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Mihalis Panayiotakis
To cite this article: Mihalis Panayiotakis (2015) The Radical Left in Greece, Socialism and
Democracy, 29:3, 25-43, DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2015.1090833
Article views: 24
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Socialism and Democracy, 2015
Vol. 29, No. 3, 25 43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2015.1090833
Mihalis Panayiotakis
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3. Renamed Coalition of the Left of Movements and Ecology (Sy naspismo6 th6
Arist1ra6 tvn Kinhmatvn kai th6 Oikologia6) in 2003
Mihalis Panayiotakis 27
for the second time for the left since World War II.4 This impressive
outcome occurred despite other radical left or left-leaning parties
having historic electoral success that night: The KKE reached a
post-1990 high of 8.5 percent; the Greens just barely missed the parlia-
mentary threshold of 3 percent, the highest ever percentage in
parliamentary elections of a Green party in Greece; and the Anticapital-
ist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow (Antikapitalistikh Arist1rh
Sy n1rgasia gia thn Anatroph, ANTARSYA) reached an unprece-
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4. The first was the United Democratic Left (EDA), which received 24.2 percent of the
vote in 1958.
5. Dimitris Koutsoumbas, Public Speech at Ermoupolis, 23 July 2015; online at www.
rizospastis.gr/story.do?id=8533360
28 Socialism and Democracy
very polarized election,6 SYRIZA again came in second (in part because
of the widespread media scare campaign against it), securing however
26.9 percent of the vote and 71 MPs. SYRIZAs rise almost halved the
Communist Partys May vote (to 4.5 percent) and decimated the
ANTARSYA (0.3 percent) and Green (0.9 percent) electoral support.
The vote in both elections, but especially in June 2012, had strong
class and age characteristics. As pollster and political scientist
Yiannis Mavris notes:
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These elections shaped events to come over the next years, deter-
mined the social and political coalitions that emerged, and led to
SYRIZAs victories, first in the 2014 European Parliament election,
and finally, in the January 2015 election.
Before analyzing the events of 2015 and the referendum that fol-
lowed, we will examine the historical roots and the position of the
Greek left since 1989, as well as the economic and social developments
in Greece that propelled the radical left to its first electoral triumph in
post-war Europe.
6. See for example the opinion poll time-series for the period referenced at Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Greek_legislative_elections,_2012
7. Y. Mavris, Greeces Austerity Election, New Left Review, 76 (July-August 2012), 95
107.
Mihalis Panayiotakis 29
8. Renewed because this was picking up where the post-Civil War conservative right
left off. Despite many of its right-wing critics, PASOK did not invent corruption in
Greece; it simply continued on the well trod path of scandal, clientelism, and corpor-
atism that the right was based on.
9. The reform and transparency efforts by the Gorbachev government in the USSR,
widely seen as precursors to the dissolution of the USSR and the collapse of
Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe.
10. The scandal is discussed in detail in a plethora of sources. See M. J. Jones, Creative
Accounting, Fraud and International Accounting Scandals (Chichester: Wiley & Sons,
2011), and J. Garrard, and J. L. Newell, Scandals in Past and Contemporary Politics
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 132 134.
11. The KKEs position on the events of the 13th congress can be found at interold.k-
ke.gr/about/history/overview-congress/overview15/index.html
30 Socialism and Democracy
the left, prominent among them the AKOA (the other part of the 1986
split in the KKE Interior) and the NAR, formed by the majority of the
KKEs youth that left the party in protest to these development,
denounced Synaspismos political embrace with bourgeois parties.
After 1990, the interest of the radical left in popular organizing
started to fade noticeably. The student movement, a historical stalwart
and breeding ground for left recruitment and radicalization, domi-
nated by the left in the post-war period, transformed from a bastion
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12. The decline in union membership is shown in OECD Union Density statistics (the
ratio of trade union members to the total number of wage and salary earners):
union density was at 38.5 percent in 1982, remained at 37.6 percent in 1992, and
then declined precipitously to 25.5 percent in 2002 and 21.3 percent in 2012 (see
OECD statistics available at stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCodeUN_DEN)
13. For example, the Movement to Deport Racism and the Immigrant Sunday School, as
well as an assortment of antifa initiatives all over Greece, created mainly by anar-
chists. The KKE assisted this movement by a drive to unionize migrant workers
throughout Greece.
