Greece - What Revolution?

It was inevitable in the end that the pro-bailout parties would win in the Greek re-run elections. Far-right voters dropped Golden Dawn and switched to New Democracy, while Syriza gained more votes but not enough to completely wipe out PASOK, which they needed to do.In the end the Greek electoral system gives New Democracy 50 extra seats so that they can form a government with PASOK and/or some of the independents. Fear of the far-left, of change and of continuing turmoil still only just managed to beat Syriza.

Not that there isn't turmoil to come. The election result just postpones the final reckoning. Greece is a dead man walking and everyone knows it. Yet politicians across the world pretend to breathe a sigh of relief as though there's any hope of saving the Greek economy or, more importantly, the Euro itself.

How can we know that Greece is doomed even with the election of a collaborationist government? Because experience has shown repeatedly that you cannot impose a change on a political culture - and it's that cultural change that nobody ever talks about. Look at post-Soviet Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest - you cannot impose a new political culture from the outside. Greek political culture is about patronage and nepotism. The state is viewed as the means to influence and reward networks of friends, families, supporters. Nobody pays taxes because they know the money is there to be distributed to political supporters and friends. The brightest and best don't go into industry they flee abroad or seek a position in the civil service. It's the way to get on.

Syriza promised to go some way to making changes. It threatened the established networks of corruption that PASOK and New Democracy have erected over decades. But they didn't talk about the underlying problem which is that a core belief in statism. They didn't threaten to leave the EU or even quit the Euro. They went so far but no further but even that was enough to threaten the Greek EU class establishment.

What Greece needs is a capitalist revolution. A revolution that throws off the chains the state, that cuts back on the red tape and the layers of bureaucracy that exist to serve those networks of patronage that have kept Greece backward for so long. Sadly, the most 'radical' voices in the country seem still not to recognise that it's the state that is the problem, not the solution.