The Syriza Problem: Radical Democracy and Left Governmentality in Greece
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- Published on Saturday, 08 August 2015 22:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1152 .... August 9, 2015
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The Syriza Problem:
Radical Democracy and Left Governmentality in Greece
Stathis Gourgouris
Although the history of the Left has produced an extraordinary theoretical legacy, which continues to be the nucleus of almost all radical thinking, it has nonetheless left a trail of extraordinary failures in practice.
I understand the dialectical relation between theory and practice, of course, but we have to admit that in real historical terms this dialectic is terribly uneven, to the degree in fact that it may render questionable a great many of these theoretical achievements, which, if we are going to be rigorously leftist about it, cannot really stand entirely on their own.
To this general account, I now add a series of realizations that have arisen from the... experience of a government of the left in Greece since Syriza was elected, a complex, circuitous, contradictory, and internally conflictual trajectory that is still unfolding in full force.
Anyone who thinks that Syriza as a left phenomenon has ended, been coopted or defeated, etc., is thinking too much too fast. Too much complexity is being swept carelessly under the rug. For this reason, despite everyone's intense attention to the recent traumatic developments, it's worth conducting an assessment of the full trajectory of Syriza in government.
