Showing posts with label Syriza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syriza. Show all posts
Give Greece a chance … By Felipe Van Keirsbilck (Alter Summit)
|
|
|
/Syriza-and-Podemos-are-a-reaction-against-the-neoliberal-assault-strangling-peripheral-countries
Interview of Noam Chomsky to Miguel Mora It has been snowing in Boston and the mercury is down at -15ºC; the buses aren’t running and cars skid. At 11am on the dot, Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, the 86-year-old linguist and philosopher, is at his post, giving an interview to a French journalist in his office at the MIT Department of Linguistics.
We are inside the legendary Stata Center, built by Frank Gehry in steel and brick. The Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences faculty is packed with students, an overwhelming number of whom are Asians. Tucked in next to a lift on the eighth floor, Chomsky’s lair smells of freshly made coffee, a sense of calm and camaraderie.
Next door to Chomsky’s office is that of the nonagenarian Morris Halle, a diminutive bearded man with a glint in his eye, crumbs down his jacket and the look of someone who has shared vodka and revolutions with Bakunin. The New Yorker has compared the pair of linguists to Dante and Virgil, or Sherlock Holmes and Watson.
It was Halle, an illustrious linguist, who brought Chomsky to the MIT in 1955, when no one else dared to hire the brilliant and angry young Jew, fresh from his Harvard doctorate. In 1968 the two joined forces to write the most important book in the history of linguistics, The Sound Pattern of English, which did for phonology –the study of the sound of words- what Chomsky had already done –at the age of 29- for syntax: converting it into a science.
Another key character in Chomsky’s life is his secretary, Bev Stohl, a charming woman who jokingly says of her venerable maestros in an aside: “They’re they are; over 200 years between them”. Chomsky’s spacious and light office, lined with books on anarchy, war, history and linguistics, is dominated by two large photographs of Bertrand Russell, an idol and guide to the atheist and pacifistic thinker. Chomsky receives his second interviewer of the day with a welcoming smile. It is soon clear that he has lost some of his energy and hearing, and his voice is faint. But listening to him is still quite an experience; having embraced all the just and lost causes there are, the conscience of Yankee imperialism is still an incurable Quixote and a shrewd analyst. He retains a prodigious memory for dates, facts, books and speeches, while not once losing his train of thought. His mind remains clear, agile and powerful.
As well as teaching, writing articles and attending to his students, Chomsky is still a guest speaker at conferences – “my diary is full through 2016”, he says – and he replies in person to the dozens of messages and letters he receives every day. According to his secretary, “the man never says no; he just doesn’t know how”. The ultimate proof of this comes after the 45 minutes of the interview have elapsed, when this journalist asks him to be honorary president of CTXT’s editorial board. Chomsky answers: “Well, I don’t join boards… But if it’s honorary, I could!”
You look cheerful. Do you still find reasons to be optimistic?
Well, there are a few. Although there is no lack of reasons to be pessimistic. Humans have to make a decision, and not in the long term, as to whether to survive or just abandon their two huge and imminent threats: one is environmental catastrophes; the other is nuclear war. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has been the main monitor of strategic and nuclear issues for many years, has a famous doomsday clock. They determine how far the minute hand should be from midnight. Now they just moved it two minutes closer, so it is now three minutes to midnight. That’s the closest it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The threat of nuclear war is increasing; it’s always been significant and it’s kind of a miracle that we have escaped it if you look at the record. The United States, for example, now devotes about a trillion dollars to the modernization and upgrading of nuclear weapons. The Non-proliferation Treaty, if anybody cares, commits us to eliminating them, to show good faith in our efforts to eliminate them. Russia is doing something similar, and others are doing the same, including smaller powers.
But hardly anybody talks about this.
Nobody is talking much about that, except strategic analysts, economic experts and others who are concerned about these things. But there are very serious threats. One is the conflict in Ukraine. One hopes that the powers will back away, but it’s far from guaranteed; we know they’ve come close before. Just to take one example, in the early 1980s the Reagan Administration decided to probe Russian defenses. So they simulated air and naval attacks against Russia, including nuclear weapons. They didn’t tell the Russians what they were doing because they wanted to provoke a real alert, not a simulation. It was a moment of extreme tension. Reagan had just announced strategic defense initiatives, like Star Wars, which analysts on all sides understood to be a first-strike weapon. If it ever works, it wouldn’t be a missile defense, but rather a protection for a first strike. As Russian archives have been released, US intelligence now recognizes that the threat was extremely severe. In fact, one intelligence analysis that just appeared recently said that we came close to war.
So it’s pure luck that we’re still here.
I’m going back to your first question… Optimism? It’s always the same story. Always, no matter how you evaluate what’s happening in the world, you, basically, have two choices: you can decide to be pessimistic and say there’s no hope and abandon all efforts – in which case you contribute to ensuring that the worst will happen; or you can grasp whatever hopes there are - and they’re always there - and try to do what you can. And maybe you’ll be able to avert disaster, or even go a little way toward a better world.
