Turn Left at Athens
Something of significance happened in Greece this week, an event that marked the end of an era, the passing of an age and a sign of the times. Demis Roussos died. One hopes the singing tent, who so successfully serenaded the Beverly’s of Suburbia in the Long Hot Summer, has found his island in the sun at last.
Oh, and the Greek people elected a radical-left party as their new government, something that has apparently sent ‘shock waves’ through the crumbling corporate incarnation of the Holy Roman Empire that is the European Union. Returning from attending the funeral of an unelected despot in Saudi Arabia, David Cameron had cause to pause and express his regrets that Syriza had captured power in Greece by purely democratic means. Are we all supposed to be quaking in our boots as if to compliment Dave’s forebodings? Erm…
For all the food banks, benefit cuts and undoubted hardship inflicted upon those on the bottom rung of society’s ladder in Britain since the financial crash of 2008, we have had it relatively easy compared to parts of mainland Europe. In the wake of the Greek electorate’s decision to reject austerity as they desperately search for an alternative, Spain is rumoured to be the next EU member poised to veer to the left. It’s no great surprise. Unemployment there has been far more catastrophic than here, particularly amongst the young, where figures for that demographic have been higher than any other EU country; even those who had educated the Spanish youth for a future snatched away from them have found their efforts unrewarded, with teachers reduced to sleeping rough on the streets whilst half-finished luxury apartments have been occupied by penniless families in an act of spontaneous reclamation. Over the past six years, many stony-faced soothsayers have reminded anyone prepared to listen that the traditional pattern of European economic meltdowns ordinarily leads to right-wing coups and war within a decade, and there has been a grain of truth in the first half of this pessimistic prediction in that the far-right has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity as blame for each nation’s ills has subtly shifted from financiers to immigrants – something our friendly neighbourhood Jihadists have played a significant part in. So far, so accurate; but how does this explain events in Greece this past week?
Many reading this are no doubt currently enduring persistent financial headaches in terms of mortgage repayments or the extortionate demands of energy suppliers, and perhaps even CPS threats that are a hangover of youthful indiscretions with the wrong woman; but, however relative such headaches may be, to slip into the shoes of a Spanish school-leaver bearing enough qualifications to warrant a job for life that is no longer there or a middle-aged Greek public-sector worker issued with a redundancy notice after twenty-five years loyal service might help clarify the reasoning behind the switch of allegiances within politics on the Continent when the comforting barrier of the Channel gives us a false perspective of safety.
To write off the Greek electorate’s judgement as a gross error would be a mistake. Unless we have experienced the genuinely debilitating economic aftermath of 2008 first hand, it’s all-too easy to condemn and criticise and to worry that events in Greece might herald a new era of ill-advised and naive recourse to pseudo-Marxism that can only herd the people over the cliff’s edge like an inebriated shepherd drinking on the job. If the consequence of capitalism has left the internal structure of one’s country in ruins, is it any wonder the electorate have flocked to another point of view in their droves? Many Greeks view the EU as a glorified pimp who regards their nation as a whore in permanent debt to him. Any party that at least hinted at the possibility of escape from dependency on the great Brussels massage-parlour was bound to strike a potent chord, and what is, on paper, a drastic change of direction could also be regarded as a simple desire to look at a fresh face. One could argue that people in this country warm to the likes of Farage and Bo-Jo, regardless of their policies, because they present a welcome change from the production-line blandroids stripped of personality by party whips and focus groups; and it’s not unreasonable to see the rejection of the powers-that-be by Greeks as coming from the same place. Indeed, it’s also not unreasonable to speculate that what seems to us as unfathomable popularity for Putin in his homeland is in part a reaction to the disastrous free-market project of Yeltsin that preceded him.
Even if Spain follows suit, it has not been (as far as I’m aware) the intention of the incoming administration in Greece to exit the EU, despite the palpable concerns of Frau Merkel, so it’s possible that once the usual hyperbole that follows a dramatic change of government has subsided it will only be domestic policy that has significantly altered. Anyone under a certain age – and that probably excludes most followers of this blog – will no more relate to Europe’s socialist administrations of the 1960s and 70s than they would to similar experiments in the 30s, something that could make the majority of the electorate sitting ducks for a repetition of what went wrong last time this happened on one hand or open to different approaches to perennial problems on the other. Either way, it would seem churlish not to wish them well and hope something genuinely new arises from the cautious revival of a philosophy so discredited by past abuses of its original intentions.
Of course, Marx and Engels were writing in a world governed by systems that may seem familiar to us but are in reality a long way from where we are now, with the imperial engine of Western Europe at one end and the effectively medieval feudal autocracy of Tsarist Russia at the other. To impose Marx’s theories in their most literal form upon a twenty-first century model shaped by decades of capitalist theory put into practice simply wouldn’t work. It stands to reason that any newly elected government of the left will most likely cherry-pick the less extreme aspects of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and blend them with the tried-and-tested successful elements of capitalism to forge something more palatable to the electorate in the hope that it restores some form of economic prosperity, or at the very least stability, to those corners of Europe that have felt the worst after-effects of 2008.
