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| THIS IS WHAT DIRECT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE |
Several years of People's Assemblies in squares across Greece maybe has spoiled us. Direct democracy in action. Horizontal and all that. Problems, sure, but still governing without government, without parties, without trade unions, governing by the multitude and for the multitude. Great stuff. New stuff. Exciting stuff.
It is diminishing now, I fear. The Party has arrived. The "radical" left Syriza has appeared on the scene, and is doing things now like calling for an occupation of Syntagma Square to support its agenda. But wait, we don't need no Party to call us to occupy...and we sure don't need some outside agenda. That sort of misses the whole point.
EurActiv tells the story:
The European Left is the main political force of change in Europe and only alternative to neoliberalism, says Greek left-wing leader and expected candidate for the European Commission top job, Alexis Tsipras, in an interview with EurActiv Greece.
The European Left can oppose "neoliberalism" and help find a solution to the effects of austerity policy, said Tsipras, the leader of the leftist Greek party, Syriza.
By the European Left, Tsipras means partys like his. He doesn't mean you and me.
Tsipras said that the crisis had brought people from all aspects of society together: “we juxtapose the solidarity of the young, the working people, the pensioners and the unemployed”.
What he doesn't seem to notice is that these people were brought together without him or his Party. What he and his Party are doing is stepping in to "represent" and "lead" these leaderless people.
No thanks.
I'm not saying that Syriza says all the wrong things. It doesn't. The problem is with it the move is away from direct democracy and back to the same old same old...just like always. You can't smash the State by becoming the State. It just does not ever work
George Venizelos writes at An International Critique:
In other words, until the next conference of SYRIZA, in three years, the party politics will be formulated by the current president Alexis Tsipras; if in one year Tsipras and SYRIZA managed to shift the party further to the right, what now... One end can be visualized; SYRIZA will have a radical and rapid ending in terms of quality. As it rapidly grew, that rapidly it will become another promising party that lost the game with the system and became slave of its misconceptions, settling itself at the levels of social democracy; far from modern, yet, radical ideas.
It is not hard to understand the popularity of Syriza. It does say the right things, most of the time, it did have activists who participated in the fights in the Squares. It represents a way forward for many people searching desperately for hope.
I hate to sound like some dogmatic leftist, but I am sorry, I even more hate to see the step back from direct democracy to Party politics.
I am going to post two articles/analysis here. The first is from ROARMAG and is from yesterday . The second is from last May and from the blog Critical Mass. I like the first article a lot. I like some of the second article not quite as much, but it makes some good points.
Greece: rise of the party, demise of the movement?
The direct democracy of the squares has given way to representative party politics — a dangerous development, the Latin American experience teaches us.
I was at Syntagma Square in Athens during its long summer of 2011. Just like hundreds of thousands of other participants in this incredible horizontal experiment, I was impressed by the ability of everyday people — who were until then outsiders of the political game — to spontaneously get together and organize themselves into the largest Popular Assembly Athens has ever witnessed, seeking to overturn the neoliberal austerity measures the government was soon to vote on, and invent ways in which direct democracy could possibly work as a form of decision-making beyond the limited space of a square.
This autonomous and horizontal project was made reality without any particular financial resources and without the participation of the traditional political actors like trade unions and political parties, which were emphatically banned from the square. It all happened spontaneously, without leaders, and from below. And it did not happen only in Athens, but in all the squares of Greece — forming what came to be known as “the movement of the squares” (and not theaganaktismenoi, or Greek indignados, as the media called them; a name that was rejected by the movement itself. A huge banner hung over Syntagma those days with a clear message: we are not indignant, we are determined!)
A year later, together with Jerome Roos, we returned to Syntagma with the intention of interviewing some of the protagonists of this movement, as well as to explore a bit further how the occupation actually took off. “We gotta find the person who brought the microphone!” was my main obsession at the time, thinking that the movement seemed spontaneous, yet actually somebody was there with a microphone and a sound system on the very first day, so if we could find “who brought the mic” we could possibly be able to locate who was behind the call for the occupation of the square as well — thus went my doubting-Thomas thinking at the time.
