Interview with Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, 8/8/2015

Interview of Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, with Tassos Pappas of "Newspaper of the Editors" (Efimerida ton Syntakton):

Q: - You say that whether on the drachma or on the euro and with Memoranda, the people will suffer under present conditions. Is it possible that this line demobilizes citizens since the prospect you offer does not seem to have contemporary relevance?

A:- You are grossly mistaken. The political proposal of the KKE is and remains contemporary. The other proposals, those of the current and the former governments, are the ones pointing to a "Neverland" of exit from the crisis in the interests of the people. Those are proposals that satisfy only big capital and its sectors. The proposals of the other parties refer either to new agreements of the Memorandum type or simply to a change of currency through Grexit. Both proposals, adopted for different reasons by the present government and other parties on the one hand, and by Golden Dawn and various extraparliamentary formations on the other, are mathematically calibrated to lead the people to total bankruptcy. The KKE proposal, conversely, is the only realistic and authentically pro-people proposal, since it links disengagement from the Eurozone and the EU to a comprehensive plan and program for the economy and society, including the socialization of the concentrated means of production, national central planning, abolition of the debt, with the people organized and determined, in the framework of an authentic worker-popular power. The people can move in this direction actively, utilizing the experience of what the KKE has been saying yesterday and says today, in plain language.

The "legislative work" of the government and the stance of KKE

The legislative adjustments the government has so far submitted to parliament -- above all the two Acts of Legislative Content, one stipulating the looting of available public funds, the other the deletion of up to 100% of fines for tax violations, including those involved in smuggling, of the major corporate groups -- lie within the strict framework of fiscal austerity imposed by the EU and the IMF (i.e, the lenders), so that competitiveness and the profitability of monopoly groups, of big capital, are protected.

Through such legislation, the government maintains the entire anti-labor, anti-popular framework that has been set in place by the Memorandum-related implementation laws of previous governments.

These are legislative adjustments that lag behind even the electoral program announced by SYRIZA in Thessaloniki, hence cutting down even on the few breadcrumbs intended for those living in conditions of extreme poverty. Not only is there no relief for the people, but essentially, the people is told to forget recovering what it has lost. 

At the same time, the government continues to refuse to bring to Parliament the agreement it made with the lenders on February 20. It is obvious that on the one hand, it wishes to avoid the image that would be created were New Democracy and the other parties of the bourgeois political system to support the agreement, and on the other, to avoid having the people see the measures in store for them -- measures they 've already dubbed "mild austerity", in the interests of capitalist profit recovery.

The SYRIZA infomercial

An infomercial is a shamefaced commercial, whose shamefacedness compels it to appear as presentation of "information" in order to sell a product more effectively. It is therefore a fusion of two genres of discourse that is at the same time a pseudo-fusion: the discourse of "information" is merely a carapace, whose purpose is to protect and reinforce the discourse of advertising.

Writing on politics, traditionally another genre of discourse than informercials, generally falls under two categories: journalistic writing, whose characteristic is the production of the illusion of a reporting "objectivity", and explicitly political writing, characterized by a more explicit foregrounding of the writer's own political principles and ideas. 

Marxist political writing is by its nature the most explicit of the subgenres of political writing: since Marxism is, among other things, a critique of the dominant ideology, ideological presuppositions, both on the side of the writer and on the side of that which the writer discusses and argues for or against, must be visible and consciously expressed.

My argument here is that a great deal of the writing that postures as political writing, and even --implicitly or explicitly-- affiliates itself with Marxist political writing these days is in fact an instance of the extension of the discourse of the infomercial in the arena of political expression. It is, additionally, that, at least when it comes to international writing on Greek politics, this is nowhere more frequent than in writing on SYRIZA, whether as a rising political force, or, since 25 January, as a government partner.

An interesting dialogue between SYRIZA, KKE and Golden Dawn MPs, Greek Parliament, 10/3/2015

Maria Kanellopoulou (SYRIZA): …. But the thousands of Wehrmacht troops, the SS, the Gestapo, the Luftwaffe and tanks that drowned Greece in blood didn't come from the moon, nor from Sirius, nor from Thule, as their local epigones claim -- parenthetically, they don't pretend to be patriots, they celebrate Hitler's birthday and tattoo themselves with swastikas. [...] The Greece on which we are deciding has been borrowed from the youth, like Pavlos Fyssas, who was murdered by the epigones of the Nazis, those who dismantled the country 40 [70] years ago. To them we owe the truth. To them we owe the [war] reparation.

Michael Arvanitis-Avramis (Golden Dawn): Ms Chair of Parliament, how can you allow her to talk like that? Recall her to order! She has no right!

Maria Kanellopoulou: And it's of blood. To them we owe.

SYRIZA MP Kanellopoulou states she will sue Golden Dawn MP Arvanitis

SYRIZA MP M. Kanellopoulou announced today that she intends to sue Golden Dawn MP Avramis Arvanitis, as, during the Parliament discussion of German reparations for damage done in World War II, and upon her reference to the murder of Pavlos Fyssas by Golden Dawn, Arvanitis allegedly made a gesture meaning he will cut her throat, and additionally slandered her father, ELAS officer Kostas Kanellopoulos, as a murderer in the Kalavryta region.

Needless to say, I stand fully in support of Kanellopoulou's intention to sue and hope she will have her party's support in doing so; zero tolerance to open Nazi provocation in parliament is essential. I hope Kanellopoulou's experience and her politically healthy response to it will cause other SYRIZA MPs to reconsider their egregious stance toward Golden Dawn in the past two years.

A few words on "Euroscepticism"

Discussions of the prospects for a United States of Europe emerged among the European bourgeoisie during the 19th-century bourgeois revolutions and nationalist movements in Europe as a bourgeois-democratic demand. Among its proponents were the French author Victor Hugo and the Italian bourgeois revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. The dawn of the 20th century saw a revival of the debate as an objective result of capitalism entering its imperialist stage, with the discussions intensifying during World War I.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the debate had an impact on the workers’ movement, with discussions concerning whether the slogan should be adopted or not. It should be reminded that this was the discussion to which Lenin contributed during World War I with his 1915 article “On the slogan for a United States of Europe”, where he pointed out:

Why there was no government coalition between SYRIZA and KKE, from Syriza's standpoint

I copy from "Radical Initiative", SYRIZA's Union in National Insurance Corp; the article is by George Gialouris: 

The third option for government coalition was with KKE, but their leadership had rejected - and quite rightly in my view - any such scenario. SYRIZA is a party of bourgeois management that seeks solutions within the EU and wishes to find a path within the EU. KKE doesn't.

Of course, this doesn't prevent the surprisingly candid SYRIZA member from adding the ritual coda: