Greece after Tsipras: a left defeated, the right in power, and the new offensive

Traditionally, at the International Thessaloniki Fair^[1], Greek governments present their program and working agenda.

This year, the newly elected Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis^[2], was in the spotlight. The ultra-liberal leader of New Democracy (ND) still enjoys the advantage that gave him the recent victory of his party in the legislative elections of July 7, 2019. With 39.8% of the votes, ND obtained 158 deputies and won the absolute majority in Parliament, as well as the possibility of governing alone. Even if the defeat of Syriza and Alexis Tsipras had been foreseeable for some time, such a result would have been considered highly unlikely a year earlier, when the majority of political analysts predicted a victory for Mitsotakis and the right, but without a parliamentary majority for his party. This debate revealed the fear of a new period of political instability for Greek capitalism, possibly triggered by the difficulties of forming a coalition government between the New Democracy and one of the small “centrist” parties, notably with the Movement for Change – Kinal – Fofi Gennimatas’ small party (8.1%)^[3], a survival of Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK, once a powerful but now marginalized party.

In the regional elections, ND also won 12 of the country’s 13 regions. The right therefore emerged as the undisputed winner of the electoral tests at the end of the Syriza period. This outcome was endorsed by all forces in the system, who quickly forgot their scepticism about Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ leadership and the political effectiveness of his party. It should be recalled that in the surveys conducted during the tumultuous year of 2015, ND recorded a more moderate decline in support than PASOK, which sank to 14%; ND’s drop signaled its retreat towards the hard core of the traditional right. Today, all the pillars of the system are united in welcoming Greece’s “return to normal.” The attentive reader will notice that what is greeted in the columns of the so-called “serious” bourgeois press is not so much the defeat of Alexis Tsipras—we will see later that efforts are being made to spare Syriza’s ruling group—as the defeat of the great workers and popular mobilization of the years 2010-13, the one that led to the political victory of Syriza in January 2015 and the birth of a popular force that, in the summer 2015 referendum, gave 62% to OXI (No to the austerity memorandum) and demanded an immediate end to austerity and the overthrow of neoliberal counter-reforms. This observation of a “return to normalcy” is precisely intended to denounce the “madness” of a time when those below had hoped to be able to win the political battle.

The government offensive

As he advanced towards the steps of power, Kyriakos Mitsotakis had used the hard slogans and language of a revengeful right-wing whose objective was to transform Syriza’s predictable electoral defeat into a strategic defeat of the workers movement and social resistance, discrediting the ideas, modes of action, and even symbols of the workers’ struggle. Leading leaders of ND, such as the current ministers Adonis Georgiades and Makis Voridis, from the extreme fascist right, had publicly defended the prospect of political domination by the right on the same scale as Greece experienced after the 1944-1949 civil war.

During the first two months of the Mitsotakis government, alarming signals were sent out. Under the orders of former PASOK Minister Michalis Chrisochoïdis, the police, a good friend of U.S. armed forces and highly appreciated under the PASOK governments for its contribution to the “fight against terrorism,” attacked and evacuated refugee squats. In the aftermath, it went to war to “restore order and law” in the Exarcheia district, an emblematic place for anarchist activism, the far left and the youth movement. The ultra-liberal Minister of Education, Niki Kerameos, inaugurated her mandate by abolishing “asylum,” the inviolability by the police of university sites, a conquest of the student movement following the dictatorship of the colonels that no government had so far dared to question. ND’s senior executives and government officials speak of refugees and migrants in terms of astonishing contempt, calling them “human waste” and thus legitimizing racist acts. The Greek Orthodox Church has officially declared a day of “mourning” for “unborn children,” inaugurating the challenge to the right to legal and free abortion.

The fight against repression, racism and the conservative ideological offensive of the right represents a first test for the popular movement, which sets the framework for this autumn’s social battles.

However, the history of class struggle, in Greece as elsewhere, shows that repression alone has never been enough to ensure the longevity of a government. The best example is the government of Mitsotakis senior (in power between 1990 and 1993) which, after launching the neoliberal offensive with the unconditional support of all the forces of the system, was finally overthrown in 1993 by a major movement against privatizations, marked by corporate occupations and street confrontations that were not driven by the far Left or anarchists but by banking, transport and telecommunications workers.

