Stathis Kouvélakis is a lecturer in political philosophy at King’s College London. It is also a public intellectual well known in the French and Greek left. He was a candidate (non-eligible position) on the lists of Syriza in the election of May 6, 2012 and is again at the next election on June 17 A few days before new parliamentary elections, while most polls give the advantage to Syriza on the New Democracy (right), it is useful to know more about Syriza, a formation of the radical left who remains relatively unknown outside of Greece. In this interview, Stathis Kouvélakis Syriza analysis and discusses the origins of the coalition party. It describes the sociology of its members and its electorate, and discusses its ideological references. It explains the reasons for the electoral breakthrough of remarkable Syriza last May, and its position vis-à-vis debt and partners of the euro area.

Philippe Marlière Could you introduce Syriza: when and how this coalition of parties of the radical left did it come about?

Stathis Kouvélakis Syriza is formed as an alliance between several distinct formations election in 2004. Its main components are on one side, SYN - Coalition of the Left (now called the Coalition of the Left, Movements and Ecology), it is the party of Alexis Tsipras, which are as a separate training since 1991. This party is the result of successive splits of the communist movement. On the other hand, there are other formations in Syriza much smaller. Some are from the classical Greek far left. This is particularly true of the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE), the main Maoist organization in Greece, which is the second component in terms of numerical weight within Syriza. The party has three MPs elected in the elections of May 2012. This is also true of the Internationalist Workers Left (DEA), the Trotskyist tradition, and other groups who come for the most communist of the matrix. This is especially true of the Communist Left Ecological and Renovating (AKOA), which comes from the ancient Greek Communist Party from within.

Syriza coalition was formed in 2004 and she won a success that can be described starting from relatively small. But she managed entered parliament in surpassing the 3%, what Synaspismos had not always succeeded in the past. Syriza is the culmination of a process of reconstruction rather complex in the Greek radical left. The radical left is split into two divisions since 1968. The first is the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which undergoes two divisions: the first in 1968 during the military dictatorship, giving rise to the Greek Communist Party of the Interior (KKE esotérikou), inspired Eurocommunist and a second in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR. What remains after these two divisions, this is a particularly traditionalist party, clinging to a matrix Stalinist considerably durcieaprès the split of 1991. This is a party that will rebuild on a basis of both militant and sectarian. He managed to win a relatively large activist base among the workers and popular, and among young people, particularly in universities. The other pole, Synaspismos, widened in 2004 by building around Syriza, who comes from a junction of two divisions from the matrix communist. Synaspismos has changed significantly during its history. In early 1990, it is a party vote in favor of the Maastricht Treaty, which lies within a moderate leftist majority in its orientation. But it is also a heterogeneous party made up of separate streams. Internal struggles against very strong left wing and right wing. In stages, the right wing will lose its grip. The constitution will seal Syriza turning left Synaspismos. Synaspismos has now self-criticism of his position on the Maastricht Treaty and campaigned heavily, as all the formations of the European radical left, against the European Constitutional Treaty of 2005.

PM What influence does the communist tradition within Synaspismos?

SK This component is clearly communist majority. It comes from the wing that was marked by Eurocommunism and that opened since the 1970s the new social movements. She knew renew its organizational and theoretical references, by grafting on the matrix communist traditions of the new radicalism. This is a party that is comfortable in feminist movements, mobilization of youth, the current anti-globalization, anti-racism, LGBT currents while keeping sizable intervention in the labor movement. Note that the backbone of executives and party activists from multiple layers employees educated to degree holders. This is a very urban electorate, and it is a party that is set amongst the intellectuals. Until very recently, Synaspismos had an absolute majority in the union of university teachers, in contrast to the KKE who lost his privileged relationship with the intellectual community. As for his leadership, it also bears the imprint of the matrix communist. Despite his youth, Alexis Tsipras itself began to be active in the youth organization of KKE in the early 1990s. Executives and managers often have older underground campaigned together, they experienced the prisons and concentration camps. Therefore, there is an atmosphere of fratricidal war and a culture of deep division within the Greek radical left that is currently maintained unilaterally by the KKE which considers Synaspismos and Syriza are “traitors” and are therefore, the “main enemy”. This is why the KKE refused to meet Syriza in bilateral contacts that Syriza had with almost all the parties represented in parliament, when Syriza was given the mandate to form a government in May in 2012.

PM How do you explain the intransigence of the KKE? Is it due to disagreement about Europe?

