Text: Ελληνικά / English.

It may seem paradoxical, but Greece ’s anarchists are organizing like never before.

Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with fewer and fewer resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some who never had faith in the first place are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities.

Tasos Sagris, a 45-year-old member of the Greek anarchist group Void Network and of the “self-organized” Embros theater group, has been at the forefront of a resurgence of social activism that is effectively filling a void in governance.

“People trust us because we don’t use the people as customers or voters,” Mr. Sagris said. “Every failure of the system proves the idea of the anarchists to be true.”

Whatever the means, since 2008 scores of “self-managing social centers” have mushroomed across Greece, financed by private donations and the proceeds from regularly scheduled concerts, exhibitions and on-site bars, most of which are open to the public. There are now around 250 nationwide.

Some activists have focused on food and medicine handouts as poverty has deepened and public services have collapsed.

In recent months, anarchists and leftist groups have trained special energy on housing refugees who flooded into Greece in 2015 and who have been bottled up in the country since the European Union and Balkan nations tightened their borders. Some 3,000 of these refugees now live in 15 abandoned buildings that have been taken over by anarchists in the capital.

The burst of citizen action is just the latest chapter in a long history for the anarchist movement in Greece.

Anarchists played an active role in the student uprisings that helped bring down Greece’s dictatorship in the mid-1970s, including a rebellion at the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973, which authorities crushed with police officers and tanks, resulting in several deaths.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, anarchists have joined leftist groups in occupying portions of Greek universities to promote their thinking and lifestyle; many of those occupied spaces exist today, and some are used as bases by anarchists to fashion the crude firebombs hurled at the police during street protests.

Over the years, anarchists have also backed a spectrum of causes, such as opposing “neoliberal” education reform or campaigning against the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

The movement continues to be largely tolerated by the public at large, reflecting a deep distrust of authority among Greeks that has been stoked in recent years by the austerity measures imposed on the debt-racked country by international creditors.

In Athens, the anarchists’ epicenter remains the bohemian neighborhood of Exarchia, where the killing of a teenager by a police officer in 2008 set off two weeks of rioting, helped reinvigorate the movement and produced several guerrilla groups that led to a revival of domestic terrorism in Greece.

The police and the authorities tread lightly in the area.

The police have recently raided some buildings illegally occupied by anarchists, called squats, in Athens, in the northern city of Thessaloniki and on the island of Lesbos, a gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past two years. But the authorities have stopped short of a blanket crackdown, which would be difficult for the leftist Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to condone.

In an interview, Public Order Minister Nikos Toskas said that the police sweeps were “systematic,” and that the raids were being carried out “where they are needed.”

The mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, condemned the squats, saying they have compromised “the quality of life of the refugees.”

“No one knows who they are controlled by and what conditions people being put up in occupied buildings live in,” he said in a response to a reporter’s questions.

The anarchists say their squats are a humane alternative to the state-run camps now filled with more than 60,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Human rights groups have broadly condemned the camps as squalid and unsafe.

 

In Exarchia, one of the squats includes a former state secondary school that was abandoned because of structural problems. Established last spring with the help of anarchists, the squat is now home to some 250 refugees, mostly from Syria, who have set up a chicken coop on the roof. Many more refugees are on a “waiting list” for other occupied buildings.

The squats function as self-organized communities, independent from the state and nongovernmental organizations, said Lauren Lapidge, 28, a British social activist who came to Greece in 2015 at the peak of the refugee crisis and is actively involved with several occupied buildings.

“They are living organisms: Kids go to school, some were born in the squat, we’ve had weddings inside,” she said.

Another initiative in Exarchia involves anarchists and local residents who have moved a cargo container into the neighborhood’s central square, calling it a political kiosk, from which they distribute food and medicine and sell anarchist literature.

Vassiliki Spathara, 49, a painter and anarchist living in Exarchia, said the initiative was necessary because the local authorities would not intervene “even to replace light bulbs” in the square, known as a haunt for drug dealers, though activity has abated recently.

“The authorities want to downgrade the area because it’s the only place in Athens that has an organized, anti-establishment identity,” Ms. Spathara said.

Mayor Kaminis said the local authorities were cooperating with residents “to rejuvenate the area,” and insisted that Exarchia residents had the same rights as all Athenians.

Yet in Greece’s crumbling political landscape, anarchists appear to be styling themselves as a political alternative to the government.

“We want people to fight back, in all ways, from taking care of refugees to burning banks and Parliament,” said Mr. Sagris, the member of Void Network and the Embros theater group, which raises money to fund squats housing refugees. “Anarchists use all tactics, violent and nonviolent.”

He noted, however, that anarchists had a “moral obligation” to make sure that tragedies — like the deaths of three people in May 2010 when an Athens bank was firebombed during an anti-austerity rally — did not happen again. Though anarchists were blamed, none were convicted in a trial that ended with three bank executives convicted of manslaughter through neglect resulting from safety oversights. (They were released on bail, pending an appeal.)

Another anarchist group, Rouvikonas, is looking beyond violence, though its members have made a cause of raiding and vandalizing state offices and businesses.

Last week, members of the group, armed with large wooden sticks festooned with black anarchist flags, conducted a night patrol of a large park in central Athens, saying the police had not intervened to stop the drug trade and prostitution involving young migrants.

