What of SYRIZA polling like 15-20 percent like a year and a half ago? I thought they were posed to eclipse the KKE. What's their social base?
Youth, urban intellectuals and a chunk of the unions?
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:59 PM, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Bhaskar Sunkara
> <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I concur. Anyway, in the 1970s Greece was along with Italy and Portugal
> > part of that "unsettled" zone of European capitalism...
> > despite democratization, not much has changed, right? The CP is still
> > wedded to Stalinist orthodoxy and is drab and conservative, but still has
> > some real roots in the working class and trade union support. I'm not
> sure
> > about the current political orientation of SYRIZA, but compared to the
> rest
> > of Europe they are quite vibrant. I'm also not sure if all that
> > "petit-bourgeois rock throwing" pushed people towards the "law and
> order",
> > but from the last election results it didn't seem that way. I don't see
> > much of an alternative opening up in Greece. If shit hits the fan and
> the
> > center-left can't impose austerity and there aren't forces strong enough
> to
> > the left to really rock the boat and the country enters into another
> prolong
> > period of chaos.... what happens? Chaos until the right wins a mandate
> in
> > the next elections?
>
> Guy Rundle, an Australian writer I happen to think is a legend, is in
> Athens and has been writing daily reports for Crikey, unfortunately
> subscriber-only. But you might find this summary from the Overland
> site interesting, he comes to similar conclusions to yours.
>
> http://web.overland.org.au/?p=3605
>
> [...]
>
> For Synapsismos, the first pro-European Greek party, the shift is
> particularly piquant. Papandreou, who stared down the PASOK old guard
> by resigning his leadership during Opposition, and then recontesting
> it, has effectively transplanted much of their argument to the heart
> of his party. The party can justly say that the EU/euro – with its
> unelected central bank dictating policy – is not the social Europe
> they had in mind in the 1970s. But as it's the only Europe on offer,
> their critique of PASOK, and their strong association with the
> now-abated anti-globalisation movement of the 2000s has left
> Synapsismos with no clear message to give.
>
> But their problems are nothing compared to the KKE, whose Leninism was
> reinforced by the departure of Synapsismos in the first place. On the
> one hand, they may be in a position to gain some support from the
> spectacle soon to take place – ECB regulators poring over Greece's
> financial records like administrators over a bankrupt company, and an
> effective surrender of Greek sovereignty over its own economic policy
> to the EU as a condition of being bailed-out (or gaining guarantees
> for its repayments). They can charge that the crisis does not
> originate from an inefficient public service and dodgy finances, as
> much as it does from the huge interest rates Greece now has to pay on
> its loans, product of the financial markets talking up the prospect of
> a Greek default in late 2009.
>
> Yet absent of any other model of development aside from international
> financing, many Greeks – including many who would have been left
> nationalists a generation ago – appear willing to accept whatever
> conditions Europe dishes out. Entry into the eurozone made capital
> cheaper, and so the change in Greek everyday life was rapid and
> noticeable for many. The KKE's manifesto on its website is out of
> another era, angrily defending the developmental record of the USSR,
> and reflecting at length on the nature of need and desire, work,
> labour and life activity. Everyone else – well, those who can afford
> it – is shopping at Marks and Spencers.
>
> But the Left's turn may yet come – and that is what makes Greece so
> fascinating. Papandreou's decision to use the metaphor of the 'weak
> link' in affirming a positive vision of European capitalism was a
> canny way of preventing it being used against him, and soon. For the
> plain fact is that the form of development that euro-isation promoted
> has been uneven in the extreme, emphasising consumption and doing
> damage to core export industries and tourism through price rises.
>
> If Greece is now restructured – ie has an austerity program imposed –
> by the ECB, then the economy as a whole will be deflated, while
> consumption continues, exacerbating inequality, and detaching many
> people from the smooth PASOK vision. Whether the beneficiaries of that
> would be the KKE, or the hard-right anti-immigrant Orthodoxy Party
> remains to be seen. If Greece is simply a laggard on an existing
> European trajectory, it is more likely to be the latter.
>
> However, the KKE is betting that this isn't the case, and that the
> 'weak link' argument is more than mere rhetoric. If they're correct
> then Greece is not on the European trajectory to a post-political
> malaise, but a point at which the contradictions of a consumer-reliant
> orientation of development, a reliance on finance capital, come into
> contact with a populace that has not yet lost its conception of class
> contradiction, and suspicion of the state.
>
> Indeed, it is this aspect of Greece that Papandreou is playing up –
> Greece as the unpredictable wildman, the Zorba of Europe, all the
> while believing that it is not the case, that it has been tamed.
> Central to this were the days of demonstrating, occupation and rioting
> that consumed the country in December 2009, after the death of a 15
> year old, Alexander Grigoropoulous, shot by police in Exarchia. The
> demonstrations and the killing itself had numerous facets, not least a
> major generational divide in the country, which has a soaring youth
> unemployment rate (around 25%), while many in an earlier generation
> enjoy the projected jobs that are contributing to the current deficit
> – and enjoying the new fruits of consumption in the euro economy. But
> the events were discontinuous with the wider struggle, rejected by
> some on the left as a disorganised tantrum.
>
> [...]
>
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