Talking to activists from Syntagma we managed to find the answer to our question, yet it was not at all what we were expecting: the mic was actually brought to Syntagma on the first assembly by… a Spanish wandering musician who happened to be present in the nearby “Greek-Spanish Assembly” of Thissio and who offered his equipment for the very first Syntagma People’s Assembly to take place. Later on, the anarchists of Exarchia brought a better sound system, of course, but this whole story really proved to us that the occupation of the square was actually what it looked like: a leaderless, spontaneous, horizontal movement for real (direct) democracy; one that taught the people who happened to pass by Syntagma those days that there is another way of doing politics, not through ‘representatives’ and ‘leaders’ but through one’s own participation.
While this direct democratic approach was obviously not without its limitations, it was still an effort “coming from the people,” as Dimitris — one of the facilitators of the assembly — told us in an interview for the ROAR documentaryUtopia on the Horizon (2012). And of course this radical democratic experiment made “the people” the main agent of change for the little while that it lasted, excluding the more traditional actors of political life and completely discrediting the country’s political system. Yet the summer of Syntagma did not last forever, even though the 72 days and nights for which it managed to last made it the longest major occupation of the Real Democracy Movement of 2011-’13.
Two-and-a-half years later, on November 10, 2013, another call for the occupation of Syntagma Square was made. Yet this time there was no need to investigate who made the call, neither “who brought the mic”. The whole event was organized by the radical-left party SYRIZA in order to support its request for a confidence vote against the government which was taking place inside Parliament at the same time (a confidence vote of which nobody understoodwhy it had been called, since there was no chance for the government not to survive it — but that’s a different story).
Of course, the party had taken care of installing a big stage (and an expensive sound system) for its members to address the crowds, while it had also invited several artists to perform at the square. And of course there was no Popular Assembly — the main attraction of the night was the speech by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras from inside Parliament. Yet, although SYRIZA had already taken care of the sound system and all the other details and needed no Spanish wandering musician to appear as a Deus Ex Machina to save the situation, its call to occupy Syntagma was not attended by even a fraction of the crowds that used to attend the Popular Assemblies two years before, neither did it have their passion, their creativity, or their hope. However, SYRIZA’s event confirmed one thing: that the ‘political party’ and the ‘state’ are back in play as the main front of political resistance in Greece today, with SYRIZA being the main expression of this tendency.
Many leftists in Europe and North America look to SYRIZA with hope and amazement. But is it really a good sign that a political party has “stolen the show” of the movements and usurped their energy? Should we not be worried that the horizontal and direct democratic experiment of the squares has largely given way to the old hierarchical forms of representation and electoral politics? Should we not be concerned that the Popular Assemblies have been replaced with the speeches of a party leader in Parliament? Perhaps we should look to the experiences of another continent — Latin America — that already has a long history with such developments, and learn a lesson or two.
In his excellent book, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements, Raúl Zibechi evaluates the decade of the “pink tide” in Latin America and comes to the following two conclusions. First, that in all the Latin American countries that experienced the “pink tide” (which swept left-leaning governments into power in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and others), and despite the many local differences among them, there was one fundamental feature these countries all shared: the return of the state as the main agent of social change. And second, that the movements that were the protagonists of the main mobilizations in the late 1990s and early 2000s (the piqueteros in Argentina, the participants in the water and gas wars in Bolivia, the landless workers’ in Brazil, and so on) had all been marginalized or neutralized through state repression or co-option, leading to the ascendency of the ‘party’ as the main expression of popular demands and desires, and the side-lining of the radical emancipatory struggle of the movements themselves.
