by V N Gelis
At the same time, the Orwellian Ministry ―for citizen‘s protection‖ unleashed a campaign of increasing repression, not only against the ―usual suspects,‖ i.e. the youth who rose up in December 2008 and the immigrants, but also against ―unruly‖ workers who dared to challenge it, with the right to strike being the first to suffer from the new ―socialist‖ government. Thus, the strike of the dockers against the privatisation of the biggest port in the country, the port of Piraeus, was effectively suppressed by the executive part of the elite, the judiciary, which declared the strike as ―illegal‖ because it openly aimed at the privatisation of the port ―an aim that the political elite had already taken care to declare ―political‖ and, therefore, illegal, in a process where the political and judicial power, in perfect harmony, confirm the Greek folk wisdom ―John offers a drink and John drinks‖! Similarly, the strike by one of the poorest sectors of society, the municipal dustmen who work under temporary contracts, was also declared ―illegal‖ by the courts, with the consent, of course, of the ―socialist‖ government, which obviously had no qualms about strangling the right of even the poorest workers in Greece to strike!
Then, it was the turn of the youth which was determined to commemorate the killing of a fifteen years old student by the police in December 2008. A massive police operation was launched to deal with it, whereas the Athens area where the killing took place, had effectively been transformed, since the PASOK taking over, into a police-controlled ghetto, leading to frequent clashes between residents and the police. Mass arrests and brute force were used to terrorise the protesting youth with police on motorbikes chasing rioters (leading to the serious injury of a woman demonstrator who was hit by a police motorcycle) and firing mass volleys of teargas and chemicals (allegedly bought from Zionist Israel, which of course has a long experience in violently suppressing popular resistance!) to disperse the youths in running street battles in the centre of the capital.[30] Clearly, the message was that no mass protest, of the scale of December 2008, will be tolerated in the dark future that was already dawning in Greece.
However, the descent of the Greek social-liberal party towards semitotalitarianism is far from a local phenomenon. It well reflects a general trend which has transformed the European ex-social democratic parties and presently social liberal ones into social-fascist parties. But, socialfascism today takes a very different form from the old image used by the Comintern to describe the social democratic parties in the 1930s. Socialfascism then was supposed to be a variant of fascism, in the sense that it stood in the way of the final transition to communism. Today, socialfascism takes the form of a mix of spurious social democracy and semitotalitarian ―democracy,‖ [31] as the inevitable outcome of the adoption by the ex-social democratic parties of the necessary social-liberal policies to make them conform with the present neoliberal globalisation of open and liberated markets. This outcome was inevitable, because it was only through massive, preventive as well as repressive, systemic violence that the present reversal of the social democratic achievements, which were realised during the statist period (1945-mid of 1970s), could be consolidated. Thus, the disintegration of the welfare state, through the effective dismantlement of fundamental social services (free education, national health systems, comprehensive social security arrangements, etc.), with the ultimate aim to fully privatise them; the massive unemployment and underemployment following the massive cuts in public spending; the introduction of ―flexible‖ labour relations; and more importantly, the enormous concentration of economic power in the hands of the privileged social strata that has led to the present monstrous levels of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth ―all these could not have been achieved without being effectively ―shielded‖ from popular counter-violence, namely, the defence of the weaker social strata against the mass systemic (economic as well as physical) violence.
No wonder, therefore, that cameras have been installed everywhere in major cities like London, supposedly to protect citizens from crime; citizens are humiliated when travelling even to the extent of being forced to have an electronic striptease before being allowed to travel; demonstrators are violently suppressed when they dare to blame the transnational elite for the present multidimensional crisis (e.g. in London during the G20 meeting, then in Copenhagen during the climate conference, etc.); the right to strike is effectively suppressed through the banning of wildcat or sympathetic strikes, inevitably leading to the consolidation of the power of trade union bureaucrats (who are usually controlled by the elites); telephone and internet communication is closely monitored by ―Big Brother‖ and so on.
The case of the transformation of the British Labour Party from a socialliberal to a purely social-fascist party in the above sense is clear and it is obviously the model used by PASOK in Greece. The British social-liberals, on the pretext of war against ―terrorism‖ (which they have created in the first place by invading countries like Afghanistan and Iraq), have led to a police state system of mass surveillance (cameras, internet, etc.) and repression of all forms of popular counter violence. [32] No wonder that even an ex-head of the anti-terrorism service now claims that Britain under Labour socialliberals ―is sliding towards a police state!‖.[33]
Social-fascism, like the original Fascism, requires the parallel development of a sophisticated propaganda system that will ensure a significant degree of popular support. Furthermore, it needs a system that will foster fear and suspicion in citizens, even for their neighbours. This irrational fear and insecurity ―which is also cultivated by the whole sub-culture of Hollywood and television serials― is already bearing fruit in Greece where, according to a recent poll, nearly 60% of people stated that they feel being ―in danger‖. [34] Indeed, today‘s social-fascist regimes have a very powerful tool in their hands, which the fascist regimes could not even dream of: television. Television plays the role of ―manufacturing consent‖, not only through panel discussions, etc. in which the guests are carefully chosen to express the systemic views, but even more so through the way they present news. This way, a virtual reality is created which essentially has no relation to the actual reality and, given that most people nowadays learn about reality sitting in their sofas and few could be characterised in any meaningful sense as active citizens, effectively two worlds have been created: the world as seen and created in TV and the actual world. This blatant contradiction is being used to the full by the new PASOK government in Greece and the modern communication techniques obviously helps it on this task to distort reality, as seen by the average citizen.
