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- | ====== The ‘indignados’ movement in Greece ====== | ||
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- | ===== What is at stake? ===== | ||
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- | Over the last few months, the immediate concern for the European Union and the Greek state has been to finalise the terms for the additional financing – 12 billion euros – required to service the Greek state’s debt repayments. The Medium Term Economic Program (the updated version of the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with the EU–IMF–ECB ‘Troika’) was finally voted for on June 29. Further funding of about 30 billion euros will be required next year, and even more in 2013. The Greek state missed budget targets set last year when the imf and Eurozone provided a 110 billion euro loan package, to be delivered in tranches. The centrepiece of the new bailout package is a privatisation drive that is predicted to raise 50 billion euros by 2015. State-owned power and water companies, ports, banks, the former telecommunications monopoly (OTE), the train operator, and other companies such as opap, the largest European lottery and sports betting firm, will be included in the sell-off, which means an even greater reduction in the indirect wage and the deterioration of living conditions in general, as well as a permanent and substantial loss of revenue for the State budget, ‘necessitating’ an even bigger deterioration in living standards and so on. In addition, there will be further spending cuts – more than 6 billion euros within twelve months, equivalent to 2.8 percent of Greek GDP – and regressive tax hikes targeting the reproduction of the domestic working class. This will mean wage cuts up to 30%. The trade-union confederation of public sector workers – ADEDY – estimated that the average overall cut initiated by last year’s package of measures would reach 40–45% of public sector workers’ salaries by the end of the present year. | ||
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- | This is the continuation of a // | ||
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- | The ‘Greek issue’ is not a Greek problem. Alan Greenspan commented on June 17 that ‘Greece’s debt crisis has the potential to push the us into another recession’. A couple of weeks earlier, ECB executive board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said to the //Financial Times// that ‘a debt restructuring, | ||
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- | >If there were a failure to resolve that (Greek debt) situation it would pose threats to the European financial system, the global financial system, and to European political unity. | ||
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- | The different approaches between the various European national capitalist formations apparently reflect their respective interests in a period of intensified inter-capitalist competition: | ||
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- | >The ECB and the French banks are among the worst exposed to a Greek debt restructuring, | ||
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- | So the various competing fractions of capital seek to prevent and, if that proves impossible, effectively contain the shock waves that a potential default of the Greek state will send through the global financial system. And even more so, as it is not only Greece; Portugal, Ireland and Spain are ready to follow (not to mention the huge accumulated public debt of the USA and UK). Such a development would cause an even more acute plunge in the global economy, transforming the current sovereign debt crisis into a major currency crisis and, ultimately, a crisis of value. Essentially, | ||
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- | ===== The ‘indignados’ in Greece ===== | ||
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- | On May 25, in a series of demonstrations and gatherings in various Greek cities, tens of thousands took to the streets to make a demand for ‘all politicians to go’. In Athens, approximately 20,000 took to | ||
- | Syntagma square (the central square opposite Parliament House); in Thessaloniki, | ||
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- | Below, we cite some minutes of the first open assembly held at | ||
- | Syntagma square on May 25, which are quite representative of the mood prevalent among the protesters: | ||
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- | >Any politician who commits injustices, anyone not respecting popular demands, must go to their home or to prison. Their democracy can guarantee neither equality nor justice. | ||
- | > | ||
- | >We should not be satisfied with being consumers or customers, we should be satisfied with being good and responsible citizens. | ||
- | We should look at this issue – of our robbed lives – globally. We should connect with anything similar happening across the world. | ||
- | It is not only the politicians who are to blame, it is all of us with our individualistic behaviour. | ||
- | > | ||
- | >We must continue with consistency the revolts of the Arabic world, to lift ourselves above homelands and nations. | ||
- | > | ||
- | >We must start formulating demands; for politics to change, for the government to go – let’s co-shape our own proposals. | ||
- | > | ||
- | >The health system collapses; there are no more disposable materials; people in hospitals are in danger; they [politicians] are abandoning us. | ||
- | > | ||
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- | >The problems are common and they are what unites us. We should not allow [political] banners, or whatever chooses to divide us. | ||
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- | >The Spanish people gave us the idea and the cue. We must co-ordinate with the rest of the debt-ridden South, we must mobilise. The Spanish people have shown us the way. | ||
- | > | ||
- | >They slander civil servants, teachers, lecturers, doctors. Justice is not the 500 euro [salaries]. They deprive us of dignity. | ||
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- | >Greece is at the edge of the cliff and the money of the country is already abroad. They robbed us, and continue to do so.((Minutes from the Open Assembly of Syntagma Square, 25 May 2011. [[http:// | ||
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- | And this is the resolution by one of the early open assemblies at | ||
- | Syntagma square: | ||
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- | >For a long time now, decisions have been made for us, without us. | ||
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- | >We are workers, unemployed, pensioners, youth who came to Syntagma to struggle for our lives and our futures. | ||
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- | >We are here because we know that the solution to our problems can only come from us. | ||
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- | >We invite all Athenians, the workers, the unemployed and the youth to Syntagma, and the entire society to fill up the squares and to take life into their hands. | ||
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- | >There, in the squares, we shall co-shape all our demands. | ||
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- | >We call all workers who will be striking in the coming period to end up and remain at Syntagma. | ||
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- | >We will not leave the squares before those who led us here leave: Governments, | ||
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- | >We say that the debt is not ours. | ||
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- | >DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW ! | ||
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- | >The only defeated struggle is the one that was never fought!((Resolution by the Popular Assembly of Syntagma square, 28 May 2011.)) | ||
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- | For more than a month, a few thousand people had been gathering daily in Syntagma square. The square was occupied 24/7, but the bulk of the protesters would turn up in the evening, after work, which was when the assemblies took place as well. On weekends, the number of demonstrators multiplied, peaking at hundreds of thousands on June 5. It was a diverse, inter-class crowd of workers (to a large extent public sector workers), unemployed, students, pensioners, self-employed, | ||
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- | As is evident from some of the minutes cited above (and obviously from its very name), the ‘indignados’ movement in Greece was inspired by the Spanish ‘indignados’ and the revolts in North Africa, especially Egypt and the calls from Tahrir square for a democratic reform of the state. Unlike Spain, however, in Greece the movement was born on the eve of an anticipated conflict – over a new package of austerity measures – within an ongoing major social crisis epitomised by the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, | ||
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- | ===== Real democracy and the rise of a new bureaucracy ===== | ||
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- | Echoing the Spanish ‘indignados’, | ||
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- | From the beginning, it was about ‘taking our lives into our own hands’ since the ones who are supposed to make decisions for us do not represent us anymore, while the question of ‘what are we to do with our lives’ was repressed. The banning of party-political identities was intended to create a public space where everyone could join in, speak and decide together. And indeed various open assemblies, which formally are such spaces, were created, initially in the central squares and after a point in various neighbourhoods of Athens. The latter were in part the revitalisation of the local assemblies which had sprung up during the December 2008 riots, and in part a rather unsuccessful attempt to impose a central direction on local assemblies which were already active, as in the case of the Athenian district of Vyronas. But the political ‘overcoming’ of politics can only create a new bureaucracy. | ||
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- | The new bureaucracy of the assemblies – which hosted leftist MPs or ex-MPs, militants, high ranking unionists, local council members, left-nationalist journalists, | ||
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- | The ‘real democratic’ discourse was the almost total absence of practical actions in the ‘indignados’ movement. Leaving aside the three days of general strike and the spontaneous attacks against politicians here and there that had been taking place for a while in Greece – manifesting a diffuse, accumulated rage on the part of the working class and proletarianised petit-bourgeois and middle strata – there were no important actions organised by the assemblies, neither the central nor the local ones, or even more informal groupings of protesters (with the exception of some interventions in unemployment offices organised by the Group of Workers and Unemployed). Even the sabotaging of ticket machines twice in Syntagma underground station was organised by the so-called | ||
- | ‘I don’t pay’ movement which pre-existed the gatherings in the squares. The bureaucracy of the assemblies, for its part, did its best to block any such actions. The various ‘thematic groups’ which were created during the first days of the movement, to the extent that they did not wind up merely as practical executers of the assembly’s decisions (photocopying and handing-out leaflets etc) vanished in non-practice. It is true that swearing at politicians and cops outside Parliament, spending time with so many other people, eating, drinking, dancing, chatting, and sleeping together is a nice feeling, and a break with the normality of everyday life. However, this movement lacked the practical actions and the imagination that the December 2008 riots or even the 2006–7 student movement produced. | ||
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- | A major emphasis of the democratism of the movement and its bureaucracy was the condemnation of proletarian violence, and in this sense it once again echoed the Spanish movement. This democratism identifies violence with an increasingly authoritarian state, against which it counterposes a ‘true democracy’ that will be able to resolve conflicts in a peaceful, civilised manner. It sees proletarians as treated unfairly, not as exploited. It sees citizens instead of classes. Contradictorily, | ||
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- | ===== No flags but the Greek flag ===== | ||
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- | The banning of all political flags and banners from gatherings in the squares left only one banner unchallenged: | ||
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- | Greek flags were mostly seen in the ‘upper part’ of Syntagma square, where (far) rightist groupings were also present. But it was precisely their presence that testified to the nationalism which permeated the nature of the ‘indignados’ movement. Nationalism was the ground on which the left and the right wings (territorialised in the ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ parts of Syntagma square) rubbed shoulders. (Far) right nationalism proper found its other half in the Stalinist, anti-imperialist nationalism of the Left and far Left. As a leftist academic (Panagiotis Sotiris) put it: | ||
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- | >Even the mass use of Greek flags in the rallies, a practice that some segments of the Left misread as ‘nationalism’, | ||
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- | Even protesters coming from the anarchist/ | ||
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- | >In my opinion they are not nazis in the classic sense, they are just old-fashioned far-rightists with a nerve that does not correspond to their small number. As such, any targeting against them, which one speaker suggested, was rightly considered pointless. It would be tragic if our side began a tactic of bullying and exclusion. These people were simply unable to shape events, they are simply non existent, and they will either be unavoidably incorporated into the body of the real procedures of the movement (assemblies, | ||
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- | In the first days of the events, there were some attacks against immigrants and some incidents of bullying by fascists/ | ||
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- | An effort to interpret the nationalisation of the movement in Greece must take into account: a) the social structure (overgrown petit-bourgeoisie) and the history of class struggle in Greece (national liberation movement during the German occupation in wwii, civil war, recent seven-year dictatorship, | ||
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- | >At the same time, there is an uncontainable migration crisis. Tens of thousands of Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Bengalis, Somalis and North Africans are packed into crumbling buildings owned by slumlords, mostly Greek, who double as traffickers. Around Omonia Square, migrants search in rubbish for bottles, cables, clothing, anything to sell. The charity Médecins du Monde has declared a humanitarian emergency; in the lobby of its small clinic young men wait for hours […]. Like the debt, the migration crisis has a European dimension. Greece is a main entry point for people trying to reach the EU from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa; 150,000 entered the country without papers in 2010 alone. Most of them cross the Turkish border, where the government plans to build a seven-mile wall; hundreds are detained there in conditions unfit for animals. Few want to stay in Greece, but under pressure from the EU the government has tightened controls over the exit points, turning the country into a giant lobster trap to keep migrants from reaching London, Paris or Berlin. According to the 2008 Dublin ii Regulation, refugees have to apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach; Greece has 54,000 pending asylum applications and an approval rate of 0.3 percent.((Maria Margaronis, ‘Greece in debt, eurozone in crisis’, //The Nation//, 28 June 2011.)) | ||
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- | It must be stressed that this migration crisis is territorialised in the city centre of Athens, where whole neighbourhoods have been transformed into ghettos/ | ||