Regarding Argentina more specifically, where the direct democratic experiments of 2001-’03 gave way to Kirchner’s corporatist neo-Peronism, Benjamin Dangl famously wrote that “Kirchner was handing out crumbs, when what many demanded was revolution.” And regarding Bolivia, Oscar Olivera — spokesperson of the Coordinadora por la Defensa del Agua y la Vida during the legendary Cochabamba Water War — described the first year of Evo Morales’ government as follows:
“Now that [Morales'] Movement Towards Socialism occupies state space, it has begun trying to co-opt and control the movements, in order to demobilize them by means of their own specific demands and tame them according to the government’s interests. The state is expropriating capacities that we recovered at great cost: the capacity to rebel, to mobilize, to organize, and to advance proposals. They give institutional positions to movement spokespeople, embassies to social leaders, and dismiss and stigmatize those of us who do not want to enter state institutions but rather want to break with them, alleging that we are funded by the right-wing.”
Kirchner’s crumbs and Evo’s offers managed to stop whatever revolutionary processes were under way below the social surface, leading us to wonder once again why social movements consistently lose out to electoral institutional politics when the center-left takes over a regime. Are we witnessing a similar process unfolding in Europe right now, with the rise of SYRIZA in Greece? Are the radical emancipatory movements once again being sidelined in favor of party politics and the electoral conquest of state power? The Latin American experience is there and we better pay some close attention to it. Otherwise we are condemned to commit the same mistakes over and over again.
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SYRIZA: CRUCIBLE OR CUL-DE-SAC?
Who wants a ‘Party of the People’?
Recently there has been a number of calls from within the UK anti-capitalist left, for the formation of a ‘party of the people’ to rescue the working class from the current crisis and the austerity measures implemented by the present political elite. Few of those making the call from within this anti-capitalist milieu, have bothered to seriously consider how a party might distort or dismember the necessary self-activity of the working and oppressed classes. Fewer still have described what such a party might look like or what efforts it would take to form one. For this reason these calls have been left as yet mere abstractions formulated out of a mixture of wishful thinking, impatience and lack of serious study. Suggestions of ‘a new political formation, which rejects austerity’ and recognition of ‘the obstacles’ to getting elected to the parliaments or other organs of political administration, are about as detailed as they get.
I shall ignore for the moment the obvious fact that the sources of power under the capitalist mode of production, lie outside of its Parliamentary or congressional ‘talking shops’ and consider what a more detailed proposal for such a party includes. In this regard, it cannot have escaped many observers notice that in the shape of Syriza, such a‘party of the people’ is taking shape within Greece. Therefore, a recent speech in London (March 15 2013) by the current leader of this ‘party‘, Alexis Tsipras, allows us a glimpse into what ideas it takes to form one and what policies it adopts in order to get elected. Syriza, Tsipras asserted, will offer the ‘radical democratic changes’ which are necessary as‘the only way out of the crisis’. The European elites he stated have ‘no viable prospect of exit from the crisis’ . Whilst this – as far as it goes – is undoubtedly true, let us consider what else he and Syriza think will prevent such an exit.
The current problems according to Syriza.
The first and emphasised problem identified in his speech was ‘austerity’. “Austerity is leading the Greek economy and society down a catastrophic path.”, he argued. He made no mention of the fact that it was the capitalist mode of production and its domination by finance-capital whose agents have devised these policies – and not always out of mistaken ignorance or meanness! Instead his primary focus was on the symptom – not the cause. From this viewpoint it is austerity policies – the symptoms – which have led to ‘cuts in benefits, deregulation and deterioration of the welfare state’, not the underlying fundamental crisis of the entire economic and political system. Superficially, this abstract and partial formulation is of course stating no more than what is glaringly obvious to every working person in every advanced capitalist economy. However, it remains a surface analysis and one woefully inadequate to enlighten or guide the very ‘people’ he seeks to recruit to assist him and his colleagues to obtain governmental ’power’.
