SYRIZA in power, social movements at a crossroads

The dire circumstances in Greece compel the social movements to reposition themselves in front of the SYRIZA government.

Theodoros Karyotis

first published at Periodico Diagonal

translated by Julius Gavroche at autonomies.org

It is commonplace to affirm that the election victory of Syriza is in large measure based on the mobilisation of the social movements of the last five years in Greece. However, this affirmation may help obfuscate the diversity of ideas and demands in Greek society, as well as possibly reinforcing a simplistic conception of a struggle between pro and anti-austerity forces. Although it is a fact that Syriza has been present in the mass mobilisations of the last years, the fundamental factor in the consolidation of its hegemony was its capacity to mobilise the vote of the middle class, convincing the latter that it could reverse the injustices produced by indiscriminate cuts, stop the downward mobility of many and take up again the path towards the material prosperity of the years previous to the crisis.

Within the social movements, however, there are two distinct social imaginaries, complementary and at the same time antagonistic. On the one hand are the movements of citizens affected by the antisocial attacks of the troika, who demand the restitution of the welfare state as an instrument of redistribution, the reinforcement of the state as mediator of social antagonisms and the return of economic growth with the aim of alleviating the poverty and desperation that mass unemployment has provoked. On the other hand, there is a multitude of movements that propose going beyond the state and the capitalist economy as organising principles of social life; movements that have begun to construct radical alternatives here and now based on proximity, solidarity and participation.

SYRIZA rising: what’s next for the movements in Greece?

A left-wing government may provide breathing space to the movements, but it can also accelerate their demobilization and assimilation by state power.

By Antonis Broumas and Theodoros Karyotis

First published at ROAR Mag

Images from plasticobilism.blogspot.gr

For us the content of the revolutionary project is for people to become capable of taking social matters in their hands, and the only means for them to attain this capability is to gradually take social matters in their hands more and more.

~ Cornelius Castoriadis (1979)

[W]hat is emerging is another society: the objective is power, not state power, but for people to organize themselves as powers in a different social context.

~ Raul Zibechi (2010)

Nowadays, social antagonism occurs in martial terms. Capitalist domination resolves its contradictions not by granting certain rights and privileges to the oppressed, as it has done in the past, but by imposing a permanent state of exception, where all measures of social engineering are justifiable and all protest is perceived as an initiation of hostilities. Reaching a new equilibrium remains a challenge, which will be addressed only by the social counter-power entering — or not entering — the center stage of political life.

In this socio-historical context, the possibility of a left-wing government emerges in Europe, with the left-wing coalition of SYRIZA in Greece and newcomer Podemos in Spain in its vanguard, as a response to the prospect of neoliberal authoritarianism consolidated on a nationalist basis.

Periods of crisis are moments of social antagonism, in which the positions of contesting social forces are liquefied. In the present crisis, autonomous social movements emerge from the contradictions of modern capitalism as the main collective subjects with a potential for radical transformation and social change. They constitute the main opponent of capitalist domination in the present social confrontation and any conflicts inside the state and government apparatus are essentially a reflection of the ebb and tide of social mobilizations.

Despite being aware that the new world we long for can only come about through the struggles from below, we have to seriously contemplate the possibility of a left-wing government. The effects of such an electoral victory would be equivocal for grassroots movements, since, on the one hand, such a victory may tilt the power balance and, thus, provide breathing space to the movements in their confrontation with capitalist domination, but, on the other hand, it could accelerate the disquieting trend of co-optation and assimilation of social movements by the logic of state management.

Left-Wing Bureaucracy and the State

In theory, the communist left relates with the state in instrumental terms. The conquest of the bourgeois state is presented as a necessary evil on the road to workers’ power. This approach, however, is immersed — even on a purely theoretical level — in a series of contradictions. Even in its most sophisticated versions it fails to address the issue of the dialectic relation between the vanguard party bureaucracy and the autonomy of the world of labor, or the possibility of achieving a transition towards an egalitarian society, when there is such disparity between the means employed and the goals proposed.