I’m no more convinced that the success of Syriza marks the ushering in of a new ‘Socialist Dark Age’ any more than I’m convinced the success of various far-right parties in other European countries will give rise to the next Hitler. As with the decline and fall of the traditional big two here, I merely regard these developments as a natural response to years of being promised the world and being delivered Scunthorpe. Such a kick up the arse could also prompt the parties accustomed to ruling the roost into a radical rethink of what they represent, in the same way (for good or ill) the short-lived SDP affected the future route of both the Liberal and the Labour parties in the 1980s. This could be a passing phase that benefits the old parties in the long run by eventually resulting in them coming back stronger than ever.
I’m pretty certain there are regular patrons of the Raccoon Arms who have studied political theory for a long time, perhaps via the university I didn’t attend, and are far more qualified to comment on current affairs than I am. But, as an uneducated observer, all I see is the will of the people to take a gamble on what they perceive to be an alternative to a system that has left them bereft of luxuries that are all too easy to take for granted when they haven’t been removed from one’s own picture. The new Greek government probably no more has ‘the answer’ than any other form of government, yet there are many disgruntled casualties of EU mismanagement that are prepared to give them a go, and I don’t begrudge them that. They may be right, they may be wrong; but good luck to ‘em nonetheless.
Petunia Winegum
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January 29, 2015 at 10:30 am -
“passing of an age and a sign of the times. Demis Roussos died”
I still listen to ‘666’ regularly, indeed it was that record which, in part, awakened my interest in The Revelation Of St.John. Who knows, maybe the Tupperware Church Of The 3rd Day* were right all along and the EU is indeed the 7 headed Beast upon which The Great Whore Babylon, the USA, rides…..
[*whose central doctrine is that our Lord’s body was sealed in an airtight plastic tomb with a snap on lid, thus allowing him to arise , on the 3rd day, as fresh as the day he went in]
*cue Roussos* *cue georgarian chantyness* : “Fallen, Fallen, FALLEN, is Babylon The Great. Masters fall and wonder,
people rise and wait…time is getting late”.-
January 29, 2015 at 10:32 am -
I’ve no idea what you’re on about, but I enjoyed reading it all the same!
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January 29, 2015 at 10:44 am -
I think Blocked Dwarf may be making reference to’ incarnation of the Holy Roman Empire that is the European Union’…..which I too took as one of the not infrequent subtleties (sailing by) in your writing
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January 29, 2015 at 10:47 am -
January 29, 2015 at 10:50 am -
“reference to’ incarnation of the Holy Roman Empire”
…that and the only album ever to make smoking dope worthwhile.
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January 29, 2015 at 10:52 am -
‘OK Computer’?
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January 29, 2015 at 10:57 am -
“OK Computer’?”
A mere abacus…ooOPs! sorry,wrong literary allusion. Although I believe they did a song ‘paranoid android’?
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January 29, 2015 at 10:46 am -
Aphrodite;s Child
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January 29, 2015 at 10:53 am -
I posted the Youtube linky of it to aid Pet’s understanding but it got eaten by the Worm of Spamfilter or the Firewall of Gehenna.
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January 29, 2015 at 10:32 am -
I wish Greece and the Greeks well.
What surprises me is that *The Left* is gaining support in the Med if it is intended as a protest against the EU, given that the EU is a construct of *The Left*. I had expected the *The Far Right* to gain more support, as it is in the northern countries.
We are told that the majority of Greeks would prefer to stick with the Euro whilst wishing to be freed from the shackles of austerity measures. Which to me seems to be the hope of wanting to control when you are eaten by a big fish, whilst being a minnow.
I thus have to admit to not understanding how voting for *The Left* is expected to help anyone in the southern countries any more than it will in the north. Except perhaps that it will more likely result in a fudge being agreed so that the EU and Euro can continue to save itself from fragmentation. But delivering what of benefit to the Greeks.
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January 29, 2015 at 10:44 am -
The EU is not of the left. It is a hardcore capitalist venture that adopts sheepskin clothes (such as working hours contracts and health promotion) so as not to scare the proles. It is all about the free movement of capital and labour, the latter to keep wages supressed, the former to exploit the competition in the race to the bottom on tax laws.
Why do you think they want TTIP with USA? Who are the fiercest proponents of this? Cameron and Merkel.
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January 29, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I heard on the wireless summat about the first actions of the new Greek Elite was that they were going to privatise loads of State Organisations.
Shame they didn’t think of such a hardcore Capitalist idea while they were still in the EU… Oh, they still are?…
This could get confusing…-
January 29, 2015 at 11:18 am -
The new Syriza government has halter the privatisation of the public utilities company and the port of Piraeus.
