Austerity in the Colours of Syriza

Golden Dawn: on the march

EXTRACT: If you find yourself in a situation where there is absolutely no reasonable or viable prospect of carrying out your full minimum programme, then you should remain a party of extreme opposition - something that stands full-square in the Second International tradition, to which Lenin and the Bolsheviks fully subscribed. Regrettably, sections of the left think the Weekly Worker is mad for raising these issues - showing how they have lost their historical memory. But there are objective, material factors that cannot be overcome by an act of will or even a big popular vote. Greece, at the end of the day, is a small and economically weak country that does not produce much in terms of industrial production and, if placed under siege, would be unlikely to be able to feed itself: essentially it is a tourist and shipping country.

What Syriza should have done, if it had being any sort of a genuine Marxist party, is resist the temptation of government (‘taking power’) - let the pro-memorandum parties take responsibility for the shit they created. It should have concentrated instead on building up its own forces and digging deeper roots in society, to the point where it became genuinely hegemonic within Greece. Most importantly of all, it should have aimed to develop and deepen its European connections and contacts, with the eventual aim of taking power on a continent-wide basis alongside other working class parties.

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