Greece: End of an era for SYRIZA

This article was translated into English by Panos Petrou.

In the party elections for the succession of Alexis Tsipras as party leader, Stefanos Kaselakis prevailed, winning 56 percent. He is a new “star” who hasn’t even been a party member and who neither has nor claims any connection to the organized political Left whatsoever, either with its history or with its prospects.

His defeated rival, with 44 percent, was Effie Achtsioglou. She led a coalition of historical leading members of SYRIZA, who had their origins mostly in the euro-communist tradition and who had chosen—after the capitulation of 2015—to remain in SYRIZA and serve as top ministers in the government of Alexis Tsipras in 2015-2019. Effie Achtsioglou held the Ministry of Labor, and Euclid Tsakalotos held the Ministry of Economy in the government that imposed and implemented the third memorandum of austerity.

Stefanos Kaselakis is an offspring of a prosperous family of entrepreneurs, and he came of age in the USA, where he engaged in business activities (either working for Goldman Sachs, or by working inside the circles of the notorious Greek ship-owners). During his time in the USA, he claims that he contributed to CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), while he was active on the margins of the Democratic Party, as a volunteer for then congressman Joe Biden. Just before the crucial elections of 2023, as part of the project of broadening SYRIZA towards the political center and in order to provide some glamour in the party ballots, Alexis Tsipras asked this promising young man of breeding to hold an honorary but not electable position in the “national constituency” list. Kaselakis accepted the invitation and returned to Greece. Back then, there were no signs to foretell the subsequent events, perhaps except for the close political affiliations that Kaselakis rapidly developed with the coterie of Alexis Tsipras.

After the crushing defeat of SYRIZA in the double elections of May-June 2023 (scoring 20 percent less than New Democracy and with a clear loss of support among the working class), Alexis Tsipras was forced by facts to eventually resign, despite his initial attempt to avoid this. In the party elections for the succession, Stefanos Kaselakis presented himself as a candidate, with the arrogant claim that he is the only one who can electorally defeat Mitsotakis. Why is that so? The answer, according to the man’s words, is astonishing: Because he speaks English better than Mitsotakis, he is better than him in Math and he has a bigger entrepreneurial experience than him…

The question that arises is how such a figure could impose its leadership in a party that still defined itself as radical Left. The Greek Press is full of articles analyzing some “triumph of post-politics”, where a “glowing” personality and smart communication techniques can crush political content. Such analyses risk conclusions on the realm of the supernatural. In my view, there are some simpler and more concrete explanations. During the campaign of Kaselakis, it became immediately clear that there was money involved, big money. The campaign of Kaselakis was promoted by a big part of the Mass Media in Greece. For successive weeks, they were coordinated in turning every single word or personal moment of the fledgling would-be leader into big prime-time news, usually heralding his victory in the process. But these things would not be sufficient on their own. Kaselakis’ victory was organized by a force inside SYRIZA: the circle of the closest and most trusted associates of Alexis Tsipras, allied with a big part of the social-democrat politicians that gradually entered SYRIZA after 2015. Nikos Pappas (former right-hand man of Tsipras), Giorgos Tsipras (cousin of the former prime minister), Pavlos Polakis (an ideological-political watchdog of Tsipras), Admiral Evaggelos Apostolakis (former advisor of Tsipras in charge of his connections in the Armed Forces) and the (stealthier) social-democrat Christos Spirtzis paint the picture of this circle of executives who until yesterday served as Tsipras’ Praetorian Guard and who now constitute the central pillars of support for the victory of Kaselakis.

Alexis Tsipras is not known for displaying generosity, not even for fairly treating those who had benefited him. The question of why he donated his party to a man who appeared like a comet in SYRIZA a few months ago, remains an important question. Another candidate for the leadership of SYRIZA, old-school social-democrat Stefanos Tzoumakas, who gathered only around 2 percent of the vote, acting as a “loose cannon”, he provided the answer: He argued that Kaselakis was, is and will be a “transitional chairman”, suggesting that the road remains open for Tsipras’ return to the party leadership. This answer is actually strongly founded. But it is not complete. The truth is that SYRIZA as a whole is now a “transitional party”. Alexis Tsipras has clearly declared his commitment to the strategic project of a recomposition which includes both SYRIZA and PASOK, towards the foundation of a broad-progressive “camp”, which will no longer include any references, symbols or features (or even the word “Left”) that recall the major political confrontations of the past.

It is true that SYRIZA has already taken big steps in this direction. Its politics while in opposition to Mitsotakis (2019-2023) severed the ties between claiming governmental power and providing a “narrative” or making any commitment to change the world in the benefit of workers. This policy, which was promoted under the pretext of boosting the electoral prospects of SYRIZA, was proven disastrous even in electoral terms. But the lesson drawn by the sorcerer’s apprentices was that the reasons for the defeat lay with the “burdens” of the past, which had prevented Tsipras from completing the right-wing turn to the “democratic camp” in a fast and coherent fashion.

