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Socialism and Democracy

ISSN: 0885-4300 (Print) 1745-2635 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csad20

The Radical Left in Greece

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

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2015.1090833

Published online: 08 Dec 2015.

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Socialism and Democracy, 2015
Vol. 29, No. 3, 25 43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2015.1090833

The Radical Left in Greece

Mihalis Panayiotakis
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If Europe is for us first of all the name of an unresolved political problem,


Greece is one of its centers, not because of the mythical origins of our civiliza-
tion, symbolized by the Acropolis of Athens, but because of the current pro-
blems concentrated here.
Etienne Balibar1

The 2012 elections


On 6 May 2012, parliamentary elections were held in Greece. These
were the first elections since 2010, when the debt crisis exploded and a
troika of lenders (the International Monetary Fund, European Central
Bank, and European Commission) imposed austerity measures of
unprecedented ferocity on the country. These led to one of the
biggest fiscal consolidations among developed economies during
peacetime, with cyclically adjusted deficits declining by more than
16% of GDP within four years, as current Bank of Greece Governor
Yiannis Stournaras pointed out recently.2 At the time of the first 2012
election, Greeces GDP had shrunk by approximately 20 percent
since 2007, and the unemployment rate had hit 25 percent. These
were also the first elections after the eruption of a massive, multifa-
ceted, anti-austerity and anti-systemic movement that enveloped
Greece. The results saw the rise of SYRIZA as a contender for
government.
SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) was then a small parliamen-
tary left-wing group, a political coalition composed of:

1. E. Balibar, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton,


NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 2.
2. Y. Stournaras, Speech by Bank of Greece Governor, at the London Conference at
Chatham House on 02/06/2015. http://goo.gl/z5HR9K

# 2015 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy


26 Socialism and Democracy

1. Various splits and mergers of factions of the historical Communist


Party of Greece (Kommounistiko Komma Elladas, KKE) since 1968,
notably the Coalition of the Left and of Progress3 (Sy naspismo6
th6 Arist1ra6 kai th6 Proodoy , Synaspismos) and Renovative
Communist and Ecological Left (Anan1vtikh Kommoy nistikh Oiko
logikh Arist1ra, AKOA).
2. Trotskyists (such as the Internationalist Labour Left, DEA , affiliated
with the ISO)
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3. Post-Maoists (notably, the Communist Organization of Greece,


KOE, the largest group deriving from the Marxist-Leninist move-
ment in Greece)
4. Libertarian communists (notably Roza, Roza)
5. Ecosocialists (Oikososialist16, Greek Ecosocialist Party)
6. Socialist groupings (such as the Democratic Social Movement,
DIKKI, a 1990s left split from the Panhellenic Socialist Movement,
PASOK)
7. Many previously unaffiliated leftists

The formation of SYRIZA in 2004 reflected a leftward drift of the


parliamentary left of Synaspismos, due to developments in Greek
society and economy, and the political cauldron of the European
and Greek Social Forum, in which various sectors of the anti-
globalization movement participated and worked together. This
opened up a space of dialogue between the various left traditions
and organizations, which was critical to the emergence of SYRIZA
a coalition that became the de facto political umbrella of various grass-
roots, labor, ecological, and social initiatives. These included, to
mention but a few of the most prominent, opposition to a catastrophic
dam in the Acheloos river, opposition to the Athens 2004 Olympics,
and support for initiatives to unionize young and precarious
workers. After the crisis, SYRIZAs identity became inseparable from
the anti-austerity movement and the fight against the troikas policies
in Greece and the Greek oligarchy.
SYRIZA jumped from 4.6 percent of the vote (13 of 300 seats in the
Parliament) in the 2009 elections to 16.8 percent (52 seats) two and a
half years later, running on a pro-movement, anti-austerity, and anti-
systemic platform, just 1.7 percent behind the leading conservative
New Democracy party (ND), thus becoming the official opposition

