{"id":1289,"date":"2019-03-27T04:06:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2019-03-27T04:06:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:06:04","slug":"a-gramscian-party-in-a-non-gramscian-world-an-interview-with-paul-mason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1289","title":{"rendered":""A Gramscian party in a non-Gramscian world." An interview with Paul Mason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Sakalis (AS)<\/strong>:
\nAt what moment did you and Theopi Skarlatos
\ndecide to make this
\ndocumentary?<\/em><\/p>\n

Paul Mason<\/strong> (PM):<\/strong>\u00a0Well on January 25, when Tsipras
\nwas speaking in Propylaea, we had just finished making a 15-minute short
\ndocumentary about the election and we just looked at each other and said \u2018this
\nis going to be amazing\u2019 \u2013 the scale of the victory, the fact that they were
\nclearly going to be able to rule with ANEL
\nas a majority government, when most people had thought, probably not. <\/p>\n

And what we found in those 25 days of election campaigning
\nwas a much deeper level of support and identification, certainly than I at
\nleast had realised, when I went into some of the so-called \u2018fortress villages\u2019
\nof Korinthos, to see the way that Syriza swung. One of the villages we filmed
\nin went for something like 37% Syriza, where before it had been a New Democracy
\nand PASOK stronghold. So we just thought: we\u2019ve got to tell this story. We all underestimated the extent to which Germany was prepared to burn its own reputation in the pursuit of, let\u2019s be clear, smashing a left wing government. That\u2019s what it was doing.<\/p>\n

And originally we thought that we were mainly going to
\ntell it through the eyes of people \u2013 so we filmed a lot of people, a lot of different
\ncommunities \u2013 not just Keratsini, Piraeus, but lots of villages. We went all
\nover at first, but it gradually dawned on us that there was a very compelling
\nstory happening inside Syriza and inside the Maximos mansion which we struggled \u2013 we struggled for a long time \u2013 to get into. Eventually we got enough access
\nto tell that story<\/p>\n

AS<\/strong>: When they
\nwere elected, what were your initial thoughts, \u201cthis is a new dawn for the
\nleft,\u201d or, \u201coh my god this is going to be a disaster\u201d?<\/em><\/p>\n

PM:<\/strong> Somewhere
\nin between, because clearly the \u2018new dawn for the left\u2019 aspect was true. This
\nwas an unusual situation where centrist politics had destroyed itself, and if
\nyou remember what it was like in 2012\/13 when fascists were roaming the streets,
\nbreaking up theatre performances, you had the Delta
\npolice openly shouting fascist slogans into the faces of anti-fascists
\nthey\u2019d just captured. That couldn\u2019t go on. And I think this is an unfolding
\nstory. We both understood that it was going to be one episode in an unfolding
\nstory \u2013 either Syriza would come to some sort of compromise with Europe, or
\nthere would an almighty clash. But I don\u2019t think either of us really knew how
\nbig the clash would be. <\/p>\n

Because you can only believe what people tell you and the
\nAmericans were saying, \u2018Everything\u2019s going to be alright\u2019. Syriza\u2019s own people
\nwere saying, \u2018Look it\u2019s going to be tough but we think we can get a deal\u2019.
\nGreek insiders were saying \u2018Of course there\u2019s going to be a climbdown', and on the
\nbasis of that climbdown, as Varoufakis demonstrated on February 20, there\u2019ll be
\na deal. But I think we all underestimated the extent to which Germany was
\nprepared to burn its own reputation in the pursuit of, let\u2019s be clear, smashing
\na left wing government. That\u2019s what it was doing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

AS<\/strong>: Do you think
\nsome people in Syriza deluded themselves into thinking it was easier than it
\nwas?<\/em><\/p>\n

PM:<\/strong> No.
\nClearly on the evidence, they had the wrong estimation of how hard it would be.
\nBut I think this was not \u2018deluding yourself\u2019, but originally a misreading of
\nthe balance of forces. Obama stood for 20 minutes in public speaking to Varoufakis.
\nI don\u2019t think he ever met Gordon Brown once, except maybe in a corridor, and
\ncertainly not in public. American presidents don\u2019t do something like that
\nunless it\u2019s to send a signal to European hardline austerity powers, to back
\noff. And the Greeks read that signal. <\/p>\n

But what I think they misread was the signal constantly
\ncoming from Wolfgang Sch\u00e4uble, <\/strong>and the Finns, and the Dutch \u2013 and they are still coming
\nfrom there now, you know – to the effect that debt relief is impossible. <\/p>\n

However, I don\u2019t think that the structure of Syriza
\nhelped. Because when Theopi shot the Syriza Central Committee meeting straight after
\nthe first climbdown on February 20, and I saw the footage she shot, it dismayed
\nme – the number of old, grey-haired middle-aged men sitting at the front of
\nthat committee, because I hadn\u2019t really seen that aspect of Syriza before. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that grey-haired middle-aged men have no right
\nto be in politics. But it did look – coming from covering Podemos, having
\ncovered Evo Morales\u2019 movement in Bolivia, for example – that,
\ngosh, this is a very traditional, very hierarchical, quite deferential party.
\nAnd I didn\u2019t join the dots at that point. But, as the moderate wing of Syriza,
\nthe Dragasakis
\nwing, started to set the agenda in the negotiations, you could then see, quite
\nlogically, that if people have worked all their lives, have struggled under the
\njunta, some people had even been in jail and worse… and what you want above
\nall is a left government, then you\u2019re going to argue, as they did argue, \u2018Let\u2019s
\ndo a deal with Europe and let\u2019s govern for a bit.\u2019 \u2018Let\u2019s
\ndo a deal with Europe and let\u2019s govern for a bit.\u2019 <\/p>\n