At this year’s Fair, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was aware of the risks he will face in the medium term. To the surprise of the majority of commentators, he used “centrist” language, leaving room for political negotiations and, if necessary, “broader consensus.” It is clear that the message was addressed to both Fofi Gennimatas’ Kinal [Movement for Change, a center-left alliance] and Syriza.

The motivation for such a choice is the fear of what the future holds. Everyone is aware that the August 2018 agreement between Tsipras and Greece’s creditors, which sealed an illusory “memorandum exit”^[4], is based on the most optimistic scenario for the international economy. Asked in Thessaloniki about the consequences of a possible international economic slowdown, the ultra-liberal Mitsotakis dismissed such a possibility and called for a… neo-Keynesian shift in the European Union, citing as an example the moderation of austerity measures in Germany.

Certainly, behind such hesitations, behind the soft language of “consensus building,” lie the inflexible choices that the capitalist class nowadays demands for Greece. Mitsotakis has thus announced the immediate repeal for any new company of all environmental protection and land use planning regulations that could hinder investors, including minimum constraints on employee health and safety. Among this “package” of measures, it is necessary to highlight the “flexibility” of collective agreements which makes it possible to remunerate qualified employees, in certain regions or sectors, at the legal minimum wage (650 euros per month) instead of the conventional wage provided for these categories.

Mitsotakis also announced the acceleration of privatizations, starting with the conclusion of the sale at a discount to the Latsis real estate group of a huge piece of land by the sea, on the site of the former Elliniko airport in Attica, the sale of the current Athens airport, the privatization of the state-owned Greek Petroleum (which controls one of the largest refineries in the Mediterranean), the privatization of the natural gas company, as well as the privatization of the large state-owned electricity company, which no government has so far dared to do.

On the burning issue of taxation, Mitsotakis announced the immediate reduction of the corporate income tax rate from 28% to 24% for the current year, then to 20% in 2020, as well as the reduction of the rate applied to shareholder dividends from 10% to 5%. It is an important gift for capitalists with tax cuts for ordinary citizens of a totally symbolic nature. The reduction in the personal income tax rate applies only to the first 10,000 bracket, whereas the current non-taxation threshold is 8648 euros. VAT rates, the tax that weighs most heavily on popular consumption, will remain unchanged until the end of the four-year term of office.

The reduction of the specific property tax, known as ENFIA, which has had a heavy impact on household housing charges since its introduction in 2011, is the issue on which the ND wishes to seal its alliance with the middle class. The gradual reduction of this tax, which will eventually reach an average of 50%, will benefit high wealth, while it will only provide crumbs to working class households.

Finally, on the crucial issue of renegotiating the exorbitant “budget surpluses” (set at 3.5% of GDP until 2022, then at 2.5% until… 2060, according to the terms of the agreement concluded in 2018 between Tsipras and the creditors), Mitsotakis took care to reconsider its pre-election commitments. He postponed the treatment of the issue to the indefinite future, stressing that he intended to bring it up only after the creditors’ agreement and affirming that he counted on the support of… Christine Lagarde.

Not surprisingly, such a program was very well received by the capitalist class. The press saw it as a sign of a determined approach, free of the ideological contradictions that tainted Tsipras’ statements.

However, such comments do not reflect any enthusiasm or even optimism about the “return of growth.” The day after the announcements at the Thessaloniki Fair, the daily To Vima, owned by the oligarch (and friend of Mitsotakis) Vangelis Marinakis, published a long article by Nicos Christodoulakis, former Minister of Finance of the social-liberal government of Costas Simitis (1996-2004). The former “tsar” of the Greek economy stressed that the main “wounds” of the Greek economy are still not being addressed; namely the massive disinvestment, the very high level of real unemployment and the sharp decline in domestic demand. Under these conditions, he writes, only a massive public investment program is likely to lead the country on the path of “growth.” However, this remains excluded as long as the “senseless” target of surpluses of 3.5% of GDP determines fiscal and budgetary policy.