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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dented 1.2 percent for the revolutionary left. The ANTARSYA,


created after a prolonged period of various attempts at consolidating
a communist, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary electoral pole, is a
political and electoral coalition of the extra-parliamentary left, a con-
federation of smaller groups, coalescing in its current form after the
December 2008 youth revolts. The largest parties of the coalition are
the Greek branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SEK) and the New
Left Current (NAR), a left-breakaway faction from the KKE from the
early 1990s. The ANTARSYA has been very active on all movement
fronts during the austerity period.
The KKE has followed its own unique path of political isolation
and purism since 1991. It is indeed a working-class party in member-
ship and strength, and its union arm, the All-Workers Militant Front
(PAME), the communist semi-autonomous trade union, has been at
the forefront of many, if not most, union struggles in the private
sector. The party considers the Memoranda of Understanding
(MoUs) imposed by the lenders on Greece since 2010 and the
ensuing austerity to be simply current strategies of capitalism; it is sus-
picious of any political goal other than the toppling of capitalism. It is
fiercely anti-EU, but it considers the issue of currency to be secondary.
In fact, its General Secretary, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, recently stated
that if Greece left the Euro now, it would be a worse option for the
working class than if it remained, as long as society remains within
the limits of the current socioeconomic system.5
The May 2012 elections resulted in a hung parliament, as no party
won an absolute majority and no coalition could be formed that was
backed by more than 151 MPs in the 300-seat parliament. Thus, new
elections were called for June. Although initially leading in polls in a

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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. . . [SYRIZAs] support is concentrated in large urban centers and among sal-


aried employees, the economically active population and younger age groups.
By contrast, the supporters of New Democracy . . . tend to be older, from rural
or semi-urban areas, and are drawn chiefly from among the economically inac-
tive population.7

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.

Political lineage from the 1980s to the 2010 crisis


It is difficult to write about what led to SYRIZAs 2015 electoral
victory, without taking into account the Communist-led Greek resist-
ance to the Nazi occupation (1941 44), the Greek Civil War (1944
49), and its aftermath. The moral and political capital that the left
gained from its national liberation struggle its martyrdom first at
the hands of the occupying forces and then under the state of emer-
gency that prevailed in post-civil war Greece was proportional to
its bloody trials and tribulations.
Upon restoration of democracy in 1974, after a seven-year military
junta, and all through the 1970s, Andreas Papandreous PASOK appro-
priated the heroic left tradition as part of its populist arsenal. Forced to
a neoliberal turn after its first, more radical four-year term in

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

government, PASOK slowly shed the veneer of a socialist party and,


following the developments of socialist parties everywhere, trans-
formed itself gradually into a mainstream third way social-demo-
cratic party, imposing an austerity policy in 1985 that eliminated all
of the working-class gains achieved in its first term. At the same
time, PASOK continued the clientelist practices of its predecessors
and of those of its political cadres who came from the Union of Demo-
cratic Center. It promoted friendly new rich dynasties, thereby ush-
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ering in a period of renewed8 scandals and corruption that would


eventually trigger its defeat.
Perestroika9 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 were a time of
turmoil for the left, but the developments in Greece, pointed at least
towards a new unity: The 1968 split of the KKE between a Eurocommu-
nist (KKE 1svt1rikoy , KKE Interior) and a pro-Soviet faction (keeping
the name of KKE), was bridged by the Greek Left (Ellhnikh Arist1ra,
EAR) (which resulted from a split in the KKE Interior in 1986) and KKE
in 1988, as they collaborated to form Synaspismos, which contested the
three elections in 1989 90, in the shadow of the Koskotas banking
scandal that shook the ruling PASOK.10 Synaspismos was formed as
a unified party in 1991, after the renewing faction of the KKE left
the party on its defeat by the loyalist faction at the partys 13th con-
gress, an internal battle decided by a handful of votes.11
The elections of 1989 were a watershed for Synaspismos as they led
to a temporary governing coalition with the ND and after that, partici-
pation in a national unity government (known in Greece as the ecume-
nical government) together with the ND and PASOK, under a senior
Greek banker and former Bank of Greece governor, Xenophon
Zolotas. This very controversial collaboration in government resulted
in the aforementioned split of the KKE and in continuous electoral
hardship for the left over the next 15 years. Other, smaller parties of

