Last week’s proposals by the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras already were a form of kowtowing. Certainly if they are compared (a) to the original election promises, with which Syriza gained the support of 36 % of voters and (b) to the result of the referendum, when 61% percent of Greeks pronounced themselves as opposed to the austerity plans of the Trojka.

In fact, these newest proposals of the Tsipras government were not really that new at all. The ’gains’ of the new austerity were somewhat better calculated, in the hope of convincing the overlords of the Trojka to agree. The proposed austerity measures were also somewhat more equitably distributed, so as to let ’strong shouders share part of the burden’. In this way shipowners and the military would also be expcted to pay up, all be it slightly.

Furthermore Athenes hoped for a (modest) reshuffling of debt, through the spreading of intrest and capital payments over a period of 5 years in stead of over some months. Eventually, it was hoped that this would lead to a third bailout program worth 53,5 billion euros. Thanks to which Greece would be permitted to stay on in the Eurozone.

Coup

For the overloards of EU-despotism, this amounted too a nice try, but not good enough. So they put forward new and even more stringent proposals. In exchange for renewed support for the Greek banks and for a vague promise to open up negotiations for a new bailout program, the Greeks have to put their crown juwelry into a new kind of Treuhand-holding [1], which will then proceed to sell them. The IMF, with its structural adjustment programs, will stay on in Greece in perpetuity.

VAT will rise, with 23% as the new norm. Automatic austerity measures will start to function, if targetted budget surplusses do not materialize. The Greek state must drop its guarantee of the (mostly bankrupt) pensionfunds, which means the payment of even meagre pensions will not be certain anymore. The Trojka will oversee and control the way austerity is implimented in the Greek state apparatus. Laws, already voted to lighten the humanitarian crisis, will have to be reviewed in order to ’safeguard’ the goals of austerity. Labour relations will have to be made more flexible as collective bargaining must remain limited.

Greek ’democracy’ is supposed to agree to all this and more in a mere three days. Without grumbling, without protest, without adjustment, without debate. The Greek people – of which 61% spoke up against further austerity – are supposed to accept meekly the shredding of their country and future. The Troika pronounces this “a deal”, “a compromise” and even “a win-win situation”. It is nothing of the sort. It is a blatant coup d’état!

Contradictions

We should not be surprised by all this. However much the election promises of Syriza were clear in their rejection of onesided and economically ineffectual austerity by the Trojka of Eurozone, IMF and European Central Bank, the government of Alexis Tsipras was also very clear in expressing its whish to stay in the European Union and in the Eurozone. Those who were not asleep, could surmize already then that such a policy is inherently contradictory: he who wishes to remain in the eurozone, will have to accept undergoing neoliberal austerity. He who hopes to reform the despotic EU will come out bitterly disappointed – as has been shown once again.

A lesser evel?

This contradiction in Syriza’s official position is not just a painful mistake, nor merely a regrettable misstep. It is their political line; a conscious approach going on for months – since the formation of the Tsipras government. Various left groups and their spokespersons (inside and outside of Syriza) have repeatedly pointed out that this political line leads in effect to the sacrifising of their proper program on the altar of neoliberal rules for the Eurozone.

One can argue wether a different approach would have been possible. Indeed, nobody has ever promised that such a different approach would be easy – anticapitalist struggles never are easy! Denying that this polical line leads to the kowtowing of last week and to the capitulation of today or even maintaining that this all actually is a victory (camouflaged by mainstream media) is simply ridiculous. If it were not, it would mean that there is nothing else to do then to follow the politics of socalled ’lesser evil’. Which is the policy of social democracy, that leads us from defeat to defeat.

Eurocommunism

This political line is and remains the approach of the (for now) dominant wing of Syriza. In doing so they embody an older political tradition in the Left: that of Eurocommunism. This tradition is focused upon not giving any arguments to imperialist opponents (the US, Germany, Great Britain and France), in order to prevent any (even a disguised) intervention in domestic affairs. In other words, Eurocommunists want to ’reform the system’ very, very, very slowly. In that way, they hope to avoid a debacle like that of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular in the Chile of 1973.

People’s Front

Another aspect of Eurocommunist tradition entails the need for national unity, through some kind of ’people’s front’, between the left party and its bourgeois competitors. In other words a ’historical compromise’ (in the phrase of the late Italian communist leader Enrico Berlinguer. It is in this way Eurocommunist politicians view themselves as creators of a ’hegemonic bloque’, proposed by Antonio Gramsci.

That is exactly what Alexis Tsipras did in the immediate aftermath of the victory of the No-camp in the referendum: to conclude an agreement with the opposition parties of PASOK, Nea Demokratia and To Potami. It is another irony of history that the stalinist KKE refused to sign on, while this party is part and parcel of the stalinist current which defined and strove for such people’s fronts in the 1930’s of the last century.

Different forces within Syriza (and also within ANEL, the nationalist coalition partner of Syriza) are resisting Tsipras’ kowtowing as well as the newest Diktat of the Trojka. Their dissidence will probably lead Tsipras to form a new coalition with the former Memoranda-parties PASOK and Nea Demokratia as well as with To Potami. In doing so, Tsipras will be joining them in stead of the other way round.

France in the 1930’s

The big question reamins wether the Greek popular masses will assent (with or without trepidation) to the proposed new plans for austerity and destruction. In that respect, it might be useful to take a look at what happened in France in the 1930’s, when the government of the Front Populaire (of social democrats, communists and bourgeois radicals) was in power. That government was doing its utmost not to provoke the tried and tested ruling order. It’s program did not meet in the slightest manner the aspirations of working people. Yet the working masses were not to be pacified. They unchained one of the biggest strike movements in France’s history. In doing so they were able to achieve the conquest of payed vacation and enormous rises in pensions and unemployment benefits as well.

Polarisation

Besides the refusal of some parliamentarians of Syriza to stand by the kowtowing and capitulation of Tsipras and company, there will undoubtedly also be shifts within the Greek popular masses. On the one hand, shifts to the left, beneficial to the Left Platform within Syriza, to the radical anticapitalists of Antarsya and to the stalinists of the KKE. On the other hand, the facists of Golden Dawn will also benefit, regrettably. Ongoing polarisation will be on the order of the day.

Solidarity!

Today the possesing classes are nurturing their victories. On the right and on the false left, they are applauding. We do not. For us it is important not to despair. On the contrary, we should prepare calmly for the ongoing cross border struggles against austerity. No one can predict the final outcome of those struggles. Yet wage them we must!

What today is clear above all else is the need of the Greek popular masses for our international solidarity. We keep our demands raised high: Down with the austerity policies of the Trojka! Annulation of the debts! Nationalise the banks!

Peter Veltmans