Alexis Tsipras. Wikimedia. CC.
The impact of the strategic defeat of last year
is still very strongly shaping various reactions within the Greek left. Some
people seem content with superficial explanations of what happened and return
to habitual ways of thinking and acting; others sense the strategic depth of
the defeat and turn inwards to disappointment and demoralization. Still others
are trying to learn from the “SYRIZA experience” in order to make themselves
more useful to people in the future. All of us sense the dangers lurking in
front of us but we are far from having a common and feasible strategy.
In a situation like this, political
priorities change and ‘novel’ tasks emerge. For example, people far
beyond those affiliated with the traditional left are scattered and in
disarray, but also full of energy, determination and skills. What should they
do? Another urgent task is how to transmit the 'SYRIZA experience' abroad,
facilitating the left in other countries in the fight against neoliberalism and
increased hostility of the elites. ‘Novel’ tasks
require a different mentality and operational qualities from the ones we used
to deploy through traditional political action.
But first we need: (i) a thorough understanding of the positive and
negative aspects of the 'SYRIZA experience', and (ii)
an open, bold and innovative process of arriving
at the new conditions of doing politics. These are some preliminary thoughts in
this direction.
The failure
SYRIZA failed to stop austerity and neoliberal transformation in Greece. One could argue that SYRIZA also betrayed the hopes
and aspirations of the popular classes and those fighting against financial
despotism. It chose to remain in power, thereby ‘normalizing’ the coup we witnessed last summer and accepting neoliberal
coordinates that shape governmentality today in Europe.
SYRIZA's
choice deprived the people of a crucial ‘tool’ in this fight by its painful
defeat: the political representation of non-compliance with financial
despotism. SYRIZA eliminated the chance of a ‘tactical withdrawal’, a
collective process of reassembling our forces that could take into account the
escalation of the fight provoked by elites – and forming a more effective and
resilient ‘popular front’ that would build its resources to challenge
neoliberal orthodoxy in the future. The
choice SYRIZA made is – among other things – a symptom of the deeper,
structural weaknesses of the left.
The experience
of the SYRIZA government in the months after the agreement, shows that there is
no middle ground between financial despotism and democracy and dignity; if you
try to reach such middle ground, you are quickly converted into an organic
component of the biopolitical machine aimed at dehumanizing our societies.
Arguing that the implementation of the agreement is the only way out of the
present situation is just a reformulation of the neoliberal core-argument that
There Is No Alternative; no strategy for continuing the fightback against
financial despotism.
However,
there is a danger of underestimating the brutal strategic defeat that we all
suffered in 2015, hiding from ourselves the extent of our current impotence as
regards any serious challenge to financial despotism. We must dare to perform an
extensive reassessment of our methodology and tools if we want to be relevant
in these new conditions. And to do so, we should not preoccupy ourselves with
the self-evident negative nature of SYRIZA's choice and comfort ourselves that
this is the source of our problems. The
choice SYRIZA made is – among other things – a symptom of the deeper,
structural weaknesses of the left.
Today in Greece a ‘Left
government’ is implementing austerity, leftwing people are confused and ‘The Left’
is turning into a pro-memorandum political force in people's minds. Nationalists
and fascists have remained the only "natural hosts" of popular rage
and resentment, the expected emotional outcomes of the burial of hope we
witnessed last summer. Greeks
are sensing that the future of their society is severely compromised. Nationalists
and fascists have remained the only "natural hosts" of popular rage
and resentment.
The
majority of Greeks have been sentenced to misery and despair through the
imposition of newer harder austerity measures without any real hope for the
future. If we add to the economic and social disaster that austerity is
inflicting on us the huge waves of refugees that are entering Greece –
especially the complex and contradictory ways in which their drama impacts on
the abused psychic economy of the Greek population –
and add also the fear of increased geopolitical instability in the region, then
it seems certain that prosperity, stability and peace has left Greece for the
identifiable future.
These are
exactly the suffocating conditions that prevail in a society before it explodes
– due to a random incident – deepening even further the decline, and plunging existential
depths. It is like we are walking on thin ice from now on in Greece. In
moments like this we have to remain calm and think clearly if we want to arrive
at what is needed to adapt and to be effective.
