In\n January 2015 there was dancing in the streets of Athens as a left-wing \nanti-austerity party, Syriza, a \u2018coalition of the radical left\u2019, made up\n of various left and Green groups, Eurocommunists and some Trotskyists, \nhad just won the Greek elections. There was rejoicing too amongst \nlike-minded people outside Greece. The fightback against austerity was \nto begin. Another policy was possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n new government was going to end in Greece the austerity that \ngovernments everywhere had been imposing in the slump that followed the \nCrash of 2008. It would do this, according to John Milios, billed as \nSyriza\u2019s chief economist, by promoting growth \u2018through a fiscal \nstimulus, targeted at lower incomes in order to boost their spending \npower\u2019 (Guardian<\/em>, 23 December 2014). <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\n never got the chance to try, not that this warmed-up Keynesianism would\n have worked. Holders of Greek government bonds, afraid of losing too \nmuch of their money, insisted, through a Troika of the European \nCommission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, that the new Greek \ngovernment continue, and even increase, austerity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Syriza\n called a referendum in July on the terms that they and the previous \ngovernment had been offered. A 61 percent majority voted to reject them.\n As a ploy to strengthen their negotiating hand, it didn\u2019t work. The \nbondholders still demanded their pound of flesh, and the Troika called \nSyriza\u2019s bluff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n government had a choice \u2013 between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. They\n could accept the terms or reject them and go it alone. Either way, they\n would have to continue the imposition of austerity as, if it wasn\u2019t \nunder direct Troika pressure, it would be under the indirect pressure of\n the world market. The government chose the first option on the grounds \nthat it would allow them some wiggle room whereas the second would be an\n unpredictable adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This\n wasn\u2019t what leftists outside Greece wanted. In accordance with their \nfanciful view that workers can be bounced into ending capitalism, they \nurged the government to adopt \u2018radical anti-capitalist\u2019 measures and, in\n the face of any resistance, to \u2018mobilise the masses.\u2019 But a second \ngeneral election in September, which returned Syriza to office, \nsuggested that most of its voters accepted the government\u2019s choice. The \n\u2018masses\u2019 were not for mobilising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s\n a familiar pattern. A left-wing government promising to improve things \nfor people is enthusiastically elected, comes up against capitalist \nreality that profits and conditions for profit-making must come first, \nthen either changes its policy or continues and provokes an economic \ncrisis and is voted out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Syriza changed its policy and so avoided immediate eviction. Four years later, however, and with the Greek economy in a less parlous state, enough voters deserted it last month to elect an openly pro-capitalist party to run the country. The Syriza government turned out to be an interlude during which it served as a repair gang for Greek capitalism, stabilising its economic and political situation so that normal service could eventually be resumed. Yet another failure of reformism, to add to the long list. Reformers from everywhere take note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In January 2015 there was dancing in the streets of Athens as a left-wing anti-austerity party, Syriza, a \u2018coalition of the radical left\u2019, made up of various left and Green groups, Eurocommunists and some Trotskyists, had just won the Greek elections. There was rejoicing too amongst like-minded people outside Greece. The fightback against austerity was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2823,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions\/2823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}