Big Government, not 'austerity', has brought Greece to its knees
What I admire about the anti-capitalist left is their ability to present their ideas as somehow "unorthodox" and "anti-mainstream", when they are clearly nothing of the sort. Go to any high street bookstore, and you will find that the politics section consists of little else but the tomes of Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Russell Brand, Owen Jones, Ha-Joon Chang, George Monbiot and the other usual suspects. If that is a "neoliberal hegemony", I dread to think what a left-wing hegemony would look like.
Still, I am amazed by how the British left has managed to convince themselves that Syriza somehow represented a break with "neoliberal politics" in Greece. According to Zoe Williams, what Syriza and other far-left parties in Europe have in common "is that they reject the prevailing economic verities”. Meanwhile, Owen Jones has trumpeted that “Outside the Greek finance ministry are cleaners who used to work there […] There is a real sense that maybe – just maybe – the likes of these sacked middle-aged cleaners could be the new masters now.” He adds: “No wonder so many [European] leftists [...] travelled to Athens for this moment. For many of them, neoliberalist triumphalism is all they have ever known.”
Yet after three and a half decades of economic statism and hyperinterventionism, how exactly is a party that stands for economic statism and hyperinterventionism a "break" with anything? Ever since the PASOK victory of 1981, Greek politics has been Fifty Shades of Red, and Syriza merely represents a more glaring shade in this spectrum.
Mais
Still, I am amazed by how the British left has managed to convince themselves that Syriza somehow represented a break with "neoliberal politics" in Greece. According to Zoe Williams, what Syriza and other far-left parties in Europe have in common "is that they reject the prevailing economic verities”. Meanwhile, Owen Jones has trumpeted that “Outside the Greek finance ministry are cleaners who used to work there […] There is a real sense that maybe – just maybe – the likes of these sacked middle-aged cleaners could be the new masters now.” He adds: “No wonder so many [European] leftists [...] travelled to Athens for this moment. For many of them, neoliberalist triumphalism is all they have ever known.”
Yet after three and a half decades of economic statism and hyperinterventionism, how exactly is a party that stands for economic statism and hyperinterventionism a "break" with anything? Ever since the PASOK victory of 1981, Greek politics has been Fifty Shades of Red, and Syriza merely represents a more glaring shade in this spectrum.
Mais
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