It is, therefore, obvious that PASOK (which was selected by the local and foreign elites in preference to the New Democracy party, so that the deepening economic crisis could be dealt with in a way that would minimise the effect on the elites themselves and the privileged social groups) had to complement such measures with the corresponding socialfascist measures of mass surveillance and repression, to tackle the inevitable popular counter violence. Thus, the strangulation of strikes through legalistic means was followed by the implementation of a ―zero tolerance‖ policy ―a clearly totalitarian policy which, when applied by the lerance‖ policy ―a clearly totalitarian policy which, when applied by the 74 was considered ―undemocratic,‖ but now, when applied by the pseudo-democratic regimes all over the world (following the US semi-totalitarian example), it has been re-baptized as democratic! The pattern is well known: the political and economic elites, which control the economic and political process, initially institutionalize the arrangements that produce and reproduce the concentration of power in their hands, and then they go on to institutionalise as unlawful any substantial resistance to these measures and repress it accordingly.
The transformation of Greece into a EU protectorate At the beginning of February, the European Commission announced plans which The Guardian characterised, with the usual British kind of understatement, as ―the most intrusive scrutiny of an EU member state‘s fiscal and economic policies and bookkeeping e
ver attempted‖, while the Commissioner himself stated, ―this is the first time we have established such an intense and quasipermanent system of monitoring,‖ ―a system that involved a stiff regime of quarterly reports from the Greek government on progress towards fiscal probity and the EC right to order extra action if needed.[35] This was followed a month later by the announcement (made by the Papandreou government on behalf of the EC —although they kept the pretence that they have designed themselves the measures!) of swingeing spending cuts and huge tax rises hitting the lower social groups. These measures involved, in a nutshell, shaving off a month‘s salary from the already low (by Eurozone standards) incomes of people employed in the public sector (who are estimated to be about one million, i.e. 20% of the total labour force), squeezing of public spending, rises in indirect taxes, including VAT, freezing of pensions and worsening of social security conditions with respect to pensionable age, etc.
At the same time, a huge media campaign was launched by the political elite to persuade the victims (employees, pensioners, unemployed, etc.) and lower income strata in general to bear once more the burden of the crisis. Inevitably, a huge ―river of anger‖ has been pouring since then in the streets of Athens and other major cities, in repeated general strikes, in face of the mockery of local elites who are blatantly trying to transfer the impact of the measures imposed by the transnational elite ―through the EU― to the lower social strata. Particularly so, as it is more than obvious that the measures announced will neither catch the enormous tax evasion, nor shall they force repatriation to the country of the billions of euros, already escaped abroad in the last couple of months since the crisis was announced, to be added to at least 60 billion euros which had already fled the country![36] However, had these funds and the local wealth been subjected to a significant proportionate extra property tax (something which is of course inconceivable for the elites), the famous problem of debt could have been solved in a flash, without having to beg for help and for new loans from the foreign elites, which (with profit in mind of course!) have been imposing instead onerous conditions that the future generations will have to pay for many years to come. This, despite the fact that it was the same elites and privileged social strata that created ―and primarily benefited from― the debt, as shown, for instance, by the significant deterioration in the degree of inequality in the distribution of income in the last 30 years or so and the fact that, according to the official statistical data, almost 20% of Greek population are at the margin of poverty struggling to survive. It is also worth noting that Greece is the joint record holder with another PIGS member (Spain) as regards the size of poverty in the Eurozone.
But, let us examine briefly the mythology used by the media propaganda of the elites to justify the unprecedented structural measures against the lower social groups, as well as the real causes of the current crisis. ― First Myth: The primary responsibility for the crisis lies with the speculators who caused a tsunami of negative speculation against the Greek government bonds, or (if we accept the plot theories), against the euro as a whole, with a view to profit. In reality, however, to blame the speculators for speculating is like blaming the military for killing in war! Obviously, this is their job in the system of market economy: to find the weakest links in the system and engage in speculation to maximise their profits. In other words, all that speculators can do is to make a bad situation worse, but not to create it in the first place, and as we saw above, the Greek debt problem had begun exploding since the 1980s. So, all that speculators can do is to bring down the prices of sovereign bonds (and correspondingly push their yields up) affecting the rates at which the country concerned borrows in the world markets and possibly the ―ratings‖ of the international agencies, leading to a vicious circle which may make refinancing the existing debt more difficult. Papandreou‘s effective propaganda machine presented the speculators as the main culprit for the crisis, simply in order to be able afterwards to present his ―marathon‖ of trips to the main capitals of the transnational elite (Germany, USA, France, etc.) ―at the expense of course of the Greek taxpayer who has to pay for the luxury trips of Papandreou and various ministers and advisers, even members of his family!― as well as the painless (for the elites) promises that they will help in the control of speculation, as a kind of personal ―success‖ and at the same time divert the attention of the angry Greek people from the measures he has been imposing on them.
