Pains And Snaps In Greece

Greece is in pains. Snaps and seething anger are spontaneous there now. There, the suffering people's acts reflect only a part of the dire situation: “ Greece is on the brink of default, 16 months after it received the biggest bailout in western history” and “a populace exhausted by the [austerity] measures.” Rumor of a multi-trillion euro grand plan to save the eurozone being prepared by European officials circulates while incidents of despair, destitution and protest provide a partial scene of the society.

In Greece , the number of suicides has increased, surging up by 40% in a year. The help lines overflow with calls: 5,000 in the first eight months of 2011 compared with 2,500 for the entire last year. ( The Telegraph , Sept. 26, 2011 & guardian.co.uk , Sept. 24, 2011 )

Shop closures in the country's Attica region that includes Athens have reached 15% since the crisis began. Of the 3,421 stores sampled in a study in the region, 505 have been closed down, the study by the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce informs. Citing the study conducted in July 19-30 daily Kathimerini reports: in central Athens , 215 businesses out of 1,252 have been closed. Clothing stores got the most brunt. In areas, the closure rate was 25%. ( Greek Reporter , Aug. 11, 2011 )

“A new underclass has appeared: in the homeless and hungry who roam the streets; in the spiraling number of drug addicts; in the psychiatric patients ejected from institutions that can no longer offer them a place; in the thousands of shop owners forced to close and board up businesses; in those who forage through municipal rubbish bins at night; and in the pensioners who make do with rejects at fruit and vegetable markets.” The income of the average household has dropped by 50%. ( guardian.co.uk , op. cit.)

“At the doors of small charities, queues of single men – ranging from Iraqis to Somalis to Nepalese – form in the early morning to receive free food or medical treatment. Now, to their intense anger, some Greeks are being forced to join these queues: 39 per cent of the country's under 24s are unemployed.” ( The Telegraph , op.cit.)

Austerity measures are pushing the people to protest. A 48-hour strike by all transport workers is expected within days. Days back, the Athens metro, tram and suburban rail workers went on a 24-hour strike; buses and trolleys stopped operating for hours; air traffic controllers refused to work overtime. Greek police force's Special Guards unit hung a giant black banner: “Pay day, day of mourning.”

Students on September 25 interrupted the state television news. “There has been an occupation at the state television channel NET”, a government spokesman informed. The youths held up a banner: “Stop watching and get out onto the streets”. ( AFP , Sept. 25, 2011 ) Students are occupying more than 30 schools for weeks. The authority has asked the protesters to stop the occupations and reopen the schools. ( GR , Sept. 25, 2011 )

The situation at universities and technological institutes “continues to be chaotic” as a result of the new education law. Students belonging to the Communist Party blocked the entrance to the building of the University of Athens rectorate. The Technical University of Crete, the Panteion University and schools of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are occupied by students. They hung banners and shouted slogans against the participation of enterprises in research programs of university, and the new law. They planned the same step in the Technological Institutes of Athens and Piraeus , and in other universities in Athens and other cities. Students are organizing general meetings in universities. September's exam in the University of Patras was postponed so that general assemblies of students could take place. ( GR , Aug. 30, 2011 )

Quoting the education minister the newspaper Ta Nea informed that for this school year, 600 teachers would be appointed while 6,000 would be retiring, and the number of substitute teachers would be decreased by 50% in comparison with last year. The minister “assured” that there would be no vacancies at schools. She warned that 2,000 schools would be merged and all the teachers would have full working hours. ( GR , Aug. 18, 2011 )

Thousands of cab drivers demonstrated outside the Greek Parliament in late-July. Cab drivers organized strike blocking ports and airports on the islands of Crete and Corfu to protest against government plans to deregulate the taxi sector, a key demand of creditors. The cab sub-sector is one of 135 areas of interference to meet the EU-IMF bailout terms.

The union representing about 800,000 civil servants planned to strike in case their wages are cut further. Their salaries have already been slashed by up to 30% since last year. They began working an extra 30 minutes each day, increasing work-week to 40 hours from 37.5. ( GR , Aug. 12, 2011 )

Crime and environment of lawlessness, a variety of challenge to status quo, is spreading. “Thefts and break-ins almost doubled between 2007 and 2009. Hostility to migrants […] has become widespread and unconcealed.” ( The Telegraph , op. cit.) Incidents of arson in different areas of the country over the last few months have been reported by the local press. The young in growing numbers are either leaving the country to find jobs or going back to the rural areas. It is being considered as “the biggest emigration wave since the 1960s.”

There is, “a lot of uncertainty, […] a lot of fear. For the first time in decades, people are really frightened. They're afraid of the future” said Yannis Caloghirou, an economics professor at the National Technical University of Athens. “Greeks feel like they are in a bad dream”, said Fotini Tsalikoglou, a prominent psychology professor. “A common thread that unites people is the experience of fear and desperation.” A collective sense of depression, analysts said, has also set in. This sense is more dangerous than the social tensions threatening to tear the country apart. ( guardian.co.uk , op. cit.)

