Much coverage of the Greek debt crisis has focused on the “troika” of international creditors and German chancellor Angela Merkel — a striking image of parasitic foreign powers scapegoating the country for personal gain.

In some corners of the Left, this narrative has fueled the demand for “Grexit” — a Greek exit from the eurozone — under the impression that such a move would create a more favorable environment for a break with austerity. This animated the Left Platform’s disagreements with Syriza’s bargaining-table approach and their later metamorphosis into Popular Unity.

Jannis Milios, once Syriza’s chief economic adviser, aligns neither with Syriza nor with Popular Unity. He views Syriza’s current program as a reversal of its original radical one. Yet his alternative to Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s approach is not Grexit, but a confrontation with Greece’s domestic capitalists. Athens-based journalist Alp Kayserilioğlu recently sat down with Milios to discuss the history of Syriza, the purpose of the eurozone, and the power of the country’s domestic bourgeoisie.