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Thanks to Andrew Pollack for pointing this out as well as the other
articles referenced there:
Historical Materialism article paywalled - available via Richard Seymour
http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/01/notes-on-greece.html, where Seymour
writes,
"It is imperative to get this right. Syriza's election is the first
real event on the European radical left for decades. I do not mind
being over-excited about this fact. I am well aware of the limits of
this success, and of the ways in which left governments can be
domesticated. Yet I would sooner get ahead of myself with enthusiasm
than submit to the wised-up cynicism according to which every gain is an
accident, and every betrayal was pre-ordained. And this breakthrough
does demand some careful research and theoretical work.
To that end, I'm going to try to post links to good, scholarly articles
offering background on Greek social formation, its working class
movements and the political variations therein. This post is a start in
that direction."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An examination of class structure in Greece, its tendencies of
transformation amid the crisis, and its impacts on the organisational
forms and structures of the social movement
Historical Materialism
Eirini Gaitanou
Abstract
The study of the Greek class structure is necessary for approaching and
understanding the forms and structures of the labour and social movement
in Greece. The class structure and the specific characteristics of the
Greek social formation present special features compared to other
developed capitalist countries of Europe. These features have
historically resulted to the appearance of broader petty-bourgeois
strata, in parallel to (and not competitively to) capitalist
development. The tendency in the last twenty years (during the
restructuring process) has been the expansion of capital into new areas
and sectors of capitalist circulation, leading to the establishment of a
range of services as capitalist commodities, and an expansion of
unproductive, but necessary for the realisation of the surplus-value,
activities (expanded reproduction of capitalism). Further, during the
current crisis, we are witnessing a massive job destruction, along with
a significant tendency of class polarisation and violent
proletarianisation of the petty-bourgeois strata. Massive unemployment
and precarious work are largely expanded, whilst the stable work model
is eroded. This reality affects both the emergence and the forms of
organisation of the labor and social movement. The working class is
highly fragmented and heterogeneous, and the trade union movement has
several weaknesses and pecularities. At the same time, large sections of
the working strata cannot be expressed through the traditional trade
unionism, because of conjunctural and structural reasons. Thus, there
appear various forms of organisation that are beyond the scope of the
traditional labor movement. The aim of this paper is to explore this
landscape and the various possibilities open to collective action, its
forms and manifestations at the political level.
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