By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
As I said in the column
which inaugurated my “Duopoly Watch” series for The
Greanville Post, one of the most important books by the great leader on the
Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was “The
State and Revolution.” Among other things, I noted:
“it deals with the nature of the state apparatus
under capitalism. It is important to understand that the state apparatus never
exists independently of the economic system of the country within which it
stands. Rather it is there to make sure that it, the economic system,
stays firmly in place. The disagreements between political parties in the
capitalist nations come over how best to go about maintaining the ruling
class’s control, the ruling class being those individuals, corporations,
organizations, and interests that have their hands on the levers of economic
power in the nation. In other words, the direct and principal beneficiaries of
the rule of capital.
“Concerning the nature of ‘constitutional
democracy’ under capitalism, Ulyanov himself put
it this way:
‘To decide once every few years which member of
the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament – this
is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in
parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most
democratic republics’ ”.
Now, every once in a while comes along a leftist party, although
pledged to operate within the confines of capitalist “constitutional
democracy,” that truly believes that it can get elected (a), and (b), that it
can really change ruling class control, through the parliamentary system.
Well, Greek lesson 1: what has happened to Syriza and Tsipras
shows, once again that that is not possible. The ruling class is the
ruling class, and short of revolution, as Lenin so rightly noted, it will
always rule, one way or another.
Greek lesson 2: The Greek ruling class seems to be coming
out of the mess in very good shape. They managed to make sure that the
worst of the “austerity” measures, imposed by their brethren in the European
Union, were carried out under the nominal governmental control of a “leftist”
government rather than its “center-right” predecessor. Of course it was the
latter that was largely responsible for presiding over the making of the mess
to begin with, e.g. (a VERY important article): “How Goldman Sachs
Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis: The investment bank made
millions by helping to hide the true extent of the debt, and in the process
almost doubled it,” by Robert B. Reich (who, by
the way, is no socialist).
Please note also, that the tax increases demanded by the European
Union do not seem to be falling on the Greek ruling class (although I may have
missed something there), nor do the demanded “reforms” (read further punishment
for the Greek working class to pay for the ruling class’ mistakes/greed) seem
to include, for example, forcing the Greek billionaires to pay the taxes that
they have avoided for years by shipping their profits overseas.
The upshot of all of this is that the Syriza government has now become the
enforcer for the evermore punitive measures being imposed by the European
Union on the Greek working class.
Greek lesson 3: The international capitalist ruling class (of
which the Greek ruling class is of course a part) is absolutely intent on
showing the people of Italy and Spain what would await them if they were to
elect a left-wing government that would attempt something along the lines of
what Syriza originally intended to do, if we are to take their rhetoric as a
true reflection of intent (at bottom, force a significant amount of loan
forgiveness upon the most irresponsible of the original lenders). In my
view, it is the teaching of this political lesson, even more rather than
the “regardless of who was responsible for incurring them, good people pay off
their debts, donchaknow” lesson, which Angela Merkel and the joint ruling
classes of the EU nations, want to accomplish through the “negotiations.”
There are more lessons for the left in parliamentary so-called
democracies, of course, but to my mind, thanks to Vladimir Ilyich, these are
the most important ones.
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor
Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and
author/co-author/editor/co-
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