In addition, Christodulakis joked about Mitsotakis’ “optimism,” pointing out that the only investments he is aware of are opiate drug production projects in Greece (at a time when the sector is in crisis in the USA) as well as some investment projects in the tourism sector, whose unbridled inflation threatens to destroy the last “value” that the Greek crisis has left behind, the coastal landscape. Nicos Christodoulakis suggested yet another negative possibility: the reduction of capital tax, combined with the lifting of capital controls, could lead to a new cycle of capital flight abroad and not to an increase in private investment. From his point of view, which is in no way that of the working class, the words of the social liberal Christodulakis are in many ways more relevant than those who applaud Mitsotakis’ announcements.

The crisis and instability of Greek capitalism are therefore not over. The fate of the Mitsotakis government will depend on workers’ and popular resistance, a factor that no one can underestimate in Greece, but also on international economic developments and their consequences on a national economy that remains seriously weakened.

The evolution of Syriza

As surprising as the achievement of a parliamentary majority by the right was the score achieved by Syriza in last July’s national election—31% of the votes.

This result is explained by the aversion of a large part of the workers and the poor to the ND, and in particular to the Mitsotakis family. During the time when PASOK was in power, its leader, Andreas Papandreou, constantly used the slogan “The people do not forget what the right means” to strengthen and perpetuate their political hegemony. Although this slogan conveys a lot of demagogy and confusion, it nevertheless reflects a real historical experience: the divisions among the Greek population that have been created over the past century by two long dictatorships and a civil war.

Many of them, even in political sectors far removed from Alexis Tsipras’ party, voted for Syriza “by holding their noses” as a counterweight to Mitsotakis. But even if this explains the continuation of Syriza’s electoral forces, it in no way compromises his political prospects. Because Mitsotakis’ current policy is moving forward in the furrows dug by Tsipras, namely the imposition of the third memorandum concluded with creditors in the fateful summer of 2015.

Under the Syriza government, the lives of workers and the working classes have not only not improved, but have also deteriorated further as a result of the implementation of the measures provided for in the third memorandum concluded by Tsipras in July 2015. The share of wages and pensions as a percentage of GDP has declined, unlike the share of profits in capital. The average real wage has fallen despite the increase in the minimum wage, and the wages of a growing proportion of workers are tending towards the minimum floor for longer and longer periods of their working lives. The decline in unemployment is a sham, with statistics discarding the hundreds of thousands of young people forced to migrate and ignoring the huge increase in the number of precarious jobs. Privatization was legitimized by being inevitable and for the first time extended to the so-called strategic sectors (ports, airports, large public infrastructures), which had until then been largely spared. Employment in the public sector has declined and become more precarious, with dramatic consequences for the functioning of public schools and hospitals. The “Katrugalos Law”^[5] laid the foundations for the complete privatization of the public insurance and pension system.

Under Trump’s presidency, the Tsipras government has also been the most openly pro-American of Greek governments since the fall of the colonels’ dictatorship. He amplified the Greek nationalist strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean: the “strategic axis” with Israel and the dictatorial regime of Sissi, the strategic upgrading of American military bases in Greece, the implementation of new weapons projects in accordance with the wishes of Greek militarism.

It was therefore the actions of the Tsipras government that paved the way for Mitsotakis. By massively demoralizing the workers and popular forces, this policy buried the historical hope of 2015, pretending to ignore that it could only lead to the return of a right wing offensive. The electoral defeat of July 2019 is in line with the political defeat of summer 2015.

These elements, beyond their importance for the interpretation of the cases that led to the current situation, also set the limits of the “opposition” that Tsipras intends to lead against the right. Syriza’s statements the day after the government announcements in Thessaloniki reflected a monumental embarrassment. Syriza accused Mitsotakis of taking advantage of the positive results obtained thanks to the policy he had pursued and of “taking advantage of the achievements” of the Syriza era! How can we criticize the policy of “budget surpluses” when it continued unabated under the Syriza government? How can we criticize the reduction in the taxation of capital when it was this same government that initiated it? How could these leaders question the flexibility of labor legislation they themselves have instituted? How can we oppose the privatizations already started?

