Critical support for Syriza?

Scan page 6

S toral coalition of some 13 political groups in YRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) is an elecGreece, most of which are reformist in the Marxist sense. It includes a variety of social democrats, euro-communists, eco-socialists, Maoists, and some small Trotskyist groups.

In the May 6 election, SYRIZA captured the broad sentiment in Greece that opposed the infamous massive austerity “memorandum” that the previous coalition capitalist government had signed with the Troika—the European Central Bank, IMF, and European Commission. SYRIZA finished second with some 22 percent of the vote, making it Greece’s second largest party. Since no party was able to form a majority government at that time, a new election is scheduled for June 17.

Some polls give SYRIZA close to 30 percent, the highest of all parties in Greece, thus opening the possibility that Syriza could finish first and win the right to form a government. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras has refused talks with capitalist formations requesting that SYRIZA join a coalition capitalist government. SYRIZA has also pledged to cancel the memorandum, which is aimed at “bailing out the banks at the expense of the workers.”

6 Socialist Action june 2012 Unfortunately, SYRIZA has failed to put forward a clear orientation to mobilizing workers through transitional and immediate demands in massive actions to challenge capitalist rule. Nevertheless, a victory for SYRIZA in the election would open the door wider for revolutionaries to gain a hearing for a fighting program that aims at socialist revolution.

Socialist Action sees critical support to SYRIZA as a timely tactic to advance the struggle. Not only would this tactic allow revolutionaries to educate about maintaining working-class independence in the electoral sphere but it would also reinforce their efforts to build united-front actions in the streets. Such actions would build on the general strikes and huge demonstrations that helped raise the self-confidence of the masses and made SYRIZA’s strong showing possible in the first place.

If the reformist SYRIZA is able to form a government but defaults on its pledges, revolutionaries would then be presented with new opportunities to expose reformist solutions and to build the mass revolutionary party that is necessary to lead the workers’ movement to challenge and defeat capital once and for all.

— The Editors uled for June 17. According to current opinion polls, SYRIZA has bright prospects to become the strongest party, with well over 20%, and thus also to get hold of the “bonus” of 50 (of the total 300) seats in parliament. This totally undemocratic scheme was specifically included in the electoral law to allow a majority, at least, of a coalition government of ND and PASOK. But it did not work since both parties together received only 149 seats.

There is no denying that it is not by chance that SYRIZA has become the first force of the left. Because SYRIZA spoke during the election campaign of a “leftwing government”—for example, to pressure KKE, but also because it does not favor a withdrawal from the euro-zone, despite the rejection of the memoranda policies—people voted for it massively. This reflects in part the stagnation or weakness of the resistance movement that has been seen since February and caused the rise of rather vague hopes that a fundamental shift in government policies could be achieved through a changing of parliamentary majorities.

The SYRIZA leadership is coming under attack from two sides because of the ambiguities of its election promises: First, the forces of the establishment can harass SYRIZA to do everything to ensure that Greece remains in the eurozone, or make SYRIZA also responsible for a possible failure of this intention and expose it. On the other hand, there are critics on the left, pointing out quite rightly that the various promises of (continued on page 7, in “The brown plague tries to rise again”)

Scan page 7

wsoctv.com