You revolutionized linguistics when you were 29 years old and then you tried to change the world. And you’re still trying. I imagine the second task has been much harder than the first. Has it been worth it?
Changing linguistics is pretty hard. Linguistics includes a bit of science and aspects of contemporary philosophy… I think I have been on the right side of things, even though I’m part of a small minority.
Would you say the overall result has been positive?
There have been successes, not just mine, but thanks to popular opposition to violence, aggression and inequality. If you take the Civil Rights Movement in the US – in which I was not a leading figure but I was involved like many others – it achieved certain significant goals, but by no means all of those that were contemplated. Take, say, Martin Luther King: if you listen to the official rhetoric, his fight stops in 1963 with his famous I have a dream speech leading down to the Civil Rights legislation, which did significantly improve voting rights and other rights in the South. But King didn’t stop at that point. He went on to try to address Northern racism and to create a movement for the poor, not just blacks, but the poor in general. He was assassinated in Memphis (Tennessee) when he was there to support a strike of public workers. His wife, his widow, led the march through the South, through all the places where the confrontations had been, got to Washington and they sat up a tent city, Resurrection City. The Congress of that time was the most liberal in history. They allowed it to stay there for a while, but then they sent the police in in the middle of the night and smashed it up and threw everybody out of town. That was the end of the movement to deal with poverty.
Europe is now immersed in its darkest chapter of the past 50 years.
There have been significant gains but they come up against a barrier. And that barrier then got much worse with the initiation of this massive neoliberal assault against the world’s population, which began in the late 1970s and took off under Reagan and Thatcher. Now Europe is one of the worst victims with these economically crazy policies of austerity under recession. Even the IMF says that makes no sense. But it makes sense from another point of view: they are undermining the Welfare State; they are weakening labor; they are increasing the power of the wealthy and the privileged. So you can see in their failure there is a success that happens to be destroying societies. But that’s kind of the footnote that you disregard when you are sitting in the offices of the Bundesbank.
Society have started to react to this situation. Do you think change is possible?
There is now a resistance to the neoliberal attack, a very significant one in fact. The most important is actually in South America, which is dramatic. I mean, for 500 years, South America had been pretty much under the domination of Western imperial powers, most recently the US. But in the last 10 or 15 years it has begun to break out of that. That’s an event with stark significance. Latin America was one of the most loyal adherents to the Washington consensus and the official rules.
The backyard…
But Latin Americans have pulled out of it; not totally, but for the first time in half a millennium, the countries are moving towards integration, which is a prerequisite for independence. They had been very much separated in the past and they’re beginning to unite. One symbol is that the US has lost all of its military bases in Latin America, with the last one being closed in Ecuador. Another striking illustration is what’s happening in the hemisphere conferences. The last conference, which was in Colombia, never reached a consensus and they could not produce a declaration. The reason was there were two countries who opposed the rest of the hemisphere: the US and Canada. Nothing like that was imaginable in the past.
Guantánamo is still an issue. Do you think Cuba will try to get the base back in the Havana talks?
I’m sure the Cubans will try but I doubt the Americans would commit to that.
I read a recent article where you said that Obama is only a liberal-conservative, a moderate Republican and that Nixon’s administration was the most liberal in US history.
Nixon was a nice guy… The standard has changed. By today’s standards, Nixon looks like a liberal, and Eisenhower looks like a flaming radical. Eisenhower, after all, stated that anyone who would ever question the New Deal legislation as crazy could never be part of the American political system. By now, most of this is gone.
So Obama is not a left-wing president?
The term left in the US is now used for moderates from the center because the spectrum has shifted. In fact, there used to be a joke that the US is a one-party state (Business Party) with two factions (Democrats and Republicans), which was pretty accurate. Now it’s not accurate anymore. It’s still a one-party state but there’s just one faction: moderate Republicans. That’s the only functioning political party. There are those who are called Democrats but they are pretty much what moderate Republicans used to be. The other party, the Republicans, has just drifted way off this background. They have abandoned any pretense of being a parliamentary party. Actually, this is recognized. One of the most respected conservative commentators, Norman Ornstein, recently described the Republicans as a radical insurgency which has abandoned any pretext of participating in parliamentary politics.
What are the neocons up to these days?
The party has been mobilized to seize two objectives: one, to destroy the country and make it look as if it is the fault of the democrats so maybe they can get into power again. The other is just to serve the rich and the powerful with dedication. But since you can’t make that your party platform, what they’ve done is understandable; to try to mobilize big sectors of the population that were always there but were never really organized as a major political force. One group are Evangelical Christians, who are a huge part of the population in the US. That’s why you have the new chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment, James Inhofe, a man who says: “It’s arrogant to claim that humans can do anything about God’s will, as in global warming”. This is antediluvian… you can’t even call it Stone Age because primitive people knew way better than that. But this is the head of the environment committee… And this is part of the essence of the Republican base, which is substantially, maybe quite substantially, extremist, evangelical Christian-right. The other sector that they have mobilized is people who are terrified. The United States of course is a very mixed society, and by now what is happening is that the white population is becoming a minority. So, there is a large sector of the population and their political leaders which says “they are stealing our country from us”. That’s a way of saying there are too many dark faces; you know, mainly Hispanics.