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- | >With mass irregular migration and immiseration comes crime, both petty and organised, run by Greeks as well as foreigners. Athens was once seen as Europe’s safest capital; last year there were 145 armed robberies in a single week. The city has become a mecca for illegal weapons: you can get a ‘used’ Beretta for around 800 euros or a .357 Magnum for a mere 500. Racist violence is on the rise, as are revenge killings and turf wars. Five dismembered brown-skinned bodies have been found since Christmas at one municipal dump. Even at midday, formerly prosperous streets are lined with women in hot pants and high heels, most of them African; their pimps stay in the shadows. Heroin is cheaper here than anywhere else in Europe. As the authorities abdicate from policing parts of the city, the task of ‘keeping order’ is assumed by vigilantes affiliated with the neofascist party Chrysi Avgi, or Golden Dawn, which last year won its first seat on the City Council. Chrysi Avgi patrols large areas of Athens, with the explicit or tacit support of many Greek residents and often of the police, staging pogroms against migrants and pitched battles with bands of anarchists who oppose them; on May 19 more than 200 people rampaged through the center, smashing shop windows and kicking or beating every dark-skinned man they saw while the police stood by. A young sympathiser described the group’s activities to me, proudly lifting his shirt to show a scar on his back inflicted, he said, by an Afghan with a knife. ‘We go into the basements where they have illegal mosques to check their papers, clear them out. They could be Al Qaeda; they could be anything. It’s not chance that they’re Muslims; they’re coming on purpose to undermine the country. There’s a plan, a secret funding mechanism, and there’s no state to protect us. The police are on the side of the migrants. We had to liberate Attica Square with our fists. The migrants were washing their clothes, their children, in the fountain; they were sleeping and praying in the square. It offends me to see them praying in the square.’ This spring a 21-year-old Bengali was stabbed to death in ‘revenge’ for the murder of a Greek expectant father knifed on the street for his camera. Two Afghans have been charged with the killing of the Greek; no one has been arrested for the Bengali’s murder.((Maria Margaronis, ‘Greece in debt, eurozone in crisis’.)) | ||
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- | ===== The general strikes ===== | ||
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- | The three days of general strike placed the ‘indignados’ movement on the level of a central conflict between the working class and the state, and put its role as an inconvenient but tolerable citizen protest into question. On the one hand, the square occupations (especially Syntagma) territorialised this conflict, provided it with an actual space to defend, but on the other hand this prohibited the diffusion of the clashes throughout central Athens. | ||
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- | On June 15, the demonstration in Athens was huge (probably more than 200,000 people). There was a presence of the more petit-bourgeois ‘upper part’ of Syntagma square and with it of right-wing nationalist tendencies. The clashes with the police lasted for some hours and they were supported by a high proportion of the protesters, a part of whom were practically involved. The number of demonstrators was so big that the police had some difficulties controlling the situation, although very few people were properly armed to fight. Many participants described an impressive feeling of solidarity and determination among the demonstrators. The dominant slogans until then, like ‘thieves’ or ‘all politicians to go’, gave way to more anti-police and anti-state ones. June 15 was the first time a break with the pacifist, non-violent discourse of the ‘indignados’ movement emerged. The heavy repression by the state disillusioned many ‘indignados’; | ||
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- | On June 28, the first day of the 48 hour general strike and the day that the voting process for the Medium Term Economic Program started in the Parliament, the demonstrators were far fewer (20–30, | ||
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- | An interesting thing to note is that in all three days of general strike there were few attacks against property; the target was mainly the police. There were some incidents where protesters trying to attack luxury hotels and banks were booed. Also interesting is the fact that there were very few Molotov cocktails used, since many in the anarchist/ | ||
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- | The day after June 29 many small demonstrations and some occupations against the heavy repression took place in various cities, while Syntagma square had already been re-occupied the previous night. However, there was a dominant feeling of defeat and disappointment as the ‘Memorandum’ was voted, and it seemed little could be done about it. But at the same time there was a lot of anger against the police and politicians, | ||
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- | ===== The contradictory dynamics of the movement ===== | ||
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- | Above were described the prevalent trends of the movement, the essential characteristics of its nature, which provided the context within which all its // | ||
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- | Even from the beginning, the gap between the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ parts of Syntagma square was evident. As said above, the ‘upper part’ was composed to a significant extent by a petit-bourgeois element that sees itself in danger of vanishing (which means thrown into the proletarian class) by aggressive tax hikes, rising inflation, and policies like the opening up of protected professions within the context of an ongoing recession which squeezes the market and business opportunities. In the ‘lower part’ there was a significant presence of students, workers and unemployed who actually face budget cuts and the privatisation/ | ||
