While we may be inspired to see a leaderless mass movement finally crystallizing in U.S. cities, the American occupations still can't hold a candle to the fire raging across Greece.
This past week, demonstrators again unleashed their rage across the tiny Mediterranean republic, blocking government agencies and clashing with government thugs amid plumes of tear gas, with assorted spectacles like trying to burn a European Union flag in effigy. Wilder than the spontaneous encampments in New York, Boston and other cities, the Greek tempests of the past several months have been persistent and rancorous enough to actually shake up the trading floor and the halls of Eurozone-IMF officialdom, as the troika hover, anxious and vulture-like, over a smoldering pyre of sovereign debt.
The explosion in Greece (along with Spain) illustrate how common assumptions about the neoliberal consensus of the industrialized world can be overturned if people become desperate enough. Despite the draconian austerity policies, writes Times columnist Floyd Norris, virtually nothing could persuade the Greeks at this point to swallow more misery:
The tax collectors, of all people, have staged job actions because they fear being laid off. To say the least, there is no sign of a national spirit of sacrifice to save the country.
The message from Greece now may be summarized as, “I’m small. I’ve suffered. You can afford to rescue me. If you don’t, I can create chaos for all of you.”
They may be right.
Are there lessons for the Liberty Plaza protesters to learn from the Athenian class warriors? The Greece context is politically and culturally unique, but it does embody the principle of fierce solidarity. The Greek left is working to harness widespread bitterness into a united front against austerity, linking unions, the jobless young, professionals and laborers.
The basic idea may be simply that those who have nothing left to lose have everything to fight for. True, as with Occupy Wall Street, there was no strict agenda guiding the 24-hour strike, but rather a roar of anguish and a fervent sense that the country is being plundered by international financiers. And that was enough. Rejecting the toxic “bailout” package the EU and IMF dangled before the Greek Parliament last May, Stathis Anestis of the Confederation of Greek Unions told the Guardian UK:
The government is behaving as if it has a pistol to its head... It is not just that it is the poor who are forced to carry the burden of this barrage of measures.... It's not just that all our hard-earned rights are being peeled away. It is that we wake up every day to another cut, another tax, another pay rise. No one can keep up!
In a correspondence with In These Times, George Pontikos of the international department of All Workers Militant Front (PAME), described a steady escalation of militancy across a growing swath of Greek society:
Students move on to huge demonstrations. Almost everyday a sector is on strike. Demonstrations become more massive and more organized. … For the growth of such a struggle, with those characteristics fight today, the class oriented workers movement and the radical movements of the self employed the poor farmers, women and youth.... Even now, class oriented trade unions and anti-monopoly coalitions of the self employed take up initiatives, through meetings at the work places, at neighborhoods, so as to express in a practical, organized and militant way, people’s response to the taxes that strangle the people, to the hard measures that condemn the people to poverty and insecurity.
PAME thus appears to have tapped into the common pulse of the citizenry's anger -- beyond the individual grievances of trade unionists, or worried pensioners, or college graduates anxious about the job market. There's a shared sense that the economy is broken from top to bottom and the all encompassing struggle is that of the tiny elite against the many. The group's campaigns, for example, reach out to immigrants and directly counter reactionary percolations of xenophobia among the dispossessed.
Moreover, the radical left's organizing philosophy seems to transcend conventional divisions among workers—across sectors, geography, generation and employment status. The conservative diagnosis for the Greek malaise is an inefficient “two-tier” top-heavy workforce, saddled with gluttonous underperforming bureaucrats, while younger workers are shut out of opportunities. Parroting a neoliberal canard (often echoed in the U.S. when debating pay and benefits for senior versus younger workers, or public versus private sector workers), Greek commentator George Kirtsos told NPR: "Those who control the system that are in [their] 50s or 60s sent a bill of their own failure to the younger generation."