SK Differences over Europe does not explain everything. On the European issue, the positions of both parties are actually much closer in recent times because Synaspismos and Syriza have an attitude of more and more critical vis-à-vis the European Union (EU). The KKE has always been a very hostile party vis-à-vis the EU, but right now it does not focus its position on the issue of exit from the EU or the eurozone. What he emphasizes, these are goals that could be called directly anticapitalist, demanding the abolition of capitalism as a solution to the immediate situation. KKE continues a line leftist enough, in terms of its rhetoric, but that can justify an isolationist and sectarian position.

PM How are you qualified Syriza line? Would you say that the coalition also continues a line or anticapitalist it fit his action in a more gradual approach, most reform?

SK Syriza has a clear anti-capitalist line, and is clearly distinguished from social democracy. This is something even more important than in the past important struggles within Synaspismos have opposite currents favor an alliance with the Social Democrats, other currents that were hostile to any agreement or any coalition at any level whatsoever, including local, or even in the labor movement. The wing “social democratic” Synaspismos lost control of the party in 2004 when Alekos Alavanos was elected President. The right wing, led by Fotis Kouvelis, eventually left Synaspismos and formed another party, the Democratic Left (DIMAR) training that is intended intermediate between PASOK and the radical left. Syriza is an anti-capitalist coalition that addresses the issue of power with an emphasis on a dialectic of alliances, conquests and electoral success, and mobilization from below and struggles. Synaspismos and Syriza parties want to control classes, courses that represent specific class interests and parties see themselves as bearers of a fundamental antagonism against the current system. Hence the title “Syriza”: the “coalition of the radical left.” This claim of “radicalism” is an extremely strong party. When the left wing won the majority in 2004, one of the first changes she has made to the party’s constitution was the explicit claim of parentage to the revolutionary movement and the Greek Communist, and the legacy of the Revolution October.

PM What are the power relations in terms activist in Syriza, and how many are there in the training of activists that make up the coalition?

SK Synaspismos includes approximately 16,000 members. The Communist Organization of Greece, Maoist, should be between 1,000 and 1,500 militants and there about the same for Renovating the Communist Left and Ecology. Synaspismos is a party that has evolved in its practices and organizational forms, which follow the trends experienced by his ideological positioning. Traditionally, Synaspismos was a party activist who was little, which contained many “notables” and had an essentially electioneering. There was a considerable change of the substance organizational and activist of the party on two levels. First, a “youth wing” dynamic has developed through the anti-racist and anti-globalization movements. This allowed the party to strengthen its presence among the young layers, especially among students where it was traditionally low. Its youth organization has thousands of members now. These are the executives from the youth who form much of the inner circle of Alexis Tsipras at present. This youth is characterized by a wide ideological radicalism and wants a Marxist affiliations, obedience to Althusser, mostly. Second, trade unionists within Synaspismos asserted themselves from the 2000s, as the anchor of its left wing. Largely following the KKE, the left wing is a more common laborer, who is on positions like class struggle rather traditional and very critical of the EU. These two elements there, and the severance of any initiative of alliance with PASOK, led to a transformation of Synaspismos which allowed to marry and to boost the reconstruction that took place within Syriza. This does not mean that there is currently no more moderate currents within the party, especially around the figurehead for the economy, Yanis Dragasakis, and certain senior Fotis Kouvelis once close who refused to follow him when he left the party. After the elections of May 6, these currents have told their difference, especially by suggesting that there would be no unilateral termination of the Memorandum, so the line of confrontation with the troika. But they had to yield on this fundamental point. It seems obvious in any case that these contradictions will re-emerge if Syriza accesses government responsibilities.

PM You said Syriza had hitherto anchored primarily urban activist and election. Does this trend have been affected by the electoral breakthrough of Syriza parliamentary elections in May 2012 which allowed Syriza to become the second largest party with 16.7% of Greek vote, ahead of PASOK?

