A more balanced and comparative discussion on the Greek situation: coalitions?

The Weekly Worker has now stated that it is not in solidarity with SYRIZA, despite the social solidarity networks the latter has established: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/104...f-syriza-wins/

I might have alluded to this before, but since there are comrades here who are aware of the Comintern's "workers government" discussions, as well as comrades here who are aware of the renegade Kautsky's Labour Revolution, I thought this group would be the best place for more level-headed discussion on the possibility of a SYRIZA-led coalition government (should that happen).

On the one hand, some have said that this would be the first "workers government" since the Popular Front in Spain ("workers government" referring to some socialist-communist parliamentary coalition or even government). On the other hand, don't the renegade's own musings on a "majority socialist coalition" now come into play? This is something that not even the late Chilean president Salvador Allende had before the military backlash, a small detail left out in leftist critiques of parliamentary socialism or so-called "democratic socialism."

Thoughts?

Here are some passages from Kautsky's 1922 Labour Revolution dealing with coalition: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...4&postcount=85

Isaak Alter seems to insinuate that in 1912 Kautsky already opened the road for coalition:

His pre-election article in "Vorwärts" in 1912, as well as both economic and political works printed in those years in the "Neue Zeit," are important however for our theme in one respect. Here Kautsky wants to theoretically substantiate his turn to the right. He tries to give a socio-economic rationale of centrism. It consists, firstly, in a new analysis of class forces in Germany. The turn to the left of the Freethinkers [Progressive People's Party] before the elections in 1912 was regarded by the leadership and its theorist Kautsky as the beginning of an era of a "new liberalism." Therefore they go to a pre-election block with the Freethinkers and change their old principles.

But on the other hand, the French socialist party was against coalition, even after the war:

We are partisans of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There, too, there’s no disagreement in principle. We so much support it that we’ve even put the idea and theory of it into an electoral program. Thus we have fear neither of the word, nor of the thing. I add that, for my part, I do not think that the dictatorship of the proletariat must retain a democratic form – even though Marx and, more recently, Morris Hillquit said so. I think it impossible, first of all, to conceive in advance precisely what form such a dictatorship would take, for the essence of a dictatorship is the elimination of all previous forms and all constitutional prescriptions. Dictatorship is an arbitrary power given to one or several men to take whatever measures a given situation demands. As a result, it is impossible, and also completely contradictory, to determine in advance what form the dictatorship of the proletariat will take. Where then is the disagreement? Neither is it over the issue of whether the dictatorship of the proletariat may be exercised by a Party. In fact, in Russia the dictatorship is exercised not by the soviets, but by the Communist party itself. We’ve always thought in France that the future dictatorship of the proletariat would be exercised by the groups of the Socialist party itself becoming, by virtue of a fiction which we all accept, the representative of the whole proletariat. The difference comes, as I have told you, from our divergence in opinion over organization and the conception of revolution. Dictatorship exercised by the Party, yes, but by a Party organized like ours, and not like yours.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/blum/1920/speech.htm

Blum in 1926 distinguished between the exercise and conquest of power http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1095710/f9.image

A socialist party can be called to govern (alone) because it has a parliamentary majority or because public pressure on the party to take responsibility etc., but political and economic conditions may lack for the conquest of power (that starts the transformation of the private property system).

Today marks the beginning of the true test of the "workers government" and "majority socialist coalition" theses, as SYRIZA has won the elections and is either just shy of an outright parliamentary majority or is that majority.

Governing is sometimes unavoidable Blum recognizes (eg when pressured by "public opinion" the party would sort of passively/reluctantly agree to exercise power), but he is against it (I'm not sure if I was clear from your letter in WW).

Another case of a Social-Democrat holding an anti-participation position is Julian Besteiro (though he was a minority in the PSOE). Besteiro said: "If we remain in power, in the long run we either allow ourselves to be taken advantage of by others or we have to exercise a strong hand and become dictators. I fear a Socialist dictatorship more than a bourgeois dictatorship. We could defend ourselves from the latter; with the former we would ourselves be committing suicide."
(July 1931 congress).
I found an account in Spanish on this page (and the following): http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigat...07/12/025.html

Speaking of letters, reproducing just as a comradely reminder to others: http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1043/letters/



Ushered

January 25 marked the ushering in of what is hoped to be the world’s first genuine, but non-dictatorship of the proletariat, ‘workers’ government’ since the Popular Front in Spain. However, January 25 also marked the ushering in of what the inter-war social democracy hoped to be the ‘labour revolution’.

Indeed, ever since discussions on ‘workers’ governments’ resurfaced, I can’t help but think why criticisms of this Comintern framework, such as those found in the Weekly Worker, did not compare it to what the renegade Kautsky wrote about coalition governments comprised predominantly of parliamentary ‘democratic socialist’ forces. This is something which not even Chile’s Salvador Allende had, but now which Greece’s Alexis Tsipras has, not least because of the efforts invested in service-oriented solidarity networks.

As a comrade told me, there is not just public support, but public pressure on the party to take responsibility. However, the political and economic conditions aren’t there for the push towards scrapping private property relations.

Coincidentally, this week also marks the ushering in of the world’s first Communitarian Populist Front since the Chartist movement and Paris Commune of the ‘working classes’ in Britain and France, respectively, with Syriza working with the anti-fascist, stridently anti-austerity, but right-populist Independent Greeks to break away from the class-collaborationism of popular fronts and sheer hypocrisy of united fronts.