Mr. Toskas, who oversees the Greek police force, said the authorities had made a major dent in the drug trade in Exarchia. “Some anarchist groups want to say that they got rid of drugs in the area so that they can control it,” he said.

Rouvikonas members recently applied to a local court to found a “cultural society”— to help organize fund-raising events — and on Saturday the group presented its “political identity” at a squat in Exarchia. (Anarchists insist they are not forming a political party.)

“Anarchists obviously cannot form a political party,” said Spiros Dapergolas, 45, a graphic designer who belongs to Rouvikonas. “But we have our own means to enter the political center,” he said. “We want to get bigger.”

The group’s long-term aim is “militant unionism,” Mr. Dapergolas said. But, he conceded, it is not easy for people to organize themselves. In the meantime, he said, “what Rouvikonas is doing can be done by anyone.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Anarchists Fill Services Void Left By Faltering Greek Governance.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/world/europe/greece-athens-anarchy-austerity.html?_r=1

The post Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance- article in New York Times by NIKI KITSANTONIS Αφιέρωμα των New York Times στους αναρχικούς της Ελλάδας! appeared first on Void Network.

“You can use the 600 Euros that you will find on me to pay our health insurance. I paid the rent yesterday. I am sorry, my daughter, I could not take more suffering just to put a warm plate on the table – a bloody plate. Make sure that our daughter goes to college and never
leave her alone. She should get the house that we have in the village.”

This is the suicide note of a 50-year-old woman to her husband. She jumped off a high wall in Crete, Greece, last week and is hospitalized in critical condition. She is one more victim of the deepening
financial crisis that is trying the limits of Greek people since 2008. According to the Greek Census Bureau, there has been a 43 percent increase in suicides in austerity-chained Greece since the beginning of the crisis. Unofficial accounts bring the number to 4,000 deaths so far.
Greece is the most recent and historically

unprecedented neoliberal experiment on a global scale. The neoliberal offensive is moving head on in the country and, if Chile “was the laboratory for the early phases, Greece has become the laboratory for an even more fierce implementation.”(1) What we have in place right now in Greece can be best described as the “downsizing of a country”(2) that brings profound changes in its social and economic fabric. Greece’s economy has shrunk by nearly one-third since 2007, and the debt has become unmanageable. Through cut-throat austerity measures, massive privatizations and cuts in the most sensitive sectors of public education and public health, the constant process of de-industrialization and the loss of sovereignty, it looks like “Greece will emerge as a poorer country, with a diminished productive base, with reduced sovereignty, [and] with a political class accustomed to almost neo-colonial forms of supervision.”(3)
I glance through snapshots in the news: grim faces, desperate eyes, angry gazes, frustration, and, most of all, fear. The city of Athens is slowly turning into a cemetery for the living. The transformation of the city, both as a physical and as a symbolic space, is shocking to the eye; as a public space and a habitat for its people, it now gets fragmented into deserted stores “for rent,” broken façades and abandonment apartment windows and balcony doors tightly locked behind iron bars for “extra safety,” carton beds and, along them, homeless people’s possessions: an old dirty blanket, oversized worn out sneakers, plastic flowers, empty water bottles, stale bread. Different parts of the city palpably illustrate a degenerating social fabric, as more Greeks are now joining the ranks of what Zygmunt Bauman has called “human waste”(4): unemployed, working poor, immigrants, all the outcasts, victims of “economic progress,” preys of rampant neoliberal policies, “casualties,” real victims to what the Greek prime minister has recently called a “success story” on the road to privatization and the wholesale of Greece’s national assets and sovereignty.
Greece is radically and violently transformed into the land field of “wasted lives” in the giant trashcan of global capitalism. Witnessing as I do this novel form of social necrophilia that eats alive every inch of human life, workspace and public space, I cringe at the sound of the words “sacrifice,” “rescue” and making Greece, according to the claims of Greek PM Antonis Samaras, a “success story.” Whose sacrifice and whose rescue? Who succeeds and who loses? Numbers are telling.
Unemployment rates are currently climbing to 30 percent, the same percentage Greece had in 1961. As a point of comparison, unemployment in the United States in 1929 was 25 percent, and in Argentina in 2001, it was 30 percent. More than 70 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, leaving most to rely on charity after losing monthly benefit payments and health insurance. This percentage does not include young people seeking a job for the first time, employees without insurance and part-timers. Unemployment is up 41 percent from 2011, and for those 15-24, it has reached 51.1 percent, doubling in only three years (5) and setting a negative record for a Eurozone country.(6)
The IMF/European Central Bank recipe is generating wealth in the global financial casino, while 31 percent of Greeks live at risk of poverty, according to Eurostat (2012). These statistics put Greece in seventh place in poverty percentages among the 27 EU countries. More specifically, in Greece: 28.7 percent of children up to 17 years old; 27.7 percent of the population between ages 27-64; and 26.7 percent of Greeks older than 65 live in the poverty threshold.

