Alexis
Tsipras claimed there was no realistic alternative to austerity for
Greece. He was wrong.
by Costas
Lapavitsas
The
“Programme of Social and National Rescue for Greece” was written
in Athens in the early spring. That was a time of great concern for
those who truly wanted social and economic change in Greece, as
opposed to those who merely talked about it.
The Syriza
government had already signed the notorious agreement of February 20,
which led to its eventual defeat. The agreement aimed at securing a
fresh loan for Greece, while promising to keep a balanced budget and
make “reforms.” It secured absolutely no benefits for the country
and, worst of all, left the government without a ready pool of
liquidity to draw on. Greece would henceforth rely exclusively on the
largesse of Mario Draghi’s European Central Bank (ECB).
This
constituted a clear and present threat to any prospect of radical
social change. Many in the parliamentary group of Syriza were alert
to it, and therefore refused to sanction the agreement.
Draghi was
not slow to act. Gradually both the banks and the public sector of
Greece went dry, thus reducing dramatically the state’s room for
maneuver. The Syriza government was for months engaged in a
breathless race to secure liquidity to pay for public sector
salaries, pensions and other obligations, while the ECB tightened the
screws steadily and ruthlessly. Eventually, Alexis Tsipras, the
leader of Syriza, was forced to confront the reality of the promises
he had made to the Greek people before the historic January 25
election that brought Syriza to power.
Tsipras had
vowed that he would negotiate “hard” to get rid of the bailout
agreements, but without taking the country out of the European
Monetary Union (EMU). Simple logic dictated that for Greece to
sustain itself during the negotiations and perhaps to succeed in
casting aside the bailouts, it would have to have regular access to
liquidity.
Unfortunately,
Draghi and the ECB were not going to oblige. The choice for the
country after the February 20 agreement was stark: either generate
liquidity independently, which of course implied abandoning the EMU
and reverting to the national currency, or surrender abjectly to its
lenders. Tsipras could try all he liked, but he simply could not
fulfill his electoral promises.
The tragedy
was that this awful dilemma was neither clear to most Syriza voters,
nor to its members of parliament and ministers. It was possibly not
clear even to Tsipras himself. The bulk of Syriza continued to labor
under the illusion that “Europe” would somehow see sense, a
compromise would be reached, and some agreement would be implemented
that would not be as disastrous as the two previous Greek bailouts.
Needless to say, during the period that followed the February 20
agreement, all thoughts of implementing social radicalism and
reasserting national dignity dissipated in the breathless search for
a compromise, any compromise.
This was the
context in which the “Programme of Social and National Rescue”
was written. The aim was to provide a coherent and clear argument —
a series of steps — explaining how Greece could adopt an
anti-bailout strategy, rather than submit to the dictates of the
lenders.
The
foundation was provided by my earlier joint work with Heiner
Flassbeck; Verso had published that work as a book (Against the
Troika) a mere day before Syriza’s January 25 victory. In that book
we argued that there is an “impossible triad” in the EMU: a
member state cannot have debt write off, lifting of austerity, and
continued membership in the EMU. A radical government, such as that
of Syriza, should opt for the first two, if it had the interests of
both society and country uppermost in its mind.
The program
thus put forth an integrated set of measures that constituted an
alternative policy: writing off debt, rejecting balanced budgets,
nationalizing banks, redistributing income and wealth through tax
reform, raising the minimum wage, restoring labor regulation,
boosting public investment, and redesigning the relationship between
the private and the public sector. These measures would be impossible
to take within the rigid confines of the eurozone. A radical
government would have to consider reintroducing a national currency
if it wished to implement them.
What had not
been done in earlier work was show how the transition to a national
currency could take place. It is, of course, far from easy to work
out the actions needed to both reintroduce a new currency and also
deal with the ensuing turbulence and beginning to implement the
broader economic and social transformation of the country.
With this is
mind, the program outlines twenty-nine steps that chart a coherent
way out of the disastrous monetary union for Greece. It is no more
than a roadmap, though one that is based on ample empirical and
theoretical research.
No one is
more aware than I am of the deficiencies and limitations of the
analysis in the program. For one thing, a great deal has changed in
Greece and Europe since it was written. For another, there is a need
for more detailed empirical elaboration of several of its components.
Equally,
however, no one is more aware of the pressure-cooker conditions under
which the analysis was undertaken in Athens and of the lack of
resources. Above all, no one is more aware of the desperate effort to
spur a badly needed public debate in Greece.
Alas, the
attempt proved futile and in the end it was impossible even to make
the plan public. There are many reasons for that, but the political
class of Greece — extending from left to right — must take much
of the blame.
Given the
complete absence of debate, Tsipras was able to claim that no
alternative program existed that could offer a realistic way out of
his terrible dilemma. This was always disingenuous on his part, but
it served his political purposes brilliantly.
And so, in a
few tumultuous weeks in July, Tsipras took the proud “no” of the
Greek people in the referendum on whether to accept a new bailout,
and turned it into a “yes.” The man who was going to change the
face of Europe proceeded to sign a new bailout that included harsh
terms and neocolonial restrictions on national sovereignty. The
firebrand had turned into a kitten.
Even worse,
though, was that in last month’s general election, Syriza emerged
victorious. Popular Unity, the new political front that included the
group from Syriza that had refused to accept the new bailout, failed
even to get into parliament.
The defeat
of Popular Unity was again due to many factors, but there is little
doubt that it paid the price for not presenting boldly an alternative
program that included exit from the EMU. Voters, confronted with the
lack of a concrete alternative and plied with bromides by those who
should have been offering concrete arguments, abstained in huge
numbers, keeping Popular Unity out of parliament. The Left carried
the burden of yet another crass political mistake.
The
“Programme of Social and National Rescue” was eventually made
public after the September 20 election. It was, first and foremost,
an act of setting the historical record straight. But there was also
a real political purpose to putting it in the public eye, even
belatedly.
After many
years in effective hypnosis, the European left has begun to wake up
to the disaster of the EMU, and to the impossibility of radical
policy within the confines of the euro. Recently there has even been
an initiative to have a European “Plan B” involving some
left-wing political figures from France, Italy, Germany, and Greece.
It should be noted that these Greek politicians never supported Greek
exit from the EMU when it mattered.
The
awakening of the European left is certainly welcome, provided that
the lessons of Syriza’s failure, as well as of the conservative
hardening of both the EMU and the EU, are put to good use. What is
required in Europe at present is more national work on exiting the
EMU — French, Spanish, Italian, and, dare I say it, German.
Only after
producing a body of left-wing approaches that reflect each country’s
traditions and specificities will there be a proper foundation for
the European left to develop a transnational approach that would free
Europe from the shackles of a failed monetary union and set it on a
path favoring labor against capital.
The national
is the real basis for the international, as has always been the case
in the history of capitalism. Without plans developed at the national
level, all attempts at developing an international plan lack
foundations and are little more than political spin.
There is no
doubt in my mind that when the components of the European left come
to do the required work at the national level, they will find in the
program an indispensable aid, despite its many deficiencies. That is
its real value and its contribution to the unfolding debate on the
future of Europe and the role of the Left.
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