And what about Muslims?
Muslims too, but Hispanics are the main source of fear.
The national myth against the onslaught of “inferior” races…
It’s still there. It may have no basis in the history or biology, but it’s in the consciousness. And now you are at the point where our Anglo-Saxon mythological heritage is not only threatened, but is being overtaken by these outsiders who are taking our country away from us. All of this is part of what the Republican Party - I have to call it the former Republican Party – has used as a basis that leads to these policies which are virtually insane.
Europe is not so far away from this vision.
Again it’s insane the way the Troika is taking decisions in Europe. Well, it’s only insane if you consider the human consequences, but not from the point of view of those who are designing the policy as they are doing fine. They are richer and more powerful than ever and destroying their enemies, in other words the general population.
The Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki calls it sadistic capitalism.
Well, you know, capitalism is inherently sadistic; actually Adam Smith recognized that when it is unleashed and freed from external constraints, its sadistic nature shows itself because it is inherently savage. What is capitalism? It means try to maximize your own personal gain at the expense of everyone else. Actually, one famous Nobel Prize-winning economist, James Buchanan, once said that each human being’s ideal is to be a master with everyone else his slave; that’s our ideal situation. And from the point of view of neoclassical economics, why not? That’s the ideal.
A world without rights or responsibilities?
A word with no rules and where the powerful get what they want. And by some miracle, everything is going to work out fine. It is interesting that Adam Smith faced this with the famous phrase “invisible hand”, which everyone throws around today. (…) Now we see that when capital is unleashed from regulation, particularly financial markets, of course everything blows up. That is what Europe is now facing.
Surprisingly, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a leftist party like Syriza has won an election in Europe. It is as if the Troika’s policies have brought the old enemy back from the dead…
I don’t really see it that way... For one thing, there is a lot of mythology about the enemy. Russia was more remote from socialism than the United States is; the Bolshevik revolution was a major defeat for socialism; it undermined the socialist movement and it led to autocratic tyranny in which the working people were basically what Lenin called a proletarian army under the control of a leader who had nothing to do with socialism.
Isn’t Syriza a sign that history’s pendulum is swinging back?
Syriza is by today’s standards a left party, but not particularly because of its programs. It’s an anti-neoliberal party. They are not calling for workers’ control of industry.
Of course, they are not real revolutionaries.
They are not even traditional socialists. That’s not a criticism; I think it is a good thing, and the same with Podemos, which basically is a party that’s rising up against the neoliberal assault, which is strangling and destroying the peripheral countries.
Let’s talk about the press. You have been a harsh critic of The New York Times and The New Yorker in two recent articles. Is the decline of traditional newspapers due to how close they are to power or, as their editors argue, is it internet’s fault?
I write about The New York Times and The New Yorker because what interests me is the kind of liberal extreme. I mean, I’ll let somebody else denounce Fox news, which is a joke. But what is interesting to me are the intellectual journals at the outer limits of acceptable criticism. They are kind of guardians. They say: you can go this far, but no further. And they are there for a particular interest. Doctrinally, I don’t think they have changed, so they were just as protective of state power all the way back. Take a look at the invasion and the overthrow of democracy in Guatemala, strongly supported; the overthrow of the Iranian parliamentary system in 1953, very strongly supported; the Vietnam War, strong support all the way through. In fact, about the only criticism over the Vietnam War up until the present time is that it failed. When Obama is considered a great moral hero because he opposed the invasion of Iraq, what did it say? It said it was a blunder, you know, it didn’t work out. If it had worked out, that’d be fine…
Guardians of power, but not of democracy…?
The press is in a very serious decline but I think it is basically the commercial markets operating. The media is basically made up of big corporations and, essentially, they live on advertising, and their sources of capital are simply diffusing, so the press is declining. So if you take, say,The Boston Globe, it used to be quite a good newspaper; one of the best in the country. But now it basically has no independent news at all. It either runs wire services or it picks up something from The New York Times and it has very few correspondents. And that’s happening in all of the country. That’s not a doctrinal manner; it has to do with the functioning of the market society; if you don’t make enough money, you decline.
And isn´t it strange that these media outlets continue to defend a model which has led them to ruin?
Doctrinally, overwhelmingly, and not just in the United States, they simply support power. In the United States that’s business and state power. There are deviations. In fact, The Wall Street Journal, the primary business paper, runs exposures of corporate crime, good ones in fact. It’s not like it’s a fascist state. - See more at: http://www.stokokkino.gr/details_en.php?id=1000000000004463/Syriza-and-Podemos-are-a-reaction-against-the-neoliberal-assault-strangling-peripheral-countries#sthash.KonNcJSV.dpuf
Could brinkmanship on Greece’s left deliver the country from austerity? BY WILLIAM RAILTONON JANUARY 4, 2015
“Greece is not run through democracy now, it is run through a Troika. Three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and cannot do.”
