Greece: October 26th agreement, coalition government and exit from the euro – Part Two

The formation of the Papadimos government is the result of the economic and political stalemate that Greek capitalism finds itself in and represents a desperate effort on the part of the ruling class to subjugate the working class which is in a rebellious mood.

A government of bourgeois unity

The long delay that characterized the negotiations for the formation of this government was not because of the myth being spread by the bourgeois media according to which, “the political parties have played games behind back of the nation”. It was the result of the difficulty of finding willing people to participate in a government whose task it will be to govern without the legitimacy of elections with an agenda of a deeper recession and the immediate threat of an uncontrolled bankruptcy and the exit of the country from the euro.

Trying to avert the threat of eurozone officials kicking Greece out of the euro, the Greek bourgeois regime in a state of panic, favoured the formation of a government composed of individuals who have the absolute confidence of European capital. Mr Loukas Papadimos, with his past record of holding a long tenure in the ECB was the most appropriate among the candidates for the post of the prime minister. Also, being a man of banking capital, the new prime minister can negotiate in a friendly atmosphere with his banker friends the terms of a "haircut" on bonds under the October 26agreement. These “qualities” of Papadimos rendered him valuable to the ruling class. They apparently also offered him some strong “incentives” to break his initial hesitations, which within a few hours led to a tragicomic reversal of the virtually agreed and finalised move of Mr Philippos Petsalnikos from the position of the Speaker of the House to that of prime minister.

But what kind of government is the Papadimos government? In a provocative manner, the bourgeoisie and its apologists in the media present this government as one of “national unity”. But quite the contrary, it is a government that has only the blessings of the ruling class and of European capital.

The Greek people two years ago voted for PASOK to improve their standard of living after five years of the New Democracy’s attacks. In the process, Papandreou’s became a hated government – seen as a puppet of loan sharks lenders. Now the Greek working class see with surprise that this government, instead of collapsing under the weight of popular outrage, mutates into a new one hidden behind the cloak of “national unity”, including the good old boys of the loan sharks bankers with the same old ministers that cannot even show their faces in public because of the popular hatred, together with new people from the bourgeois parties who were not voted in the last national elections... As one slogan, which has appeared in these days on the walls of major Greek cities, aptly puts it, “We haven’t had such a large dose of Democracy since the era of the dictatorship”.

The new government is a government not of national, but of bourgeoisunity. It consists of bourgeois technocrats and political representatives from the entire range of bourgeois political leaderships. Despite the distance that Mr Antonis Samaras tries to keep from the government for demagogic reasons, the new government is a coalition of the leadership of PASOK, New Democracy and LAOS. The key ministries are held by elements within the bourgeois leadership of PASOK with the blessing of the New Democracy. The New Democracy part of the government is made up of six ministers, two of which (Dimas, Avramopoulos) are frontbenchers with a long parliamentary history. Finally, we have the far-right LAOS with its first participation in a government with some of its most prominent members, proving that it is in perfect harmony with the leadership of PASOK and New Democracy.

The excitement and expectations which the apologists of capital have invested in the political presence of a technocrat to head the new government, is a reflection of the huge historical political vacuum of leadership of the bourgeois political camp in Greece. The absence of bourgeois political leaders of the calibre of Eletherios Venizelos or Constantine Karamanlis in these critical circumstances throws the ruling class into a state of depression and forces it to turn politically to inexperienced mercenaries, to "messiahs" and to a technocrat as the new prime minister. It must be stressed that this absence of high calibre politicians is not a question of personal attributes and skills, but ultimately reflects the historical impasse of capitalism and the growing social isolation of the ruling class, that seriously undermine their self-confidence.

The involvement of sections of the extreme right in the new government is an element that should not be underestimated. The fact that known nationalists and apologists of the old military junta have taken up ministerial portfolios, is a clear attempt to familiarize the public with extreme reactionary bourgeois governments. This, combined with the lack of popular legitimacy of the entire government, ultimately reflects the future trend of the ruling class towards to some kind of Bonapartist government. The bringing in of extreme right-wingers as ministers is a warning to the labour movement and the Left. If capitalism is not overthrown by a workers’ government then, sooner or later the working class will suffer the painful experience of Bonapartist reaction.

The two tactics within the ruling class for the new government

Although the government is supported by all the wings of the bourgeoisie, within the Greek ruling class there seem to exist today two major tactics. The first which is expressed by the powerful media and the bourgeois leadership of PASOK, has an attitude that could be summarized as follows: 1) the government collaborations is of great political importance, because it creates a useful precedent of consensus, which will be very useful in the case of larger crises in the future, 2) The Papadimos Government should stay in power as long as necessary, in order to ensure the position of Greece within the euro, without being limited by a timetable.