There is an 11.8 percent increase in child poverty, raising the number of poor children to 465,000 in 2011.(7) The Greek social and welfare state has been collapsing through draconian cuts in wages and pensions, massive layoffs and the violation of vested rights, of labor laws and of collective bargaining rights. All collective bargaining expired on May 14, 2013, and it has been replaced by individual contracts where workers become hostages of their employers. Base salary went tumbling down to 500 Euros monthly (400 for young people) – not to mention a retroactive salary cut of 22 percent (32 percent for youth) in February 2012.
In March 2013, the government announced additional pension cuts of up to 20 percent. According to the Labor Institute of the National Confederation of Greek Workers (2012), new measures dictated by the Troika (the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund) will lead to at least a 35 percent deterioration of salaried employees’ and pensioners’ lives. As an example, since the beginning of 2011, 113,268 people have disconnected their telephone landlines to decrease expenses. With a 19 percent increase in the cost of electricity, 350,000 people now live without electricity in Athens. Additional taxes on property have ravaged the middle class that is now “paying rent” in their own houses through new taxes and fines imposed. Quality of life is radically deteriorating for Greek people.
This neoliberal experiment, as currently implemented in Greece, breeds destructiveness and death and resonates with forms of “social necrophilia.” By social necrophilia, I mean the blunt organized effort on the part of the domestic political system and foreign neoliberal centers to implement economic policies and austerity measures that result in the physical, material, social and financial destruction of human beings: policies that promote death, whether physical or symbolic. The goal of the ongoing capitalist offensive in the form of a neoliberal doctrine is to destroy symbolically and physically the most vulnerable strata of the population, to put the entire society in a moribund state to impose the most unprecedented austerity measures that generate profit for the most privileged classes internationally.
Erich Fromm, Frankfurt School philosopher, social psychologist and psychoanalyst, provides both a metaphor from the realm of psychiatry, as well as the tools to make the case for a reified market society that is being forced to start loving death: its own. In his seminal work on the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Fromm defines necrophilia as “the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion to tear apart living structures.”(8)
In the case of the Greek neoliberal experiment, however, beyond destroying for the sake of destruction, there are real economic interests at stake. There are bets and speculations in casino capitalism, and the game is on in Greece for banks and other large financial organizations. Social necrophilia here can be understood as the state of decay, the material and social degeneration of society, and the destruction of social fabric, where illness and death loom for the poor as a result of an economy dying through specific political choices while profit goes to big banks and multinational corporations. Love of death or the politics of social necrophilia can be illustrated in Greece in a) the rise of fascism and b) the shocking increase in illness, suicide, addiction and spread of infectious diseases since the beginning of the crisis.
Fascism
In the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (9) Fromm makes the case that necrophilia is a product of fascist thought, as he discusses the example of Spanish Falangists who used to shout, “long live death.” Fascism finds expression both in government discourses and policies as well as in the rise of neo-Nazi Party Golden Dawn. Love of death is currently manifested in Greece in that rise of Golden Dawn.

In the context of the Greek crisis, a new form of political domination has emerged, a renewed model of fascism, or another example of “proto-fascism.(10) The elected Greek coalition government has been systematically violating the Greek Constitution and shaking the foundations of parliamentary democracy by establishing a “side system” of legislation. Using “urgent legislative decrees” indiscriminately and regularly, the coalition government is bypassing Greek legislation to facilitate privatizations and sellouts. In addition, there is an institutionalized instability: Laws keep changing, and many laws are voted in and implemented with retroactive effect.
Beyond the constant constitutional violations, the disappearing public space is a central feature of Greek proto-fascism. The landscape taking shape since 2009 is not too far from the kind of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote about: a “totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; . . . It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom, which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.”(11)
Motion is not only inhibited and/or prohibited, as for example, in the case of prohibiting demonstrations in the center of Athens when Troika officials visit, a practice reminiscent of the curfews during the German occupation of the ’40s. Furthermore, what motion there is, is watched, with heightened surveillance and cameras installed throughout Athens. In a necrophilous state of affairs, the system in charge operates with the conviction that the only way to solve a problem or a conflict is by force and violence, both symbolic and material, usually failing to see other options. This also explains the increased exponential violence employed by the state the last five years as manifested in shutting down protests, criminalizing dissent and activism and torturing arrested protesters as well as pre-emptive arrests in every mobilization.
Alongside symbolic violence manifested in economic, political and discursive form, there is an intensified move toward militarization and authoritarianism. To this end, and while massive layoffs are taking place in the public sector, the Greek state spends more money on hiring and training law enforcement officers. More interestingly, there are close ties between the police and the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, whose members are nostalgic of Hitler and the 1967 Colonels’ Junta. Golden Dawn – now pronounced a criminal organization – is involved in running “paramilitary operations that systematically attacked migrants, leftists and gay people.”(12) Eighteen of its MPs are already incarcerated, and a number of its members have been involved in violent attacks, gun possession and even murder as in the fatal brutal beating of Pakistani immigrant Shehzad Luqman and the cold-blooded murder of Pavlos Fyssas, a young leftist anti-fascist activist and rapper.
The “public” is being abolished in favor of the private, through a process of devaluation, vilification and degradation. A case in point is the ongoing demonization of public functionaries, public school teachers and university professors, and doctors working in the public system of health as lazy, incompetent, in need of constant evaluation and with the Damocles sword of investigation should they dare to disagree. Everything “public” is left to decay, by cutting off funding, staff and support and creating a fertile space for corruption and violent competition.

