The Podemos leadership has contributed to the party’s decline by embracing the Tsipras faction in Syrize and mimicking its evolution. The development has predictably cheered the political, academic, and media elites who feared the party’s rise and who now welcome its “normalization” and “shift from idealism to pragmatism”.
Should Podemos not follow Syriza in forming a government, it will be no bad thing. If left-wing parties and governments are unwilling or unable to mobilize their supporters against the formidable forces of international capitalism arrayed against them, better they remain in opposition rather than crossing over and imposing austerity on their working class base. The record of social democratic governments shows this to have mostly been the case. They have sapped rather than strengthened the movements for reform which lifted them into office, prompting disillusionment and a retreat from politics rather than increased confidence, consciousness, and involvement by the great numbers of people who voted for them.