The Collapse and Transformation of the Greek Party System

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The Collapse and Transformationof the Greek Party SystemJannis Kompsopoulos & Jannis ChasoglouPublished online: 28 Mar 2014.

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The Collapse and Transformation of the

Greek Party System

Jannis Kompsopoulos and Jannis Chasoglou

Introduction

For more than four years Greece has been the focus of discussionabout the causes of the Eurozone crisis. It has also been a real-lifesocial laboratory where new policy tools for fighting the crisis havebeen implemented. These are supposed to save the Europeanbanking system, to guarantee that investors will get what states andother debtors owe them, and to ensure that the EU will remain a power-ful global actor. All this has been done at the expense of the overwhelm-ing majority of the people of Greece, as well as of numerous othercountries. These proceedings of course have led to massive rejectionof this policy and of the actors who pursue it – domestic parties andpoliticians as well as the Troika (a supranational body consisting ofthe IMF, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank).

Greece is a peripheral state incorporated into the capitalist worldeconomy through the framework of the EU. Restructurings inside EUmember states have to be understood as part of the transnationalizationof their state models. The speed, depth and direction of this transform-ation are determined by political struggles whose outcomes are tightlylinked to the balance of forces between different social groups. Thetransformation of the Greek economy into this mode of regulationfrom an earlier “Keynesian mode with paternalistic features” (Rapti2007) was facilitated by domestic bourgeois classes acting as intermedi-aries between the interests of big foreign (mostly European) capital andthe internal structures of accumulation and regulation.

The starting point of this analysis is the concept of the Dollar-Wall-Street-Regime, which describes the contemporary stage of developmentof world capitalism. Its two main pillars are the role of the Dollar as aworld reserve currency, and the ability of financial actors to unrestrict-edly move and gain access to financial assets whenever their plans ofprofit-maximization demand it (Gowan 1999). This in turn fortifies

Socialism and Democracy, 2014Vol. 28, No. 1, 90–112, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.871098

# 2014 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy

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the dominant position of the USA in the world economy and geopoli-tics. The political and economic elites of Europe accepted the leadingposition of the USA and began to incorporate their countries into thissystem in order to consolidate their subordinate position as a regionalpower (Cafruny and Ryner 2007). Every major step of economicpolicy taken since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) serves this agenda.

The Greek crisis is a concrete expression of the global crisis of capit-alism. In Europe, the crisis was channeled and deepened by the devel-opment of the EU and the common currency. The loss of monetarypolicy sovereignty magnified the asymmetries between stronger andweaker economies inside the European Monetary Union (EMU),which gave an additional drive to the de-industrialization processesin countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and even France. This contributedto a fragile situation, where state expenditure became an importantstimulus for (financialized) growth and where the Southern Europeaneconomies were unable to restore accumulation and thus plunged intodepression.1 Contrary to the hopes of some alternative economists, thecrisis led only briefly to a return to Keynesian economic policies. Stateregulation in all its forms remains a tool in the repertory of bourgeoiscrisis governance, but making it the dominant paradigm for economicpolicy is simply not an option for decision-makers. It is now increas-ingly clear that the ruling elites’ reaction to the crisis is not a renuncia-tion of previous neoliberal policies but rather their radicalization.

A new phase of European integration

European integration evolved through two distinct phases beforethe Great Recession. These can be termed the Keynesian-anticommu-nist phase and the neoliberal phase. The first phase, primarily pursuingeconomic integration for political reasons, began in 1951 with the Euro-pean Coal and Steel Community. This “European community” servedwell the myriad interests of the major national actors: WesternGermany needed it to reclaim its sovereignty after World War II,France wanted it to better exercise control over German heavy industryand to prevent any future threats from Germany, and the US supportedit as a pillar of its containment and rollback strategy against socialism.Although economic integration was based on free-trade guidelines, thecapacity of member states to control and regulate economic develop-ment in the broad sense was maintained at that time. This began tochange in the 1980s, with significant milestones being the Single

1. For a detailed account of the EMU’s effect on the crisis, see Lapavitsas (2012).

Jannis Kompsopoulos and Jannis Chasoglou 91

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European Act (1986) and the Maastricht Treaty (1992). Since then, pol-itical competencies have increasingly been shifted from the memberstates to the European governance level, especially the Council of theEuropean Union (Council of Ministers) and the European Commission.Annual public deficits of more than 3 percent and public debt of morethan 60 percent were forbidden by the Stability and Growth Pact of1997. The construction of the Eurozone was based on German policypreferences: substantial transfers between countries were excludedand common monetary policy was based on the “independence” ofthe European Central Bank (ECB) – “independence” entailing itsexclusive commitment to the target of price stability.

These institutionalized governance mechanisms were viewed inthe late 1990s as elements of a “disciplinary neoliberalism” and “newconstitutionalism” (Gill 1998). Already then, a tendency toward moreauthoritarian forms of governance – bypassing parliaments and thepower of nationally based unions – was visible. However, the mainfocus at that time was “negative integration”: removing nation-states’regulation of the free movement of capital, people, commodities andservices (Scharpf 2008). This has also been called a “Ricardian” formof integration because economic interaction between member stateswas based on “comparative institutional advantages” of European“varieties of capitalism” (Hopner and Schafer 2010; see also Hall andSoskice 2001). Strong economies with a broad industrial base andexport-driven growth gained further advantages while weaker econ-omies like Greece had to find other ways to accommodate themselvesto the new institutional pattern.

