The subsequent general elections of June 17 led to a flood of attention in the international media and blatant foreign intervention due to their potential economic implications for the Euro currency zone and the global economy. Observers were concerned that a Greek exit from the Euro would have a catastrophic impact on other ailing European states, damaging the US and the entire global economy. There was an unprecedented campaign orchestrated by the Eurocrats, the German government and the German media, which amounted to the blackmailing of the Greek electorate to vote against the parties that want to end the draconian austerity and neoliberal policies.

E.U. officials disregarded the norm of neutrality concerning an independent national election and expressed their opinion about their preferred outcome of Greeks’ vote, threatening “Grexit,” i.e., forcing Greece out of Euro zone, if the radical left wins. The intervention crescendo came on the eve of the election with an open letter of Germany’s Bild newspaper to Greek voters. The tabloid warned:

“Tomorrow you have elections but you do not have any choices….If you don’t want our billions, you are free to elect any left- or right-wing clowns that you want…For more than two years, though, your ATMs are only issuing euros because we put them there. If the parties that want to end austerity and reforms win the elections, they will be breaching all agreements and we will stop paying.”

But it was not only threats by the media and the Euro-area governments. After the May election results, part of Greece’s next aid payment (1billion Euros) was postponed as a warning to Greek politicians and voters to stick to the austerity program.

Repeated Eurocratic interventions over the month before the election of June 17 implied a deep disapproval of potential choices by free citizens. This began in February, when German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble made the incredible suggestion that Greece should hold off the election and allow the interim government led by the banker Lucas Papademos to stay in power. This revealed a neoliberal German and European Union leadership that has become scared of democracy, unable to deal with the uncomfortable realities that elections can produce.

The foreign led “Grexit” campaign was combined with a domestic “Drachmageddon” terrorist campaign that propagated the notion of total catastrophe if Greece were to go back to the Greek national currency the Drachma, orchestrated by the media with close relations with the corrupt ruling parties of New Democracy and PASOK.

Those of us who have studied foreign interventions in Greece in the past can’t recall such a blatant foreign interference, with its effective co-ordinated scaremongering. As a result, the elections on June 17^th produced a vote of fear to avert a bleak Greek future, superseding the vote of anger against the corrupted political system of the elections of May 6^th.

It is also crucial to note that the great majority of Greeks has repeatedly expressed in polls and also on May 6^th elections in favor of the Euro, though clearly against the  “memorandum,” i.e., the draconian austerity bailout program, enforced by the troika, EU, IMF and ECB. That is why the Eurocrats and the Greek ruling forces tried and succeeded to transform the elections of June 17 into a referendum about Euro and not about the memorandum. Angela Merkel herself had called the Greek President to suggest the official transformation of the election into a referendum in favor of the currency. Hence, scaremongering campaigns for “Grexit” and “Drachmageddon” defined the June 17^th elections to be a de facto referendum on Greece’s future with the Euro, between leftist Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza Party, which opposes the terms of the country’s latest bailout, and its conservative rival, Antonis Samaras’s New Democracy party, which largely supports the bailout program, the ND with PASOK together are the “ancient regime.” Nonetheless, while the June election amounted to a referendum on whether Greece would become the first country to be forced out of Euro, it is quite certain that if a real referendum about the austerity bailout program, the vast majority of suffering Greeks would have voted against it.

The elections results

After all these orchestrated campaigns, on June 17, the conservative New Democracy (ND) came in the first place with 29.66%, from 18.9% in the previous vote, getting 129 seats in the parliament, including 50-seat bonus that goes to the leading party. The leftist SYRIZA jumped to 26.89% from 16.8%, holding 71 seats. It is followed in third place by the socialist PASOK, which fell to 12.28% from 13.2%, now holding only 33 seats, down from 157 in 2009.  The newly formed nationalist populist party of Independent Greeks which managed to get 10.6% in May is now in fourth place with 7.51% votes and 20 seats. Unfortunately for the Greek democracy, Golden Dawn came in fifth. This extreme neo-fascist party, with members who have been linked with violent attacks on African and Asian immigrants, maintained its power 6.92% (7%) and occupies 18 seats, down from the 21 it elected in May. The moderate “Democratic Left” came in sixth, with 6.26% (from 6.11%) and 17 seats. Last, in seventh, was the Greek Communist party KKE, which only got 4.50% (down from 8.5% in May) and 12 seats, refusing  any cooperation with SYRIZA.