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January 29, 2015 at 11:29 am -
Obviously I was listening on the wrong brain channel…
http://maritimeintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Largest-Merchant-Fleets.jpg
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January 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
Interesting interpretation Windsock, that it cloaks itself in lefty clothes to hide it’s true capitalist purpose, but if that were true I’d expect even more people to be afraid of it. I’d turn it on it’s head and say that the capitalist crumbs it throws to get big business on side are the cloak for it’s left motivation. Where Capitalism seeks to restrict the amount people make, the Left and the EU seek to claw back and spend as much as possible especially on pointless bureaucrats and bureaucracy.
Neither Cameron nor Merkel supporting something shows it to be a ‘hardcore capitalist venture’. Merkel’s background in particular being anything but. Cameron is just hitching his wagon to anything he can turn to his personal advantage, he is more New Labour than New Labour were. Both want unlimited power and money and do what is necessary to get both, left or right isn’t an issue for them. Barroso and others who have wielded the real power are left not right.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:51 pm -
OK… discussion time… considering that businesses get far more out of the EU than it’s population , how could it be a leftist project? That would, at least in name, be a project for the material re-distrubtion of wealth among all it’s inhabitants, and as we can see from Greece – that definitely is not happening. That it is a self-sustaining bureaucracy is self evident, agreed, but that is not supposed to be the defining characteristic of “the left”. Maybe we’re in territory where both “Left” and “Right” are irrelevant – it’s just greedy bastards out for themselves.
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January 29, 2015 at 1:55 pm -
*Maybe we’re in territory where both “Left” and “Right” are irrelevant – it’s just greedy bastards out for themselves.*
Well put.
And I should probably end it there but….The “Left” isn’t about “re-distribution of wealth among all it’s inhabitants” in my view, that would be socialism. I can’t remember when we last saw any pretence of that anywhere.The “Left” surely is about power and money for the few who are more equal than the others and that is the EU to a ‘T’. The “Right” is also about that of course but doesn’t pretend to be doing it in the name of the equality. and for the greater good of us all.
Now that isn’t pretty or clever as an analysis, but it gets to the nub. The EU is rotten to the core, relentless in drawing more and more power to the centre, driving ever greater division between all with it’s political correctness which is anything but and sleeping with anyone and everyone who will fund it’s private excesses whilst destroying family values by death of a thousand cuts. It is relentless in putting a rotten apple into every barrel of good ones certain that will be sufficient to infect the whole and it will. These are the tactics of the malevolent Left.
Don’t get me wrong, if the EU imploded I shudder to think what effect that would have on a Brit (me) trying to see out his days in France, but it isn’t about me, it is about what is rotten and needs eradicating, to the roots.
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January 29, 2015 at 2:02 pm -
Actually, even the ‘capitalists’ are divided in their opinion. The CBI (mainly large businesses and multi-nationals) are generally enthusiastic about the EU. The Small Business Federation (which represents small and medium enterprises) takes a much more sceptical line.
I’m inclined to the view that some are hell-bent on an integrated Europe come what may, and at almost any price, and others are more sceptical. The degree of scepticism varies between full integration of as many nation states as possible into one new entity, but at a slower pace, and those who prefer an arrangement in which the current nation states govern their own affairs, but co-operate on matters such as free trade.
I really don’t know (or particularly care) which of those is ‘left’ or ‘right’. I’d just prefer a solution that allowed people to live in peace under a government that they are free to elect, and by extension, unelect if they see fit. Since I can’t currently elect or hold to account through the ballot box the EU decision-makers, I don’t like it in it’s current form.
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January 30, 2015 at 7:06 pm -
The reason that the CBI is in favour and the Small Business Federation are sceptical is simply because the bureaucracy of the EU creates so much red tape for companies to comply with that companies often need to employ people that are dedicated to ensuring compliance and this necessity is much more onerous for small companies than large ones. Bureaucracies create the tangle of red tape partly to exert power over those subject to the regulations and partly to justify their continued employment and expansion of their role. Red tape also provides the bureaucracy with a handy mechanism for generating corrupt payments and to enable them to pick winners (ie decide who succeeds).
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January 29, 2015 at 2:10 pm -
@windsock Maybe we’re in territory where both “Left” and “Right” are irrelevant
I believe you are correct ….one might call the EU a capitalists charter (but not a charter for the ‘right’ necessarily) economically and socially a liberal charter (but not necessarily a leftist charter) . The model is managerial and appears to use whatever political tactics are of use to it at any moment in time, most obviously those employed and even boasted about by the left to gain power and justified as necessary to create their version of ‘Utopia’. Its look what we give you ‘loadsamoney’ …..though really its ‘loadsayourownmoney’ which we now have control over.
It was interesting watching members of the new Greek Government in public ….a group that appeared to me to have a high level of Academics (a group of individuals that usually make me reach for my pistol to misquote Goering) but also difficult not to have considerable sympathy for them. Either clever politics or naïve politics (I favour the latter not for any reason than I am far too gullible) for them to say Greece has no intention of defaulting …….and a rather hollow feeling in my stomach that Greece is due for execution ‘pour encourager less autres’ whatever course they take. Germany’s fault? not really coz Germany gave up the most successful post war currency and it was not unreasonable for them to set a few rules (that everyone agreed to) in return
In the coming months it might be worth bearing in mind that Greece got itself in the mess it did with a government of exactly the same political hue as pretty much the rest of Europe though that won’t be remembered as the firing squad take their position and when the body slumps to the ground a few moments later. -
January 29, 2015 at 2:15 pm -
… it’s just greedy bastards out for themselves. …
– plus ça change etc. -
January 30, 2015 at 2:24 pm -
I think the problem here is that you are taking capitalist to be the opposite of leftist, which I don’t think it is exactly. I see the political space (in the west, at least) as a square, one dimension of which is private ownership ((the hallmark of capitalism) and the other is centralisation (the hallmark of socialism). Top left I place the leftists (Marxists, etc), representing high centralisation and low ownership; top right are facists, representing high centralisation and high private ownership; bottom left I place anarchists, representing low centralisation and low private ownership; bottom right I place capitalists, representing low centralisation and high private ownership.
On this scheme I would place the EU in the top right quadrant, as it is clearly socialist in its desire to centralise power and exert control at every level but equally clearly is determined to leverage many of the market mechaisms underpinning capitalism. How does that stack up against experience ? I venture to suggest that a quick sniff test would confirm that, out of our four candidate political archetypes, the EU is indeed most closely modelling the behaviour of a fascist state.
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January 29, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
Corporate socialism is the present system not a free market. It is in the interests of leftists to try to con people that the two are the same system . But corporate socialism has far more in common with state socialism than it has with a free market.
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January 30, 2015 at 3:35 pm -
Mussolini’s original definition of Fascism seems to be a Public/Private partnership but only at State and Corporation level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctrine_of_Fascism
Interestingly he seems to have defined the 19th Century as the century of the left – of Socialism.
Charles clearly hadn’t the dickens of an idea what was really going on…
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January 29, 2015 at 10:33 am -
“It stands to reason that any newly elected government of the left will most likely cherry-pick the less extreme aspects of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and blend them with the tried-and-tested successful elements of capitalism”
You can hope but I doubt it. The Bolsheviks didn’t learn the lessons of the French Revolution. (Or, maybe they did and were doing it on purpose). At some point it all fades into myth, and people come to believe that “history has never had less to teach us” (Copyright The Rt Hon Anthony L.C. Blair). We are told that a strong armed forces are unnecessary, like the joke about the man with his anti-lion powder (“But there are no lions for thousands of miles”/”Yes, works a treat doesn’t it”)
After a few decades it seems people forget.
The Crimean War, which ended fifty-five years prior to WWI, was the largest war that was possible at the time given the transport and communications infrastructure, (the first successful transatlantic telegraph not yet being laid, and the trans-Siberian railway not yet imagined). As such it is the nearest comparator to a world war. Forty years prior to that the closest example perhaps was the Napoleonic wars, whose scale was enabled by the semaphore telegraph.
It is now seventy years since the end of WWII. Putin’s Russia descends deeper into autarchy. China casts her envious eyes over every land where a Imperial soldiers ever set foot, and many where they did not, seeking confrontations from Vietnam to the Philippines. The same radical Islam that Germany allied itself with in the first world war is resurgent in Africa, Asia, and even in Paris.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
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January 29, 2015 at 8:22 pm -
Your points about (tele)Communications infrastructure and warfare are very insightful and caused some ponderings dans la maison Dwarf this day. Thank you.
…its sad , no doubt very sad, but this Dwarf finds Optical Telegraphy strangely fascinating….and will probably reread ‘The Victorian Internet” again sometime soon.
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January 29, 2015 at 10:57 am -
It seems that we are condemned to living in interesting times.
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January 29, 2015 at 11:03 am -
“They may be right, they may be wrong”
We know they are wrong because the mass of he electorate more often than not are. They form opinions not with thier heads because rational evidence based thinking is beyond them and when it is not bias, prejudice, tribalism and envy taint them. Your article tells me that you are a highly intelligent and articulate person whose analytical skills are way above average. However I see that you like the rest of most of us look at symptoms and not causes and only address the former. That is understandable as the causes are in most cases these days (since the industrial revolution that is) are far too complex to be tackled and the masses would not want you to anyway. As we do not want causes of problems to be addressed we look to those who will offer the best medicine to take away the pain of the symptoms. That way the rise of dictators and loony groups like the current ones elected to govern in Greece come about. The end result always being instability, impoverishment and conflict often very bloody.
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January 29, 2015 at 11:03 am -
Vote for everyone to be rich and pay no taxes!
Yeah. That should work.
It’s Demockrasee innit.-
January 29, 2015 at 12:06 pm -
You’ve obviously hacked into Mr Miliband’s draft manifesto.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
No, his reads, “Vote for everyone to be rich and make them pay all their taxes!”
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January 29, 2015 at 11:04 am -
I love your neologism, “Blandroid”!
