The Real Plan B: The New Greek Marathon
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- Published on Thursday, 16 July 2015 22:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1145 .... July 17, 2015
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The Real Plan B: The New Greek Marathon
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch
In the face of being excluded from desperately needed funds and the threat of being kicked out of the European Union, the Greek parliament has now voted to accept the Troika memorandum. The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras acknowledged – unlike social democrats choosing to implement neoliberalism as part of their ‘modernization‘ – that this was ‘a bad deal’ forced on the Greeks. Syriza's MPs were divided although three quarters of them followed Tsipras and voted yes. Outside in Syntagma Square thousands of angry demonstrators gathered and then marched through downtown Athens, this time the ‘NO’ being reserved for rejecting the memorandum. There is a strong current of dissent in the Syriza... party Central Committee, which has yet to meet. Yet there is also a general sense we get from party members and supporters at all levels we have talked with here that the government should be supported and continue in office.
In the face of these divisions and frustrations, what if anything might be done to revive and continue Syriza's struggle against neoliberalism? And since neoliberalism is what capitalism is today – there is no other kind – what can be done to lay the basis for ending capitalism? This is not just a question for Greeks, though crucial aspects of this dilemma are of course specific to Greece, but for how the left everywhere thinks about and responds to the challenges of coming to power in a hostile environment to try to protect people from the worst depredations of neoliberalism, and tries to embark on ‘really-existing transitions’ to a more egalitarian, solidaristic, substantively more democratic world.
Sections of the Greek left and a good part of the international left have argued that the deal should have been rejected, and Grexit embraced instead. This opens up a number of scenarios but the most likely would be the government resigning, calling new elections, and Syriza running on a program that reversed its former support for staying in the eurozone. Whether or not the party would win its credibility would, according to this argument, be maintained and it would at least live to fight another day.