Mihalis Panayiotakis 31
14. The criteria are: low inflation rates, fiscal deficits under 3 percent of GDP, and gov-
ernment debt to GDP ratios under 0.6. www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/escb/html/
convergence-criteria.en.html
15. For an analysis on the financial, geopolitical and historical underpinnings of the
current Greek debt crisis, see V.K. Fouskas, C. Dimoulas, Greece, Financialization
and the EU: The Political Economy of Debt and Destruction (London: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2013).
16. As reported in the press at the time see [in Greek]: news.in.gr/economy/article/
?aid966466
32 Socialism and Democracy
17. A. Kalyvas, An Anomaly? Some Reflections on the Greek December 2008, Constel-
lations, 17, no. 2 (June 2010), 351 356.
18. Then Secretary General of the KKE Aleka Papariga, stated on 12 December 2008, in
an ANA/MPA interview: The molotov cocktails and looting of the hooded individ-
uals, whose steering center is linked with the state secret services and centers
abroad, have absolutely no relationship with the mass rage of the pupils, the stu-
dents, the people in general. The ANA/MPA article went on to present Aleka
Paparigas position that recent events were exploited in order to turn attention
away from and disorient the mass mobilizations of the youth and the people
against authoritarianism and the anti-popular policy. In the interview, Papariga
reiterated her harsh criticism of SYRIZA, stressing that the KKE has fundamental
differences with that party in strategy, ideology and policy; www.hri.org/news/
greek/apeen/2008/08-12-12_2.apeen.html#03.
Mihalis Panayiotakis 33
19. Greek 10-year government bond yields reached 11.24 percent on April 28 2010, up
from less than 5 percent most of the past decade, after six months of increases. This
was to be dwarfed later in the second austerity deal with the troika in the summer of
2012, when 10-year bond yields surpassed 40 percent.
20. See data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG/countries?page1; the
aggregate 26 percent decline is also mentioned in the CIA fact book.
21. According to Eurostat Unemployment trend figures ec.europa.eu/eurostat/stat-
istics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics#Unemployment_trends
22. Eurostat, People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion; ec.europa.eu/euro-
stat/statistics-explained/index.php/
People_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion
23. UNICEF Office of Research, Children of the Recession, Innocenti Report Card 12
(2014), 8; online at www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc12-eng-web.pdf
24. ILO, Global Wage Report 2014 / 15 Wages and income inequality, 2015, 7; online at
goo.gl/941gtR
25. See data from The Federation of International Employers, online at www.fedee.
com/pay-job-evaluation/minimum-wage-rates
26. See, for example, A. Kentikelenis et al., Greeces health crisis: from austerity to deni-
alism. The Lancet, 383: 9918 (22 February 2014), 74853.
27. Erik Olsen, Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves, New York
Times (1 July 2015).
34 Socialism and Democracy
28. Reported by Ellie Ismailidou in Market Watch (17 May 2015); available at www.
marketwatch.com/story/greeces-scariest-deficit-has-nothing-to-do-with-money-
2015-05-07
29. Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality, IMF Policy Paper (February 2014).
30. Pew Research Center, Emerging and Developing Economies Much More Optimistic
than Rich Countries about the Future (9 October 2014); www.pewglobal.org/2014/
10/09/emerging-and-developing-economies-much-more-optimistic-than-rich-
countries-about-the-future
31. Amnesty International Report, A law unto themselves: A culture of abuse and
impunity in the Greek police (2014); www.amnesty.ca/sites/default/files/
greecereport3april14.pdf
32. Mentioned in GSEE press release 9 July 2015 [in Greek] www.gsee.gr/apantisi-se-
osous-kataskevazoun-esoterikous-echthrous
Mihalis Panayiotakis 35
Syntagma Square was split between the upper square and the
lower square. Upper was where raw emotions and abusive
chants against the parliamentarians were expressed, with plenty of
Greek flags and a patriotic/nationalist rhetoric; lower was where
the youth of December 2008 and those from a radical left background
gathered, organized assemblies, experimented with participatory pro-
cedures, and invited speakers to discuss everything from democracy to
the economy.
