SYRIZA Research Paper

[JPSartre12]

Comrades, I am doing a very large term paper for one of my classes at my university on the rise of SYRIZA in the wake of the Greek financial crisis, and I am doing it from an explicitly left-wing perspective.

My thesis in the paper is that despite the fact that SYRIZA drapes itself in socialist rhetoric, it is, in reality, the left wing of capital, and has fallen victim to embourgeoisment, and is being sapped of all of its populist, transformative potential as it is incorporated into the parliamentary establishment. My argument is that SYRIZA is a capitalist party, not a socialist one.

Are there any issues that you think I should touch upon, or any advice that you can give me? Input from our Greek comrades would be exceptionally insightful.

[KurtFF8]

While I don't know much about SYRIZA, I believe it is a coalition of left wing organizations, and it may be a bit too blanket of a statement to call it the Left Wing of capital (although it seems to serve that role as the new main opposition party with more toned down policy prescriptions).

I can't help point you in the direction of good sources, but I would say that a brief history of their formation and a look at the factions (and how they interact to shape the overall organization) will help with your paper.

And of course it depends on what kind of class it is, but you may want to avoid too much usage of rhetoric that is often associated with Marxist political publications, as academics tend to frown upon that.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm not sure you're going to have a paper of much integrity if you are planning to write it from an explicit left-wing perspective. What subject is this for, by the way?

I mean, it is OK to write from a Marxian perspective; pretty much every economic historian is a Marxist in the sense that they want to view things as products of their time, and how certain actions at certain points in history have affected what happened later on. But you can't just say, for an academic paper, "oh i'll write from a left-wing perspective", because your research results may not fit your hypothesis and, if you are biased - which you are - then you'll just fit the results to your hypothesis and your 'academic' paper will be little more than a test in confirmation bias and a piece of unreliable propaganda at best.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you want to investigate SYRIZA properly - and I don't think your research question is a bad one at all I might add -, then you're going to need to take a more holistic approach; look at their political philosophy, their practice, their economic and financial policies, their actions, their organisation, their finances etc.

I would also suggest that you spend a lot of time researching the literature for a firm definition of capitalism; in order to prove that SYRIZA are a capitalist party, you will need to be clear on what makes a party capitalist (and in the first instance whether a party can be capitalist even if its grassroots members/supporters are not necessarily so), and prove on a clear, point-by-point basis that in its outlook and actions, SYRIZA is a party of capitalism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, moved thread to research sub-forum.

[Philosophos]

Synaspismos was first split from KKE because of ideological opposition. After lots of years it was renamed SYRIZA because it became a left party coalition.

The thing I know is that when they got this rise up % in the last elections they started being social-democrats while before the elections they were more communist.

Tsipras and the rest party members were saying that they will define the IMF and they won't pay back anyone and that we will go back to drachma (our old currency). When they got the 24% (if I remember well) they changed their views in one night. They said that "we will discuss for better terms and try to stay on euro"...

They say they are socialist but in fact they are not. They are populist (this is proved from the time before the elections) and opportunists (after the elections).

They change their views and opinions just like they do with their daily clothing and at the same time each member of the party has a different opinion so basically I don't know what they hell they want to do. Each time I watch the news Tsipras is saying something and then another member says something else and the other member says something else and goes on and on...

When the % goes down they remember to meet with socialists and ask for advices but when the % is back on they don't give a shit and they change their views once again.

I think, as many others say too, that SYRIZA is the new PASOK (social-democrat party/ even more right-winged than ND) that brought the whole corruption in Greece (not that the citizents didn't want the corruption but anyway).

I believe they are really left wing of capital as you said and that they are not going to change anything if they get elected. The problem is that lots of people don't recognize these things and if SYRIZA gets elected and screws up everything people will lose their trust to the left-winged parties and they will go back to ND and PASOK...

If you need some more info I'm happy to help you if I can

[JPSartre12]

What subject is this for, by the way?

It's for a contemporary European politics course at my university.

I mean, it is OK to write from a Marxian perspective; pretty much every economic historian is a Marxist in the sense that they want to view things as products of their time, and how certain actions at certain points in history have affected what happened later on. But you can't just say, for an academic paper, "oh i'll write from a left-wing perspective", because your research results may not fit your hypothesis and, if you are biased - which you are - then you'll just fit the results to your hypothesis and your 'academic' paper will be little more than a test in confirmation bias and a piece of unreliable propaganda at best.

Yes, you make a valid point. I'm writing it from an explicitly Marxian perspective, so it is going to be relatively biased. The angle that I'm trying to work from is that economic downturns result in a rise of the far-right; by that, I mean show the connection between economic conditions and political popularity.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you want to investigate SYRIZA properly - and I don't think your research question is a bad one at all I might add -, then you're going to need to take a more holistic approach; look at their political philosophy, their practice, their economic and financial policies, their actions, their organisation, their finances etc.