Tsipras’ political project is to maintain electoral forces pending Mitsotakis’ political attrition. It is on this speculation that the deepening of the party’s social-liberal shift, announced by the project to consolidate the “Progressive Alliance” launched during the election campaign, is based.

Syriza will emerge from its upcoming congress as a “new” party. Alexis Tsipras already speaks of “e- Syriza,” an electronic party that aims to be the new pole of a stabilized two-party system, a force of alternation in every respect in accordance with the ideological norms of Macron and Renzi.

In such a context, any voice within Syriza portraying itself as “to the left of the Tsipras group” is doomed to humiliating defeat and marginalization. Tsipras’ com’ system is already publicly attacking Panos Skourletis (the party secretary), Nicos Voutsis (former Speaker of Parliament), Nicos Filis (former Minister of Education, dismissed at the request of the Church) and sometimes even Euclid Tsakalotos (the Finance Minister who signed the memorandum, positioning himself in the “left” of the party). In reality, all these people have broken with the radical left, because all the militants of the radical left, all tendencies combined, left Syriza in the summer of 2015. The remaining cadres are a few former members of the Eurocommunist movement and supporters of “Europeanist” reformism, some of whom have difficulty accepting a social-democratic transformation under the banner of social-democracy’s submission to neoliberalism. Attacks against these “dissidents” are tirelessly repeated in the mainstream media, demonstrating that the project of a “new, more open and broader” Syriza imposed by the Tsipras group is actively supported by forces of the neoliberal system. These forces are grateful to Tsipras for the services rendered, the establishment of “social peace” and the implementation of the third memorandum. They are also aware that Mitsotakis could face setbacks and that, in such a case, a “broader consensus” would be useful for the stability of the system.

The issue is the construction of a new two-party system, which would succeed the ND-PASOK system that dominated Greek political life from the late 1970s to the late 2000s. But Mitsotakis’ ND still faces hostility from a large part of the world of work and the poor (as evidenced by the results of the July 7 elections in the working class neighborhoods), and Alexis Tsipras’ “new Syriza” is still far from having acquired the stability and determination of Papandreou and Simitis’ PASOK. As for Greek capitalism, it remains weak and anxiously awaits the prospect of a new international crisis.

It is from this landscape and its contradictions that the necessary reconstruction of the forces of the radical left will be tested in the near future.

The left beyond Syriza

Current developments only make sense by taking into account the failure of the left beyond Syriza. Because it is a fact, enshrined in the results of the last elections, that the radical left, in all its variants, has not been able to build a credible and unifying alternative to Syriza’s austere neoliberal drift and the threat of the right’s return.

Some explanations can be given for this situation. Objective social conditions have become particularly difficult, leaving less and less space for political action by workers and young people. The demoralization associated with the 2015 defeat played a crippling role. Once again in history, the crippling effects of defeat have had a more negative impact on those who fought against the line that led to defeat and who had warned against this drift.

But the debate on mitigating circumstances is no longer really meaningful. We must turn to political problems, because it is only by directing the debate in this direction that reconstruction can take place.

For the KKE (Communist Party of Greece), the July 7 elections represented a rare opportunity. Hundreds of thousands of people were willing to sanction Syriza. To its left, there was no serious threat, on the contrary, hundreds of militants from different sensibilities of the radical left participated in its lists, or supported them. The result (5.3%) was below expectations, despite 10 years of crisis and major social struggles. The inaction reveals the conservatism of the party’s political line, its desire to avoid any political initiative under the pretext of “still immature conditions,” as well as the sectarianism of its methods of action, based on the rejection of any form of unity both in the social movement and with the other forces of the radical left. For the first time in years, the differences within the KKE leadership have been brought into the public debate and have pitted those who insist on the “resilience” of the party against those who try to support some “openings” in order to claim a broader influence for the party.

ANTARSYA, the far-left coalition that rejected for the second time (after the 2015 elections) proposals for political and electoral convergence with Popular Unity (PUE), failed, obtaining only 0.41% of the votes. Within it, centrifugal tendencies have increased. It will be difficult to bridge the differences between those who insist on the “united front” character of ANTARSYA (mainly the Socialist Workers Party–SEK, linked to the British SWP) and those who are moving towards the creation of a “new communist party” (mainly the New Left Movement – NAR), especially following conflicts and divisions at local and regional level.

