Costas Lapavitsas and Stathis Kouvelakis reflect on the reasons for SYRIZA's defeat and what it would take for the radical left to once more win power.
The results of the recent European elections were the natural outcome of SYRIZA's disgraceful capitulation in the summer of 2015. SYRIZA did not face the immediate outcry experienced by previous Memorandum Governments. On the contrary, the Third Memorandum was accompanied by social passivity that eventually brought about a turn towards the Right, and indeed a tough neo-liberal version of it, driving the Left in its entirety toward paths that are difficult to tread.
This shift is not a Greek exception. Along the length and breadth of Europe, all variants of the Left are at historically low levels. The major victor is the European Far Right, purporting to be an "anti-systemic" actor, capitalizing on the anger of societies wounded by decades of neoliberalism. The rise of the Far Right demonstrates the loss of the Left’s radicalism, its transformation into a manager of a system that is now systematically and unconditionally unmaking a century’s worth of social gains. The bonds between the Left and the working and popular classes, once its natural base, have been broken.
What is original in the Greek case is that a party of the classical conservative faction, New Democracy, is on the cusp of returning to power. The forthcoming parliamentary elections are certainly not the same as the European elections, but they will also formally signal the close of the cycle opened in the squares in the summer of 2011. It is indeed evident that SYRIZA is unable to articulate a political discourse with elementary persuasiveness. Its electoral message is that it has a program that will produce "growth" alongside "fiscal stability" and "social justice". The government and the prime minister have once more become radicals, prepared to clash with the "conservative circles of Brussels" and the "extreme neo-liberal" leader of ND Mitsotakis.
This is but a reheated meal of a bygone age. What confrontation with Brussels, when they have accepted the abusive surpluses of 3.5% until 2022 and austerity until 2060 in order that the debt is served unhindered? What growth, when taxation is severe, and public investment is continually cut in order to bring even greater surpluses? What confrontation with neoliberalism, when public wealth is systematically privatized and sold off to foreigners? What social justice, when the "Katrougkalos" law has ravaged a meager layer of small businesses in order to support a pension system that has no hopes of surviving in the long run?