That was a very strong impetus. But having covered the
\nstreets in 2011, where you almost never met people like that, I don\u2019t think I had
\nrealised quite how strong that tendency was within Syriza. Of course, you could
\nsay that within Podemos, there are unofficial hierarchies. But once you\u2019ve got
\na party that is quite keen on hierarchies, then it is rather easy for that party
\nto impose, through discipline, the compromises it eventually made.<\/p>\n

Celebrations in Athens after the OXI vote. Demotix\/Konstantinos Pashalis. All rights reserved.\n<\/p>\n

AS<\/strong>:<\/strong> One of Syriza\u2019s main selling points
\nwas the idea of new politics, of doing politics differently, \u201cWe\u2019re not going
\nto be like the establishment parties.\u201d Was there anything you found while
\nfilming Syriza which differentiated them from other parties and politicians you
\nhave previously covered?<\/em><\/p>\n

PM:<\/strong>\u00a0There were massive differences. However much, retrospectively, people want to say that they sold
\nout, or they shouldn\u2019t have surrendered or they should have left the euro, one
\nthing you cannot say systematically is that they were in any way captured by
\nthe elite, or by the state, or by the oligarchy. One
\nthing you cannot say systematically is that they were in any way captured by
\nthe elite or by the state or by the oligarchy. <\/p>\n

In fact, what I\u2019ve argued is that they made the opposite
\nmistake. In order to avoid being captured by the state, they never really took
\npart in it. So they would run ministries from the top floor. The top floor
\nwould be full of Syriza people, often journalists actually, often people who\u2019d
\nbeen party activists, so not enough lawyers, not enough experienced civil
\nservants, and then the civil service would be on the floor below. <\/p>\n

And what that meant was that the civil service couldn\u2019t
\nspy on you, or it was more difficult for them to spy on you and, they couldn\u2019t
\nsabotage you. But neither could you really control them. So that\u2019s the first
\nthing I\u2019d say about Syriza, and I think it is a very underexplored aspect in current
\ncritiques of Syriza: how they actually used and inhabited the state. <\/p>\n

As for the level of personal capture, absolutely not. In
\na way, as a journalist with a certain influence from abroad, I know full well
\nhow easy it is to get sucked unwittingly into networks of influence. It\u2019s the
\nusual things like, \u2018Come to my villa, let\u2019s have a beer.\u2019 And before you know
\nit, you\u2019re in a network of influence.<\/p>\n

What I saw was that Syriza\u2019s politicians were scrupulous
\nin their understanding of that octopus that you\u2019re trying to avoid. Now of
\ncourse, it is a struggle. Once the octopus is locked onto you with its
\ntentacles, it\u2019s a struggle to get the tentacles off again, and again. But I
\nthink they did struggle. I don\u2019t think you could systematically accuse them of
\nthat. <\/p>\n

But obviously inside Syriza there is this huge debate full
\nof recriminations, where they do feel some ministers did get too close. The
\nother thing is the question of prioritisation. As Euclid Tsakalotos actually
\nsays to me in an interview that will come out later, probably over the weekend,
\n\u2018Yeah, we didn\u2019t do enough on the oligarchy and corruption.\u2019 Even if they
\ndidn\u2019t get captured by the oligarchy and corruption, they now admit that they
\ndidn\u2019t do enough on that. Yet the ideal time to fight oligarchy and corruption
\nis when the masses are with you, and everybody\u2019s overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

AS<\/strong>: You\u2019ve
\ndescribed Syriza as a Gramscian party in a non-Gramscian world. Can you
\nexplain what you mean?<\/em><\/p>\n

PM:<\/strong> Gramsci
\nargued that you can\u2019t just conquer the state: instead, you have to take the
\ntrenches that are defending the state within civil society. And Syriza knew
\nthat: they were effectively founded on that understanding. No matter how many people you mobilise on the streets to
\nhelp you, it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

But there are two differences. So what they came up with
\n\u2013 via Poulantzas \u2013 is the idea of
\nthe disciplined democratic party and the independent mass movement. So the
\nfirst thing that\u2019s changed from the Gramscian world is that those mass
\nmovements are networked and don\u2019t really want to articulate within the party.
\nYou never saw people outside Syriza\u2019s HQ saying \u2018please let us in! Please
\ninteract with the masses!\u2019 Those networks, whether it\u2019s Exarcheia, whether it\u2019s the
\ndockworkers, it\u2019s not the same. That\u2019s the first thing. <\/p>\n

The second thing is that the state has changed. The whole
\nGramscian problem was to answer the question: how do you avoid just attacking
\nthe state, and civil society rising up against you, as, for example, in Italy
\nunder fascism. The problem here is that the state doesn\u2019t control the economy.
\nThe European Central Bank controls the economy. So, no matter how much of the
\nstate you take and no matter how many people you mobilise on the streets to
\nhelp you, it doesn\u2019t matter, because they can\u2019t influence the ultimate power,
\nwhich is Frankfurt and Brussels. I think that\u2019s what I mean by the Gramscian
\nparty in a non-Gramscian world.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this article then please consider liking Can Europe Make it?<\/strong><\/em> on Facebook and following us on Twitter @oD_Europe<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Sakalis (AS): At what moment did you and Theopi Skarlatos decide to make this documentary? Paul Mason (PM):\u00a0Well on January 25, when Tsipras was speaking in Propylaea, we had just finished making a 15-minute short documentary about the election and we just looked at each other and said \u2018this is going to be amazing\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}