Stavros Mavroudeas — The Greek Referendum and the Tasks of the Left

For six months, after its January 2015 election victory, the SYRIZA government began negotiations with the EU. In these negotiations SYRIZA was confronted with the stubborn and increasing intransigence of EU and its companion institutions (the ECB and the IMF). SYRIZA very soon accepted the logic and the structure of the troika program; that is the Economic Adjustment Program for Greece popularly called the Memorandum. 

It simply tried to modify it by making it less front-loaded (i.e. delaying the implementation of reductions in pensions and hidden wage cuts, reducing fiscal primary surplus targets and thus making fiscal policy less austere). It also asked for facilitating debt servicing (by rolling back debt, leveraging and ‘financial engineering’) and an increase in aid funds (through the fictitious Juncker plan) that would help to jumpstart the moribund after 6 years of austerity Greek economy. Last, it shyly asked for some commitment for a future reduction of the Greek debt. 

The EU, as soon it diagnosed this conciliatory mood by SYRIZA and since the whole game was played in its ground, begun pressing it for additional concessions. The more that SYRIZA slide towards capitulation the more the EU demanded. In the end it was politically infeasible for SYRIZA to accept all of EU’s demands, even despite its humiliating compromises and its blatant betrayal of even its mediocre electoral program. This led to the breakdown of the negotiations and the call, by the SYRIZA government, of a referendum on the troika’s demands.

The breakdown of the negotiations between Greece and the EU proved beyond doubt the true nature of the EU: it is the enforcers of the interests and prerogatives of the dominant capitalist powers of Europe. It imposes neoliberal austerity policies on the people and weaker countries of Europe for the benefit of capitalist profits.

Moreover, the negotiations’ breakdown demonstrates the unrealistic character of the SYRIZA government program for a ‘decent compromise’ with the EU that would be ‘neither a clash nor a capitulation’ and for ‘staying in the Eurozone at any cost’. If you want to stay in the Eurozone and the EU you have to capitulate to the demands of its dominant powers. There is no other way. Thus, even the 47-pages long SYRIZA proposal for a milder version of the troika austerity program was indignantly rejected....

SYRIZA failed not only strategically but also tactically....

SYRIZA did not acquire control of the central bank and also accepted or even appointed several ‘men of the system’ in the directorship of commercial banks and other crucial public enterprises. SYRIZA emptied the state coffers by stupidly paying all the due tranches to IMF and the international creditors. Thus, once the referendum was called the EU, in close co-operation with the Greek bourgeoisie, created a condition of asphyxia for the banking sector and obliged SYRIZA to impose very severe capital controls on the very day that the huge mass of Greece’s badly paid pensioners (that support also another big portion of the population) were paid....

Counterpunch

The Greek Referendum and the Tasks of the Left

Stavros Mavroudeas | Professor of Political Economy in the Economics Department of the University of Macedonia