"Sustainable Prosperity: A Greek Perspective II" by Michalis Theodoropoulos

In Worldwatch Institute Europe’s second article examining the current situation in Greece we explore the particularities behind the current social situation, the ongoing changes taking place within Greek society and the notion of sustainable prosperity as viewed from a Greek standpoint.
Worldwatch researcher Eirini Glyki [ http://www.worldwatch-europe.org/node/52 ] interviews Michalis Theodoropoulos [ http://www.linkedin.com/in/michalistheodoropoulos ], European Parliament assistant for the Greek Green Ecologists and responsible for environmental, food safety and health issues:

What was Greece’s relation to sustainable prosperity in the past? What is this relation in the present?

We need to define sustainable prosperity first. Do we mean in terms of GDP and consumption increase, or in terms of the Human Development Index and social welfare? Or merely the idea that the past was more prosperous than the present?
Greece following the tragic aftermath of World War II and the succeeding civil war went through a restructuring process under the sponsorship of the USA and the funds of the Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP). These funds were used to build necessary infrastructure and supposedly boost production and consumption of goods.
Political instability until the late 1970’s, lack of planning and large internal migration from rural areas to city centers, rendered production patterns fragmented and unsustainable, while consumption was kept on basic needs. Big industry was never really developed; exports were never that important; agricultural production covered mainly internal needs but sufficiently. Society was still living in conservation status, saving rather than spending, secured by family bonds and trust in social institutions rather than in state welfare and the corrupted political system that followed. People worked hard but lived a rather descent and modest life, rich in spirit rather than material goods, small was still beautiful. The environment was kept in quite pristine condition, although there was a total absence of environmental protection.
Then the 1980’s came, along with EU subsidies and private bank loans, living conditions and the socio-economic fabric changed. Tourism became the main industry and subsidized agricultural production gave rise to monoculture of environmental stressful products. Small industrial units operated uncontrolled without any environmental consideration and there was a considerable shift from production of goods to service provision. A new middle class started to emerge, with an urge to spend more than it earns, to consume more than it needs.
During the 1990’s and till 2005, GDP increased along with stock market and property loan bubbles, people seemed to be happy to be able to consume more with easier loans, while at the same time refrained from their financial obligations to the state, as there was no payback in terms of public welfare. Prosperity seemed to be a benefit for many and living conditions improved, although the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. Bigger, easy and more was the beauty of the time.
Under the current crisis and austerity policies, prosperity really seems a thing of the past, as wages, pensions and social welfare are diminishing. A whole generation that invested in this lifestyle saw its aspirations and jobs getting evaporated. Although according to OECD, the Greek workforce is amongst the hardest working in the EU (although not that productive in GDP terms), austerity is affecting mostly the working and lower classes: unemployment is reaching 20%; the same percentage of the population at present lives in breadline conditions and new-homeless people pack in city centers by thousands.

Has the economic crisis triggered a change of views amongst Greek people?

Although there is widespread criticism against the political establishment and significant social turmoil, the majority of the Greek people are still entrapped in a certain lifestyle and political system, numb and afraid, waiting for help from above (politicians, the state, God, etc), or an easy way out.
Fortunately, there is a worth-noticing critical mass of people and movements striving for change, although in tight oppression and significantly fewer in numbers. Despite that, hundreds of thousands of people protest in massive demonstrations against the austerity policies and the colonial-type loans, while at the same time many thousands of people are creating their own post-crisis environment, smaller self-managed systems within the system, cracks in the existing monetary-based economy.

In the present, what are the attitudes of Greek people concerning their living model?

There is widespread consideration about the deterioration of living conditions in Greece at present, great anxiety and uncertainty about the future. Environmental considerations fall short when there is no guaranteed income and when there will be a privatization of public natural resources and services, in order to repay the usurious loans Greece received as bail-out.
Although the majority of the people are entrapped in city centers and certain lifestyles, a critical mass of the crisis generation has found ways to make cracks in space and time, either in the city, or in view of a reoccupation of the countryside. Sooner or later, people will have to start considering living with less but in better conditions, if not by choice, by need for sure. Bankruptcy is around the corner and people start considering life after money and debt.

Is, in your opinion, Greek society ready to move away from consumerism?

Consumerism in Greek society does not go back more than two generations. People will have to re-evaluate their financial and social institutions when the crisis really hits the bottom. Sustainable practices from the past, such as barter economy, solidarity networks, mutual assistance, community orchards, cooperatives, collective housing, reoccupation of public spaces and many more, have already shown signs of hope.
The younger generations, although entrapped in widespread commercialized consumerism, are ready and willing to revitalize traditional practices and consumption patterns followed by their grandparents. Following the inspiring example of Catalonia [ http://www.homenatgeacatalunyaii.org/en ], several self organized initiatives have sprung lately also in Greece, setting aside intermediaries, creating subsystems of their own, reclaiming public life and space.

Currently, what - if any - are the movements within Greek society shaping up to be?

Beyond the crisis there is a growing number of people that have decided to take their future in their hands and reinvent the collective We. You may move faster when you are alone, but you can go further if you collaborate. Local exchange trading systems without money, eco-communities, cooperatives of producers and consumers, worker cooperatives, urban community orchards, traditional seed banks and seed exchanges, collective management of public goods, public assemblies and self-organised social centers, are just few of hundreds of grassroots initiates that have sprung during the last two years in Greece. An indicative list can be found here. [ http://www.iliosporoi.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=514:2012-01-12-14-51-13&catid=84:2011-11-24-20-29-10&Itemid=374 ]

What are, in your opinion, the changes needed to be made in order for
Greek society to be viable?

