17.12.2015

Learn the lessons of Syriza

What will the weekend bring for Podemos? Tom Munday and Ana Ibarruri comment on the likely outcome of the general election

Nearly 80 years on from the Spanish civil war, an election looms and Spain looks set to once again serve as a microcosm of the political battles of the entire European continent.

In one corner stands the crumbling derelicts of post-Soviet, European liberal democracy, represented by the ruling Partido Popular (PP) and the opposition ‘socialists’ of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE); in the other the simmering discontent of the masses, currently wracking just about every country in Europe. Undoubtedly, the 20D (December 20) election is shaping up to be a litmus test for the continued struggle in Europe between the hegemonic powers and the forces below.

And of particular interest to readers of this paper will be the fact that the primary new force in Spain is Podemos - a new model party of the Left Unity mould. Podemos - perhaps more so than its Greek counterpart, Syriza - has been used by LU leading lights to demonstrate what could be achieved in an advanced European economy.¹ In particular it has achieved distinction amongst the myriad left projects of Europe by having serious electoral traction - threatening the perennial neoliberal parties and acting as a lightning rod for political discontent amongst the working class. Though not yet having had the opportunity to properly flex its muscles as Syriza has (and we will allow readers to judge how effective that was), Podemos has even been able to demonstrate some degree of real-terms political viability, seizing key European parliamentary and local government positions, including the Madrid and Barcelona mayoralties.

As an LU “sister party”, the basic contours of Podemos should be readily recognisable to anyone familiar with the workings of its British equivalent. For a start there is the name: a political statement of intent. Podemos translates as ‘We can’ - a phrase evoking Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign, whilst cannily avoiding any strong left connotations. Similarly, the Socialist Workers Party’s popular front was called Respect: an equally ambiguous moniker (in this writer’s opinion) which nowadays is a George Galloway one-man band. Nevertheless the intent was clear: the goal of new party model was clear: avoid association with traditional leftwing politics - it being imagined that, once membership numbers began to swell, the rank and file would be comprised predominantly of people who could be easily led and manipulated.

Podemos was decidedly more successful in this ambition than Respect, Left Unity, Rise and other such UK counterparts. It did, after all, have a stronger left tradition to build on, and an erudite, charismatic leader in former ‘official communist’ Pablo Iglesias. Key tenets of the Podemos mantra were explicitly about moving ‘beyond a politics of the left and right’ and they chose to daub their material in a tasteful shade of plum in recognition of this fact (ie, neither red nor blue).² The general, ‘pretend we’re not pinkos’ approach appeared broadly successful, enabling the young upstarts to pull well ahead of the Izquierda Unida (the more traditionalist left in Spain), much to that formation’s annoyance.³

That said, in recent years the project has suffered significant setbacks. Chiefly, the entirely predictable failure of Syriza. Truth be told, there is still a significant risk that Podemos will suffer the same fate. In every televised debate Iglesias has been forced to bat away accusations suggesting that his party is the Spanish version of Syriza. Of course, such accusations are hardly groundless. It is highly likely that even Syriza understood itself as something of a dry run for future ‘new parties’ - essentially banking on a major European economy (or preferably a series of them) delivering a left victory and offering it a way out of austerity.

Understanding Spain as that ‘major European economy’, is the chicken/egg problem here. The success of the isolated Greeks being dependent on the success of the Spanish, who were in turn dependent on the success of the Greeks. This was never a sound plan. And the discrediting of Syriza’s anti-austerity credentials is now being repurposed as highly damaging ammunition against Podemos. So far this has seen the party slide from first to third or fourth position in the polls, trailing behind two demonstrably corrupt ruling parties and contesting third place with Ciudadanos, a liberal-right lash-up that appears to be led by an overconfident sixth-former (the kind who wears a suit and a side-parting to school).

Still, it is not necessarily all doom and gloom. A decent showing in the election is certainly better than no showing - if Podemos can continue to snap at the heels of the neoliberal establishment, it may well exert some influence. Already, policies like a national basic income, once decried as fringe lunacy, have become staple talking points in the mainstream.⁴ That parties of the bourgeoisie are programmatically incapable of delivering on these (within their accepted paradigm of austerity) will leave Podemos well-positioned to pick up deflected votes when the reality bites. As a force of the left it also has an essential value in much the same way as Corbynite Labour or (perhaps at a stretch) the Sandernista Democrats. That is to say that, in lieu of a proper, organised response from the radical left, these softer projects at least re-establish the socialist discourse in the public consciousness and drag the political coordinates of their respective states a little to the left.

Interestingly then, the real trick here might be to see Podemos pitched between being too powerful and too weak. The dangers of the latter may be obvious, but the former is potentially just as lethal. A Podemos powerful enough to become a decisive coalition partner may find itself coopted into austerity cheerleading. Hopefully the example of Syriza will silence those naive voices who previously ruled this out. With polls indicating an extremely close result, the likelihood is that any government elected on December 20 will prove extremely unstable (with some pundits giving it a life expectancy of as little as two years).⁵

Thankfully for those of us who want to learn the lessons of Greece, it looks extremely unlikely that Podemos will be part of any government. It should take heed from Syriza’s failing: the party that internalises the logic of compromise and bourgeois rapprochement - whose ambitions avowedly go no further than scraps from the capitalists’ table - is in fact announcing its willingness to sup from any chalice, no matter how poisoned it may be. The ruling class will spot that weakness and exploit it for all it is worth: they might let you raise the minimum wage by a cent, but they will insist on you robbing grannies of their pensions and trashing your hard-earned legitimacy for the privilege.

That is not to say that a better-than-expected Podemos showing would be something not to be celebrated, but rather that, the more electorally successful Podemos becomes, the greater the temptation to capitulate will be. Since the party has made broadness (or compromise?) a cornerstone of its politics, those of us on the outside have good reason to warn Iglesias and co that participation in government would be the road to disaster. Not being given the opportunity play junior partner in an austerity-lite government, on the other hand, will save them that headache outright. It may even, in the wake of 20D, give Podemos ample time and space to reconstitute its politics around something more principled, coherent and resilient. The parties of austerity are all ostensibly relying on a gamble (or pretence) that, save some global geopolitical shift, which is never going to pay out, they can somehow batter and abuse the Spanish economy into bountiful growth. The idea that Podemos can do what the austerity parties cannot is simply absurd.

While the post-politics plum-coloured banners might have drawn crowds initially, the rallying cry was largely based on a non-confrontational falsehood. Now Podemos has its foot in the door, it should begin to shift focus to building conscious, militant, mass support (a much more plausible project in a country so visibly on the receiving end of the EU crackdown) and using any parliamentary leverage it does have to obstruct the predations of the bourgeois government when and where possible. Should the situation in Spain change dramatically enough that the austerity parties can be saved, then the Podemos project in its current state is more or less invalidated - the electorate will go back to bickering about bourgeois-liberal political minutiae: the mass appetite for vague ‘change’, currently sustaining Podemos’s base, will dissipate. Thus, longevity depends on the leopard learning to change its spots; and whether or not the election result is favourable, Podemos needs to move towards such a transformation.

Notes

1. http://leftunity.org/what-can-the-british-left-learn-from-podemos.

2. http://platypus1917.org/2014/12/01/mas-alla-de-la-izquierda-y-la-derecha.

3. www.versobooks.com/blogs/1851-an-izquierda-unida-mp-podemos-have-literally-copied-us.

4. www.basicincome.org/news/2015/03/spain-popular-initiative-basic-income-ends.

5. http://m.publico.es/opinion/1942978/el-ultimo-comunista-vivo.