(Ομιλία στο Ολλανδικό Ινστιτούτο Αθήνας στις 10 Απριλίου
2014)
1.
Introduction
It is difficult not to connect the severity of the economic
crisis in Greece with the fact that during 30 years of participation in the
European Union, our country did not manage to adapt to what are or were the
caracteristics of a european capitalist economy and society. The administration
remained inefficient, production was lagging behind, and the social state was
partial and offered unequal services, while not covering all of the working
population.
In reality the entry into a European Common Market, adopting
at the time the new neoliberal strategy, was a factor that reinforced the
conservation of existing practices and functions, and did not encourage the reforms
leading to the more typical caracteristics of the “european model”. The
european institutions were not interested in transforming the greek economy and
society, into what with great difficulties they were trying to adandon.
Therefore the questions are: how can we read the economic
and social history of the past 30 years in Greece? Is it a number of faillures
on the way to “europeanisation”, or is it the result of the way the greek model
was adapted to the construction of the neoliberal Europe? How can we explain
that the post-dictatorial spirit of democratisation did not lead to radical
reforms of clientelist and inefficient institutions but on the contrary leed to
the repetition and extension of clientelist practices?
It is striking to admit that there are three important
structural caracteristics of the “greek model” that existed in the beginning of
the 80’s and continue to exist until now and continue to be at the same time,
recognised problems and consequences of the succesive economic strategies,
including the “memoranda”. These are (a) the clientelistic practices at the
core of relations between the state and the various economic interests, (b) the
deficitary nature of economic relations with the rest of the world, and (3) the
persistence of undeclared work and absence of workers and social rights in an
important part of the labour market.
The clientelistic relations between private or specific
social interests and the state, were the result of the immediate post-civil-war
reconstruction period when opportunities to make money and build enterprises
were almost exclusively a function of the relations with the political
personel. The post war state was build to serve these type of relations, and
its inefficiency was simply the other side of its capacity to adapt to the
various demands of these interests.
This approach of economic develpment policy was supplemented
by some important investments (in the late 50’s and the 60’s) which did not
solve the serious problems concerning the general economic equilibriium –
external or internal. The economic developent of the 60’s and 70’s would have
been impossible without the greek migrants’s money, and the money of the greek
sailors in the merchant fleet, but also without the fast developping tourist
sector. Industrial production was even before the late 70’s underdeveloped from
the quantitative and technological point of view, social spending also, and the
salary earners protected by labour and social laws were mainly those of the
public sector.
Such an economic and social model did not have something to
do with the “european model”, with the social state, collective bargening and
collective agreements. The military dictatorship was the result of the
incapacity of the greek model to reproduce itself in the conditions of an even
incomplete democracy.
2.
The
contradictory 80’s
The stabilisation of the post-dictatorship regime after the
1981 elections, meant that the questions of a national economic development, of
the social state and of the reform of old administrative practices were open.
The PASOK government showed directly its intension to adopt a radical reformist
policy concerning social and salary issues, satifsying long pending demands,
and showed also its expectations about the dynamics of a keynesian strategy.
But the keynesian strategy presupposes a proper
institutional framework, and most of all the ageement of the capitalist class
about such a pespective, and in the precise case of Greece during that period,
the agreement with a daring structural industrial policy. The creation by PASOK
of an institution aiming at the reviving of “problematic” enterprises and the
implementation of an industrial policy by the state met with the fierce
opposition of the industrialists union.
By 1985 the PASOK government had to face the worsening
balance of payments with a devaluation and an administrative reduction of
salaries and wages. It was the admission of a failure to resolve through a
keynesian policy the external sector problem and of the refusal of industrial
capital to participate to the necessary consensus.
But bank capital was not either anxious to contribute to a
remodeling of the greek economy. The reform of the administrative management of
the banking system in 1987 and the “liberalisation” of the market, lead in
reality to the creation of a cartel of the main banks that offered them the
possibility to absorb the losses of the previous period through a common policy
of high interest rates. It was the inauguration of the new financial power in
Greece.