Public schools lack books and other materials, and in many areas in the north of Greece, children stay at home on very cold days because schools cannot afford to heat the classrooms. Teachers are suffering terrible cuts in their salaries, and universities barely meet their minimum functional needs with cuts in laboratory and support staff that hinder the appropriate working of the departments.
The Decaying Body
“It’s simple. You get hungry, you get dizzy and you sleep it off,”  said the mother of an 11-year old boy who has been suffering hunger pains at school.(13)
Necrophilia is further manifested in physical terms in the ways the human body is degenerating, ravaged by illness, malnutrition, drug abuse, HIV and suicide. People looking for food in the trash. There are homeless people in every corner; mini slum communities all over downtown Athens. Walking south, toward the center, thousands of people wait in line to be served food by soup kitchens that provide over 30,000 free meals a day. Plenty of people queue up for possibly the only meal of their day. Welcome to the “human waste” line.
The Greek governments that assumed the role of the executioners of IMF/EU directives since the beginning of the crisis in 2008 have demonstrated a particularly necrophilous character, and they have done so unapologetically. Αn increasing number of children have been passing out in schools because of malnutrition; there are embarrassing shortages in public hospitals, where patients often have to buy their own gauze and medication from an outside pharmacy while admitted. People without health insurance with severe illnesses do not have access to treatment. Malaria, a disease officially eliminated 40 years ago, also made a comeback in 2012, with cases being noted in eastern Attica and the Peloponnese.
There are increasing numbers of suicides (close to a 43 percent hike) that rank Greece number one worldwide in suicides the past five years. There are alarming new cases of depression and mental illnesses. A recent study conducted by the University of Ioannina found that one in five people facing financial problems presents psychopathological symptoms. There is also a 200 percent increase in HIV cases.(14) At the same time, significant funding is cut from psychiatric hospitals, public drug rehabilitation centers and other social and welfare provisions while the system tries to “abort” vulnerable social groups such as HIV-positive women, drug users and people with mental illness.
With the 40 percent surcharge the government has slapped on heating oil, thousands of households have remained cold during the winter while people are returning to wood stoves, the out-of-control use of which has generated poisonous toxic smog over the city of Athens. Bodily decay goes hand in hand with environmental destruction: Greek soil is ravaged as mineral resources are overexploited in the name of profit. Large forest areas, such as the Skouries forest in Halkidiki, are turning into vast mining sites, where private companies exploit the natural wealth of the country, while poisoning the soil, the air and the water.

It is a challenging and complicated task to try to explain Greek people’s lack of massive organized resistance the last five years given the radical deterioration of their living conditions. There is almost a reconciliation with death looming everywhere; people are slowly getting used to terror. The initial manifestations – gatherings in squares, protests and other acts of disobedience – did not acquire a more organized and consistent character, despite small local victories and the existence of a movement that daily struggles on many levels and sites. The power elites used the initial shock and paralysis to spread fear through what Naomi Klein has termed the “shock doctrine.” It is common practice for business interests and power elites to exploit shocks in the form of natural disasters, economic problems, or political turmoil, as an opportunity to aggressively restructure vulnerable countries’ economies. In this vein, popular resistance and dissent are squashed through symbolic and material fear and violence ranging from “catastrophic” discourses in the media to very real torture and repression.(15)
Shock helps the system implement antisocial and harmful policies that citizens would normally object to. Being in a state of shock as a country, says Klein, means losing your narrative, being unable to understand where you are in space and time. The state of shock is easy to exploit because people become vulnerable and confused. They are robbed of their vital tools for understanding themselves and their position in the sociopolitical context. People become unalive things and the market becomes alive. While people are slowly losing their humanity, with the government abandoning its social and welfare functions, “markets” become the new referent people should care and worry about, as if they were something alive.
Although lifeless things, markets acquire a soul and a character in the neoliberal discourse. One can observe an interesting phenomenon in the official government discourse, loyally reproduced by mainstream media: a continuous attempt to ascribe human properties to markets. The “market” as a noun, subject or object, is projected as the overarching authority, above and beyond everybody, the entity that should be kept happy and satisfied – another manifestation of necrophilia as people have to die to keep the market alive. The anthropomorphism of the market is illustrated when “markets” are used in the mainstream media in sentences such as “the markets showed satisfaction today” or “the market is struggling,” and “we need to convince the markets,” “we should appease the markets,” or “let’s wait and see how the markets respond.” The invisible market’s “reactions” give legitimacy to the “human sacrifices,” as all “market feelings” depend on increasing antisocial austerity measures that relegate a large part of Greek productive population to the unemployment trashcan. The more human qualities are attributed to the markets, the more real people are robbed of their own human substance. It seems as if the system needs to dehumanize people to “humanize” the market and then, possibly re-humanize them in the new market society, as a new kind of people robbed of any sense of agency.
In the Greek people’s quest to find their lost narrative, to “renarrativise” themselves in a collective way (16), the ability to consciously disobey and to fill the concept of hope with a real, feasible political project are two very important imperatives. To paraphrase Fromm, at this point in Greek history “the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey”(17) may be all that stands between the future for this country and its end. In articulating a political project and a narrative against capitalist necrophilia, there is a need to put at the core critical and radical thought that, when blended with the love of life, may take the struggle to the next level. Instead of getting confined to reforming or amending the current situation, people need to strive to imagine that which is not, desire it and work hard to make it happen.
* This article draws on my forthcoming book chapter “Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: Erich Fromm and The Politics of Hopelessness in Greece” to appear in Miri, S., Lake, R. & Kress, T. Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays on Erich Fromm’s Thought. Boston: Sense Publishers.
1. Hall, S., Massey, D. & Rustin, M. (2013). After Neoliberalism: Analyzing the Present. In Hall, S., Massey, D. & Rustin, M. (Eds.) After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto; London, UK: Soundings, p. 12.
2. Sotiris, P. (2012). The Downsizing of a Country. 
3. Ibid.
4. Bauman Z. (2004). Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge, UK: Polity, p. 4.
5.INE GSEE/ADEDY. (2012). Greek economy and employment: Yearly Report 2012. Athens, Greece.
6. Eurozone Unemployment Reaches New High (2013, January 8). BBC 
7. Greek National Committee of UNICEF. (2003). State of Children in Greece 2013. Athens: Greece.
8. Fromm, E. (1973). The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt, p. 369.
9. Ibid
10. Giroux, 2008, p. 21-22). Giroux, H. (2008). Against the Terror of Neoliberalism Politics Beyond the Age of Greed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
11. Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973, p. 466)
12. The Guardian