Greek society needs a shift in its collective consciousness. As we exit the century of Self, we need to reinvent the new collective We, as much as, we need to redefine basic humanistic values and fundamental rights. We need a change of paradigm, a change of narrative, a change in our collective imaginary institution of society, in order to live our utopias, in order for the younger generation to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
We live in a period of historical developments, the end of an era and the beginning of another one. We need to find sustainable ways for the ecological transformation of society and the economy. We need to aspire confidence and optimism for the future. It is our duty not only to create the conditions for this transition but also to toll the whole society along this way, by promoting best practice examples and realistic but at the same time radical solutions.
Now many say that a new Marshall Plan is needed, a Green New Deal, focused on green investments and the ecological transformation of the industry. This is much needed, as much as we also need a shift towards degrowth targets, especially for certain industry sectors, such as energy, transport, automobile, chemicals, agriculture, while at the same time re-localize production and consumption. It is certain we need to start thinking of prosperity being decoupled from growth as determined by the current form of capitalism.
Greece specifically, could find solutions in dramatically cutting down military expenditure, taxing the Church’s wealth, as well as taxing the wealth of the richest 1-2% of the population and the financial stock exchange transactions. Moreover, at a larger scale, the “free -corporate- market” and banking system (including rating agencies) need to be regulated, in order to serve public interest instead of just being profit driven.

In your view, what does this crisis point out considering the existing living model and economic system? What are the connections of this crisis to sustainable prosperity?

It is my view that this current crisis, is a systemic restructuring of the current monetary-based economic system, purely profit driven, resulting to the economic elite accumulating further wealth and power. This clearly shows the default of the existing “neoliberal” policies, as well as of the current development patterns. The current economic system seems to have lost its morality by ignoring the human factor.
Unsustainable recipes of the past, as practiced in Greece, focusing on economic growth, GDP increase, over-consumption of natural resources, even at the expense of human lives, should be an example to avoid in the future as we strive to make a transition into societies with prosperity for all. In order to achieve sustainable prosperity, the current production model based on productivism and monetary-based economy should be replaced by a resource-based economy, a combination of green investment aiming at the ecological transformation of the economy and society, coupled by degrowth elements (live a better life with less material goods and fewer working hours) and a conscious lifestyle by everyone.

"Greece: the European version of shock doctrine. The dawn of a new obscure era" by Kostas Svolis

All austerity measures forced on Greek people since 2010 constitute a small hors d'oeuvre in relation to the upcoming tsunami of social poverty and squalor that will be served to them as the main course by the capital and the Greek government, the IMF and EU directorate. The percentage of “official” unemployment has surpassed 16%, while the real one is estimated to be more than 20%. The situation is really dramatic for young people, as the percentage of real unemployment concerning this age group reaches 40%, while it is estimated that by the end of 2011 the number of unemployed will surpass 1 million. Workers’ wages are continuously decreasing and it is estimated that between 2010- 2012 total decrease will reach 30%.
Apart from salary and pension cutbacks in the public sector, there is also dramatic salary decrease in the private sector, through the abolition of collective employment agreements (CEAs), the abolition of overtime cost and the application of flexible and precarious work arrangements. It is notable that employers have the right to pay young workers (up to 25 years old) with only 80% of minimum wage. The new insurance legislation both decreases pensions and increases the number of working years required and the age limit for right to pension (40 years of labor, 65 years of age as minimum requirements for full pension rights).

At the same time, changes in the Greek health system are burdening pensioners and workers with bigger cost participation in medicines and hospitalization. Of course, it is unnecessary to stress that the unemployed, socially excluded people and immigrants have no access whatsoever to the public health system.

In addition, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are on the verge of total extinction, especially those in retailing. The percentage of businesses that have closed in the center of Athens has gone up from 17% (August 2010) to 23,4% as we speak. It is estimated that during the interval 2010-2013 approximately 200.000 small enterprises will be closed and the consequent job loss will amount to more than 350.000 (employers’ jobs included).
Additionally, Greece still holds the third place in EU in relation to inflation rates which, in early 2011 were close to 5% (while at the same period the Eurozone rate was 2,2%). Basic survival goods are becoming more and more expensive and the recession rate remains steady in 3,9%. The dramatic increase of direct taxes on basic popular consumption goods, the increase of income tax even on small incomes, together with the interest rate increase for housing loans, are decreasing even more people’s income. There is also the imposition of poll tax on the self-employed as well as precarious workers who are being paid through rendered services invoice. On the other hand, people who enjoy excessive incomes, the local capital and multinational companies continue to ostentatiously evade taxation and are owing huge sums to national insurance funds. The tax reform that takes place in the name of “investment” generates tax cuts for capitalists and initiates an unprecedented tax raid aiming at small and medium incomes. Nevertheless, it is estimated that there are 600 billion euros worth of deposits by Greek big depositors in Swiss banks, a sum which is twice the amount of the Greek public debt!

By voting the mid-term austerity plan and its application law, the Greek government is preparing to pass to the second phase of its plan that involves selling out the country’s public wealth and taking apart the almost nonexistent welfare state. The most tragic sequences will derive from dissolving the national public health system. The aim is to cut back health expenses by 75 million euros till the end of 2012 and another 150 million euros from 2012 till 2015. Needless to say that this “money saving” procedure will not be based on fighting off health equipment and medicine overcharging, neither bribing and corruption that characterizes the deals between hospital management and pharmaceuticals companies, nor through cutting back the huge salaries of various hospital managers, but on the expense of Greek people’s health. Health expenses cutbacks will take place by decreasing the number of public hospitals from 137 to 83, the number of available hospital beds from 36.000 to 32.000 and the release of 550 of them to private insurance companies for economic exploitation. Clinics inside the remaining hospitals are expected to merge, a fact that will lead in significant reduction of service quality offered by hospitals. It is estimated that in years coming 9.000 doctors will be fired and 26.000 nursing staff. Especially in the case of Greek periphery, there will be a desertification in terms of public health services.

And while the Greek government spent 80 million euros for the Special Olympics Games fiesta, at the same time it discontinues a number of special education schools, thus leading thousands of people with special needs to social exclusion and dramatically increasing their expenses in terms of necessary equipment.

