James Petras
Introduction: While the Right faithfully
supports the policies and interests of its ruling class supporters, the
Left has systematically betrayed their political platform promises and
deceived its working class, salaried employees, small business and
regional supporters.
Historic reversals have happened in rapid succession by Leftist
leaders, including greater oligarch control over the economy, more
dictatorial political domination by imperial powers (US,EU), increasing
inequalities and poverty, and ‘Leftist’ support for imperial wars.
In some cases leftist leaders have gone beyond their rightist
opponents by passing even more extreme reactionary policies upon
assuming power.
In this essay, we will identify some of the turncoat leftists: The ‘Champions of Betrayal’.
Secondly we will review their policy reversals and the consequences for their working class and rural supporters.
Thirdly, we will present a case study of the world’s worst ‘Left’ traitor today: Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece.
In the final section, we will discuss some of the possible explanations for the trend of political reversals by left leaders.
Turncoat ‘Leftists’ of the Early 21st Century
There are numerous examples of former guerrilla movements, leftist
regimes and political leaders who gained mass popular support on the
promise of radical structural transformations and who turn around to
embrace the interests of their oligarchical and imperial adversaries.
An entire generation of radicals from the 1960’s and ’70’s started
on the left and, by the ’80’s and 90’s ended up in ‘centrist’ and
rightwing regimes - even becoming collaborators with the extreme right
and the CIA.
Former guerrilla fighters, who turned centrist and rightwing, became
Cabinet Ministers or Presidents in Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and
Chile.
El Salvadoran guerrilla commander, Joaquin Villalobos, later
collaborated with the CIA and provided ‘advice’ to the ‘death squad’
President of Colombia.
The list of late 20th century traitors is long and dismal. Their
policy betrayals have caused great hardship for their mass supporters
who suffered socio-economic losses, political repression, arrests,
torture, death and a profound distrust toward ‘left’ intellectuals,
political leaders and their ‘promises’.
The 21st Century: Starting on the Left and Ending on the Right
The first decade of the 21st century witnessed a revival of left regimes and political parties in Europe and Latin America.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), led by the great
peasant leader Manual Marulanda, had 20,000 fighters and millions of
supporters. In 1999, it had advanced to the outskirts of the Capital,
Bogota. The reality today is a dramatic reversal.
In France, the Socialist Party adopted a left program and elected
Francois Hollande as President in 2012. He promised to raise taxes on
the rich to 75% in order to finance a massive jobs program. He promised
to extend progressive labor legislation and to defend national
industries. Today his credibility is near zero.
Throughout Latin America, Leftists were elected to head governments,
including Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador
and El Salvador. With the possible exception of Bolivia and Ecuador,
they have been ousted by their rightwing partners or opponents.
In Spain, Portugal and Greece, new radical leftist parties emerged
with promises to end the brutal European Union-imposed austerity
programs, and launch profound, class-based, structural transformations.
Here history is repeating itself with another series of betrayals.
The Revolutionary Armed of Forces of Colombia (FARC): From Revolution to Surrender
By June 2017, the FARC leadership had disarmed its fighters,
abandoning millions of peasant supporters in regions formerly under
their control. The FARC’s signing of the Peace Pact with the Santos
regime led to neither peace nor a real pact. Dozens of activists are
already being murdered and hundreds of leftists and peasants are fleeing
for their lives from death squads connected to the Santos regime.
Assassinations occurred throughout the negotiation process and
afterwards. Guerrilla fighters, who turned in their arms, now face
kangaroo trials, while peasants who apply for agrarian reform are driven
from their farms. Rank and file FARC fighters and militants are
abandoned with their families in the jungle without homes, jobs and
security from the death squads. US military bases and advisers remain.
The entire socio-economic system is unchanged. Only the Cuba-based
guerrilla ‘leaders’ are guaranteed security, two comfortable seats in
Parliament– which has been denied– and the praise of the US government!
FARC leaders and chief negotiators, Ivan Marquez and Timoleon Jimenez, are clear contenders for the ‘Traitor of the Year Award’.
France’s President Hollande: An Imperial Collaborator Flushed down the Toilet
President Francois Hollande’s tenure was not far behind the FARC’s
betrayal. Elected President of France in 2012 under the Socialist Party,
he promised to ‘tax the rich’ by 75%, extend and deepen workers’
rights, reduce unemployment, revive bankrupt industries, prevent
capitalist flight and end France’s military intervention in Third World
countries.
After a brief flirtation with his campaign rhetoric, President
Hollande went on a pro-business and militarist rampage against his
voters:
First, he deregulated business relations with labor, making it easier and quicker to fire workers.
Second, he reduced business taxes by $40 billion Euros.
Third, he imposed and then extended a draconian state of emergency
following a terrorist incident.
