Greece is a basket case. We know that. They know that. Europe knows that. Africa knows that. Asia knows that. The Americas know that. Heck! even Argentina knows that. Everybody under the sun knows that. Except the Greek. Well… at least not at a conscious level. They are clueless. And this is typical considering a slow evolutionary political system.
POLITICAL EVOLUTION
Consider this ultra-short history of Greece. The Byzantine Empire and its successor the Ottoman Empire ruled Greeks since antiquity. This was the first of the political evolutionary phases that Greece underwent entering into modernity. This phase formally ended in 1821 with their successful revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Since that year and with many ups and downs Greece was stuck in a monarchical political system. This latter phase formally ended in 1975 when Greece abolished monarchy and became a republic… where they have been stuck ever since. Formally.
More or less. Give or take.
We must never forget that all political evolutionary steps are transitional in nature. As such and technically speaking Greece may be a republic but it still drags the need for "strong" people to "govern" and "rule". Greek people have not yet fully come to terms with the benefits of a full republic over monarchy and of this one over being subjugated by an empire. As such, the Greek government -although formally republican- is composed of "strong" people who "rule" with an iron hand. Is this a surprise? Absolutely not. We would have been extremely shocked should it would have happened otherwise.
This is the large framework, the big picture, the bird's view context in which we must analyze current political situations in Greece.
Sometimes when we speak about political evolution, overzealousness gets the best of us. This is our mistake. Political evolution is simply the large trend of human political endeavours that happens over very long periods of time. When we speak of Democracy versus Communism in this context, we are referring to the inherent and basic differences between those two systems, differences that have nothing to do with specific political theories and everything to do with modes of governing. A democracy is, by definition, the government of the people. A communist regime is, by definition, the tyranny of the party (an oligarchy). Power in a democracy is thus distributed among people while power in a communist regime is concentrated away from people. From this perspective, communism has many more coincident characteristics with monarchy than democracy. And this is the key difference.
Many people do not understand why Greece attempted to become communist since 1922. This is so because Greek people saw communism as an approximation to a monarchical system they were not willing to abandon yet. A transitional evolutionary step from being subjugated by an empire and a republic nobody fully understood. The fact that communism captured this idea is a fluke. The same idea could have been captured by the extreme right or some other monarchical system. As a matter of fact, for many years this wish was fulfilled by "strong" military man and their revolutions. The details are irrelevant. What is relevant is that Greece is still stuck in this desire for a half-monarchical system and it will not outgrow this need any time soon. As such, communism is there to stay, not because people are blind to what communism is doing, but because they associate communism with their political evolutionary step where they are stuck.
CONSEQUENCES
Being stuck in one such a phase means that all matters of extreme will take place simply because people will tolerate such extremes far more than otherwise. In the Greek case, this created a tragedy.
In 1981 Greece entered in the EU and with its ascent a new era of prosperity should have commenced. Or so many people believe, but not us. In 1981 Greece was still communist and acted as such to a limited degree while all other EU states declared to be "social democracies". The difference? None. Semantics if you like.
The only real difference is that Greek people tolerated Greek politicians governing with communist style. It took such Greek politicians only 30 years to utterly destroy Greece. Consider the following issues:
- Private debt grew from about 24% to 120% with little to no investment.
- Sovereign debt grew from 28% to 140%
- Bubbles (particularly real estate) were created.
- Public deficit was running at 15%
- There was widespread de-industrialization
- Agriculture stagnated
- The most brilliant minds left Greece for good
- State education was used and continues to be used as a propaganda tool, while constantly decreasing in quality
- Entrepreneurship, creative thinking and business acumen were declared anti-social
- People subsisting on state allowanced funded by debt became the norm
- In a country of 11 million people, there are 1.5 million unemployed, 0.8 million public employees, 2.8 million pensioners, 2.8 million children and only 2.9 million who are supposed to support everybody.
- The party in power and their friends became multi-billionaires drunk on EUR loans taken "for the good of the people"
- All current economic policies are based on the unholy trinity; tax, borrow and eventually, print.
And now consider the future:
- Greece is utterly broke and will most likely abandon EU. The exact form is unknown, but chances are excellent Greece will simply default, Argentine-style (or should we say Greek style?).
- These calamities created a new version of aggressive socialism from the left, right and centre. Nazis and Fascists received 8% of votes. Hard-core communist 7%. In the upcoming election a new front composed by communists and socialists of all extremes will most likely win.
- The new ruling party will further exacerbate and push an already extreme socialism into communism-light.
Those are the consequences when people do not evolve politically. They are terrible but at the same they are unavoidable and, eventually, positive.
CONCLUSION
Greece is communist. Communist Greece will commit suicide in the near future. This much is written in stone. It is a tragedy but not an avoidable one. The events that will unfold in the near future will brand all Greeks for generations to come and this is good. They will remember the terrible mistakes of the past at a subconscious level and refuse to commit them again. They will become an example to follow. They will have evolved. Finally.
Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.
