The bourgeois political staff in Greece are using all their imagination in view of the forthcoming local and EU parliamentary elections that will take place in May. Once again, they created new parties this time aiming at the recomposition of social democracy.   

Over the past two years there has been an effort to promote the party of SYRIZA in place of the old and “powerful” PASOK. However, the staffs of the bourgeois class are worried due to the low ratings of SYRIZA in the polls and the elections in a series of trade unions and professional associations where the forces of SYRIZA have not received the expected results. Sections of bourgeois class that are counting on a government of SYRIZA are particularly concerned. At the same time, forces within this party call for a more rapid adjustment of SYRIZA to the positions of social democracy and for the absorption of a larger part of the fragmented PASOK.

At the same time, the “old” social democracy is trying to give signs of life. Thus, last week PASOK (actually its remnants) and the other three small pieces of social democracy, which emerged from it, announced a new common political project under the aegis of the “European Socialist Party”. The new political formation which was established in the presence of the leader of the European socialists, Martin Schulz, was named the “olive tree”. Even if this olive tree is presented as being newly planted it is made of the old material and bears the hollows characteristic of old olive trees, the hollows of the anti-people policies, of the deep decay and corruption of the governing social democracy.

That’s the reason why the European socialists did not hasten to put all their eggs in one basket. The following day he participated in another effort to reconstruct social democracy, this time by the “Democratic left”.  This party was created in 2010 by forces that left SYRIZA and it also incorporated in its ranks MPs and MEPs of the collapsing PASOK. It will run in the forthcoming elections under the title “Democratic Left-Progressive cooperation”.

Finally, another new party with the title “the river” emerged last week in the framework of social democracy. The head of the new formation is the well-know TV journalist Stavros Theodorakis. In his effort to describe the political features of the new party he stated that this party “will steal ideas from the left and the liberal current”. Without having any concrete programme so far, it presents “radical ideas” like the reduction of MPs from 300 to 200 it seeks to fish for votes and confuse the working people with the muddy “political” waters of his river. However, one thing is clear: the commitment of the “River” to the EU, to the “need” for Greece to participate in this imperialist union.  

But why are those who hold the reins of the bourgeois political scene so hasty? It is obvious that they seek to trap in new or renovated political formations this section of the working people who, although they are disappointed by the centre-left and social democracy have not drawn deep political conclusions; those who are afraid of the conflict and rupture with the capitalist system; those who hope that they will preserve their position in case of capitalist recovery and under a governmental solution  that will multiply (in any case by means of trickery) the profits of the capitalists and safeguard the allegedly pro-people way out from the capitalist crisis.

The saying that reality exceeds the wildest fantasy  is very fitting for these sections of the working people. Be cause they can not even imagine that from now on the capitalist system will only be able to give rise to social problems, impasses every day, poverty, destitution, unemployment, the commercialization of every social service, the imperialist war. . As long as these sections of the working people do not see the actual dilemma i.e. socialism or capitalist barbarity, the system will seek to trap them in the decrepit olive trees and the muddy political rivers.