The lefts in the crisis by François Sabado International Viewpoint Monday 20 May 2013
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The historical crisis of the European workers’ movement
How, under these conditions, could the ’lefts’ not be impacted? During the first months of the crisis, around 2008, it was hoped that the crisis would cause reactions, large-scale social struggles and the strengthening of the workers’ movement. Five years later, it is another scenario that has been written. There has been and there is resistance and social struggles. Southern Europe - first of all Greece, with its 8 one-day general strikes, but also Portugal and in an impressive way Spain - with its indignados, its strikes and demonstrations - have experienced an upsurge of struggles. Radical forces have obtained good electoral results in Greece with Syriza, an exceptional phenomenon, and to a lesser extent in Spain and France, with Izquierda Unida and the Left Front. But this reality can also express itself in a movement such as the "Five Stars" in Italy. However, in none of the countries of Europe has a significant blow been delivered against the attacks of the governments and the employers, despite exceptional struggles in Southern Europe. Moreover these struggles are not producing a phase of organic growth of the workers’ movement: there are no massive waves of people joining parties or trade unions.
No reformist, left reformist, anti-liberal or revolutionary current has experienced substantial growth, apart perhaps in Greece, with a large number of recruits to Syriza which, despite weaknesses in its implantation and organization, had at its last National Conference nearly 35,000 members. But in general the rate of unionization continues to decline, after declining significantly in the 1980s and 1990s. Only IG Metall maintains its position in Germany. As for the parties, they are experiencing a steady erosion of their members, and in the best of cases tend increasingly to be reduced to big electoral machines. Even the powerful German Social Democracy has dropped from a million members in the 1970s to less than 500,000 members. And almost nothing remains of the great Italian Communist Party!
A party like the PCF, which has contained its crisis following the election results of the Left Front, has seen a significant drop in its membership. The number of members went down from 78,779 to 64,184 between the last two congresses. The number of members who voted for the last congress (February, 2013) was 34,000, whereas 48,000 voted to choose their candidate for the presidential election in June 2011. "34,000 is the lowest figure in recent years," noted Roger Martelli, historian of the PCF and himself a former member of the party. So there is a singular situation, which combines one of the deepest crises of the capitalist system and a very much weakened European workers’ movement. This is a notable difference with other crisis situations and in particular the 1930s, when all organizations and currents experienced impressive growth, on both the political and the trade-union level.
"Already no longer and not yet”
This weakening of the workers’ movement has deep causes. It is firstly the result of thirty years of neo-liberal capitalist offensive that have unravelled, dismantled and then liquidated a series of social achievements. The crisis comes at a time when the workers’ movement has for years been thrown onto the defensive. The changes that have been made to work processes have been shaped by these unfavourable relationships of forces. While the working class has never been as big (between 85 and 90 per cent of the active population), it is segmented, divided, individualized, and in significant proportions engaged in precarious work. This undoubtedly inhibits the development of class consciousness and of trade unions or working-class political organizations. Finally, even in the countries of Southern Europe which demonstrate great fighting spirit, there is a very considerable lag between social explosions and socialist consciousness. The absence of an alternative puts a brake on any project of revolutionary socialist transformation.
These discrepancies exist in other regions of the world, as for example in the Arab world which is today destabilized by the outbreak of revolutions for democracy and social justice. Dictatorships have been overthrown by the popular classes and by coalitions bringing together democrats, secularists, nationalists, religious people and revolutionaries. The revolutionary processes are continuing, but as shown by the developments of the situation in Tunisia and Egypt, the dominant political forces come from the Islamist movement, even though it is diverse and divided. If, as Gilbert Achcar explains, "We have to go through the experience of Islamism in power", that does not explain the weakness of the progressive and revolutionary currents today. The balance sheets of the Arab nationalism of the 1950 and 60s and of Stalinism on the international level weigh painfully on the formation of socialist consciousness.
