Introduced by Peter Koenig

“It is [….] a triumph of the empire to have the victims elect their executioners.”

These are the words of Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
this Monday morning, 21 September, the morning after the Greek ‘snap’
elections, when the Greek people re-elected Syriza and their leader
Alexis Tsipras, who betrayed them with impunity and on several occasions
in the last eight months – yes, when the people of Greece re-elected
their hangman with more than 35%, almost the same percentage of votes as
on 25 January 2015; not an absolute majority, but a majority all the
same that will allow them to form the next government and to call the
shots on the already signed-off austerity package – against another debt
of 86 billion euros, of which not one euro goes to Greece’s vital
social programs – only to the banks, which are bleeding the country to
death.

If the Parliament re-confirms the new debt which it already
approved before Tsipras resigned on 20 August 2015, the debt to GDP
ratio will climb to above 210% – completely unmanageable – and illegal,
as debt acquired under duress and blackmail which is the case in Greece –
is illegitimate under all international standards and laws – as also
stated in Zoe Konstantopoulou’s (former  President of the Greek
Parliament) speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 3
September 2015 –

http://cadtm.org/Zoe-Konstantopoulou-s-speech-at.

The bulk of this article was written about 3 weeks before the
elections. THE NO FRONT is an essay on how to build a Front of
Resistance, including remarks on moral and national aspects of politics,
on left and right, on left and nationalism, and on euro versus drachma.
In the author’s own words, it

“represents the views its writer has
supported in a lot of political talks and deliberations which have
taken place in Greece between the 20th of August and the 3rd of
September. But the question of how to build a front will remain very
much in the agenda after the elections.”

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a renowned Greek
journalist, writer, philosopher, and he is the cofounder of The Delphi
Initiative, a group of international intellectuals called to meet in
Delphi, the birthplace of Democracy, at the end of June 2015 to
formulate ideas for the government to extricate itself from the debt
dilemma, the dictate of the troika and the colonization of Brussels. To
no avail. In today’s globalized neoliberal world, Democracy is not worth
the breath it takes to pronounce it.
—–

How to build a Front of Resistance (some remarks on moral and
national aspects of politics, on left and right, on left and
nationalism, on euro and drachma) (*)

While Greek politicians travel around the country telling nonsense
and narratives, Greece is disintegrating at an appalling pace. Only God
knows what is going to happen this winter. Neither the first Memoradum
nor the second can be compared with the third one. It may lead Greece
towards a “low intensity” civil war or police state or even to major
losses of sovereignty abroad, or it may contribute to the dismantling of
the Republic of Cyprus.
Old and new supporters of the Memorandum agree in supporting the program
agreed between the Greek government and the creditors, in spite of all
the fighting between them, in reality about who will be the best,
elected Gaulaiter of the foreigners in the country. But at the same
time, everybody knows that this program will not work. Every single
Greek knows this, those who signed it know it, all serious economists
around the world also know it. It is as clear as that the Earth orbits
around the Sun and not the opposite. But on this basic fact, on this
major question for the destiny of the nation, the two main parties
claiming now our vote either remain silent or they lie blatantly.
While the country is in a process of decomposition and the nation is
being threatened with death, as an organized entity, our TV news are
full of no news, like the coincidental meeting of Tsipras and Meimarakis
at Heraclion airport. Tomorrow, it is not excluded that we will see the
two participating in the same government, ruling the country on behalf
of its creditors.

A memorandum aiming at destroying Greece
It is unbelievable and this is exactly the reason many people refuse to
believe it. But the program applied in Greece is not a mistake. If it
was it would have been long ago corrected.

It is aiming exactly at what it achieves, that is our destruction. It
has already provoked by far the biggest economic, social,
moral-psychological and demographic disaster in post-1945 capitalist
Europe. This is not subject to argument, as most economic, social or
political questions. The climax of the disaster is clearly reflected in
all objective indicators (GDP, unemployment, especially unemployment of
the young, dramatic deterioration of living standards and health levels,
sovereign and private debt as percentage of GDP etc.)

Only Kafka or Orwell could name this a program of “help” to Greece!
It is indeed a program for destroying Greece. It aims at what it is
really achieving. And by provoking economic and social disaster, those
who engineered it, aim – and so far they succeed – at our enslavement
and promote their political, or rather “regime change” agenda, first in
Greece, then, if the experiment proves successful, to all of Europe.

Only by causing such a catastrophe could they oblige a European
people to accept the unbelievable terms (translated from English with
the help of an automatic translation program) that the Parliament has
voted in an all-night humiliating parody of a debate, under the
blackmail of immediate “bankruptcy of the state”. It is through a new
form of financial and political “war” that they are pushing their aim
and this aim is to destroy bourgeois democracy, the social welfare state
and the Greek nation, as a coherent institutional, political and
cultural structure.

