Greece euro debt deal – democracy is the loser
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Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin: Treating SYRIZA responsibly
By Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, Athens
July 13, 2015 -- The Bullet (Socialist Project, Canada), posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- As against those on the international left so keen to put the boot in against the SYRIZA government with the charge that they had abjectly "capitulated" already with the plan passed in the Greek parliament, it is instructive to read this document from the German finance ministry.
SYRIZA's unique capacity on the international left to build the type of party capable of both mobilising against neoliberalism and entering the state to try to actually do something about this has always hinged on the way it sought to find room for manoeuvre within a European Union that has neoliberalism in its DNA, going back all the way to the Treaty of Rome let alone the Economic and Monetary Union 30 years later.
Anyone who at all seriously followed developments in Greece over the past five years should have known that the leadership of the party would only go as far as the Europeans would let it, and that the balance of power inside the party made the Left Platform faction's strategy for Grexit an effective non-starter. Those on the revolutionary left who hoped that after SYRIZA's election this leadership would get swept away by a massive popular upsurge for Grexit in face of the limits and contradictions of a SYRIZA government were, as usual, dreaming in technicolor.
Room for manoeuvre?
Of course, the room for manoeuvre was much narrower than the leadership hoped, not least because of the incapacity of the left in northern and central Europe to shift the balance of forces in their own countries in even a minimal way.
On the other hand, SYRIZA would never have been elected on the basis of a call for leaving the eurozone, nor would it have won the recent referendum. Those in and out of the party who have always called for an immediate Grexit never were persuasive on the necessary political conditions for this.
Given the limits imposed by the unfavourable international balance of forces, those of us who argued that the room for manoeuvre inside the EU was a lot narrower than the SYRIZA leadership hoped, and therefore favoured connecting a socialist strategy to Grexit – and always made this view clear to our SYRIZA comrades – could not, however, help but be sympathetic to the dilemmas they faced. Not to have been would have been churlish beyond measure, especially given the socialist left's own political weakness in our own countries.
This remains true today. Despite how they have already been traduced by some on the radical left, the disciplinarians of neoliberalism made it clear yesterday that they believed that SYRIZA was not a typical social-democratic party that could be trusted to accommodate to neoliberalism. Indeed, they clearly see that SYRIZA is a left party with socialism in its DNA, and one that whatever the constraints of staying within the EU, will continue to challenge European and global capitalism.
The exact content of the agreement that has now been struck between SYRIZA and the EU leaders will be examined in the coming days, and the reaction of the party and those who supported it in the referendum will be assessed. We hope SYRIZA can stay united as the most effective new socialist political formation on the European left that has emerged in recent decades.
The role of a responsible international left is to support this, while continuing to point out the party's weaknesses in terms of lacking the capacity to build on the solidarity networks so as to create alternative economic plans at local and regional levels that would put people to work in transformed social relations.
This is what really matters, and it would be no less crucial even with Grexit. The potential for this will also be addressed in future. Given our own weaknesses in this respect, considerable patience and modesty of the international left is called for as we watch this drama unfold.
[Leo Panitch is distinguished research professor and Sam Gindin is adjunct professor at York University, Canada. They co-authored The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso). Both are currently in Athens, Greece.]
SYRIZA´S BETRAYAL and its Defenders
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By Paul Mason
http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/greece-wins-euro-debt-deal-democracy-loser/4155
July 13, 2015 -- After an all-night negotiation during which Greek prime minister was subjected, according to one observer, to “mental waterboarding”, there is the basis of a deal to keep Greece in the euro. As I write, the Greek side do not have a document, but we have some details.
Greece will have to implement the tough austerity measures demanded by its lenders, plus hand €50bn of assets to a privatisation fund, where sales will be used to pay down debt.
In return it will get a new, third bailout deal reportedly worth €54bn; a promise of discussions on restructuring its debt; and a bridging loan to finance the repayments it cannot make. It is this – plus the imminent reopening of the banks under an ECB emergency lending scheme – that will allow PM Alexis Tsipras to save any kind of face with his own supporters, who are fuming.
If you doubt how it might play on the Greek streets, consider the headline of Dimokratia, a conservative tabloid: “Greece in Auschwitz: Schauble attempts eurozone holocaust”.
Last night the eurozone leaders presented Greece with an ultimatum that shredded all vestiges of control the government has over the economy going forward, and reversed every law it has put through parliament since being elected with 36 per cent of the vote in January.
While Greeks vented, and the hashtag #ThisIsACoup went viral across the globe, Tsipras and his team negotiated. They knew that to have any chance of getting the deal through parliament they must free themselves of IMF involvement, resist the foreign-held privatisation fund, get some commitment to debt reprofiling and an assurance that the ECB will turn the taps of emergency lending back on to the banks.
I said last night that without these things there was no chance of getting the austerity measures through parliament. It seems this morning that each of the measures has been fudged: so the privatisation fund remains in Athens, not Luxembourg; the IMF invovement is still there but apparently muted; the debt restructuring is there but unspecified.
So I am still not certain this will pass.
To understand what happens next you have to understand that, first, the Greek centre and conservative right is so morally and organisationally shattered by its defeats in the January election and the June referendum that it cannot simply take over.
There is only a parliamentary majority if Tsipras (pictured below) leads it.
The rebels in his party come in two genres: the hard left of the Left Platform, whose leader Panayotis Lafazanis abstained in Saturday’s parliamentary vote and may be sidelined in the coming days; and a more organic left, known informally as the 53 group, whose MPs voted yes on Saturday but can go no further.
The Syriza newspaper Avgi spelled out the party’s approach going into the negotiations: they must accept and vote through the outcome of negotiations in order to stay in power, because the overthrow of a government by the EU is unacceptable (nor indeed possible given the parliamentary arithmetic).
The eurozone took itself to the brink last night, and we will only know for certain later whether its reputation and cohesion can survive this.
The big powers of Europe demonstrated an appetite to change the micro-laws of a smaller country: its bakery regulations, the funding of its state TV service, what can be privatised and how. Whether inside or outside the euro, many small countries and regions will draw long-term negative lessons from this. And from the apparently cavalier throwing of a last-minute Grexit option into the mix by Germany, in defiance of half the government’s own MPs.
It would be logical now for every country in the EU to make contingency plans against getting the same treatment – either over fiscal policy or any of the other issues where Brussels and Frankfurt enjoy sovereignty.
Parallels abound with other historic debacles: Munich (1938), where peace was won by sacrificing the Czechs; or Versailles (1919), where the creditors got their money, only to create the conditions for the collapse of German democracy 10 years later, and their own diplomatic unity long before that.
But the debacles of yesteryear were different. They were committed by statesmen. People who knew what they wanted and miscalculated. It was hard to see last night what the rulers of Europe wanted.
What they’ve arguably got is a global reputational disaster: the crushing of a left-wing government elected on a landslide, the flouting of a 61 per cent referendum result. The EU – a project founded to avoid conflict and deliver social justice – found itself transformed into the conveyor of relentless financial logic and nothing else.
Ordinary people don’t know enough about the financial logic to understand why this was always likely to happen: bonds, haircuts and currency mechanisms are distant concepts. Democracy is not. Everybody on earth with a smartphone understands what happened to democracy last night.
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