By now the dust has somewhat settled on the much-watched elections in that Balkan country, Greece. It would have to have been one of the most interfered-with elections in recent European history, in a way that makes Putin look like a shining democrat. No surprises that the conservatives ‘won’, primed, financed and advised by the Euro-lords and led by a man, Samaras, in one of those repulsive business suits that signals money and exploitation. Of course, many among the left are disappointed that Syriza ‘lost’, let alone the communist KKE.
The whole terminology of ‘win’ and ‘loss’ in elections has taken on the air of football matches – like the Euro 2012 going on at the same moment. Your team trains, fronts the media, does its best or maybe not so best. If they win, you leap about, feel the tingle in the spine, drink yourself into the ground, and think the world has changed. If they lose, you drag your feet, smash things, don’t want to get out of bed, weep inconsolably. But everyone abides by the rules of the game. With the final whistle, it’s game over. The losers may complain about the refereeing, sack a coach, and so on. But until the next game, everyone goes home and gets on with life.
So where the hell is Lenin when we need him? Elections and the parliamentary system aren’t about ‘winning’ and ‘losing’. They are means for getting your party’s views out to a much wider audience rather than playing according to someone else’s rules. On that score, the Greek elections were a raging success. Elections are certainly not the main game, and you don’t go home after the final vote is counted. Rather, they comprise one element in a much larger scene, which includes active organisation, strikes, legal and illegal activity, agitation among the armed forces, for without the army no revolution is successful, and of course the willingness to seize power when the time is right.
22 June, 2012 at 11:36 am
There is a Euro 2012 football match, the quarter-finals no less, between Greece and Germany in 18 hours time. Germany, whose leading player is the wonderfully named Schweinsteiger, are favoured to win.
Will be rooting for Greece!
22 June, 2012 at 11:39 am
Love that phrase, ‘rooting for’, since in Aussie slang it has a somewhat different sense. As in, ‘ya wanna root?’
22 June, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Perhaps after the game….
22 June, 2012 at 3:22 pm
I’d just like to say that I’ll be rooting for and on behalf of Greece.
22 June, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Tough ones to beat, the Germans, since they play ‘strangulation football’.
22 June, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Indeed, but even Brazil lose a game every couple of years.
22 June, 2012 at 3:23 pm
At east the Brazilians are a delight to watch.
23 June, 2012 at 10:34 am
Elections and the parliamentary system … are means for getting your party’s views out to a much wider audience rather than playing according to someone else’s rules … Rather, they [elections] comprise one element in a much larger scene, which includes active organisation, strikes, legal and illegal activity, agitation among the armed forces, for without the army no revolution is successful, and of course the willingness to seize power when the time is right
How is this different from the mentality of the Greek neo-Nazis? I assure you, they would sign each and every sentence above (and they are already active, both legally and illegally). Shouldn’t we be able to distinguish between the revolutionary and the fascist in terms of behavior, not just content?
23 June, 2012 at 6:07 pm
The difference is simple: the socialist parties are democratic, the neo-fascists are not. What does that mean? Here we need to recover the properly revolutionary sense of democracy. In the revolutionary period in Russia leading up to the October Revolution of 1917, ‘democracy’ was clearly associated with the labouring masses of workers and peasants, who were the ‘people’ (demos and thereby narod). The opposite of democracy was not the autocracy or dictatorship, but the classes of the old aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Thus, terms such as ‘democratic elements’ ‘democratic classes’, ‘revolutionary democracy’, along with ‘democracy’ itself, had distinct class dimensions. Democracy thereby became synonymous with the range of socialist parties, while those of the bourgeoisie (Kadets) and the old aristocracy (Octobrists and others) were anti-democratic A similar socialist sense for ‘democracy’ was common in China in the 1920s and 1930s, through figures such as Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and Qu Qiubai. Reclaimed in this way, democracy and democratic methods d not mean the bowdlerised form of bourgeois democracy.