The sad case of Europe
The
neoliberal EU and Eurozone has transferred a bundle of important policies and
powers that once appeared to belong to the nation state out of the reach of the
people. At the same time, a vast array of neoliberal regulations and norms
govern the function of the state. In the EU and Eurozone today, the elected
government is no longer the major bearer of political power. In the case of
Greece, democratically electing a government is like electing a junior partner
in a wider government in which the lenders are the major partners.
The junior
partner is not allowed to intervene and disturb decisions on such crucial
economic and social issues as fiscal policy, banks, privatizations, pensions
etc. If it does intervene and demand a say on these issues, then the
people who appoint it are going to suffer the consequences. The elites – by
extracting important powers and decisions on crucial issues from the
democratically structured institutions of the bourgeois state – have managed to
gain unchecked control over the basic functions of the society. It is up to
their anti-democratic institutions to decide whether a society will have a
functional banking system and sufficient liquidity to run or not.
That's what happened to Greece; that's
the core argument of the president of Portugal behind his initial decision to
appoint a pro-austerity minority government: ‘I am preventing unnecessary
pain.’ Pain that will be caused by the naivety and dangerous ignorance of the
people and political powers that still insist on people's right to have access
to crucial decisions, while at the same time they do not have the power to shape
these decisions.
It is evident today that
the EU is an openly anti-democratic institutional structure. The left must embrace the crude reality: in Europe a
new kind of despotism is emerging fast.
Tsipras and Juncker. CC.
The time lag of the left
In western societies, the
left, but not only the left, of a robust democratic constitution has been
trained to do politics within the coordinates of a post-war institutional
configuration. We assumed that the elites were committed to accepting the
democratically shaped mandate of an elected government. If they did not like
the policies that it promoted, they had to engage in a political fight;
opposition parties must convince the people that this policy is neither desirable
nor successful and use the democratic processes for a new government of their
preference to be elected.
But was this ever truly the case even for western societies after the Great
War? This is surely a debatable issue. However, it is sufficient to assume that
this was at least the dominant conception of political functioning that shaped
the methodology and strategy of political agency over the last decades, even if
it does not correspond fully to reality.
According
to this conception, the post-war global balance of forces inscribed in state
institutions a considerable amount of popular power, so that people without
considerable economic power nevertheless have access to crucial decisions. Of
course, the quality and the range of the access was a constant issue of class
struggle. The elites were obliged to fight according to the rules (or at least
to appear to do so) and at the same time they were working deliberately to
diffuse a kind of institutional configuration contaminated by popular power. In
recent decades (not accidentally after the fall of the Soviet Union) they made
decisive steps towards diffusing this kind of power and hence limiting the
ability of the popular classes to influence crucial decisions. Today the elites
feel confident enough to openly defy democracy. Democracy is no longer a sine qua non.
Based on the premise that
the framework in which politics is being performed hasn't changed significantly,
SYRIZA did what the traditional way of doing politics dictates: supported
social movements, built alliances, won a majority in the parliament, formed a
government. We all know the results of such a strategy now. The real outcome
was totally different. There was virtually no change of policy.
Prepare
for landing
A strategy that wishes to be relevant
to the new conditions must take on the duty of acquiring the necessary power to
run basic social functions. A strategy that wishes to be relevant
to the new conditions must take on the duty of acquiring the necessary power to
run basic social functions. No matter how difficult or strange this may sound
in light of the traditional ways of doing politics, it is the only way to
acquire the necessary power to defy the elites' control over our societies.
Is this feasible? My hypothesis is that
literally every day human activity – both intellectual and practical – is
producing experiences, know-how, criteria and methods, innovations etc. that
inherently contradict the parasitic logic of profit and competition. Moreover,
for the first time in our evolutionary history, we have so many embodied
capacities and values from different cultures within our reach that we are
bound to progress our collective intelligence in this regard if we put our
minds to it.
Of course we are talking about elements
that are not developed sufficiently yet. Elements that may indeed have been
nurtured in liberal or apolitical contexts often functionally connected to the
standard economic orthodoxy. However, the support of their further development,
their gradual absorption in an alternative, coherent paradigm governed by a
different logic and values, and finally their functional articulation in
alternative patterns of performing the basic functions of our societies is just
a short description of the duty of any left that wishes to take up a clear,
systematic and strategically broadbased orientation.
