Referendum July 2015: Ten days that shocked but did not change Greece

"The uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook remains high, but the chances of a change for the worse and for the better are balanced.” This was stated in the Commission’s forecast report on the EU economy in spring 2015. This implied that everything was hanging by a thread, as the consequences of the “crash” that had preceded it a few years earlier and the outbreak of the global financial crisis, had not yet been overcome. It was clear, then, that as the crisis in Greece was escalating and was heading towards its peak, the EU and the eurozone were not in their best possible condition. That is precisely why, however, they chose a display of power against a country that – as they well knew – had acquired a government that was not willing and ready for ruptures.

And they believed that the best way to achieve this was to bluntly blackmail. That is, to clearly pose a dilemma that would not concern the “yes or no to the EU-IMF memorandum”, but something much more important: the stakes of “in or out of the eurozone”. And they did so, apparently assuming that the Greek people would not dare to risk their currency and in that way they would put a definite end to the "madness" with their vote. "With the referendum, the Greek people are being asked to answer whether they will remain in the Euro or return to the Drachma" said the then president of the European Commission and "friend" of Greece, Jean-Claude Juncker, in a statement he made on June 29, after the parliament approved the holding of the referendum. "If there is an emphatic ‘yes’ to remain in the Euro, to participate in the construction, to rebuild the economy so that it is sustainable in the long run, then there will be the following response from us: let's try (...) When there is an intent, there is a way", IMF Managing Director (and currently President of the ECB), Christine Lagarde, had emphasized in an interview with the BBC on June 27.

The stage, then, had been methodically set by the EU and the IMF and at the right moment, the noose became suffocating with the restrictions on capital movements (capital controls) that were announced two days later, on Sunday, June 28. The responsibility was borne by the ECB's extortionate decision to close the liquidity tap to the banks. With the consent and encouragement, of course, of the Bank of Greece and its governor, G. Stournaras, who had been placed in this crucial position a year earlier and remains steadfast to this day. When a capitalist structure like the EU is threatened, all its members unite to defend it, putting aside their differences and rivalries. This was also demonstrated by the statement made at that critical time by the then US President, Barack Obama, whom Tsipras, SYRIZA and a large part of their voters had as a role model. “What is required is that Greece be serious about carrying out important reforms (…) The Greeks will have to make some difficult political choices, which will be good in the long run,” he said on June 8 at the G7 summit in Germany.

The memorandum was the central choice of a coalition between the European bankers and the core of Greek capital, for a violent restructuring of Greek capitalism, for the crushing of the most historic conquests of the working class and the people, the skyrocketing of exploitation, the repayment of debts in the environment created by the capitalist crisis of 2008, the stability of the eurozone. With such a strategic stake, it was certain that there would be no blackmailing, threat and measure that the capital and the political system would not think of to impose.

SYRIZA, which ultimately emerged as a hegemonic force in the great movement of 2010-2015, had a very specific line. The memorandum will be abolished “with an bill and a law”, by a “government of the left”, which will “negotiate” with the Institutions a program of “social rectification and justice”, without a rupture with the Eurozone and the EU. The slogan “neither rupture – nor submission” was, as it was afterwards proven, a tragic delusion that led to the transformation of the great popular “No” into a “Yes”, in the 2015 coup, precisely when the strategic question of rupture or submission with the “institutions” and the bourgeois political system was at stake.

However, this openly compromising policy did not hover “in the air”. It was orchestrated throughout the previous years of the anti-memorandum struggles, it was “communicated” and to a significant extent shaped, and limited the political boundaries of the movement of that period. The forces of SYRIZA and other forces of the movement inside/outside SYRIZA were fighting to politically limit the movement and the struggles in the anti-memorandum framework, to detach the immediate goals from the political conditions for their implementation, to prevent the goals from escalating from the "anti-memorandum" to the "anti-EU - anti-capitalist” level, to prevent the need to break away/exit from the Euro and the EU, in the name of "broader unity".

On the other hand, the KKE's (Communist Party) stance led to the political halting of the movement, from a different direction. Throughout the years of the great anti-memorandum struggles, the KKE waged a political and theoretical battle against the political goals that signalled ruptures with bourgeois politics! Indeed, from 2010 onwards, they denied the goal of “abolishing the memoranda” (because other countries are implementing the same program to enhance the competitiveness of capital without memoranda), the goal of writing off the debt, the goal of exiting the Euro and the EU (because “it is integrated into the framework of the Euroscepticism promoted by bourgeois forces”), contributing to the fixation of the movement within the iron limits of bourgeois politics and greatly reinforcing the truncated parliamentary logic of SYRIZA. This rationale led the KKE to turn its back to the people during the referendum, and the “I see no solution other than the Euro” position by the leader of KKE, D. Koutsoumbas, at the political leaders’ meeting.

SYRIZA emerged as a political spokesperson for the anti-memorandum struggles because its proposal seemed more “realistic” and because it gave a specific political answer to the issue of power, the “government of the left”. A very extensive ideological struggle took place around the issue of the left’s governmental perspective. For the majority of the people, with long-term parliamentary illusions, the government is identified with power, it is the tool for imposing any comprehensive political solution. Therefore, the political proposal of the “ruling left” responded to the needs and illusions, that is, to the level of their consciousness. However, for the unhindered and overwhelmingly hegemonic prevalence of the parliamentary government solution in the struggling forces and in the social and political vanguards, an important role was played by organizations, groups, intellectuals, of leftist, Marxist orientation who supported SYRIZA and formed a more theoretically elaborated line of justification of the perspective of the “leftist government”. The theoretical basis of these views was mainly the one of the reform of the bourgeois state, (with a Eurocommunist reference) using government power as a springboard, which in combination with the “pressures from the movement” could lead to the “sharpening of the contradictions of the system”, to broader changes for the benefit of the people.

