For leftist SYRIZA, the real challenge now lies ahead. We don’t mean the likelihood of more MPs defecting from its parliamentary group or the fact that the ill-mannered Pavlos Polakis came second in Sunday’s party leadership race with a stunning 43% that established him as the de facto voice of the opposition within the party.
The challenges that lie ahead go a long way back. What’s left of SYRIZA will have to confront the past of a party that had its moment in the sun – in whichever way that was – and the fundamental questions that challenge the left globally. Who are they? Where are they headed? What is their message? How do they address the core contradictions that led the movement to disrepute and the party to such fragmentation?
Political parties need to develop deep roots in society instead of tapping into its most base and fickle instincts
Self-criticism is the first thing that is required, for both tactical and essential reasons. Any initiative to bring the country’s “progressive forces” together, as SYRIZA has been touting for years, demands that it first heal the wounds it inflicted. There are many in center-left PASOK who will not soon forget how they were slandered and attacked – literally, too – by the clamorous hordes of SYRIZA when the leftists finally got their turn at the helm of government.
The essential reasons are more important. There are many in SYRIZA who pine for those times of sheer audacity that led to the party’s pyrrhic victory in 2015 – hence Polakis’ 43%. But hooligan tactics do not build solid foundations or formulate propositions that can stand the test of time. Political parties need to develop deep roots in society instead of tapping into its most base and fickle instincts.
Beyond the challenges it faces in Greece, the left is also in very poor shape globally. It is almost impressive how badly it’s doing, given that capitalism is coming under such serious fire. Workers everywhere are expressing their opposition to the system that is making them poorer by voting for the far-right. The left’s decline is bolstering its rivals, like Donald Trump, and empowering the representatives of big capital, like Elon Musk. Worldwide, the left is starting to look outdated or at least disconnected from society’s concerns and hopes, and, above all, from the social classes it seeks to represent.
We obviously don’t expect Sokratis Famellos, as SYRIZA’s new leader, to solve the global problems of the left – we hardly expect him to solve the domestic ones. But we do hope that he initiates a bold dialogue about the problems besetting the left, a dialogue with something more meaningful to propose rather than “out with the Mitsotakis government.” Let’s not forget that it was this kind of thinking which took SYRIZA into what was one of the worst periods of its history – when Stefanos Kasselakis thought he had what it takes to bring down Kyriakos Mitsotakis.