The concept of uneven development here takes on an addeddimension, as Greece, following the fall of the right-wing militaryjunta in 1974, embarked on a specific kind of Keynesian politics includ-ing construction of a welfare state – a class compromise which prom-ised broad legitimation. Previous right-wing policies of repression athome and NATO-alignment in foreign policy had undermined thegovernment’s legitimacy. The new approach responded to demandsfor political freedom, social justice, and higher living standards. Thetension resulting from decades of authoritarian rule could thus bereduced, thereby warding off demands for further change from a sig-nificant portion of the Greek population (Pagoulatos 2003: 88). Thesedevelopments occurred at the same time that the more advancedcountries started to unravel their own welfare states and Keynesianpolicies in the aftermath of the 1973 crisis and the breakup of theBretton Woods system. In Greece, neoliberal policies did not gain sig-nificant momentum until the second half of the 1990s, in the wake of its

92 Socialism and Democracy

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Eurozone entry. The EU’s institutional framework proved its effective-ness in Greece as well by making it all the more difficult to pursuepolicies other than neoliberal ones (McGiffen 2011).

Currently, a new phase of European capitalist integration is begin-ning. It has been termed “Post-Ricardian” because European govern-ance tends to eliminate institutional differences of national capitalismin favor of a single, neoliberal mode of governance for all EUmembers (Hopner and Schafer 2010). We, however, want to focus ona different aspect of the current shift and therefore have termed it“authoritarian positive integration” (Kompsopoulos and Chasoglou2013). In contrast to the practice of recent decades, “negative” measuressuch as deregulation and trade-liberalization are now no longer at thecenter of the integration project. Instead, we witness a strong centrali-zation of power and decision-making in the executive organs of the EU– hence, “positive integration”, because new common institutions areformed (without removing old, nationally based ones). But above all,it is a strong shift toward authoritarian governance.

The shift of governance from a national to a supranational levelentails a strong class bias. Whereas working people in many Europeancountries still have some organizational and bargaining power at thenation-state level, they lack such power at the European level. Everyshift of decision-making to supranational bodies thus reduces thecapacity of working people to influence or resist policies that affecttheir lives. The developments in this direction are numerous and canonly be named here:2

. the shift of elite decision-making from formal channels to informalgroupings;

. the turn toward “European Economic Governance” and mechanismsincluding the EU’s constitutional commitment to permanent auster-ity, the “European Semester”, the “Euro-Plus-Pact”, the “Sixpack”and others;3

2. For a more comprehensive account, see Kompsopoulos and Chasoglou (2013).3. The “European Semester” aims at securing national budget discipline: The European

Commission and the European Council analyze the economic situation in the EU andits member states and then elaborate a bundle of recommendations for national aus-terity policies. The “Sixpack” consists of six legislative measures on the Europeanlevel that create economic supervision and budget consolidation procedures.Non-compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact leads to compulsory adjustmentprograms in member states and possible financial sanctions for deficit countries. The“Euro-Plus-Pact” promotes voluntary economic policy coordination of memberstates with the aim of enhancing competitiveness and fiscal consolidation formember countries.


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. the “fiscal pact” which generally outlaws public deficits, opening thedoor to further liberalizations, cutting of wages and pensions, etc.;

. discussion of a “banking union” which will in reality be a union tobail out banks by European rather than national institutions (seeZeise 2012);

. ouster of the elected governments of Greece (Papandreou) and Italy(Berlusconi) and their replacement by “technocratic” problem-solvers (the former bankers Papadimos and Monti) who are morereliable in the eyes of European elites; and

. the shift of public discourse toward more open propagandizing ofauthoritarian solutions.

German chancellor Merkel, one of the staunchest proponents ofausterity, has openly called for a “democracy that conforms tomarkets” (Lowenstein 2011) while mainstream newspapers demandincreasingly regressive economic policies. In European core countrieslike Germany, politicians like Merkel and the mass media have fos-tered nationalism and chauvinism by launching a broad campaignagainst “lazy Greeks and Portuguese” – with alleged “luxury pen-sions” and abundant holidays – who are then contrasted with thehard-working Germans who allegedly had to pay with their taxmoney for the Southerners’ failure to make a “sound” financialpolicy. Although most of these claims were outright lies whichwould have been easy to refute with official statistics,4 only fewmedia outlets – almost none of them belonging to the mainstream –dared to contradict them.

The most radical expression of “authoritarian positive integration”is the “Troika”, a supranational body consisting of the IMF, the Euro-pean Commission and the ECB. Most of the countries that have beenunable to meet their financial commitments and needed Europeanassistance in order to prevent state bankruptcies and major impactson the European financial systems, including possible chain reactions,had to subject themselves to the Troika’s directives. Since then, creditsare only provided under strict conditions. While Spain has beenexempt from this procedure due to its size and importance, Greece,Portugal and Ireland have since been governed in accordance with

4. For example, the average age of retirement in Greece was 0.4 years above that inGermany, and holiday entitlement was considerably lower than in Germany evenbefore the crisis (on average, 23 days a year in Greece and 30 in Germany). Whileit was often claimed that due to an alleged “Southern” mentality Greeks did notwork much, annual working hours in Greece were 2119 hours on average comparedto 1390 in Germany (Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation 2012).


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Troika orders. It is, however, too simplistic to declare this just a sign ofSouthern European elites selling “national interests” to some sort offoreign (above all German) “neo-colonialism”, as is frequentlyclaimed by critical authors. In fact, large parts of the elites havemade European integration their strategic choice in order to enhancetheir own position in international competition and the domesticbalance of forces. This entails a willingness from the Greek elites’side to subordinate themselves to the strategic interests and investmentdecisions of the elites in the European core who in turn, as alreadyhighlighted, have relatively subordinated themselves to the US elites.