Popular Unity suffered a crushing defeat by obtaining only 0.28% of the votes in the national elections, after the 0.6% it obtained in the European elections. This is the end of a journey and a project inaugurated in 2015 by the split of Syriza and the departure of the “Left Platform.” The most important internal component of the LAE, the “Left Movement” led by Panagiotis Lafazanis, held by the political difficulties of the 2015-2019 period, has returned to “popular-front” traditions with a centralist vision of organizational issues, with a structuring role for the person of the leader. The main problem of “popular-frontism” in Greece’s current situation is its connection with Greek nationalism in the name of a strategy of “struggle for national independence.” This political line has failed. It was rejected both by the majority of those who supported Popular Unity in 2015, and also by those who were looking for an alternative after their disappointment with Syriza.

This widespread failure creates new conditions. The reconstruction of the radical left requires the rebuilding of links with social resistance movements, in the workplace, with the antifascist and anti-racist movement, the women’s movement, actions against extractivism and climate change, in the mobilization against repression, etc. Reconstruction consists in gathering forces around a political framework that is radically left-wing, and at the same time unifying, concrete and determined. In this sense, reconstruction is linked to strengthening a unified vision of political action and functioning. This vision seems to have been achieved for a large militant sector. This trend was expressed by radical left-wing organizations which, a few weeks ago, published a joint text signed by DEA (Internationalist Workers’ Left), ARAN (Left Recomposition), “Confrontation,” “Meeting of the radical left”^[6].

The reconstruction of the radical left in Greece will take time and require conscious and organized efforts. But this is a case that involves real militant resources, perhaps more important than in many other European countries, and forces that have accumulated valuable experience in recent years.

This is what gives us hope that, in the near future, we can again send optimistic messages to our international comrades.

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[1] This is a “forum” for business, politicians and international guests held every September in Thessaloniki, focusing on economic, political and geopolitical developments.

[2] The Mitsotakis family is one of the great political “dynasties” in Greece. Konstantinos Mitsotakis, the current Prime Minister’s father, was a member of the Central Union, which he left in 1965 to join the king’s political intrigues. This “apostasy” of the summer of 1965, which made it possible to overthrow Georges Papandreou’s elected government, paved the way for the military coup d’état of April 1967. After 1977, Mitsotakis joined the right and became the leader of the neoliberal wing of ND. Kyriakos Mitsotakis was a personality of average importance in the governments of the ND. He became the leader of ND in 2015, when Syriza’s victory led to the departure of the ultra-nationalist wing of Samaras and the “popular right” wing of Karamanlis.

[3] Daughter of Yorgos Gennimatas, historical leader of PASOK, who died in 1994. She is now the leader of a small and unstable social democratic party, the Kinal – Movement for Change – which represents the continuation of PASOK while it is more widely perceived as a “transitional” party. A large part of the former PASOK leadership has already moved to Syriza, with a minority of former ministers joining ND.

[4] “Memoranda” are documents – several thousand pages long – signed between, on the one hand, the Greek governments that have been in power since 2010 and, on the other hand, the “Troika” representing the country’s creditors, namely the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF. These documents set out the “conditionalities” that attach to the credits allocated to the country and define the terms and conditions for repaying its public debt. In practice, they dictate in detail the macroeconomic policy objectives that governments are required to adhere to to the letter and establish a strict regime of surveillance of the country, equivalent to placing it under supervision. The first of these memorandums was concluded under the PASOK government in 2010, the second in 2012 under a right-wing coalition government, and the third was signed by Alexis Tsipras one week after the victory of the no’ vote in the July 2015 referendum.

[5] Giorgos Katrougalos, a former KKE executive, was the Minister of Labour in the second Syriza government. He was the instigator of an extremely neoliberal pension law. After the public outcry, he became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Today, he is part of the ruling circle around Tsipras.

[6] DEA and ARAN are components of Popular Unity. “Confrontation” comes from ANTARSYA, it is mainly activists of the youth branch from the NAR. “Meeting of the Radical Left” is composed of radical Left activists who left SYRIZA in 2015 without joining Popular Unity.