Portside

The September election was a consequence of fundamentally undemocratic maneuvers by Tsipras designed (in the words of the DEA, a Popular Unity component) to “confirm the balance of political forces and reestablish the viability of the SYRIZA-led government before workers and popular classes realize through their own bitter experience the actual content of the agreement that was signed with the creditors on July 13.”

In upcoming votes for the European Union's most indebted countries, the left will have to battle both the forces of austerity and a resurgent xenophobic right. The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. The response of the EU is massive cutbacks in government spending, widespread layoffs, and double-digit tax hikes on consumers.

Across Europe, people are fed up with a monetary union that is inefficient because it is so profoundly undemocratic. This is why the battle for rescuing Greece has now turned into a battle for Europe’s integrity, soul, rationality and democracy by setting up a Pan-European political movement, inspired by the Athens Spring, that will work toward Europe’s democratization.

The EU's belt-tightening measures are cutting holes in Europe's social-safety net. Austerity as an economic strategy is more than just throwing a scare into countries that, exhausted by years of cutbacks and high unemployment, are thinking of changing course. It's laying the groundwork for the triumph of multinational corporate capitalism - undermining the social contract between labor and capital that's characterized much of Europe for the past two generations.

Following the resignation August 20th of Greek Prime Minister Alex Tsipras and the announcement of snap parliamentary elections, 25 Syriza lawmakers who opposed the recent bailout deal formed a new Popular Unity Party and will challenge Tsipras and Syriza in September elections. Former Syriza Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis will head the new party. With its 25 members, the Popular Unity Party becomes the third largest party in the Greek parliament.

Any country that would challenge neoliberalism inevitably will face the assorted weapons of international capital. The central question, then, is whether a government is “willing to mobilize its people on behalf of the policies that meet the needs of people.” And this was the question I posed about Syriza in 2013: “do the stances taken by the Syriza leadership foster or weaken the movements from below?

The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece's Surrender - as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets (and in red). Read and weep.

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The future demands a proud Greece within the Eurozone and at the heart of Europe. This future demands that Greeks say a big NO on Sunday, that we stay in the Euro Area, and that, with the power vested upon us by that NO, we renegotiate Greece's public debt as well as the distribution of burdens between the haves and the have nots.

An austerity crisis continues to be imposed by European bankers on Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, among others. A catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression has been forced upon Greece for over five years under the deceptive description of a bailout. Now the banks are demanding even more, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that Germany will not be blackmailed by Greece, demanding a deal before financial markets reopen next Monday.