Greece: the ideological blindness of pro-austerity forces

Panagiotis Sotiris[1]

Bertolt Brecht’s famous ironic line about the need to ‘dissolve the people and elect another one’ sums up the position by pro-austerity media in Greece. A wave of articles and Op-Eds. appeared in major Greek newspapers expressing the fear that in the general election set for 6 May, voters will be motivated by their feelings of protest and anger against the austerity measures imposed upon them, and vote against the pro-austerity parties. They insist that the only mature choice is to accept austerity, mass unemployment, dismantling of public services and limited sovereignty as the only solution. 

It is obvious that we are dealing with an extreme case of ideological distortion of reality. According to this narrative, rationalism, maturity and clear thinking can only lead to the sober acceptance of the policies imposed upon Greek society by the EU-IMF-ECB ‘Troika’; protest and contention are, by definition, immature, irrational and expressive of an inability to think properly. It is an extreme form of social racism and the only parallel can be found in 19^th century conservative arguments against the right of poor people to vote, because of their inability to think properly!

How immature is the decision by someone whose salary has been reduced by 25-50% not to vote for the political parties that have voted for these reductions? How irrational is the anger of a young voter facing a 51% youth unemployment rate in a country where emigration is becoming the only way for many young university graduates to find a job? What else, if not the result of clear thinking, is the protest of a pensioner who has to pay for a large part of his medical expenses at the same time that his pension is being drastically reduced?

What lies behind this ideological blindness is not only the deep unease of both center-right and center-left parties in a situation where an aggressive neoliberal policy is openly dictated by the European Union and the IMF, leaving no room even for the simplest pre-election promises. It is also their fear of the deep social and political divide across Greek society. The fact that pre-election polls show that New Democracy and PASOK are now having a combined potential vote of less than 50%, well below their erstwhile averages of 80% or more, is only one of the expressions of this polarization. Large segments of Greek society are turning their back to what they view as the parties of the political establishment that led to the current crisis, at the same time that they want a different road for Greek society. The impressive wave of protest of the past two years, from the general strikes to the movement of the ‘Squares’, expressed a deep-rooted anger and profound changes in social alliances.

But their bigger fear of pro-austerity forces comes from their realization that more and more people are ready to listen to a different narrative about Greek society, instead of the future of endless austerity, ‘internal devaluation’ and social Darwinism in the name of ‘export competitiveness’ and ‘growth’. The growing appeal of demands such as the immediate stoppage of debt payments, the exit from the euro, the nationalization of banks and strategic enterprises, and income redistribution, attest to this tendency, combined with a desire for real democracy and popular sovereignty.

Until now, Greek society has been the testing ground for aggressive neoliberal social engineering. There is strong chance that it can become a collective laboratory for a radical alternative. Then, the current anxiety of the pro-austerity forces will turn into permanent fear.