Long Waves in Politics and Institutions: The case of Greece

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Long Waves in Politics and Institutions: The case of Greece

Jason Koutoufaris-Malandrinos

To cite this version:

Jason Koutoufaris-Malandrinos. Long Waves in Politics and Institutions: The case of Greece. 2015, http://bestimmung.blogspot.gr/2015/10/long-waves-in-politics-and-institutions.html. �hal-01352167�

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LONG WAVES IN POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONS : THE CASE OF GREECE

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by Jason Koutoufaris-Malandrinos

Le grand homme dʼaction est celui qui pèse exactement lʼétroitesse de ses possibilités, qui choisit de sʼy tenir et de profiter même du poids de lʼinévitable pour lʼajouter à sa propre poussée.

Fernand Braudel

1. I

ntroduction

It is known that Kondratieff waves reflect long-run movements in price indices and interest rates, and, by extension, fluctuations in general economic activity.

Can we discern similar patterns in politics and institutional change?

I will attempt a comparative sketch of the political institutions and ideologies in Greece during the periods 1821/1831 to 1910 and 1940/1949 to 2015. Although I do not discuss here the difficult issue of how the politico-institutional cycles are connected to Kondratieff waves, it seems, prima facie, that the first period (1830- 1910) covers a whole K-wave (1848-1893) along with the second half of the B- phase of the precedent wave (1831-1848) and the first half of the A-phase of the next wave (1893-1905), whereas the other period (1940-2015) covers just one K-wave (1940-2008).

¹

I hope to obviate certain objections by making it clear that my sketch is not about disregarding the unique characteristics of every historical period, but identifying the common elements considered to be crucial to proper interpretation.

2.1. First stage : Revolution and Civil War

2.1.1. This stage lasts for about a decade (1821-1831, 1940-1949), beginning with a national (theoretically supra-class) revolution (Greek War of Independence, Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation).

2.1.2. The enemy is a world-imperial land power (Ottoman Empire in the process of its incorporation into the capitalist world-economy, Nazi Germany in its attempt to transform the world-economy into a world-empire), whose rule is deemed illegitimate as being gained through unjust conquest.

* This article appeared on bestimmung.blogspot.gr/, and is available at:

http://bestimmung.blogspot.gr/2015/10/long-waves-in-politics-and-institutions.html. For an earlier version in Greek under the same title, see http://bestimmung.blogspot.gr/2015/01/blog- post_30.html. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated.

1 I follow the “base dating scheme” proposed by Goldstein (1988), p. 67. The application of the K- waves to the study of Greek history is still needed. Of course, there are a few exceptions:

Sakellaropoulos (1991), Mitrofanis (1991), Mitrofanis and Sinarellis (1995), Tsoulfidis (2009), Konstandopoulos, Modis and Skillas (2006).

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2.1.3. Radicalism sets the tone of the revolution. Indeed, both the revolutionary Constitutions (1822, 1823, 1827)

²

and the Resolution of Koryschades (1944)

³

are distinguished for their democratic and popular character.

2.1.4. The initial radicalism is later sidelined, when the revolution becomes a civil war (1824-1825 and 1827-1831 [struggle between Kapodistrians and anti- Kapodistrians], 1946-1949).

2.2. Second stage : Greece in periphery

2.2.1. This stage lasts for about thirty years (1831-1862, 1949-1974).

2.2.2. Political life revolves around a foreign-imposed and extremely conservative monarchy (House of Wittelsbach, House of Glücksburg).

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The common people talk about “Bavarocracy” and “Americanocracy” respectively.

2.2.3. Under the auspices of constitutional law (Constitutions of 1844 and of 1952), the Rechtsstaat is jeopardized,

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civil and political rights are restricted,

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while social rights are completely neglected.

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2.2.4. Government becomes more and more arbitrary, the Great Powers become more and more interventionist, and the lower classes become more and more miserable.

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2.2.5. After a period of extreme polical policing and repression (Athanasios Miaoulis “Bloody Ministry” of 1857-1862, Military Junta of 1967-1974), this stage ends with the fall of the authoritarian regime (deposition of King Otto in 1862, Fall of The Junta in 1974).

