Black days

The black day July 13, 2015. Greece can claim a single historical precedent: August 4, 1914, when the German Social-Democratic Party in the Berlin Reichstag spelled the beginning of the tragedy of the twentieth century, a tragedy whose consequences are still being felt even today.
And yet today, as then, the whole catastrophe had been preceded by dozens if not hundreds of oaths of loyalty to the values of socialism and implacable opposition to the blackmail from the right, capital and the bourgeois. “Never again war”, they promised then; “I will never be another Papademos,” they told us.
But, alas, our fine bureaucrats soon caved in to the pressure; they voted then for the war credits, and they consented today to the transformation of Greece into a debt colony – naturally, still affirming that they had ‘avoided the worst’ and still promising to return soon to the right path.
Of course, we know that the course of events is different. Not only have they not returned to their socialist past, they have distanced themselves further and further from their roots, to reach a final crossing of the class Rubicon and turn themselves into good loyal managers of the capitalist system and its barbarism.
However, be careful. The march of the bureaucrats towards their total degradation and their utter betrayal of their youthful aspirations has, and continues to have, its own implacable logic. To arrive at its eventual infamy, the Social-Democracy had not only to purge from its ranks the unrepentant champions of the ‘red lines’ of its past, but also to exterminate them! In fact, it was a leading minister – the bloodhound Noske – who bombarded the working-class living quarters of the German cities, drowned in blood the revolt of the Spartakus League, assassinated Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and set the stage for the emergence and the final triumph of the Nazi monster.
And now? Can it be that all this is just ancient history with no relevance to our own ‘postmodern’ epoch? When you look at all that has been happening since the infamous Brussels Accord was signed, no one can dare say that history isn’t repeating itself. The heads of Zoe and Lafazanis [Zoe Kanstantinou, speaker of the Greek parliament, and Panayotis Lafazanis, leader of Syriza’s Left Platform – both ‘betes noires’ in the eyes of Greek reaction] are no longer demanded just by their habitual class enemies, but also and above all by their own comrades of yesterday. And unfortunately it is these latter who are distinguishing themselves today by the same ferocious hatred as has been shown over the last hundred years by the likes of the various Noskes who fill the history of the Social-Democracy.
So let’s take care lest history repeat itself yet again, not necessarily as farce but also again as tragedy. Just like then, so too today things can happen, and have already happened, which yesterday seemed impossible, inconceivable: things which are beyond human understanding, such as their comrades of yesterday making common cause with their class enemies to suppress those ‘unrepentant romantics’.
However, today as then the stakes are of such vital historic importance that we have a duty to put aside as fast as possible our current bewilderment and confusion – before it is too late, not just for our fellow citizens and the Greek left, but also for the sake of the workers and the left throughout Europe.
This article has been excerpted from: ‘Black days: August 4th,1914 Germany and July 13th, 2015 Greece’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org