It’s time to print a new T-shirt, ready for the election. Along the lines of, “Don’t waste your vote on a Blandroid”
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January 29, 2015 at 11:19 am -
Farewell, Singing Tent! Like Blue Nun, flares and Starsky & Hutch, fondue, Triumph Spitfires and Austin Allegros, you were an icon of a Time The Land Really Should Forget.
I had the misfortune to drive an Austin Allegro once (I didn’t choose it), and all I can say is that it represented everything calamitous about the state of British industry in the 60’s and 70’s. It was utterly shit. It was even shit coloured. One of the happiest days of my life was when I watched in the rear view mirror as some moron in a car park trundled his own pathetic jalopy relentlessly towards its arse as I was waiting at a junction. Thump. It was such a piece of shit that even a low level impact totaled it. Deep joy!
As for the Greeks, it is the old story: the Zorba in the street gets the pain, and the rich seem to get richer. There was also an endemic problem with corruption and over spending, but that’s not the whole problem. The sooner they get out of the Euro the better, would be my advice. Indeed, I can’t see the Euro lasting that much longer. Too large, too unwieldy, and too many divergences of opinion.-
January 29, 2015 at 11:32 am -
It might help that the French have just been told to cough up E1.5B they got “in error”.
Reminds me of my old Monopoly days. Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass God. -
January 29, 2015 at 11:36 am -
Let that be a lesson to all. Nationalise your car industry and what do you end up with? The Austin Allegro.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm -
Whilst I had the Triumph Spitfire, a Mk3 for the cogniscenti or anyone who cares, started as white, had it painted black, unique at the time. Brilliant fun, took it camping to Switzerland in the early 70s, quite a challenge with 2-up and bugger-all boot-space.
Bought a Mazda MX-5 Roadster a few years ago to re-live those days – brilliant car, but everything worked so predictably perfectly, it did however lack the random character and charming rattles of the old Spit.
Some poor, misguided soul in an Allegro once piled into the back of my Audi 100 – my tow-bar completely wrecked its front-end, mine only got one scratch and a tail-lamp lens broken – I felt almost sorry for him, first just for having an Allegro, secondly for the prang he caused.
The old Allegro was famed for one special trick – if you jacked up one rear corner too vigorously, the rear windscreen would pop out – such a classic.-
January 29, 2015 at 12:27 pm -
Not to mention the square steering wheel, which surely beats even the most extreme Soviet folly.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
That’s made me laugh. Yes, the bloody things obviously were totally crap and fell apart. They should do a Top Gear Special with them (if they can find any).
I yearned for a Spitfire – they looked great little cars! A black one would have been super. Couldn’t fit in one now. But then I can hardly fit in my Volvo Estate!!
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January 29, 2015 at 12:42 pm -
Blue Nun has quite different connotations for me
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January 29, 2015 at 12:42 pm -
Pervert! Mind you….
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January 29, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
“Like Blue Nun, flares and Starsky & Hutch, fondue”
Hmmmm fondue…that what became the Cheese Curry of the 80s. I am proud of having led the successful student protest at college to have that added to the dinner menu! Sod the baby seals, Greenham Common and Animal Rights. “WADDA WE WANT?”-“CHEESE CURRY!!!”-“WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”-“DUnno…like any time…man…anytime we don’t have essays on the The Glorious Revolution to hand in that afternoon….”
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January 29, 2015 at 11:31 am -
In all the analysis, sombre reporting and vox pops I’ve heard during the Greek elections, I only heard one person (a Greek) say that all the discussion is about redistributing wealth and non about earning it. Seems to me to be the nub of the problem.
Greece has never been a rich country. It has a few vastly wealthy ship-owners, a tourist industry, and that’s about it. Since it joined the EU, and especially since it adopted the Euro, it has propped up it’s bloated public sector with money borrowed at the cheap rates Euro membership allowed. It has no real private sector to generate the means to service these debts, never mind repay them; a problem exacerbated by a national reluctance to pay any tax at all. So, now Greece has little income and huge debts.
I can’t see how more State control (either domestic or supra-national via the EU) is going to solve any of this. Ultimately, the only answer for a decent future for Greece and the Greek people is for a lot more wealth generation – more Capitalism, in other words. Give the Greek people a chance to earn foreign exchange by whatever methods they can. The constant arguments about redistributing practically nothing while the debts mount up even more can’t be any sort of long-term solution.
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January 29, 2015 at 11:37 am -
I recall that when they were having Athenian riots a few years back, that the Kommentariat were remarking that things would settle down in the summer because the Athenians all bugger off to a Greek Island for several months. What a shit life it must be over there…
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January 29, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
But wouldn’t it be nice to see the little guy (Greece) give the big guy (Germany & the EU) a bloody nose for once? Germany has the EU and the Med countries to thank for buying a lot of it’s products which otherwise wouldn’t have been, however foolish the Greeks were to do it.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:15 pm -
One analysis has it that it was that very sort thing that applied Greece to the slippery slope.
http://sportdialog.ru/sites/default/files/report/user151/3/pa-717823.jpg
People very quickly succumb to notions of their inherent superiority.-
January 29, 2015 at 12:17 pm -
Come on Moor that isn’t fighting fair!