Similar changes are promoted in the education system through school merging that, especially in the case of Greek periphery will lead to exclusion of children even from primary education. As far as tertiary education is concerned, academic independence and self-governance are being abolished, while universities are being forced to operate under private financing criteria and the supervision by managers unfamiliar with their academic and scientific content. The quality of studies is undermined and through cutbacks in catering and housing student rights, as well as access to free books, the road to tuition fees is slowly being paved.

And while the Greek public telecommunications operator has been completely sold out to Germans, the government is preparing to sell out all the other public wealth “fillets”. First and foremost energy and water, the exploitation of mineral ores, beaches, public land for touristic exploitation and everything else imaginable –rumor has it, even archaeological sites. By using fast track laws and the Fund for the Private Property Exploitation of the Public Sector S.A., the Greek government is able to continue its destructive task, without being obstructed by constitutional law, parliamentary procedures, environmental effects studies and whatever might suspend capitalist profitability hidden under the beautified title “investments’. Investors, local and foreign, are the ones that brought Greece to its current state and now they will be able to make huge profits by buying for nothing the country’s public wealth with minimum cost and risk involved.

The cost for society will have many aspects, not just in terms of public revenue loss and the increase of public deficit or bills becoming more expensive and services/goods provided becoming worse due to privatization. Worst of all, exploitation will take place in predatory terms so that the capital will ensure the biggest possible profitability, a fact that will lead in overexploiting natural resources, environmental destruction and pollution increase, thus undermining any future possibility for the society to satisfy its needs through its relationship with nature and the environment.

It is most characteristic that following the privatization of water supply companies in the UK, the budget for repairing networks was diminished to more than 50%, leading to a dramatic increase of leaks. Prices were increased by 36% within a decade, while investors’ profits increased by 14,7% within eight years. Two million people had delinquent accounts, water supply was cut off in more than 18.500 households and 50.000 jobs were lost.
Therefore, through the continuously diminishing work income and rights, the shrinkage of small property and self-employment, the pillage of public wealth and nature, Greek society will acquire specific characteristics noticeable in some South-American societies. The economic polarization between extreme wealth and popular poverty will lead to the rapture of social fabric and to generalized social cannibalism.

The “economic miracle” that took place during the former two decades and led Greece to the European Monetary Union and the Euro, was largely based on non-standard work by hundreds of thousands of immigrants who worked under miserable conditions, on illegal status and with extremely low pay. That “miracle” had as its symbol the Olympic Games 2004, which apart from the huge debt they left behind, they also left numerous dead bodies of immigrant workers (during the construction period of Olympic projects, fatal accidents were estimated to three per week).

Currently, with the crisis plaguing the country, the immigrant population that lifted the burden of economic development by working in the hardest and most underpaid jobs (construction, land workers, housekeeping, sea workers, etc.) are being turned into the first victims not only of unemployment, but of social cannibalism as well. The state exploits both the rhetoric and the racist attacks of right-wind radical and fascist gangs against immigrants in order to channel people’s indignation to a generalized war between different segments of the lower classes. This war takes the form of everyone against everyone, so that the indignation will not transform to an overthrowing force directed to upper and ruling classes.

The above described scenery is complimented by Greece’s transformation to a levee against immigration to the rest of Europe, a role that was imposed by the Dublin II Treaty. Thousands of immigrants who intend to go to other European countries are being trapped in Greece, while there are no existing structures for hospitality and social integration whatsoever and absolutely no working perspective that would ensure some sort of basic living. All these people are stacked in already degraded –due to lack of state interest and the desertification caused by crisis- neighborhoods in Athens and other big cities, trying to survive or creating makeshift camps outside the ports-exits to Europe in Patras and Igoumenitsa, hoping that they will be able to escape hidden in the wheels of a big truck, preferring to risk their lives rather than to live in misery and poverty.

Thus, a grim condition is being created in which crime rate, drugs, prostitution, gang war and, of course, even more upgraded, the serpent’s egg, fascist violence and police repression will be used by rulers in the context of the exertion of biopolitics control over different population segments, locals and immigrants, which will be thrown out of the social fabric because of the crisis. In reality this condition constitutes an opportunity -based on popular demand for safety and security- for reconstructing the legalization of the political system which has reached its lowest point. All this may seem too much for Greek reality at the moment, but it should not be treated as a sci-fi scenario, as it is all about “management” forms that are applied in other countries, such as Mexico. Another way of “managing” crisis could be Greece’s involvement in “issues and adventures of national importance”, using, for example, as a pretext the exploitation of deposits in the Aegean Sea or the wider area of Eastern Mediterranean as well as redefining the country’s foreign policy towards Israel. In this last case, the Greek government’s stance towards the Free Gaza flotilla and its obstruction was most characteristic.

A de-legalized political system

At this moment the political system seems too weak to activate this sort of control mechanisms and appears to concentrate all its powers in trying to apply the three pillars of the economic steamroller that were mentioned before.

According to the latest poll, which in essence validates previous ones, unspecified vote amounts to 35%, the percentages of the two major political parties are between 27-25% with neither of the two having majority, while the conservative opposition is pulling ahead of the socialist governing party, and 49,6% of participants approve of public demonstrations against MPs that voted for the memorandum and constitute a part of the daily political agenda in Greece. Left-wing parties do not seem able to effectively reap the centrifugal tendencies of the electorate and their shortcoming appears as structural as the crisis characterizing the rest of the political system.

Papandreou’s government –that nearly abdicated when it dealt with popular anger during the general strike and the Parliament blockage on June 15th- is in quick sand. This is not due solely to the fact that 5 of its MPs have gone independent since the government was sworn, nor to its downfall as sketched by poll results. The basic problem is that the government ruptures its representation relations with its popular basis and even its hard core who are the workers in public and wider public sector and who ensured PASOK’s majority in labor unions, without at the same time being able to build new alliances with other social classes. PASOK’s government remains in power only because of the strong pressure it takes from its principals abroad and the support it enjoys from local capitalists who control the media. In spite of the centrifugal tendencies characterizing the governing party, there are still no reliable socialdemocratic alternatives in Greece.

