Left Voice interviewed Kostas Skordoulis, a leading member of OKDE-Spartakos about the current situation in Greece following the resignation of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the recent formation of Popular Unity. Kostas spoke to us in a personal capacity. Alejandra RÃos
From Athens
The good drachma? A modest contribution to the debate
27 August 2015, byThe Tsipras government’s surrender to the diktats of the troika is a painful defeat for all supporters of an alternative to neoliberal austerity in Europe. The reasons for this defeat can be summarized roughly: under-estimation of the violence of the “institutions”, this mixture of economic fanaticism and political will to smash any alternative; lack of preparation of the material components of a rupture particularly by a unilateral suspension of debt payments; non-construction of the internal relationship of ideological forces necessary for this break; inability to take forward the referendum “no” vote, instead passing the measures that the government had asked the citizens to reject within a logic of national unity; absence of political relays from other governments and weak support from the social movement.
Greece: Was, and Is There, an Alternative?
17 August 2015, byOn January 25 Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, emerged with a plurality of 36% of the popular vote in Greece’s national legislative election, winning 149 seats, two short of a majority, on a radical anti-austerity program. With the support of ANEL, a small right-wing but anti-austerity party, it formed a government.
Escaping the Euro Dream
15 August 2015, byThe following statement was published by Nicole Gohlke and Janine Wissler, two radical MPs in Germany’s Die Linke (The Left Party) associated with one of its far-left currents, Marx21. In it they criticize what they perceive as the party’s failure to entertain political possibilities outside of the eurozone, limiting itself to strategies of creating a “social Europe” within the confines of the European Union (EU). Instead, they argue for a widening of the strategic debate in Die Linke in light of Syriza’s defeat at the hands of the troika.
Jacobin
Turning “No” Into a Political Front
13 August 2015, byAll those who vested hopes in the prospects of a Syriza government still find themselves today in a state of “post-traumatic shock,” as Seraphim Seferiades aptly put it. The shock is attributable firstly to the defeat of a specific political strategy, but the extent of this defeat and its shattering character is something whose effects extend well beyond the people committed, one way or another, to that strategy.
An Alternative for SYRIZA
20 June 2015, byOn January 25th of this year the Greek left party SYRIZA won the elections and formed a coalition government with a minority populist right party, ANEL, to oust the previous center-right/center-left coalition (New Democracy/PASOK) that governed Greece during the first period of the Greek crisis. New Democracy and PASOK had been alternating in power at least for the last forty years. Syriza’s victory has been interpreted by a number of people on the left as a momentous change in the history of Greece and Europe, and has created inspiration and hope for radical change. Now that 100 days have passed with the "first Left" European government in power we are in a position to reflect and extract some lessons for the future.
The Battle in Syriza
16 June 2015, by ,Below, we publish a column by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, written for Le Monde, which includes the first list of concessions accepted by the Greek government in its negotiations with the troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund). Tsipras’s article is followed by a reply from Stathis Kouvelakis, a central figure in Syriza’s Left Platform. Both were translated by David Broder and first appeared on the Verso Books blog.
The Syriza strategy has come to an end
4 May 2015, byIn a joint interview with German daily Der Tagesspiegel and ThePressProject International, Syriza MP and economist Costas Lapavitsas says that the time has come for Greece and its partners to understand that “they are flogging a dead horse”.
The government, the party and the people
29 April 2015, byGreece’s left government will soon be faced with either paying foreign debts or wages and pensions for state workers, as the European elite increase the pressure to capitulate to the domination of the "institutions"—the new term for the Troika of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
For Syriza, there is an alternative to “strategic retreat.”
29 April 2015, byEver since the media spin that presented the February 20 agreement between the Greek government and the Eurogroup as almost a victory started subsiding, the main argument of its supporters has been that “it bought some time.”
Some concessions had to be made, proponents say, but they took place within the framework of a “propellant compromise,” to use the terminology of deputy prime minister and prominent figure of Syriza’s “realists” Yiannis Dragasakis.