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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of radicalism to an apolitical and in general conservative body domi-


nated by ND and PASOK youth, as witnessed by the results of
student elections from the late 80s onwards. It thus lost, until the
mid-2000s, much of its political impact, despite isolated struggles
and mobilizations. At the same time, trade union membership
started to decline, if not in absolute numbers at first, certainly in rela-
tive union participation, especially in the private sector.12 This
retrenchment on many fronts resulted from a series of deep societal
transformations that began in the 1980s, but peaked after the neoliberal
capture of the socialist PASOK under Kostas Simitis in 1996.
As new social tensions appeared between 1990 and 2008, a realign-
ment of forces took place leading to the emergence of new or reinvigo-
rated political actors. These included: (1) the anti-war movement (very
active and massive in Iraq Wars, NATO aggression against Serbia, and
the Kurdish struggle, especially after the Greek government turned
over the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to Turkish authorities), which
was mainly driven by party initiatives (primarily from the KKE); (2)
a multifaceted environmentalist movement; (3) anarchist groupings
arising as an alternative to what was perceived, especially among the
younger generation, as a socially static and ossified left; (4) the anti-
globalization movement and the Greek and European Social Forum,
which were, among other things, catalysts to the formation
of SYRIZA; and (5) numerous anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-
xenophobic initiatives.13

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

Society and economy before the European crisis


The Greek economy, in the period preceding the great crisis, was
on a generally upward trend by most indicators. As Greece struggled
to meet the Maastricht criteria for Euro membership,14 inflation
dropped to single digits from over 20 percent in the early 1990s, the
GDP boomed as lending rates plummeted, and a series of successive
bubbles provided a temporary boost for the economy. The successful
Greek model was based on massive borrowing, public and private.
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Prospective Euro membership led to debt-fueled growth and destabi-


lized a Greek economy that was already deindustrializing and had
become a low-value-added service economy.15
At the same time, unemployment remained high, never dropping
below 8 percent after 1992. Labor standards were dismal and real
wages stagnant. Mass migration from Albania and the former USSR
saw an increase in labor availability and labor exploitation. As the
last of the bubbles burst after the 2004 Olympics, employment possibi-
lities were becoming increasingly poor, especially for younger
workers. Precarious work became the norm and the term 700 Euro
generation was coined, describing well-educated youths trapped in
low-paying, precarious and dead-end jobs, thus endangering any pro-
spects of achieving middle-class status. This all, assisted by persistent
police brutality against youth, came to an explosion in December 2008.
The youth revolt of December 2008 can probably be considered the
point of departure of the Greek political crisis. Although it occurred well
before deficits and bond-spreads shot up, it appears in hindsight as a
premonition of the disaster to come. It was the critical point at which
grievances of a generation without any viable future met with the fear
of a looming crisis and the institutional violence against youth that
had become commonplace. It was a massive uprising, mixing the
violent and the non-violent. In the first 10 days alone (the events
lasted until early January), there were more than 250 young protesters
arrested, scores of officers injured, and according to the Business
Council of Athens, some 500 shops or businesses destroyed.16 The

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

events included the storming of police headquarters, overturning patrol


cars, clashes with riot police as well as peaceful protests outside parlia-
ment (met with police violence nonetheless), and a series of school occu-
pations throughout Greece. As Andreas Kalyvas points out, From the
point of view of mass, there were days with more than 100,000 partici-
pants nationwide, some 600 schools and 150 university facilities
across the country occupied, and numerous labor unions, civil associ-
ations, NGOs, and social movements in daily strikes and marches.17
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The events, triggered by the murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoro-


poulos by a police officer in downtown Athens, spread to all of Greece,
from small towns to the suburbs of Athens (almost every major Greek
city saw some form of student/youth unrest). They were fueled by
the persistent repression of youth protest and culture by Greek law
enforcement, highlighted by the extremely violent police repression
with which the student movement against private universities of
2006 7 was met. Its actors were a broad spectrum of youth across
social classes, but through these events, native Greek and immigrant
youth at the margins of society, proletarian and those under the threat
of proletarianization, without any hope and prospect, emerged for the
first time in the spotlight and demanded political space.
During and especially after the events, the mainstream media tried
to dismiss the protests as apolitical, meaningless, and dangerous. At
the time the radical left, except for the KKE,18 was supportive of the
demonstrations, but SYRIZA was the only parliamentary party to
support them.