In this process of conservative mutation, the changes in organizational habits and practices were not secondary in importance. When Tsipras claimed for himself the privilege to be directly elected by the members and the supporters of the party, he took a huge step against the tradition of a structured party that is a feature of the Left. Today, 120-130 thousand people took part in a process whose only precondition to participate was paying 2 euros. Out of that total, a 56 percent majority picked as party chairman a person whose political views remain completely unknown, while his bio warns that if such views exist at all, they are hostile to any version of left-wing politics.

But it also true that the mutation of SYRIZA had not been concluded. Inside the party, there still exist members whose lives in politics have been connected to left-wing traditions, to the labor movement and the pursuit of socialism (at least through a reformist strategy, as the final destination after many successive “stages” or a series of reforms and so on). The major weakness of these currents is the stance they took in the crucial period of 2015 and their belated, reluctant and shy differentiation from Tsipras after 2019. But they have made clear that they don’t intend to follow a course which will end up with a Democratic Party like the one in the US.

The actual content of the “Kaselakis era” is the cleansing of SYRIZA from such oppositional voices. And this cleansing will not be limited to individuals or groups of members. It will also include a bolder integration of even bigger parts of bourgeois ideology and politics in the party DNA, it will include an even faster transformation of SYRIZA’s links with its social audience to a conservative direction and so on. And what will emerge in the horizon will be a new party which will only need to change its name.

Tsipras chose to try and direct this course by proxy (par procuration), since it involves conflicts and unpopular cruelties. Today we don’t yet know the timeframe of this “transition”, we don’t even know whether the Congress of SYRIZA, scheduled for November, will take place eventually. We obviously don’t know whether, at the end of the “transition”, Kaselakis will return the leadership or he will prove to be more resilient and menacing for his current mentor. My personal opinion is that the most possible scenario is an acceleration of SYRIZA’s shrinkage and its degeneration to a loose gathering of centrist- “democrat” politicians of secondary political importance.

One thing that is granted is that this course will not be defined solely by the situation inside the party of SYRIZA. It will be influenced, perhaps in a determinant way, by the possibilities of a generalized confrontation between the social movement and the wildly aggressive government of Mitsotakis.

Because in Greece, a return to a smooth normality is far from being the case. As it happens every year in the International Fair of Thessaloniki, also this year Mitsotakis had to present his economic/social policy in the autumn.

The context was quite heavy. During the fires and the floods of this summer, more than 200.000 hectares of land [2.000 square kilometers] were destroyed. Mitsotakis’ hypocritical references to the climate change were not enough to address the anger for the collapse of the most elemental mechanisms of civil protection, after many years of cuts in funding and limits in hiring new personnel.

Mitsotakis, aware of the return to fiscal discipline since 1.1.2024, said that the policy of his new government will consist of “less benefits” (!!) compared with 2019-23 but “more reforms” (!!).

Both aspects consist of a challenge. The food prices break record after record and in this context of extreme austerity, the government puts a brake on “benefits”, like the small aid to the poorest among the poor that enabled a minimal consumption. Even more challenging is the threat of “reforms”: in a country where the average weekly worktime is the longest in Europe (41 hours!), the far-right minister of Labor, Adonis Georgiadis introduced a law which enables a dramatic increase of working hours: it legalizes work 7-days a week and it opens the way for a daily worktime of up to 13 hours! The tragic indicator of deadly “accidents” at work is demonstrative of the exhaustion of the working class in Greece: 2022 was a record year with 122 deaths in the workplace. During the first 9 months of 2023, there are 135 deaths, suggesting a bleak growing tendency…

It was against this challenge of the antiworker “reform” in the working hours that the first general strike during the new mandate of Mitsotakis took place. Despite the inertia of the bureaucracy in the General Confederation in private sector, the strike had a noteworthy success and since it was organized a few weeks after the electoral victory of Mitsotakis, it could be a sounding warning: this time around, there will be no honeymoon period.

In the era of a really strong two-party political system, meaning the times when both New Democracy and PASOK had great political power, seasoned parliamentarians used to say that it is not enough for one of them to be strong. They argued that a condition for systemic stability is that the combined vote of both major parties should hover around 70-80 percent of the electorate, as a guarantee for the role both of a government and an institutional opposition.

In the camp of Mitsotakis, there currently prevails a sense of unstoppable supremacy, due to the crisis in the opposition and especially SYRIZA. It is a shortsighted and arrogant mistake.

The crisis in the opposition is a factor of instability for the system. Workers are pushed to realize that their struggle is the only oppositional force.

And this factor has repeatedly proven in Greece that it can force both Mitsotakis and Tsipras to shift, even dramatically, their political calculations.