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January 29, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
The Greeks have long flirted with far left and far right politics (it’s what powers the lively debate over coffee and Ouzo in kafeneons up and down the country), and it comes as no surprise to me that under the current circumstances they have flocked to Syriza.
This doesn’t actually mean that Greece has ‘lurched to the left’. The Greeks themselves, as individuals, are hardcore capitalists who lean, if anything, to a somewhat anarchic ‘every-man-for-himself’ system. There is so little industry in Greece that in reality it is a nation of small traders, all looking for the advantage. They may pay lip service to socialism, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty they are ferocious in their pursuit of the Drachma (or Euro, as it is now).
Syriza has predominated because they promised change, a change that the Greeks are desperate for. They have lived under the austere yoke of the Troika for years, and yet still see no light at the end of the tunnel. They want self-determination again, and Syriza looks to be the only party that will fight for it. That Syriza are left-wing is irrelevant. The Greeks utterly reject the Troika mandated selling off of the family jewels – the Greeks are proud of their history, and don’t want to see that history sold for a mess of pottage. And they are tired of the poverty that has been inflicted on them so that the Grand Projet may live on at their expense.
The biggest mistake Greece made was joining the Eurozone. The second biggest mistake they made was not bailing out of the Euro as soon as the shit hit the fan in 2008.
If they exit the Euro, it will be bad news for me personally, as all my assets are tied up there. But realistically, I think a return to the Drachma is their only hope of salvation.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:34 pm -
I imagine many Germans are in complete agreement with their Grecian neighbours, but see the Deutsche Mark as their salvation.
But to imagine it’s got anything to do with democracy is to wholly misjudge EU l’affaires.-
January 29, 2015 at 1:23 pm -
“The biggest mistake Greece made was joining the Eurozone”
The biggest mistake the northern European countries made was allowing all the dago-woppy-spiccy lands to join at all and allowing them to paella their ledgers to do so. I was living in Germany at the time and can well remember every serious economist describing the southern European economies as ‘basket cases’ , with currencies so weak they needed crutches to get them out one’s wallet. Even Germany was in no real position to join, having just bought the DDR (after bribing it with ‘cheap tin trays and glass walking sticks’ as my history teacher was wont to say).
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January 29, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
It’s been my view for some time that it’s not the likes of Greece that should leave the Euro, but Germany. The (presumably) Deutschmark would rise, leaving the Euro as a cheap currency that the Southern Europeans might just make ago of
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January 29, 2015 at 2:08 pm -
But a Germany out of the Euro wouldn’t have the degree of control over the rest of the EU that it does have whilst in the Euro. Germany gains much advantage from being in because of the other country’s that are also in. Germany does whatever it does because it gains advantage, no?
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January 29, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
That, however sensible, won’t happen. It would make German exports more expensive, especially in their southern european captive markets.
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January 29, 2015 at 3:42 pm -
One show I recall about the Grecian fiasco explained that urban Greeks took great pride in buying Porsche Cayennes. The catch was that they all bought them using credit on German interest levels, so I’m not sure Germany benefits in the end, since they were lending them the money anyway. The whole thing is a dog’s dinner. The Euro only exists because Mitterand made it a condition of German Reunification. The French were determined to keep the Boche in a box, and ensure France could continue in it’s delightfully bourgeois ways knowing the Krauts would bail them out and they could continue to opt out of the global economy. That folk are now “blaming” the Germans is ridiculous.
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January 29, 2015 at 4:51 pm -
But are people blaming the Germans? I don’t think so, rather they are stating it as it is, the Germans have gained a lot out of the Eurozone and probably more than anyone else. No problem. Except that Greece is not and as far as I know, never wanted to be Germany, rather it wanted to be Greece.
Germany does whatever suits Germany. Of course. The issue is that Greece isn’t now (whatever has gone before) being allowed to do what is best for Greece. Germany is insisting via the EU that it will apply the rules that by coincidence suit it.
Germany is running the show, accepting that is not the same as blaming Germany. It is stating the fact that Germany is the big guy and is trying to impose it’s will on the little guy, as big guy’s tend to do.
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January 29, 2015 at 5:08 pm -
“But are people blaming the Germans?”
The images- by my standards offensive- of Merkel dressed as Hitler would indicate a proportion of Greece blame the Germans, yes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of ‘Anschi’ in her role as the Chancellor OF Germany, for my mind if you want to be Margaret Thatcher Mk2 then you have to have her ‘balls’, but as The German Chancellor she has bent over backwards to help the Greeks. It would not be unfair to say that she and the Germans are the only REAL friends the Greeks have.
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January 29, 2015 at 5:30 pm -
” It would not be unfair to say that she and the Germans are the only REAL friends the Greeks have”
You haven’t said why that is.
