OKDE on the results of the elections of the 7th of July
14 July 2019
The European elections in Greece were followed by national elections that registereda further serious defeat for the working class and for the left. Our sister organizationOKDE looks at the consequences of this defeat. Above all it registers the utterbankruptcy of SYRIZA and its betrayal of the workers. The many left fans of SYRIZA in Ireland and across Europe who based strategy around its broad front reformism are now silent, apparently unaware of defeats an dunwilling to draw any lessons.(ed)
Announcement by OKDE First estimates for July 7th election result
1. The electoral result of 7th July is a heavy defeat for the forces of the labor and people's movement. On the one hand, the uprising in power of an ultra neoliberal, extreme right-wing ND, with a very strong percentage (40%), which restores its electoral influence to before-2010 levels. On the other hand, the stabilization at high percentage (nearly 32%) of the memorandumist, neoliberal SYRIZA, which gives a second pillar to the bourgeois political scene, at least for the time being. In total, all these memorandumist forces exceed 80%, adding up the percentage of KINAL (ex-PASOK). In addition, with the remaining percentage of Golden Dawn (its non-entrance to parliament is also a vindication of anti-fascist struggles) and the nationalist-racist Greek Solution, we have an overall right, conservative shift of the political scene. The most dangerous thing is that it is not just the surface of parliamentary correlations, but it has clearly influenced on workers, poor people, youth at a social level, perhaps in the most unfavorable way over the past 40 years.
2. SYRIZA has almost totally the blame for ND’s comeback to power and for this conservative shift. The historic betrayal of NO in July 5th 2015 was a turning point for the dissolution of the anti-memondarum bloc, the hit against the workers-people's movement, all anti-memondarum forces and the Left (which had reached a total of 45% in the January 2015 parliamentary elections). In order to rise up and keep in power, SYRIZA and Tsipras made a big and profound damage to the workers-people' s movement, imposed shocks that reached the backbone of the working classand all of those who fought, especially in the 2010-2012 season and they seized their votes. SYRIZA not only legalized the worst types of bourgeois politics but also humiliated the meaning of the Left, the searching for an alternative, the ideas, values and references of the workers' movement. In addition to the obvious confusion, frustration and fear that SYRIZA's neoliberal scrubbiness has created, he resurrected and gave a breath to the bourgeois memorandum forces that the Greek people had massively condemned. With all this, it offered the best help to the Right and the old pro-memorandum, the bourgeois and the imperialists forces, getting power to make it even worse.
3. The result is tough for the forces with reference to the Left and the labor movement, facing with the threat of extreme weakening. This is mainly due to the logic of the "less evil" against ND, which clearly prevailed in broad social-labor strata in favor of SYRIZA, but it some point and in favor of the pro-EU,bourgeois, leader-centered formation of Varoufakis (MeRA25), whose entrance into the parliament demonstrates the right shift of the "anti-memorandum" spectrum.- KKE lost extra votes in comparison with the fall which has already had in the European elections. In a general shrinking of the Left, it "holds on", without this giving a way out to its physiognomy and its orientation – and with the cost of an increasingly defeatism or even conservative policy. - The remaining left-wing lists, mainly ANTARSYA and LAE, are highly squeezed (with the exception of the two “maoist-leninist” ballots, taken us a sum compared to September 2015, when they participated in electoral alliance). As it’s well known to all militants, the future of these frontsis totally uncertain because of their electoralist character.- The result of OKDE is bad (1,675 votes (0,03%), compared with 2,433 (0,04%) in the September 2015 national elections and 4,823 (0,09%) in the recent European elections). All of our comrades gave a difficult battle with enthusiasm and stubbornness, gaining valuable experiences. Our efforts didn’t manage to question in practice the electoral adherence of popular strata to SYRIZA, to overcome the polarization that prevailed and the big pressures it created to our independent revolutionary ballot. It has been proved again the difficulties of rooting of a revolutionary policy, particularly in these specific circumstances. OKDE thanks workers, young people and fighters who supported it, having made a difficult choice. Our organization will thoroughly discuss the causes of this electoral defeat in order to elaborate its policy and tactics as efficiently as possible, based on the steps forward it has achived in recent years and the needs of the labor movement, of the building of a revolutionary force.
4. The overall balance sheet of a period of 10 years is harsh for the working and popular masses, for the forces and militants who are referring to the anti-capitalist, revolutionary, communist Left. The massive rejection of Memoranda and the searching for an alternative policy with strong radical components (social and political), as expressed until July 2015, crushed to the betrayal of SYRIZA - and then castrated into frustration and fatalism- and it could not find a reliable alternative on the left, being trapped in the "less evil" in favor of SYRIZA. A revanchist Right has now an air of supremacy, along with the government. The disintegration of the bourgeois parties, which was massive until 2015, has been halted (at least for now) and an entire political circle had closed. Giving space to the bourgeois political forces to proceed with new, tough anti-labor and anti-popular attacks - to try impose a decisive defeat on the workers' movement, the neoliberal memorandum compliance of the Greek people, ensuring the continuation of the present negative class correlations for many years, more and more deeply at the core of the working class and its organizations and throughout the social web, along with a neoliberal ideological hegemony.
5. That mission of the bourgeoise and the imperialists - which do not hide their class joy for the result - is not at all simple. The stability of Greek capitalism is rotten, actually it has been in a much worse economic situation since it entered the Memoranda in 2010. The regime of Debt Colony and the memoranda commitments undermines every possibility of development, as well asthe return of the world capitalistic crisis (epsecially in Europe). Not only have we not come out of the Memoranda, but we are ahead of the endless memoranda. The only plan of ND and the rest of bourgeois forces is even more harsh neoliberal measures, a massive attack and anti-labor, anti-popular measures – coded as “reduction of the state” (cuts, layoffs etc.), "investments" (doing evenmore despotic the New System of Exploitation that crashes the working class), "security" (even more dark undemocratic regime), the new-aristocratic "excellence". On the other hand, the plan of a "rescue" and stabilization of SYRIZA as the second supportive pillar of bourgeois policy, with a turning further to the right, towards a "progressive" or "center-left" formation, even more autonomous from any social basis and coherent ideology, will be extremely difficult and with a totally dubious conclusion, after the loss of power.All of these means a new exacerbation of the social crisis (and Mitsotakis, of course, will not save the petite bourgeoisie from the millstone of the capitalist crisis, no matter how he cries out in favorof the "middle class"!), the exacerbation of the class war against the working class and the poor, creating the possibility of new struggles.
6. However, the danger is really serious for the labor movement. The new attacks of Mitsotakis will not automatically generate new struggles, because of confusing that exists, the dissolution situation in the trade unions and the deep and complex crisis of the workers' movement. And, of course, they will not automatically bring the predominance of a proper policy in favor of the workers. The forces of the Left and the workers’ movement are squeezed between, on the one hand, a logic of defeatist adjustment and pressure for new “Pan-Left” front deadlocks – and, on theother hand, of an ultra-leftist, unrealistic super-optimism that it can’t see no specific duty of rebuilding the workers' movement or is extremely indifferent for its unity. The cost of these mistakes is already really heavy. On the contrary, it is required a serious, patient and persistent work to rebuild the forces of the labor movement. Everything will be assessed at building the unityand struggles of workers and youth, transcending step by step all the ineffective deadlocks that harms and kneels the workers’ movement. OKDE will continue its efforts to contribute to this strategic task: with a unified policy, alongside with all the fighters and the forces of the Left, who they insist, despite the difficulties to defend basic components of class independence and policy, with all workers and young people who want to fight against the aggression of Mitsotakis and neo-liberal cannibals.