But radical New School economist Richard Wolff told ITT these are classic divide-and-conquer tactics:
The tension between older and younger workers is and should be understood as a minor dimension of the much larger crisis of capitalism as a system that is unfolding before and all around us. Worse, this minor dimension risks being utilized by right-wing forces to distract attention from the systemic roots and dimensions of the crisis. In Europe, for example, those in power seek to transform a struggle pitting workers and citizens against austerity agendas (happening in all European countries) into a nationalistically inflected struggle between, say, northern and southern Europeans. This is articulated as hard-working and frugal northerners versus spendthrift southerners.
Another parallel distraction entails pitting private sector against public sector workers. Inside Greece, for example, this distracts attention away from struggles against austerity that unite all workers.
In the coming weeks, American media and officials will no doubt issue sneering dismissals of Occupied Wall Street, predicting that youthful activists will chafe against the involvement of established labor and political groups, or unions will distance themselves from more radical elements in the movement, or that the inability to agree on a ten-point agenda will sunder the delicate coalition.
But from the ragged edges of Europe to the heart of American capital, Greece can still deliver a prescient lesson in solidarity and direct democracy: in any economic system that feeds off, and ultimately destroys itself through, unbridled selfishness, the best alternative ordinary people can seek is to find common ground to occupy... and hold on tight.
Cross-posted from In These Times.
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Underneath the anger that is obvious in the demonstrations is a yearning for a new way of organizing the world of work, the way we live. This is an exciting time to focus on developing all people's skills and talents and strengthening self-reliance. History has shown over and over that when central governments fail, local citizen groups rise up. Isn't this what is happening now?
Sylvia Lafair author "GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change"
That explains why TARP was given without preconditions, scrutiny, accountability, and only to those firms associated with or who had business dealing with Goldman-Sachs. Hank Paulson was former CEO of that firm, while Lehman & Bear-Stearns were allowed to collapse (eliminating G.S. competition).
It wasn't just that we bailed bankers out from their own failures (consequences of their own mismanagement, abject greed, unethical and in some cases illegal practices), but that TARP was used for posh junkets, obscene bonuses, mergers-acquisitions making those "too-big-to-fail" institutions even larger, and for more lawyers-lobbyists to persuade (aka bribe) lawmakers to enable and encourage them to continue reckless speculation and abusive-predatory practices. BTW: TARP did not cost $700-billion, but with 0-interest Fed loans + guarantees against future losses, will end up costing $2.9-trillion. Worse, it's only a matter of time until the next melt-down/collapse.
For decades now, Greece has not been able to achieve a good standard of living on her own. First it was the guest-workers' remittances to Greece and then the EU grants. Both were "gifts" and didn't have to be paid back. And since the Euro, it has been cheap loans which financed the Greek standard of living. 388 billion EUR flowed to Greece (net) from 2001-10. If money does not continue to flow to Greece, the economy will come to a grinding halt; poverty will be seen at all corners of the country. Greece does not produce very much and exports even less. Her standard of living depends on imports which can not longer be paid for if and when Greece is no longer given the money to pay for them.
http://klauskastner.blogspot.com/2011/09/endgame-for-greece.html
George SOROS' Money !
"No More DEBT Economy" on two signs at local "OccupyWallStreet" Site on Sunday.
Seems like the entire Greek Economy works on DEBT/Public Spending. Isn't that what the DEMS
want America to do ? France has a large part of it's Banking Loans in Greece ? Serial Default
looks like the RESULT to this Kid ! So, Let's DO It in America ?
Why does Europe always get into Trouble every 30 Years ?
The vibe from Greece is quite bracing, when compared to the livid division among Americans. So clearly, the future will not emerge from the New World, but from the Greeks, (whom I have seen slandered on mainstream Australian media just as you've described). Those, such as the Argentines, those, such as the Bolivarians, the Asians, the Icelanders, have woken up, and taken back the economy from the vampires.
Thank you for your article.