The polarization of voting between ND and SYRIZA squeezed small parties like the Ecologist Greens, Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) and “Drasi,” which this time all fell well short of the 3 percent threshold needed for them to enter Parliament. A new abstention record was reached, 37.53%, higher than the 34.9% in May. About half of the young voters between 18-29, suffering from 50% unemployment, voted for SYRIZA, and those over 60, fearful pensioners and women over 55, voted ND for staying with the Euro.

Hence, Greece’s second national elections produced a narrow victory for the conservative New Democracy by 2.4 percentage points over leftist SYRIZA. However, Mr. Samaras of the New Democracy party, who declared that “Athens would honor its commitments” made in exchange for rescue loans from the EU and IMF, has only 129 of Parliament’s 300 seats, and lacks enough MPs to govern alone. He sought allies among his traditional rival, the pro-bailout PASOK, which came third, and the small Democratic Left party, which, while opposing the country’s harsh austerity program, has declared it will help to form a strong government. So, these three parties managed to forge a pro-euro and pro-bailout coalition government, backed by 179 out of 300 MPs.

The ND narrow victory, the coalition government and the real winner

Antonis Samaras was sworn in as prime minister of a three-party coalition government promising to uphold Greece’s international bailout commitments. Samaras two coalition partners, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left, have decided not to provide MPs for cabinet positions.

The real election winner is, though, in my judgment, SYRIZA, which saw its percentage of the vote rocket from less than 5 percent in 2009 to 17 percent in May to 27 percent in June. SYRIZA has made clear that it will not take part in any government or national negotiation team for a better memorandum. SYRIZA, with the anti-austerity wind in its sails, will be a powerful opposition force, insisting that the memorandum lacks popular legitimacy, having been effectively annulled by the strong anti-austerity vote in May. Mr. Tsipras, campaigning to reject the bailout terms and yet keep Greece in the euro, repeatedly stressed his party’s commitment to the common currency. To defend against the conservative pro-Euro arsenal, he eschewed any reference to radical positions the party holds on repudiating the national debt or nationalizing the banks.

In my view, unlike its name as a Coalition of Radical Left, SYRIZA is by no means  a communist radical movement; this is clear to the well informed American administration and media, which were not polemically against its leader Alexis Tsipras. SYRIZA, like the initial PASOK in the 80s under Andreas Papandreou, is a leftist reformist, multi-group coalition, attracting  mostly young people, the leftist intelligentsia, and the now state dependent middle strata, which has been disappointed by PASOK.  SYRIZA can play a modernizing role against the corrupted political system, similar to the role played by PASOK in 1981 against the prolong right wing rule. In its effort to be able to form the next government after a predicted failure of the present pro-bail out government, SYRIZA will be transformed into a governmental party, obliged to abandon its leftist radicalism, and gradually, like the PASOK governments, will disappoint its leftist followers. Rather than victory now, 38 year old Tsipras very well may be happier to emerge as a formidable and strengthened opposition leader, waiting for his leftist movement to become mature as a governmental party in order to succeed the coalition government’s predestined failure and short life.

Post elections assessments and prospects

The June elections has temporarily enabled Greece to avoid “Grexit” and “Drachmageddon,” and relieved the EU leaders with the formation of a pro-austerity government. One could argue that it is another temporary win for the Ancien Regime, which will just encourage Greece overlords to be more draconian. A government made up of the same political parties carrying the burden of the same old sins is incapable of resolving the Greek crisis. Without substantial European help, it will collapse soon.

