Kasselakis [14] (who was Tsipras’s successor as president) – and there are even rumours of a possible new “initiative” by Tsipras himself.

If we want to speak of “the left”, it’s more relevant to speak of what exists. The KKE exists both in an organised way in workplaces and at local level, and it also has a real electoral base. We must also speak of the different parts of the former “radical left”, even anarchist circles. More generally, the effects of the 2015 defeat continue to weigh and push a dynamic of fragmentation, even splits, both from the point of view of understanding and assessments of the defeat and from the masses’ point of view, for whom accelerated individualisation and disorganisation create understandable frustrations.

In such a general atmosphere, retreat into inherited thought patterns makes any necessary reconfiguration of the left more difficult, especially as the Stalinist legacy and national retreat add obstacles to orientation in an increasingly chaotic world. It’s therefore no coincidence that campist [15] predominance prevents this left from truly showing solidarity with Ukraine, Syria, Iran, etc. But ultimately it’s the real class struggle that can nourish a political renaissance.

How do you explain the rise of Zoe Konstantopoulou’s party, Course for Freedom? Is it really a left alternative?

Course for Freedom’s [16] rise in polls is real and also expresses the type of relationship that links Konstantopoulou with her audience. Although she left SYRIZA just after its capitulation to the EU, and despite her radicalism against the memorandums, she didn’t form an organised pole, but remained an “intransigent” personality. However, it’s difficult to place her on the left, as she has sometimes adopted extreme nationalist positions. It’s true that recently, in her parliamentary interventions on Tempi [17] (a tragic railway accident caused by privatisations and neoliberalism in 2023), and on other themes (like immigrant rights), she has taken a more leftward orientation. This is the problem with “caudillos” (public personalities), especially if they don’t have systematic links with organised popular forces.

It would be interesting to compare Konstantopoulou to Varoufakis and his party, MeRA25 [18], which, with barely fewer votes, couldn’t enter parliament in the 2023 elections. Although he’s also a “personality” and is less “radical” than her in his break with SYRIZA (after all, he’s one of the main co-responsible parties for the alleged negotiation with the Troika), MeRA25 and its cooperation with LAE [19] (Popular Unity) have given his space a left, even “radical” orientation.

What prospects exist for rebuilding a left front carrying a credible and radical alternative to Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government and New Democracy?

In the electoral arena, no such perspective is currently on the horizon, whilst the political forces dominating the official and media scene today are New Democracy and PASOK [20]. The KKE and SYRIZA’s debris don’t want to or cannot form anything of this kind. But outside the electoral arena, more fundamentally, difficulties in forming a front, particularly a radical and realistic one, stem from the effects of defeat, but also from issues felt by the masses.

However, there are also positive signs, particularly in certain struggles, trade union or otherwise (ecological, for immigrants, etc.), where we see a tendency toward class unity against capitalism without limitations and very repressive. Even within the radical left, attempts are being made to overcome fragmentation. This was, for example, the case with the founding of Anametrisi (the Test) which was joined by TPT-4, the Greek section of the 4^th International. Although the same impasses risk recurring, often on the same tactical questions, there are also new attempts, at least for discussion and common action. Searching for a socialist political compass facing the meanderings of current society.

Interview with Tassos Anastassiadis conducted by Ph. K.