⁹

2 Alivizatos (2011, p. 63) observes: “The ample protection of equality compared to all other rights –along with an early announcement of welfare benefits– expressed a rather unusual –among the liberal declarations of that time– sensitivity for the most vulnerable social strata”.

Paparrigopoulos (1887, p. 734) had even criticized A. Mavrokordatos for creating a constitution

“polyarchic if not anarchic”.

3 See Koutsoubos (2003), especially p. 47 et seq., and more recently Skalidakis (2015).

4 A further similarity could be the prevalence of women inside the palace. “[Queen] Amalia seemed to act as if she herself were king” (Kordatos, 11, p. 669): a description equally suitable for Queen Frederica.

5 “Even after the concession of a constitution in 1844, King Otto managed to thwart the principles of constitutional government”, by using “a combination of manipulation, patronage and, where necessary, downright intimidation” (Clogg, 1987, p. 2). On the other hand, the 1952 Constitution was accompanied by a Para-constitution (Παρασύνταγμα, Parasyntagma), namely a set of emergency decrees enacted during the Civil War (ordering purges, deportations, confiscations, deprivations of nationality, etc.), which overrode several fundamental constitutional provisions (see Alivizatos, 1979, p. 415 et seq.); a Greek version of McCarthyism (Samatas, 1986).

6 “Under the 1844 Constitution, there was a tendency to interpret the clauses on civil liberties restrictively and in favour of the royal powers” (Calogeropoulos, 2004, p. 371), while, under the 1952 Constitution, “a departure from the liberal credo on constitutional rights was clear”

(Contiades and Tassopoulos, 2013, p. 154).

7 Social rights, enshrined –“before their time” (Alivizatos, 2011, p. 51)– under the 1823 Constitution, were deleted in the 1844 Constitution. The 1952 Constitution “ne prévoit pas du tout et ne garantit pas les "droits sociaux"” (Manessis, 1954, p. 308).

8 See Vournas (1998), p. 373.

9 See Arrighi (1990, p. 38): “The rapid succession of "crises in dictatorship" in Southern Europe

(Greece, Portugal, Spain) can be taken as the watershed between the "authoritarian" and the

"democratic" phases of prosystemic semiperipheral development”. The authoritarian phase is characterized by a common predisposition, which “has been (1) to preserve extreme class

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2.2.6. In each case, the completion of the stage is hailed as a Metapolitefsi (regime change),

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and the student movement is formally recognized as the catalyst in the struggle for freedom (Skiadika in 1859 and Synomotika in 1861,

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Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973).

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2.3. T hird stage : Greece in semiperiphery

2.3.1. This stage lasts for about thirty-five years (1862-1898, 1974-2010).

2.3.2. A new Constitution (Greek Constitutions of 1864 and of 1975) is ratified, which introduces a more democratic –obviously, in the sense of representative democracy– regime. The head of state (King of the Hellenes, President of the Hellenic Republic) is vested with considerable powers. As Anagnostou (2004, p.

214) notes, “the President of the Republic according to the Constitution of 1975 is undoubtedly the most equipped with prerogatives in the constitutional history of Greece, prerogatives similar to those we could find in a crowned republic”.

2.3.3. Yet, only a decade after (1875, 1986), these presidential “super-powers”

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are drastically limited, and a purer parliamentarianism is embraced (introduction of the principle of declared confidence as a constitutional convention in 1875, constitutional amendment of 1986).

2.3.4. A relatively stable bipartisan system emerges, with a centrist party (New Party of Charilaos Trikoupis, PASOK) and a centre-right party (Nationalist Party of Theodoros Deligiannis, New Democracy) dominating the political scene.

¹⁴

2.3.5. Socialist thought flourishes: various groups are formed and many newspapers are published.

¹⁵

2.3.6. Student activism gives birth to a new generation of politicians, which soon divests itself of its juvenile radicalism. Public figures like Epameinondas

inequalities in the distribution of personal wealth within their domains, and (2) to perform subordinate functions in global processes of capital accumulation” (Arrighi, 1990, p. 27). Arrighi puts Greece in the same category as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey (p. 26). This insight could enable a further understanding (through comparison) of the politics and ideologies of these countries.

10 Although the word is used today to depict the period after 1974, we must not forget that it also described the period after 1862 (Dragoumis, 1879, p. 320).

11 See Lappas (2004), p. 736: “Students also took part in political life. At least since the movement against king Otto (1859-1862) a liberal political spirit prevailed among students, and was dynamically expressed during the "Skiadika" (1859)”. See also Lazos (1987), p. 74 et seq., and 111 et seq..

12 As stated by Epameinondas Deligeorgis (1863, p. 3), “the University, by educating the Nation, generated the [1862] revolution”, whereas the Athens Polytechnic uprising “did not throw the Junta out”, but “it operated as a key catalyst for its fall” (Lazos, 1987, pp. 379-380).

13 Tsatsos (1988), p. 100.

14 “À la multitude des partis groupés autour dʼun chef influent sans programme précis, succèdent, à partir de 1880 environ, deux formations politiques à tendances plus nettes: les éléments progressistes de la bourgeoisie, les intellectuels et une grande partie du peuple se rassemblent autour de Charilaos Tricoupis. Les conservateurs et les forces du vieux monde politique se groupent autour de Coumoundouros, dont le parti, privé des ses éléments bourgeois, abandonne lʼesprit progressiste quʼil avait montré jusquʼalors. ce parti, dont la direction passe, après la mort de Coumoundouros (1883), à Th. Déliyannis, représente la résistance du passé et lʼobstruction pure et simple aux efforts de Tricoupis” (Svoronos, 1953, p. 75).

15 See Noutsos (1990).

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Deligeorgis

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and many members of the “Polytechnic Generation” can easily be compared.

2.3.7. A general economic and political upheaval marks the end of this stage. The upheaval starts off as a sovereign debt crisis (1893, 2010) and culminates in the imposition of foreign control over the Greek economy (International Financial Control in 1898, Troika in 2010).

2.3.8. In each case, foreign control is made possible by a deep shock across Greek society (the “Unfortunate” Greco-Turkish War of 1897,

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the Greek government- debt crisis in 2009), felt by the people as a “national humiliation”.

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2.3.9. From the “restoration of Democracy” to the “crisis”, excessive government borrowing is justified by the supposed need to technically modernize and culturally westernize the country.

2.3.10. The hosting of the Olympic Games (1896, 2004) comes to crown the

“national effort”.

2.3.11. Greece is a member of a monetary union (Latin Monetary Union then,

¹⁹

Eurozone now), but the crisis affects its participation in it.

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2.4. Fourth stage : Greece during crisis (1898-1910, 2010-2015)

2.4.1. The old political system, unable to solve the crisis, disintegrates and splits up into competing personal factions. At the same time, any ideological difference fades away in favor of a putative national interest.

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16 See Kyriakidis (1892, p. 525): «Deligeorgis was not the beloved youth leader anymore; [...] he did not like the university phalanges as he used to do; [...] but then he had been a dissident and now he was in power· [...] So who was right? Deligeorgis of 1862 or Deligeorgis of 1873;».

17 Stephanou (1934, as cited by Katsoulis, 1975, pp. 226-227) highlights that “the 1897 war was a pseudo-war, in order to impose on Greece the international financial control”, and he continues:

“Our fatherland was disgraced and the blood of Greek soldiers was spilled and the innocent Greek people was involved in a premeditated fraud just for the International Financial Control to be imposed, a control that not one government or parliament would dare to accept. At that time (1893-1898) the speculators had begun to gang up under the protection of the king”. Andreadis (1925, pp. 300-301), Kordatos (12, pp. 591-604) and Rodakis (1975, p. 45) emphasize Germanyʼs role in the events.

18 Apparently, the Shock Doctrine is not so much of a novelty. War and market meltdown (along with coups, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters) is just different ways of inflicting it (see Klein, 2007, pp. 16-17).

19 The Latin Monetary Union was established in 1865 and formally dissolved in 1927. According to Einaudi (2001, p. 3), its similarities with the European Monetary Union are “at times striking”.

After all, Félix Esquirou de Parieu, who presided over the Convention of Paris in 1865, was already proposing a “European Commission” and a “European Parliament” (Parieu, 1870, p. 355).

2.4.2. Protests and strikes erupt in violence (Lavrio Minersʼ Strike of 1896/

Patras Raisin Producersʼ Strike of 1896/ John McDowallʼs Engine Shop Workersʼ Strike of 1898/ Chair-makersʼ Strike of 1898/ Athens Printersʼ Strike of 1898/

Sanidika Riot in 1902/

²²

Lawyersʼ Strike of 1907/ Thessalian Peasantsʼ Protests of 1909/ Volos Tobacco Workersʼ Strikes of 1909-1911, 2010-2012 anti- austerity movement).

2.4.3. Right-wing extremism is gaining ground (aggravation of the greek language question in 1901-1903,

²³

rise of the far-right Golden Dawn in 2012).

2.4.4. There is an open constitutional question. The dilemma was then that of monarchy versus democracy and today that of subservience to EU elites versus national autonomy. Scaremongering serves the ruling class as an argument.

²⁴

2.4.5. The national humiliation is exacerbated by the caricature of the “lazy parasitic southerner” that is disseminated through the media in core countries.

²⁵

clientelism persists till our days and it has operated as a link between the electorate and the politicians, namely a form of democratic control; to use Humeʼs words into another context, “we may, therefore, give to this influence what name we please; we may call it by the invidious appellations of corruption and dependence; but some degree and some kind of it are inseparable from the very nature of the constitution” (cf. Hume, 1741, p. 89). Moreover, the personal charisma of the Old Partiesʼ leaders was an element that Venizelos and Tsipras did not –and could not– repudiate. – It makes more sense to perceive the Old Parties as parties in a process of gradual and, by the end of the third stage, almost total convergence (Petridis, 1992, pp. 85-86;

Vernardakis and Temel, 2014). That could explain the ease and eagerness to form an alliance against Venizelos then and Tsipras now.

22 “In late November of the same year [1902], following elections which had failed to produce a clear majority, supporters of Diliyiannis brandishing planks which they had taken from near-by construction buildings (hence the appellation Sanidika), roamed Athens, terrorizing and attacking their political opponents; not surprisingly, on 24 November Diliyannis was sworn in as prime minister” (Carabott, 1993, p. 119).

23 In 1901, the adaptation of the New Testament in Demotic Greek (the modern vernacular form of the Greek language) caused a wave of violent protests, known as Gospel Riots or Evangelika.

Similar protests (known as Oresteiaka) errupted when Aeschylusʼ Orestia was also adapted in Demotic Greek and was performed at the National Theatre in 1903. The demoticist translators were accused as “traitors”, “anti-Greeks”, “matricides” or even “pan-Slavists” (Van Steen, 2008, p.

366). P. Mackridge (2009, p. 253) notes perceptively: “In the last analysis, neither the Evangeliká nor the Oresteiaká were purely about language”; rather Demoticism was “demonized by nationalists who connected it with the Slav threat and accused it of collaborating with Greece’s enemies to divide and destroy the nation” (p. 288). Mackridge also observes that “the perceived threat of pan-Slavism in Greece at the time should not be underestimated: if pan-Slavism had been established, it would have spread from Vladivostok to the southern borders of Serbia and Bulgaria – wherever these might have been – and there would have been little to stop Slav irredentists from trying to complete the job by taking over regions that Greeks believed to be theirs” (p. 254).

24 Today we constantly fear a Grexit and its consequences, but the culture of fear dates back in time. Georgios Philaretos, MP and later “Father of Democracy”, is revealing: «Regrettably, during the discussion, impious threats were hurled against the independence of the country. [...] They exercised psychological violence over us by raising the spectre of the Great Powers! [...] How long will we be tormented by this spectre anyway? [...] I must protest with all my strength and remind everyone who thus speaks, of the equality and independence of each State, no matter how large or small [...] We are a small country, gentlemen, but, however small we are, after so many sacred struggles, we mean to be an independent State. The cannons that we see from time to time gathered in the Port of Phalerum, it is high time they ceased to appear» (Philaretos, 1956, pp.

197-251).

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3. Beyond the fourth stage

The end of the fourth stage is marked by the triumph of Eleftherios Venizelos then and of Alexis Tsipras now. Is this where the similarities stop? Not quite.

3.1. Venizelos and Tsipras are the first Prime Ministers to have been born after the “Metapolitefsi”, that is during the transition from the second to the third stage (1864, 1974). Coming from a middle-class background,

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they have gained activist credentials and the fame of being charismatic long before their premiership (Cretan Question during the period 1897-1910, social movements during the period 1999-2015).

3.2. Both Venizelos and Tsipras organize their political campaign along two axes, namely a slogan (abolition of the monarchy, cancellation of the Memoranda) and a programme (Larissa Programme, Thessaloniki Programme). Both campaigns convey the message of a “peaceful revolution”, a catchphrase steadily used by SYRIZA,

²⁷

but it dates back to the journalism of Vlassis Gavriilidis, editor of the newspaper Akropolis and a subsequently staunch Venizelist.

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3.2.1. The slogan has two main characteristics: first, it suggests that the constitutional question will be resolved in a radical way, and, second, it is widely attributed to the leader, but the leader does not explicitly accept it.

3.2.2. The Larissa Programme was announced by Venizelos on 14 November 1910,

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and the Thessaloniki Programme was announced by Tsipras on 13 September 2014.

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Their similarity is disarming; they both aim at “national recovery”, which would be realized mainly by:

i. stimulating demand.

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25 Stephanos Stephanou, Venizelosʼ private secretary, reports about the 1893 crisis: “The German government was foaming at the mouth, the German journalists were hauling our country over the coals, and a Berlin satirical magazine published a cartoon of king George on horseback, dressed like an armatolos (in fez and fustanella) and carrying a yataghan with a legend "Der kleine klephte", a Greek-German play on words, meaning the little Klepht, but also the petty thief. The larger part of the sovereign debt was in German hands. Kaiser was threatening to suffocate us”

(Stephanou, 1929, as cited by Kordatos, 12, p. 527). Regarding Greece, this stereotype dates back at least to the time of Bayard Taylor, the American travel writer, who wryly notices: “About every third day is an eorti, or holy-day of some venerable unwashed saint, or company of saints, whose memory is duly honored by a general loafing-spell of the inhabitants. The greatest benefit that could happen to Greece, and to all Southern Europe, would be the discanonization of nine-tenths of those holy drones...” (Taylor, 1859, p. 76).

26 See Macrakis (2008), p. 42, 45, and Wallenfeldt (2015).

27 See Petrakis (2012), and Heyer (2015).

28 Gavriilidis believed that “the Peaceful Revolution is going to dislodge the established corrupt oligarchy”, and, while not a communist, he calls for the revolution “in the name of the class struggle” (Gavriilidis, 1909, as cited by Kordatos, 13, p. 78). According to Kordatos (13, p. 77), Akropolis was calling for “a peaceful revolution for a better future, a reborn Greece, for the extinction of the old gentlefolk, for the reorganization of the national economy, for the improvement of the peasantsʼ and workersʼ situation”. The resemblance with todayʼs demands is obvious.

29 See Venizelos (1910).

30 See SYRIZASYRIZA (2014).

31 SYRIZAʼ policy-makers are simply talking about “boosting demand”. Venizelosʼ language is far more colourful: “Unfortunately, in the past, the direct connection between the national economy,

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ii. shifting the tax burden away from lower classes and onto upper strata, and basing the tax system on the real capacity to pay.

iii. reorganizing the state and advancing the rule of law; Venizelos was the first to establish a state governed by the rule of law,

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Tsipras commits himself to restoring it.

iv. promoting an all-round balanced development of domestic production;

Venizelos stated, long before the left government, that Greece “is not poor, but unexploited”.

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v. regulating the labor market to benefit workers (in the words of Venizelos,

“lucrative business, but in compliance with the law”)

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, and thus reversing the massive emigration of Greeks to other countries (which is –again in the words of Venizelos, a “terrifying haemorrhage of the national organism”)

³⁵

.

The programmes are hardly anti-systemic; rather they promote a kind of

“procataleptic socialism” or “defensive welfarism”, namely a compromise between labor and capital,

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in order to mollify any revolutionary mood and to avoid further tearing the social fabric.