The important question arising is until when PASOK will be able to govern and suffer the political cost and if PASOK will exist, in which form and with what kind of electoral strength after the elections, whenever and if they take place.

Nevertheless, the most important issue is what kind of processes and dynamic are going to develop in its social base which, on one hand detaches itself from party representation, but on the other remains silent and inert.

The conservative opposition party, New Democracy (ND) may have voted against the mid-term austerity plan but has also voted for the majority of the articles of its application law, thus trying both to comply with the anti-memorandum feelings of its voters and the demand of European partners for political consensus as far as the austerity measures are concerned. Nevertheless this effort was in vain, as both voters and partners are displeased! Given the fact that is impossible for ND to consent to a coalition with its eternal adversary, PASOK, without facing tremendous political cost, ND is forced to demand elections though in secret it wishes against majority -which is unlikeable, anyway.

The political forces of the “willing” span the entire spectrum of the political system, ranging from right-wing radicals (LAOS) and hardcore right-wing liberals (DE.SY.) to the most reformist version of the Left (DE.AR.) and they constitute the political system’s reserve in the very likely case that PASOK will not be able to cope with tasks assigned. The possibility of a coalition or a national consensus is very strong, whether it comes up as an election result or not. There are lot of jokers (polls predict a 9-party parliament) and as a result, alternatives multiply. It goes without saying that a government of this type, especially in the name of national unity, will impose even harder measures and will not hesitate to rely even more on brute force exercised by suppressive mechanisms.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) remains faithful to a policy of isolationism and entrenchment, not only in relation to other political formations of the Left, but also to all kinematic processes and fermentation that are taking place in squares. Its strategy concentrates exclusively in increasing its electoral percentage. In spite of its revolutionary rhetoric, it does not miss the opportunity to wink at bourgeois legitimacy, thus being rewarded by the media as the serious, responsible, fortified Left. Even when, on some occasion (seamen strike, for example) it hardens its attitude, it does not provide the struggle with perspective and continuity. As the oldest in the Greek political scene, the Communist Party is more interested in its reproduction, rather than its potential role as a catalyst in the context of a subversive movement –a stance characteristic of any bureaucracy.

Apart from wading in the muddy waters of the squares’ movement, SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) remains captive not only of its internal contradictions and juxtapositions, but mostly of a policy that although it may seem kinematic, it seeks ways to rescue and not to surpass the existing system. SYRIZA may be under continuous attack by the media for supposedly being politically responsible for public citizen protests and the “violence” against government officials (for several months now government officials and PASOK MPs are unable to circulate in public without being subjected to citizens protesting against them), but at the same time SYRIZA’s sole proposal for finding a way out of the crisis is a regulatory plan for the economic capital, debt renegotiation and development measures, without making any kind of groundbreaking proposal towards socially redefining productive activity.

It is notable that, for the first time, social and political polarization as well as the disparate questioning of the political system are recorded in polls, by estimating an electoral percentage of 1,5-2% for radical left ANTARSYA and 1-1,5% for neo-Nazi HRYSI AVGI.

Is there a rival?

Nonetheless, opposite of this nightmarish scenery there appears popular dispute and disobedience, chaotic, confused, mixed up, controversial, contradictory –but apparent. The question is whether dispute and disobedience will transform to a considerable rival.

The eight 24hour general strikes that took place since the Greek government has asked for an IMF-EU bailout and the 48hour strike in June, exhibit a considerable social dynamic which, without question, is not based on decadent and disreputable tertiary trade union bodies. GSEE (General Confederation of Greek Workers) and ADEDY (Civil Servants' Confederation) mainly consist of public and wider public sector workers, since trade union density in the private sector does not exceed 10%. In reality, GSEE and ADEDY can do nothing else than declaring some general strikes, under the continuing pressure of labor classes. They have been completely cut off from trade unionist workers and they are unable to organize any sort of serious proletarian struggle. Even in the case where significant public industries were targeted for privatization and went on long-term strikes (public transport, DEI-Public Power Corporation, etc), trade union leaders functioned as hindrance to any form of struggle and caused its degeneration. It is most characteristic that the latest 48hour strike was organized under the pressure of Syntagma Square mobilizations and so as to avoid the risk for GSEE and ADEDY to lose even the last ounce of their prestige.

On the other hand, during the last few years a number of militant primary trade unions have been created, mainly after the initiative of fighters of the extraparliamentary Left and the Anarchist movement. These primary trade unions mainly concern non-standard workers in the private sector such as: couriers, waitpersons, call center employees, bookshop employees, teaching staff, technical employees, etc. The main characteristics of primary trade unions are intense militant action, anti-hierarchical structure and a clear anticapitalist politicization in contrast with the partisan influence characterizing bureaucratic syndicates. Primary trade unions are quite small and it could be said that they constitute raw syndicate models; nevertheless they are very successful in terms of achieving significant results. They fight against layoffs, for the application of trade collective agreements and for acquiring more working rights such as benefits for different specialties, etc. Their power lies in the fact that when fighting against employers (where their main weapon apart from striking is also business boycotting), they succeed in mobilizing significant numbers of supporters in solidarity with their cause from the wider anticapitalist movement. In addition, the extra-parliamentary Left is relatively powerful amongst educators, hospital doctors, Local Management Organizations (OTA), Ministry of Culture employees, etc. Nevertheless, their action nowadays finds serious obstacles, having on one hand to deal with the abolition of negotiations for CEAs that was voted by government and on the other hand a huge wave of layoffs which, in combination with increasing unemployment numbers, makes the struggle for re-hiring extremely difficult.

It would be impossible to leave out other notable forms of social struggle, which through time acquire a more radical character. Most characteristic examples are the struggle of the 300 worker immigrants concerning permits and the one fought by Keratea residents against landfill construction in their area. These are struggles organized by the people and in many cases acquire a conflictual character and are characterized by an intense tendency to question central authority and its decisions.

