In July of 2015, a few days after
Tsipras’s betrayal of the referendum, my partner and I found ourselves in the tiny village of Komitata on the Ionian
island of Kefallonia. In the one café at
the center of the village we listened to Tsipras explaining his decision on
television. I subsequently wrote about
this event in the book of essays we published titled ‘Greece at the
Crossroads’. [1]
This past August we returned to
Kefallonia and paid a visit to the café and its owner, Tasso. He is a man in his 60’s who opened the café
after retiring from a job he held for many years in the island’s capital,
Argostoli. It was a little over two years since that evening when we first met
Tasso and I was curious to know what he thought about the events of July 2015
and the present situation in Greece.
The past two years have witnessed
a political stalement in Greece following the shock experienced by many of Tsipras's betrayal of the referendum of July 2015. Since
winning the hastily called election of September of 2015, the Syriza-ANEL coalition government, now purged of its troublesome left wing, has fully embraced its role as the instrument of EU imposed austerity on the
working class of Greece. Tsipras’s poll numbers are at an
all-time low since the heady days of January 2015 when Syriza first came to
power. The journalist Helena Smith writes,
The fallout from
the U-turn has been colossal. Syriza’s popularity has plummeted; Tsipras’s own
ratings have nosedived. Some polls show the leftists trailing by as many as 16
points, others less, but all seem to reflect a view that the charismatic politician
“lied” by adopting the virulent neoliberal budget cuts and tax rises he had
once vowed to overturn. [2]
There is however little love for
the opposition New Democracy. And the opposition is in no hurry to call new
elections even though they would likely win. They would rather sit back
and let Syriza take responsibility for the cuts that are being imposed on
Greece as a result of the Third Memorandum Agreement.
In the meantime Tsipras has been
bragging to the foreign press that thanks to his leadership Greece has finally “turned
the corner” and the economy is now growing. [3]
In a follow-up article in September,
Guardian correspondent Helena Smith, expressing some skepticism about Tsipras’s
claims to have turned the corner on the economic crisis, wrote of him,
To the delight
of many, nonetheless, Tsipras, the man who set Europe ablaze with Marxist
ideology and anti-austerity rage back in the heady days of January 2015,
is becoming more pragmatic by the day. The 42-year-old’s embrace of the
free-market policies he once abhorred was cemented last Sunday, when he
announced that he would personally oversee the foreign investment drive now
viewed as key to curing the curse of Greece’s unemployment rate. [4]
When we arrived in Greece in late
June the entire country was in the middle of a trash collectors strike. The strike, with over 10,000 part time employees
participating, was in reaction to planned layoffs that will eventually destroy
150,000 government jobs. [5] The air in the streets of Athens was becoming increasingly putrid as the
synergy between an unbearable heat wave and the rotting garbage left in the
street took its toll. All this was the background to our return
to the café in Komitata.
We sat with Tasso at a table on
the plaza outside his café while we talked.
I asked him first of all how he would characterize his politics and what
was his reaction to the events of July 2015. In response to his political leanings, Tasso
answered with a question of his own,
“Did you see the wall of my café?”
I took a quick peek inside the café
and noticed three items on the wall; a clock, an iconic poster of Che Guevara,
and a decoration of a hammer and sickle. Only instead of the hammer, Tasso had
hung on the wall the traditional “worry beads” (κομπολόι). Tasso explained that the beads were his father’s, who took comfort in them when he was imprisoned during the Civil War. Almost everywhere you turn in Greece, there are images pregnant with the history of the class struggle if you know where to look.
 |
| The wall in the café |
Tasso continued,
“We all had hope when Syriza won
the election (in January of 2015). We
were very happy with the results of the referendum. But then the ‘NO” became a “YES”. We couldn’t
believe it!”
I then asked Tasso, “If there was
a new election called tomorrow, who would you vote for?”
Tasso replied, “I would vote for
the Far Left”. He clarified this by
saying he meant anyone to the left of Syriza, someone who would genuinely
oppose the austerity. I asked if he
meant a group like ANTARSYA, to which he replied, “Yes”.
Tasso then asked me about my
politics, and I replied that I am a Trotskyist. Tasso then said,
“We have a Trotskyist in the
village”.
 |
| Tasso |
I was astounded by Tasso's response since
this village is in a remote part of a remote island, on the highest point of a
one lane country road that winds its way through a mountain, far from the more
popular tourist destinations in the Aegean such as Santorini or Mykonos. There are no more than a dozen or so year
round residents in this village.
 |
| The outside of Tasso's café |
This past week, back in New York,
I saw Tsipras on television in a joint news conference with Trump. While
ostensibly on a mission to encourage foreign investment in Greece, Tsipras announced
that a deal had been worked out for Greece to invest in American made military
hardware to modernize its Air Force and beef up its military base in
Crete. Trump also praised Greece for
devoting at least 2% of its GDP to its military, in fulfillment of its NATO
commitment. It is difficult to imagine a
more candid representation of the complete betrayal of the Greek working class
than this image of Tsipras embracing Trump.
 |
| Tsipras and Trump |
The other side of this dismal
picture however is the determination of the Greek working class. The betrayal of the referendum was a huge shock and unquestionably set in a period of demoralization. But the working class, though battered, has not been defeated. Nothing has been resolved. Despite Tsipras's happy talk, there is no economic recovery in sight. Greece's debt load of €340bn, or 180% of GDP is by any estimate competely unsustainable no matter how deep the austerity goes. The average income of a Greek household has dropped by 40% since the start of the economic crisis and unemployment remains amost 22% with youth unemployment much higher. Pensioners continue to see their benefits cut to the point where the comfortable middle class life that they anticipated in their dreams has been turned into the nightmare of a daily struggle for survival.
We are now in a period of anticipation before the next outbreak of the class struggle. If you have
any doubts about that just make a trip to the village of Komitata
and have a talk with Tasso.
[1] See my political memoir, Greece at the Crossroads, Part I, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2015/08/greece-at-crossroads-part-i.html
and Greece at the
Crossroadds, Part II,
[2] Helena Smith interview with Alexis Tsipras, Alexis Tsipras: 'The worst is clearly behind
us', July 24, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/24/alexis-tsipras-the-worst-is-clearly-behind-us
[3] Helena Smith, Ibid.
[4] Helena Smith, The eurozone may be back on its feet. But is Greece?, Sept. 16,
2017,
[5] For an account of the background to the
strike see, Greek waste disposal workers
strike against mass layoffs,