― Second Myth: Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy and Greeks have to make sacrifices to save their country, as such an eventuality would lead to the loss of sovereignty. In reality, however, although Greece is actually on the verge of bankruptcy, as I showed above, it is not in interest of the EU elites to allow such a development, either politically or economically, and therefore they will certainly provide financial help of some form to prevent such an outcome, of course on their own (strict —and beneficial to them) terms. Yet, this is an ―exogenous‖ factor, which does not in any way question the fact that Greece is really the weak link, despite the attempted alchemy of figures by some (reformist Left) analysts, who went a step further and even attempted to show that Greece is not near bankruptcy at all, as supposedly is shown by the fact that an attempt by the state in the midst of the crisis to sell state bonds of about €5bn was oversubscribed or, alternatively, because similar levels of budget deficit and public debt characterise other members of the Eurozone as well. What however, they ―forget‖ to mention is that although neither the public debt nor the budget deficit, in relation to GDP, are by themselves, the highest in the Eurozone, neither of the other member countries does it pose a similar combination of high rates (113% and 12.7% respectively).[37] Furthermore, no other Eurozone country has to repay or refinance, in just five years, half its total €300 b debt (mainly to German and French bankers) ―€31b of which has to be repaid this year alone― and to spend more than half of the total government revenue in servicing the debt![38] Furthermore, any sovereign nation in the Eurozone could easily make similar loans to the recently oversubscribed one, particularly when it would have to pay, like Greece, an interest rate which was seven times as much as that of any commercial bank in the EU, while at the same time lenders do not face any real risk of losing their money, as they are fully aware that a member country of the Eurozone is never going to proceed to a compulsory expropriation of the debt, and that, one way or another, it will be finally forced to repay it in full! Finally, as regards the potential loss of sovereignty in case Greece becomes bankrupt, in fact, as we shall see, below, exactly the opposite is true: it is now that Greece has lost even the last vestiges of any kind of sovereignty!
― Third Myth: The EU itself has to be blamed for the crisis as it has no mechanism to prevent surpluses/deficits. Thus, the EU is blamed for not showing the necessary ―solidarity‖ to a member state, by creating, for example, an economic union in addition to the monetary one. Moreover, as reformist economists emphasize [39] —taking of course for granted the entire institutional framework of open and liberalised markets and the EMU— the main culprit is the European Central Bank and the German elite which, thanks to the policy of ―hard euro‖ it followed (which includes the suppression of labour costs), it improved significantly German competitiveness and consequently improved the German balance of payments, creating a significant surplus to it. Conversely, the faster increase in labour costs in countries like Greece has led to the decline of its competitiveness and it consequently worsened its balance of payments, further worsening its deficit —something that ultimately led to an increase in the public debt to finance the bubble of ―growth‖ Greece enjoyed since its adoption of euro. And indeed, it is true that Germany, starting with a deficit of 1% of GDP in the Balance of Payments on Current Account in 2000, achieved a huge surplus amounting to 5% of its GDP today, while in the same period huge deficits were conversely created in the European South (Greece tripled the deficit in absolute numbers, Spain increased it as much as six times, etc.) and it is also true th
at, in the same period, labour cost in the European South has risen faster than that in the North. But, what such analyses ―forget‖ is that, historically, wages were and still are, almost half in the South compared to those in the North (the minimum monthly wage in Greece, Spain and Portugal in 2006 was less than half of that in the European North[40]) and had a real convergence been achieved —supposedly a main EU policy― even greater differences in competitiveness would have been created among these countries, which no transfer of funds from a new institution (like the US Fed, as some suggest) would have been capable to eliminate. Particularly so when such convergence within a capitalist market economy has not been achieved even within nation-states (Italy, Germany, UK, etc.) let alone an economic union of states like the EU!
So, the EU is blamed by reformist analysts for the wrong reasons, i.e. for its internal organisation and structure —something that is hardly surprising coming from analysts who are only interested in improving the EU rather than in finding out whether there are any systemic reasons which intrinsically lead to crises like the ones that have been created at the moment in Greece and the PIGS in general. But, in fact, as it could be shown by both theory and historical experience, in any economic union consisting of members characterised by a high degree of economic unevenness (as is the case with the EU), the establishment of open and liberalised markets for commodities and capital, would inevitably lead to a situation where those which primarily benefit from the free movement of commodities and capital would be the more advanced regions/countries (which have already developed high productivity levels and advanced technologies) at the expense of the rest. No wonder therefore, that Greek productivity in manufacturing, in the period 1980-84, was about 42% of that in Germany and that after almost 20 years of membership, it was even lower at 38% in 1995-99![41] It is not therefore surprising that, historically, none of the presently advanced capitalist countries ―which are now keen to promote the freedom of trade, etc.― opened its own markets before it has already achieved a high level of competitiveness for its own exports, under protected markets.