JR

Not necessarily. I do believe that alternatives remain possible, even within the highly restrictive context of the eurozone. But defying the structural power of international lenders in a context of globalized financial markets and widespread credit dependence requires immense ingenuity, extensive preparation, and unshakable determination — always in combination with powerful popular pressure from below. Sadly, these are precisely the qualities that were in short supply inside the Syriza government in 2015.

What struck me the most about Syriza’s short-lived anti-austerity experiment was the apparent incapacity, not just of the party leadership, but also of some of its more outspoken “internal opposition” members, to present a credible strategy to neutralize the main weapons of the opponent: its control over the international credit supply and its liquidity assistance to the Greek banking system. It was always fairly obvious that in the event of non-compliance, the creditors and the European Central Bank were simply going to close the taps and squeeze the Greek government dry. Countering this would have required a degree of control over domestic credit and money circulation. In the absence of a national currency and an independent central bank, the only way to take that type of control would have been to set up a parallel payment system of sorts.

This, of course, is precisely what finance minister Yanis Varoufakis proposed at the height of the crisis, following the resounding victory of the anti-austerity camp in the July referendum, but Varoufakis was rebuffed by prime minister Tsipras and the most powerful figures in the party leadership. While I was never really an admirer of his swashbuckling style, I want to emphasize that Varoufakis’s parallel payment system proposal was theoretically extremely interesting. It demonstrates that he was one of the few figures inside the government who was aware of the structural power asymmetry between Greece and its lenders, emphasizing the need to reduce the country’s credit and liquidity dependence as a way to escape the lenders’ brutal asphyxiation strategy.

At the same time, however, I have serious doubts about the practical feasibility of Varoufakis’s proposal in light of its technical complexity and Syriza’s poor preparation for such an eventuality. We have to keep in mind that Syriza ministers hardly even had effective control over the state bureaucracy at this point. The party was internally divided, and neither its leadership nor the internal opposition of the Left Platform had a very clear understanding of the forces they were up against. As for Varoufakis, it’s one thing to have a brilliant idea, but quite another to have the political capacity to carry it out — within a very limited time frame and under conditions of extreme duress.

At any rate, for me the key takeaway here is that the outcome of the Greek crisis was never simply written in stone. I do believe that there were alternatives on the table, and that things could have gone differently, but they would have required much more preparation and political effectiveness on the part of the Syriza government, and much more openness to popular participation and social mobilization.

When the people were finally involved in the political process through the anti-austerity plebiscite, the popular energy quickly overflowed the capacity of the government to regulate or contain it. To me, the mass demonstrations and stunning referendum result demonstrate that the Greek people were the truly radical and creative force here; they were willing to take the confrontation with the European creditors much further than their quivering prime minister. I believe there was a potential here to capitalize on this popular energy and radicalize the opposition to the lenders’ demands.