He also identified the following problems – also notably formulated as bourgeois abstractions – a lack of ‘justice’, ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’‘. A further and related problem, he noted, concerned the current elite in Europe and Greece;
“They seek the creation of an economic environment based on cheap labour, special economic zones, de-regulation of the labour-market, tax exemptions for capital and extensive privatisations of public goods and services.” (A. Tspiras. London March 15 2013.)
This too is telling us nothing new! Haven’t they always sought and achieved these? Then follows a perhaps revealing formulation which claims the powerful forces of neo-liberalism aim to; “exclude alternative political programmes”. I shall come back to this point later, but a few other points of the speech are worth considering. He points out that sections of the political elite had ‘circumvented the separation of powers’ and the constitution’ and have passed legislation and decrees; “..without Parliamentary approval“! Isn’t that what any ruling elite do – tear up their own laws when it suits them? Isn’t that what they will increasingly do as the crisis deepens. Will the capitalist class and their elite supporters really allow a ‘constitutional’ overthrow of their system or even a radical reform of it – if it does not suit their purposes? A study of history suggests otherwise.
The speech by Mr Tspiras continued to attempt to hook a left audience into agreement with him with descriptions of the present governing elite unleashing ‘unlimited state violence’, repression, torture and fascist thugs’ all of which endanger – the European liberal and humanist tradition’. Indeed it does, but what is the purpose of this one-sided seductive talk about the European tradition of liberalism and humanism? Aren’t such ideological abstractions nothing but a bourgeois smokescreen for ruthless exploitation of their own working people and those of foreign countries? The tradition of European capitalism, despite its public rhetoric of liberty, fraternity, equality, justice and declarations of human rights, has been one of unmitigated ruthless genocidal, Colonialism, and Imperialism. Even in the 21st century, Europe still authorises the bombing of villages in Iraq, Afghanistan etc., and has done elsewhere since the 19th century. The European Community still chooses to ignore the slow genocide of the Palestinians by the Zionist state of Israel and supports the latter in many economic and military ways.
The solutions proposed by Syriza.
Some of the solutions to the above noted ‘problems’ suggested by Mr Tspiras, are as follows. Stop austerity, stop tax avoidance, reform the taxation policies, restore the minimum wage, freeze the current reductions in salaries, wages and pensions, re-capitalise the banks and restore the dignity of the working classes. But it also includes more. For example;
“A future government will put a stop to the austerity policies, while at the same time re-negotiating the loan agreement with our creditors. Syriza argues that an economically viable strategy must follow the model of the 1953 London Debt Agreement which gave post-war German economy a kick start and helped create the economic miracle of the post-war era.” (A.Tsipras. March 15 2013.)
He then informed the audience that Syriza sees no reason in 2013 that a similar ‘Marshal Plan’ for the whole of the south and Greece why such a settlement should not be an appropriate way forward. In other words Syriza wants ‘debt reduction’ and financial terms from Europe ‘linked to export and growth performance‘. It cannot escape the notice of listeners to the speech or readers of its printed reproduction that everything in these policy headings are completely in accordance with the most enlightened members of the capitalist classes. They are the same bourgeois aspirations which informed and motivated the tendency of ‘bourgeois and petite bourgeois socialism’ castigated by Marx and Engels. It cannot have escaped anyone who lived in the post Second World War or who has studied its politics and economics, that these – and more – were largely granted by the capitalists and their supporters at the time. They did so in order to stave off revolution and have clawed everyone of them back as fast as possible.
In the face of the most profound and sustained crisis of capitalism since the 1930’s, Syriza in its pursuit of power seems it cannot envisage anything further than the temporary heights of the post-war socio-economic accommodation granted by the then guardians of the capitalist system. It’s policy proposals represent a mood of understandable nostalgia among the working and middle-classes, for the brief period in which a small degree of welfare and well-being was created. That is to say on the basis of the post-war re-construction needed because of the massive destruction of life, property and means of production during the intensity of total war during 1939 – 1945. It is a feeling of longing for the past which is particularly strong in the UK and is largely behind the Left Unity ideas of ‘People’s Assemblies’, the ‘need to reject Tory cuts’ and form a new party headed by the unions, Labour activists and the Green Party. Such nostalgia has been vividly illustrated by the recent film ‘The Spirit of ‘45’ by Ken Loach. Yet it was only this 20th century massive capitalist inspired destruction of human and non-human capital which created the foundation for the short-lived post-war European growth which Syriza considers is now possible for Greece and other struggling capitalist countries.
