I.

Jan­u­ary 25^th marks a his­toric turn­ing point in recent Greek his­tory. After five years of dev­as­tat­ing aus­ter­ity, a social cri­sis with­out prece­dent in Europe, and a series of strug­gles that at some points, espe­cially in 2010-2012, took an almost insurrectionary form, there has been a major polit­i­cal break. The par­ties that were responsi­ble for putting Greek soci­ety under the dis­ci­pli­nary super­vi­sion of the so-called Troika (EU-ECB-IMF) suf­fered a humil­i­at­ing defeat. PASOK, which in 2009 won almost 44% of the vote, now received only 4.68%; and the splin­ter party of Giorgos Papan­dreou, the PASOK Prime Min­is­ter who ini­ti­ated the aus­ter­ity programs, got 2.46%. New Democ­racy came in at 27.81%, almost 9% below SYRIZA. The elec­toral rise of the fas­cists of Golden Dawn has been halted, although they still main­tain a wor­ry­ing 6% of the vote. Another pro-austerity party, the RIVER, rep­re­sent­ing the neolib­eral agenda (although nom­i­nally com­ing from the center-left) took only 6.05%, despite inten­sive media hype.

In a cer­tain man­ner this has been the elec­toral revenge of a soci­ety that has suffered, and strug­gled against those respon­si­ble for this suf­fer­ing. We should not for­get that Greece saw offi­cial unem­ploy­ment ris­ing up to 27% – and youth unemploy­ment up to 50% – suf­fered a cumu­la­tive con­trac­tion of almost 25%, saw a mas­sive reduc­tion in wages and pen­sions, and wit­nessed the pas­sage of mas­sive leg­is­la­tion ori­ented towards pri­va­ti­za­tions, labor mar­ket lib­er­al­iza­tion, and neolib­eral uni­ver­sity reform.

II.

SYRIZA won an impor­tant elec­toral vic­tory, with 36.34% of the vote and 149 deputies (it needed only two more to have an absolute par­lia­men­tary major­ity). Sym­bol­i­cally, this is a his­toric vic­tory. For the first time in mod­ern Euro­pean his­tory, a party of the non-social-democratic Left will form a gov­ern­ment. In a coun­try where the Left suffered per­se­cu­tion for a great part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, the image of a Prime Min­is­ter whose first act after tak­ing the oath of office was to visit the place where 200 com­mu­nists were exe­cuted on May 1, 1944 seems like the sym­bolic vin­di­ca­tion of a whole his­tory of strug­gles. This polit­i­cal turn to the Left is the result of the tec­tonic changes in polit­i­cal and elec­toral rela­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tion induced not only by the eco­nomic and social cri­sis, but also the long cycle of strug­gles against aus­ter­ity that acted as a cat­a­lyst for new rad­i­cal polit­i­cal iden­ti­ties and new forms of belong­ing. As such, it sends an impor­tant mes­sage of change and resis­tance to the whole of Europe and has already become a source of inspi­ra­tion, some­thing evi­dent in the enthu­si­as­tic reac­tion from the rest of the Euro­pean Left.

III.

Dur­ing the cam­paign the “real­ist” and right-wing turn of the lead­er­ship of SYRIZA became much more evi­dent. The SYRIZA lead­er­ship has aban­doned the demand for an imme­di­ate abro­ga­tion of the mem­o­ran­dum (the con­di­tions attached to the loan agree­ments), which was the main thrust of the 2012 cam­paign. It has moved away from the “no sac­ri­fice for the euro” posi­tion. The nation­al­iza­tion of the bank­ing sys­tem is no longer one of the imme­di­ate demands. The main pro­gram­matic posi­tion of SYRIZA is an attempt to put an end to aus­ter­ity while remain­ing within the insti­tutional, mon­e­tary, and finan­cial frame­work of the Euro­zone and the EU. They have insisted on their abil­ity to nego­ti­ate a restruc­tur­ing and pos­si­ble reduc­tion of the Greek debt with our cred­i­tors, namely the EU and the IMF. At the same time, they have pointed towards using against aus­ter­ity the Euro­pean ver­sion of “quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing” that the ECB has just ini­ti­ated. More­over, they have insisted on the pos­si­bil­ity of a change in the direc­tion of the EU based upon the rise of left­ist move­ments in South­ern Europe or in Ire­land, and the diver­gences between the Ger­man gov­ernment and the ECB or between Angela Merkel and Mat­teo Renzi. The main thrust of SYRIZA’s poli­cies, once in office, will be, accord­ing to their pre-election dec­la­ra­tions, the cre­ation of some­thing like a social safety net by rais­ing the min­i­mum wage back to 751 euros, rein­stat­ing basic rights to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, revers­ing suspensions of pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees, offer­ing imme­di­ate assis­tance to 300,000 fam­i­lies below the poverty thresh­old, cre­at­ing jobs, and increas­ing pen­sions. There is no deny­ing that these are urgently needed measures.