Forgive me if I speculate. Is that because the Germans know what is best for Greece even if the Greeks don’t? Or because they are prepared to sacrifice some of their own well being to assist the Greeks? Does the sale of two submarines enter into the friendship equation?
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January 29, 2015 at 6:39 pm -
I’d like to think that it is due to Germans experiencing some collective guilt- no not for the war – but for it being their former Chancellor , Gert The Shredder , allowing Greece into the eurozone under unrealistic easy terms in the first place. Indeed Kohl (who was Anschi’s mentor and Spirit Guide, has said so quite clearly) and having been a ‘false friend’ once, Merkel wants to be a ‘real friend’ to Greece now.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a doctor ‘only’ earning 800 euros a month or Nescafe costing 6 euros a jar….and not just in Greece.
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January 29, 2015 at 7:02 pm -
Is that a lot or a little different from the guy who raped a girl, finding out she is pregnant then wanting to make an honest women of her and be a good father to the child?
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January 29, 2015 at 7:26 pm -
“Is that a lot or a little different from the guy who raped a girl, finding out she is pregnant then wanting to make an honest women of her and be a good father to the child?”
Change ‘girl’ in your analogy to “clap ridden, crack whore desperate to become a ‘Single Mom’ and thus acquire a winning hand in the Benefits Game” and ‘raped a girl’ to ‘was accosted at the side of the road by said crack whore peddling her wares as “fresh and clean” ‘ and it’d be nearer the truth. Indeed some of the dialogue between Athens and Berlin has had more than a passing resemblance to divorce court proceedings.
Someday soon both the Greeks and Germans will revert back to the default position, to that building block and corner stone of the EU, the founding principle that : The French are to blame. Always, without fail.
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January 29, 2015 at 7:56 pm -
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
I know someone famous said that, I just can’t remember who.
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January 29, 2015 at 2:44 pm -
As always, Nisakiman speaks wise words. And in this case he knows exactly what he’s talking about because he lives in Greece and has done for many years – not as an indolent ex-pat, but with his young family as a working resident who speaks Greek. I too lived in Greece for over ten years until this time last year – and spoke the language.
There’s an awful lot of bollocks being written this week about Syriza and Greece – including some of the comments here. I can’t be bothered to refute everything, but a few points to mull over:
Unemployment amongst 16 – 30 year olds was running at 62%.
The percentage of workers employed in the public sector was and is roughly the same as the UK, less than France, but greater than Germany.
Professional public sector salaries are ludicrously low and have actually had real cuts: e.g. a fully-qualified GP earns around E800 a month; public health inspectors (real ones, the ones who prevent dysentery outbreaks) had a cut from E1,200 to E1,000 then to E600 p.m.
Even contributory pensions have been drastically cut: E400 a month is not a lot to live on, and there are no supplementary benefits.
Prices of staple goods have risen and are still high. Last time I shopped, a 200g jar of instant coffee was around E6.00, a pack of washing powder around E8.00, and toothpaste around E3.00. Petrol was around E1.90 a litre.The level of despair is enormous.
No wonder Greeks of whatever political persuasion have voted for someone who gave them hope, and a politician whose background did not involve massive financial corruption and who didn’t come from one of the great nepotistic political dynasties. Believe me, if Alex Tsipras had been involved in any corruption, his enemies would have published it far and wide by now.
Finally, it’s very interesting to note that he has chosen to go into coalition with a centre-right party (Anexartitoi Ellines = Independent Greeks), when he could so easily have chosen a centre-left one (To Potami = The River).
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January 29, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
No mulling over necessary, much of what you have written accords with what I am hearing from others who know. But ease up on the ‘indolent expats’ if you will. I work only 8 hours a day during the winter months for no pay because that is all the daylight I have. Come the longer days mine extend to 12 hours as well, but 7 days a week not 5.
I wouldn’t have it any other way mark you I don’t move fast.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
Good luck to ‘em indeed.
Anything that throws sand in the gears of the EU cannot be entirely bad.
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January 29, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
“the traditional pattern of European economic meltdowns ordinarily leads to right-wing coups and war within a decade”
The fascists – Nazis, Mussolini etc – were left wing socialists who came to power because of the economic meltdown of the time. Nazi =National Socialist.
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January 31, 2015 at 12:00 am -
Incorrectamundo. The fascists were actually right wing socialists. A bit like modern day Conservatives, but with balls.
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January 29, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
The Euro might have worked well if it had started with a core of countries at a roughly similar stage with others being allowed to join when they were really ready. As with the rush to take in as many countries as possible though common sense went out of the window with predictable consequences. I remember John Major suggesting that there could be a parallel common currency that mainly business would use and which could evolve naturally into a common currency. That made sense to me but it was laughed at by the PTB.
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January 29, 2015 at 4:20 pm -
It’s hard not to feel sad about Greece.