“In Athens , panic is sketched not only on the faces of those who have become increasingly impoverished [… P]anic was heard in the voices of the ruling elite. ‘People, justifiably, think the crisis is what we're going through now: cuts in wages, pensions and incomes, fewer prospects for the young,' said the Greek finance minister […], looking visibly drained […‘T]he crisis will be […] the complete collapse of the economy, institutions, the social fabric and the country's productive base.' Greeks no longer believe what their politicians say…. The death of faith in the future is the biggest fear. ‘The worst part is perhaps psychological because there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no source of hope,' said Dr Thanos Dokos who directs Eliamep, a thinktank in Athens .” (ibid.)

Tale of a Family

Dmitris Andreou, a businessman, and his wife Mary, an English teacher, find their savings exhausted, and disposable income dropped by about 50% in two years. In some days, they only buy the basics and in others, they are not able to buy even those. They have to count “cents to decide between buying bread, milk or butter.” They don't buy clothes any more. “People don't go out. There is simply no money around out there”, Mary informs. They had to cancel cable TV subscription. The chances of a university education for their school-going two daughters are evaporating. “Right now though, they have more pressing problems. At the two girls' secondary school, the autumn term has started without textbooks. The pupils have been handed CDs instead.” ( The Telegraph , op. cit.)

Bigger Danger

The type of the situation carries “bigger danger to the future of Greece . People are switching off: from politics, from the mass media, from social life. ‘We would like to see the politicians executed,' says Maria, not smiling as she delivers the joke. ‘Most people are saying this: politicians deserve capital punishment […]' ‘We can't watch the television news any more,' says Dmitris…. ‘If you watch it, with the constant uncertainty, it can make your psychology very low. […] I don't trust the media any more.' ‘It feels like we're in a post-war situation,' says Mary. ‘There's no optimism; we don't know what happens next. We just try to survive.'” (ibid.)

Antonis Papayiannidis publishes Economic Monthly . Antonis warns: ‘In an almost detached way people have just watched the catastrophe happening to them. They were very displeased but they did not erupt. They became withdrawn and they are still withdrawn. But it could erupt very quickly, because the feeling of helplessness is very intense right now - in a way that makes the petrol bombs and barricades of June look pathetic.' (ibid.)

Education Reform

As another blow, changes have been initiated in higher education. Teachers and students have protested the state education reform law. Athens Polytechnic teachers called a 48-hour strike. The students are organizing general assemblies to assess the situation and to decide on their next move. The University  of Athens has dismissed the bill. Many universities have already asked the vigilance of the academic community.  The Polytechnic Schools of Athens and Crete postponed the September exams as the students' unions meetings will take place. The University of Crete decided to follow any legal procedures against the new law. ( GR , July 20, 2011 )

Nine hundred world famous academics from 43 countries including Noam Chomsky expressed their opposition to the policy followed by the government in higher education in Greece  and their solidarity to their Greek colleagues. They said: The reform having devastating consequences in higher education undermines the prospect of research and teaching within Greek universities and will be another blow to the afflicted Greek society and economy. They proposed adequate public funding of higher education. ( GR , Aug. 20, 2011 ) The left wing political parties' supporters consider that the law will destroy the universities, and undermine critical thought, the scientific knowledge and the ability of students to fight for their rights. ( GR , Aug. 27, 2011 )

The system, it seems, prefers a single option in the face of its crisis: press down the common people, encroach their spaces and hand over the loot to big capital. The crisis, it seems, appears as a boon to capital as it creates its “logic” for survival.

An Exhibition

And, there is an art exhibition from October 5 in Athens to raise public awareness of children's and adolescents' health: “Children and Youth, Voices and Whispers”. But the system is failing to listen to the murmur under the surface.

For capitalism, the present day Greece is almost unique. The system encountered debt problem in its periphery. But, here, the case is a developed capitalist country near to the center. Contradictions are active among the dominating “partners”, actually contenders, of the system having stakes in Greece . All the “partners” are trying to secure and expand respective interest. It's a partnership in competition. None of the “partners” have capacity to initiate actions independently. All the contenders need all of them. It's a unity of disunity. Within the Greek ruling elites, dissent will be heard, and fractures will appear. That will be a contradiction between interests, not a reflection of sense of dignity. But they will remain united on the fundamental question of common destiny: accumulate, even in distress condition.

Further austerity measures will “assist” anguish and frustrations overwhelm public life. Apathy, inertia and a desperate psychology will cohabit. The state, the maharaja s – the World Bank, the IMF, the bankers, the Brussels bureaucrats – and broadly, the system will come under scrutiny by the people, which is a very long, and initially, a silent process. Armed with the power to silence dissent, and to make lies heard as truth and establish illogic as logic they also carry the capacity to erode their own legitimacy. But in the process, adventurism and anarchism may find fertile ground strengthening forces of reaction in absence of a lead by a class conscious politics.