In the 21st century, this foundation no longer exists. Indeed the very crisis of the system which has given rise to the symptoms of ’austerity’ are the very opposite of those in the 1950’s. The current crisis is one of massive over-production of commodities, industrial capacity, financial instruments, together with over-production of pollutants, over-exploitation of natural resources, over production of arms and armaments and over-production of government debt. These problems cannot be exited or overcome by any of the policy means outlined by Syriza. Indeed the means proposed by Syriza are the very ones which many of the more naive and disolusioned capitalists themselves now vainly wish to see implemented. This then goes some way to describe the content and essence of the alternative political programme, noted earlier, which Syriza has identified as being one of the ones the elite wish to ‘exclude’.
The revolutionary alternative to nostalgia.
Not all, the bourgeoisie have benefited from the last two decades of neo-liberal globalisation. Many of them, particularly small business proprietors, local shopkeepers and local trades-people, have suffered from high monopoly prices now charged by the social utilities, high taxation, bank collapses and competition from mega producers and suppliers. Many have also suffered losses of investments due to the collapses of speculative finance. More are yet to see their lucrative posts in the higher levels of government and the capitalist state, disappear as the sovereign debt crisis matures. There is therefore, growing criticism of the capitalist mode of production from these sectors along with the above noted nostalgia for parts of the post-war consensus.
In face of this situation there are several possibilities for intervention. One can play to the mood of nostalgia and try to create and offer a reformist programme or one can face people with the reality and explain the real situation they face. The reality is that austerity is not the result of a new bout of meanness or incompetence, by the pro-capitalist elite but a considered strategy motivated by the fundamental contradictions of capital. Yet instead, of probing below ‘appearances’ and wanting to mobilise the working and oppressed classes to take control of production, Tsipras says Syriza wishes to mobilise; “all the social forces who have an interest in fighting corruption, cronyism, clientelism, and public sector inefficiency.” In other words almost a perfect late 20th century bourgeois programme. And, incidentally, by asserting reform is possible, it is a programme which plays into the hands of the authoritarians who also want to reform capitalism – in their own fascistic way.
Those who are currently suffering from the crisis – in all its forms – can of course, be encouraged to look backward for inspiration and try to replicate an elite-led resurrection of welfare capitalism – without the post EEC immigration – or they can be encouraged to look forward to a self-determined alternative. The melancholy pro-capitalists and workers ‘leaders’ and those who bought the high-value dodgy derivatives, are among the forces which are pressing in the direction of creating a reformist programme for the continuance of capitalism in a more gentile form. Obligingly, Syriza in Greece is providing one. These sectors are getting more voluble at every setback in the banking system. Instead of explaining reality to them, the needs of the moment and the logic emerging from a study of the capitalist system, Syriza offers them ‘hope’ for future growth. Instead of a revolutionary transformation of the mode of production which is essential, Syriza offers in its own words, ‘a minimum wage‘, ‘a prevention of tax avoidance’, an economic ’kick-start’ to capitalist economic growth and a restoration of the ‘dignity’ of the working and oppressed classes.”
