[lbo-talk] I'm left you're right she's gone

[Dennis Claxton]

For years we've been talking about the left "such 
as it is" in the U.S.  This argument from wsws 
says even if you have a group openly 
called  “Cooperation of the Anti-Capitalist Left 
for the Revolution,” you can still be 
fucked.  This essay is also interesting for 
containing the phrase "there is nothing accidental..." :

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m20.shtml

[...]

What characterizes the current political situation in Greece?

The social democratic PASOK government is acting 
on behalf of international finance capital by 
imposing draconian cuts to make the working 
population pay for the bankruptcy of the state, 
resulting from its bailout of the banks, and the 
overall crisis of the capitalist system.

PASOK, in turn, relies on the trade unions, with 
which it has a long association, to divide, 
dissipate and exhaust the resistance of the 
workers by restricting it to fruitless protests. 
While union leaders criticize the cuts at protest 
rallies, they back the government and devote 
their efforts to stabilizing the capitalist 
system. This means, in practice, creating the 
conditions for PASOK to impose the cuts demanded by the banks.

Under conditions where the unions’ treachery is 
ever more apparent and they face increasing 
criticism from workers, the union bureaucracy, in 
its turn, relies on the pseudo-left groups. Their 
role is to prevent a rebellion by workers against 
the organizational and political straitjacket of the union apparatus.

Political organizations like SYRIZA, which calls 
itself a “Coalition of the Radical Left,” and 
Antarsya, which was established last spring as 
the “Cooperation of the Anti-Capitalist Left for 
the Revolution,” insist that no struggle against 
the austerity measures is possible or legitimate 
unless it is headed by the unions.

They ignore the fact that the leaderships of the 
two main union federations, GSEE in the private 
sector and ADEDY in the public sector, are 
largely comprised of PASOK members, and that both 
organizations are allied to the very party that 
is carrying out the attacks on the working class.

The central demand of SYRIZA and Antarsya is for 
the “unity of the left” in support of trade union 
action by GSEE and ADEDY. This programme of 
“unity” behind the unions is a betrayal of the 
interests of the working class. Its purpose is to 
uphold the authority of right-wing organizations 
that are working for the defeat of the workers.

Real unity of the working class can be 
established only on the basis of a rebellion 
against the unions and the establishment of new, 
democratic organs of struggle based on a 
socialist perspective­the fight to mobilize the 
working population to bring down the PASOK 
government and replace it with a workers’ government.

There is nothing accidental about the orientation 
of these fake “lefts.” It does not arise from the 
impulses of individual leaders. The line-up of 
petty-bourgeois ex-left organizations with the 
trade union apparatuses is a universal political 
phenomenon. It can be seen on every continent and 
in every country­the ex-radicals in the US, the 
New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, the Left 
Party in Germany, the Socialist Workers Party in 
Britain, Rifondazione Comunista in Italy, etc., etc.

[..]