This attitude is determined by the panic that the bourgeoisie has been gripped by because of their possible expulsion from the euro. They believe that the greatest threat to their system is the present crisis. Accustomed to the moderate conduct of the leaders of the Left, they cannot see in the foreseeable future a threat to their power and, therefore, they promote the direct and full use of all the possibilities that the political consensus of the bourgeois parties and leaderships provides them with.

The other tactic is expressed by the New Democracy Party and Samaras and was reflected in his statement today [last week]. Samaras said that society needs immediately the “safety valve” of elections, because a “social explosion” is coming. He stresses that the Papadimos government is only of a “transitional” nature. The government’s task is only to push through the decisions of the October 26 agreement. Of course Samaras is a demagogue and he is hiding the fact that the agreement is accompanied – with even the most optimistic scenario for the development of the crisis – by austerity measures and cuts amounting to 100 billion euros over the next 10 years, an amount which means as explained before, an extensive and unprecedented social disaster in Greece. Unlike the other wing of the ruling class, the leadership of New Democracy seems to consider – correctly from a bourgeois point of view – that revolution is the most immediate and by far a more serious threat to capitalism than expulsion from the euro.

What Samaras feared was that a premature decay of New Democracy within the Papadimos government would eliminate the possibility for the ruling class of having a strong government, legitimized by a new popular mandate, i.e. in the next elections. It would also strengthen the revolutionary moods within society and in the parties of the Left and of course, this would put an early end to his career as candidate for prime minister.

Prospects of the new government

What will determine the developments is not the tactics of the ruling class, but the extent of the crisis of European capitalism and its reflection in the minds of the masses. The tactics of the supporters of “national” unity are as hollow as those of the leadership of New Democracy, which amount to damage limitation from participation in the Papadimos government.

The troika is demanding new measures here and now. A model of a binding memorandum for new measures has already been sent to be signed by the Greek bourgeois political leadership and is waiting for Samaras in his office. Without these commitments the release of the sixth instalment of the bail-out, and the negotiations for the “haircut” on bonds cannot proceed. It will be very difficult for Samaras to avoid signing.

Furthermore, the government has to immediately impose new measures that will wear down all the “partners” who compose it. These measures are derived from both the commitments of the previous government to sweeping privatizations, massive layoffs from the public sector and the imposition of the collection of predatory taxes, and also the dramatic worsening of the crisis in Greece and the eurozone and the very serious possibility that Greece will not achieve the desired benefits from the negotiations on the “voluntary haircut” on bonds. These are factors that can bring closer the prospect of a sovereign default and uncontrolled bankruptcy. On the basis of the rapid deterioration of the crisis, the new government in the coming weeks could even find itself facing the threat of immediate expulsion from the euro.

All these possibilities would threaten to destabilize the new government, bringing it up against a new wave of protests and immersing it in a process of internal conflicts.

For a government of working class unity with a socialist programme!

In these past few days the working people have been watching the theatre of “national unity”, as they remain politically disarmed and without an alternative. The inertia of all the leaders of the labour movement after the magnificent 48-hour general strike is what has given space to the ruling class to manoeuvre undisturbed by the labour movement, whereas, as was demonstrated, the government was in reality extremely weak. An escalation of the struggle to an all-out general political strike, could have led rapidly to the government having to call new elections. But the leaders of the labour movement did everything to hold back that great movement of strikes and occupations of key centres of the state apparatus, while the leaders of the Left were calling monotonously for elections, without explaining how the labour movement could force such elections to be called.

Without a leadership and a clear perspective, the workers and the poor people found a way to express their revolutionary mood by converting the October 28 national parades into mass demonstrations. But again, the leaderships of the Left did not take any initiatives to meet these moods and continued the abstract calls for elections, without even accompanying them with a concrete plan of action. This approach gave to the government time to achieve a “coordinated” retreat from office and to prepare undisturbed a new coalition government.

The attitude of the leadership of the Communist Party and of SYRIZA during the several days of negotiations for the new bourgeois government was truly deplorable. They did not utter a word that could indicate to the workers that there existed a power solution different to that of “national unity” of the bourgeoisie. The result was that widespread confusion, disorientation and frustration prevailed in the ranks of the working masses. In their eyes, only the bourgeoisie had a solution for the problem of power. The Left, with this approach, once again appeared merely as a voice of protest but with no prospect of taking power.

What should the Left do in order to reverse this picture and indicate a different road to the workers that would break with the logic of the fraud of “national unity”? The bourgeoisie with their spirit of unifying their class during these days, provided lessons in proper class behaviour. Just as the bosses united, so must the workers unite as a class. Every militant of the Left must therefore fight for the unity of the mass forces of the Left and of the labour movement against this new government of bourgeois unity. At the same time, this unity should, as of NOW, take on the form of a political alliance between the KKE (Communist Party) and SYRIZA, in order to elect a government that will implement a socialist programme. No other road exists. If we do not put forward this specific solution of power, and simply complain about the “anti-democratic shift” of the ruling class and ask for “elections here and now”, means offering the workers and poor people mere “empty words”.