In the past days, ‘realism’ has been the catchword in the Greek pre-election debate. The most common criticism raised against those supporting a break with austerity is not that they are wrong but that they are not ‘realist’ and suggest policies that cannot be realistically implemented.
The problem is that it is possible to find echoes of this ‘realism’ rhetoric in the discourse of the Left and especially SYRIZA. The proposals by SYRIZA seem like an attempt to solve the problem of austerity while keeping stable many of the current parameters of economic policy. Important aspects of the conjuncture, such as the loan agreements with the EU and the IMF (and the flow of funds for the functioning of the Greek State), the dependency of the Greek banks on constant solvency injections from the Eurosystem, and Greece’s participation in the Eurozone, are being treated as unavoidable initial conditions of any attempt to get rid of austerity. However, we all know that the way we set the initial premises of a problem limits the possible answers we can have.
The result is that the Left promises saving society and breaking with austerity without dealing with the very mechanisms that led to the current social devastation. Such a position does indeed seem realist: a change of policies within the contours of the current situation. However, how realist is to suppose that loan funds and solvency injections that have been offered under the condition of extreme austerity and ‘structural adjustment’ will continue to be available if the austerity policies are abandoned?
Of course one can suggest that our EU partners are merely bluffing, and in the end fearing a collapse of the Greek economy and the Greek banking system and the repercussion this will have all over the Eurozone they will keep on funding Greece despite a radical change of policies. What will happen, if they are not bluffing? In that case, even a temporal stoppage or delay in funding, something that in way is already happening, will lead to a generalized inability of the Greek State to cover its expenses, and the Greek government will be blackmailed into accepting even harsher austerity measures.
The answer by many people, even in the Left, is that it is possible to begin by not reversing austerity but by ‘freezing’ the policies at their current level and not imposing any further austerity cuts. However, even if there are no new measures, the current policies in effect guaranty the continuation of the vicious circle of austerity, recession and unemployment. Besides, this ‘freezing’ is exactly what the EU calls ‘renegotiating’: an endless discussion of possible changes while austerity measures remain in effect. Therefore, the danger with the ‘realist’ approach is that it can lead back to austerity. The result would be that a government representing the hopes of a society would be in the end associated with social disaster.
However, the question remains. How to deal with the threat that any unilateral refusal of the terms of the loan agreement (the austerity measures associated with continuation of funding) will lead to a collapse of State finances, default and immediate exit from the Eurozone? I think that he answer is to reverse the very terms of the question. We have to see that in the end refusing the terms of the loan agreements and getting rid of the embedded neoliberalism of the euro single currency, will liberate a potential for social justice and reconstruction of collective productive capabilities.
It is true that exiting the Eurozone, refusing the pay the debt and defaulting on sovereign terms (and consequently refusing any more loan funds from the EU), nationalizing banks and imposing controls to the movement of capitals, will lead to difficult transition period. For some months, it will lead to changes in consumption patterns, short-term shortages, and State interventions to make sure the functioning of public infrastructure. However, it is better to go through such a transition that to endure the slow death of a society through endless cycles of near defaults and new waves of extreme austerity packages.
In light of this, I think that the question facing the forces of the Left and especially SYRIZA is the following. What is worse, a few months of hardship but also of regaining democratic control of economic and social policy and initiating processes of social transformation, or an agonizing effort to fight austerity, while remaining within the draconian terms of the loan agreements and the eurozone and being subject to constant blackmail? I think that in the end choosing the second path will discourage society and open the way for the restoration of pro-austerity forces.
On the contrary, a process of rupture with the EU and the IMF is the only way out of the current crisis. We must place our confidence not in banks and markets but in the power of social movements, solidarity and struggle, in order to endure the hardship of the transition period, to create support for the new currency and the new policies, to experiment with an alternative productive paradigm.
Moreover, moving the terrain of political debate towards realism only helps systemic forces. The identification of the unilateral exit from the terms of the loan agreements with the exit from the Eurozone, the demonization of any return to national currency and the replacement of the question of ‘yes or no to the loan agreements’ with ‘who can renegotiate them better’, only makes the terms of the debate more friendly to pro-austerity forces.
In this sense, the challenge is that any participation of the Left in government must be accompanied by an attempt at actual Left-wing governance: breaking away from existing policies and the demands of the EU and the IMF, mobilizing the labour movement, having confidence in the ability of a fighting people to support a program of social transformation. Otherwise, any identification of the Left with defeat and failure will only open the way for more reactionary solutions and the hybrid of anticommunism, cynical neoliberalism and racism that pro-austerity forces are proposing.
On May 6, Greek society did not express its realism, but a strong desire for radical change. The only realist position is exactly to refuse the ‘realism’ of austerity and the current financial and monetary architecture of the Eurozone.
*Panagiotis Sotiris teaches social and political philosophy at the Department of Sociology of the University of the Aegean. He can be reached at [email protected].