We get the usual hard nosed ‘they’re lazy, won’t pay taxes’ criticism, which may or may not be true
When promising the future paradise of membership of the eu & euro, did the Greek politicians ever explain that it meant Greeks becoming German clones? i.e. productive & biddable workers & taxpayers? That for Greeks, given their economy, it would be really tough?
These same politicians involved in the economic death of a nation then collaborated in a ‘recovery’ scheme that offers no hope to a generation.
And what of Brussels? It’s hard to see their project as any more than the manifestation of a perverse religion; one in which it doesn’t matter what the cost, no backsliding allowed.
On religion, never worked in Greece, but Med communism I’ve seen is far more pragmatic than the usual stereotypes; even so, it’s hard to see anything good ahead for the Greeks, in or out of the euro.
Meanwhile, as the high priests in Brussels & their apostles fronting our governments impose their faith, the real world is full of successful trading blocs. Ready to feed off Europe’s carcase.
Just a view & what do I know?-
January 29, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
Hear hear.
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January 29, 2015 at 4:38 pm -
“… the will of the people to take a gamble on what they perceive to be an alternative to a system that has left them bereft of luxuries.”
That’s not correct. A significant proportion of the Greek populace is not merely “bereft of luxuries” — they are struggling, as best they can, to survive and live from day to day, under the swingeing austerity imposed upon them.
Greece should never have met the criteria for joining the Euro zone. But that wasn’t the fault of the Greek electorate. It was Goldman Sachs, at the behest of the then-government, that managed to fiddle the figures and thus allow Greece to gain entry. Yet neither Goldman Sachs nor the governing elite have faced any repercussions. Instead, the man-in-the-street has borne the burden. No wonder he wants an alternative!
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January 29, 2015 at 5:08 pm -
I use the word ‘luxuries’ in terms of items most in Western European nations take for granted and don’t perceive as luxuries until they’re gone. A TV set is a luxury when you can’t feed your family.
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January 29, 2015 at 6:43 pm -
Damn you and your Ompaas Pet! That was what I was trying to say with my comment a minute ago that: “There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a doctor ‘only’ earning 800 euros a month or Nescafe costing 6 euros a jar….and not just in Greece.”.
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January 29, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
@binao Just a view & what do I know?
It would appear rather more than most -
January 29, 2015 at 7:20 pm -
The Raccoon Arms once again shows it’s utility-for any subject one or two informed commentors will pop up and speak sense, thank you Lysistrata Eleftheria and nisakiman, if I then ignore most commentary provided by the lame stream media and proceed to Zero-hedge, I can form an opinion.
The view I form is this, the new Greek leader though he is painted as far-left (much as the lame-stream would have you believe that PEGIDA is far right) comes across as quite rational, he sees the world as it is, not as he he wishes it would be. He appears to see advantage in allying himself with Russia, perhaps to provide a veto vote (for Russia) at the EU against further disastrous power plays in Ukraine. One can easily perceive that Greece might follow Iceland in an organized default, whilst relying on Russia for crucial energy supplies and perhaps bank support. At the same time a further payment to Russia is due for Ukrainian natural gas and the begging bowl is once again in evidence, will Russia once again demand payment in gold and further de-stabilise European bank assets ( the “assets” they are stuffed with consist of mainly bonds paying little to nothing issued by desperate governments).
There are so many permutations as to how this could play out, but given recent history I back the Russians as rational players to succeed, to support Greece and expand its influence in the Mediterranean all the better to make NATO pee its pretty panties when it realises that natural gas supply is insecure and the energy flowing through the Med could also soon be very insecure. The windmill continent suddenly looks very silly.
Far from being the weak sister in the EU I see Greece as a vital partner that can negatively effect every country in Europe. That does not please me because their decade of credit card-like excess would seem to be validated. -
January 29, 2015 at 8:31 pm -
As one wise correspondent wrote in a paper last week – Greece is simply Mother Nature’s way of demonstrating why the Euro could never work.
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January 30, 2015 at 8:13 am -
There’s an excellent perceptive article and analysis in this morning’s Daily Telegraph by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, their International Business Editor. At last, someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
Had it appeared yesterday I would’ve linked to it. (Ignore the ‘nuclear’ bit, he’s using it metaphorically not literally).
Go read and learn.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11376031/Investors-have-woken-up-to-Greeces-nuclear-risk.html-
January 30, 2015 at 9:44 am -
@Lysistrata Eleftheria a worthwhile article for many reasons but worth it alone for the sentence ‘Mr Varoufakis has vowed to smash the “rent-seeking” kleptocracy that enjoys legal tax immunity and have turned state procurement into an enrichment scam. “We will destroy the bases which they built for decade after decade,” he said. This I think summons up not just the Greek ‘problem’ but succinctly summarises the use to which the European project has generally been put in many countries. It is unsurprising perhaps that the model appears to be under threat
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January 30, 2015 at 11:15 pm -
Who, I wonder would be considered the rent-seeking kleptocracy in Greece?
And oh, how I wish you Brits had the gumption to say such things, SamCam’s rentseeking family and the royal family come to mind.
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