The attempt to form a “keynesian” social alliance failed and
this fact had very important consequences for the form of the regime. The trade
union movement of the public sector enterprises became dominant and the private
sector unions were weak and in many cases defeated, after their confrontation
with employers. The small and medium enterprises remained dependent to a great
extent on undeclared work and tax evasion. Public sector trade unions and
professional organisations established close relations with the state. The
political parties maintained privileged relations with the bureaucracies of
these unions and organisations. The model of relations of enterpreneurs with
the state did not change and clientelistic practices remained dominant.
During the 80’s public social spending increased from 10,2%
of GDP in 1980, to 16,5% in 1990 and 17% in 1993. During the same period public
dept insreased from 20% of GDP to 100%. But direct taxation remained at half
the average level of the European Union of 15 members. The feeling of
instability and revelations of economic scandals implying the PASOK government
and alllegedly the prime minister himself, led to the victory at the 1990
elections (after a right and left government and a national unity government)
of the New Democracy party, lead by Constantinos Mitsotakis, who had adopted an
authentic “thatcherite” program. This government resigned in 1993 after the
failure of its attempt to implement privatisation of public enterprises. It had
obviously underestimated the existing relations of forces in society.
3.
Stabilisation
through “modernisation”
Since the end of the 80’s “modernisation” entered the
political vocabulary as the most misleading though strong and lasting term.
Modernisation managed to maintain the charm of “europeanisation” as understood
in the past, but also to express the necesity to adapt to the changing european
strategy. “Modernisation” did not come to mean anymore keynesianism and social
state, but enterpreneurship and employability. Trade union bureaucracies were
participating in institutions of social dialogue, but undeclared work,
especially of immigrants and later the youth, was tolerated if not adopted as a
strategy. The union of industrialists wellcomed the “social dialogue”
institutions as long as the labour market policies were deregulating employment
practices.
The success of the “modernisation” strategy was due to the
fact that it was based on a solid alliance of the political leadership assuming
it with the most strong and combative public sector unions. There was a
“modernisation” of industrial relations in the sens of the individualisation of
learning trajectories, the flexibilisation of the labour market, together with
the persistence of inefficient legislation and practices concerning health and
safety at the shopfloor. The attempt to renew the legislation about immigrant
work waited until 1998, almost a decade after the massive entry of immigrants
from the Balkans, and the responsibility to prove the existence of a work
contract was left to the worker himself and not to the employer or the
authorities.
“Modernisation” was also a crusade of the world of
enterpreneurs against the inefficient and overdeveloped state, and the so
called prejudice against private initiative. There were of course parts of the
world of enterpreneurs that could not be pleased with the clientelist methods
of the industrial policy, and the anti-state speech was the best way to orient
discontent towards the state and away from the powerful enterprises and enterpreneurs.
In the meantime the managing of the succesive Cadres Communautaires d’Appui was
reproducing a typical and lasting clientelism, and reproducing also the
inefficiency of the state not only concerning the relations with the individual
enterpreneurs but mainly concerning the results of the sectoral economic
policies. In such a context the chatter about private initiative and
competitiveness could not – and did not – lead anywere, and despite the flow of
european money that was reaching 4-5% of GDP per year, the greek economy was
losing productive capacity and competitiveness.
While investment and growth accelerated during the second
half of the 90’s, the results during the first half of the years 2000 were the
fall of value added in the secondary sector from 14,5% in 2000 to 13,2% in 2004
(the lowest by far in the Union), and in the primary sector from 7,3% in 2000
to 5,6% in 2004. 2003 and 2004 were the last years with a GDP growth reaching
4,5%. But in 2004 the external commercial deficit was six times higher in value
compared with the beginning of the 80’s.