It is exactly because they need absolutely our complete destruction,
in order to promote their extremely radical agenda, that they refuse and
kind of concession. Not just to Tsipras, which after all could be
considered more or less normal, but also to Samaras before him, who was
their man and he was very close, politically and ideologically, to the
forces now dominating Europe.
For political-geopolitical reasons they decided to write off much of the
debt of the occupied Iraq or of the US-friendly government in Kiev. But
they insist on Greeks paying the debt until the last euro. Even if they
will alleviate a little bit the terms of its repayment, they will keep
it at unsustainable levels, in order exactly to continue its use as a
weapon against the country!

Greece has experienced its dependence from the US and its
tragic consequences after 1947. But even the Americans have not aimed at
our complete destruction. They threw us a carrot in the form of the
Marshall Plan. Now the threat is complete annihilation!

The program imposed on Greece is not an accident. It
reflects the strategy and the ultimate goals of the most extremist
segment of the global financial oligarchy, which is now using Greece and
Europe in order to implement its European and global agenda. This
oligarchy estimates that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it has a
historical, unique opportunity to impose a global dictatorship, a global
totalitarianism, which, they think, is the only way to keep their
present hegemonic position. If you have any doubts, just see what has
happened in Iraq or Libya, Ukraine or Yugoslavia.

The financial, social and psychological-moral disaster caused by the
program itself is exactly the weapon used to effectively abolish
democracy and the welfare state, free health care and the right of
citizens to a pension and to a decent living, which are the most
important conquests of human civilization until today.

A «Greece without Greeks» (and also a Cyprus without Greeks) may be
the end-result of it. The mechanism is already in place and working:
massive emigration of the best educated young people, demographic crisis
as a result of the Memorandum policies, serious deterioration of the
health situation of the population predictably leading to a serious
decline of life expectancy. If the Republic of Cyprus is dissolved, by
accepting to become a post-modern protectorate through a new version of
the “Annan plan”, which was rejected in the 2004 referendum, the loss of
state protection will also force Greeks to emigrat in large numbers.
There is no more vital task for all Greeks than to stop this program.
This is not linked to the facility or difficulty of trying to stop it,
nor to the risks and dangers associated with that. Obviously it will be
very difficult and dangerous to stop it. Simply we don’t have any other
choice. A very intelligent and competent leadership could, maybe, I say
maybe, achieve a compromise, but even to achieve a compromise, you
should have an iron determination to go all the way. By compromise I
mean a stabilization of the situation where it is, that is to stop the
work of the “death spiral” in which Greece is now found. (The term
“death spiral” is quite exact if one wishes to describe the situation in
Greece. It was introduced in the debate by George Soros who knows
better than anyone else what is all about, as he himself has greatly
contributed to the launching of this vicious circle!).

The upcoming elections

The September elections will take place under
conditions of brutal violation of the constitutional and democratic
order, as the Greek people, after deciding by an overwhelming majority
in the referendum to reject the policy imposed to them, are now called
to decide who will implement the policy they rejected! In such
circumstances, there can be no democratic political solution uniting the
nation. Although formally legal, the elections and their result cannot
be considered as a legitimate and genuine expression of the will of the
people.

The social and political forces that supported the “No” vote are
still in a state of cataplexy, of deep shock after the sudden
transformation of the leader of the anti-memorandum struggle into the
main spearhead of the Creditors and the Americans.

Large sections of the Greek people, angry with the whole political
class, are now thinking of abstaining. But such an attitude, perfectly
understandable from a certain point of view, will not help in the end
but will only precipitate the collapse of democracy. The entire Greek
and international historical experience is pointing to this conclusion,
first of all our own experience of abstention of the Left in the 1946
elections.

Such attitudes will contribute to facilitate the victory of a
political system and a government, which will rule in opposition to the
people. Umable to protect the most vital interests of the Greeks
citizens, they will have lost their legitimacy to govern, even if they
win the elections.

The most probable result in the short or medium term is a
sort of formally legal -but not legitimate- “low intensity” police state
of a “selective character”.

What is to be done

In such conditions, what is really required is the creation of a
broad and credible national and popular front for the defense of the
Greek people and the economic and national rebirth of the country. Such a
front should assimilate, in the way it is constituted, the many and
hard lessons from the total bankruptcy of SYRIZA and AN.ELL., as well as
the ease with which their leaders joined, almost without resistance,
the opposite camp.

This, for a number of reasons, is impossible to achieve in the little
time left until the elections. But if the various “anti-memorandum”
personalities and organized forces realize to a sufficient degree that
Greece faces the specter of a national disaster of incalculable
proportions, if their consciousness of the risk to the homeland will
prevail in their thoughts and dominate other, micro-personal and
micro-party interests and considerations, then what they have to do is
to unite and provide the population at least with the prospect of such a
front in the form of a common ballot in the next elections.