Almost two years after this criticism of European hegemony was voiced by an MEP in the European Parliament, Greece finds itself heading into an election which could result in renouncing its austerity measures and leaving the Euro.
On 25th January, Greeks will go to the polls once again, following the Greek parliament’s rejection of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ presidential nomination.
Opinion polls predict victory for the young, leftist party Syriza. Formed of a coalition of National Socialists, greens and Maoists and others, Syriza’s popularity owes to its pledges to raise the minimum wage, end privatisation and reverse the austerity measures which Greece consented to as part of its $240bn bailout by the EU and IMF.
Campaigning on television this week, three of Syriza’s MPs, including economic adviser Yiannis Milios, indicated that unless the conditions of the Europe’s bailout can be eased, a government headed by Syriza would stop making repayments to foreign creditors on its debt. Fears of a default on these repayments have scared markets.
In an interview with the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in March 2014, Milios said that in Greece “public debt is used as a vehicle to increase the power of the ruling classes and the very big corporations and to deprive labour rights and income from the masses” by dismantling the welfare state and cutting wages and pensions.
For the last 4 years, social conditions have been difficult in Greece. Disenchantment with Europe is a view shared by the squeezed middle and unemployed youth alike. So long as Greece’s fiscal policy is dictated by the so-called Troika (the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission), real growth is a pipe-dream.
The Greek political establishment is very worried about what might happen in three weeks’ time. Rather than strengthening the Greek negotiating position, members of the current government believe that stopping repayments will lead to Greece’s exit from the Euro. Greek newspaper Ekathimerini reported that on Wednesday, Prime Minister Samaras, head of the ruling conservative party New Democracy, described Syriza’s agenda as “the most official program guaranteeing poverty that the Greek people have ever heard in an election campaign”.
If Greece’s political shift to the left could be expected, it is surprising that Syriza is leading the charge. A victory for Syriza is a prediction few would have made before the bailouts.
Since the 1980’s, the Greek centre-left has been represented by Pasok, a popular social-democratic party which was the main partner in the Greek coalition government until 2012. However, Pasok was ousted during the election for the poor role it played in negotiating the austerity imposed by Europe. Pasok currently languishes with 5% of the vote but Syriza was doing even worse in the polls back in 2009 (4%), before the young radical Alexis Tsipras led the party to victory in last year’s European elections, winning a 27% share of the vote – 4% more than its rival in government, New Democracy.
The real question is: Can Syriza’s threat of a ‘Grexit’ force Germany to lessen austerity measures?
There was a time when a Grexit was unthinkable. When the second bailout was issued in 2012, Greece’s default threatened to bring down Spain, Ireland, Italy and others with it; a total Eurozone collapse. Some commentators are still arguing that Greece’s exit in 2015 would trigger a selloff of peripheral bonds, undermine the ECB and threaten the Euro much to the same extent.
However, in an interview with Rheinische Post newspaper, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s party, Michael Fuchs, has unequivocally denied that Greece’s “blackmail” would work this time. “The times where we had to rescue Greece are over. There is no potential for political blackmail anymore. Greece is no longer of systemic importance for the euro.”
Syriza’s victory is by no means certain. Polling data suggests that no party will emerge with an outright majority. A poll cited in the Financial Times has suggested that 5% of the total vote might even be stolen by ex-PM and former Pasok leader George Papandreou, who has established a new centre-left coalition. The left’s vote would be split and the government would cling to power.
But Syriza is not alone. The rise of Podemos (which translates as “We can”), a Spanish leftist party, is symptomatic of political parties on the left breaking into the mainstream. The wave of populist parties gathering support since the economic crisis has come predominantly from the right, but not exclusively.
Economic protectionism and a tough stance on crime and chiefly immigration (albeit to very different extents) have characterised the policies of right-wing parties appealing to the politically disillusioned. With the rise of Syriza and Podemos, it would seem that nationalism and euroscepticism are attitudes which the left and right could hold increasingly in common in the future.
After all, the MEP who stood up in 2012 to attack the Troika’s dictatorship of Greek policy was UKIP’s Nigel Farage.
As these parties become established as more than just a protest vote, they will find themselves under increasing pressure to show that their ideals can be transformed into workable alternatives.
We will have to wait until after 25th January to see if Syriza can deliver.
Why Syriza is good news for Greece and Europe (V. Fouskas)
Why Syriza is good news for Greece and Europe
The Cold War is over. Scaremongering campaigns on the part of German and European officials make no sense, as Syriza is not a threat to Europe, but a breakthrough.
On 29 December, 2014, the Greek parliament failed to elect a President of the Republic and the country is heading toward elections, scheduled for 25 January 2015. Syriza will win the election, albeit in a climate of scaremongering that, mutatis mutandis, resembles Greece in the 1940s and after. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's Finance Minister has already warned that, "the new government [implying Syriza] must fulfil all the obligations signed by the previous one". This new type of White Terror must stop for the benefit of both Greece and Europe.
