Greece in a Transitional World

Although i'm not as knowledgeable as I want to be about the situation in Greece, a recent comment by a regular reader has prompted me to consider these issues in terms of what I think is going on internationally.

First, in light of the recent interventions ("austerity measures") of the IMF and other international finance institutions into the bankruptcy and governance crisis in Greece, it seems to me that the elite economic institutions are again deploying the now standard neoliberal 'shock doctrine' reforms (i.e., privatization, cutting social programs, decreasing regulation, repealing environmental laws, etc) as a way to intensify the dependence of the Greek nation-state on corporate controlled global flows of material and commerce. In short, international institutions, under the direction of the elites who govern them and whose interests animate their policies, are effectively reorganizing the very character of Greek polity.

To be sure, Greece is only one of a number of European states to begin the process of disintegration that nation-states will go through as the international order unravels. (Which I find ironic, given that core features of Western civilization originate from that region.) Governments, until now, have been supporting a way of life predicated on cheap energy and maintained by the mass production and consumption of superfluous goods. The result is an institutional reality that is extended beyond its functional limits. The Greeks, and everyone else in the so-called West, need to begin to understand that massive change is both inevitable and necessary. The era of governments managing and controlling incredibly complex public-oriented systems is at an end - the party is over.

Contrary to the myth of ‘badly managed finances’ perpetuated by managers and technocrats, the dismantling of many public institutions and social programs in Greece is the direct result of major shifts in the balance of power from nation-states to large non-national corporations. Profit-seekers and technocrats use financial obligations and weak leadership to justify taking over key decision-making powers and responsibilities. As a result, private interest organizations have gained demonstrable control of the flow of finance, material productivity, infrastructure and the institutional assemblages that afford most of our social relations. Corporate projects and decision-making are now openly encouraged to avoid and ignore state mandates and thereby exclude “public interests” from its deliberative practices.

With a developed capacity to control energy utilization, cash flow, media and production, wealthy elites and their corporations collaborate (e.g., "create policy") with large financial institutions to entangle nation-states such as Greece in increasingly narrow and maladaptive activities. Such entanglements have allowed private organizations to routinely supersede state-oriented institutions and interests, and dictate the flux and allocation of resources towards non-national and intensely stratified accumulations of wealth and security.

As nation-states become legally entrenched in international financial obligations and controls they relinquish the power or capacity to continue social programs and manage traditional public activities and incentives. Money and the maintenance of controlled material flows has become the only political concern for national managers and elites. Therefore, outside of direct action, money is now the only available political tool for individuals and groups. And as major corporations take over traditional governing capacities (i.e., infrastructure development, security, basic health care, etc) they also generate a distorted and detached social logic: the logic of isolation, profit and exchange.

Sadly, this is precisely the kind of “freedom” neoliberalism promised us from the beginning: freedom from government and the obligations of anonymous social welfare. Only, now, the “constraints” of government and public life have been replaced by the obligations and imperatives of corporate employment, finance, brand loyalty, and the passive participation in and dependence on unsustainable modes of production and forms of life.

As economic flows shift and the whole international system is comes apart each nation/region will be required to use whatever institutional and operational resources it has remaining to "restructure" accordingly. And while I totally disagree with the way that Greece is going about doing this restructuring - mostly because they are just getting their people even deeper into the system that created the current crisis to begin with - change is both inevitable and necessary. 

Now, as I see it, Greece has two clear choices:

1. Allow the nation-state to continue to whither away and hope the populous creates enough of their own institutions or economic projects to maintain some semblance of a ‘reciprocally regarding’ social solidarity.

2. Use the military to take control of core economy functions and redirect the ebbs and flows of capital, energy and materials towards reorienting productive activities, reinvigorating public life  and reinforcing public institutions.

However I don’t see either of these two polarized choices being acknowledged by Greek leaders at this time. Greece will instead become one of many nation-states that will continue to slowly and painfully disintegrate - despite calls from the people asking the state to maintain public programs and with the state increasingly ceding sovereign powers and duties to private interests.

It is my contention that when a critical mass (or systemic threshold) of discontent, poverty and social disintegration is reached, recently hollowed-out states will rapidly convert to a loose system of regionalized and centralized corporate military zones with protected enclaves of trading and functionality - so-called “green zones” for those of us who can afford it. Those unfortunate enough to get excluded in these new zones of fuctionality will simply be abandoned , marginalized and left to exist in anarchic and despotic conditions - or so-called “red zones”. In less words, those who have the guns and technology, and therefore the resources, will make that "transition" smoothly while those who don’t will be forced to the periphery.

