memorandum – Michal Rozworski

Creative resistance: Interview with Andreas Karitzis

After Syriza accepted a third austerity memorandum for Greece and called early elections, much of its leadership left the party. Some formed Popular Unity, while others are still searching for a new home to continue the fight against austerity.

Andreas Karitzis is among the latter. Until this summer, he was a member of Syriza’s central committee and had been a key figure in the party’s electoral planning process before its triumph in January’s elections. Karitzis was also previously at the Nicos Poulantzas Institute, the research center affiliated with Syriza.

Now outside Syriza, Karitzis recently spoke on my podcast about charting an anti-austerity path when a left government is responsible for implementing austerity. “The Greek experience,” Karitzis says, “teaches us that we need to go beyond electoral politics, not against it.” This transcript was originally published in Jacobin.

What’s next for anti-austerity in Portugal and Greece?

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Two updates from Southern Europe this week: Catarina Principe brings us up-to-date on the situation in Portugal and Andreas Karitzis recounts the search for a new politics in Greece after (and under the rule of) Syriza.

My first guest, Catarina Principe, is an prominent activist in Portugal’s Bloco, or Left Bloc, the country’s new broad left party. She been a member since her teenage years and has sat in the governing structures of the party. She is also a prolific writer. Most recently, she has been editing a collection of essays on the European left, to be published in May 2016. The Left Bloc gained its largest vote share ever in Portugal’s recent elections. The possibility that there might be a social democratic government that it supports has created a political crisis that today remains unresolved.

Andreas Karitzis was, until this summer, a member of Syriza’s central committee and had long been a key figure in the party. He was instrumental in the planning process after 2012 and also previously worked at the Nicos Poulantzas Institute, the research centre affliated with Syriza and named after the influential Greek socialist political theorist. Like many, he is now searching for a new home to continue the fight against austerity.

To recap: Syriza maintained power in Greece after September’s general election. The party and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, also remained committed to implementing the new austerity memorandum “negotiated” with Europe’s bureaucrat and banker overlords. Since the summer, many people, including Andreas, have exited Syriza and the left has once again fractured. Andreas speaks with me about how to do politics in this new conjuncture.