You state, ‘While we may be inspired to see a leaderless mass movement finally crystallizing in U.S. cities, the American occupations still can't hold a candle to the fire raging across Greece.’
I agree, the Tea Party has been inspirational and it is good to see the OWS supporters picking most of their already well-made points. I did not know you were such a supporter of their inspirational movement.
You state, ‘Wilder than the spontaneous encampments in New York, Boston and other cities, the Greek tempests of the past several months have been persistent and rancorous enough to actually shake up the trading floor and the halls of Eurozone-IMF officialdom, as the troika hover, anxious and vulture-like, over a smoldering pyre of sovereign debt.’
Thanks for aptly pointing out another reason for us to turn our backs on a European-style welfare state, start to reign in our debt in a serious manner via government spending cuts, and neuter the ruinous effect that our bloated public union class is having on our economy. Your point is well-taken.
You state, ‘The Greek left is working to harness widespread bitterness into a united front against austerity, linking unions, the jobless young, professionals and laborers.’
Or a more apt description, ‘assembling a big group of takers so they can marhc en-masse and demand more free stuff from the government at someone else’ expense instead of admit that THEY are the problem’
Kai
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No...but they could be forced to swallow more misery. If the Euro gives them the boot (whcih they should) the Greace would have exactly one choice: annual consumption must equal annual production. There is nothing wrong with a country and/or government matching consumption with productions. Greace should do it and so should the United States.
First, their debt is booked in Euros. That wont change just because they change the currency. The effect of such an imbalance can currently be observed in Hungary, where people often took (then cheap) credit in Swiss currency to finance their homes. Now, since the Forint depreciated and the Swiss Franc appreciated, they can no longer pay back those credits.
But the most critical thing is this: What would happen? The neo-drachma would depreciate rapidly (no one dares saying were the free fall would stop). Knowing that and taking into account that you cannot prepare such a move over a weekend, the moment it became known people would rush to the banks and trying to get any cent from their accounts in Euro currency. Within a day Greece wouldn't have any banks any longer. The whole economy would collapse.
My personal thought on this: We cannot change the past. If it was possible then I suppose everyone would agree that Greece just should not join the Euro Zone.
But now they are part and whatever the solution is it must not be a proposal that simply tries the impossible: Change the past.
But this has somewhat of a downside: For a number of years, we put administration officials from western Germany into key positions in order to help building efficient structures. They also were granted a somewhat broader authority in the decision making process than they would have had in western Germany (so they could sort things out faster). ... Such a move (and I am not suggesting to use German officials but maybe Polish or Swedish or Norwegian officials) ofc conflicts with a strong sense of sovereignty in Greece. They'd need to trust that - much as in eastern Germany - this does not infringe their interests but is a pragmatic way out.
I really would like to know how it ends. Will a direct democracy truly emerge? Or will people become demoralized and accept whatever measures are imposed on them? I can see it going either way, but I very much hope for the best for the people.
Much of the mainstream media has not been portraying the situation accurately. They don't mention that 1/4 people in Greece are below the poverty line and that the official rate of unemployment a few months ago was over 16%. And yet more job cuts, brutal cuts to pensions and wages, and tax hikes are coming.
I think that no one doubts that the whole Greek economy as it presents itself is inefficient and does not create the necessary revenues to maintain the lifestyle (with all that comes along). Somehow that gap has to be financed, the system needs to be repaired. And repair cannot just mean that everyone else in Europe is taxed and the money transferred to Greece. Not only the Greeks have a democracy and a public and an opinion.
But what seems to happen (and this is also divide and conquer) is that all blame is put on the whole rest of Europe and on their own government only inasmuch as they don't protest against the rest of Europe. On the other hand, 2600 (or 2400?, I read the number a while ago) families own more than 90% of Greece's wealth ... and are not properly called to help their nation because of the clientile political system and because they lack a system of tax collection that would allow to draw on these coffers.
This is a decision which has only one "ownership": Greek politics. It's wrong to blame anyone else for that.