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In fact, these proposals declare an economic policy largely analogous to that already followed by the erstwhile hegemonic power

³⁸

in the world-economy (1906-1914 Liberal Welfare Reforms in Great Britain, New New Deal in the United States).

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Although this is more true for the Liberal Party than for SYRIZA, let it be noted that both parties adopt the catchphrases or even the symbols of this policy.

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3.3. Both Venizelos and Tsipras head two successive governments and win triumphantly a snap general election between them. Before their first premierships, they are supported by an alliance of diverse groups, which assert

namely the citizensʼ wealth, and the budget revenues was forgotten, while it was also forgotten that, if the sources of the great pool of national wealth remain always the same, and if the pipe – which empties the pool and fills the public purse– always widens, the pool (and thus the public financial means) would end up drained” (Venizelos, 1981, p. 206).

32 Svoronos (1953), p. 88.

33 Venizelos (1981), p. 205.

34 Venizelos (1981), p. 206.

35 Venizelos (1981), op. cit..

36 Venizelos was very clear that his government “is neither a capitalist government nor a workersʼ government. […] it is a national government” (Diamantopoulos, 1985, p. 154). Tsipras, on the other hand, hopes to see “a new balance in the relations between state and market”, with the state “protecting public goods and functioning [...] as a driver for growth” (Tsipras, 2014b).

37 According to Venizelos, if the State enhanced the position of the working class in its struggle against capital, “the eruption of hate or even of a civil war” could be prevented (Venizelos, 1969, p. 331). Tsipras urges the need for national unity and unanimity (Tsipras, 2015b), and considers his victory as “a mandate to regenerate the Nation and restore the social cohesion of our country”

(Tsipras, 2015c).

38 See further Wallerstein (2011), pp. xxii-xxvii, and Wallerstein (1996), pp. 58-59.

39 See Grunwald (2012) and Jakobsen and Pellegrini (2014). By 2012, Tsipras had already admitted that he was “proposing something similar to what President Obama is trying to implement in the U.S.” (Tsipras, 2012).

40 The Greek Liberal Party (Κόμμα τῶν Φιλελευθέρων, Komma ton Fileleftheron, literally “Party of the Liberals”) adopts the name and colours of Great Britainʼs Liberal Party. SYRIZA stresses democracy and a “European New Deal” (Tsipras, 2015a).

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an ideological continuity with the first stageʼs revolution and other radical movements; Venizelos is likened to an “oplarchigos” (: militia leader during the Greek Revolution) and is proclaimed “Garibaldi of Crete”,

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while SYRIZA is inspired by EAM

⁴²

and Tsipras himself is characterized as “Che Guevara of Greece”.

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Furthermore, both of them seem to be advocates of the “Megali Idea”

[“Great Idea”] (either in its irredentist form or its europeanist form)

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, although they clearly understand it more as a precondition for prosperity rather than as an end in itself.

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Nevertheless, both statesmen soften their stance, and thus they are heavily criticized by their own parliamentary group. The snap election is used to a large extent as a means of escaping the crossfire and of homogenizing the group of their supporters.

In the process, both the Liberal Party and SYRIZA cast off their more radical elements and encompass many former Old Partiesʼ members,

⁴⁶

including two Ministers out of five in the Cabinet of Venizelos and three Ministers out of thirteen in the Cabinet of Tsipras.

It is also remarkable how dramatically Venizelos and Tsipras managed to impose their will upon the people. While delivering his most important public speech on 5

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September 1910, Venizelos silenced an anti-monarchist crowd and insisted on preserving the monarchy.

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In the same vein, Tsipras transformed a “no” vote in the bailout referendum into a “yes” vote, by signing the third Memorandum.

4. Some conclusive thoughts

History is durations that intersect each other. Cyclicality in History is not the same thing as the movement of a pendulum. Social structures look like a strong wall, human action looks like a battering ram. History is the ramming of the courte durée of our lives against the longue durée of social institutions. Blow after blow, the wall remains standing but cracked. It takes a lot of blows –and perhaps a lot of rams– to tear down the wall, but in the end the wall falls. Thatʼs why “a Kondratieff cycle, when it ends, never returns the situation to where it was at the beginning of the cycle”.

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41 Pournaras (1957), p. 226.

