The crisis here in Greece is not just financial, but also social and moral. People suffer, while the political elite and the establishment survive, untouched, although they are responsible for the current state bankruptcy. Given the history of the recent past, after the bloody civil war (1947-1949), during the police state (1949-1967) and the military dictatorship (1967-1974), and especially after the dictatorship up to the present, the crisis is not surprising. Greek tragedy has returned.
After the end of the dictatorship, democracy was restored and Greece joined the European Union (EU) and eventually the Euro-zone for political reasons, not based on economic fiscal criteria. As a consequence, the Greek people enjoyed thirty five years of stable democratic life and relative prosperity, albeit a false one. The state apparatus, dominated by the two political parties, the conservative “New Democracy” and the socialist “PASOK,” was thoroughly corrupt and mismanaged with a highly elaborate system of patronage. There was little real economic development. The economy was based on tourism, EU agricultural subsidies and other EU funds. Many Greek citizens, based on their political connections, were employed in the inflated public sector, and avoided their tax obligations, violated building regulations, and received permits and easy loans from the state controlled banks.
Through loans or from EU funding, these were good years for Greeks and their European partners, especially the Germans who took advantage of the great Greek party, i.e., Athens 2004 Olympics. Their outrageous cost and the ensuing corruption seriously contributed to the present debt crisis and the actual bankruptcy of the whole post dictatorial state and society. Beyond the Olympics, European and other multinational corporations have fully exploited Greece’s corrupt and disorganized system so as to multiply their profits in relation to other countries. The real party was in arms deals in the billions, which involved huge kickbacks. The Greek Parliament covered up the Siemens’ kickback scandal and several others. No one has been sentenced to jail. No one has been punished.
With the international fiscal crisis and aggressive international markets, the good times are now over for Greece and its European partners. Greek citizens, especially the lower middle class, who were unable to have money exported to Switzerland and other off shore safe havens, are getting poorer and poorer with drastic salary and pensions cuts. We are very angry with politicians, with the Greek establishment, with German chancellor Angela Merkel, with the IMF, and the banks. We do not accept the international shame and the unjust generalization, the slander of Greeks as lazy and cheats, and the German demand for what amounts to a permanent tutelage. I find the populist German front pages that present the Parthenon as being for sale particularly ridiculous.
The highly educated who speak foreign languages, having no future in a bankrupted country, are choosing emigration. The challenge to rebuild the Greek state from the ground up and reinforce Greek democracy and the Greek economy is both urgent and next to impossible. Social cohesion may be destroyed. There is a real danger of spreading violence. While in the ancient Greek tragedies people suffered due to the gods’ will, in the end there was catharsis, i.e., a just end by a Deus ex machina who gave justice and cleansed away all blame. In the current Greek drama, people indeed do suffer, but there is no apparent prospect for catharsis.
You mean emigration, not immigration (para. 5). I know that the Greek, metanastefsi, translates as migration, covering both.
Populist? Who is being populist? You blame everyone but yourself. Based on this text one could think that the poor Greek people were slaves to some alien invaders (“elite” and “Germans”) who exploited them and held hostage. The fact is that the Greek society enjoyed that empty prosperity immensly, did little to imporve its democratic system and the economy – and now refuse to take any responsibility. I am not saying that you should pay the bill – indeed, much of what is owed is a result of governmental corruption and foreign speculation. But if you want to start fixing the world, begin with yourselves. And get off the Germans, who also refuse to pay a debt that is not their own — it’s yours.
I don’t know Greece. But I think the referendum was the last chance of having austerity and a bailout work. If the people had decided in an open vote that staying in the euro was worth whatever cost, they would perhaps find a way to pay such cost. If austerity is imposed by politicians, it will fail.
I thought that proposing a referendum was a brave and decent thing to do. But I was wrong. The politicians talked about a referendum because they wanted to pass on the responsibility to the people, and then backed out because they didn’t want to take responsibility for asking the people.
It’s pathetic. Now disorderly default is certain.
Thanks guest. Correction made. Copy editing is never ending process, good to get a helping hand.
Kafka, Samatas is pointing out that there was a structured quality to the responsibility and benefit of Greek corruption. There are many who benefited from the corruption, many didn’t, and it has been particularly the latter that Samatas thinks is now paying for the corruption past. It is not accurate to just blame “the Greeks.”
Excellent and thoughtful analysis — I spent two weeks in Greece this past summer, speaking to many educated, hardworking Greeks, trying to make sense of what was happening there, and I came to many of the same conclusions.
Greece is my ancestral homeland and I am heartsick about the situation there, but I also know that many non-Greeks might have trouble understanding how this crisis evolved. Bravo to the author for a piece well written, one that goes to the heart of the issues and sheds light on what many commentators have left in darkness.
This, to me, is a modern Greek tragedy in the making . . . . one that unfortunately demonstrates the ultimate price of corruption and greed.
Jeff suggested that I repost this here, since he was not sure Minas reads facebook posts, so here it is.
Actually, one addition and question to you, MInas – I was wondering, given the unity between Merkel and Sarkozy, why is it that Germans are such a target in Greece, but not the French so much….
While I agree with many of the points about German business interests in Greece, I wanted to correct one aspect the authors seems to have misunderstood. Showing the Acropolis on sale on a frontpage was actually an illustration of the outrageous demands for privatization posed to Greece. German reporting (and political debate about the topic in general) on the Greek crisis has been far from streamlined (ie only depicting the Greeks as lazy and unwilling to agree to severe austerity measures). But these sophistications do not seem to actually have made it into the Greek public debates. So, I would actually like to see a layer of analysis added to the conversation why blaming THE Germans and in particular A. Merkel has been so opportune, it appears, and in whose interest that is.
I find most compelling the fact that your earlier groundbreaking studies – Bureaucratism as a Method of Sociopolitical Control in Greece – illustrate clearly the potential of the present tragic outcome – an overstuffed bureaucracy based on political patronage, a high inflation rate, and an economy based to heavily on tourism without an industrial base. Add in further corruption, no powerful will for change at the top, and frost this with the Siemens technology fiasco for the Olympics which was too complex to ever be fully implemented, yet cost millions (more?) in the” developmental progress” payments.