How­ever, in the cur­rent bal­ance of forces in the EU, even such a mild loos­en­ing of aus­ter­ity might not be pos­si­ble. It is not that such a break with aus­ter­ity is not finan­cially pos­si­ble; rather, the rea­son is that the deep cri­sis of the Euro­zone, as a result mainly of the embed­ded and insti­tu­tion­al­ized neolib­er­al­ism of “Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion,” causes the Euro­pean rul­ing class to be fear­ful of any­thing that might seem like a “par­a­digm change.” This is espe­cially true if we take the debt cri­sis in Italy and the increased French deficits into con­sid­er­a­tion. So it is more prob­a­ble that dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions the EU side will try to push for the con­tin­u­a­tion of some form of aus­ter­ity policies, so as to send the mes­sage that no one can escape the norm. We should not for­get that Greece is still depen­dent upon EU fund­ing and ECB liq­uid­ity, and the new gov­ern­ment will face a sit­u­a­tion of empty state cof­fers and press­ing spend­ing needs. Deal­ing with these urgent needs, while at the same time fac­ing the pres­sures from the EU, is going to be one of the first chal­lenges the new gov­ern­ment will have to deal with. More­over, we should not for­get that as part of the aus­ter­ity pro­grams, the finan­cial life­line offered to Greece was depen­dent not only upon fis­cal tar­gets, such as pri­mary bud­get sur­pluses (them­selves a form of aus­ter­ity), but also upon imple­ment­ing neolib­eral leg­is­la­tion and reforms. And they will try to apply the same pres­sure against some lim­ited form of debt relief. In the words of the Finan­cial Times [1], “none of Mr Tsipras’s pro­pos­als for debt relief will get a sym­pa­thetic hear­ing unless he promises to con­tinue deep-seated reforms of Greece’s econ­omy and the pub­lic administration.”

IV.

In light of the above chal­lenges, the neces­sity of a break with debt, the euro, and the EU treaties acquires a new urgency. It is obvi­ous that only a stop­page or mora­to­rium on debt pay­ments and a process of debt write-off can offer the Greek gov­ern­ment the abil­ity to increase pub­lic spend­ing in order to start revers­ing the con­se­quences of aus­ter­ity. It is also obvi­ous that only through repeal­ing the bulk of neolib­eral reforms imposed upon Greece in the past years will it be pos­si­ble to have some more progres­sive poli­cies. Such a process will inevitably lead to the con­fronta­tion with the whole super­vi­sory mech­a­nism of the EU and the pro­vi­sions inscribed in the Euro­zone frame­work. In this sense, the break with the euro, and thus a return to mon­e­tary sov­er­eignty, remains an urgent neces­sity – the start­ing point for any truly pro­gres­sive politics.

V.

More­over, it is obvi­ous that what peo­ple strug­gled for in the past years was much more than a “social safety net.” Rever­sal of the social dis­as­ter caused by aus­ter­ity is, of course, the first and nec­es­sary step. How­ever, the deep social and polit­i­cal cri­sis in Greece, as a “cathar­tic” moment, also offers the pos­si­bil­ity for a dif­fer­ent social and polit­i­cal road away from neolib­er­al­ism and debt-driven con­sumerism. This means that the exit from aus­ter­ity should not be seen sim­ply as a return to “growth” but as the begin­ning of a process of exper­i­men­ta­tion with an alter­na­tive devel­op­men­tal para­digm, based upon self-management, new forms of demo­c­ra­tic par­tic­i­pa­tory planning, and the ben­e­fit of the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence and inge­nu­ity of the peo­ple in struggle.

VI.

Lack­ing the nec­es­sary par­lia­men­tary major­ity, SYRIZA has formed a gov­ern­ment with the Inde­pen­dent Greeks party (ANEL). The Inde­pen­dent Greeks are a pecu­liar hybrid of pop­ulism and tra­di­tional right-wing val­ues, with ties to seg­ments of the Greek busi­ness class and the Greek Church. They have been anti-austerity ever since they split away from New Democ­racy. The SYRIZA lead­er­ship had indi­cated that they might form a gov­ern­ment with the Inde­pen­dent Greeks rather early, even though they would have pre­ferred a full major­ity. This was part of a change in polit­i­cal rhetoric from the “left gov­ern­ment” posi­tion, to that of an anti-austerity “gov­ern­ment of social res­cue around SYRIZA.” More­over, Panos Kam­menos, the leader of the Indepen­dent Greeks, and the new Min­is­ter of Defense, cam­paigned to with the slogan: “put me into par­lia­ment so that I can con­trol SYRIZA from becom­ing too leftist.”

At the same time, it should be stressed that there was never a dis­cus­sion of an alliance with the Com­mu­nist Party (KKE), because such an alliance would have meant the pos­si­bil­ity of a rad­i­cal anti-EU coali­tion. This is some­thing that both SYRIZA and KKE do not want: SYRIZA because of their pro-EU, pro-euro posi­tion; KKE because of their sec­tar­ian defeatism and their refusal to see any pos­si­bil­ity of change. In terms of eco­nom­ics, it will be pos­si­ble to strike a bal­ance within the new gov­ern­ment. In fact, one might say that in cer­tain aspects the Inde­pen­dent Greeks are more “pop­ulist” than the SYRIZA lead­er­ship. Inde­pen­dent Greeks are not anti-EU or anti-euro; con­se­quently, there will be no diver­gences on that front either. Regard­ing rights (for exam­ple, LGBTQ rights), rela­tion to the Church, immi­gra­tion pol­icy, etc., there might be some ten­sions, but over­all – and tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the “real­ist” turn of the SYRIZA lead­er­ship – it seems as if the coali­tion will work, at least at first. It also helps the attempt of the SYRIZA lead­er­ship to present the new gov­ern­ment, both domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally, as a national anti-austerity coali­tion, not just as a gov­ern­ment of the Left.