In my judgment, if SYRIZA had won, it by no means would have resulted in a Armageddon for Greece and EU; because such a victory would have triggered drastic economic and political changes in Greece and in Europe more broadly. Europe’ s leaders, and Germany’s in particular, would have been forced to find the resources and imagination to reform the euro zone and advance the European integration.

Unfortunately to this point, following the election, Germany, IMF and the EU continue to demand that Greece honors the terms of the crucifying bailout that unrealistically assumes a quick economic recovery despite draconian austerity and crushing debts. Germans sadistically insist that Greece must continue take its disciplinary medicine – a 25% fall in GDP, collapse in living standards and youth unemployment of 50% – and pursue a neoliberal reform of its economic structures. For Germany, Greece’s draconian disciplinary austerity experiment is providing important lessons for other southern European “PIIGS.” But even if Grexit and losses  of the Greek debt might be containable, what would not be containable is the fear among member states  such as Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy that their countries could suffer the same fate as Greece.

After the financial problems in Portugal, Ireland and now in Spain, it is obvious that  the Greek crisis is not endemic and its cause is not the unruly Greeks. We have seen how many weak links there are in the European chain, which have nothing to do with Greece. As famous American economists, notably including Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have argued, the origins of crisis that is tearing Greece apart, and threatens to spread across Europe, can be found in the deeply flawed European monetary system. There must be a wholesale redesign of the EU economic structure. This and not the destruction of the Greek economy is the answer to the crisis.

Will the new Greek government be offered further forgiveness of its foreign debts, a moratorium on further cuts in the social wage and an opportunity to stimulate the economy with a range of infrastructure projects financed by European funds? Greece and Southern Europe need something closer to a Marshall Plan than more austerity, but the German neoliberal government and its northern partners refuse to acknowledge this. Instead, they will continue half-measures and moralistic lessons that have resulted in the destruction of the Greek economy and society, and which have grown to present a threat to EU as a whole.

The revival of the parliamentary left in France, Italy and Greece, plus the sorely needed, from the point of view of Greece and Europe, re-election of President Obama in the U.S., bring some hope for a developmental turn against the irrationality of austerity in the European crisis and democratic reforms in the European Union. The concept of a unified Europe has been shaken to the core. If the Greek election serves as a wake up call and has promoted a recognition of a necessary change of course, it will be a real democratic win for the people of Europe, and beyond.

I am on the road from Gdansk. It’s been an intense few days. Last Tuesday, I joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for a bit. By Wednesday, I was in the Gdansk shipyards, where Solidarity confronted the Party State in 1980, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. I was interviewed for the Solidarity Video Archive, giving my account of the work I did with Solidarity and my understanding of the great labor movement. Immediately after which, I was taken to Gdansk University, where I gave my talk, this year’s Solidarity Lecture, “Reinventing Democratic Culture.” It opened the All About Freedom Festival. Over the weekend, I visited my family in Paris, and now I am flying over the Atlantic on my delayed flight to Newark, hoping I will get back to New York in time to teach my 4:00 class, The Politics of Everyday Life. It has been a packed week.

Unpacking my thoughts is a challenge. A new social movement is developing in the U.S., with potentially great impact. In Poland, a new generation is confronting the Solidarity legacy, trying to appreciate the accomplishments, while also needing to address new problems. Yesterday’s elections in France and especially in Poland were important. Yet, just as important for what was not on the ballot as for what was. Everywhere, there seems to be a political – society agitation and disconnect, with the politics of small things potentially contributing to a necessary reinvention of democratic culture.

I have many thoughts and will need more time to put them into a clear perspective. Here, just a start. I have a sense that things are connected: not falling apart, rather, coming together.

