{"id":1425,"date":"2025-09-01T15:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antithesi.gr\/?page_id=1425"},"modified":"2025-09-01T15:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:03:14","slug":"derailment-of-struggle-greeces-railway-crisis-and-the-rise-of-ethnopopulism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/antithesi.gr\/?page_id=1425","title":{"rendered":"Derailment of Struggle: Greece\u2019s Railway Crisis and the Rise of Ethnopopulism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dismal state of Greece\u2019s railways and the decline of protests against it<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Friends of the uprooted pavements<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three months after the mass demonstrations across the country\u2014on the second anniversary of the horrific deaths of 57 passengers on Intercity 62 bound for Thessaloniki\u2014we find ourselves in a new and different socio-political situation.[1]<\/a> The limited participation in the general strike on 9 April \u2014despite the high expectations on many sides\u2014suggests that the demonstrations in January and February did not mark the beginning of a new cycle of class struggles. The vast majority has withdrawn from the streets, with the notable exception of a few ongoing struggles, such as the teachers\u2019 struggle against evaluation.<\/p>\n

Not coincidentally, a portion of social protest has been channelled into a rise in the polling strength of ethno-populist forces such as Plefsi Eleftherias (which now seems poised to become the country\u2019s second-strongest party) and Hellenic Solution. The consolidation of a coherent governmental pseudo-alternative\u2014whether of a centre-left or ethno-populist\/post-fascist variety\u2014remains far from reality. As a result, social discontent persists undiminished, while political incorporation is stunted<\/em>. Beyond the dangers inherent in these conditions, they also open a path toward forging a genuine alternative: the formation of a proletarian movement against capitalist domination<\/em>. The analysis of the current sociopolitical situation and the trajectory up to this point is undertaken from this perspective, and what follows is formulated with that aim in mind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ethno-populism: a trajectory of ascent<\/strong><\/p>\n

The (not merely) polling surge of Course of Freedom and Greek Solution in the present conjuncture stems from two intertwined factors: the bolstering of ethno-populist ideology and practice by inflated sources of social reaction<\/em>, and the parties\u2019 absorption of a sizeable share of current social discontent. Aspects of this phenomenon\u2014some of them striking\u2014are discussed below.<\/p>\n

The collapse of the left\/right divide<\/em> has become a cornerstone of politics and ideology in advanced-capitalist countries, especially as regards the content and claims of governance. In Europe the left\u2013right distinction once corresponded, first, to the representation within the state of the working class versus the capitalist class and, second, to the incorporation of the former into capitalist political institutions. That era marked the politicization and nationalization of the \u201csocial question\u201d. From the 1970s onward, the deep crisis of capitalist (re)production gradually eroded that distinction: policies pursued by left- and right-wing governments converged, both in cutting and restructuring the welfare state and in deregulating labour relations. Their shared aim was to raise the rate of exploitation as a counter-tendency to the crisis of over-accumulation. The historical process labeled neoliberalism<\/em> was not a linear decline of capitalist production. There were medium-term growth phases\u2014e.g., in Greece from the mid-1990s to 2008\u2014during which the individualization of the working class was entrenched. Ordoliberals had called this de-proletarianization<\/em>: workers internalizing bourgeois values, no longer viewing themselves as exploited proletarians but as people \u201cmoving up\u201d to become entrepreneurs of the self or self-determined \u201chuman capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

When subsequent recessionary waves devalued capital and labour-power, the recomposition of the proletariat as a historical subject became far more difficult. The resulting crisis of legitimacy and representation led, on the one hand to stronger populist forces opposed to the established political \u201corder,\u201d and, on the other, to the rise of a corresponding cross-class social subject\u2014visible in many movements that have erupted, especially after the 2008 Great Recession (Arab Spring, Movements of the Squares, Yellow Vests, etc.). In most of these movements, a minority proletarian, anti-capitalist current actively sought\u2014ultimately without success\u2014to break with populism and national identity.<\/p>\n