This included the banning of strikes by
workers protesting his anti-labor legislation and the double-digit
unemployment rate.
Fourth, Hollande launched or promoted a series of imperial wars in the Middle East and North and Central Africa.
France under Francois Hollande initiated the NATO bombing of Libya,
the murder of President Gadhafi, the total destruction of that nation
and the uprooting of millions of Libyans and sub-Saharan African
workers. This led to a massive flood of terrified refugees across the
Mediterranean and into Europe with tens of thousands drowning in the
process.
President Holland’s neo-colonial project oversaw the expansion of
French troops into Mali (destabilized by the destruction of Libya) and
the Central African Republic.
A clear promoter of genocide, Hollande sold arms and sent ‘advisers’
to support Saudi Arabia’s grotesque war against impoverished Yemen.
President Hollande joined the US mercenary invasion of Syria,
allowing some of France’s finest nascent jihadis to join in the
slaughter. His colonial ambitions have resulted in the flight of
millions of refugees into Europe and other regions.
By the end of his term of office in 2017, Holland’s popularity had
declined to 4%, the lowest level of electoral approval of any President
in French history! The only rational move he undertook in his entire
regime was to not seek re-election.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras: ‘Traitor of the Year’
Despite the stiff competition from other infamous leftist traitors
around the world, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wins the ‘Global
Traitor of the Year’ award.
Tsipras deserves the label of ‘Global Traitor’ because:
1) He made the quickest and most brutal turn from left to right than any of his venal competitors.
2) He supported Greece’s subjugation to the dictates of the Brussels
oligarchs privatization demands, agreeing to sell its entire national
patrimony, including its infrastructure, islands, mines, beaches,
museums, ports and transports etc.
3) He decreed the sharpest reduction of pensions, salaries and
minimum wages in European history, while drastically increasing the cost
of health care, hospitalization and drugs. He increased VAT, (consumer
taxes) and tax on island imports and farm income while ‘looking the
other way’ with rich tax evaders.
4) Tsipras is the only elected leader to convoke a referendum on
harsh EU conditions, receive a massive mandate to reject the EU plan and
then turn around and betray the Greek voters in less than a week. He
even accepted more severe conditions than the original EU demands!
5) Tsipras reversed his promises to oppose EU sanctions against
Russia and withdrew Greece’s historic support for the Palestinians. He
signed a billion-dollar oil and gas deal with Israel which grabbed oil
fields off the Gaza and Lebanon coast. Tsipras refused to oppose the US
-EU bombing of Syria, and Libya - both former allies of Greece.
Tsipras, as the leader of the supposedly ‘radical left’ SYRIZA Party, leaped from left to right in the wink of an eye.
The first and most revealing indication of his turn to the right was
Tsipras’ support for Greece’s continued membership in the European
Union (EU) and NATO during the formation of SYRIZA (2004).
SYRIZA’s ‘left’ mouthed the usual platitudes accompanying EU
membership, raising vacuous ‘questions’ and ‘challenges’ while talking
of ’struggles’. None of these ‘half pregnant’ phrases made sense to any
observer who understood the power of the German-led oligarchs in
Brussels and their strict adherence to ruling-class imposed austerity.
Secondly, SYRIZA had played a minor role, a best, in the numerous
trade union general strikes and worker and student led direct action in
the run-up to its electoral victory in 2015.
SYRIZA is an electoral party of the lower middle and middle class,
led by upwardly mobile politicos who had few if any ties to shop-floor
factory and agrarian struggles. Their biggest struggles seemed to
revolve around internal factional wars over seats in Parliament!
SYRIZA was a loose collection of squabbling groups and factions,
including, ‘ecology movements’, Marxist sects and traditional politicos
who had floated over from the moribund, and corrupt PanHellenic
Socialist Party (PASOK). SYRIZA expanded as a party at the beginning of
the 2008 financial crisis when the Greek economy collapsed. From 2004 to
2007 SYRIZA increased its presence in Parliament from 3.5% to only 5%.
Its lack of participation in the mass struggles and its internal
squabbles led to a decline in the 2009 legislative elections to 4.6% of
seats.
Tsipras ensured that SYRIZA would remain in the EU, even as its
self-styled ‘left wing’, the Left Platform, led by ‘Marxist academic’
Panagiotis Lafazanis, promised to “keep an open door to leaving the EU”.
Alexis Tsipras was first elected to the Athens city council, where he
publicly attacked corrupt and demagogic rightwing colleagues while
taking private lessons in power from the oligarchy.
In 2010, the rightwing PASOK and far right New Democracy agreed to
an EU dictated debt bail-out leading to massive job losses and the
slashing of wages and pensions. SYRIZA, while outside of power,
denounced the austerity program and gave lip-service to the massive
protests. This posturing allowed SYRIZA to quadruple its representation
in parliament to 16% in the 2012 election.
