A Moment of Catharsis
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- Published on Sunday, 21 February 2016 22:15
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1224 .... February 22, 2016
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A Moment of Catharsis
One year after Syriza's victory and six months after the coup
Mario Candeias
One year after the victory and six months after the coup, we shouldn't fool ourselves: This was a defeat, of the Greek government. But it's not only Syriza that has failed (for now). The whole left has failed in Greece -- and in the rest of Europe, indeed. Europe is no longer what it was. It's impossible to defend this project of European unification from the left without falling into pure illusions.
Ever since the last European Parliament elections, the minimal demand is: ‘No further transfer of powers from the national to this EU.’ This is certainly right, but then what?
Some hope that now... they can score points with alternatives to the current EU. But already before the crisis there was the question: What's the concrete strategy we could use to carry out these alternatives? The social union was our model for 20 years and it's turned into an illusion. The greater the defeat -- the submission of the Greek government -- the more radical the left's defiance becomes, whether this means that we support a ‘LExit’ (left exit), a radical democratization of the EU or for instance an unemployment insurance for all. None of this is realistic if it is disconnected from a strategy of how to get there. It's all a politics that amounts to nothing more than proclamations and intellectual games far from the seats of power. There's no subject for carrying it out. As a world view for organizing and a political orientation, these desperate attempts at self-assertion are good for nothing. I, for one, am uncertain about how we can go forward with a view to social transformation.