Based on people's
capacities, proper alignment, connection and coordination it is possible to
acquire the necessary power to at least be in a position to assume the basic
functions if needed. We can do this by ‘extracting’ the embodied capacities of
the people and putting them into use for the liberation of society.
For those
who are frankly skeptical of the possibility of laying the groundwork for such
a process, let's see the potential in the stark case of Greece. Plenty of people
were available to help SYRIZA with their expertise if there had been suitable
processes to “extract” their embodied capacities in an efficient way (which was
not the case).
SYRIZA at
its peak had approximately 35,000 members, the various solidarity networks
included thousands of people and from experience we know that plenty of people
were available to help SYRIZA with their expertise if there had been suitable
processes to “extract” their embodied capacities in an efficient way (which was
not the case). Furthermore, massive unemployment provides us with huge numbers
of people who would be willing to participate in networks of a different nature
as long as we can build and expand processes of this kind in a systematic way.
So, it is possible to pursue such a path as long as we apply the proper
methodological and organizational principles in our way of doing politics.
In the worst case scenario,
we will achieve some degree of resilience; people will be more empowered to
defend themselves and hold their ground. In the best case, we will be able to
regain the hegemony needed: people could mobilize positively, creatively and
massively, even decisively to reclaim their autonomy.
Graffiti in Athens. Photo by Carl Packman. Used with his permission.
Redesign the 'operating system' of the
left
We know that the popular power once
inscribed in various democratic institutions is exhausted. We do not have
enough power to make the elites accept and tolerate our participation in
crucial decisions. More of the same won’t do it. If
the ground of the battle has shifted, undermining our strategy, then it's not
enough to be more competent on the shaky battleground; we need to
reshape the ground. And to do that we have to expand the solution space by
shifting priorities: from political representation to setting up an autonomous
network of production of economic and social power (NESP).
We must
modify the balance between representing people's beliefs and demands and
coordinating, facilitating, connecting, supporting and nurturing people's
actions. Instead of being mainly the political representative of the popular
classes in a toxic anti-democratic European political environment designed to
be intolerant to people's needs, we must contribute heavily to the formation of
a strong 'backbone' for resilient and dynamic networks of social economy and
co-operative productive activities, alternative financial tools, local cells of
self-governance, democratically functioning digital communities, community
control over functions such as infrastructure facilities, energy systems and
distribution networks. These are ways of gaining the degree of autonomy necessary
to defy the control of elites over the basic functions of our society. It is not
only in Greece that there is a growing exclusion of people from having a job or
a bank account, having a ‘normal life’.
It is not
only in Greece that there is a growing exclusion of people from having a job or
a bank account, having a ‘normal life’. Modern society in general is in
decline. From history we know that societies in decline tend to react in order
to survive. It is up to us to grasp this and start building networks that can
perform basic social functions in a different way – one that is democratic,
decentralized and based on the liberation of people's capacities. First, this
would allow people who are being excluded today to survive. Second, this could
begin a transition towards a better and more mature society. And last but not
least, there are no empty spaces in history, so if we do not do this, the
nationalists and the fascists – with their own militarized ways of performing
these basic functions – may step in to conclude the decline.
Shifting the battlefield
Our
opponents have already spotted the shifting nature of the battlefield and have
moved to new unclassified ways of organizing and acting. They develop new kinds
of institutions (a Greek example http://www.corallia.org/en/) compatible
with the emerging environment of fast flows of information, digital frameworks
of action and production etc. They also explore new methods and models; for
example, “open innovation” models have emerged in the
last few years to enable the R&D departments of big multinational companies
to cope with the current distributed nature of knowledge and expertise that
exceeds past means of control and usurpation of human intellectual creativity
and innovation.
We have to create new
popular power if we want to bring about substantial change or make ourselves resilient
instead of just handling the remaining, seriously depleted if not already
exhausted popular power inscribed in the traditional institutions. The question is what does it look like to do politics
in order to produce popular power without presupposing traditional democratic
functioning – to restore it by newly transforming it? In other words, what are
the modifications needed in our political practice for the constitution and
expansion of NESPs? What does it look like to do politics
in order to produce popular power without presupposing traditional democratic
functioning – to restore it by newly transforming it?
