Within the disheartening political map of Europe, defined by ruling neoliberal and reactionary forces, any effort for a progressive national solution is doomed. This is particularly true for countries in the European periphery. In the 1990s the celebrated ‘Greek miracle’ of unprecedented growth was founded on a structural transformation of the national economy, encouraged ideologically and financially by the European Union. The decline of agricultural production and the decline of small and medium-scale industries was greeted as a sign of modernisation, while Greek capitalists transferred their activities to the Balkans, taking advantage of low wages and a lack of regulation.
This structural transformation became evident in the last few years. Even though mainstream media focus on the transfer of personal savings to foreign banks, the hidden parallel universe of ship-owners and elites that traditionally evaded taxation has readily transferred its financial activities beyond the borders. As the historian Christos Chatziosif has underlined, this shift explains the paradox of a national elite that has not given any assistance to the governmental efforts for the restoration of the national economy. Deprived of allies in the European Union, Syriza’s agenda for national reconstruction within the European Union is deadlocked. full: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/syriza-and-the-future-of-the-left/ At the risk of defying reality, I think it would be worthwhile to think about what it would mean to “build socialism” in Greece. In fact, there’s very little engagement with that question in the IDOM website. Mostly there are calls for radical action such as the following: “Rather than requesting a European debt conference with bourgeois governments we should hold directly in Greece an international conference of the mass organisations of the working class and of the youth against capitalism!” (The comrades are fond of the exclamation point.) full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/05/18/socialist-revolution-in-greece-easy-to-say-harder-to-do/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