This subordination of Greek elites, however, is a relative one, inwhich they are attempting to improve their position in relation toother fractions of capital. Greece occupies an intermediate position inthe global and European power hierarchies and is therefore not in astate of absolute dependence. Until the outbreak of the crisis, Greeceenjoyed a financialized debt-driven growth with relatively high ratesand positive employment effects. The interests of the Greek elites arecompatible if not identical with the interests of the other EU elitesabove all regarding the financialized character of the European inte-gration project. This of course does not mean that these interests arefor the “common good of the nation”, i.e. the other social strata ofGreek society and the overwhelming majority of the Greek people. InGreece, the entrepreneurs’ association SEV has supported austerityand the downsizing of the public sector right from the beginning inorder to enhance the competitiveness of Greek businesses (Rizospastis2011). Moreover, most measures agreed on in the memoranda withthe Troika have to be confirmed by national parliaments and cancount on the votes of the majority of deputies – even if this is achievedby a state of permanent blackmail a la “either memorandum, ordisaster”.

The transformation and demolition of a “Southern” welfare state

The task of the Troika in Greece (as elsewhere) is a radical restruc-turing of society along neoliberal and authoritarian lines. It aims atradically reversing the correlation of forces in Greek society andforcing through a series of reforms that have not been possible in thepast due to massive popular resistance. Austerity in Greece at thesame time aims at generating new income for the state and cuttingits expenditure, with the focus clearly on the latter. Greece’s“reforms” so far have led to a decline of real GDP from 2008 to 2012by over 20 percent. While the current account deficit was reduced


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from 15.6 percent in 2010 to 6.2 percent in 2012, the ensuing fall in dom-estic demand was more than 6 percent. At the same time unemploy-ment reached in rapid succession one record level after the other andstood in the first nine months of 2013 between 27 and 28 percent andat about 66 percent for people under 25 according to official statistics,which are widely known to be fraudulent. Between 2009 and 2012,real wages annually decreased by about 5 percent. This is the so-called “internal devaluation” which is the improvement of competi-tiveness by wage reduction. As a result the at-risk-of-poverty ratestood at over 30 percent in 2012, and with an S80/S20 inequalityratio of 6.0 in 2011, Greece belonged to the “top five” of the mostunequal countries within the EU (ETUI 2013). It has become the thirdpoorest EU member state (Ta Nea 2013). Public healthcare is in a disas-trous state as most hospitals are basically bankrupt and social securityfunds are severely endangered, threatening hundreds of thousands ofpeople in need with the total collapse of social benefits (Rizospastis2013; Alderman 2012).

Crushing the strong unions, especially the militant and class-oriented ones, is another important aim. Unions were able to stopseveral attempts at neoliberal restructuring in the past, and the pres-ence of a powerful anti-capitalist wing inside the union movementmight be the only real threat to current policies and to the system asa whole. This is why freedom of association is being gradually under-mined: the majority of strikes are declared illegal by the courts andnow on several occasions, the threat of imprisonment has beenemployed to get striking workers back to work. Industry-wide collec-tive bargaining has been ended, thus weakening unions’ bargainingpower and in the long run also their political power.

Huge parts of public property are being privatized and are sup-posed to generate additional income for the state so that it can payits debts. This encompasses airports and ports, roads, land, airlines,the last remaining manufacturing sectors e.g., in the defense industries,etc. As a result of the crisis and these policies, poverty has stronglyincreased, as have homelessness, prostitution, suicide and emigrationrates, and even malnutrition.

To summarize, the core element of current policies in Greece is afrontal attack on the welfare state. What has often been regarded as atypical example of a “Mediterranean” or “southern” welfare state(Rapti 2007) is now being transformed into a competition-orientedworkfare state, which will be characterized by at least three features.First, its financial volume will be considerably smaller. Second, therelationship between its commodifying and its de-commodifying


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functions (Lessenich 1999, 424) will be redefined in favor of the former,as the commodity character of labor power is reinforced through theweakening of collective bargaining, a turn towards reduced workplaceprotection, the raising of the retirement age, and other similarmeasures (Schoemann and Clauwaert 2012). Third, the market effi-ciency of state apparatuses is to be improved by lowering their costsand superseding their institutional fragmentation through a series ofreforms in administration, healthcare, justice, etc.

As this transformation of the state imposes enormous costs on themajority of the Greek population, it obviously has a profound politicalimpact. It not only reduces living standards, but destroys the veryfoundations of the class compromise of the post-dictatorship period– which is what has tied the electorate to the two major parties forthree-and-a-half decades. The party system has thus been plungedinto chaos.

Changing patterns of regulation in the wake of EU integration

Following the fall of the junta in 1974, the conservative Prime Min-ister Constantinos Karamanlis founded a new center-right party, NeaDimokratia (New Democracy), which, in the traditional manner ofthe old dignitary-style parties of Greece, was mainly centered on hisperson. He began rebuilding bourgeois democracy without embracingthe center-left and communist parties’ positions. He monopolized thetransition process partly by excluding PASOK (the Pan Hellenic Social-ist Movement) and the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) from thedrafting of the new bourgeois-democratic constitution. At the sametime, by legalizing KKE, he split and thereby weakened the left(Sassoon 1996: 632f). Nonetheless, he understood that the demandfor a return to democracy pertained not only to upholding electionsand civil rights, but also to guaranteeing social rights, which hadbeen ignored by governments following the defeat and marginaliza-tion of the left after the 1946-49 Civil War. He nationalized strategicsectors like utilities and companies like Olympic Airways. The con-struction of a welfare state with health insurance and pension planstogether with the tax system were thus important aspects of thisclass compromise between a government of the right and the rehabili-tated left.