The existence of radical Left organizations, but mainly organizations of a wider anticapitalist movement with distinctive Autonomous, Antiauthoritarian and Anarchist characteristics constitutes for certain a big draw for social questioning, in spite of the existing huge problems and contradictions, mainly those of sectarianism in the case of radical Left and the fetishization of colliding with riot police in the case of Anarchists. If, supposedly, December 2008 was a youthful insurrection where the wider Anticapitalist and Anarchist movement put its stamp, it is time to outdistance itself and its own “regularity”, starting first of all to broaden its social reference beyond young people. Surely there will be plenty of opportunity to make that leap shortly, either through the processes which begun at Syntagma Square, or the local and partial struggles as well as resisting the privatization of public wealth.

The contribution of the wider Anticapitalist movement, not only in the forthcoming working and social struggles, but also in the forms and structures of social solidarity and reproduction, so that society will be able to hold its ground in times of social poverty, will be of major importance not only for society itself, but for the political existence of the Anticapitalist movement as well. Defending and broadening the social character of public goods and resources which the government intends to sell out, reconstituting parts of the productive sector for catering to social needs apart from market criteria, are all issues that must be included in our daily agenda under a different prism that will combine mediate answers with strategic perspective. In reality we are falling behind, social solidarity structures are fetal and experimental, functioning in the context of political collectives, while the attempts to create productive collectives are nonexistent.

All issues are wide open in front of our eyes, but one way or the other the shadow of the future has fallen upon us…

Kostas Svolis


published at Anarkismo.net : http://www.anarkismo.net/article/20210

"Exhaustion and Senile Utopia of the Coming European Insurrection" by Franco Berardi Bifo

Figures such as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, among many others, have stressed in the past that we need to create institutions for unified political decisions at the level of the European Union. In the aftermath of the Greek debt crisis, it seems that the Europhile intellectuals have gotten what they asked for. The EU entity has been subjected to a sort of political directorate that has unfortunately only served to reveal that financial interests lie at the heart of the Union’s priorities. The early stage of the European tragedy has manifested itself as a political enforcement of the financial domination of European society.
The institutions of the welfare state have been under attack for thirty years: full employment, labor rights, social security, retirement, public schools, public transportation—all of these areas have been weakened, neglected, or destroyed. After thirty years of neoliberal obsession, we arrive at a collapse. What comes next? The ruling class answers coarsely: more of the same. Further reduction of public sector salaries, further raising of the age of retirement. No respect for society’s needs and the rights of workers.
Thatcher said thirty years ago that there is no such thing as society, and today this statement comes across as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Society is in fact dissolving, leaving space to a jungle where everyone fights against one another. Following the Greek crisis, the monetarist dogma has been strongly reinforced, as if more poison could act as an antidote. Reducing demand will lead to recession, and the only result will be to further concentrate capital in the hands of the financial class and further impoverish the working class.
Following the Greek financial crisis, emergency law was declared: a self-proclaimed Merkel-Sarkozy-Trichet directorate imposed a deflationary policy to be forced on the various national governments of European countries. In order to rescue the financial system, this self-proclaimed directorate diverts resources from society to the banks. And in order to revive the failed philosophy of neoliberalism, social spending is cut, salaries are lowered, the retirement age is raised, and the younger working generation is precarized. Those who do not acknowledge the great necessities of competition and growth will be cut out. Those who choose to play the game will have to accept any punishment, any renunciation, any suffering demanded by the great necessity. But who said that we must absolutely be part of this?
So far, the result of the collapse of neoliberal politics has been its confirmation and consolidation. When the American financial system collapsed, there was a general expectation that capital concentration would be abandoned or at least diminished, as a redistribution of wealth seemed necessary to rescue the economy. This has not taken place. The Keynesian way has not even been explored, and Paul Krugman has been left to repeat a series of perfectly reasonable options that no one is willing to consider.
Thanks to the crisis, American society has been robbed by big finance, and now Europe is following with its own mathematical ferocity. Is there any chance of stopping this insane race? A social explosion is possible, as it is apparent that living conditions will soon become unbearable. But precarious labor and the decomposition of social solidarity may open the way to a frightening outcome: ethnic civil war on continental scale, and the dismantling of the Union, which would unleash the worst instincts of nations.
In Paris, London, Barcelona, Rome, and Athens, massive demonstrations have erupted to protest the restrictive measures, but this movement is not going to stop the catastrophic aggression against social life, because the European Union is not a democracy, but a financial dictatorship whose politics are the result of unquestioned decision-making processes.
Peaceful demonstrations will not suffice to change the course of things and violent explosions will be too easily exploited by racists and criminals. A deep change in social perception and social lifestyle will compel a growing part of society to withdraw from the economic field, from the game of work and consumption. These people will abandon individual consumption to create new, enhanced forms of co-habitation, a village economy within the metropolis.
Unless one is seized by avarice or psychotic obsession, all a human being wants is a pleasant, possibly long life, to consume what is necessary to keep fit and make love. “Civilization” is the pompous name given to all the political or moral values that make the pursuit of this lifestyle possible. Meanwhile, the financial dogma states that if we want to be part of the game played in banks and markets, we must give up a pleasant, quiet life. We must give up civilization.
But why should we accept this exchange? Europe’s wealth does not come from the stability of the Euro or international markets, or the managers’ ability to monitor their profits. Europe is wealthy because it has millions of intellectuals, scientists, technicians, doctors, and poets. It has millions of workers who have augmented their technical knowledge for centuries. Europe is wealthy because it has historically managed to valorize competence, and not just competition, to welcome and integrate other cultures. And, it must be said, it is also wealthy because for four centuries it has ferociously exploited the physical and human resources of other continents.
We must give something up, but what exactly? Certainly we must give up the hyper-consumption imposed on us by large corporations, but not the tradition of humanism, enlightenment, and socialism—not freedom, rights, and welfare. And this is not because we are attached to old principles of the past, but because it is these principles that make it possible to live decently.
The prospect of a revolution is not open to us. The concept of revolution no longer corresponds to anything, because it entails an exaggerated notion of the political will over the complexity of contemporary society. Our main prospect is to shift to a new paradigm not centered on product growth, profit, and accumulation, but on the full unfolding of the power of collective intelligence.