Austerity and the Greek great depression


On 23 April 2010, from the remote Greek island of Kastelorizo, then
Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou announced that Greece would ask

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

its European partners to allow it into their support mechanism as, in


the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007, the countrys borrowing
costs had shot up to unmanageable levels.19 Thus, the country entered
the era of MoUs and austerity. There followed a phenomenal decline of
wages, living standards, social protections, regulations, and
democracy.
Between 2009 and 2014, Greece lost approximately 25 percent of its
GDP,20 and the unemployment rate peaked at over 26 percent,21 of
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which nearly three quarters were long-term unemployed not receiving


any unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, youth unemployment ranged
between 50 60 percent. The percentage of people at risk of poverty or
social exclusion reached 35 percent in 2013,22 the largest five-year
increase in Europe. Child poverty jumped from 23 percent to 40.5
percent between 2008 and 2012.23 Wages were crushed, losing on
average approximately 26 percent of their pre-tax purchasing power
up to 2013,24 while the minimum wage dropped from approximately
E710 (net, pre-tax) to E586 (E511 for young workers).25 The health
care system, significantly defunded, buckled under pressure26 as did
mental health. Suicides increased dramatically and homelessness
became a massive phenomenon in the major cities of Greece for the
first time in living memory. According to some estimates,27 over
300,000 Greeks (most young) have emigrated from the country, of

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

whom nearly 200,000 were well educated professionals (doctors,


engineers, programmers, etc.).28
The scale of devastation and social catastrophe has been immense.
Greek working people suffered the equivalent effects of a war, indeed a
class war. Even the IMF pointed out29 that income inequality in Greece
had reached dangerous levels and, according to a 2014 Pew survey,
Greeks viewed the levels of inequality in the country as a major
problem more than in any other OECD country polled.30
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This happened while the very principles of bourgeois parliamen-


tary democracy were undermined. Police violence and impunity esca-
lated, often in conjunction with the fascist right, whose violence was
tolerated and protected.31 Strikes, private and public sector, were
repeatedly stopped by forced conscription of workers. Press
freedom suffered through both the shutting down of the public broad-
caster, the ERT, and the falling in line of all major (oligarch-owned) TV
channels and newspapers around the pro-troika position, as well as
persistent police violence against journalists. Between 2009 and 2014,
Greece fell 56 places to 99th on the Reporters without Borders
World Press Freedom Index rankings.
Having to face the effects of the hyper-austerity policies dictated by
the troika and the repression organized by the Greek government, the
Greek working class and large segments of the afflicted population
responded promptly. The series of general strikes (42 in the first five
years of the crisis alone)32 and their accompanying demonstrations
organized by the Greek General Confederation of Workers (GSEE)
and the union of Public Employees (ADEDY) could be said to be
more show than substance. Most of these strikes had low participation
rates (under 20 percent in the private sector, though accurate partici-
pation numbers are hard to find and the numbers quoted by various
sources are widely divergent to say the least) and seemed to be more

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

about ritually exorcizing austerity than organizing a coherent struggle.


Both union confederations were bureaucratized and clientelist, with
strong ties to the ruling (and later co-ruling) PASOK. A similar ritual
ineffectiveness afflicted the much more militant PAME marches held
separately on days of general strikes. However, popular discontent
expressed itself even through these limited forms. This was demon-
strated especially in the GSEE protest on 5 May 2010 in Athens, at
the start of the austerity period. A massive (union estimates put the
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number of demonstrators at 150,000), angry, and determined demo,


culminating with an attempt to storm the parliament building, it was
stigmatized by the tragic death of three bank employees, trapped in
their office when a group of (alleged) anarchists firebombed it. The
shock of this incident froze the militant mood and ushered in a
small period of retreat. Despite quite a few similar but smaller
union-organized marches, the next significant wave of protest started
with the squares/indignant movement on May 2011, which was
perhaps the pinnacle of mass popular resistance to the austerity
regime.
The events that led to the Greek indignados (aganaktismeni,
meaning outraged) movement are noteworthy: following the similar
spontaneous protests in major squares in austerity-ridden Spain, an
explicitly non-partisan call was made through social media for gather-
ings in Syntagma Square in Athens and in other squares in cities
around Greece. The initial gatherings were far more successful than
expected and this had a very strong feedback effect as the daily peace-
ful assemblies grew in size and strength. The numbers of protesters
started at 35,000 in Syntagma alone on the first day, 25 May 2011,
reached 80,000 by the end of the month, and shot up to hundreds of
thousands by June 2011, when the peaceful demonstrators gathered
in Syntagma joined with successive union protests. This confluence
of movements was met then, for the first time in the aganaktismeni
demos, with extreme police violence as the squares became increas-
ingly politicized.
These demos took place all over Greece and were truly massive a
June 2011 poll by Public Issue,33 showed that 52 percent of respondents
(2,700,000 adults according to the polling company) either would
surely participate or probably participate in the movement of
the squares.