13. Alderman, L. (2013, April 17). More Children in Greece are going Hungry. The New York Times.
14. Henley, J. (2013, May 15). Recessions can hurt but Austerity kills. 
15. Klein: Klein, N. (2008). The Shock Doctrine. New York: Henry Holt.
 16. Edmonds, L. (2013, April 26) “Is Greece in Shock?” Naomi Klein tells Enet how her bestseller The Shock Doctrine relates to Greece. Eleytherotypia Online.
17. Fromm, 1981

The post “Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: The Case of Greece” By Panayota Gounari appeared first on Void Network.

As the far-right government in Greece is preparing a new law that allows the destruction of Greek coast-line by private interests and all kinds of capitalist’s investments we publish here a serial of photos from Spain where anyone can see clear the destructive effects of capitalistic development in Mediterranean environment. We are asking all people of Europe to fight for the defense of Greek coast-line and the paradesiac Greek beaches from destructive Greek government and private interests.

To understand what they try to do in Greece you can see the total destruction of coast-line in Spain.

Καθώς η ακροδεξιά κυβέρνηση στην Ελλάδα ετοιμάζει νόμους που θα επιτρέψουν την καταστροφή της Ελληνικής ακτογραμμής από ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα και κάθε λογής καπιταλιστικές επενδύσεις δημοσιέυουμε εδώ μια σειρά από φωτος από την Ισπανία έτσι ώστε να γίνει ξεκάθαρο στον καθένα το απόλυτα καταστροφικό αποτέλεσμα της καπιταλιστικής ανάπτυξης στο περιβάλλον της Μεσογείου. Ζητάμε από τους ανθρώπους όλης της Ευρώπης να υπερασπιστούν τις παραδείσιες Ελληνικές παραλίες από την καταστροφική Ελληνική Κυβέρνηση και τα ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα.

The destruction of Spain’s coastline / Η Καταστροφή της Ισπανικής ακτογραμμής

In the past two decades the once-beautiful Spanish coastline has been ravaged by the construction of hotels, apartment blocks and second homes. Here are some of the worst examples.

Τα τελευταία 20 χρόνια αυτό που κάποτε ήταν οι πανέμορφες Ισπανικές παραλίες και ακτές έχει κακοποιηθεί από την κατασκευή ξενοδοχειακών μονάδων, συγκροτημάτων διαμερισμάτων και εξοχικών. Εδώ μπορείτε να δείτε κάποια χαρακτηριστικά παραδείγματα:

2005: The Azata del Sol complex on the Algarrobico beach in the Cabo de Gata park in Almeria, southern Spain

2005: Το οικοδομικό συγκρότημα Azata Del Sol στην παραλία Algarrobico στην Νότια Ισπανία

 

The post S.O.S Greek coastline is destroyed by private interests and Greek government. The paradigm of the destruction of Spain’s coastline / Η Καταστροφή της Ισπανικής ακτογραμμής παράδειγμα για το μέλλον των Ελληνικών ακτών! appeared first on Void Network.

Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis, based in Athens, spent several weeks documenting the unemployed and homeless in Greece as the continued economic downturn has impacted the numbers of homeless. Since the debt crisis erupted in 2009, hundreds of thousands of Greeks have lost their jobs — the unemployment rate in the country reached 26.8 percent, as the economy contracted by another 5.6 percent in the first quarter of 2013, and even stricter austerity measures are being urged. See also Portraits of Greece in Crisis from last year. [23 photos]

click on the right down side of the photo to see full screen 

Alexandros, a 42-year-old from Serres in northern Greece, sits in the abandoned car he lives in, at the port of Piareus near Athens, on April 10, 2013. Alexandros owned a plant shop in Athens until 2010, when it was forced to close, he became homeless soon after. According to Praxis, a non-governmental organization, the number of homeless in Greece has nearly doubled to over 20,000 from 11,000 in 2009. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis)

2

Michael, 36-years-old and unemployed, poses by an abandoned open-air cinema in central Athens, on February 8, 2013. Michael worked as a hotel clerk for over fifteen years but when the hotel closed he was unable to find work and in late 2011 became homeless. Two months later he was diagnosed with lymph node and thyroid cancer. He now lives outside a church. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