Yes, definitely. A major section of my research paper is the comparison of SYRIZA's constituent parties' individual political philosophies to historical political philosophies - ie, contemporary, reformist social democracy to the revolutionary social democracy of Luxembourg, etc.

I would also suggest that you spend a lot of time researching the literature for a firm definition of capitalism; in order to prove that SYRIZA are a capitalist party, you will need to be clear on what makes a party capitalist (and in the first instance whether a party can be capitalist even if its grassroots members/supporters are not necessarily so), and prove on a clear, point-by-point basis that in its outlook and actions, SYRIZA is a party of capitalism.

I'm going with the traditionally Marxian definition of capitalism - ie, one of the several historical modes of production, private ownership of the means of production, commodity production, production for profit (as opposed to production for use), has money and borders, etc.

[Fionnagáin]

Yes, you make a valid point. I'm writing it from an explicitly Marxian perspective, so it is going to be relatively biased.

I think you're missing Boss's point. He's saying that you're supposed to treat Marxism as a methodological framework through which a given topic is examined, rather than as a series of truths or values which you layer on top of it. For example, if you were writing a comparison of electoral candidates from a Marxist perspective, it means that you'd look at things like their social base, their connections with capital and the state, and so on, not that you'd grade them based on how closely their campaign promises matched up with the Communist Manifesto.

Confessing "bias" suggests to me that you haven't quite worked this out yet, that you're still treating Marxist as ideology rather than method, so I'd say that the very first thing you need to do is to figure out exactly what a Marxist framework would be in a context like this. As the Boss said, the point is not to announce a conclusion and then go about justifying it, it's about offering a methodological premise and seeing what insights it can produce.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yes, you make a valid point. I'm writing it from an explicitly Marxian perspective, so it is going to be relatively biased. The angle that I'm trying to work from is that economic downturns result in a rise of the far-right; by that, I mean show the connection between economic conditions and political popularity.

See Fionnagain's post above.

I'm going with the traditionally Marxian definition of capitalism - ie, one of the several historical modes of production, private ownership of the means of production, commodity production, production for profit (as opposed to production for use), has money and borders, etc.

You're going to need to be more specific, though. Commodity production occurred in some form before capitalism 'proper', though of course commodity production is a necessary (but not on its own sufficient) factor in the development of capitalism.

Again, money was also in circulation pre-capitalism. Commodity money has been around for a long, long time. Banking originated with the Italian goldsmiths in the medieval period, check out the Italian merchant city states from the 11th century onwards. Private ownership of the means of production is kinda meaningless too - really, it's private property entrenched in law that you're going to be interested in. So bourgeois legal frameworks and all that - you might want to look at the founding fathers for the US, or the 1688 'Glorious' Revolution in terms of your reading for that.

If I were you, I'd do a lot more reading before writing this paper, as you're lacking a bit of specificity about what Marxism is (as Fionnagain pointed out, not mere 'ideology', but an objective framework used for the study of contemporary and historical societies. As my very right-wing economic history professor told us, 'technically, we economic historians are all marxists').

I suggest you go to www.marxists.org and have a read of Karl Marx, in particular:

Value, Price and Profit.
The Grundrisse (which V, P & P is incorporated into)
Engels - pre-capitalist societies.

Also there is a wonderful book called 'The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism', published by Aakar Books in 2006 (and by Verso, 1976). The 2006 edition has an introduction by Rodney Hilton, and has very interesting contributions on the transition debate going back to the post-war period; it will help your understanding of what feudalism is and, by extension, what capitalism is and how we have studied past societies through the prism of Marxist historical materialism as a framework. It's not that dense either, a good book to read!

[Hit The North]

If I were you, I'd do a lot more reading before writing this paper, as you're lacking a bit of specificity about what Marxism is (as Fionnagain pointed out, not mere 'ideology', but an objective framework used for the study of contemporary and historical societies.

Yes, it is important to have a coherent understanding of capital and its history, but given the focus of the OP's paper, surely some things can be bracketed off. He doesn't have to write a chapter on the genesis of modern capitalism and its transition from feudalism in order to interrogate SYRIZA's strategy and tactics and hold them to account on the basis of comparison with a model of revolutionary praxis informed by Marxism. And, of course, Marxism isn't just a method, it is also a guide for political action.

The angle that I'm trying to work from is that economic downturns result in a rise of the far-right; by that, I mean show the connection between economic conditions and political popularity.

But isn't the rise of SYRIZA already evidence against the notion that economic crisis inevitably result in only the rise of the far-right? We might question their fidelity to a revolutionary program but they are still 'of the left'.