33. [in Greek] www.publicissue.gr/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/plateies-6-20111.


pdf
36 Socialism and Democracy

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:

. The Im Not Paying movement (Den Plirono) started in early 2008,


before the crisis exploded, as a protest against high toll-road rate
increases, but soon after the first troika memorandum in Spring

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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Athens, a local movement, pretty much universally supported in


the area, emerged to oppose a planned toxic landfill, operated by
one of the Greek oligarchs. This led to clashes with police, barricades
and roadblocks. The struggle was, in the end, victorious. A similar
but even more prolonged and violent struggle has been raging in
the northern Greek peninsula of Chalkidiki where a Canadian gold
mining company, in collaboration with the same Greek oligarch, is
laying claim to thousands of acres of pristine forest. Since 2011,
local inhabitants have been active and on a daily war footing
against the company, its toxic plans, and its thugs. The situation
has often been violent, with the police systematically siding with
the company against the protesting citizens.36
. The 595 female cleaning workers fired from the finance ministry
remained in protest on the street and camped outside the finance
ministry building, fighting riot police and braving a host of adminis-
trative and repressive measures for nearly two years, until rehired by
the SYRIZA government.
. In June 2011, the Greek government decided to suddenly shut down
all public broadcasting, abolish ERT (the public radio and TV broad-
caster), and fire everyone working there. A huge movement in their
support materialized. Many of the 2650 fired ERT employees along
with a massive solidarity movement kept on broadcasting, unpaid,
through the internet and digital TV channels. In one of the first
bills introduced by the SYRIZA government, ERT was restored
and all its workers rehired.
. Steelworkers at Chalivourgia Ellados, where the union was domi-
nated by the PAME/KKE, went on a nine-month strike (November

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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roots and solidarity economy, along with spontaneous social


infrastructure initiatives. This included takeover of factories37 and
self-organized initiatives of food and goods distribution that eschewed
middlemen to both farmers/producers and consumers benefit, local
currency schemes in many towns, social groceries and pharmacies
which delivered food and pharmaceuticals to the poor at low prices
or for free, as well as social soup-kitchens and even hospitals, which
provided urgent or chronic care for many of the hundreds of thousands
of Greeks and immigrants who had lost access to public hospitals. The
range of similar initiatives was enormous and enveloped the country.

2015 elections and their aftermath


On 25 January 2015, after two and a half years in opposition,
SYRIZA was elected to govern. The years since the 2012 elections
saw a decline in movement activity, as social expectations transferred
to the political realm and the prospect of a SYRIZA electoral win, which
eventually seemed inevitable. This change of attitude and the necessi-
ties of political preparation for government, led to a shift of the party
from the street to offices.
The first signs that SYRIZA was close to taking the government
came in May 2014 in the Greek elections for European Parliament,
which SYRIZA won (while its leader, Alexis Tsipras, ran for President
of the European Commission), and in the greater Athens regional
elections where SYRIZA managed to elect Rena Dourou as governor
of the periphery.38 In December, SYRIZA forced through an early par-
liamentary election. Running on a platform of restoring hope,

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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parties such as PASOK and Potami, because both of these parties


were tainted with large-scale corruption in the case of PASOK and
alleged ties to Greek oligarchs in the case of Potami.
SYRIZA came to power promising a combination of two things that
would soon prove incompatible: remaining in the eurozone and
putting an end to the austerity disaster in Greece. SYRIZA strove to
be the first domino in a democratization of Europe that would begin
in Greece, reclaiming the social Europe that was lost after the defection
of the Social Democratic parties to neoliberalism. Its electoral platform,
the Thessaloniki Program, was a very moderate call for an emergency
program, mildly redistributive, aiming to relieve the hardest hit and
repair the fractures of the Greek small and middle scale economy
not a radical left manifesto. On this basis, it created a social alliance
broader than the one it had achieved in June 2012. As Mavris
pointed out, analyzing the vote:

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

The SYRIZA/ANEL government in its first six months passed a


number of important and progressive bills, such as re-hiring public
sector workers whose jobs were unjustly terminated (ERT, cleaning
ladies, and teachers), ushering in a new law for citizenship to
second-generation immigrants, restoring access to public hospital
care for the hundreds of thousands of uninsured and also abolishing
the E5 entry ticket to public hospitals, initiating a humanitarian relief
effort for the most afflicted, and taking steps to eliminate prison
overcrowding.