The European tragedy has been founded on a false representation of social reality, based on some assumptions that contradict daily experience, but are nevertheless delivered as absolute truth, as unquestionable dogma.
Platitude 1: Public spending must be drastically cut if European budgets are to be balanced. In fact, European states have been cutting their budgets over the last thirty years, and are now diverting financial resources from social infrastructure towards banks and corporations. This diversion has already produced extensive damage, and will produce more.
Platitude 2: The European economy must compete with the emerging economies of developing countries, and this can happen only by reducing labor costs. This means that in order to become competitive, in a strictly economical sense, European life should be impoverished. And this is what is happening: unemployment is rising, education is being privatized, and racism is spreading. Nobody has ever explained why the only criterion for evaluating wealth must be financial in nature.
Platitude 3: The European worker’s productivity must be increased while salaries must be reduced. This produces an effect of low demand, deflation, and depression, but also overproduction. 40 percent of cars produced in Europe will not find buyers (thank God). So why should carmakers seek to increase the productivity of their already hyper-exploited workers? Consumption declines because salaries shrink, but also because Europeans simply do not need any more cars.
Platitude 4: The age of retirement must be raised, as there will be too many young people and too few old people in the future. The retirement age has already been raised in every European country, and now in France as well. But the rationale does not make sense. The productivity of the average European worker has increased fivefold over the past fifty years, so when the time comes, fewer young people actually will be able to feed more old people. But in reality, raising the retirement age has nothing to do with any social concern whatsoever. Rather, it is a trick for reducing labor costs. Capitalists would much rather pay a poor, old worker a salary than a deserved pension, and leave the young to find their own way, accepting any kind of occupation, whether precarious or simply underpaid.
No European politician dares to question these fundamental platitudes. And those who protest against these devastating measures are accused of being unable to comprehend the task at hand: to advance the deregulation that produced the present collapse. The late-neoliberal ruling class states that if deregulation produced the systemic collapse, we need more deregulation. If lower taxation on high incomes led to a fall in demand, let’s lower high-income taxation. If hyper-exploitation resulted in the production of unsold and useless cars, let’s intensify car production. Are these people crazy? Perhaps they are panicking, in fear of their own impotence.

Aesthetics of Europe

The aesthetics of the European Union is cold by definition. The European Union was born in the aftermath of World War II with the goal of overcoming old nationalist and ideological passions, and here lies its progressive and pragmatic nature. Lately, however, this founding anti-mythological myth seems to have been blurred, confused, forgotten. In the words of Ève Charrin:

Europe is peace, Europe is prosperity … Granite, glass and concrete: depressing architectural neutrality … This modesty without grace is a way of pretending that we are not political (rather, we are only managing).¹

Charrin expresses the aesthetic predicament of the European Union over the past decades, but such an apathetic way of being together was only possible under prosperous conditions. Insofar as a growing level of consumption could be guaranteed within the EU, monetarist rule could favor economic growth, and the EU could exist as an entity. It is a fiction of democracy governed by an autocratic organism, the European Central Bank. While the US Federal Reserve was established to stabilize the value of currency and maximize employment, the primary goal of the ECB charter is to fight inflation. Now this goal has become irrational, as deflation is the overwhelming trend.
Citizens can do nothing to influence the politics of the ECB, as the Bank does not respond to political authority, and this is why European citizens have been conscious of the vacuity of European elections. In the future, these citizens will come to view the EU as their enemy.
Social movements should focus on a founding myth of European history: the myth of energy. Modern culture and political imagination have emphasized the virtues of youth, of passion and energy, aggressiveness and growth. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of physical energy, and semiocapitalism has subjugated the nervous energy of society to the point of collapse. The notion of exhaustion has always been anathema to the discourse of modernity, of romantic Sturm und Drang, of the Faustian drive to immortality, the endless thirst for economic growth and profit, the denial of organic limits.
The romantic cult of youth is the cultural source of nationalism. In the colonial era, British and French nationalism was the cultural condition of colonial expansion, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, nationalism resurfaced to express the self-affirmation of young countries (Italy, Japan, and Germany), while the old empires (Russia, Austria, and the Ottomans) headed towards collapse. Nationalism also affirms the role of the young generation at the cultural and economic level. Old-fashioned styles are devalued, old people and women are despised for their weakness. Fascism always depicts itself as the young nation.
In late modernity, this depiction became an essential feature of advertising. But contrary to Fascist discourse, late modern advertising did not abuse old age, but denied it, claiming that every old person could be young if he or she would simply accept to partake in the consumerist feast. As Norman Spinrad showed in his novel Bug Jack Barron (1967), the denial of age and time marks the ultimate delirium of the global class.
The Fascism that triumphed in Italy after 1922 can be seen as the energolatreia (worshipping of energy) of the young. Now, Berlusconi re-stages the same arrogance, but the actors of the present comedy are old men who require make up and Viagra to inhabit an image of energy and potency. Like the heroic mythology of Fascism, as well as the mythology of advertising embodied by Berlusconi’s subculture, the myth is based on a delirium of power. Where the former was based on the youthful virtues of strength, energy, and pride, the latter employs the mature virtues of technique, deception, and finance. And while the nemesis that followed the youthful violence of Fascism in Italy was World War II and its unthinkable mass of destruction and death, one must ask what nemesis will be brought about by the present energolatreia of the old people?
With very few exceptions, literature and cinema have scarcely dealt with the subject of love between the elderly. It is a subject we know very little about, simply because old people have never really existed. Until some decades ago, it was rare to find a person older than sixty, and while many that were would be surrounded by an aura of respect and veneration, many others were banished to the border of society, where they would find themselves alone, deprived of the means of survival, and unable to form a community. We know very little about growing old, and we know nothing about the emotions of the elderly and their ability of social organization, solidarity, and political force. We don’t know because we have not experienced it. But that experience is now beginning.
The destiny of Europe will be played out in the biopolitical sphere, at the border between consumerism, techno-sanitarian youth-styled aggressiveness, and possible collective consciousness of the limits of the biological (sensitive) organism. The age of senilization is here, and Europe is the place where this experience will first find its voice.