Whatever distinctions are drawn between left- and right-wing populism\u2014the people<\/em> as a \u201csubject of emancipation\u201d for the former and as a national totality for the latter; the former\u2019s attempt to unite the people by integrating partial struggles (workers\u2019, feminist, ecological, etc.) versus the latter\u2019s reliance on abstract constructs, and so forth\u2014both ultimately converge on invoking the (equally abstract) \u201ccommon man\u201d and \u201cthe people\u201d against \u201cthe elites,\u201d thereby obscuring the class relations of exploitation and domination beneath these distorted categories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conflict between the proletariat and capital disappears and is replaced by the conflict between the people and the elites. The concept of \u2018the people\u2019, however, is not merely cross-class; it inevitably refers to the national political community, excluding migrants and those who may potentially be expelled as \u2018anti-national elements\u2019. The same function is served by the homogenizing figure of the \u2018common man.\u2019 On the other hand, the concept of the elites is not defined in class terms or based on the capitalist relations of production but in moral terms: it refers to \u2018corrupt,\u2019 \u2018greedy,\u2019 \u2018malicious\u2019 sharks and schemers who parasitize on \u2018national wealth\u2019 and \u2018popular prosperity\u2019 aiming to control both the state and the people. For this reason the elites are often equated with \u2018supranational capital,\u2019 banks, large multinational technology and pharmaceutical companies (\u2018big pharma\u2019 and \u2018big tech\u2019), and so on \u2013foreign powers conspiring against the nation in collaboration with their local agents. [\u2026] Obviously, based on such a moralistic definition, a portion of the national capital can, of course, be absolved as \u2018productive\u2019 and \u2018pro-people\u2019 thereby excluded from the corrupt elites. [\u2026] At the same time, social conflict is shifted from a challenge to class power relations and the national political community itself, aiming at revolutionary overthrow and transformation, toward the elimination of parasites belonging to the \u2018elites\u2019 \u2013 a process that may be later extended to those declared \u2018enemies of the people\/the nation\u2019\u201d.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Left-wing populism refuses to recognise the capitalist state as a state<\/em><\/strong>\u2014that is, as the political form intrinsic to the expanded reproduction of the national<\/strong> social capital. Instead it explicitly or implicitly insists on the state\u2019s \u201cneutrality,\u201d treating it as an instrument capable of satisfying the demands of the particular struggles it is called upon to unify and represent. Denouncing the elites\u2019 corruption or greed flows from capitalist right itself, a system of rules that is permanently self-improving and self-reforming<\/em>. It is in this context that we must view the demand for the restoration of lost morality through \u201cgood governance,\u201d the demand for a purified state that will serve the \u201cgeneral interest\u201d of the national \u201ccommunity.\u201d It is no coincidence that left-wing populists advocate policies of protectionism for the national economy and domestic industry, just like the far right, often ending up in racist narratives about \u201cprotecting jobs\u201d from immigrants (Wagenknecht, Five Star Movement, etc.). This political line ratifies neoliberal management of exploitation, with the \u201cdifference\u201d that it attributes the generalized insecurity and the (relative or absolute) impoverishment of the working class not to a higher rate of exploitation but to the conspiracy of certain \u201cshadowy centres\u201d or to an \u201cexternal threat,\u201d thereby fostering intra-class divisions or racism against migrants. Thus the domestic working class is bound even more tightly to the chariot of national capital, becoming its ideological and practical<\/em> follower<\/em>. The crisis of legitimacy and political representation is transformed into a delusive and reactionary \u201canti-systemism,\u201d and the very contestation of the capitalist order is thrown into crisis.<\/p>\n

Corruption, lack of transparency, cover-ups: denunciation and opposition<\/em><\/p>\n