Now I understand this projection might seem wildly apocalyptic and far removed from current conditions. But let point out why it is not.

For starters, for those lucky and connected green-zoners such rapid and intensive transformations will undoubtedly seem to them as a drastic but necessary step to safe-guard “civilization” from disaster and prevent the overall degeneration of human social life. From the point of view of the protected they will simply be cutting dead weigh, so to speak, on the way to the full rescuing and transformation of social life - with its movement towards neo-feudal corporatist socioeconomic organization.

Yet for the red-zoners it will be not resemble an "apocalypse" because it will be perpetual. An apocalypse implies a particular moment in time, but for red-zoners the harsh realities of post-state life will be constant and relentless. What's worse, at least for the first few generations, is that not only will they become prey to whatever anarchic distribution of power that will follow rapid disintegration, they will also have to watch from the margins how “civilization” continued without them.

Also, for those of you who want to dismiss such possibilities as mere fantasy (as opposed to fantasy per se), please consider that this type of organizational assemblage is not that much different than what currently exists. It has been argued that we post-industrial consumer-citizens exist in our ‘first-world’, while others have their ‘second’, ‘third’ and 'fourth' worlds. And the only strong difference between the zoned societies I describe above and today’s international orders (emphasis on the plural) is mobility.

Right now the international social order is characterized by the activities that support the hyper-mobility and intensive communicative flexibility of a relatively sizable comfort class. Whereas a world that is post-peak-oil, post-cheap-energy, post-mobile, limited in production and non-state organized, will be more situated, guarded and sharply delineated (stratified) while becoming oriented towards the utilization of remaining resources. In other words, the major difference between these the current social orders and those I argue we will transition into is the intensity (and rigidity) with which they are organized, while their structural interests remain the same: controlled subsistence, energy and security.

The fact remains that the economic foundation upon which our lifestyles depend is dying. And as all those ‘goods’ stop being circulated within capitalist international systems (as a result of collapsing bio-physical systems), and the superfluous “jobs” their production makes possible disappear, it will be less possible to placate and pacify the Western hoards. With their jobs, creature comforts, trinkets, vacations and T.V programs vanishing, the appearance of mutual interdependence will weaken and cease to captivate the imaginations of citizen-consumers everywhere. The resulting weakening of imagined and functional mutual dependence will then undermine most types of remaining social non-zero sum ("public interest") activities and "compel" (or provide opportunity for) all those powerful elites and self-appointed guardians to begin setting up their respective zones of influence, economics and security. 

My basic point, if I have one at this juncture, is that nation-states are endangered institutions. State-systems are being assaulted from all angles by ethnic allegiances, corporatist appropriations, ideological devaluation, and libertarian politics alike – while continuing to operate with increasingly scarce resources (both monetarily and ecologically). The era of state-sponsored social systems and forms of solidarity therefore is also coming to an end. Western societies can no longer demand that our leadership and state apparatus provide ‘public goods’ while simultaneously supporting (or becoming entangled in) unrestricted “freedom” for the consumerist and corporate accumulation of 'private goods'.

In this context, and returning to the situation in Greece, it would be much better for populations in the long run if their governments withdrew from the system of economics and dominating practices controlled by private organizations and the international legal and financial order. If Greece carefully extracted its economic participation enough to reallocate its remaining resources towards transitioning to a more local economy – one that includes strong and creative public institutions, and the employment structure (“jobs”) that come with them – the Greek people might be able to dramatically increase their self-sufficiency and resilience for the future.

Of course this would entail Greece rejecting international financing and stopping payments on the exasperating and moronic loans that bind them. In defiance of international processes, and in adjustment to all the punishments and coercive forces that would result therein, Greece would then need to move quickly enough to develop a legal apparatus that would legitimate their internal organization and sovereignty while deactivating the economic relations that perpetuate the whole-sale reliance on international trade and financial systems.

I have no doubt that such a "withdrawal" would be as hard on the Greek people as any of the current “reforms”, at least in the short term (with massive job loss and economic chaos), but it would also most certainly provide a more stable and socially-oriented polity in the long term. And it would be important, as indicated above, for such 'withdrawn states' to use and reallocate its remaining resources to soften the severity of the transition.

The way I interpret it, we can either choose to do it the hard way (by just letting it happen to us), or the easier way (by taking action to develop positive transitional forms of life). But however we decide to do it, some sort of transition to another way of being is the path ahead of us.