Greece: The implosion of the systemic crisis
29 / 05 / 2010
The very fact that PASOK managed to gain a comfortable parliamentary majority (thanks to an electoral system that blatantly favours the first party in number of votes), in reality, sowed winds which, most likely, will, soon, reap whirlwinds.
by Takis Fotopoulos
Greece has been again front-page news in the world press in the last few months.
First, because of the new flare-up of riots in Athens in December 2009 caused by the alienated youth of the country marking the first anniversary of the police killing of a 15-year old student a year before ―when an unprecedented social explosion took place, which, as I tried to show a few months ago,[1] had not been seen again since the student uprising in the early seventies that eventually led to the fall of the military junta in 1974. However, this was only a pretext and the new flare-up should be seen, in fact, as part of a process indicating the flimsy foundations on which the post-war social and economic system has been built and, also, as an indication of the fact that the systemic crisis in Greece is continuously deepening. In this context, the recent Greek elections in October, which gave an overwhelming parliamentary majority to PASOK’s social-liberals and was celebrated by the political and economic elites both in Greece and abroad, could be shown to be just a sideshow, mostly irrelevant to the underlying social processes going on, their only real interest being that they were indicative of the elites’ plans for the future.
Second, because of the near bankruptcy of the Greek economy when it was revealed that it enjoyed the highest combination of public debt and budget deficit as a proportion to GDP among the Eurozone countries. This prompted the rating agencies to downgrade Greece as regards the degree of reliability in repaying its huge debts to foreign lenders, boosting the “spreads” (i.e. the rate at which the Greek state could borrow compared to Germany) to a record level and creating a vicious circle as regards the financial reliability of the Greek elites, while giving at the same time the chance to the European elites to impose almost unbearable conditions on the Greek people, in order to continue lending the Greek elites ―perpetuating in the process the economic and political dependence of the country on them! The outcome, as usual in these cases, is that the Greek people and particularly the lower social strata would be called upon to pay the heavy price of further borrowing, (in terms of lower incomes and employment), so that the local and foreign elites could continue enjoying their huge income and wealth which they have accumulated.
In this article, I will examine, first, the political bankruptcy in connection to the October elections and recent events, and I will discuss next the present near economic bankruptcy in relation to the myth of “green growth” promoted by the reformist Left and Greens and, after I consider the social crisis with reference to the systemic problem of immigration, I will continue on with the massive suppression of the December demonstrations, which confirmed the rise of social-fascism in Greece. Finally, I will examine the current attempt by the EU elites to transform Greece into a EU protectorate and I will propose an alternative solution that will aim to stop the Latin-Americanisation of Greece, and create the preconditions for a self-reliant economic democracy as an integral part of on an Inclusive Democracy.
Political bankruptcy, elections and parliamentary parties
It is now clear that the decision to call a general election, just two years after the previous one, was very much enforced on the political elites by the local economic elites and the EU elites, in view of the social unrest that would inevitably have followed the introduction by a right-wing government of the radical reforms of “structural adjustment” demanded by the EU and other international organizations (OECD, IMF etc.). Particularly so, as these reforms would inevitably have included drastic restrictions on public spending (health, social security, etc.), suppression of wages and pensions, further “flexibility” of labour and so on, aiming at a drastic improvement of the competitiveness of the public and private sectors at the expense of the working people, in other words, aiming at the completion of the country’s economic integration into neoliberal globalisation. Of course, whether the political and economic elites and the new government which expresses their interests will manage at the end to avoid an effective systemic (economic and political) bankruptcy is another story, which will be determined by the outcome of the social struggle, now reaching a critical turning point.
However, given the above plans of the European and local elites, it is not surprising that the overwhelming victory of the social-liberal PASOK party in the October general election was celebrated by the elites, locally and abroad. This is particularly so, after the December 2008 social explosion made clear the extent of the systemic crisis in Greece. It was at this particular point that the elites realised that the need for a self-declared “socialist” government to take over, with the main aim to introduce the drastic “reforms” mentioned above, was imperative.
PASOK ―today under the leadership of George Papandreou (offspring of the Papandreou dynasty of the centre-“Left”) was the “perfect” choice for the elites, as this party has governed Greece, in turns with the Karamanlis dynasty of the centre-Right, during the entire post-junta period that followed the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. In fact, these two dynasties, initially under the tutelage of the British and then of the US elite, and, lately, under that of the transnational elite, have been the main players of the Greek political scene for the entire post-war period, which began with the end of the Greek Civil War in the late 1940’s. However, the very fact that PASOK managed to gain a comfortable parliamentary majority (thanks to an electoral system that blatantly favours the first party in number of votes), in reality, sowed winds which, most likely, will, soon, reap whirlwinds. This is because the bipartisan system in Greece is not based on any solid foundations. An indication of this is the fact that, while in Europe, neo-liberal parties alternate with social-liberal ones (which have, long ago, abandoned even the socialist rhetoric) on the basis of a clear agenda that summarises the demands of neo-liberal globalisation, in Greece, both parties, and especially the social-liberals, systematically hide their true identity! When therefore, the true identity of PASOK is being revealed today, following the harsh measures it is introducing to deal with the crisis, its electoral base is in fact being dismantled and the result may well be the future dissolution not just of PASOK but of the entire bipartisan system in Greece.
It is clear that the same, more or less policies, with perhaps small variations on the actual fiscal measures to be introduced, would have been adopted by whatever party was elected, given the main goal imposed by the European Monetary Union (EMU) on all member-states for the reduction of the public debt to meet the Maastricht Treaty criteria. The “choice” given by the elites to the Greek people was clear: either to re-elect the previous governing party (New Democracy) with an explicit new mandate to implement the savage cuts in social spending suggested by the EU commission and international organisations, or to elect a party (PASOK) which was in fact deceiving the electorate that it could somehow avoid the suggested savage cuts ―in other words, a party that was, in fact, relying on its socialist name and its control of trade union bureaucracies to pass exactly the same policies! The method has been, after all, successfully tested for many years by the British Labour party, with the full support of the elites in Britain. It is therefore obvious that PASOK aspires to play exactly the same role now, with the full support of the local elites, which played a crucial role in its rise to power.
As for the New Democracy Party, it was apparently “sacrificed” temporarily by the economic and political elites in the EU and Greece, on the expectation that a “socialist” government could pass the same measures much easier, given its control of trade union leaderships. So, the only hope of its newly elected leadership for a return to power ―in case PASOK is finally dismantled following its present irreparable damage to its “socialist” identity― is the “nationalist” card that Samaras, the new leader elected after the resignation of Karamanlis, is in a good position to play, given his past conflict with the party establishment on nationalist issues. Particularly so, as PASOK is even more obedient to the transnational elite than New Democracy on “national” issues (Cyprus and Greek-Turkish relations, Macedonia, etc.). This, of course, is by no means surprising, given that Papandreou is well known as one of the most docile instruments of the transnational elite in the Greek political elite and Pangalos, his vice president, is a brazen adventurist who has shown in the past that he has no qualms to do any despicable act that his transnational bosses would ask him to do ―as the Ocalan case[2] has clearly shown, when he played a leading role in trapping the Kurdish leader on behalf of the US and Turkish secret services and then effectively handed him over to his Turkish tormentors― just in order to satisfy his personal political ambitions.
Source: Greece: The implosion of the systemic crisis
29 / 05 / 2010 | Tags: Economic Crisis, Governance, Hellas Greece |
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