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There were currents within the Greek radical left (mainly, the
KKE)34 and in certain anarchist circles that did not seem to be comfor-
table with the Greek indignados movement at all. SYRIZA stood by its
side from the beginning, as did the ANTARSYA despite some misgiv-
ings on their initial anti-party and anti-political rhetoric.
The movement, although in decline by the end of August 2011, was
critical in helping to produce, in its wake, massive demonstrations on
October 2011, disrupting the parades for a national holiday, and then
again on 12 February 2012, probably the largest protest (perhaps a
half-million) before the rise of SYRIZA, as the second memorandum
was voted by the Greek Parliament.35 The demo was attacked by riot
police before it even had the chance to start, and ended in road fights
and burned buildings.
At the same time, as the crisis unfolded, a series of local and
broader struggles and initiatives erupted. It is impossible to catalogue
all the forms that this spontaneous or organized resistance took, but
some stand out:
34. Thus, in its positions for its 19th Congress, the KKE Central Committee stated that:
The so called movement of the outraged was supported, encouraged if not
planned as well by bourgeois mechanisms, with the aim to manipulate, to
prevent radicalization by diverting parts of the worker aristocracy and sections of
the petty-bourgeoisie. Parts of the working class and the unemployed were attracted
to this movement. Among its lines there occurred a coalition between right and left
opportunism, reactionary slogans dominated, slogans of petty-bourgeois democ-
racy, aiming against the class oriented movement; quoted by the partys radio
station at http://goo.gl/K9VsWy
35. Costas Douzinas has suggested (SYRIZA: the Greek Spring) that the rise of
SYRIZA as a political alternative was a consequence of the squares movement;
www.analyzegreece.gr/topics/elections-250102015/item/119-costas-douzinas-
syriza-the-greek-spring
Mihalis Panayiotakis 37
2010, it spread around the country, taking other forms such as refusal
to pay for (hiked) city transport tickets.
. Even before the murder of anti-fascist rap artist and activist Pavlos
Fyssas by Golden Dawn thugs, a broad anti-fascist movement devel-
oped throughout the country, with anarchists at its militant core,
which took on Golden Dawn and the police force that enabled and
regularly supported it.
. In December 2010 in Keratea, a small town of 8000 people near
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36. See F.E.I. Hartlief, K. McGauran, and R. van Os, I. Romgens, Fools Gold: How Cana-
dian firm Eldorado Gold Destroys the Greek Environment and Dodges Tax Through Dutch
Mailbox Companies (Amsterdam: Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations,
March 2015), 29 33; available at http://www.somo.nl/publications-en/
Publication_4177/at_download/fullfile
38 Socialism and Democracy
2011 to July 2012) that created a large wave of support for the
workers but ended in their defeat.
. The Coca-Cola 3E strike in Thessaloniki and the nationwide call to
boycott the company were to continue until the workers demands
of rehiring laid-off workers and the reopening of the companys
Thessaloniki plant are met.
The most impressive and unique element of resistance and survi-
val against the austerity measures however was the emergent grass-
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37. In the most prominent such case, workers in the Vio.Me factory in Thessaloniki took
over the plant and proceeded to self-manage it cooperatively. This initiative persists
to this day.
38. The periphery in Greece is the highest-level local governing structure. The Periph-
ery of Attiki which Rena Dourou won, is the largest of these regional governments,
and home to 3.8 million voters.
Mihalis Panayiotakis 39
SYRIZA won, with 36.3 percent of the vote (149 of 300 seats), against
27.8 percent for the ND (76 seats). The KKE reached 5.5 percent (15
seats) while the ANTARSYA saw its vote recovering slightly from
the June 2012 elections, to 0.6 percent (but remained under the 3
percent threshold for parliamentary representation). SYRIZA formed
a government with the right-populist and anti-austerity Independent
Greeks (ANEL), which gained 4.75 percent of the vote (13 seats).