A Therapeutic Paradox

Exhaustion has no place in Western culture, and this has become a problem, for exhaustion now needs to be understood and accepted as a new paradigm for social life. Its cultural and psychic articulation will open the door to a new conception of prosperity and happiness. The coming European insurrection will not be driven by energy, but by slowness, withdrawal, and exhaustion. It will be the autonomization of the collective body and soul from exploitation by means of speed and competition.
Western people were first advised of exhaustion in 1972, when the Club of Rome commissioned the book The Limits to Growth.² For the first time, we became aware that the physical resources of the planet are not boundless. Some months after the publication of the report, the Western world experienced the first oil shortage following the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Since then, we are expected to be conscious of the fact that energy is leaving the physical body of the Earth. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the collapse of the dot-com economy led to the pauperization and precarization of cognitive workers, while the financial meltdown of September 2008 initiated a process of pauperization and precarization of overall society. Western culture is unprepared to deal with the patterns exposed by these crises, because it is a culture based on the identification of energy and good, of expansion and social well-being.
At the moment the change in perception towards exhaustion seems rather dark and depressing, because the game is played following the rules of modern energolatria: growth. In the coming years one third of the European population—the generation born after World War II, when the fulfillment of the modern promise of peace, democracy, and well-being was apparently at hand—will reach old age. The new generation now entering the labor market does not possess the memory of this past civilization, nor the political force to defend their existence from the predatory economy. The age of senility is here, and it may introduce a generalized form of dementia senilis: fear of the unknown, xenophobia, loss of historical memory. But in a different scenario—one that we should anticipate at the cultural level—the process of senilization may open the way to a cultural revolution based on the force of exhaustion, of facing the inevitable with grace, discovering the sensuous slowness of those who do not expect any more from life than wisdom—the wisdom of those who have seen a great deal without forgetting, who look at each thing as if for the first time.
This is the lesson that Europe may learn if it can come out from the capitalist obsession with accumulation, property, and greed. In a reversal of the energetic subjectivation that animated the revolutionary theories of the twentieth century, radicalism should abandon the mode of activism, and adopt a passive mode. A radical passivity would dispel the ethos of relentless productivity that neoliberal politics has imposed. The mother of all the bubbles, the bubble of work, would finally deflate. We have been working too much over the past three or four centuries, and outrageously too much over the last thirty years. If a creative consciousness of exhaustion could arise, the current depression may mark the beginning of a massive abandonment of competition, consumerist drive, and dependence on work.
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson would define the European malaise in terms of a double bind, or contradictory injunction, with a paradoxical solution that could be this: don’t be afraid of decline. Decline and de-growth imply a divestment in the midst of frenzied competition, and this is the paradox that may bring us out of the neoliberal double bind.

originaly published in Dec. 2010 in e-flux:
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/191

Platitudes

"Democracy: There’s no escape." by Greek political group "Agents of Chaos"

Democracy

There’s no escape.

The big pricks are out.

They’ll fuck everything in sight.

Watch your back.

Harold Pinter (He already said it on February 2003)

At the historical point we are now in, the contradiction of capital is increasingly clear worldwide. Proletarians around the world are in turmoil as the reproduction of their existence becomes more and more difficult. But while it is already difficult for proletarians to continue their lives, it is capital itself, as a relation of exploitation, which is in a crisis of reproduction: The current struggles of the proletariat are the expression of the current form of this relation of exploitation.

During the last year in China, where the economy is still growing very quickly, all kinds of contradictions were rising. Clashes of workers with the police are common for a number of reasons: the demand for the increase of the very low wages on which the steep economic growth is based; attempts to prevent land enclosures in villages; struggles to get compensation for dismissed workers, and against the inadequacy of a health system which results in a high mortality rate for children. In the U.S.A., where there is a historical low in workers’ struggles, thousands of homeless and unemployed people have occupied vacant houses which had been seized by banks. Students have occupied universities in California and New York writing on their banners: We have decided not to die. They are demanding what was until recently taken for granted, just their ability to continue being students. Proletarians in South Africa and Algeria, from their much more desperate position imposed by the hierarchy of capitalist states, have made the same demands, of water and electricity, against being forced to live in slums, as they clash with police. In India as well, workers fight because the price of bread has suddenly risen, and they are starving to death. Last year in Spain, workers in shipyards which were shut down burnt police cars. In South Korea, dismissed workers occupied factories and clashed with police for two and a half months. In Bangladesh, dismissed workers clashed with police and burnt factories. In France and Belgium, dismissed workers kidnapped their bosses, placed explosives in the factories and threatened to blow them up if they were not compensated for their dismissal. In India and China, they kill their bosses during the conflicts because of thousands of upcoming dismissals. In this historical phase, proletarian struggles are objectively struggles for the right of the reproduction of existence itself.

At the same time, the restructuring of labour relations has accelerated and precariousness is the predominant situation for everyone now. Precariousness is manifested in the worst conditions: there have been 43 employee suicides in France Telecom in two years; in the U.S. 1,000,000 unemployed are desperately waiting to see whether Obama will once again extend the unemployment benefit, which runs out in April, or if they will be left with nothing. Unemployment numbers in most countries have surged, hitting records higher than in any other historical period.

