by Norman Markowitz

Via: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/editors-blog/

Monday 18 June 2012

I’ve been reading about the Greek elections , the sudden but quickly fading band and stock market happiness that the old guard looks like it will be able to form a governent, President Obama’s unneccesary and unwise praise for the results(given the fact that the leaders of Syriza made clear their willingness to stay in the “Euro Zone” and even their sympathy for some of his goals in seeking to defend peoples interests.

Let me make a few very quick points which mass media here isn’t highlighting at all

1. Syriza finished with 26.9% about 2.7 % percent behind the rightwing New Democracy, and way ahead of Pasok, the social democratic party The KKE(the Greek Communist Party) which not only opposed Syriza but denounced it, received 4.5% of the vote. Although the position of the CPUSA is not to criticize other parties, I can’ help as an individual but state the obvious. Had the KKE formed a united front with Syriza(which the center and the right throughout Europe, especially in Germany have been villifying) Syriza would have run first and have had the possibility of crafting among the various parties and factions a left center government to challenge the austerity policies

2. The neo Nazi Golden Dawn party, which specializes in storm troop hoodlumism, received 6.9 % of the vote, “hanging around” Greek politics and, according to British and European press reports, having a significant following in the Greek police, a clear and present danger politicaly

3. The election solves nothing of course for the European crisis or for the Greek people. The issue remains one of shifting the burden of the crisis from the backs of the working class unto capital and the wealthy, of reviving both employment and mass purchasing power, not, as one left comentator noted, making the Eurozone into the Fourth Reich in economic terms, with the prime ministers of the various countries becoming the Gauleiters of German finance capital, which has been calling the austerity tune in Europe and put the squeeze most heavily on Greece

4. As a good friend said about the United States(and this from a progressive person not involved organizationally with any left party or faction) we in the U.S. should be so lucky as to have an electoral force like Syriza which could on its own gain more than a fourth of the electorate and put real fear into the capitalist class

Norman Markowitz