Completely ST. It is essential to understand the sociology of voting on May 6, 2012. The qualitative change is that the seismic quantum leap. A party that oscillated between 5 and 6% of the vote in recent years has increased to 16.7% of the vote. Today, the polls crediting more than 20% - some even give him more than 30% of the vote. This happened on May 6 is relatively easy to analyze: it is essentially a class vote. The electorate employee in large urban centers so that the majority voted for PASOK was transferred at once to Syriza. Synaspismos is the largest party in Greater Athens, in which nearly half the Greek population, and in all major urban centers. It reached its highest scores in working class neighborhoods that were popular and the bastions of PASOK, the KKE also. In these electoral districts, the KKE which begins its decline will increase, as indicated by the polls for the election of June There is a transfer of votes to the KKE Syriza. It’s a popular vote, but also a vote of employees educated layers, and is a vote of assets. Syriza is a score equal to its national average among 18-24 year olds, and in 24-30 years. But he made a score higher than his national average in populations that are the heart of the labor force (30 + years). These scores are the lowest among the inactive population in rural areas (including the peasantry), retirees, housewives, professionals and independent. The dynamics of Syriza rests on a voting class of wage labor, including its fringes upper working classes and unemployed urban centers of Greece.

PM How the vote for Syriza is it a vote of the public sector wage system?

SK The electoral sociology indicates that Syriza receives 24% of the votes of salaried public and 22.5% of the wages of private scores to broadly similar, with a slight advantage for public sector employees. But his best scores are in the second district of Piraeus - riding a big industrial and working class - as well as in northern Greece, in the department of Xanthi, in the Turkish-speaking Muslim majority population, in which an MP from Syriza the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority was elected.

PM For the first time in Europe since the postwar period, a party of the radical left has exceeded the polls the party representing the Social Democrats. It is exceeded due to the impressive breakthrough Syriza, but also the collapse of the vote for PASOK. Do you think this excess to be sustainable?

SK Shock therapy was applied to Greece led to the same policy outcomes than in other countries where it has been applied. The old political system has collapsed. Both major parties have been affected: PASOK, but also, to a lesser extent, New Democracy, which has lost 20% of its votes, which is the lowest score for a right-wing party since Greece is as an independent state. In reality, the collapse of PASOK is still qualitatively superior to what the national figures. In large urban centers, PASOK followed at sixth or seventh. In most neighborhoods that were once bastions, it is surpassed by Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi. His score among 18-24 year olds was 2.6%. The bulk of the electorate (13.4% of votes) is comprised of retired and living in rural areas and small towns. Polls on voting intentions in the election on June 17 show that this trend will further increase.

PM can say that today is a PASOK party totally discredited in the eyes of the Greeks ...

SK The party is completely destroyed. It actually contains residues of the old party-state networks. The two parties that have successively held power since the fall of the colonels were mass parties, but party-state, that is to say extremely parties related to the State, and distribution of resources obtained through access to the state apparatus. PASOK and New Democracy had clientelist practices, which were no longer so significant to those of the former to the extent that they were insured by bureaucratic apparatuses, including in the labor movement. New Democracy was indeed a “right People’s Party”, a Volkspartei comparable to the German Christian Democrat who had a relatively substantial wing union.

PM I would reverse the position of Syriza vis-à-vis the membership of Greece in the euro area and even the EU. What does he really on that front?

SK There are two levels of analysis. There is one level, the more apparent: one can first say that the position of Syriza compared to Europe is similar to that of the Left Front, the Left Party or other components of the European Left Party, that is to say an opposition to neoliberal Europe and a call for its transformation from the inside, which involves a break with the founding treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon, and their replacement by new treaties with out neoliberalism. There is a second level of analysis that focuses on the shift in the position of Syriza last few months or few weeks. Syriza is at the heart of his speech the termination of the Memorandum and insists that the first act he will if he manages to form the next government, will be repealed. For Syriza, this is something that is not negotiable, whatever the consequences this may bring. On the one hand Syriza denounces the dilemma between pursuing the Memorandum and the output of the euro led to a return to the drachma. This is the manner in which the Greek media, the major parties and European governments have the situation. Syriza rejects this type of blackmail. Whatever the consequences, Syriza not back down and will reject any prosecution in the state of the Memorandum. Ironically, unlike the law that would slope toward moderation is irresistible when one approaches the power, this position was refined price of heated internal debate in the wake of the May 6 results, as and as Syriza appeared driven by a dynamic electoral majority.

Tsipras presented the roadmap of Syriza extremely clearly. First act: immediate repeal of the Memorandum by statute, which therefore eliminate all application devices of two Memoranda. Act II: request renegotiation of government debt in the European context. If there is a refusal of the EU or if there is a breakdown of the financing of Greece by the ECB, a government Syriza interrupt unilaterally the debt repayment. Implicitly, even if they do not say so publicly, it is likely that the leaders of Syriza know that there would in this case an output of the euro de facto, but they insist on not presenting this as a goal or their own choice. Termination payment will not be immediately announced, but it is a weapon in case of refusal to renegotiate the Memorandum to cancel debt for the most part. If European governments are blocking the goal of Syriza which seeks the cancellation of debt, in part, the idea of ​​a Plan B - that is to say out of the eurozone - will win the field.

