We, who sign this text, members of SYRIZA-PS, members with a shorter or longer journey in the radical and renewing Left, but also members who have joined recently, and indeed in times of electoral defeat and political retreat, are deeply concerned about the present and above all the future of our party. We all realize that SYRIZA-PS is on the run. Until recently, many of us harbored the hope or delusion that a legitimate and institutionally guaranteed confrontation was taking place within SYRIZA, which could be resolved through collective democratic processes. A common denominator in our concerns today is the collective sense that we belong to a party that tends not to be, on any political grounds, associated with the Left. Everything we knew about the character and social priorities of SYRIZA is changing, changing violently and unilaterally.
@ Despite all this, or precisely for all that we live, the way out is Left.
# For the bitterness and disappointment of the double electoral defeat of SYRIZA in May-June 2023. Which should have been followed by the collective search for the causes, to draw up the strategy of withdrawal, but it was succeeded by concern and anger at the denial of expectation. Emotions are widespread among the members and friends of SYRIZA, especially after the problematic development of the presidential election, regardless of how they manage it.
# For the resignation trends and departures, which intensify every day, now that a cycle of electoral contests is closing with the discouraging results of the self-governing elections for SYRIZA. And we can no longer watch them passively.
@ Our belief that there is a way out is not an obsession, it is a life attitude, our own tried and tested way to resist and overthrow the dominance of the Right, the threat of the extreme right, the inequalities that grow, the discriminations that solidify.
It is not because this is how we used to be from long ago, but because this is what today’s needs, today’s disputes, everyday problems and modern global threats, current contradictions demand.
Because this is the only way we can hope and envision, plan from today the change that society and our lives need, socialism with freedom and democracy.
@ Developments refute daily even the most well-intentioned moods:
# Due to the unacceptable changes in the statute, which we also failed to prevent, even though we fought and many and many of us voted against them, it had an operatic ending, which is developing into a drama of the total transformation of SYRIZA into an unrecognized leader party, with the mercy of God, a president, source of all powers, who exercises leadership “directly”, without feeling the need to convene the elected collective party bodies.
# The self-evident request for an account and assessment of the three consecutive electoral contests, which resulted in strategic defeats, is rejected by referring to the invisible future with a bunch of pretexts.
@ Instead, with coup-like leadership statements, the intention to repeat the same choices, which have already led us to painful results, is confirmed:
# The most manageable election defeat of 2019 was met with a dash forward, resulting in a liquidation of SYRIZA to become the “great democratic party”. With the well-known results of the collapse of the voter turnout four years later.
# In 2023, without a trace of political imagination, it is decided to implement the same “saving” strategy. Without the slightest discussion anywhere. After the disappointing appearance in the self-governing elections, with some bright exceptions, this “big idea” tends to end in an unconditional association, some even envision a merger, of a now weakened party with PASOK-KINAL. In a political parody, occupying the void of alliance strategy.
# There is no doubt that the tight-knit group of executives surrounding St. Kasselakis, with his consent, is leading SYRIZA to mutate into an apolitical formation, unrelated to any version of SYRIZA or even SYRIZA-PS. By evoking prehistoric theories of capital and labor cooperation and attributing to capital the status of a tool for combating inequalities, he tends to suggest new methods of more effectively extracting surplus value from the exploitation of labor power. Thus proposing a form of supporter of “entrepreneurship” instead of a party in the service of workers.
# And he attempts to do so by consciously referring to the Greek calendars in every collective attempt to assess the progress so far. We are reminded almost daily that the unanimously decided November conference will not take place in the foreseeable future.
# The new leadership does not act as a presidency, a one-person body with statutory commitments towards the collective, but as an owner of a position of power, which protects it like the apple of an eye from collective control.
@ Convinced of the historical significance of the founding convention of SYRIZA as a coalition of political forces of the broad Left, from the left social democracy to the radical left, we will not be able to coexist harmoniously in the same party and be represented by a leadership that files for divorce from any political reasoning related to the Left, its values, ideas, ethos and style.
@ It does not suit us to brag with her, that there is a magic key to government power, held by the charismatic leader. A condition for there to be a prospect of claiming it again from the Left, is to rebuild from the low percentages we have been led to by a reliable political body:
# with seriously worked out program of radical changes
# with a reliable and stable policy of alliances, which will not be simply proclaimed, but will be consistently built in the central political scene, at the local and regional level and in the field of social movements. And it will lead to progressive programmatic convergences with neighboring political forces through the strengthening of the left and not by its unconditional surrender to plans foreign to its own program.
@ The myth of the leader who will defeat Mitsotakis in a duel is either a delusion or an outright fraud. In both versions it prevents us from regaining the necessary credibility based on a solid leftist identity, distinct from the side of the many, the social forces to which we refer:
with a clear class position in favor of the workers and the popular classes
with a clear economic and fiscal policy against inequalities
with an alternative paradigm of production and consumption
with the strategic goal of structural reforms that change the existing organization of society
with bold radical policy to tackle climate change focusing on just transition policies to the green economy
by regaining the close relationship with the rights defense movements (primarily of refugees/equals and anti-racism, of the LGBTI+ community, of the disabled, with the youth anti-authoritarian movement)
with strong ties to the feminist movement
with organic ties to the movements of the new generation, its expectations and struggles for a livable today and a better tomorrow designed with its own participation
with clear positions on the distinction between state and church.
Finally, with a clear strategic vision for the Europe of the peoples, with a stable European orientation in an organic relationship and coordination with the European Left
Defense of the country’s sovereign rights through a foreign policy of good neighborliness, guided by recession, the pursuit of peace and disarmament, free from the influences of nationalism, even when clothed in a “patriotic” mantle.
@ Our opposition to the current leadership team and the strategy of mutation is not an ordinary intra-party confrontation, it is of an identity nature. The invocation of unity cannot be done at the expense of the Left. It is in the territory of the Left that it is sought.
SYRIZA cannot be the thuggery and the brazenness of the owner’s spirit, which decrees “whoever disagrees, leave”. It is all of us who founded it, believed in it, promoted it as a contender for the government, a refuge for the many, for those “from below”, an opponent of the extreme right-wing populism that is on guard.
@ Our intention and goal is to ensure a political space capable of defending and promoting the identity, character, values, ideas and political proposals of the Left, open to the tens of thousands of women and men of the Left, of ecology, of feminist movement, youth movements, social movements, who feel the need to discuss and act together for its present and future, for their own present and future, either participating in it, or following its course, without abandoning their current choices for the time being. A common place capable of inspiring optimism and mobilizing those who are led to resignation, but also the “abstention crowd”, fueled by the mistaken belief that there is nothing to expect from politics. While almost everything depends on our participation in its processes and social movements.
