Greece : Syriza’s victory is a defeat for the Greek people

In our declaration released on 6 July 2015 (see “Victory for the ‘No’ Vote in the Greek referendum : a defeat for the imperialists but an alternative still remains to be built !”) we stated that : “While the victory for the NO vote is a blow for the imperialists, it does not necessarily hail a victory for the people whose survival conditions will not improve as a result. Tsipras intends to use this result for minor leverage at the bargaining table with the international institutions. […] Nothing is certain for the Greek people unless its strengthens its organisation, its vigilance and its mobilisation in the long term to fight austerity packages, whether they come from abroad or are hatched by the Greek government itself. As long as Greece remains hostage to the imperialist institutions, with the Greek government seeking conciliation, austerity packages will inevitably be rolled out one after the other and the people’s situation can only deteriorate.”

As we wrote at the time, the No vote in the Greek referendum should not be given more importance than it is actually worth. As we have seen, the result by no means ensured concessions by the imperialists, nor did it force the Syriza government to adopt an anti-imperialist stance. Tsipras even gave in to the demands of the Troika surprisingly quickly, preferring conciliation with the enemies of the people at any price rather than relying on the strength of the people itself.

Today Syriza has managed to scrape a majority of seats in the Greek parliament, albeit at the price of going from being a reformist party promising hope, to a bourgeois party similar to its predecessors in the government, ready to back to imperialist policy to the full. The low turn-out (40% abstention) together with the failure of the more radical parties standing for election (including Popular Unity which split from Syriza over anti-austerity) highlight the resignation of the combative masses in Greece.

In France, the Communist Party and the Left Party, members of the Left Front, have applauded Tsipras and Syriza for years and have once again shown their true face following the betrayal of their fellow Greeks.

The French Communist Part still defends Tsipras through thick and thin, claiming that the Syriza government hasn’t really backed down and that it continues to follow a hard-line anti-austerity policy, etc. This should come as no surprise, because the French Communist Party is itself a bourgeois government party with a record of soft resistance whenever it is in the opposition and applying “austerity policies” in towns where it has a majority or when ruling with the Socialist Party. As birds of a feather, the French Communist Party and Syriza provide each other with mutual support. According to the French Communist Party, the big European right-wing parties supposedly want Tsipras to fail because his victory would mean a defeat for the right ! Whereas, in fact, the big European bourgeois parties actually want to ensure that a domesticated Tsipras remains in power in order to safeguard politically stability. Ultimately, they see him as been more able to contain the anger of the Greek people than the right-wing New Democracy party… just like Mitterrand in France in 1981 !

While the Left Party disagrees with the turn-round by Syriza, it still continues to see Tsipras as a mistaken friend who could be made to reconsider his concessions to the Troika through pressure from the left. That is why the Left Party has decided to align itself with the Popular Unity party, a left-wing offshoot of Syriza which has refused to accept Tsipras’ U-turn, and with Yannis Varoufakis, who resigned as the Greek Minister of Finance. The Left Party led by Mélenchon aspires to : “change Europe by playing by the European rules” and by changing the contents in order to create a democratic structure to serve the peoples. Pie in the sky ! The Left Party peddles the same petit-bourgeois reformist pipedreams as those promised by Tsipras before he shifted position and which are just as inevitably condemned to failure. But they’re also looking for an emergency plan to fall back on, which they believe is what Tsipras lacked, involving a return to national currencies and a common currency which would supposedly give back “sovereignty” to the people and provide it with political leeway should a reform of the EU and the euro prove impossible.

Any discourse revolving around the possibility to “change Europe” is nothing but hot air. Even if the European Union were quite simply abolished tomorrow, any attempt to build a “democratic” Europe “to serve the peoples” would be doomed to failure as long as the dictatorship of Capital continues to reign in each country, even under the guise of bourgeois democracy. Given that the whole purpose of the European Union is to cement an alliance between the big European imperialist monopolies in the face of international competition, could the peoples of Europe really bypass these monopolies which would continue to wield power in their respective countries in order to build a Europe “of their own” ?

Refusing to harbour illusions about the European Union does not mean that Communists should fall back on chauvinism. Not just the National Front but a wide range of political currents covering the whole bourgeois political spectrum, including self-styled Communist currents, uphold a “sovereign stance” which is nothing more than chauvinism. First and foremost Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, while claiming to be an internationalist, makes a play of targeting Germany while avoiding any criticism of French imperialism. Nor does he hesitate to resort to the most hackneyed stereotypes of the German people which harp back to Second World nationalist propaganda.

Such a stance is just as unrealistic as hoping to “change Europe” : before the EU and the euro, the people had no more say over national politics than it does today. Not forgetting that those who support this position lump together the workers, small-scale employers, executives and the unemployed, putting the exploited in the same bag as the exploiters. Barring a handful of politicians and big bosses, for these people the class struggle does not exist. Whether in the current or a new French Republic, within the framework of bourgeois democracy, a return to “people’s sovereignty” could only ever mean handing over power to other elements of the bourgeoisie.

For the French proletariat, sovereignty can never mean national sovereignty, but only ever class independence !

The solution does not lie in the European Union or falling back on chauvinism. The true solution lies in international solidarity between the peoples and the proletarians. It lies in the independent organisation of the masses without falling into the electoral trap ; it lies in drawing up a clear program of struggle and a clear revolutionary program underpinned by a new Communist party. In Greece, revolutionary Communist militants and organisations are already working in that direction. And in France, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Organisation-Proletarian Way (OCML-VP) proposes building an alternative to the unbridled barbarism of Capitalism based on these political clarifications.

Marxist-Leninist Communist Organisation-Proletarian Way, 22 September 2015

Our statement in french : ICI