3

Adrian, a 51-year-old from Romania, extracts copper from a cable in central Athens, on January 18, 2013. Living and working in Greece for over a decade, Adrian lost his job in 2011 when the lorry company he was working for closed down. He now lives in an abandoned warehouse in an Athens vegetable market and survives by collecting scrap. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

4

Tareq, a 46-year-old unemployed painter, sits in the shed where he lives at an abandoned factory in central Athens, on May 30, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

5

Tareq, a 46-year-old unemployed painter, reflected in a mirror in the shed where he lives in Athens, on May 30, 2013. Tareq, a Syrian refugee, who lived in Greece during the 1990s, returned to Syria, but fled back to Greece in 2012, to escape the violence there. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

6

A homeless scrap collector sleeps outside in central Athens, on May 26, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM ATHENS HERE:

 

7

Andy, a 53-year-old unemployed German immigrant from Dusseldorf, sits by his makeshift home at a deserted harbor storage building in the port of Piraeus, near Athens, on April 13, 2013. Andy worked in Greece for many years, becoming homeless after he lost his job six years ago. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

8

Michael, a 36-year-old unemployed clerk, sits in the sun near a bridge in central Athens, on May 24, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

9

Boris Potev, a 56-year-old Bulgarian immigrant, lies on a mattress amid garbage in an Athens suburb, on April 9, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

10

Yannis, a 53-year-old unemployed chef, sits with his head in his hands in front of a graffiti mural in Athens, on January 28, 2013. Yannis was a chef for over 19 years, until he lost his job in 2010 and a year later became homeless. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

11

Savas, a 34-year-old who became homeless in 2009 after losing his job, sleeps in a tent at an open air photographic exhibition of homeless people organized by a charity called Klimaka in Athens, on April 14, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

12

Marialena, a 42-year-old homeless AIDS sufferer and former drug addict, sleeps under a bridge in central Athens, on May 13, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

13

Dimitrios, 51, watches as his girlfriend Marialena, a homeless AIDS sufferer and former drug addict who is on a methadone rehabilitation program, put on makeup after waking up under a bridge in Athens, on May 26, 2013. Dimitrios was a dancer for a famous Greek folk dancing troupe until he lost his job three years ago and became homeless. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

14

Marialena pushes away her boyfriend Dimitrios, who is trying to clean up her self-inflicted wounds, under a bridge in central Athens, on May 15, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

15

Homeless immigrants from Syria and north Africa sit near their home in the central train station in Athens, on May 2, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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Matheos, 58, stands next to the makeshift shelter where he has lived since late 2011, on a hill in Athens, on January 23, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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Giorgos, a 58-year-old who became homeless five years ago when he lost his job, sits on a park bench in Athens, on May 2, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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Glikeria, 42, sits on a street in central Athens, on April 17, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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Alexis, a 43-year-old former cycling champion, begs as he sits on his mattress in Athens, on January 20, 2013. Alexis became homeless when he lost his job in 2004, and became a drug addict in the following months. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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Stephanos, 42, reflected in a mirror as he combs his hair before setting off to look for a job in Athens, on May 16, 2013. Stephanos became homeless in late 2012 when the clothes shop where he had worked for over a decade closed down and he had no income to pay for his flat. He now lives next to a church in central Athens and eats in soup kitchens. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

21

Homeless people sleep outside a bank in Athens, on May 26, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

22

Vaios, 62, a former construction worker, sits in the abandoned warehouse where he lives in the central vegetable market in Athens, on May 25, 2013. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

23

Alexandros, a 42-year-old from Serres, lights a cigarette as he sits in the abandoned car he lives in, at the port of Piareus near Athens, on April 10, 2013. Alexandros owned a plant shop in Athens until 2010, when it was forced to close. He became homeless soon after. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) #

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In his early writings, Marx described the German situation as one in which the only answer to particular problems was the universal solution: global revolution. This is a succinct expression of the difference between a reformist and a revolutionary period: in a reformist period, global revolution remains a dream which, if it does anything, merely lends weight to attempts to change things locally; in a revolutionary period, it becomes clear that nothing will improve without radical global change. In this purely formal sense, 1990 was a revolutionary year: it was plain that partial reforms of the Communist states would not do the job and that a total break was needed to resolve even such everyday problems as making sure there was enough for people to eat.

Where do we stand today with respect to this difference? Are the problems and protests of the last few years signs of an approaching global crisis, or are they just minor obstacles that can be dealt with by means of local interventions? The most remarkable thing about the eruptions is that they are taking place not only, or even primarily, at the weak points in the system, but in places which were until now perceived as success stories. We know why people are protesting in Greece or Spain; but why is there trouble in such prosperous or fast-developing countries as Turkey, Sweden or Brazil? With hindsight, we might see the Khomeini revolution of 1979 as the original ‘trouble in paradise’, given that it happened in a country that was on the fast-track of pro-Western modernisation, and the West’s staunchest ally in the region. Maybe there is something wrong with our notion of paradise.





Before the current wave of protests, Turkey was hot: the very model of a state able to combine a thriving liberal economy with moderate Islamism, fit for Europe, a welcome contrast to the more ‘European’ Greece, caught in an ideological quagmire and bent on economic self-destruction. True, there were ominous signs here and there (Turkey’s denial of the Armenian holocaust; the arrests of journalists; the unresolved status of the Kurds; calls for a greater Turkey which would resuscitate the tradition of the Ottoman Empire; the occasional imposition of religious laws), but these were dismissed as small stains that should not be allowed to taint the overall picture.