SYRIZA chose to collaborate with the ANEL over the center left
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SYRIZA remains the party that primarily represents the strata of salaried
workers . . . and of the unemployed . . . in the two-year period 2012 14,
SYRIZAs social base expanded significantly to include other segments of the
population negatively affected by the crisis. This applies not only to the agri-
cultural and traditional segments of the lower middle class, but also to
groups within the economically inactive population (such as pensioners and
housewives), which the party had been unable to attract in 2012.39
39. Y. Mavris, The social forces of the anti-Memorandum alliance (11 February, 2015);
www.mavris.gr/en/621/the-social-forces-of-the-anti-memnorandum-alliance
40 Socialism and Democracy
40. The Juncker offer included, among many other things, VAT hikes in food, tourism,
heavy tax burdens on professionals and small businesses, horizontal cuts in welfare
expenditure and welfare subsidies, cuts in the lowest pensions, cuts in public sector
wages, harsher foreclosure legislation, not restoring collective bargaining (banned
by a troika order in 2012) as SYRIZA had introduced a bill to do, the go-ahead to
privatizations that the previous government had begun and that SYRIZA had
initially announced its intentions of stopping and a return of all banks to
private control.
41. These included most of the provisions of the Juncker Plan, on VAT, pensions and
taxes, privatizations, labor law restraints and, critically, created an obligation for
the Greek government to submit all bills it introduced to Parliament for troika
approval. At the same time, for the first time the issue of the unsustainably of
Greek debt was admitted, albeit indirectly, in an EU document (See Euro Summit
Statement, Brussels, 12 July 2015; www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-
releases/2015/07/12-euro-summit-statement-greece/).
Mihalis Panayiotakis 41
SYRIZA seem to still remain high in opinion polls, despite the memor-
andum, but things are in a flux, and the new austerity measures,
apart from being anti-social and undemocratic, seem also to be non-
implementable, designed to fail from the start.
SYRIZA, like the European left as a whole, is at a crossroads. It is
obvious that the strategy of remaining in the eurozone in order to
achieve a pan-European anti-austerity shift has failed terminally. Tsi-
prass July 12 capitulation seems to herald a new era for the EU, in
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42. BBC News, "PM Alexis Tsipras quits and calls early polls" 20 August 2015, www.
bbc.com/news/world-europe-34007859
42 Socialism and Democracy
and of the popular classes and open up a path for the progressive
reconstruction of the country, of its economy, and of its institutions.
These goals, Kouvelakis notes, cannot be realized without exiting
the eurozone and breaking with the whole set of policies institutiona-
lized by the European Union.43
A few days after the formation of Popular Unity, 53 members of the
SYRIZA Central Committee and the Political Secretariat announced
their resignation from the party to join Popular Unity,44 as have
many SYRIZA members throughout the country. Popular Unity has
sought an electoral partnership with many smaller left wing groups,
but has failed, so far, to reach an electoral agreement with the
ANTARSYA.
Apart from the Left Current party faction that has quit SYRIZA
to form the LAE, a large number of Central Committee members that
were affiliated with the presidential majority but as part of the
53+ party tendency45 announced their resignations from office,
one after the other, among them Tasos Koronakis, who resigned as sec-
retary of the party. This was in large part due to the SYRIZA leader-
ships evasion of internal democratic procedures, especially its
postponement of the emergency party congress originally scheduled
for mid-September (after the elections) a move seen by most
members of the tendency as a leadership gambit to retain the initiative
on the platform that SYRIZA would run on in the forthcoming elections
and beyond, as most of the 53+ wanted a clear roadmap for exiting the
new MoU austerity plan that the SYRIZA government was extorted
into signing.
43. S. Kouvelakis, Introducing Popular Unity, Jacobin Magazine (21 August 2015);
atwww.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/popular-unity-syriza-left-platform-lafazanis/
44. Massive defection from SYRIZAs central committee, ekathimerini (26 August
2015).
45. A tendency that was principally a mixture of libertarian left and left post-Eurocom-
munist members of SYRIZA, strongly associated with social movements and
struggles.
Mihalis Panayiotakis 43
as a policy choice, but has only done so under blackmail and will fight
these policies with the tools it will have as a government from the
inside. It has announced that it will introduce measures that will
ameliorate the most socially destructive parts of the new MoU deal
and advance a new parallel plan that would help create space for
more progressive policies even within the asphyxiating confines of
the deal with the lenders.46 It is also hoping that a large enough debt
restructuring will be agreed upon this autumn to allow the government
to claim that this austerity package will at least be the last one.
The elections will determine whether the Greek electorate is
patient enough to re-elect SYRIZA on the downgraded, but more rea-
listic hope that the new program seems to promise, and whether the
LAE, ANTARSYA, or other small formations will manage to convert
the dynamic of the No vote to a renewed political dynamic.