In the U.S., the central ideal of equality has been compromised in the last thirty years. From being a country with more equal distribution of income, property, education and respect, than in other places, which Tocqueville took to be definitive of the American democratic condition long ago, it has become a country of gross and increasing inequalities. With dramatic flair, the Occupy Wall Street movement is making the issue visible, resetting the terms of public debate, from the conservative issue of taxes and debt to the more progressive problems of unemployment and gross inequality. There have been, of course, many individuals and groups who have been trying to bring these issues forward, from the respected Nobel Prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to labor unions – transit workers, public employees, the AFL-CIO. It is intriguing that a relatively small but dramatically inventive social movement has focused the issue. Its political potential points to the importance of imaginative gestures in getting media attention and changing public debate, very similar in this regard to the Tea Party.

In Poland, Solidarity is gone and forgotten, but also constantly present. The two major parties emerged from Solidarity. The leaders have in common experience in the opposition to the Communist regime. The major parties are to the right of center, one based on patriotism, identification with Catholicism and nation and skepticism about Europe, PiS, Law and Justice. The other party is the pro-Europe, pro-business and pro-market PO, Civic Platform. The election presented a clear 19^th century choice, between Conservatives and Liberals. Only minor parties presented 20^th century social democratic alternatives.

My hosts, and the professors, students and the members of the general public in my audience repeatedly expressed dismay about their choices. It’s not that they felt that there were no differences between the parties. It’s that the differences didn’t seem to address the problems of our times.

Following my talk, during the question and answer period, a young woman expressed the problematic situation. She saw that there was a serious debate between the parties, but she couldn’t understand how the debate included her. She may have been put off by the ultra nationalism of one party and the market fundamentalism of the other, but neither party addressed her and her peers concerns. She didn’t know what to do.

I, of course, told her that I wouldn’t advise her on voting (which she actually seemed to be asking for), other than to make the general statement that I am a strong believer of choosing the bad over the worse, with the proviso that I wouldn’t choose between two competing faces of totalitarianism (two Nazi Parties, I think I said). But then I returned to the theme of my talk, linking the politics of small things to the challenge of reinventing political culture. The Solidarity movement revealed the power of the politics of small things.

I highlighted my basic theoretical position as it emerged from my observations of Solidarity.

When people meet and speak in each other’s presence, and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It is realized in the concerted action. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, in the politics of small things, there is the power of constituting alternatives to the existing order of things. When this power involves the meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face, it is democratic. As Arendt has theorized, such meeting, talk and action constitute political power as the opposite of coercion. As Goffman investigated, this power is constituted in the expressive life of the involved people. Power by acting together, expressively created, is a power that has been highly consequential.

My talk was about how I saw this in the 1980s, specifically when I was last in Gdansk to observe the trial of three Solidarity leaders, Bogdan Lis, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk and Adam Michnik. I used my reflections on that experience to show how such power is playing a key role in the politics in the U.S. and the Middle East today, drawing upon analysis that is systematically developed in Reinventing Political Culture.

The irony was that this applies to Poland now as well, as the population and the political leadership seem to have lost sight of what was accomplished in the Solidarity Movement. I tried to answer the Polish student’s question, and quite a few others developing this point. Actually existing democracies, such as Poland and the United States, need recurrent social movements to keep them alive. As the conflicts in Polish politics is being played out by people who were involved in the struggles of those times, the principles of those struggles provide untapped resources for those who are critical, or feel disaffected from the present political scene.

During my weekend in Paris, I thought of this as well, as I talked about the primary elections in the Socialist Party and the upcoming general elections. Politics seems inadequate, as the problems the democracies of Europe face seem quite profound. The popular movements and disruptions in Spain, Greece and England were not particularly creative, as Solidarity was, but they are a clear expression of a fundamental problem, not only economic but also political.

And in this light, from a distance, I read with appreciation Ermira Danaj’s contribution to Deliberately Considered. Here, in a most dramatic way, we see concerted action making democracy possible in a pretty extreme circumstance.