In December 1944, Athens was in flames. Clashes took place between Greek nationalist forces and the British Army on the one hand, and Greek left democratic forces of the National Liberation Front (EAM-ELAS), on the other. The clashes were confined to Athens, but all over Greece the situation remained very tense. The defeat of EAM-ELAS in Athens by superior forces, led to its disarmament in the Varkiza Agreement (February 1945), followed by a campaign of fear and intimidation, a campaign of White Terror that finally led to a bloody Civil War (1946-49) and the final defeat of EAM by the nationalist forces aided by the USA in Cold War conditions.
From 2011 onwards, and especially before and during the electoral campaigns of May and June 2011, a new form of White Terror and propaganda of fear and intimidation was levelled against Syriza, Greece's rising party of the left, on the grounds of "taking Greece back to Middle Ages by moving the country outside the EU and the EMU". Before the crucial parliamentary vote of 29 December 2014, Greek right-wing PM, Antonis Samaras, the key person responsible for Greece's nationalist stance over the issue of Macedonia in 1990-1993, exercised, together with his right-wing and "socialist" entourage, the same form of obscene propaganda, trying to scare the MPs and, by extension, the electorate away from Syriza positions.
No doubt, the same scaremongering tactics will be pursued by all pro-establishment parties in the run-up to the election contest of 25 January, which Syriza is poised to win. So is it, mutatis mutandis, the 1940s all over again? Not at all, and to the extent that it is, this time by contrast, it is going to be good for both Greece and Europe. Here is why.
The post-Civil War regime established in Greece had all the features of a semi-authoritarian, peripheral and dependent regime under Cold War conditions: its ideology was purely anti-Communist and anti-left/democratic; its political powers were drawn from its ability to treat its citizens to a good dose of fear and compulsion under the auspices of its foreign Cold War master, the USA; and its economic abilities were restricted due to a structural, pre-existent, developmental gap with the economies of the core. In other words, Greece in the 1950s and 1960s remained a relatively under-developed, semi-authoritarian state and a dependent, peripheral national formation, despite its high growth rates.
Soon, in 1967, came dictatorship, after the failure of the right-wing establishment to control the rise of the left and the refusal of Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus to surrender his independent island to three pro-NATO forces: Greece, Turkey and the UK. Thus, the post-1974 breakthrough that came with the legalisation of Communism and the formation of political forces voting for a new constitution, heralded a period that soon began to give way to new forms of economic and political dependency. The European Community began to be Greece's new financial sponsor, with the USA in the background controlling, via NATO, Greece's security apparatus.
This emergent complexity was marred by a new, two-party regime alternating in power, or ruling together in a Große Koalition, until recent times. This created an unprecedented regime of political clientelism, nepotism, corruption and wheeling and dealing, the most recent big scandal being that involving German multinational, Siemens. The collusion between big comprador interests (large import consortia) and the governing parties of New Democracy and PASOK has been colossal. The more the fusion between comprador interests and ruling parties deepened, the more new forms of authoritarianism emerged, especially with the rise to prominence of a monetarist set of policies that began prevailing in the executives of Europe and the EEC/EU itself in the 1980s (Greece became a member in 1981, five years ahead of Portugal and Spain and for geo-strategic/geo-political, rather than economic, reasons).
In a purely Cold War manner, the systemic parties managed to contain the fragmented Greek left, which briefly rose to some prominence in 1989-90, when PASOK lost power amidst a series of scandals. The fall of Communism took its toll on the Greek radical left, but it soon re-grouped and created a stable political force winning 4% of the vote, aside from the traditional Greek Communist Party (KKE), one of the last vestiges of Stalinism not just in Europe but in the world.
Syriza
Some argue that the rise of Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) is the result of the extreme austerity policies implemented in Greece by the two ruling parties as a consequence of the debt crisis. This is only partially correct. The debt crisis and the austerity that followed destroyed the middle classes and pushed people to the extreme left and the extreme right, but the recruiting process of the extreme right of Golden Dawn has been contained, whereas Syriza's influence has increased with the passage of time. Today, opinion polls give it top ranking. Moreover, no splinter group or leadership coming from the matrices of the two ruling parties has managed so far to amass any considerable political force.
One explanation remains outstanding in explaining the rise of Syriza to prominence, namely, the deep ideological roots of the spirit of the Greek democratic resistance against Nazism and nationalism in the 1940s, roots passed on from one generation to another, of which not just the Greeks but the whole of European civilization must be proud. What is happening today should not be seen by EU leaders as a call for the recapitulation of the 1940s project to defeat the left that provided the backbone of resistance against Nazism in Greece; rather, it should be seen as a blessing, opening the way for profound changes both in Greece and Europe against the dominance of neoliberal financialization and the anti-inflation bias presided over by Germany.
The Cold War is over. Scaremongering campaigns on the part of German and European officials make no sense, as Syriza is not a threat to Europe but a breakthrough. Syriza's programme advocates a substantial write-off and renegotiation of the bail-out agreements, accompanied with what is called a "development clause". Leaning towards a Keynesian, rather than a monetarist, approach, Syriza opts for balanced rather than surplus budgets, and advocates a return to the minimum wage and a relief programme for all affected by the crisis in order to stem the humanitarian fall-out. It also advocates a fair taxation system and a breaking of the nexus between corruption and comprador interests, although we have not yet seen a concrete reform programme concerning institutional renewal and re-organisation of Greece's dilapidated state machine.