His successor in 1981, Andreas Papandreou, went much further inhis efforts to establish universal health insurance and pensions, as wellas in his endeavors to heal the rifts of the past by recognizing thestruggles of the left as legitimate. Papandreou, a former Harvard


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economics professor and follower of dependency theory, had builtanother party – PASOK – based on strong personal leadership.Characteristically, he did not call it a party but a “movement”. Its struc-ture, nevertheless, was modernized by establishing regional and localparty offices all around the country, forming a far-reaching politicalmachine. Papandreou, displaying rhetorical radicalism, demandedGreece’s exit from both NATO and the EEC. He proclaimed a “ThirdWay” between socialism and capitalism, invoking elements of depen-dency theory and declaring Greece an underdeveloped country underpressure from imperialist interests. This radicalism subsided veryquickly after his 1981 electoral victory (Sassoon 1996: 634–639).PASOK became the pillar of the “Third Republic”, ruling for 21 yearsbetween 1981 and 2011. Papandreou’s legacy was continued, althoughquite modified, by the “anti-populist” policies of his successor KostasSimitis, who replaced him in 1996 and started the first phase of neoli-beralism (after the brief intermezzo of the ND government from 1990–93) in preparation of the country’s Eurozone entry which he describedas a “one-way street”.

The US-born son of Andreas Papandreou, Georgios Papandreou,won the 2009 elections with the promise of more social-democratic pol-icies and an improvement of the worn-out welfare state. To his misfor-tune, his administration began at the moment that the Eurozone crisisbroke out, following the revelation that Greek public debt was muchhigher than previously reported. After pushing through the firstharsh austerity measures without any involvement of the EU or IMF,he later sought help from the Troika. Realizing that their agenda wasanything but what the Greek people demanded, he called for a referen-dum on whether the austerity policies should continue or not. So much“democratic” procedure (designed, of course, only to keep him inoffice) cost Papandreou dearly, and after interventions of his Europeancolleagues from Brussels, Paris and above all Berlin, he resigned. Forthe next months, a “technocratic” (unelected) government led byformer central banker Lukas Papadimos headed the country and thenegotiations with the Troika.

The growing prominence of clientelism and corruption after themid-1990s was linked to a transformation of the Greek state, whichdue to the EU’s intermediation became ever more internationalized.This transformation led to a specific interconnection between certaincapitalist class fractions and the Greek state. Those fractions acted asgo-betweens for foreign companies in domestic and foreign trade aswell as in money markets (Fouskas and Dimoulas 2012). Additionally,these new class fractions facilitated the inflow of international, mainly


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European, capital. This helped the banking sector flourish by attractingforeign capital, which was then invested profitably in offshoreactivities.

At the same time the impositions of the EU – e.g. via the “race tothe bottom” of national tax regimes to attract foreign investment(Ganghof and Genschel 2008) – began to constrain the Greek statefrom engaging in redistributive policies. Corporate tax rates inGreece were reduced from 45 percent in 1995 to 21 percent in 2004(Ioannidis 2013). Dependence on foreign capital thus grew constantly,as the Greek state made bids for big infrastructure projects like the 2004Olympic Games in Athens. Furthermore, Greece remained the Euro-pean country with the highest per-capita expenditure on armaments,bought mainly from Germany and France. The policies of privatizationand re-commodification created new liquid assets which engendered afirst bubble in 1999. More than 100 companies were privatized between1994 and 1999. When the bubble burst, many small asset holders losttheir savings through speculation, which had been explicitly encour-aged by the Greek government. Speculators on a bigger scale,though, gained huge profits.

This whole system worked through the acceptance of tax evasionon the part of finance capital. More than 6000 individuals wereknown to owe more than E150,000 to the state, amounting to a totalof over E30 billion, while Greece’s total budget was about E23billion (Fouskas and Dimoulas 2012). After 2000, this model gainedmomentum again and provided Greece with the second-highestgrowth rates in the Eurozone (around 3.7 percent) until 2008. Itsmain driver apart from domestic demand was the rising profitabilityof corporations. Their increased profit margins accounted for morethan two thirds of Greek inflation, which was considerably higherthan in the Eurozone as a whole, thus eroding Greek competitiveness(Karamessini 2012: 156–158). Greek investments went to the Balkansand the Middle East, into small and medium companies in the textilesector or brewing. Greek banking capital spread through the Balkans,buying stakes in banks and telecommunications. Greek exports wentmainly to EU member states, reaching 65 percent in 2009 and still58.5 percent in 2011 with the biggest partners being Germany, Italyand France (Elstat 2012). The problem of unevenness is expressedhere again: While the absolute value of Greek exports to Germany in2012 amounted to E2.6 million, the value of German exports toGreece, after three years of constant fall of Greek imports, stillreached a total sum of E5.18 million (Destatis 2013). This contributedto the doubling of public debt between 2001 and 2009.