Until 2004 the public debt remained at the high but stable
level of 100% of GDP. The reason of this stability was that from 1993 to 2003
there was a primary surplus of public finance. The neoliberal agenda, adopted
under the “modernisation” perspective, in agreement with the European
Commission, contained besides the deregulation of the labour market (and the
quest of cheeper work), a privatisation policy (which was until then very
succesful) and a policy of reduced taxation of capital and wealth. Direct taxes
increased from 1995 (6,6% of GDP) to the year 2000 (9,7% of GDP) but then fell
until 2003 (7,8%) stabilising at that level. But these percentages were much
lower than the EU-15 averages. Capital and wealth were taxed much less in
Greece: 19,9% of their value in 2000, compared to 30,2% in the eurozone, and
16,3% in 2004, compared to 27.9% in the eurozone.
Public social expenditure had reached 19,2% of GDP in 2000
and 22,7% in 2007, before the crisis, levels compared to Portugal and Spain,
and this increase was due to pensions and expenditure on health. It is obvious
that social spending was “normal” but taxation of wealth was not. After the
year 2000 and especially 2004, the year of the Olympic Games, the economy did
not have the ressources to continue its growth and the financing of public
expenditure but also consumption depended on the increase of debt, public and
private. The productive private sector was continiously shrinking, and was reproducing
itself through the reduction of taxes but also the deregulation of the labour
market. After 2004, public debt started to increase and reached 140% of GDP in
2010.
The social alliance of the “modernisation” period between
private capital, public sector trade unions and middle class professionals had
lost its dynamic and its faith to a socialist party government. Factors as the
privatisation and the weakening of public sector trade unions through this
process, the accumulated demands of the private enterprises for cheeper labour,
and reduction of social spending, the aftermath of the 1999 stock exchange
crisis, were the first signs of an impasse of the economy and the end of the
“modernisation” period. The continuous increase of public and private debt and
the guarantee of profits through deregulation of the labour market, subsidees
and taxation policy were typical bank led choices, leading directly to a
crisis, and to a deep impasse of the productive private sector. The external
deficit had increased, the clientelist method was a failure and the regulation
through deregulation of the labour market was not sufficient. After the
provisional balance of the “modernisation” period the economy was getting out
of control.
4.
Conclusions
What was the force of destruction of the greek economy that
we are witnessing now? It was of course the dominant forces within the private
enterpeneurial sector which refused the adaptation to the entry into the
european market through structural industrial policies, and fought for the
persistence of their control over the state, and the reproduction of
clientelist methods of state management, and also refused the complete
legalisation of the labour market and the construction of a social state. Bank
capital and european neoliberalism did not disagree, since “private initiative”
of all sorts was the rising dogma since the 80’s.
In the present situation the choices of the troika make of
course some sens in a neoliberal narrow perspective. The banks have to survive
and continue to make money, and the enterpreneurial activity has to acquire
some autonomous dynamic through cheep labour and adaptation to productive
possibilities in the globalised economy, and all this at any social and
economic cost. The troika is in fact trying to recreate a dominant social class
out of practically nothing, no productive capacity, no apropriate state
institutions, no perspective, and the greed of bankers, or of the big friends
of politicians are not obviously sufficient.
The greek drama is the fact that no part of the elit –
political or economic – is capable of taking a realistic look on society, and
understand that the recent “european” hopes of the population can not be
tranformed in just a few years to the despair of a suddenly marginalised working
force and youth, accepting any working and living conditions. This is the
reason of the extreme tensions within greek society, and the tensions within
the political institutions. The european governing elite is adopting the same
approach as the greek elit, punishing the people of Greece for the
irresponsability and incapacity of its ruling class, accepting the destruction
of social institutions and productive capacity, and offering the terrain for
the reinforcement of a nazi criminal gang that is willing to fill the gap.
If the greek people are considered part of Europe, there
should be at the level of the continent organised social and political forces
who can support the corresponing forces in Greece, who are not only defending
the democratic and social legacy of Europe, but are also aiming at the
reconstruction of productive activity and society. The majority of the left is
supporting the idea that the necessary reconstruction in Greece is and must be
considered as a european project.
[PLR, 10-4-2014]
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