Tsipras welcomed corrupt ex-PASOK members and financial advisers
into SYRIZA, including Yanis Varoufakis, who spent more time
motorcycling to upscale bars then supporting the unemployed workers in
the streets.
EU ‘memorandums’ dictated the privatization of the economy, as well
as deeper cuts in education and health. These measures were implemented
in shock waves from 2010 through 2013. As an opposition party, SYRIZA
increased its seats 27% in 2013 … a scant 3% behind the ruling rightwing
New Democracy. In September 2014, SYRIZA approved the Thessalonika
Program promising to reverse austerity, rebuild and extend the welfare
state, restart the economy, defend public enterprises, promote tax
justice, uphold democracy (direct democracy no less!) and implement a
‘national plan’ to increase employment.
The entire debate and all the resolutions turned out to be a
theatrical farce! Once in power, Tsipras never implemented a single
reform promised in the Program. To consolidate his power as head of
SYRIZA, Tsipras dissolved all factions and tendencies in the name of a
‘unified party’ - hardly a step toward greater democracy!
Under ‘Dear Uncle Alexis’ control, SYRIZA became an authoritarian
electoral machine despite its left posturing. Tsipras insisted that
Greece would remain within the EU and approved a ‘balanced budget’
contradicting all his phony campaign promises of public investments to
‘extend the welfare state’!
A new EU bailout was followed by a jump in unemployment to over 50%
among youth and 30% of the entire labor force. SYRIZA won the January
25, 2015 parliamentary elections with 36.3% of the electorate. Lacking a
single vote to secure a majority in parliament, SYRIZA formed an
alliance with the far-right ANEL party, to which Tsipras gave the
Defense Ministry.
Immediately upon taking office, Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras
announced his plans to renegotiate Greece’s bailout and ‘austerity
program’ with the EU oligarchy and the IMF. This phony posturing could
not hide his impotence: Since SYRIZA was committed to staying in the EU,
austerity would continue and another onerous ‘bailout’ would follow.
During ‘internal meetings’, members of SYRIZA’s ‘Left Platform’ in the
Cabinet called for leaving the EU, reneging the debt and forging closer
ties with Russia. Despite being totally ignored and isolated, they
stayed on as impotent ‘token leftist’ Cabinet Ministers.
With Tsipras now free to impose neo-liberal market policies,
billions of Euros flowed out of Greece and its own banks and businesses
remained in crisis. Both Tsipras and the ‘Left Platform’ refused to
mobilize SYRIZA’s mass base, which had voted for action and demanded an
end to austerity. The media’s gadfly, Finance Minister Varoufakis, put
on a sideshow with grand theatrical gestures of disapproval. These were
openly dismissed by the EU-IMF oligarchy as the antics of an impotent
Mediterranean clown.
Superficial as ever, the Canadian, US, European left-wing academics
were largely unaware of SYRIZA’s political history, its opportunist
composition, electoral demagogy and total absence from real class
struggle. They continued to blather about SYRIZA as Greece’s ‘radical
left’ government and attended its PR functions. When SYRIZA flagrantly
embraced the EU’s most savage cutbacks against Greek workers and their
living standards affecting everyday life, the highly paid, distinguished
professors finally spoke of SYRIZA’s ‘mistakes’ and ladled the ‘radical
left’ from this stew of opportunists! Their grand speaking tours to
Greece were over and they flitted off to support other ’struggles’.
As the summer of 2015 approached, Prime Minister Tsipras moved ever
closer to the entire EU austerity agenda. ‘Dear Alexis’ dumped Finance
Minister Varoufakis, whose histrionics had irked Germany’s Finance
Minister. Euclid Tsakalotos , another ‘radical’ leftist, took over as
Finance Minister, but turned out to be a malleable lieutenant for
Tsipras, willing to implement any and all EU-imposed austerity measures
without the antics.
By July 2015, Tsipras and SYRIZA accepted a harsh austerity program
dictated by the EU. This rejected SYRIZA’s entire Thessalonika Program
proclaimed a year earlier. The entire population, and SYRIZA’s rank and
file members grew angrier, demanding an end to austerity. While
approving a ‘belt tightening’ austerity program for his electoral mass
base throughout the summer of 2015, Tsipras and his family lived in
luxury in a villa generously loaned by a Greek plutocrat, far from the
soup lines and hovels of the unemployed and destitute.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras implemented policies earning him the
‘Traitor of the Year Award’. His was a duplicitous strategy: On July 5,
2015, he convoked a referendum on whether to accept the EU’s bailout
conditions. Thinking his ‘pro-EU’ supporters would vote ‘Yes’, he
intended to use the referendum as a mandate to impose new austerity
measures. Tsipras misjudged the people: Their vote was an overwhelming
repudiation of the harsh austerity program dictated by the oligarchs in
Brussels.
