If you want a cohesive understanding of the situation in Greece, the election happening on Sunday, and the dilemmas and possibilities of political and social transformation today, this is the (long) interview to read: Sebastian Budgen, editor at the journal Historical Materialism and at Verso Books, interviews Stathis Kouvelakis, a well-known political theorist and member of Syrizas central committee: I have also been reading a lot of Poulantzas, and specifically late Poulantzas, not only on the strategic issue of the “democratic road to socialism,” but also in order to understand specifically the risks of Syriza’s evolution as a party form and more particularly the need to avoid the “state-ization” of Syriza. The risk of this type of strategy is that, before reaching power, or immediately after reaching power, you have already been absorbed by the state. And, of course, we know that the state is not neutral, that it reproduces capitalist power relations, and so on. So I have been reading a lot of this to understand strategically the situation...Now the question you raise is truly relevant, because it really seems the Spanish situation is quite similar to Greece. To quote Bensaïd, the Spaniards realized that the indignados were not a self-sufficient proposal, and it was a “social illusion” to think that you can change the situation only via the indignados movement. On the other hand, Podemos is really sui generis: very self-consciously pursuing a populist approach along Laclauian lines. My perception of this is that the developments of Laclau chronologically come after Poulantzas — they came at a time when the very types of issues raised seemed to have moved away from the question of the transition to socialism and seizure of state power raised by Poulantzas. Substantively, I think that what is ahead of the Spaniards is Poulantzas and not Laclau. What I mean by this, very simply, is that the problems that Podemos will face as a party are only starting now. As an organization, as a type of intervention and strategy, at the political level, at the level of the program, of the party, of the relation to the state, to international realities, everything: they have only just started. So, in a way, the serious stuff — and the annoying stuff — is ahead of them. My perception is that they will need to go beyond Laclau to face these tasks. And, to be a bit less optimistic, if Syriza fails, and turns out not being able to face the pressure, I’m not very optimistic about the chances of something less structured (like Podemos) to resist similar types of pressure.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:22:57 +0000
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