Then the Taksim Square protests exploded. Everyone knows that the planned transformation of a park that borders on Taksim Square in central Istanbul into a shopping centre was not what the protests were ‘really about’, and that a much deeper unease was gaining strength. The same was true of the protests in Brazil in mid-June: what triggered those was a small rise in the cost of public transport, but they went on even after the measure was revoked. Here too the protests had exploded in a country which – according to the media, at least – was enjoying an economic boom and had every reason to feel confident about the future. In this case the protests were apparently supported by the president, Dilma Rousseff, who declared herself delighted by them.

It is crucial that we don’t see the Turkish protests merely as a secular civil society rising up against an authoritarian Islamist regime supported by a silent Muslim majority. What complicates the picture is the protests’ anti-capitalist thrust: protesters intuitively sense that free-market fundamentalism and fundamentalist Islam are not mutually exclusive. The privatisation of public space by an Islamist government shows that the two forms of fundamentalism can work hand in hand: it’s a clear sign that the ‘eternal’ marriage between democracy and capitalism is nearing divorce.

It is also important to recognise that the protesters aren’t pursuing any identifiable ‘real’ goal. The protests are not ‘really’ against global capitalism, ‘really’ against religious fundamentalism, ‘really’ for civil freedoms and democracy, or ‘really’ about any one thing in particular. What the majority of those who have participated in the protests are aware of is a fluid feeling of unease and discontent that sustains and unites various specific demands. The struggle to understand the protests is not just an epistemological one, with journalists and theorists trying to explain their true content; it is also an ontological struggle over the thing itself, which is taking place within the protests themselves. Is this just a struggle against corrupt city administration? Is it a struggle against authoritarian Islamist rule? Is it a struggle against the privatisation of public space? The question is open, and how it is answered will depend on the result of an ongoing political process.

In 2011, when protests were erupting across Europe and the Middle East, many insisted that they shouldn’t be treated as instances of a single global movement. Instead, they argued, each was a response to a specific situation. In Egypt, the protesters wanted what in other countries the Occupy movement was protesting against: ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Even among Muslim countries, there were crucial differences: the Arab Spring in Egypt was a protest against a corrupt authoritarian pro-Western regime; the Green Revolution in Iran that began in 2009 was against authoritarian Islamism. It is easy to see how such a particularisation of protest appeals to defenders of the status quo: there is no threat against the global order as such, just a series of separate local problems.

Global capitalism is a complex process which affects different countries in different ways. What unites the protests, for all their multifariousness, is that they are all reactions against different facets of capitalist globalisation. The general tendency of today’s global capitalism is towards further expansion of the market, creeping enclosure of public space, reduction of public services (healthcare, education, culture), and increasingly authoritarian political power. It is in this context that Greeks are protesting against the rule of international financial capital and their own corrupt and inefficient state, which is less and less able to provide basic social services. It is in this context too that Turks are protesting against the commercialisation of public space and against religious authoritarianism; that Egyptians are protesting against a regime supported by the Western powers; that Iranians are protesting against corruption and religious fundamentalism, and so on. None of these protests can be reduced to a single issue. They all deal with a specific combination of at least two issues, one economic (from corruption to inefficiency to capitalism itself), the other politico-ideological (from the demand for democracy to the demand that conventional multi-party democracy be overthrown). The same holds for the Occupy movement. Beneath the profusion of (often confused) statements, the movement had two basic features: first, discontent with capitalism as a system, not just with its particular local corruptions; second, an awareness that the institutionalised form of representative multi-party democracy is not equipped to fight capitalist excess, i.e. democracy has to be reinvented.

Just because the underlying cause of the protests is global capitalism, that doesn’t mean the only solution is directly to overthrow it. Nor is it viable to pursue the pragmatic alternative, which is to deal with individual problems and wait for a radical transformation. That ignores the fact that global capitalism is necessarily inconsistent: market freedom goes hand in hand with US support for its own farmers; preaching democracy goes hand in hand with supporting Saudi Arabia. This inconsistency opens up a space for political intervention: wherever the global capitalist system is forced to violate its own rules, there is an opportunity to insist that it follow those rules. To demand consistency at strategically selected points where the system cannot afford to be consistent is to put pressure on the entire system. The art of politics lies in making particular demands which, while thoroughly realistic, strike at the core of hegemonic ideology and imply much more radical change. Such demands, while feasible and legitimate, are de facto impossible. Obama’s proposal for universal healthcare was such a case, which is why reactions to it were so violent.