The anti-corruption discourse is not the privilege of left- or far-right populists. It served as the main slogan of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to legitimize and justify shock policies worldwide\u2014from the former \u201csocialist\u201d countries to African states subjected to Structural Adjustment Programs. Ordoliberal theorists (and fascists such as Carl Schmitt) argue that in mass democracy the impartiality of market and competition rules is violated by powerful private interests (lobbies, cartels, union-mafias, etc.), causing the rule of law to collapse and to be \u201cre-feudalised.\u201d Hence, they say, the state must be strengthened\u2014\u201cbuilt like a fortress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adam Smith stressed that state power is the precondition of commercial society: without \u201cthe power of the commonwealth\u201d, that is, the state, \u201ccommercial society will descend into bloodshed and disorder\u201d.[3]<\/a> In one of his lectures he notes that: \u201c[t]he first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice\u201d and \u201cthis produces what we call police\u201d.[4]<\/a> Carl Schmitt similarly insisted that: \u201cthere is no legal norm that can be applied to chaos. Order has to be established for the legal norms to be effective\u201d.[5]<\/a> Werner Bonefeld succinctly condenses Schmitt\u2019s position: when society is no longer governed by the rule of law, \u201cgovernment by the force of law-making violence becomes necessary to restore<\/strong> the liberal veracity of the rule of law<\/strong>\u201d.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Appeals to restore the rule of law against the \u201cmafia-state\u201d are, in essence, calls to reinforce police and juridical power and violence. It is no accident that all wings of capital \u2013paleoliberals, neoliberals, left and right populists, even outright fascists\u2014concur on this point. The interwar Romanian case is telling: the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael<\/em>, led by Corneliu Codreanu, founded one of the Balkans\u2019 most brutal fascist dictatorships precisely on the \u201cstruggle\u201d against corruption, exploiting outrage over a scandal involving the purchase of defective weapons by \u0160koda to directly dispense \u201cextra-legal justice.\u201d In times of national crisis, they argued, corruption must be purged by any means by the forces of \u201cnational salvation\u201d. The legal system itself must be dismantled in order for a \u201chigher\u201d, national form of justice to prevail.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

The statements of Traian Br\u0103ileanu, a fascist sociology professor and supporter of the Legion of Archangel Michael<\/em>, resonate with today\u2019s accusatory voices from the camp of left populists: \u201cThe problem becomes more complicated when the normal flow of money into the State treasury is stopped by the disorganization of the State apparatus, when \u201ccorruption\u201d makes it impossible for the money to be collected by the State, and the money collected is used to satisfy the luxury needs of a decadent and degenerate political class<\/em>\u201d.[8]<\/a> The economic and social consequences of the global financial crisis of the 1930s were interpreted as the result of the actions of individuals, while the structural and systemic forces at work in the global economy were reduced to subjective actions or individual \u201cmoral choices.\u201d The parallels are striking.<\/p>\n

Such distortion also characterizes the dominant narrative of cover-up, illicit cargo and mafia networks in the Tempi train collision. Mafia gangs dealing with state officials and the trafficking of \u201cillegal\u201d goods are self-evident facts, yet truth is a matter of understanding<\/em>, not revelation<\/strong>. Focusing on a moment of cover-up or corruption rather than on the economic, social, and ideological conditions that make it possible obscures and undermines the development of a movement that would target the real power of capital. It covers up<\/em> the structural causes<\/em> of the train crash, the recent extreme deterioration of safety conditions in rail transport, and the widespread devaluation of labour power\u2014the very lives of the working class\u2014in Greece and worldwide. These structural causes express the logic <\/em>of capital: its indifference to the \u201cgrowth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body<\/em>\u201d of proletarians. The only thing that matters to capital is its \u201cblind unrestrainable passion<\/em>\u201d, its \u201cwere-wolf hunger<\/em>\u201d for surplus labour.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

The extreme deterioration of rail transport and the rise in \u201caccidents\u201d in Greece and beyond stem from the reasons analyzed in the following section. The deeper capitalist logic forming the basis for this structural deterioration is identifiable. The way in which capitalist relations of production developed in post-war Greece, as well as the structure of capitalist production and transportation that specifically shaped this basis, are tangibly and empirically evident.<\/p>\n

\n

Rail transport: a history of constant neglect and decline<\/strong><\/p>\n

The role of the state in the development of railways in post-war Europe<\/em><\/p>\n