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- | The conflictual class interests among the protesters were smoothed by the fact that the ‘Memorandum’ means a direct deterioration in living conditions for everyone. Hence, for a while, all coexisted under the umbrella of democratism/ | ||
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- | However, the incursion of proletarian violence on June 15, and the subsequent police repression, brought the class character of the conflict to the forefront. This led to a gradual shrinking in the size of the movement and of its petit-bourgeois elements. The prevailing mood towards violence gradually changed, and this was manifested in the multiplication of voices raised against the pacifist calls of the leftist bureaucracy after June 15, and in the extended clashes during the 48 hour general strike. Within the ‘lower part’ in Syntagma, groupings such as the Group of Workers and Unemployed and other tendencies would now increasingly challenge the domination of the new bureaucrats. The tolerance of (far) rightists and fascists gave way to verbal and physical attacks, a 200 strong demo on June 27 shouting antifascist slogans, and the beating up of fascist groups in the June 28 demonstration. After June 29, the general feeling was that everyone had to take sides: ‘with us or with the police?’ Even the union confederation representing public sector workers called for a demo ‘against the repression of the workers’ movement’ on June 30. | ||
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- | ===== What was it all about? ===== | ||
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- | The ‘indignados’ movement in Greece was a massive, populous, inter-class movement, and – although the temporal unfolding of its internal contradictory dynamics must not be forgotten – this defined its very nature, unlike the December 2008 riots which were a minoritarian movement incorporating high school kids, young precarious workers and immigrants – namely, those who have no future //par excellence// | ||
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- | The democratic discourse of the movement was an inter-class response to a major political crisis, against a state which is becoming authoritarian. This democratic discourse is very much associated with the penetration of the middle strata (mostly the young generation, the would-be middle strata) and the petit-bourgeois into the class struggle, but it can only be transitory because of the severity of the crisis. This was also the case, shaped obviously by different particularities, | ||
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- | The ‘indignados’ movement was the struggle of proletarians and rapidly proletarianised middle and petit-bourgeois strata whose reproduction is blocked, who are becoming poor, a struggle waged at the level of politics – that is – outside production. Faced with the generalisation of the absence of future in the progress of the current crisis and the intensification of the dynamics of the restructuring, | ||
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- | The voting of a new bailout and new austerity measures provided the movement with a specific target, a demand, something to struggle for. This target was concretised in the relation between the ‘indignados’ and the general strikes, with the latter placing the movement at the level of a //social// conflict between the working class and the state. This caused a shift in the internal dynamics of the movement and at the same time posed an end date for it, defining what the protesters could expect as a victory or a defeat. Finally, the movement was defeated. And although some gatherings and small scale actions continue, with mostly the militants involved now, it seems that everyone is waiting for the summer holidays to confirm its end. | ||
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- | What was made evident by the conflict over the new austerity measures is that the bourgeoisie has no space for manoeuvres and no will for negotiations. As the deputy Prime Minister Theodore Pangalos put it on June 27, ‘without [the austerity package] the country will be broke by mid-July and if that happens, we are likely to see tanks on the streets of Athens to protect the banks’. What is left for the management of the population is the police, as was clearly demonstrated on June 29, or even the army. What was also made evident by the ‘indignados’ movement is that the turn of the republic towards an authoritarian formalisation of the repressive management of the population will tend to have a ‘national socialist’ //tone//. However, it is highly doubtful that we will see a ‘national socialist’ Greek state capitalism, as the present mode of accumulation in its crisis provides no basis for it, since the nationalist material integration of a part of the working class is out of the question, while at the same time there is no such thing as an autonomous Greek capital anymore. Any forecasts are very risky at the moment. We suppose everything will be determined by the development of the global crisis (predicted currency crises) and the coming unfolding of the class struggle. The next target of the government is a new higher education act which aims to radically ‘modernise’ the university system in the country, while a discussion on the inadequacy of the recently voted austerity package and the practical possibility of default or the restructuring of the debt is already taking place in the daily press. | ||
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