A political movement begins with an idea, something to strive for, but in time the idea undergoes a profound transformation – not just a tactical accommodation, but an essential redefinition – because the idea itself becomes part of the process: it becomes overdetermined.​＊ Say a revolt starts with a demand for justice perhaps in the form of a call for a particular law to be repealed. Once people get deeply engaged in it, they become aware that much more than meeting their initial demand would be needed to bring about true justice. The problem is to define what, precisely, the ‘much more’ consists in. The liberal-pragmatic view is that problems can be solved gradually, one by one: ‘People are dying now in Rwanda, so forget about anti-imperialist struggle, let us just prevent the slaughter’; or: ‘We have to fight poverty and racism here and now, not wait for the collapse of the global capitalist order’. John Caputo argued along these lines in After the Death of God (2007):

I would be perfectly happy if the far-left politicians in the United States were able to reform the system by providing universal healthcare, effectively redistributing wealth more equitably with a revised IRS code, effectively restricting campaign financing, enfranchising all voters, treating migrant workers humanely, and effecting a multilateral foreign policy that would integrate American power within the international community, etc, i.e., intervene upon capitalism by means of serious and far-reaching reforms … If after doing all that Badiou and Žižek complained that some Monster called Capitalism still stalks us, I would be inclined to greet that Monster with a yawn.

The problem here is not Caputo’s conclusion: if one could achieve all that within capitalism, why not stay there? The problem is the underlying premise that it’s possible to achieve all that within global capitalism in its present form. What if the malfunctionings of capitalism listed by Caputo aren’t merely contingent perturbations but structural necessities? What if Caputo’s dream is a dream of a universal capitalist order without its symptoms, without the critical points at which its ‘repressed truth’ shows itself?

Today’s protests and revolts are sustained by the combination of overlapping demands, and this accounts for their strength: they fight for (‘normal’, parliamentary) democracy against authoritarian regimes; against racism and sexism, especially when directed at immigrants and refugees; against corruption in politics and business (industrial pollution of the environment etc); for the welfare state against neoliberalism; and for new forms of democracy that reach beyond multi-party rituals. They also question the global capitalist system as such and try to keep alive the idea of a society beyond capitalism. Two traps are to be avoided here: false radicalism (‘what really matters is the abolition of liberal-parliamentary capitalism, all other fights are secondary’), but also false gradualism (‘right now we should fight against military dictatorship and for basic democracy, all dreams of socialism should be put aside for now’). Here there is no shame in recalling the Maoist distinction between principal and secondary antagonisms, between those that matter most in the end and those that dominate now. There are situations in which to insist on the principal antagonism means to miss the opportunity to strike a significant blow in the struggle.

Only a politics that fully takes into account the complexity of overdetermination deserves to be called a strategy. When we join a specific struggle, the key question is: how will our engagement in it or disengagement from it affect other struggles? The general rule is that when a revolt against an oppressive half-democratic regime begins, as with the Middle East in 2011, it is easy to mobilise large crowds with slogans – for democracy, against corruption etc. But we are soon faced with more difficult choices. When the revolt succeeds in its initial goal, we come to realise that what is really bothering us (our lack of freedom, our humiliation, corruption, poor prospects) persists in a new guise, so that we are forced to recognise that there was a flaw in the goal itself. This may mean coming to see that democracy can itself be a form of un-freedom, or that we must demand more than merely political democracy: social and economic life must be democratised too. In short, what we first took as a failure fully to apply a noble principle (democratic freedom) is in fact a failure inherent in the principle itself. This realisation – that failure may be inherent in the principle we’re fighting for – is a big step in a political education.

Representatives of the ruling ideology roll out their entire arsenal to prevent us from reaching this radical conclusion. They tell us that democratic freedom brings its own responsibilities, that it comes at a price, that it is immature to expect too much from democracy. In a free society, they say, we must behave as capitalists investing in our own lives: if we fail to make the necessary sacrifices, or if we come up short in any way, we have no one to blame but ourselves. In a more directly political sense, the US has consistently pursued a strategy of damage control in its foreign policy by re-channelling popular uprisings into acceptable parliamentary-capitalist forms: in South Africa after apartheid, in the Philippines after the fall of Marcos, in Indonesia after Suharto etc. This is where politics proper begins: the question is how to push further once the first, exciting wave of change is over, how to take the next step without succumbing to the ‘totalitarian’ temptation, how to move beyond Mandela without becoming Mugabe.

What would this mean in a concrete case? Let’s compare two neighbouring countries, Greece and Turkey. At first glance, they may seem to be entirely different: Greece is trapped in the ruinous politics of austerity, while Turkey is enjoying an economic boom and is emerging as a new regional superpower. But what if each Turkey generates and contains its own Greece, its own islands of misery? As Brecht put it in his ‘Hollywood Elegies’,

The village of Hollywood was planned according to the notion
People in these parts have of heaven. In these parts
They have come to the conclusion that God
Requiring a heaven and a hell, didn’t need to
Plan two establishments but
Just the one: heaven. It
Serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful
As hell.

This describes today’s ‘global village’ rather well: just apply it to Qatar or Dubai, playgrounds of the rich that are dependent on conditions of near-slavery for immigrant workers. A closer look reveals underlying similarities between Turkey and Greece: privatisation, the enclosure of public space, the dismantling of social services, the rise of authoritarian politics. At an elementary level, Greek and Turkish protesters are engaged in the same struggle. The true path would be to co-ordinate the two struggles, to reject ‘patriotic’ temptations, to leave behind the two countries’ historical enmity and to seek grounds for solidarity. The future of the protests may depend on it.



source: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/06/28/slavoj-zizek/trouble-in-paradise

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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.

The post “Sustainable Prosperity: A Greek Perspective II” by Michalis Theodoropoulos appeared first on Void Network.

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

The post “Greece: the European version of shock doctrine. The dawn of a new obscure era” by Kostas Svolis appeared first on Void Network.

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

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