Imagine becoming poor overnight. Since May 2010, when the government
decided to get a loan from the IMF, EU and ECB, most people in the
country have lost at least one third of their annual income. For those
who still have a job, the value of their labour has fallen dramatically;
many people now work full-time for €500 – €600 a month.
Helping to keep the value of labour so low is unemployment, which is
more than 18% overall (below 10% in 2009), and an estimated 50% among
young people, not counting the ones who work under precarious and
‘flexible’ conditions.
In order to repay the enormous debts, taxes are also on the increase.
An emergency tax was recently implemented to everyone who owns a house;
a very effective measure given that private ownership of houses in
Greece is widespread and even people with relatively low income often
own their own home. This property tax was attached to electricity bills,
so if you don’t pay it – as is common under circumstances where some
must choose between buying food and paying it – your power is cut.
Since the EU and IMF instructed structural adjustment of the Greek
economy that accompanied the May 2010 loan, the suicide rate in Greece
has doubled. Reports of desperate people ending their lives are
published daily in a country that, until 2009, had the lowest suicide
rate in Europe. Research published in a recent issue of
Lancet shows that the crisis has already had a significant negative impact on the general health of the Greek population.
Now imagine further. Imagine your country gets a new kind of
experimental government that eliminates social provisions and represses
any social movement that dares rise up against this new regime. Two
weeks ago a new government was appointed with the former vice-president
of the European Central Bank (ECB) – who gave that huge loan to Greece –
as the PM.
Moreover, MPs who are members of the extreme-right-wing party LAOS
were included in the new Greek government, along with social democrats
and conservatives. Italy has also appointed an unelected government.
During a crisis, whatever it takes to enforce the sustainability of
capitalism is permitted – even appointing unelected governments.
The actual people undertaking each role matter little, however. The
example of Greece is pretty straightforward: governments of the last few
decades (elected or non-elected, Left or Right) are working towards a
common goal: the creation of an authoritarian and ruthless neoliberal
capitalist regime, which may be spun as democracy from time to time, but
never really is.
But perhaps you people of Britain don’t need to use your imaginations
so much? Across Europe, several countries are already experiencing a
‘light’ version of what is happening in Greece. The full fat recipe is
already being prepared for Ireland and Portugal – who both took similar
loans from IMF/EU/ECB troika soon after Greece – while Italy has now
taken its place at the table.
Yet this type of governance isn’t unique to countries that have
received loans from the global bankers. Even here in the UK, benefits
and higher education teaching budgets have been cut, while the end of
free healthcare looms. Simultaneously, activists and protestors over the
last year have been given a taste of what a police state looks like.
In Greece, the resistance to this new type of governance has been
huge. Among other social reactions, this summer saw one of the biggest
manifestations of the Occupy Movement in Syntagma Square. Soon after
Egypt and Spain, people in Greece occupied the square located just
across from the House of Parliament in Athens – along with other squares
around the country.
Two 48-hour general strikes were called in June during the occupation of the square; the second took place on the 28
th and 29
th
– when the House of Parliament had scheduled to vote for a new
austerity package. The majority of strikers in Athens chose Syntagma
Square and the movement that had grown there as the focal and
spatial-political reference point.
The state used unprecedented police violence to control the rally,
leading to a long battle over territorial control, but strikers and
demonstrators risked their lives defending the square containing the
protesters’ camp, daily assembly and everything else the square
symbolised. More than 500 demonstrators were hospitalised or injured by
the police during the second general strike alone.
Greece is not the only place today where the dominant
political-economic system manifests the limits of its ‘democratic’ mask.
The Occupy movement all around the world sees profound levels of
repression. Tunisia, Egypt, USA and Spain are just a few of the
countries where the authorities have tried to smash the local versions
of the Occupy movement, with various parts of the establishment (e.g.
corporate media) playing their parts in these attempts. If nothing else,
these attacks make explicit the political significance and the
potential of the Occupy Movement, especially when combined with more
traditional means of struggle such as strikes and marches.
If it were not so dangerous for the global economic and political
establishment, they would not attack to the Occupy Movement so
aggressively, and when the establishment is so rotten, posing danger
feels great.
Dimitris Dalakoglou is co-editor of ‘Revolt and Crisis
in Greece’ (with A. Vradis) and a member of Occupied London Collective
which maintains the blog From the Greek Streets. He works as a Lecturer
in Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Many Thanks to Antonis
Vradis for his comments on an earlier version of this text.
Originally posted @the occupied times London 