Over 61% of the Greek people voted ‘no’ while merely 38%voted in
favor of the bailout conditions. This was not limited to Athens: A
majority in every region of the country rejected the EU dictates - an
unprecedented outcome! Over 3.56 million Greeks demanded an end to
austerity. Tsipras was ‘admittedly surprised’ . . . and disappointed! He
secretly and stupidly thought the referendum would give him a free hand
to impose austerity. He put on his usual grin as the voting results
were announced.
Less than a week later, on July 13, Tsipras renounced the results of
his own referendum and announced his government’s support for the EU
bailout. Perhaps to punish the Greek voters, Tsipras backed an even
harsher austerity scheme than the one rejected in his referendum! He
drastically slashed public pensions, imposed massive regressive tax
hikes and cut public services by $12 billion euros. Tsipras agreed to
the infamous ‘Judas memorandum’ of July 2015, which increased the
regressive general consumer tax (VAT) to 23%, a 13% food tax, a sharp
increase in medical and pharmaceutical costs and tuition fees, and
postponed the retirement age by five years to 67.
Tsipras continued on his ‘historic’ rampage over the suffering Greek
people throughout 2016 and 2017. His regime privatized over 71,500
public properties, including the historic patrimony. Only the Acropolis
was spared the auction block…. for now! The resulting unemployment drove
over 300,000 skilled and educated Greeks to migrate. Pensions slashed
to 400 Euros led to malnutrition and a three-fold rise in suicides.
Despite these grotesque social consequences the German bankers and
the regime of Angela Merkel refused to reduce the debt payments. Prime
Minister Tsipras’ groveling had no effect.
Sharp tax hikes on farm fuels and transport to tourist islands led
to constant marches and strikes in cities, factories, fields and
highways.
By January 2017 Tsipras had lost half of his electorate. He
responded with repression: gassing and beating elderly Greeks protesting
their poverty pensions. Three-dozen trade unionists, already acquitted
by the courts, were re-tried by Tsipras’ prosecutors in a vicious ’show
trial’. Tsipras supported the US-NATO attacks on Syria, the sanctions
against Russia and the billion-dollar energy and military agreements
with Israel.
Short of the Nazi occupation (1941-44) and Anglo-Greek civil war of
(1945-49), the Greek people had not experienced such a precipitous
decline of their living standards since the Ottomans. This catastrophe
occurred under the Tsipras regime, vassal to the Brussels oligarchy.
European, Canadian and US leftist academic tourists had ‘advised’
SYRIZA to remain in the EU.
When the disastrous consequences of their
‘policy advice’ became clear… they merely turned to advising other
’struggles’ with their phony ’socialist forums’.
Conclusions
The betrayals by ‘Leftist’ and ‘radical leftist’ leaders are partly
due to their common practices as politicians making pragmatic deals in
parliament. In other cases, former extra-parliamentary and guerrilla
leaders were faced with isolation and pressure from neighboring ‘left’
regimes to submit to imperial ‘peace accords’, as in the case of the
FARC. Confronting the massive build-up of the US supplied and advised
armies of the oligarchs, they folded and betrayed their mass supporters.
The electoral framework within the EU encouraged leftist
collaboration with class enemies - especially German bankers, NATO
powers, the US military and the IMF.
From its origins SYRIZA refused to break with the EU and its
authoritarian structure. From its first day of government, it accepted
even the most demonstrably illegal private and public debts accumulated
by the corrupt right-wing PASOK and New Democracy regimes. As a result
SYRIZA was reduced to begging.
Early on SYRIZA could have declared its independence, saved its
public resources, rejected its predecessors’ illegal debts, invested its
savings in new jobs programs, redefined its trade relations,
established a national currency and devalued the drachma to make Greece
more flexible and competitive. In order to break the chains of vassalage
and foreign oligarch imposed austerity, Greece would need to exit the
EU, renounce its debt and launch a productive socialist economy based on
self-managed co-operatives.
Despite his electoral mandate, the Greek Prime Minister Tsipras
followed the destructive path of Soviet leader Michel Gorbachev,
betraying his people in order to continue down the blind ally of
submission and decay.
While several leaders offer stiff competition for the ‘Traitor of
the Year Award’, Alexis Tsipras’ betrayal has been longer, more profound
and continues to this day. He broke more promises and reversed more
popular mandates (elections and referendums) more quickly than any other
traitor. Moreover nothing short of a generation will allow the Greeks
to recover left politics. The left has been devastated by the monstrous
lies and complicity of Tsipras’ former ‘left critics’.
Greece’s accumulated debt obligations will require at least a
century to play out - if the country can even survive. Without question,
Alexis Tsipras is the ‘Traitor of the Year’ by unanimous vote!!!