42 See Tsipras (2014a).

43 See Ansa (2015).

44 Constantine Karamanlis was the first to hail the European integration as the “new Megali Idea of the Nation” (see Clogg, 1987, p. 73, 156).

45 “To the traditional political oligrachy, Megali Idea had an undefined and unrefined meaning, and it was disconnected from any different ambition (except, perhaps, for its use to discourage the expression of social demands) [...] On the contrary, in the venizelist State [...] it repudiates its metaphysical, purely ideological or symbolical content of the past and … obtains an unequivocal socioeconomic meaning” (Diamantopoulos, 1985, pp. 38-39). Tsipras expresses himself similarly;

“"Our party as a whole wants to see the country in the euro," Tsipras has said, for example. But he qualified that statement by adding: "on the condition that social cohesion isn't threatened." On another occasion, he said the euro was "not a fetish" [...]” (Ertel and Schult, 2015).

46 “Venizelist deputies formed an ideological mosaic. Many of them belonged to the Old Parties”

(Kordatos, 13, p. 233).

47 “From that moment, Greece had a governor. He had been acclaimed not by voice, but by silence of the people” (Ventiris, 1931, p. 66).

48 Wallerstein, 2004, p. 31.

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Europe has already taken the path to being transformed into a German world- empire – again. The war in the Middle East escalates. The refugee problem is already aggravated – Tsipras has to deal with an issue that Venizelos faced a decade after his first premiership and under very different conditions. A hegemonic war is not at all improbable.

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Fluctuat nec mergitur; this may not be the case with capitalism.

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Back to the dawn of the 20

^th

century, Greece was trying to enter the core;

nowadays it is struggling not to slip into the periphery. Venizelos was a successful centrist liberal by conviction, Tsipras is moving amidst the chaos following the collapse of the liberal consensus. So, what is to be done?

In the elections of September 2015, some comrades considered voting for SYRIZA and supporting it as a mistake or even a betrayal. They assumed that SYRIZA (and Tsipras in particular) had cleverly deceived the people into more passively accepting the TINA doctrine. SYRIZA, they said, achieved this goal by gradually lowering peopleʼs expectations of what a Left government could accomplish; after all, didnʼt the Secretary-General of Podemos (SYRIZAʼs sister party in Spain) write that “winning an election does not mean winning power”

⁵¹

? Nevertheless, the criticism leveled at the Left government for being ineffective or for betraying the people can only be sustained within the conceptual framework of the two-step strategy – first take state power, then change the world. Though we need more than this strategy. As A. Karitzis, a former member of SYRIZAʼs Central Committee, puts it, “we need the expansion of democracy and cooperation in social practices, and new social institutions. We need social innovation for new forms of popular empowerment. [...] there is no other way to implement a different policy today than to liberate and use the embodied capacities of the people”.

⁵²

So, I think that what has been viewed as a reduction of expectations is actually raising the bar. If we are responsible for our future, if socialism is not about achieving a remote utopia or following a certain “proven” formula, if we do not wait for the government to save the world, the formal political arena becomes a battlefield like any other – not, of course, an insignificant one. In other words, although we should support a party (actually, not just any party, but the most viable option under the circumstances), this does not mean giving a blank check;

our right to vote does not preclude our right to revolt – even against the very government we voted for.

According to novelist Asimakis Panselinos, Venizelos was able to give the people ideals in exchange for sacrifices; “therein lied his grandeur”. These days we have

49 See Goldstein (1988, p. 353): “As a first approximation, I suggest the period around 2000 to 2030 as a "danger zone" for great power war. The greatest danger of war, in my opinion, will come later rather than earlier in this period. Unlike the upswing that began with World War II, there is no great unresolved issue of hegemony left over from the last upswing period. Instead, like the upswing that ended with World War I, there is a more gradual erosion of an existing hegemonic system and the rise of potential challenger s to that hegemony [...]. Given the exceptional costs of great power war in this era (see below), it seems that war would come only at the end of a long buildup with persistent pressure toward war”.

50 See Wallerstein et al. (2013).

51 Iglesias Turrión (2014), p. 176.

52 Karitzis (2016), pp. 376-377.

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made plenty of sacrifices; here and now we are creating our own ideals; therein lies our grandeur.

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