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

There was an outpouring of popular good will as the SYRIZA/


ANEL government took office and attempted to negotiate with the
countrys creditors. Soon, however, any illusions that the SYRIZA lea-
dership might have harbored about the flexibility of the EU and the
possibilities of reforming the eurozone were sinking. It was obvious
that the main goal of the Greek governments interlocutors was to
topple it or force it to collaborate with the old, corrupt political system.
By late June 2015, faced with a final ultimatum by the troika, Alexis
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Tsipras announced a referendum on this offer.40 Again, despite


frenzy from the oligarch-owned media and threats of Greece being
expelled from the eurozone by all sorts of European political actors,
an unexpected 61 percent of Greek voters, significantly polarized on
an income and age basis, expressed their disagreement with the new
austerity deal this, in the face of capital controls induced by Euro-
pean Central Bank which imposed a E60 daily limit on bank withdra-
wals and restrictive oversight of international monetary transactions
(including import/export transactions and credit card use abroad),
as yet another external form of pressure. It was a brief glimmer of
democracy.
Despite the referendum victory, the European elites remained
unmoved and came back with an even more extortionate and punitive
austerity and oversight plan41 that reduced Greece to the status of a
protectorate, threatening to collapse the Greek banking system if it
was rejected. Tsiprass government caved in on 12 July 2015 and
accepted, under the blackmail of immediate economic obliteration, a
new loan MoU of austerity measures.
Matters in Greece are still evolving, a split in SYRIZA has already
occurred and the prospect of new elections is looming. Tsipras and

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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which this last in a series of moves away from democratic accountabil-


ity, combined with total domination of banking interests over the EU
economies, has turned the eurozone into an inescapably anti-demo-
cratic debtors prison for the periphery countries, and proved any
economic policy outside of neoliberalism unachievable within its
bounds.
I believe that SYRIZA can still play a significant role in reinventing
the lefts conception of European policy, if it manages to deliver a
counter-strategy that includes a Euro exit option. The lessons of the
SYRIZA calamity must be heeded by the European radical left. For
the last seven years, Greece has been at the center of an unresolved
European political problem. SYRIZA has given this problem a name
and has bared its dictatorial face for all to see. But now, what is
needed from Greece, from the entire EU radical left, goes beyond
simple activism. It demands an alternative political strategy that
will apply productive capacities, cultural capital, factory takeovers,
and new forms of worker based economic collaboration (collectives,
a new cooperative movement, commons-based initiatives) and solidar-
ity networks, to undo the capture of institutions and lives by the unde-
mocratic forces that on 12 July 2015 extinguished the few rays of hope
that the Greek working classes and movements spent sweat and blood
to create.
On August 20th, Alexis Tsiras announced his governments resig-
nation, admitting in a televised address to the Greek people that The
political mandate of the 25 January elections has exhausted its limits
and now the Greek people have to have their say.42 Elections were
set for 20 September 2015. The next day, a group of 25 SYRIZA MPs
that had already voted against the proposed deal, most of them
members of the partys Left Current, announced the creation of a
new party that they named Popular Unity (Laikh Enothta, LAE).
The party has stated that they will attempt to organize a front of the

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

No vote of the 5 July referendum. This is a party that, according to


Stathis Kouvelakis, a former senior member of SYRIZA, has as its
main planks the rupture with austerity and the memoranda, the rejec-
tion of all privatizations, and the nationalization under social control of
strategic sectors of the economy (starting with the banking system), the
cancellation of the major part of the Greek debt (starting with the
immediate interruption of its repayment), and, more broadly, a set of
radical measures that will shift the balance of forces in favor of labor
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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

At the time of writing, it is unclear how many of the original 201


members of the SYRIZA Central Committee will remain in the party.
But there is a very large wave of resignation from office and party
membership all over Greece, some heading to the LAE, some continu-
ing to support SYRIZA, some not taking a stand either way. The largest
party of the radical left in Greece is in a process of redefinition and
rearrangement.
The SYRIZA leadership is insisting that it has not adopted austerity
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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.

46. SYRIZA, pre-election Government Program Plan, in Greek; available in Greek at


goo.gl/EDAoCb

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