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All this accounts for the budget deficit of the Greek state. Publicexpenditure, although growing immensely after 1974, did not exceedthe OECD average. Nor did the percentage of public sector employeesin relation to the whole labor force (Markantonatou 2012: 191). It wasthe complex system of legal tax exemptions and easy tax evasion, com-bined with its structural peripheral position in the European singlemarket and Eurozone, that led to the indebtedness of the Greek state.There are 500 exemptions regarding corporate taxation, leavingcrucial revenue sources like shipping (Greece has the biggest GrossRegistered Tons capacity in the world), landholdings of the OrthodoxChurch, and banking almost completely outside the tax system. Thissystem, although it leaves most profits to the above mentionedgroups, was extended to a whole range of professions (lawyers, engin-eers, etc.), farmers, and self-employed who together comprise 30percent of the labor force. Greece’s peculiar iteration of embedded neo-liberalism (van Apeldoorn 2001) thus meant that many groups of thesociety benefited, if only on a small scale, from possibilities of taxevasion and exemption. It left salary earners and pensioners as themain pillars of the state’s tax revenue, together with VAT. The newtax reforms implemented since the outbreak of the crisis have intensi-fied that tendency, making taxation even more regressive (Ioannidis2013).

Integration into the European economy transformed the Greekeconomy into one with a financialized and extraverted orientation.This means that economic growth was mainly driven by finance.Since the Greek currency was now the Euro, Greece was perceivedas an investment site as safe as Frankfurt or Paris. The state could there-fore pile up high amounts of debt more easily. It thus became a debt-driven model dependent on credit inflows from abroad and hencesubject to strategic investment decisions made outside of Greece.

2012 and after: turmoil in the Greek party system

We may now analyze in more detail the elections of 2012, to showhow the unilateral termination of the 1974 class compromise led to anend of the old two-party system that was its clearest expression. Sincethis system can no longer gain legitimation through tax exemption, jobappointments as political favors, or other corrupt clientelistic practices,people turned against it. They did so also because every austeritymeasure was passed without serious deliberation in parliament ornegotiation with the trade unions. The government’s effort to blamethe unelected foreign functionaries of the Troika for these decisions


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only served to damage the reputation of both. Consequently, the oldclass compromise was shattered.

The sacking of public servants is one of the key demands of theTroika. With a diminished public servant corpus, the two dominantparties of the post-dictatorship era lose their most important electoralpillar and main constituency. Thus, the two-party system basedupon the old forms of clientelism has been demolished on a long-term basis.

The first 2012 elections (in May) took place under quite exceptionalcircumstances. The degree of pressure from abroad (expressing itself inbizarre open letters from German newspapers explicitly calling onGreek voters to vote “reasonably”, i.e. for pro-Euro parties) and thepressure exerted by the two big parties and the domestic mass mediaevoked an atmosphere of immediate catastrophe in case of “wrong”results. Many observers described the public mood of voters hatingthemselves for the very vote they just had cast based on fear of possibleconsequences of an alternative vote. It was the continuation and inten-sification of a pronounced state of emergency. The state of emergency,once proclaimed, justifies all means intended to overcome it, since “thenation” has to be “saved” from supposedly imminent catastrophe(Markantonatou 2012).

The elections brought to an end the two-party system which haddominated the post-dictatorship era. The main characteristic of theelections was anger after three years of austerity policy and sixmonths of an “unelected” government. Both hitherto dominantparties had to take steep losses. The (by name) social-democraticPASOK, the winner of the 2009 elections with 43.9 percent, fell to13.2 percent, and the conservative ND, with 33.5 percent in 2009, got18.9 percent (all figures from: Ministry of Interior 2013), which madeit the winner of this vote but unable to build a one-party government(as had been the case almost always since 1974). It could not achievea majority, even though the Greek electoral system grants to the firstparty 50 extra seats in the 300-seat parliament. In 2009, the twobiggest parties together received 77.4 percent of the vote, whereas inMay 2012 those two parties together obtained only 31.1 percent, lessthan half the votes of only three years before. Participation ratesstood at 65.1 percent in May and 62.5 percent in June which markednew all-time lows. The supposedly “left-wing radical” SYRIZA(“Coalition of the Radical Left”) with its anti-Memorandum rhetoricskyrocketed from 4.6 percent in 2009 to 16.8 percent, thus becomingthe second strongest party. Another party with an anti-Memorandumprogram, the “Independent Greeks” (ANEL), split from ND and


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positioned itself at the center-right, albeit with strong populistelements. It reached 10.6 percent with its main political focus on abol-ishing the Memoranda with the Troika. A new center-left, pro-Europarty called Democratic Left (DIMAR), a “moderate” split-off fromSYRIZA, won 6 percent. The communist party KKE, against the Mem-oranda as well the Euro and the EU, because for them they constitutethe newest and furthest developed means of capitalist exploitation,gained 1 percentage point and stood at 8.5 percent. The most alarmingnew aspect of the elections was the entry of the openly fascist partyGolden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi) into parliament with almost 7 percent ofthe vote and 21 representatives.

