Slavoj Žižek, Alexis Tsipras and Oliver Stone on Subversive Festival 2013 in Zagreb. Wikicommons/Robert Crc.Some rights reservedOn September 20, in spite of the low (and perfectly
understandable) low voter turnout, Alexis Tsipras secured another victory by a
relatively large majority, following which he announced his plans for a SYRIZA-ANEL
coalition 2.0. Unlike the first time round, though, he will do so with the
support of a much more united (for now) party, since the anti-euro leftist
minority has broken away from the party to form Popular Unity, which failed to
win a single seat in parliament.
SYRIZA’s victory is, of course, great news: the
survival of the only leftist and anti-neoliberal government on the continent is
a hugely important event, in light of the European political-financial
oligarchy’s numerous attempts to topple it, including a brutal strategy of financial
asphyxiation for which the ECB will one day have to answer (both legally and
politically). That said, there’s no sense in denying that this is also a bitter
victory: we all know that the government’s manoeuvring room is severely limited
by the third Memorandum of Understanding’s (MoU) numerous red lines.
These elections took place in what is effectively a
regime of ‘limited sovereignty’ – a condition that to a lesser degree applies
to all EMU countries, meaning that the issue at stake was not the continuation
or otherwise of austerity (as SYRIZA, somewhat naïvely, framed it in the
January elections), but simply the methods of administration and distribution
across society of the austerity measures. At the same time, it would be absurd
(and rather infantile in Lenin’s sense of the word) to draw the conclusion from
this – as many on the European left have done in recent weeks – that the elections
were meaningless, that it made no difference whether SYRIZA or the country’s
conservative right came to power, since ‘Greece’s fate is already written
elsewhere’ (meaning Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin).
Firstly, it would be naïve to assume that Greece’s
fate is really carved in stone in the pages of the MoU. The Memorandum – like
every political agreement – is only as strong as the political-economic status
quo that sustains it. If the status quo were to change, the MoU’s legitimacy
would change accordingly. Need I remind all those who imply a kind of
Fukuyama-esque ‘end of history’ scenario for Greece and for Europe that these dramatic
events are part of a wider historical process,
in which there are no easy shortcuts (‘exit, devalue, live happily every
after’), for which the ending has yet to be written? A process in which we are
– could/should be – all active participants, not merely spectators?
Secondly, because there
is some room for manoeuver, albeit very limited. During the negotiations
with the troika, Tsipras (along with Varoufakis, in the first stages of the
negotiation) fought unwaveringly to obtain a redistribution of the burden of
austerity from the lower-middle classes to the upper classes. Sure, the troika
met few, if any, of his demands, but – unlike the PASOK-New Democracy comprador
duopoly – he fought, and we can
expect him to keep fighting throughout this second term.
This is not to suggest in any way that, in the current
European context, one can entertain the dangerous notion of a ‘left-wing
austerity’ in contrast to the establishment’s ‘right-wing austerity’: the logic
of the MoU is macroeconomically unsustainable and destined to fail in the
medium run, as Tsipras is undoubtedly well aware. This has to be stated in the
clearest possible terms. At the same time, it would be intellectually dishonest
to argue that, in the short term, there is simply no way of mitigating the
suffering of the weakest strata of the Greek population even within the framework of the Memorandum. This is simply not
true. In other words, it makes a big difference whether the Memorandum is
implemented by SYRIZA or by New Democracy. A point of which the Greeks – more
so than those on the non-Greek left, apparently – seem to be well aware.
Need I remind the swelling ranks of armchair revolutionaries
that Tsipras’ government fought an incredibly fierce and brutal battle against some
of the most powerful states and institutions in the world, utterly isolated – European
social democracy looked the other way, where it did not actively oppose the Greek
government, while social movements were unable to influence the proceedings in
any meaningful way – and in conditions of mind-boggling political and
psychological pressure (The Guardian wrote that during
the 26-hour-long European Council of July 12, Tsipras
was subjected to ‘mental waterboarding’ in closed-door meetings with Angela
Merkel, Donald Tusk and Francois Hollande). Despite this, the Greek prime
minister kept his nerves, dignity and determination, obtaining the most that a
government of a small, weak (albeit proud) nation, elected on the basis of a
very moderate social-democratic platform, could obtain via diplomatic means, in
light of the historical circumstances (i.e., the level of class struggle in
Greece and, more importantly, the brutal power relations on which the current European
order rests). In other words, whatever SYRIZA’s failings may be, they reflect
the failings of the entire European left, of each and every one of us.
