Alexis Tsipras has announced that he is leaving the
left-wing Syriza party. Syriza, a movement that attempted to reify the Greek
people’s hope for an escape from the abject poverty inherent in austerity, was pushed
back by European economic powers (especially Germany) in every negotiation:
blackmailed by economic bankruptcy and capital flight. Despite the
anti-austerity referendum that was engineered to provide further bargaining power
for Syriza at the European negotiations, the neo-liberal poverty and starvation
bailout terms for the Greeks was inexorable.
While the neo-liberal media, reverberating its hegemonic
narrative of profligate use of resources by the Greeks and “what is good for
the business is good for the Greeks”, the left-wing media has been busy
debasing the Syriza movement as a betrayal of the Greek working-class. One of
the main arguments made by the left-wing media is that the Syriza
administration has turned its back on the anti-austerity platform that it was
originally elected for. Other arguments that the left-wing media make are based
on a media research into any anti-Marxist ideas or phrases a member of the
Syriza may have said. Further, from my own readings, I have yet to see a writer
that actually attempts to actualize the economic situation of Greece and use it
to reify a possible nascent alternative.
The economic numbers speak volumes about the current
position of Greece, with 26% unemployment and 44% of the population below the
poverty line and 80% of the work force in the service sector. These numbers are
the manifestations of years of neo-liberal robbery. Neo-liberalism’s penchant
for deindustrialization (sending manufacturing jobs to south Asia (cheap
labour)), breaking union and workers’ associations, shifting the cost of the
reproduction of labour from the capitalist to the labourer (through tax cuts
(for the capitalists) and social service cuts), and the erosion of the nation
state (economic independence/workers’ bargaining power) has left countries such
as Greece in the state it is today.
Capitalism has a tendency to roil reality with inordinate
economic details of its exchange value system. However the use values necessary
to replenish/reproduce labour is not at all complex. The worker requires a
home, food, safety, education, and healthcare (basic human rights) to be able
to reproduce his/her labour. However the exchange value system, especially that
of Greece, after years of neo-liberal robbery, has forced Greece to import most
of the above (or finance them) through the exchange value system, at an unconscionable
exploitation rate. This economic situations inevitably oscillates political
position towards the lenders, where they can accrue their profits via
accumulation by dispossession: currently Greece is being forced to sell 15 of
its major airports, public transportations, and Islands to German buyers. What
is even further exasperating and insulting is the fact that much of the bailout
money used to condemn the Greeks to abject poverty in all the above transaction
is in fact fictitious capital:
capital that was accumulated not through actual production of goods via proactive
social labour, but through speculations and exchanges (often non-existent
commodities) made in the Wall-Street casino: fictitious money capital is used to buy things
that are actually produced via productive social labour!
Although it may seem that the worker’s movement in Greece is
occluded at every turn by finance capital, this may not be the case. Syriza was
able to procure state power by growing in popularity during the years of
anti-capitalism and ant-austerity movement in Greece. The European governments
everywhere, were in a state of panic (as seen in the stock market), not because
of Syriza coming to power, but the workers’ movement that was supporting it. It
was the surfacing of the 99%, through an organized revolutionary party, that
strikes fear in the heart of capitalism. However, this grass-roots power source
was something that Syriza never actually utilized to its advantage. Instead of
burnishing the revolutionary character of the Greek movement and to reinvigorate
it through alliances with other working-class movements, Syriza chose to
isolate and keep silent important economic negotiations and to maintain with
the culture of keeping the people out of politics: a political strategy
capitalism uses to encapsulate the class-struggle in society for its benefit.
Rather than creating an on-going dialogue between itself, Syriza, and the
working-class majority, for involvement and strategies to escape the myriad economic
tentacles of the European Union, Syriza took the path of pure backstage silent
negotiations. If two of the main ingredients in a making of revolution are
class-consciousness (of which Greece does not lack) and revolutionary
leadership, it seems Syriza did not utilize the juggernaut 99% working-class
force that stood behind it. With millions of Greeks with their backs against
the wall and ready to attack and tear capitalism to shreds, Syriza representatives
still stood shy and defensive at the European negotiation table.
Chia Barsen
www.chiabarsen.com
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