Since the May results did not give a majority to any party, a secondelection was called in June and took place under the same circum-stances as described above, but on an intensified scale. Furthermore,for many voters, the prospect of a SYRIZA-led government dominatedtheir voting decisions. This climate brought a further decline ofPASOK’s votes down to 12.3 percent and for the KKE the loss ofalmost half of their electorate, which was reduced to 4.5 percent. TheKKE’s decline was due to its firmly maintained strategic line ofrefusal to co-operate with pro-system parties, including those of the“left”. The communists’ position was that any management of thecrisis without the overthrow of bourgeois rule and private propertyin means of production would only do more harm to the majority ofthe people. This staunch revolutionary line, however, did not attracta significant share of the indignant voters. The only parties thatgained votes were ND with 29.7 percent and SYRIZA with 26.9percent. DIMAR improved slightly by 0.14 percent. ANEL lost morethan 3 percentage points and Golden Dawn held steady, althoughlosing three parliamentary representatives. Now, under heavypressure from other EU member states and the Troika, the old adver-saries of the pre-crisis era, ND and PASOK, had to form a grandcoalition, extended by DIMAR as a small third partner. The newprime minister was the leader of ND, Antonios Samaras, a former uni-versity roommate of Giorgos Papandreou, who, until the Troikademanded otherwise, had categorically rejected the Memoranda.DIMAR left the government after the unprecedented closure of thenational broadcasting station ERT in June 2013, leaving the tworemaining coalition partners with a margin of now three seats abovethe 151-seat minimum for a majority.

The main electoral base of the ND since 1974 has been a coalition ofthe business and employer classes, farmers and retirees. The twoformer groups also formed an electoral stronghold for Golden Dawn


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in 2012. SYRIZA, serving as a pole of attraction for disappointed formerPASOK voters, transformed its character profoundly from a partydominated by academics to one supported by young people, wageearners in both public and private sectors, the unemployed, andsmall and medium artisans. KKE’s main constituency groups since1974 are the recently unemployed, private-sector middle management,private-sector wage earners, and students, forming an alliance ofmiddle- and working-class wage earners (Vernardakis 2012).

Resistance and opposition parties

Numerous movements and resistance groups, as diverse in theircomposition as in their political goals, showed up in the course ofthe crisis. Popular protests were enacted such as the the “Denplirono” (I don’t pay) movement which lifted the bars of toll stationson the national motorways to let drivers pass for free. Another formof protest was adopted by local farmers who went to the next towncenter and gave vegetables for free to passers-by. Many exchangespots arose in the larger cities, based upon the barter system. Themost prominent one was the movement of the “Aganaktismeni” (theOutraged) inspired by the movement of the Indignados in Spain.They intentionally rejected any specific political ideology or organiz-ational structure, which made their movement quite short-lived. Itwas an expression of anger on the streets, politicizing mainlyyounger people who up to then had never engaged in politicalactions. Because of this political inexperience, it never went beyondthe level of an open discussion forum and a platform for the symbolismof dissatisfaction rather than for the elaboration of alternatives.

It remains to be seen whether all this marked the end of the post-dictatorship (“metapolitefsi”) era. If so, the beginning of this endwould likely have been the violent riots that erupted after a 15-year-old youth had been shot dead by the police in December 2008. It wasthe first violent political experience of the so-called “700-Euro-Gener-ation” – highly skilled university graduates who could not find jobsexcept in fields like food-service or delivery, with low wages and inse-cure labor.

Scores of general strikes have been waged by the unions since theimposition of the first austerity packages. Tens of thousands of peoplecame out on the streets in some of the larger strikes. A break betweenunion members and their PASOK-affiliated leaders, and afterwards abreak of union cadre with PASOK, were the first results. Innumerablewildcat strikes took place, as did occupations of plants that were


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threatened by closure. Several of these became self-governing, whereasin others like the Steelworks in Elevsına, strikes continued for manymonths to stop layoffs or plant-closure.

The state apparatuses responded with unprecedented levels of vio-lence and brutality. Furthermore, the government increasingly usedcompulsory mobilization from the times of the military junta to forceworkers back to work, under the threat of prison terms. Anarchistsand other young demonstrators were arrested and subject to brutalityand torture on a scale that led to an outcry even in the foreign press.5

The main formation of the extra-parliamentary left, calledANTARSYA (an acronym which also means “uprising”), consistsmainly of Trotskyist and Maoist fractions as well as splits from theKKE. Its electoral results have been very low, but its militants havebeen visible in demonstrations and at “aganaktismeni” gatherings.Although they reject austerity policies and the EU, and call for a cance-lation of all debt, in practice they are closer to SYRIZA than to KKE,their main critique of SYRIZA being only about its strong parliamen-tary focus.

SYRIZA, first founded as an alliance of a number of socialist, Trots-kyist, Maoist and ecological parties and movements in 2004, onlyrecently transformed itself into a party proper, adopting the nameSYRIZA (United Social Front). The by far dominant structure insideSYRIZA is Synaspismos, again a former alliance of various socialistand ex-Eurocommunist forces whose origins lay in the split from theKKE in 1968, after the intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in Czecho-slovakia and during the military junta in Greece. It then establisheditself as KKE-Interior, thereby alleging an “external” orientation ofthe KKE toward Moscow. It has been from the very beginning themain pillar of pro-EU-stances inside the Greek left. In 1989 thoseforces, then called “Greek Left”, closed ranks with the KKE again tobuild an alliance with the name Synaspismos (“alliance”). This exper-iment lasted only three years and in 1991 the two parties split again,since the “renewing” Left demanded that the KKE give up Marxism-Leninism as well as its structure as an autonomous communist party.KKE resolutely rejected both demands. Since then, there has beenbitter hostility between the Synaspismos and the KKE, reinforced bythe KKE’s insistence on maintaining its revolutionary Leninist and

5. The British magazine New Statesman asked its readers if Greece really still was ademocracy (Baboulias 2013); the Guardian published photos of the victims andquoted their lawyer in describing these police actions as an “Abu-Ghraib-style”humiliation (Margaronis 2012).


