[authorbox authorid=”97″ title=”The Author”]
Exiting crisis marks a new era for both Greece and Europe. The crisis was not only economic but also a crisis of democracy, and this became apparent from the election results on a pan-European level. Τhe risk of fascist diversion of societies was a much greater risk than poverty.
The depreciation of civilian personnel, the depreciation of parliamentary decisions, the deprecation of democracy itself was the greatest shame especially for the country that gave birth to it. That’s why the end of Greece’s bailout was a milestone.
Many discussions can be made as to whether the Greek government’s decisions of the first few months of government was wrong, whether the country could come out earlier in the markets and whether some former minister’s decisions had a great cost for the Greek economy. But this government, at the time of its election, was perhaps the last mound of democracy, so its successes has a special symbolic value.
So, at a symbolic level it was a victory. But at a practical level, when everything is being economized and man becomes a set of business and investment funds, one can not celebrate either in Greece or Europe.
Memoranda may have faded but agreements and measures have remained in all countries where they have been implemented. Greece, as well as all the former bailout countries, is left free but only to go on the road that was dictated without any deviations. The opposing voices, pan-European, have almost disappeared from the public speech, those who spoke about people, and not about numbers, and chanted an alternative proposal were dismantled by the power of the markets.
It has turned out that the reasoning of neoliberalism has penetrated everywhere, and those countries who dared to question its omnipotence were ultimately forced to do so through the so-called “soft power”.
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It has become clear that states have value only on the basis of their economic impact. Greece was an example to be imitated, not when it dared to question the market’s power over democracy, but when it accepted the economy as the absolute regulator of everything. Greece was released, like other countries, only when it became clear that it could pass by Foucault’s “disciplinary society” to Deleuze’s “society of control”.
The weak homo politicus, who in the past years appeared through movements and alternative government proposals, crashed into homo economicus. The question of next elections, in all European countries, is no longer which economic model to follow, as this is unquestionable, but who will better manage the existing one.
Thus, Greeks and Europeans before celebrating the end of the memorandum will have to think about what was won and what was lost.