Elements of this programme should include a generous de-centralisation of the state strengthening the weak periphery, bringing into the heart of it the taxpayer and not the corrupt comprador element with its political networking, complexities and clientelist networks.
In all, this is a modest and reasonable programme from which moderate left and democratic socialist forces across Europe would benefit by letting themselves being steered clear of the monetarist consensus of the centre in which German anti-inflation interests and policies have the upper hand. Before the bail-out austerity agreements were implemented, Greece's debt to GDP ratio was at 125%; today it is at 174%. Unemployment was at 9%; today it is at 27%, whereas youth unemployment is at 65%. Why then should demand-led policies be an anathema for Europe's rulers?
To this end, socialist forces throughout Europe, especially in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the Labour Party in the UK, should support Syriza in its titanic effort to win the election of 25 January against the obscurantism of the falling, failed and corrupt regime that has been governing Greece not just since 1974 but since December 1944. "Two Karamanlises" of the Right-Wing New Democracy party and "three Papandreous" of various Centre-Left parties have ruled Greece from the 1940s to the present day. It is now time for those dynasties to go home. But there is also something else that should not go unnoticed.
In the past, as Lenin famously wrote in his State and Revolution, socialists used to say that Nazism and fascism were embedded in, and emanated from the state's conservative machine, which should be smashed in the transition to socialism. Today, the phenomena of extremism and neo-Nazism have their roots directly in the market fundamentalism of ruling elites and neoliberal financialization. Rampant market forces feed xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism across Europe, and the wilder the supply-side policies are the more the likelihood that we will see the emergence of strong neo-Nazi parties.
The Aegean, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans is a remarkable geo-strategic frontier for Europe, especially as regards population movements on the ground. Europe needs Syriza and Greece to produce a balanced policy on migration and illegal migration, cultivating solidarity with Asians and Africans, instead of hostility and civic conflict. That is an additional reason why Syriza must be supported by all democrats across Europe. This would be the real victory of the left against neo-Nazi forces, opening the road for more substantive social democratic changes across the continent and beyond.
Greek radical left Syriza prepares for power under Tsipras By Giorgos Christides Thessaloniki, Greece (BBC-news)
A large portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg hangs in the Thessaloniki office of Nikos Samanidis, a founder member of Greece's Coalition of the Radical Left, better known as Syriza.
With many Greeks exhausted by five years of recession, tax hikes and record unemployment rates, Syriza and its firebrand leader Alexis Tsipras are tipped to win the early elections that must be called, according to the Greek constitution, if parliament fails to elect a new head of state by 29 December.
"After decades on the defensive, the left is staging a comeback. Not just in Greece, but in Europe and Latin America as well," said Mr Samanidis, a top official of Syriza in the country's second city.
Alluring as it may prove to Greek voters, the prospect of a leftist party coming to power in Europe's most indebted country is rattling the markets and European capitals.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has warned parliamentarians that if they fail to elect a new president, Greece could risk a disastrous exit from the eurozone.
Syriza won the European elections in Greece in May and are still leading in the opinion polls
The Athens Stock Exchange posted its biggest drop on record on 9 December, while borrowing costs for Greece have skyrocketed amid the political uncertainty.
A number of senior European officials have urged voters to support the ruling coalition of conservatives and social democrats. "I wouldn't like extreme forces to come to power. I would prefer if known faces show up," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently told journalists, commenting on the chances of a general election in Greece.
'Still radical'
While Rosa Luxemburg may adorn its offices, Syriza is not the revolutionary force that her Spartacists represented in Germany a century ago.
As the party draws closer to real power, it has softened many of its sharp edges and tried to build bridges, even with City hedge funds. Syriza is vowing to keep Greece within the eurozone and has reassured creditors it will refrain from unilateral decisions on the debt issue.
A portrait of Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in Nikos Samanidis' office indicates Syriza's political leanings
Far from being destructive, Syriza's political proposals offer a reasonable way out of austerity and a chance to replace existing bailout laws with new ones, argues political economist Yanis Varoufakis.
"The first priority is renegotiating with creditors. Syriza needs to speak the language of truth about the continuing triple bankruptcy of the country - public debt, banks, private sector - something no Greek government has done so far. Then they need to table positions that the average German will find reasonable."
But Syriza and its 40-year-old leader are still seen by many in the Greek and European establishment as unknown and potentially dangerous quantities.
Mr Tsipras has warned markets that they "will have to dance to the tune" of his government, while Syriza promises to boost public spending, reverse privatisations, increase salaries and pensions and repeal bailout laws liberalising the markets.
Nikos Samanidis emphasises that the prospect of power has not blunted the radical nature of the party, despite its meteoric rise from relative obscurity to frontrunner in little over two years.
"The rich, the elites, the markets, the super-rich, the top 10%, yes, they obviously do have reason to worry," he says.