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anti-revisionist profile. By contrast, the Synaspismos, as well asSYRIZA as a whole, has retained its pro-EU-position (culminating inits approval of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992). Since 2007 it is led bythe youthful and media-savvy Alexandros Tsipras, who gives theparty the pronounced populist profile that contributed to its successin the highly person-centered Greek political system.

SYRIZA is attempting to replace PASOK as the dominant forcewithin the mainstream trade union organization. When taking powerbecame a realistic possibility in 2012, the continuous transformationof SYRIZA into a standard social-democratic force was greatly acceler-ated. In several meetings with ruling politicians of other coun tries,Tsipras repeatedly stressed his “responsible” stance towards theEuro, debt, and the country’s economic order, hailing Obama’s andHollande’s social and economic policies as role models for the policieshe would pursue when elected into government; this has been termedthe “realistic turn” of SYRIZA. Nothing could express this develop-ment better than the affirmative stance the Greek employers’ organiz-ation SEV has adopted towards the party under the Tsipras leadership(To Bima 2013a).

The two populist parties – the “Independent Greeks” and SYRIZA– although with very different ideological origins, share manycommon views: Both view Greece as being subjected to external anti-social and anti-national forces; both put the Memoranda at the centerof agitation; both want to overthrow the rule of the two traditionalparties. This is why they formed a “strategic alliance” in parliamentagainst the government.

Whereas the rise of populism could have been expected under thepresent conditions, two other phenomena beg for explanation: the sim-ultaneous failure of communism and rise of old-style fascism in both2012 elections.

Decline of the KKE. The KKE, the oldest party of Greece and for along time the only one not based upon clientelism, was founded in1918, gave itself a clear communist profile in 1920, and renameditself Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in 1924. From then on tilltoday it declares itself as Marxist-Leninist and has kept and reinforcedits organizational structure according to Lenin’s “party of a new type”.It has played a significant role in the political struggles of the countryever since. It gained its greatest prominence during the German occu-pation, when it led the resistance movement and was able to build, inthe liberated mountainous regions, the nucleus of a socialist society.This all ended with the retreat of the Axis forces and the determinationof Great Britain to restore monarchy in Greece, thus ensuring that the


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country remained firmly attached to the western bloc. The commu-nists’ armed revolutionary advances in 1944 and 1946 led to a bloodyCivil War (1946–49), which was finally won by the ruling extremeright due to US intervention. The Greek Civil War was not only thefirst “hot” conflict of the Cold War, but also a testing ground for UScounter-insurgency warfare, including the use of napalm against therebels.

After the defeat of the communist-led Democratic Army of Greece,the KKE was outlawed and its members prosecuted and in many casesmurdered. In the following decades, the KKE could only indirectlymake its mark on the political scene, operating covertly and insidelegal formations, above all inside the United Democratic Left (EDA)party. This remained unchanged until 1974 when the KKE was lega-lized by Karamanlis. The party’s influence is only partly expressed inelectoral results, which have oscillated between 13 percent and 4.5percent. These results contrast with its continuous ability to organizelarge-scale popular mobilizations on short notice. A peculiar aspectin Greece is the party’s respect even in adversarial political campsdue to its political history. Official anti-communism and the legitima-tion of anti-social policies thus must assume different forms than inother European countries: even outspoken economic liberals refrainedfrom openly attacking the welfare state or unions’ wage policies as inother countries.

The KKE’s main power-base is the anti-capitalist trade unionorganization PAME, which unites large parts of the country’s labormovement, assumes a staunch anti-government and anti-EU politicalline, and radically opposes the leaderships of the “official” unions.According to its own numbers, about 850,000 people are organizedin its different branches. KKE has been from the very beginningagainst the entry into what was then the European Economic Commu-nity. It was against entering the Eurozone and against the Memorandaof the Troika. It regards all those developments as tools to enhancecapitalist exploitation and imperialist domination. Although it favorsabolition of the EU and the Euro, until now it has been cautious innot calling for an immediate retreat from the Eurozone under capitalistconditions, believing that this could also have negative effects for thepeople and foster illusions about the main contradictions of capitalism.Its exit strategy therefore combines dissociation from the EU with theoverthrow of capitalism.

The hope that large parts of the population have placed in the pro-spect of an immediate and easy solution of their everyday problems bya left-wing government made it impossible for the KKE to gain greater


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resonance with their proposal of socialism and people’s power, at leastnot at the elections. Most outraged citizens at this moment seem to longfor a restoration and extension of the old way of living and the removalof corruption from the political system, rather than revolution. This isthe reason for the KKEs losses in the June 2012 elections.

The rise of fascism. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement wasfounded in the 1980s by supporters of the Greek military junta. Its ideol-ogy is a crude mix of extreme nationalism and adoration of NaziGermany, the regime which invaded, occupied and devastatedGreece for more than three years, leaving over 300,000 dead – one ofthe highest death-to-population ratios of all countries involved! Manyobservers from inside Greece, but also from abroad, have hinted atmanifold connections between the party and certain interest groups,e.g. ship-owners who sent groups of Golden Dawn members to beatstriking crew-members and break up their strikes (sophokleous.in).More is known about the tight links to Greek police forces, who letGD members in certain quarters of Athens engage in violent practicesincluding chasing foreigners, destroying their market stands, beatingand stabbing them. In the June 2012 elections, up to 50 percent of theAthenian police force gave their vote to GD (To Bima 2013b).