To come back to Europe, the propulsive force of its workers’ movement strengthened parallel to the expansion of capitalist Europe, even though the workers’ movement was controlled by the bureaucracies of Stalinism and social democracy. Europe’s decline on the socio-economic level has been accompanied by cultural and political weakening; it reduces the influence of the workers’ movement on the continent. Of course, some counter-tendencies offset these declines: social resistance to the attacks by capital, new social movements such as the global justice movement, the indignados, and new radical currents among youth. New socio-political experiences which block austerity policies can cause sharp turns in Europe, as evidenced, for example, by Syriza in Greece.
>From a geopolitical point of view, the potential of the workers’ movement and of social movements is considerable in the new emerging powers, especially China. The social weight of the Chinese proletariat, its progress in the fight for wage increases, social security, its ability to build trade unions, associations for democratic rights, independent political movements can play a key role in a reorganization of the lefts. In a situation where the traditional workers’ movement "is already no longer", as long as new movements – the young indignant ones and Chinese and Indian workers and those of other countries in Asia and Latin America, "are not yet’, what is most promising about the new epoch keeps us waiting. At the same time, capital is scoring points. We must therefore be lucid about the reality of the global relationships of forces, and in order to resist, know how to defend a political project able to respond to sharp turns in the situation.
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The “Syriza” singularity
Quite another thing is the Greek configuration. We cannot understand Syriza without starting from the Greek crisis, which has resulted in social destruction unprecedented in Europe since the Second World War. Socio-economic demolition goes hand in hand with the political decomposition of the traditional parties, in particular PASOK. At the same time, the austerity plans of the Troika are massively rejected by the population. Greece has experienced in recent months eight one-day general strikes. On the far right, against a background of racism, the Nazi party "Golden Dawn" is making a breakthrough. In these exceptional circumstances, those of a "global national crisis," Syriza has been propelled into being the first party of the Left: its election results have gone from 4.6 per cent to 26.8ç per cent!
Syriza, originally a coalition, has been transformed into a party. It comes from the history of the Greek Left, the crisis of the Communist movement, its splintering: Synaspismos, the majority current, comes from the Eurocommunist currents of the 1970s and has experienced internal crises and shifts to the left, notably under the pressure of the younger generations. Syriza has also worked with the global justice movement. The KKE, a very Stalinist party, more organized, is outside Syriza. At the last National Conference of Syriza, the left current and the left pole presented a separate list that obtained 25 per cent of the votes. Although the majority of Synaspismos remains on left reformist positions, the instability of the coalition, its sensitivity to the mass movement, its capacity of attraction with regard to the anti-austerity forces, the place of the revolutionary left within it, contribute to giving Syriza a radical role very different from that of the Left Front in France.
Syriza’s essential strength and its dynamic come both from its radical opposition to the memorandums of the Troika (EU, IMF, ECB), its rejection of austerity policies, and, over and above formulas, from its real defence of a programme in favour of social rights, public services, the annulment of the illegitimate debt, nationalization of the banks under social control. In this situation of acute confrontation, these demands have a transitional role. Syriza has pursued a policy of unitary proposals towards the KKE and Antarsya, which have rejected them. Lastly, it is practically engaged alongside sectors in struggle. Syriza is the expression of the anti-memorandum movement. It has also popularized the proposal of a government of the lefts on an anti-austerity programme, whose content is an issue between the left and the right of the party. Because, to date, it clearly a question of a "government of the lefts," a government breaking with austerity and not a "government of national union or salvation", as has been stated here and there by some leading members of Syriza.
Of course, nothing is settled. Social decomposition is increasing day by day. The stakes in Syriza are considerable on the level of the pressure exerted by the EU and the Greek capitalists. The left reformist orientation that is dominant within Syriza, and also the gap between its electoral strength and its organic weaknesses, limits its capacity for action. The temptations of the Syriza right to seek agreement with sectors of the ruling classes for a compromise with the EU are real. Other sectors of the Left, outside Syriza, discuss the possibility of a project of national reconstruction. But, at this stage, the EU remains intractable: no salvation outside “the memorandum”! So, faced with the attacks of the Troika and the Samaras government, there is no other perspective than confrontation, mobilization to overthrow this government, the battle for a "government of the lefts", and creating from the rejection of the austerity conditions the first breaks with the capitalist system.
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