In this historical phase we are in, there are more than enough proletariats for capital as the latter cannot effectively exploit the former, cannot produce the amount of profit needed so as a part of it to be anew put into profitable investments. This is the essence of any capitalist crisis regardless of the form it takes. The present form of crisis objectively puts proletarians’ reproduction at the center of the contradiction. The crisis first appeared as debt crisis of proletarian households in the U.S.A. It has already been transformed into a generalized debt crisis, and it is possible it will be transformed into a monetary crisis; that is, a debt crisis of large countries with strong currencies or even whole blocs of capitalist states such as the European Union. The debt crisis forces capital to turn to its only choice at the moment, which is to continue the strategy that created this crisis. It must further reduce wages and benefits in every possible way. This is the only choice of capital, because the debt crisis is the result of globalization and the restructuring of capitalist relations from which there is no turning back.

From the proletariat’s standpoint: “[it is] caught in the stranglehold of competition that can only reduce prices by reducing wages, in the servitude of debt which has become just as indispensable as income in order to live. The waged have, to cap it all, the chance of being tyrannised at their own cost, since the savings [are] instrumentalised by stock-exchange finance, savings which demand to be repaid without end, are their own.” (Le Monde diplomatique, March 2008). From capital’s standpoint, it is a relentless pursuit of the lowest possible price of labour power across the planet, but which has a limit: the existence and reproduction of labour power as this is socially defined in every capitalist state.

Capital is forced to try to resolve the crisis by destroying fixed capital (buildings, machinery, infrastructure) and variable capital (humans) in order to recreate the conditions of its reproduction, without being, at the moment, able to do it through its only directly effective manner, widespread global war. Thus, for the time being, the restructuring will inevitably deepen. The wage cuts are reaching the point where the lowest wage and the unemployment benefit tend to be equal, resulting in the explosive growth of debt for more and more proletarians. The privatization of “public” sectors (health, education, social insurance) is increasing dramatically. The unemployed have smaller and smaller benefits and are forced into slave-like working conditions with wages below the level of reproduction. The present historical period has reached its limit. That’s why the state places police guards outside schools in France or inside schools in the U.S.A. to arrest ‘undisciplined students.’ Capital’s only way out today is repression, but there is absolutely no way out of the crisis. This is obvious in cases of natural disasters such as in Haiti and Chile. In such cases, the capitalist system is directly put into question by proletarians, who, temporarily unable to be exploited as labour power, organize the expropriation of commodities and use them according to their needs in order to survive. Here, the only way to maintain capitalist property is by using military violence: Curfews during the night and straight assassinations are imposed in Haiti, while or imprisonment without trial takes place in Chile. Suddenly life looks like a prisoner’s life in concentration camps for the undocumented migrants who live in the thousands, imprisoned at the borders of each capitalist state.

The attack of capital against part of the working class in Greece is an aspect of this crisis of reproduction of capitalist relations. Greece today is in the eye of the storm of the debt crisis for many reasons. The most important is that the most precarious part of the proletariat rebelled in a way we all know in December 2008. Greece is an experimental lab for the new phase of the absolutely necessity of capital’s global restructuring. The bourgeoisie in Greece, as has happened many times in the past, has asked for help from more powerful bourgeois classes in order to impose a new form of exploitation. From the very beginning, the new government announced a higher national debt than the previous government in order to accelerate the introduction of the Stability Program). But the bourgeoisie itself is at the centre of the global crisis. The entire international economical press is waiting to see the reaction of the proletariat here in Greece and then to have an overview of the situation internationally. The biggest stores of loan sharks are competing with each other in order to lend and, thus, control the future of the Greek state, and thus the form and intensity of the local proletariat’s exploitation. The creation of the European Monetary Fund to IMF standards clearly shows that the contradiction of competition between capitals can now be solved temporarily, but it also shows that it does not matter who the boss of the proletariat is.

Any attempt to present the situation in a “better” way than it really is a meaningless effort. Any attempt to present the restructuring as Germany’s attack against Greece is suitable only for second rate TV-stations. SYRIZA (a leftist parliamentary party) has tried this approach, issuing nonsense about “sacred money” as compensation for a German Nazi occupation. An Orwell-type propaganda of the mass media has been mobilized, and restructuring is being presented as a natural disaster. At present, this propaganda has been partly successful. Some workers in the private sector have welcomed the reductions in the salaries of the employees in the public sector. The employees in public sector are divided on the basis of who is “truly privileged” and who is not. But all of them are in danger. If someone is wondering what being privileged means, they can ask the dismissed workers of Olympic Airways who occupied the State General Accounting Office. 15 days ago they accepted “the difficult and quite heavy program of the Ministry,” while the deputy-minister ignored them after they had begged him for a meeting. If someone is wondering about the impact on workers’ daily lives because of the attempted restructuring, one can ask the workers at the National Printing Office who after reading the text of the austerity plan’s law and realizing that 30% of their income was to be cut, decided to occupy the building they work at in order to prevent the printing of the Gazette! One can also ask them about the role of their trade union leaders who ended the occupation because they were orally “promised by the government” a circular amending the law!

There is nothing that can improve the situation. The ceremonial demonstrations called by leftists, as long as they remain as such, result in nothing but dead-ends. We are unmasking reality from the veils of politics. The stones that were thrown last Friday (March 5), and which covered the sky are not enough to make them listen to us. As more and more unemployed people occupy buildings and the police repress them; as more and more precarious workers and the unemployed clash with the forces of repression at any slightest opportunity; as the social chaos leads to organization on its own and takes the form of class revolt, then, the smiles of the showmen on the TV-news will freeze on their faces. The battles will be of similar levels to the violence accumulated over many years through the accumulation of capital and the expropriation of proletarian lives.

“What will happen in history, tomorrow, it can only be compared with the major geological disasters which change the face of Earth …”
- Victor Serge

text written in Greece for the demonstration and general strike in 5 March 2010 by Agents of Chaos 

translated and published by the Greek political collective and magazine Blaumachen: http://www.blaumachen.gr/2010/03/democracy-theres-no-escape/