Political and electoral success of Syriza be explained precisely by the fact that this party is immediately opposite the Memorandum and shock therapy austéritaire. The party, in a concrete and practical, has been able to invest in social movements and collective actions that have developed in recent years in Greece. Syriza did respecting the autonomy of these movements, including the most spontaneous forms and new mobilizations. It has, for example, supported the movement to occupy places that we saw last spring, while the KKE denounced this movement, saying he was “anti-politics” and dominated by petty bourgeois elements. This is a party that has also worked extensively in the networks of solidarity at the local level to cope with the trauma of the civil crisis and its practical impact in people’s everyday lives. It is also a formation that has sufficient visibility in the institutions appear to be capable of transforming the balance of power at national politics. That said, Syriza only took off in the polls in recent weeks of the campaign. The real take-off was at a time or Tsipras focused his speech on the theme: “A government of leftist anti-austerity now”, making it look like an open offer of alliance with the CPG, the forces of far left of the parliamentary left, and with small groups of dissident PASOK. This is what has literally changed the course of the campaign and refocused its agenda. From there, all political parties had to position themselves in relation to the proposed Syriza, which has emerged as a practical political perspective, at hand, which would put an end to the yoke of the Memorandum and the Troika .

PM This is a very speech unit left ...

SK Absolutely. Syriza is particularly credible to wear this type of proposal because of its practices in the social movement, but also because of its form of political front, and practice of coexistence between different political cultures even within Syriza. To answer your question, I would say that is a party Syriza-hybrid, one-party synthesis, which straddles the tradition that comes from the Greek Communist movement and the new radicalism, as they emerged in the new period.

Alexis Tsipras PM How is it perceived in Greece?

SK The main aspect of the image of Tsipras is his age: he is young. But in the composition of its senior executives and its groups, the radical left in Greece is still dominated by the generation approaching sixty, or has expired and is haloed with the prestige of the struggle against the dictatorship of the colonels. Alekos Alavanos, the former president of Synaspismos, organized the transfer of power to Tsipras to mark a break with this kind of multiple generational marking the Greek radical left. It was a gesture of a great political will. Tsipras is popular because, before being elected head of Synaspismos, he led the party list in municipal elections in Athens. Alexis Tsipras is not exactly a charismatic orator. It’s not a bad speaker, but he certainly has not the effectiveness of a tribune George Galloway or Jean-Luc Melenchon. He also made mistakes, including underestimating the beginning - as much of the radical left - the gravity of the crisis and the issue of public debt as proof of the implementation of austerity policies. It appeared quite overwhelmed. Then he developed a pugnacious style in parliament; opposition to the government of PASOK and Papandreou, in particular. He then improved his profile tribune. Which allowed him to take off, it was his proposal for a unity government of the radical left and all the forces anti-austerity, a few weeks ago. It has changed the picture, yesterday dominant in Greek society, a radical left seen as a force worthy, honest, useful in social movements, but that does not seek to assume the task of history to offer a way to the crisis. This is a considerable upheaval for radical left still traumatized by the defeat of communism of the last century. It now wants to break with a posture of eternal minority, one that refers to a force dedicated to doing only the “resistance”.

PM There is currently no relationship between PASOK and Syriza ...

SK Apart from Greece, one can hardly imagine the gulf between PASOK, not only the radical left, but also of Greek society. Since the 1990s for the KKE and since the mid 2000s to Syriza, there is no alliance is possible or desirable between PASOK and the rest of the radical left, at any level whatsoever.

PM If there is such a cordon sanitaire around the PASOK is that this party is no longer considered a leftist party by the other formations of the Greek left ...

SK There is a specific language that must have in mind. Until 1974, there was no socialist party in Greece. In the Greek political lexicon, when a Greek said, “I am left,” he means “I am left of PASOK”. Moreover, PASOK never viewed as a leftist party in the Greek sense of the term. The left in Greece refers to the communist tradition, in the broadest sense. This excludes social democracy like PASOK.

Bloomsbury, London, May 22, 2012.