"They will lose their privileges. Our voter base has expanded greatly, but the grassroots, radical nature of Syriza has been preserved thanks to the crisis. Our party has not and will not sever its ties with the streets, with the social movements it arose from."
Syriza was formed in 2004 as a coalition of groups and parties ranging from Maoists to greens. Before 2012 its electoral appeal had been of little consequence for Greece's political system, never exceeding 5% of the vote. It only became a unitary party in 2013.
But in 2012, in the apogee of the Greek crisis, Syriza took the political establishment by storm, polling close to 27% in the June general elections and eclipsing the social democrats to become the second-largest party in the country. In the European Parliament elections in May 2014, Syriza emerged victorious, polling close to 27% of the vote.
No fear
Colleagues see him as an ordinary, decent man while critics see him as arrogant
Mr Tsipras, the youngest political leader in Greece's history, was instrumental in transforming Syriza from an also-ran to a potential ruling party. Known for his rhetorical skills, his dislike of neckties and his good looks, Mr Tsipras rose to the leadership of Syriza in 2008 and was elected to parliament in 2009.
"The economic crisis and the collapse of traditional parties certainly helped Syriza grow its influence, but it was Alexis Tsipras who catapulted the party," says Christoforos Vernardakis, Professor of Political Science at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and founder of the public opinion survey company VPRC.
"This happened because Tsipras is young and knows no fear. He took a defensive left and turned it into a credible choice for government."
Despite his undoubted charisma, several Syriza members and officials who know Mr Tsipras personally describe him as "an everyday, decent person".
"With Alexis we go a long way back. We used to hang out and I can tell you he is a normal, decent guy. Even as a leader, he likes collective processes and decisions," said Mr Samanidis.
Critics, on the other hand, see Mr Tsipras as arrogant, inexperienced and power hungry - a maverick politician willing to sacrifice Greece to rise to power.
Long-time friend Nikos Karanikas rejects this description of Syriza's "comrade-president".
"Although it was clear from the start he was a leader, it took some encouragement from us for him to come forward and take the lead - he had no lust for power," said Mr Karanikas, a member of the political bureau of Syriza's largest constituent group, Synaspismos.
EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he would prefer Greece to maintain its political status quo
Tsipras, he argues, still lives in the middle class Athens neighbourhood of Kypseli, and cut his professional teeth while working as a civil engineer. He was one of the "700-euro generation" of youth who struggled to advance beyond the average Greek salary.
'Operation of terror'
Eager as they are for a historic victory for the left, Syriza officials are also prepared for a long struggle. "My generation has a chance now with Syriza to stop the disaster. We have no fear of governing," said Mr. Karanikas.
The party's first battle starts on Wednesday, in the first ballot of the parliamentary election for president.
Some analysts predict that renewed fears for Greece's future in the eurozone will convince enough MPs to vote for the government's presidential candidate; or, in the event of a general election, convince enough Greeks to turn the tide in favour of the ruling coalition.
Alexis Tsipras has denounced this tactic as an "operation of terror" by Prime Minister Samaras and European officials.
Some Greeks seem to believe the danger is real, with weekend polls showing that Syriza's lead has narrowed slightly.
But others, like Panagiotis Makridis, a waiter at a Greek coffee shop, are enraged by what they say is blatant scaremongering from the government, Brussels and European capitals.
"So Jean-Claude Juncker is telling me who to vote for? I didn't plan on voting Syriza, but now I just might."
It's Time to Start Paying Attention to Greece Again By Joe Weisenthal (http://www.businessweek.com/)
Photographer: Michael Debets/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Alexis Tsipras, the leader of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and current leader of the Greek Opposition, is pictured at the beginning of the protest march on Nov. 27, in Athens.
It’s been awhile since Greece was front-page news, so here’s a refresher: A few years ago, it looked as though Greece might be forced to leave the euro zone, as investors lost faith in the country’s ability to pay its debts. In late 2011, 10-year Greek bonds were trading with a yield around 35 percent. The crisis began to dissipate in the summer of 2012, when the center-right New Democracy party eked out the narrowest of election victories and cobbled together a coalition that agreed to a bailout under harsh terms. Since then financial markets have eased considerably, although the economy is still in the gutter.
Anyway, you might want to start paying attention again.
Greece may see elections early next year, and a new poll just out has the radical leftist Syriza party in first place by more than 3 percent. If Syriza takes power, the relative calm of Greek financial markets could be rocked.
So the question is, will Greece in fact hold an early election? It may depend on what happens in late February and early March, when the Greek parliament is set to vote on a new president. Current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party faces a massive task to keep his government together.
In an e-mail, analyst Lorcan Roche Kelly of Agenda Research explained what might go down:
“[Samaras's] coalition (of New Democracy and Pasok) controls 155 seats in the 300-seat parliament. In order to elect a president, he needs 180 votes in favour of his candidate (the president vote runs in three rounds, if 200 of the 300 MPs do not vote in favour of the candidate in the first two rounds, there is a third round where the majority is reduced to 180, there are 5 days between each round, so the whole process takes over a week. ie, it will be noisey)
“Samaras is 25 seats short of this target, and if he doesn’t get it, an election will be called.”
