We don't need a guarantee of success. There is no such thing. We don't need the fulfillment of all demands at once. We all know that the anti-capitalist left has not yet won hegemony. But we do need to see a definitive break from the capitalist TINA (There Is No Alternative) consensus, and determined moves toward building a new social order. We need to see a political movement that will embrace the possibilities inherent in a generalized crisis of capitalism that is pissing everybody off, and that opens new opportunities for real, systemic change.
If Syriza realizes its potential, if it fights the battle using the new strength it has won, with determination and conviction, it will energize populist left forces elsewhere in Europe, starting in Spain, where Podemus has already been energized by Syriza's victory. As Kouvelakis put it, a fighting Syriza "will provoke an enormous wave of support by very large sectors of public opinion in Europe, and it will energize to an extent that we cannot imagine the radical left in countries where you have the potential for it to intervene strongly." It's easy to imagine the momentum moving quickly to Italy, and possibly soon thereafter to France. A fighting Syriza, a Syriza that inspires the working people across Europe to reject the capitalist management of their lives, can change the balance of class forces in Europe radically and quickly, and make it possible to build the alternative that is not supposed to be possible.
It is for better or worse, this decisive turning point. It's an historical point that will change European politics for a long time, and from which the whole of Europe will move either strongly left or strongly right. Per Frederick Douglass: "It must be a struggle."
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