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Comment on "The 2015 Greek Elections (and Revolutionary History)":
 
   
By Salvatore Engel-DiMauro
      
Many good point, Steve. I am quite surprised by the facile analogies made by many commentators. It reminds me of the ridiculous statements about Kobane (the new Stalingrad, 1930s Spain, and other nonsense.) These analogies are quite unhelpful in understanding the current conjuncture and I wish comrades would look at what is actually occurring right now, not the 1930s, not 1917. NATO-US/EU aren’t threatened or weakened by any military defeat as Czarist Russia was when defeated by Japan prior to 1917. There is no Spanish Republicanism in Greece, or within the EU, and so bourgeois forces at EU level need not have recourse to nazi groups at all (but fractions of the Greek national bourgeoisie do need Chrysi Avgi and this is probably why spokespeople from that nazi scum party are so confident about future elections).
     
Of course all of that is right now. I could not agree with you more about the potential. I may be a bit more sceptical regarding the EU. They will find a way of reforming things, as the former incarnation, the “European Community,” found a way of incorporating/co-opting the largest Communist Party in Western Europe (the Italian). Eurocommunism is far from over, regrettably, and NATO is its preferred shield. Syriza also has to contend with that bit of history—not of their own making, but heavily burdensome. That’s another reason I don’t believe the analogies to the 1910s or '30s are constructive in this conjuncture.
     
Syriza is a coalition within which there are contradictory political currents. That makes it very weak, even in terms of parliamentary processes. And the relationship between Syriza and potentially revolutionary movements in Greece is slim at best (see the struggle against the devastating gold mine in Halkidiki, for example, which Syriza has mostly stayed away from). If Syriza decides, without falling apart as a coalition, to go with the PRC and/or Russia, the German bourgeoisie and allied forces will throttle Greece immediately by making concessions to Russia or PRC with US consent (not publicized, of course), so that US financial firms can continue their global speculation and profit-making. In part, what lurks beneath all this austerity rhetoric as well as its supposed alternative is a struggle between US and German financial capital relative to who gets the biggest share of the loot—not just from the Greek people, but from the EU as a whole, divided as usual, and most stupidly as usual, along national(ist), racist lines.
     
This is one big favor that the Franquists (Rajoy and the other low-lifes), Alternative for Germany, Lega del Nord with Salvini, Fidesz in Hungary, Chrisi Avgi, etc. are handing to trans-Atlanticist financial capital. It is almost as if it were an orchestrated transnational move within the EU. Syriza could do more than simply  block the EU financiers from murdering Greeks via austerity ripoffs (higher mortality rates as documented in journals like The Lancet)—important as that is. It also needs to begin popularizing and widening the reformist platform it offers at an EU level, across national lines. The linkage with Podemos can be helpful in this way. And Podemos is in a similar situation as Syriza.
       
There is no revolutionary anything in all of this in an immediate sense. Not even remotely, though the future, after a bit more experience by the masses, is another question. As matters stand, we will be lucky if fewer people die as a result of the EU financiers making it impossible for a relative minority (still a large number of people) within and outside the EU (one must always include migrants in our calculations) to meet their basic needs. Everyone should grasp what the EU is and what the conjuncture is globally at the moment. But the left seems to be so desperate that people confuse their own yearnings with actually-existing power relations. There is already a lot to do and accomplish without having to deal with wishful thinking within our midst. More lucidity is much needed.
     
For more information on the EU as empire, see 
Capitalist Expansionism, Imperialism, and the European Union by Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro.


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