However, the prospect of a government change from 2012 onwards led not to an intensification of the struggle, but to a strengthening of “realism” in the name of the parliamentary majority. The period 2010-2012, and up to 2015 was a period of shocking struggles, which led to an unprecedented political crisis, and to the historic collapse of the traditional two-party system. It was not just a “crisis of representation”. Major issues with bourgeois politics (memoranda, EU) entered the agenda. Forms of people’s organization and self-activity flooded Greek society (people’s assemblies, diverse forms of solidarity, etc.). As it was also evident in the days of the referendum, people’s consciousness significantly advanced. The “down with the memoranda” had already become a significant part of the “conflict with the Eurozone and the EU” or at least it was open to such a trajectory. In order to continue and escalate the battle after the coup d’état of the “No” by SYRIZA, a timely clarification of the role of SYRIZA and its leadership was required (and not the reproduction of the illusions that supported the “we vote against the memorandum, we support the government” until the very last moment). The political-ideological and organizational preparation to defend the “No” with militant struggles against the bureaucracy that supported the “Yes”, the independent rallying of the anti-capitalist forces, the forces of the “No ‘till the end”. In this way, the continuation and escalation of the struggle could pave the way for a broader questioning of the system. But these did not happen, resulting in the movement being politically and organizationally unprepared at that critical moment to move forward without SYRIZA and against SYRIZA.

NAR (New Left Current) and ANTARSYA (Anti-Capitalist Front) fought wholeheartedly the battle of the "triple NO"; NO to the memoranda, NO to the EU, NO to the SYRIZA government. All the previous years they highlighted and fought for the main goals of the anti-capitalist program. That included the abolition of the memoranda, the write-off of the debt, the rupture/exit from the Euro and the EU, the nationalization, without compensation, of the banks and other strategic enterprises. They aimed for this political program to "permeate" the movement and not remain within the limits of "negotiation" and parliamentary rotation. They promoted forms of independent organization of the movement (e.g. mass coordination/coalition of Primary Trade Unions, the campaign "We Do Not Owe, We Do Not Pay", etc.). They also contributed with their presence on the streets to the militancy of the staggering mobilizations in May 2010, June and October 2011, and February 2012.

However, the forces of NAR and ANTARSYA had a strategic inability to connect the struggle with those steps that would pose the question of power in a different way. The 4th Congress of NAR assessed: “There was a certain detachment of the anti-capitalist program of struggle and the question of political power; an incomplete elaborate answer to who and how will impose them; an impractical and not specific approach on the organisation of the “extra-parliamentary” and the against-to-the-bourgeois-political-system peoples..…”. Thus, we did not “transfer” the experience of people’s assemblies to the workplaces, so that the working class could organize itself in an independent manner, we did not attempt to systematize and unify those assemblies in regional and national levels, to create “seeds” of another organization of the peoples. 

Deep weaknesses and limitations were expressed in the organized extra-parliamentary Left. First of all, a large part of it supported and joined SYRIZA. The membership in SYRIZA was supported by a series of arguments, the main one being the possibility of the forces of the “radical left” to inflict influence, through their participation in it. This logic, which was historically applied, span from “entrism” of one group in to another, to the formation of the “broad left parties”, failed. A historical conclusion to this is required. The combination of the downgrading of the political goals of the program in the name of “broad unity” and the support (from within or “critically” from outside) of the reformist current, disarms the movement and the vanguards and constantly destroys the possibility of unity and independent formation of the anti-capitalist left.

Ten years after the social explosion that led to the inspiring "NO" in the referendum, the entire system is trying to eliminate every trace of popular momentum. Just as they "corrected", that is, abolished, the people's vote at the meeting of political leaders at the presidential palace on 6/7/2015, so they are rewriting history today. Angela Merkel, then head of German capitalism, who pioneered barbaric measures against workers, is re-introducing herself in Greece as a friendly "mother". A. Tsipras, who became synonymous with opportunism on an international level, appears as... the honest one who never lied, although it is clear that he had never thought of breaking with the Euro and the EU. In general, the period 2010-2015, when the people and the youth found themselves in the cramp of the Capital-EU-IMF, is attempted to be “buried” and labelled as “madness” and “dark days”. For them, the dark days were not the memoranda, but the struggle against them… The system’s fear that similar social cracks may return in the future leads to all of this appearing as a tragicomedy.

The consensus of the bourgeois political system around Euro was expressed in the most striking way in the infamous meeting at the presidential palace. The then President of the Republic, P. Pavlopoulos, was revealing in a recent interview: “It was a climate of deliberation, a climate of anxiety, but in no case a state of conflict. And I will never forget the positive attitude of the KKE leader D. Koutsoubas, who even impressed Merkel. Koutsoubas said publicly: ‘‘We are against the European Union, but when you enter an organization such as the European Union, you do not leave in this way.’’ That was the best a President of the Republic could expect from a communist party…

If we hold on to anything from 2015, it is firstly the ability of the working class, the people and the youth to “surprise”, to take the step forward towards disobedience and rupture even in difficult circumstances. Secondly, that without rupture and exit from the EU and the overthrow of the pillars of capital in Greece, there cannot be a pro-peoples program. And thirdly, that a strong and determined communist organization is required, with elaborate revolutionary tactics and strategy and a strong anti-capitalist front within a growing political movement for the overthrow of capitalism.