These modifications may be classified
in three categories: political imagination, methodology and organizing
principles. From my experience, the very same people who energetically claim
that we need to be more innovative, better adapted and more efficient, when they
actually do politics, reproduce priorities, mental pictures, methods and organizational
habits that they already know are insufficient or inadequate. There are ingrained
norms in terms of methodological guidelines that decisively shape the range of
our collective actions, rhetoric, decisions and eventually strategy. In the same vein, we believe in and fight
for the promotion of the logic of cooperation and democracy against the logic
of competition, but in practice our organizations suffer severely in terms of
cooperation and democracy on the operational/organizational level. We need to
recognize these blind spots and set up a process of identifying best practices,
methods and regulations – both from the experience of our collectivities and
from expertise in management, leadership, organizational complexity and network
systems theory etc. – in order to operationally upgrade our forces.
Furthermore,
our actions and initiatives are not properly connected up, but fragmented and
isolated, destined to face the same difficulties again and again. We need to
upgrade our operational capacities through appropriate nodes of connection,
facilitating smooth flows of know-how and information, transferring best
practices, building databases and accumulating knowledge and expertise in an
easily retrievable and useful way. Actually, this is the advantage of
multinational and large corporations in general, in comparison to others: they
have a vast social network and powerful databases that gives them the necessary
tools to plan and pursue their goals while their smaller competitors seem in
disarray in a global environment of rapid changes. We need these qualities if
we want to be really useful today.
Greek Red Cross helps refugees trapped at Idomeni on the Greece-Macedonia border. Demotix/Giorgios Cristakis. All rights reserved.
What
about political representation?
The function of political
representation is a fundamental one in complex societies. It's the function that political parties
mostly perform and that shapes everyday thinking regarding what ‘politics’ is
about. The task here is not to revive neglected aspects of politics – like
building popular power – or to reinvent collective and individual qualities;
the aim is to explore novel ways of performing the function of political
representation in order to upgrade significantly the political leverage of the
people.
Of course, building popular power will
also invigorate and possibly transform the institutional framework, giving
substantial meaning back to political representation. But, the expansion of a
network of the sort we are discussing here and the
changes it could generate at various levels of the social configuration must be
reflected on the function of political representation itself. We need to
evaluate and explore concepts like the
“commons”. Advancing a project to shape political
representation as “commons” could give us valuable insights into new
ways of performing vital functions that transcend the traditional, institutional
framework of representative democracy.
Democratising the state?
The left talks too much about the
democratic transformation of the state. In practice, the driving concept is the
restoration of state functions as they were before the neoliberal
transformation. But the expansion of a network of economic and social power
under people's control could unlock our imagination towards more advanced and
better targeted reforms of state institutions. In theory this is an old idea:
the transformation of the state is a complementary move to the self-organized
collectivities of the people outside it, driven by these forms of
self-governance. This is exactly the “mechanics” of
transformation that various intellectuals and leaders of the left described in
detail a long time ago.
Actually, this is
exactly what our opponents did consistently and persistently during the last
decades: they were designing and implementing reforms in various levels of state
institutions based on the methods, the criteria and the functioning of their
own “social agents”, namely the corporations and their own understanding of the
nature of public space, namely the market. This is exactly the “mechanics” of
transformation that various intellectuals and leaders of the left described in
detail a long time ago. Perhaps, by shifting our priorities we will be
able to revive old but useful ideas that have been forgotten in practice.
Mind the
gap
The
“SYRIZA experience” will be worthless if we do not resist the temptation to
replace one mistake with another. The failure of SYRIZA – the failure of
focusing solely on traditional electoral politics to radically change the
dominant neoliberal framework – creates favorable conditions for notions like
“self-referential alternativism” and “vanguard isolationism” to emerge and
preoccupy the minds and hearts of those who are willing to continue fighting.
But
choices like these just repeat what SYRIZA did, justifying fully the threat of our
opponents: either you will be marginal or you will become like us! The
existential threats and crucial questions regarding their future that our
societies face today have nothing to do with a strategy of building “arcs” that
aim to safeguard the “Left” or any other identity.
Entering the ominous
battlefield of the twenty-first century, the left will either be relevant and
useful for the defense of human societies, or it will be obsolete.