Five personalities, who have a nationwide appeal, everyone of them
with his own advantages and disadvantages, have disagreed with the
capitulation of the government and with its transformation into an
instrument of the Creditors-colonialists. They are, in alphabetical
order, Yanis Varoufakis, Manolis Glezos, Mikis Theodorakis, Zoe
Konstantopoulou and Panagiotis Lafazanis

Why can’t these persons cooperate and support such a ballot in
circumstances of a looming national disaster? In the past the Communist
Party was able to cooperate with New Democracy (under the leadership of
Mitsotakis) against PASOK. SYRIZA was able to cooperate with Independent
Greeks (An.Ell.) or the Bolshevik Lenin with Russian Old Believers
(“Beat together, march separately” was the formula).What are the
colossal differences that prevent such a temporary, even partial,
cooperation, respecting all other differences, when the country is in
decomposition and the most vital interests of the Greek people are
threatened?

There are many others in Greece, whο are distinguished for the
integrity of their character, their selflessness and their seriousness.
Those are the properties we need desperately. These people have
distinguished themselves by their participation in the struggles of
society and of ideas in the most diverse domains of social life, thus
expressing existing social currents and sensitivities in a society
which, being often amorphous, is better expressed in some cases by
individuals and less by social institutions, organizations etc. We know
them and we can find them, if we put aside our enormous -but really so
small- egos, our selfishness and opportunism. These should be the
candidate MPs on the ballots of the front.

Only a caricature of a Front could be formed on the basis of party
and parliamentary hierarchies, or by supposedly uniting organizations
devoid of a genuine social dynamic or serious ideas, thus perpetuating
the “mediocracy” which characterizes our social fabric in the most
diverse areas.

It is unfortunately impossible within 15 days to elaborate a
credible economic program. The lack of such a program is one more of the
things for which the SYRIZA leadership bears enormous, we should say
criminal, responsibility. The absence of such a comprehensive program
has been the Achilles heel of the “anti-memorandum” movement in all its
forms and wings. But, still, there is at least the possibility of
outlining in the remaining time the main principles and guiding ideas of
such a program and of an alternative vision for our country.

Left or Right?

The Front we need to create should stand, somehow,
“over” and “above” the classical division between left and right. This
has to be done not because such a difference does not bear any
significance, as some people claim. This has to be done because we
should try to unite all Greeks, if possible, in an effort to save and
“regenerate” our country.

In Greece, we don’t face just a neoliberal counter-reform program
which provides for the violent deterioration of the situation of the
poorer classes. If we had to confront such a program, it would only be
natural to try to create a class-based, not a national and social front.

An ultra-neoliberal program of course is imposed in Greece. But it is
part of and a consequence of a project of destroying the fundamental
conditions of reproduction of the Greek social formation and of the
Greek nation-state, of establishing a form of “self-destroying debt
colony”. It is also a project leading to the rapid and violent
deterioration of the terms under which Greece participates in the
international division of labor.

This is not happening by accident, as we emphasized above. The
nation-state in Europe represents an embedded institutional identity, a
strong ideological identity, but also the only framework in which there
can be some exercise of democratic control and some level of social
protection. All these qualities make the nation-state a huge obstacle to
the forces that wish to impose a global dictatorship in the concrete,
real conditions we are now facing in Europe and the world.

In such conditions, the defense of the nation is not nationalism. On
the contrary, it is the only way to maintain the dignity of people and
the most basic human, social and political rights and conditions of
existence of all citizens, and in particular the poor and working
classes of society.

No one of course can defend the nation without defending the people,
which we consider more or less identical with the nation, as well as the
other way round. The forces that organize the economic warfare against
Greece, taking advantage, needless to say, of the pre-existing serious
crises of its internal structures, are in fact destroying the
nation-state in the form we have known it, because only in this way can
they finish with democracy and the social welfare state.

It is the (form of the) problem we are confronting that has to define
the means and the tools of addressing it. Communists created in Greece
the largest resistance movement in Hitler’s Europe. They did not name it
a “class”, or “workers’ and peasants’”, or “socialist” front. They
named it the National Liberation Front.

Those who want to fight for the hegemony of their leftist or rightist
ideas, can do so and try to prove within such a front that their ideas
are the most suitable to help organize and constitute the identity of
the struggling nation and the people.

Drachma or Euro

This issue has now become the main issue dividing the country, but also the “anti-memorandum” forces.

The “No” front cannot be a “front for the drachma”, but it should not
also preclude, in all circumstances, the need to resort to a national
currency, a national means of payment, if the necessities of the
struggle and the need to resist foreign pressure and war so requires.