State institutions and the media reacted initially with a policy oftoleration, although later on critical voices in several talk shows andnews programs grew louder. The government actually seemed to behappy to have this pressure valve which allowed the people’s indigna-tion to be channeled in a direction not dangerous for the governingparties. The parts of Athens with high proportions of migrants andhigh schools are hotbeds for GD recruitment. Playing the guardiansof law and order, they accompanied elderly people to ATM machinesor distributed foodstuff and blood exclusively to Greeks. GD’s fiercerhetoric focuses on the Greek ethnos, Greek orthodoxy, and theinflux of migrants; it presents GD as the only un-corrupt party.Threats of violence have often come true, with thugs related to theparty systematically intimidating media representatives, artists, homo-sexuals, and politicians from other parties. Recent expressions of itsaggressiveness have included murders of immigrants, a massiveassault on a group of communist militants who were distributingparty posters, and finally the stabbing to death of well-known anti-fascist rap musician Pavlos Fyssas. However, only the latter – themurder of a Greek citizen – provoked a public outcry, with theparty’s poll results plummeting and the police arresting severalGolden Dawn MPs due to their alleged involvement in heavy criminalactivities such as murder, extortion, money laundering and bombings.


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At the moment the Greek judicial system has initiated the process ofdeclaring GD a criminal syndicate. However, it has been shown thathe Greek government only did so due to external pressures fromJewish- and Greek-American communities in the US as well as fromthe European Commission (Milakas 2013).

GD’s pre-crisis cadre consisted mainly of thugs, convicted crim-inals, and former doormen. With its rise in popularity, though, itstarted many initiatives at schools trying mainly to recruit youngpeople, so far with great success (Papadopoulos 2013). Recurringpolls showed a rise in the vote-share for GD, reaching around 15percent before the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, thus making it the third-largest party in potential elections. Although the party seems (tempor-arily) to have lost some of its popularity, it is unlikely that the resur-gence of fascism in Greece, a country that has often fallen victim todomestic and foreign fascist regimes, has come to an end. The rise ofwhat is probably Europe’s most extreme right-wing movement in apeople with a supposedly deeply-rooted anti-fascist and democraticconscience marks a pronounced rupture with the hitherto hegemonicpolitical culture. It shows that the ideological and political superstruc-ture of post-dictatorship Greece was not merely a product of the trau-matic historical memory of fascist occupation and brutal dictatorships,but rested on the foundations of a specific class compromise which,based as it was on a rudimentary welfare state and the continuity of cli-entelism, proved much more fragile than anybody could haveexpected. Only for as long as this class compromise held, could theND keep most still-existing extreme right-wing and fascist politiciansinside its ranks.

Conclusion

Although the Greek political scene is currently in flux, our analysisleads to the conclusion that the old political system and class compro-mise no longer exist. This would remain true even if elections were tobring back to power both the traditional ruling parties and even if weregard SYRIZA as the actual PASOK successor. Even if SYRIZA winsthe next elections, it will have to deal with its diminished abilities tofulfill the output expectations of its voters. Since it intends to governwithin the institutional framework of the austerity-prone EuropeanEconomic Governance, it is no daring prediction that a SYRIZA gov-ernment will soon provoke widespread disappointment.

In this context, many have raised the question of whether Greecewould not be better off leaving the Eurozone. Economist Costas


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Lapavitsas, for example, has long argued for a strategy of default andexit from the Eurozone (Lapavitsas 2012). This question and the answergiven by Lapavitsas and others, however, are much too narrow. To besure, the Economic and Monetary Union has tightened the neoliberalstraitjacket considerably. But the European Union, whose principalaim is to enhance the “four freedoms” of capital, labor, commoditiesand services in its internal market in order to build and sustain thesecond biggest capitalist bloc within the international division oflabor, also provides little advantage to the majority of people inEurope. The EU’s character as a project of class rule and internationalcompetitiveness must be taken into account in envisioning real alterna-tives. Exit from the EU does not in itself constitute a viable strategy.Finally, the problem is not confined to a certain currency or economicpolicy. It is the very nature of capitalist relations of production thatcaused the crisis along with its consequences for Greeks and peopleelsewhere; thus a “solution” within the capitalist framework willonly reproduce its tendencies towards crisis and pauperization.

The turning of Greece into a social laboratory – with unprece-dented interventions into national practices of representation, partici-pation and social policy – has shaken the foundations of the ThirdRepublic. The post-Dictatorship class compromise was canceled uni-laterally by the ruling elites. The enforcement of a harsh austeritypolicy on a scale unseen in peacetime by unelected “technocratic” del-egates of the Troika and three subsequent governments of differentcomposition (but always with the involvement of the two dominatingparties of the last four decades) made a mockery of any remainingbourgeois-democratic procedures. The apocalyptic scenarios whichaccording to the Greek and international press would immediatelyresult from a “wrong party” winning the elections made the verynotion of election – in the sense of a choice between at least twoalternatives – a farce as well. The anti-crisis policy which declaredthe existing welfare regime dispensable and made the solvency ofGreek and foreign banks the highest priority has been pushedthrough not only without consulting the former “social partners” butagainst their resolute resistance.

Up to now, the resistance has seemed utterly futile. Yet it is a clearsign that those policies completely lack legitimacy for the overwhelm-ing majority of the Greek people. The sharp increase of unemploymentand poverty make for an explosive mix which could erupt at anymoment. It is still not clear what the outcome of those processes willbe, but one thing is certain: it will depend on large-scale strugglesthat could challenge the very foundations of the existing social order.


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The Collapse and Transformation of the Greek Party System

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Transcript of The Collapse and Transformation of the Greek Party System