“SYRIZA needs a Programme for Socialism” - Speech at the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Read a short account of the position of the Communist Tendency of SYRIZA at the recent SYRIZA CC meeting, along with the speech by our comrade, Stamatis Karayannopoulos.

Yesterday’s meeting of the SYRIZA CC resulted in the approval of the proposed Code of Conduct for MP candidates, along with the proposed candidate list and rationale for the forthcoming elections. Only the CTS voted against the proposed candidate list and rationale which included opportunist traitors from DIMAR (i.e., ‘Democratic Left’, a centre-left party, ex right-wing split of SYRIZA, that had been a founding part of the Coalition Government in the aftermath of the 2012 elections) among the list of SYRIZA’s desirable allies…

Comrades from the ‘Left Platform’ (i.e., a left tendency within SYRIZA with Panagiotis Lafazanis as main leader) abstained from voting on the proposed list. 

Below follows the speech delivered by our comrade and representative of the CTS, Stamatis Karayannopoulos, at the SYRIZA CC meeting:  

“Comrades, 

"With regard to the 25 January national elections, SYRIZA’s political mission is neither simply to annul some laws that arose from the Memoranda nor to achieve some successful negotiation with Greece’s lenders. SYRIZA’s duties are historical. SYRIZA is called upon to lead the working class in the open war declared on it by capital in its efforts to defend its reactionary achievements over the last five years. 

"In this war, capital has begun to enlist every weapon it possesses: the control of the economy, of the state, and of mass media. Over the recent period we have seen how capital is attempting to turn large parts of society against SYRIZA and this has placed SYRIZA on the back foot. Against such fervent attacks, it is lamentable that our comrades at the leadership seem frightfully unprepared. They appear particularly uncomfortable. However, this isn’t a question of feelings and emotions; it is thoroughly political. The leadership ought to possess a government programme capable of disarming the class enemy – that is to say, to entirely take from its hands all control over the economy and the state. In lieu of this, however, the leadership has a programme based on very weak foundations: all the appropriate and necessary anti-Memoranda reforms contained in the leadership’s proposed programme are, in fact, founded upon the utopian notion that two of the constituent elements of the ‘Troika’, namely, the EU and the ECB, are willing to tolerate, even fund, the dismantling of the policies that they have imposed.

"This is tantamount to one preparing for war by having regard to the enemy’s generosity rather than to one’s own forces. Unsurprisingly, this sense of unease does not encourage the confidence of the public in the party; what it does is allow for fear to take root.

"Comrades, the Communist Tendency has warned the leadership that should it fail to address the inadequacy of its programme by replacing it with a genuine socialist programme, it will inevitably face painful experiences ahead. It is a law of history that whoever attempts to manage capitalism ends up becoming a tool of its crisis; there cannot be any exception for SYRIZA. 

"On this occasion (i.e., the CC meeting of 4 January 2015), the CTS, for its part, did what had also been necessary at the founding congress of the party in July 2013: that is to say, we submitted a comprehensive socialist government programme as an alternative to the programme proposed by the leadership. It is a programme based not on illusions but on the confidence that it is only socialisations and the democratically designed economy which are capable of effectively disarming capitalists, and of raising the Left-Socialist paradigm and making possible its domino effect across Europe, thus disarming the ‘Troika’. 

"Comrades at the leadership, before you denounce this programme as ‘extreme’ and ‘cliched’, do take the trouble to read through it, and allow yourselves to be positively influenced by at least some of its basic points. Though it may be that the ideas contained in our alternative programme are held by a small Tendency within our party, they express a great and persistent necessity: the necessity for the working class to free itself not just from the symptoms of the crisis, that is to say, from austerity, the Memoranda, and the debt, but also to free itself from its causes, that is to say, from capitalism itself.”