Does this means that there was no alternative to a
third Memorandum? No, but we should be clear about the fact that the only
possible alternative was a Greek exit from the eurozone (the argument that
there existed a ‘third way’ in which Greece remained in the EMU while issuing a
parallel currency is very weak, at best). In the end, though, Tsipras ruled out
a return to the drachma. Was it a mistake, as many on the left – including many
of Tsipras’ former comrades – argue? I beg to differ. The point is not that
Tsipras didn’t have the mandate to take Greece out of the euro (which he didn’t),
nor that countries should cling to the euro at all costs (God forbid). The
point is that, given the circumstances, none
of the conditions that would have been necessary to mitigate the otherwise
disastrous effects of an exit were present, neither at the national level –
lack of a level of mobilisation and radicalisation of the workforce and general
population capable of sustaining the necessarily-traumatic-at-first
consequences of an exit, the chasm between SYRIZA’s electoral success and its grassroots
support, the weakness of the Greek productive fabric, the country’s chronic
current account deficit, etc. – nor at the international level, with neither China,
Russia or the United States showing a willingness to offer the country
financial support.
Tsipras admitted his defeat in the face of the troika,
acknowledging that the terms of the new Memorandum are very harsh, but also correctly
noted that the alternative – solitary exit from the EMU or, even worse,
expulsion at the hands of Schäuble – would have been far worse. The point, as Italian
political scientist Michele Nobile writes, is that ‘the limits of
the Tsipras government are the limits of the current state of class struggle,
not only in Greece but in all of Europe’.
But the responsibility of shifting the balance of
power in Greece and in Europe – between classes as well as between countries –
cannot rest solely on the shoulders of Tsipras, as the angry calls for Grexit
coming from all quarters of the European left seem to imply. As the Greek writer Alex Andreou commented: ‘It
is revealing of the political landscape in Europe – indeed, the world – that
everyone’s dreams of socialism seemed to rest on the shoulders of the young
prime minister of a small country. There seemed to be a fervent, irrational,
almost evangelical belief that a tiny country, drowning in debt, gasping for
liquidity, would somehow (and that somehow is never specified) defeat global
capitalism, armed only with sticks and rocks’. Indeed.
Especially when we take into account – as Nobile points
out – that the problem of the balance of power in Europe is further
complicated by another issue: ‘on the one side, the post-democratic regression
of national political regimes; on the other, the institutional design of the European
Union and monetary union, which constitutionalises post-democracy at a much
higher level. This faces us with an unprecedented situation, which doubles the
challenges posed by a leftist electoral victory: it is not simply the struggle
against the national apparatus of the capitalist state that one has to take
into account but also that against a higher-level apparatus, which incorporates
the lower level in a supranational or inter-state system’.
To which I would add that this ‘supranational or
inter-state system’ extends its reach well beyond the boundaries of the EU/EMU.
To believe that exit from the EU, EMU or both is sufficient to escape the fury
of the European and international predatory oligarchy would be to seriously
delude oneself. For the establishment, it is crucial to prove that no
alternative to neoliberalism can exist neither
within nor without the eurozone.
To conclude, I think we should all be grateful to
SYRIZA for kick-starting a new political cycle in Europe (evident also in
Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party in the UK), but we should
also be aware that there is only so much that SYRIZA can do alone. It is only
by means of a resolute pan-European class struggle, fought at both the
grassroots and institutional/governmental level and coordinated at the continental
level – the same level at which capital operates –, that we have any hope of overturning
the current economic paradigm. Today more than ever it is crucial to understand
that the challenges posed by the crisis
and by post-democracy cannot be solved within the boundaries of individual
member states (inside or outside the euro); they necessarily have to be
addressed in the context of a transnational transformative framework (inside or
outside the euro). Anything less than that is almost invariably bound to
fail.
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