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For those of us who were until recently more sympathetic to Antarsya,
the “other” left-wing coalition on Greece’s radical left, it is salutary
to reflect on how well Syriza has done in the last month, and how poorly
Antarsya has done by comparison.
The justification for Antarsya’s separate existence goes something like
the following: Antarsya, unlike Syriza, is a coalition of the parties
that believe that Greece can only be saved by a revolutionary
transformation of the state. Syriza, unlike Antarsya, equivocates on
this issue, and on the connected questions of whether the Greek
government should remain in Europe or whether it should agree to pay any
of the debt to its international creditors. Those who vote for Antarsya
are voting for a revolutionary alternative to capitalism and, in so
doing, they keep alive the possibility of a revolutionary politics.
Syriza by contrast is merely reformist; and likely to every bit as
shabby in government as PASOK, Labour etc.
Inevitably in the last election, Antarsya’s vote was squeezed to just
0.6% since the election became a referendum on the possibility of a
left-wing government (which most politicised workers want), but by
standing Antarsya has kept pressure on Syriza from the left. Its stance
outside Syriza has all the benefits of being associated with a rising
movement (the sales of Workers’ Solidarity the newspaper of one of
Antarsya’s affiliates, have apparently never been so high), but none of
the disadvantages of being associated with Syriza’s defeat, when that
disappointment inevitably comes.
Who makes the revolutionaries?
Where this justification of Antarsya begins to fall down is with the
assumption that the best alternative to a programme of reform is to
offer a rival, programme of greater reforms. In this revolutionaries are
different from reformists principally in that they ask for more. So
Syriza offered Greek nationality to the children of all migrants; and,
like a poker player, Antarsya “raised” them, by offering to legalise all
immigrants in Greece. Syriza said that it would stop all the planned
privatisations; Antarsya’s reply was to say that it would undo every
privatisation in Greek history.
Using elections to make revolutionaries is not about out-bidding your
rival, it involves an explanation of both any government under
capitalism has only limited power, and how those limits can be overcome
(only through a direct conflict with the international capitalist
class). It is at this point that Syriza comes over as politically more
sophisticated than Antarsya, because it had an analysis of its own
limits as a reforming government (the European powers will not allow us
to write off more than a small portion of our debt), and an idea of how
to get beyond that limit (on the basis of agitation from outside
parliament keeping pressure on the government, and on the basis of
support from the left outside Greece).
full:
https://livesrunning.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/syriza-and-the-poverty-of-philosophy/
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