(to be published in Arabic for Arabi21)
The current crisis in Greece represents the clearest possible proof that democracy has become an entirely futile exercise in the era of globalized capital. Opposition groups everywhere need to recognize this reality and recalibrate their strategies of resistance to respond to the new dynamics of power.
Syriza did everything right. They played by the official rules of the political process. They created a political party, campaigned on a populist platform, grew their support base, participated in elections, and won. They won, in fact, by an impressive majority, which should (according to the official rules of politics) have given Syriza a powerful mandate to pursue the economic and political goals which were the reason for their landslide victory.
Furthermore, Syriza held an historic referendum on the European Union’s proposal for strictly conditional financial aid; allowing the Greek population to democratically participate in their country’s political and economic policy decisions; something unheard of in any of the EU countries seeking to impose harsh neoliberal austerity measures on Greece (when was the last time the Germans, French, or British citizenry had the chance to vote for or against the economic decisions of their respective governments?).
The result of the referendum was a resounding reiteration of the Greek people’s support for Syriza’s original anti-austerity platform, and a deafening rejection of the EU’s savage and exploitative proposal..
In other words, Syriza basically received two overwhelming displays of popular support through two separate democratic processes, for their declared commitment to resist austerity.
What was the result? A program of drastically harsher austerity measures.
Because Syriza ‘s success in both the election and the referendum were such dramatic illustrations of the party’s democratic legitimacy, the new austerity program represents an equally dramatic negation of the democratic process itself, when the real, and irresistible authority over policy-making actually lies in the hands of international business.
There is another aspect of this which is largely overlooked in the discussions about Greece and the EU; namely, the fact that the EU is enslaved to business too.
Greece is now being forced to accept brutal austerity measures in order to pay back loans from the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These loans were given to Greece after 2010 with the rigid stipulation that the loans would be used exclusively to pay back Greece’s debts to European private banks; the loans were not to be used to rehabilitate the Greek economy.
What that means, quite simply, is that the heads of the EU; people like Angela Merkel and former French leader Nicholas Sarkozy, arranged for the EC, ECB, and IMF loans, not to bailout Greece, but to bailout private European banks who were afraid that Greece would default on its debts. Essentially, they purchased Greece’s debts to relieve Greece’s private creditors, and so the EU has assumed responsibility for the collection of those debts.
This is as clear a scenario as I can imagine in which we see the power of states being mobilized by private companies.
The obvious message from all of this is that the official rules about “democracy” and so on, no longer have any actual relevance to the way real power and authority work in the world. Real power and authority do not exist within the boundaries of democratic processes; rather, actual control over policy rests in the private sector.
This reality must cause us to discard almost everything we thought we knew about how to influence policy and achieve our economic and political goals. It can no longer be accomplished through conventional democratic methods of struggle. The power of the private sector must be democratized.