The “No” camp consists of social forces that, at present either want
to stay in the eurozone or want to exit from it. If one were to adopt a
categorical position on this subject, the only result would be to split
apart the unity of the antimemorandum social forces.

But this is not just a political tactic, which someone could
criticize as opportunistic. We need indeed the dialectical synthesis of
the two views, keeping in the arsenal of Greece all weapons available.
We can’t predict now under what conditions, in Greece and in Europe, the
Greek question will be raised again. There is no reason to decide now
what will be our negotiating position in the future. On the opposite, it
is extremely important to study very seriously, prepare ourselves and
prepare the country for all options.

And this has not to do only with the choice of currency. It has to do
with the whole international orientation of Greece, which probably will
have to change, if the need of saving our nation will impose such a
fundamental change. We should say all this very clearly. Greece should
not be taken for granted by anyone.

But if we should leave open all possibilities, we don’t need
to define as of now and in a categorical way what we will do at a given
moment.

Sometimes, the discussion on the currency seems like talking to
someone who had a heart-attack and telling him that he needs to quit
smoking and start eating normally. He should of course do this, but he
should first be saved from the attack!

We must remember that the weapons used against Greece by its“Creditors” are not only -or even mainly- the euro.

Economically, Greece has been attacked through debt. Legally it was
attacked through the imposition of British colonial law and the
jurisdiction of foreign courts, in conjunction with the clearly colonial
terms of the loan agreements it was obliged to sign. Politically, it
has been attacked through a “communication war”.

It is on all these fronts that the country needs to organize its
defense and its counterattack. And at the same time, it has to organize
and struggle for its internal redressing. Without at least the beginning
of efforts and struggles to redress the internal situation, it will be
impossible to resist external pressure and vice-versa. The choice of a
currency has to derive from global strategy, not substitute for its
lack.

Along the way, of course, we may need to change everything, including
the currency and the entire international orientation of the country.
But this has to be done when the need clearly demands it and the Greek
people understands it.

Maybe we are wrong in all that we have said so far. Still we would
like to ask the supporters of the national currency, is the opponent
making a mistake here? Why are the pro-Memorandum forces so anxious to
limit the whole discussion in Greece to the “Euro or Drachma” question
and to portray the entire opposition to the Memoranda and loan
agreements, as the “party of drachma”?

The discussion about what and how we produce, how we survive in
conditions of economic warfare, how we create consumer, production,
small business cooperatives, how we set society again on the path of
production, cooperation, solidarity and assertion, has to be organized
at all levels of society. It has barely started. It certainly precedes
the absolutely necessary debate on the currency. The Greeks know that
the euro is a bad currency and the EU is a very spiteful environment.
But they have no confidence in themselves and in their country, nor in
us. That’s why the majority in the polls say they prefer the euro!
We should all, to the extent that our forces and influence permit, also
propose an electoral-political solution to the Greek people, despite the
enormous difficulties of this task. Mere talk and blaming each other
simply won’t do. The responsibility for the tragic situation we are
experiencing lies not only with the leader of SYRIZA and his associates,
nor only with the old parties and servants of foreign interests. We all
bear a part of the responsibility, each according to the role he has
played, his power and influence. These responsibilities are very
different for all of us but they exist. And everyone will be judged and
very severely indeed.

Athens, September 3, 2015

(translated from Greek)

(*) The decision to call an early election, announced on the 20th of
August by Alexis Tsipras, with the encouragement of the Creditors and
Washington, has found the political forces which still are against the
capitulation in a dire state. Not unity between them, not clear
perception of what is to be done, internal antagonisms for “power”,
inside their camp, no new credible message for the continuation of the
struggle.

The “Left Platform” tendency of SYRIZA, afraid that they would simply
be kicked out of the SYRIZA party lists, decided to form a new party
“Popular Unity”. They formed the (over-centralized) structure of the
party, they wrote the outlines of its program and then called on other
people to cooperate. Such a method provoked a lot of protests and
remorse, but nobody else was really ready or had the will and the
mechanism necessary to participate in the elections. Leaders of “Popular
Unity” decided also that the electoral lists of the new party would be
comprised essentially of the SYRIZA deputies who have disagreed with the
Memorandum, thus excluding a possibility of political and social
enlargement. And they have insisted on adopting a strong position on the
introduction of a national currency for Greece, a point which divides
the anti-memorandum camp.

All this provoked a rather negative atmosphere inside the “No” camp.
The very probable consequence will be a rather low electoral result for
“Popular Unity”, which has proven that it cannot by any means represent,
even a significant part of what was the “No” camp in July.

This article represents the views its writer has supported in a
lot of political talks and deliberations which have taken place in
Greece between the 20th of August and the 3rd of September. But the
question of how to build a front will remain very much in the agenda
after the elections.