If this putitive programme is not part of some convoluted manoeuvre then the ‘dignity’ of the working class is to be achieved not by revolution, but by their so-called representatives‘grovelling’ to the European Bond-Holders and ‘begging’ for a Marshal Plan from the IMF. On the other hand, if these policies are part of a convoluted top-down manoeuvre to fool the capitalist class until Syriza achieves a majority in parliament, then such deceit will effectively fool the working and oppressed. It will also deflect and prevent any large-scale alternative self-activity of the workers and oppressed as many will be diverted into divisive electoral activities, rather than solidarity in community defensive activity. And it is only the development of the latter which will create an effective – crucial – defence for embattled communities and at the same time create the necessary solidarity from which any revolutionary opportunities can be launched.
The reactionary nature of political solutions.
The reactionary nature of those ‘socialists’ – not just those in Syriza – who exclusively raise demands which have already been met by capitalists at one stage and withdrawn at another, is demonstrated by the illusions they are now trying to inflict upon the present generation of workers and oppressed. Facing as they do, a war against them, the working and oppressed classes are to be armed by Syriza and others by accepting a belief in outmoded abstractions and miracle promises of economic ‘growth‘. Such ideas, purporting to be socialist but not thoroughly and clearly anti-capitalist, amount to a subterfuge which is either the result of dishonesty or naivety. These bourgeois abstractions are fundamentally reactionary; for in the current situation they sow illusions and confusions among those who seek to struggle against the impositions of the pro-capitalist elite. They also serve to create an ideological basis for solidarity between workers in struggle with those proponents of the capitalist mode of production – who also want change – but also want retain the economic essence of their system.
Such parties ‘of the people’ are projects for class collaboration in which the capitalist class – who have managed to screw-up the world in so many ways – will retain their positions of power and influence through their continued control of the means of production. Such‘socialists’ who promote these ’parties’ are happy to direct demands upon the bourgeois state and promise benefits from it, because they see themselves as becoming an influential part of it. Yet even if the honest and naive ones among them succeed in gaining a majority in the ‘talking shops’ of parliaments or congresses, they will remain powerless to do anything of lasting benefit to workers and the oppressed. The power of the bourgeois classes lie not in Parliaments or Congresses, but in their control of the means of production, the commodities and services resulting from this production, the production of the ‘means of production’ the means of circulation and the means of repression (police, judiciary, army, navy, air-force, prisons etc.).
In any attempted electoral ‘coup’ of parliament or congress by a radical left political force, those who are not bumped off beforehand will be arrested and incarcerated during or after the attempted coup. It is naive to think, or Machiavellian to pretend, otherwise. The history of the bourgeois class, provides ample evidence of this method in all countries of the world. Are the workers to be really conned into working their guts out to create a reformist political organisation? Are they to sink all their energies and slender resources into building it, only to recreate the very pro-capitalist social scaffolding which has failed them before and will later be used to dismantle their organisations and decimate their ranks? I think not! The circumstances of the fundamental crisis of capitalism, ecologically, financially, economically, socially and morally, require nothing less than a revolutionary solution.
Not to make this revolutionary necessity clearly, unambiguously and continually available by the anti-capitalist left to the masses of working people and oppressed is to betray every sacrifice made before in the struggles to overcome the capitalist mode of production. To prioritise the building of a political party over the facilitating the self-activity of the working and oppressed classes is to continue to blindly make the tragic mistakes of previous attempts to go beyond capital. It also serves to disarm large sections of them. As Marx noted in his critique of the Gotha Programme, anti-capitalists cannot pass over in silence such bourgeois phrases as appear in the speech by Alex Tsipras. Marx considered the insertion of such bourgeois and petite bourgeois phrases ‘a monstrous attack upon the understanding‘. And deplored the;
“…dogmas, ideas, which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook which it cost to instil..” (Marx. Critique of the Gotha Programme. Section 3)
The realistic outlook is that there is no way back to the conditions of European capitalism during 1945 -1965. There is only the prospect of a re-run of 1920’s and 1930’s situation in Europe and North America or of moving on to a post-capitalist form of production. These stark alternatives need to be presented clearly and unequivocally to all we can reach. Nostalgia may be comfortingly soporific but it is no basis for deciding where to put ones energies.
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