In Gdansk, I also took part in a public discussion of a brilliant documentary film, Cyril Tuschi’s Khodorkovsky. It is an excellent work. The film portrays the kind of neo-Soviet state with a democratic opposition that Russian has become. It also presents a great study of an amazing character, the richest man in Russia, turned into a prisoner, turned into a dissident, locked in battle with an equally impressive character, Vladimir Putin. The power of small gestures was remarkably revealed in the film. This power of gestures in the new media age is quite important.

Final note: the power of mediated gesture is what I saw on the first day of this intense week, in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is in the creative gesture that the alternative to the order of things and mindless disorder is to be found. More about this in my next post. I will try to work on it after I teach in a few hours and after a good night’s sleep.

Brazil is fast setting the pace for both developed and developing nations by declaring itself the world’s first “Fair Trade” nation, an announcement that comes on the heels of the election of its first woman president. Scholars and advocates have taken note. But while Dilma Rousseff’s election has been reported, the Fair Trade story has gone unnoticed in the mainstream Western media.

On November 17, President Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, whose tenure ends at the end of this year, signed a decree formally establishing a National System of Fair Trade. At the same time, he initiated a national business incubator network to encourage grassroots economic development. The actions continue the evolution begun in 2004 with the establishment within the Ministry of Work and Employment of the National Secretary of Solidarity Economics to liaise with federal government bureaus, local municipalities, and civil society organizations in developing policies and programs that foster economic and political equity and social inclusion in Brazil.

What is “Fair Trade?”

To better understand this event, one must distinguish between the concepts of Fair Trade and solidarity economics. Fair Trade is more commonly known to American consumers and entails a specific set of exchange practices. These include: pricing floors, living wages, long-term financing guarantees and purchasing agreements, profit sharing, community reinvestment, and the like, the costs of which account for the extra two bits or so one pays at the local coffeehouse for an “ethically sourced” cup of cappuccino.

Fair Trade is sometimes called alternative trade because it seeks to circumvent prevailing market transactions, especially those espoused under neo-liberalism and the process of globalization. For reformers like Joseph Stiglitz, Fair Trade is a viable model for international development in that it advances “trade not aid” as the solution to growing global inequality. Yet Fair Trade has also been criticized as a new form of dependency, tying the livelihoods of Third World producers to the largesse of privileged consumers in the First World.

Solidarity economics encompasses much broader ideas of cooperative exchange. These include: unpaid labor and household provisioning exchanges, bartering systems, production and purchasing collectives, local currencies, gift economies, “freecycling,” and regional reciprocity coalitions. Radical interpretations of solidarity economics foresee the end of capitalist economics and politics whereas more moderate views hope to simply negotiate a “humanizing” intervention within the existing market system.

According to a 2006 report by the ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), efforts to promote solidarity economics in Brazil actually date back to the 1970s. These initiatives occurred under the auspices of several mostly faith-based international NGOs that organized rural workers into collectives to make and export handicrafts for sale to an emerging cadre of “conscientious” consumers, initially in Europe and now throughout North America and beyond. These efforts continue today through the government-sponsored Brazil Handicraft Program and associated social entrepreneurs such as EcoArts and Brazilianas Handicraft.

By contrast, Brazilian Fair Trade seeks to develop an internal market for domestically produced goods and services. In this regard it’s a potential move toward autarky and ultimately independence from the forces of free-market globalization. (Though at this point the investment is minimal in relation to Brazil’s GDP.) The system of university-based incubators, harnessing the intellectual capital of researchers and students and marrying it to popular local knowledge, has the makings of a cultural revolution presumably without the severe dislocation (not to mention the brutality) of the Maoist “sent down” program.

Writing in The Nation, Kenneth Rapoza characterizes the election of Rousseff, Lula’s handpicked successor, as a refutation of the Washington Consensus that presribes privatization and so-called open markets as the pather to success for lesser-developed countries. Fair Trade Brazil marks yet another step down a road less traveled.