There are a lot of question marks about whether the current coalition can get to the 180 votes needed. It’s possible that by cajoling enough independent members of parliament, the coalition could get there and keep the government alive. But it will be extremely close, and they could come up short.
If an early election is called, and if the leftist Syriza party controls the government, watch out. Ostensibly, Syriza and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, want Greece to stay in the euro zone. But they’re dead set against the current bailout/austerity regime.
Then you’re looking at a potentially huge game of chicken. The European leaders who bailed out Greece will insist that current terms are not going to be renegotiated. The new government will insist that it wants to stay in the euro zone but that the arrangement must change. How that plays out is unpredictable, but it could easily be the major world story to watch early next spring.
Resolve the Real Greek Crisis (New York Times)
By EDWARD P. JOSEPH and ANNA TRIANDAFYLLIDOU
Published: February 5, 2013
By EDWARD P. JOSEPH and ANNA TRIANDAFYLLIDOU
Published: February 5, 2013
Resolve the Real Greek Crisis
FOR Greeks suffering from the wrenching pain of a long economic crisis, a youthful savior has emerged. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the second-strongest party in Parliament, the Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, is not yet 40, but his relentless attack on austerity has made him a favorite to head the next government.
Tsipras has been visiting power centers in Europe and the United States to bolster his credentials and to press his case for debt relief. He argues that Europe is bluffing with its threat to expel Greece from the euro zone if it doesn’t implement severe cuts.
But even if Tsipras wins the next election, he is likely to fail in his bid for an international conference that would provide dramatic debt relief. The reason is that Greece’s main creditors, Germany in particular, suspect that Tsipras is bluffing as well. They know that the Greek economy hangs like a thread, and that failure to sustain debt relief would plunge Greece into economic free fall.
Thus the impasse over Greece that serves as a brake on Europe’s recovery and has left a quarter of Greeks unemployed is likely to continue — unless Tsipras widens his message. He could wring substantial concessions out of Germany and other creditors if he does what no Greek leader has managed to do: get Greeks to accept the need for national reform, not just austerity and not just debt relief.
The truth is that Greece is not only broke, it is broken. “Uncompetitive” does not describe the pathology of the Greek economy. It is a myriad of small businesses, unproductive subsidies, inflated state contracts and Byzantine regulations seemingly designed to inhibit productivity. In the past, it was sustained by tourism, olives and other small-scale produce, and, of course, loans — which have evaporated. Real relief for Greeks can only come from foreign investment, not loans and not debt relief. And few will invest in Greece without real reform. Indeed, some of Greece’s most successful companies are fleeing the country.
Ironically, even as segments of Greek society still unleash noisy protests, the public knows the truth: They are not innocent victims but willing, if small-scale, participants in a corrupt system. This helps explain why expressions of public anger have been — given the breadth of the disaster — relatively tame. A protest movement known as the “aganaktismenoi,” or the resentful, has emerged, demanding accountability. Long-concealed scandals have come to light, and some prominent members of the political elite have gone to prison, or face the prospect of being jailed. But there is no unifying agenda among protesters, many of whom are animated solely by the prospect of losing their benefits.
Moreover, for all their suffering, most Greeks are aware just how much worse their situation could become. They understand that they have a lot to lose if the country’s fragile banks collapse or if the country defaults. The value of their euro-denominated bank accounts, if converted into new drachma, would plunge.
If anything, anger in Greece is focused outside the country, at Germany in particular, or disgracefully, on the most vulnerable people — poor immigrants — who have benefited least from the country’s corrupt system. Either way, the misdirected anger only distracts Greece from much-needed introspection. And even when there has been reflection, such as the momentary pause in the spring and summer of 2010, Greece has been plagued by the paralysis of collective responsibility: “So maybe I didn’t pay my taxes, but who did?”
The focus of Greek energy these days is not on how to fix the country, but rather on how to survive within the existing system.
At their core, Greeks know better and are not condemned to perpetual cynicism and incipient poverty. They need a leader with the courage and the standing to tell them that the old ways of doing business will not return prosperity.
Greeks have proven that they can move toward meritocracy, as has been illustrated by the general public exam for public administration or university admissions. The unique aspects of Greek culture have their advantages and need not be discarded. Small changes, for example simplifying regulations and putting more information on legislation on the Internet, can have a big effect.
These measures can pave the way for consensus on the larger labor reforms demanded by creditors, very possibly winning the major concessions that Tsipras seeks. Soon, with support from civil society and the Orthodox Church, momentum toward national renewal could reach a tipping point, where the rewards of complying with rules will outweigh flouting them.
In short, Greeks do not have to “become Germans.” They only have to face up to the fact that you can’t get something for nothing forever. A politician with the courage to speak this truth and appeal for a new compact that matches individual and business responsibility with concrete steps toward state transparency can win an election, debt relief and real hope for a battered people.
Edward P. Joseph is senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for trans-Atlantic Relations. Anna Triandafyllidou is professor at the European University Institute.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)