SYRIZA clears protesters from university

[Futility Personified]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/04/18/gree-a18.html

After the U-turns it seemed that this was inevitable, but it doesn't make it any less sobering. So all that's left to do is dissolve Greece as a nation state, arm the diaspora and begin destabilizing the EU and disintegrating the nation states of Europe, yeah?

[motion denied]

it keeps happening, why didn't you listen

[Futility Personified]

Both as a revleft entity and a human being I was somewhat cynical about what they would achieve but hopeful that they could at least symbolically drag european politics leftwards. Now the people's stick is going where it isn't wanted and the noble loukanikos can no longer bite the hand refusing to feed.

[Cliff Paul]

one of my first posts on revleft years ago was like "oh good miliband is now head of labour, this is definitely a plus for the uk working class"... :laugh:

[Futility Personified]

I been there man, I feel for you :crying:

[Armchair Partisan]

I never really thought of the Syriza victory as anything particularly great, and yet they've still managed to disappoint. Good job!:rolleyes:

[Comrade Jacob]

I have to admit I was chuffed when they got in but I am not surprised.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Both as a revleft entity and a human being I was somewhat cynical about what they would achieve but hopeful that they could at least symbolically drag european politics leftwards. Now the people's stick is going where it isn't wanted and the noble loukanikos can no longer bite the hand refusing to feed.

But for many of us, it wasn't about being cynical/disillusioned. I mean, I'm cynical. I don't even believe the cup noodles I eat are going to be as good as they were in the past. I know I could set my expectations to the lowest setting and still be disappointed. That's not what this was about, though. A lot of us would explain why a SYRIZA victory would mean nothing for the working class, not even progressive disillusionment with bourgeois parliamentarianism - that SYRIZA was a popular front. And then we ran around like Charlton Heston in Soylent Green yelling "popular fronts are bourgeois!".

As for symbolically moving, I honestly don't know why people are so obsessed with this. Politics in France are "symbolically" left as all arseholes. I mean a centre-right party in France is likely to be named radical socialist popular movement something something of the left. Doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to people in France.

[Futility Personified]

When I read your posts, I defer to you on lots of things 870, at least in my head. I'm not sure how old you are, but for me, even if it wasn't the start of a 'fightback' (maybe i've read too much anti-austerity stuff) it was about sticking two fingers up at the powers that be, before they tell us how permitted we are to rebel. But there is no leeway, and no concession. This is great, from an accelerationist perspective.

The symbolic movement was a shift in social consciousness, even in a populist sense, away from austerity. Of coures capitalist real politik loomed like damocle's sword after a few hours on the whet stone, but just a respite was all that I wanted. People are obsessed because some folk use the phrase late capitalism not just as an adjective but an optimistic prediction. Even as their politics went rightward, the idea of socialist influence, and not nominal socialist, but actual socialist, was something that enthused despite liberal dilution. I am relating more of this to how I feel about UK politics than the minimal I know about greek, but functionally speaking, all bourgeois parliaments are the same.

Things will get worse, and that is not a pleasant idea. Because I'm going to be old if and when the revolution happens.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm 25, soon to be 26, which I find slightly frightening to be honest. In all likelihood, I'm not significantly older than you are. And like you - like anyone, really - I didn't spring from my father's forehead waving around a copy of the "State and the Revolution". I started as a supporter of the (liberal) People's Party before being radicalised (for the first time) by the failures of the first social-democratic government.

But I don't mean to disparage street movements. They have their own problems and often present a confused mass of demands and programmes - that communists should aim to split along class lines. But they're not something to be opposed in the abstract. However, parliamentary groups like SYRIZA - or Podemos or, going back, the Chilean Socialist Party etc. are not the street movement, and they are not the outgrowth of street movements. They are what happens when street movements are defeated - the bourgeoisie needs to channel the discontent that led to the movements in the first place into parliamentary channels it can control. So the defeat of the OWS led to Sawant and Sanders and godknowswhat, the defeat of the anarchist-led movement in Greece led to SYRIZA and ANZARSYA, the defeat of the movements in the late sixties led to a resurgence of "radical" social-democracy (Allende, Nenni, etc.). In fact the same can happen for movements of the right - the various instances of nationalist protest being coopted to support DeGaulle's parliamentary putsch for example.