VII.

Regard­ing other ten­den­cies of the Left, it should be stressed that the Com­mu­nist Party had a small increase in votes (5.47% up from 4.5% in June 2012). Dur­ing the cam­paign it main­tained a rather sec­tar­ian tone, depict­ing SYRIZA as a sys­temic alter­na­tive and pre­sent­ing the strength­en­ing of the Party as the only way out. However, the char­ac­ter­is­tic trait of the KKE’s polit­i­cal line has been its insis­tence that unless “oppor­tunism” is defeated there can be no process of social change. This rather defeatist posi­tion is the basis of the party’s sec­tar­ian tac­tics. The rad­i­cal anti-EU Left, rep­re­sented by ANTARSYA-MARS, did bet­ter than in 2012 (0.64% up from 0.33% in June 2012), but came under heavy pres­sure within a heav­ily polar­ized elec­tion. Despite its attempt to cam­paign as the nec­es­sary non-sectarian Left opposi­tion to the right-wing turn of SYRIZA, it did not man­age to have an elec­toral result that could match its appeal within the social movements.

VIII.

The period ahead of us presents impor­tant chal­lenges, espe­cially for the rad­i­cal Left. The first chal­lenge is to rebuild the move­ment in the deep­est sense. The polit­i­cal change and the new sense of opti­mism of the sub­al­tern classes must also be transformed into a new surge of strug­gles. This is required to put the nec­es­sary pressure upon the SYRIZA gov­ern­ment to honor its promises and to actu­ally improve the social sit­u­a­tion – from mak­ing sure that laid-off pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees get their jobs back and ERT (the pub­lic broad­cast net­work) is reopened, to the strug­gle for the repeal of neolib­eral reforms, strong social move­ments and mobi­liza­tions are more than nec­es­sary. This will restore the con­fi­dence of peo­ple in their abil­ity to change their lives and thus demand more rad­i­cal poli­cies, a nec­es­sary coun­ter­weight to pres­sure and black­mail from inter­na­tional organizations.

With­out a soci­ety engaged in strug­gle, that is, a soci­ety engaged in col­lec­tive practices of resis­tance and trans­for­ma­tion, no process of social change can be initiated. This impres­sive cycle of strug­gles in the past years was the cat­a­lyst for the elec­toral shifts and the turn of the elec­torate to the Left. In a cer­tain sense, the electoral results have also been polit­i­cal trans­la­tions of dynam­ics of protest and contes­ta­tion. In the cur­rent con­junc­ture, we need a resur­gence of the move­ment, a resurgence in terms of strug­gle but also aspi­ra­tion – a nec­es­sary sur­plus of social force both as pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment, as coun­ter­weight to the black­mail from the EU, but also as the cat­a­lyst for new forms of radicalization.

IX.

Finally, the debate on strat­egy must con­tinue. The chal­lenge ahead of us is not simply to have some form of pro­gres­sive gov­er­nance within the for­bid­ding constraints imposed by the EU and the Euro­zone. The chal­lenge is to artic­u­late a new dialec­tic of imme­di­ate demands and rad­i­cal changes, not only in the sense of the nec­es­sary break with the debt bur­den and the euro, but also – and mainly – of the ways to exper­i­ment with new social con­fig­u­ra­tions. For ANTARSYA and the broader Greek rad­i­cal anti-EU Left, the chal­lenge is not sim­ply – and not mainly – to be a “Left oppo­si­tion” to SYRIZA, how­ever use­ful this might be in a polit­i­cal landscape where all oppo­si­tion to SYRIZA will come from the Right. The chal­lenge is how to elab­o­rate a left alter­na­tive, a strat­egy of rup­tures and breaks (with the embedded neolib­er­al­ism of the euro, debt, etc); this is exactly the kind of alter­na­tive that will be urgently needed when the strat­egy of SYRIZA hits the wall of EU blackmail and the counter-attacks of the forces of capital.

X.

We have entered a new his­tor­i­cal phase. We have the pos­si­bil­ity of col­lec­tively writ­ing a new page in his­tory. Greece has been the test­ing ground for the most aggres­sive neolib­eral exper­i­ment since Pinochet’s Chile. We still have the poten­tial to transform it into a lab­o­ra­tory of hope! This demands con­fi­dence in the poten­tial inscribed in pop­u­lar strug­gles and an abil­ity to think beyond the dom­i­nant frames of think­ing. But isn’t this the essence of rad­i­cal pol­i­tics? The real chal­lenge now is for the peo­ple to sus­tain their hope – the hope of peo­ple actu­ally chang­ing their lives.

Panagiotis Sotiris