Ponencia presentada en el Panel “Las ocupaciones obreras y la autogestión a lo largo de la historia –vínculos con el presente. II Encuentro Euro - Mediterráneo “La Economía de los trabajadorxs” - VIOME - 28/29/30 Octubre 2016. Participantes: Francesca Gabbriellini (Italia), Milos Vlaisavljevic (Croacia), Ozgur Narin (Turquía), Alan Tuckman y Tom Unterrainer (Reino Unido) y Mario Hernandez (Argentina).

2016 is shaping up to be a year of social movements: Black Lives Matter, trans-equity, teachers and workers struggles. It is also an election year, and one candidate, Bernie Sanders, has activists and organizers across the country “feeling the bern.” But is the enthusiasm justified, will electing good politicians lead to substantial change?

The case of Kshama Sawant shows that no matter how good the candidate, business as usual rules in elected office.

This article is part of an ongoing series called “Socialist faces in high places” looking at the left in relation to the electoral path and state power.

Syriza’s rise to power elicited widespread praise from the left internationally, inspiring renewed enthusiasm for the possibilities and promise of “mass left” party building in and outside the United States. At a rally celebrating Syriza’s electoral victory in Spain, Pablo Iglesias, secretary general of the Spanish anti-austerity party Podemos, declared that “the sun of hope rose over Greece.”

Yet “the sun of hope” began to set on Greece almost as quickly as it rose. Shortly after taking office, Syriza, the “Coalition of the Radical Left,” formed a coalition government with the right-wing, anti-immigrant Independent Greeks (ANEL) party, followed only months later by the predictable surrender of the government to a new round of harsh austerity imposed by Greece’s creditors.

Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy then as a farce. A case in point is that in South Africa sections of the left are once again calling for a mass workers’ party (MWP) to be formed to contest elections – this they believe will bring us closer to revolution. History says otherwise.

Of course the new calls for a MWP stem from the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) breaking from the African National Congress (ANC). As an outcome NUMSA is exploring the possibility of setting up a MWP to contest elections. Many Marxist and leftist influenced organisations, but also cadres within NUMSA, are therefore providing reasons why activists should be interested in such a party.

Across Europe, the left is excited by Syriza topping the polls in the Greek election. Some on the left have gone so far as to suggest the election itself will mark the end of austerity policies, in the terminology of the Anglo left, an end to the idea that There Is No Alternative (TINA).

Another indication that something of significance is happening is that ahead of the election a new wave of capital flight has started from Greece with an estimated 8 billion transferred out of the country over the last few weeks. From an anarchist, non electoralist perspective we might hope that Syriza’s election represents the high water mark of the swing to electoralism that came out of the defeat of mass resistance to the imposition of the crisis. That won’t be today or tomorrow, it will take a period of weeks for Syriza to have been in power long enough to demonstrate that the problem with the old electoral left was not reducible to corrupt social democrats and lying politicians. Rather it is in the nature of the electoral system, a system that takes in young idealist transformers and spits out older, corrupt defenders of the status quo.

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