After World War II, most European networks came under state ownership and control. This was due to the enormous costs of management, maintenance and development of the infrastructure, which made their operation unprofitable for private capital. However, their maintenance and development were of strategic importance for industrial development, and local communities demanded that non-profitable lines be kept in service. The nationalization of the railways was linked to the dominant model of reproduction of the total social capital at that time. In the 1950s-1980s, the dominant model was state-led growth. The railways remained a state monopoly; low uniform fares, \u201cunprofitable\u201d itineraries, and thousands of relatively well-paid jobs were part of the social wage<\/em>, i.e., the unremunerated income of the working class, financed by the state through taxation and borrowing. At the same time, the development of the railway network reduced the transportation costs for large industrial enterprises and was a key aspect of the industrial policy adopted in France, Germany, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The development and maintenance of railway networks belong to those sections of social production that \u201care absolutely indispensable to private capital as a whole, but are poorly matched to the imperative of profitability because of their physical characteristics [\u2026] The investments for their construction generally implies an extremely long turnover time [\u2026]. In the two cases just mentioned \u2013 state industries destined for profitability on one side, state industries bound to non-profitable managing on the other \u2013 the passage of the enterprise under state control extracts it from market competition, hence from the equalization of the rate of profit. If this enterprise is characterized by weak profitability, as is often the case in practice, this leads to an increase in the average rate of profit within the private sector\u201d.[10]<\/a> Thus, the role of the state is crucial in such sectors, to the extent that they cannot be understood as purely profit-making sectors, completely separate from the state.<\/p>\n

Unlike in Western and Northern Europe, where railways retained a central place, the development of transport in Greece focused almost exclusively on the road network. This difference is not merely technical in nature, but reflects deeper political and economic choices related to the mode of reproduction of national capital and the regulation of the indirect wage. Post-war capital development in Greece was based on low wages and not<\/strong> on investment in fixed and human capital. Corporate profitability increased, but without a corresponding increase in productivity. This is also reflected in the sectors that experienced the strongest growth: the construction sector grew rapidly due to urban expansion and the antiparoch\u00ed<\/em> property-exchange system, public works (starting with Marshall Plan funding) and the development of tourism. Industrial development was mainly limited to the processing of agricultural products (food and beverages), textiles, and the chemical industry (petroleum and fertilizers). In this context, state investment aimed at developing infrastructure for heavy industry, increasing labor productivity, and a more effective reproduction of skilled labour power through the development of an indirect\/social wage was very limited in post-war Greece.<\/p>\n

For this reason, investment in the road network in post-war Greece was overwhelmingly greater than investment in rail transport. Despite the fact that Greece has no car industry, 80-90% of government spending on transport between 1950 and 2000 was directed towards the development of the road network, compared with 60% in Europe. The corresponding figures for railway development were 10-20%, compared with 40-45% in Europe.[11]<\/a> The development of the road network boosted construction, tourism, and commerce, i.e., sectors geared toward short-term profitability. On the other hand, the development of the rail network, which requires long-term planning and is linked to the development of heavy industry, never materialized.[12]<\/a> Tellingly, the railways in Greece have never formed a genuine network<\/em> but rather an axis<\/em> that even before the cut-backs of recent decades, served barely half the country.<\/p>\n

Neoliberal era<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the 1980s the neoliberal doctrine of fiscal discipline and \u201cderegulation\u201d has come to dominate railway policy even in advanced industrial countries. In the EU it was codified in the \u201cRailway Packages\u201d: the very first package (Directive 2001\/14\/EC) required an accounting\u2014and, where politically feasible, an institutional\u2014separation between infrastructure and operations, thereby opening the door to private capital. The basic idea was that the state would remain the manager (and funder) of the loss-making network, while the\u2014potentially profitable\u2014operation of transport services would be handed to private hands.<\/p>\n

In the United Kingdom, vividly depicted in Ken Loach\u2019s film The Navigators<\/em>, the 1996 privatisation was comprehensive and even included the infrastructure and the network. A series of accidents (Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield etc.) that killed almost one hundred people and injured many more exposed the massive maintenance gaps under the private firm Railtrack and led to its re-nationalisation via the creation of the publicly owned company Network Rail. However, operations remain in private hands \u2013dozens of companies that run different parts of the service.<\/p>\n

The already underdeveloped and technologically backward Greek railways have been pushed towards outright dismantlement in the period from the 1980s to the present. In the early 1980s OSE still possessed an extensive network (about 3,300 km, though 70 per cent was metre-gauge rather than the modern 1,435 mm standard gauge) and still carried a not insignificant share of passenger and freight traffic. After Greece joined the EEC (1981) a funding package was activated that went first and foremost into the rapid expansion of the road network. Railways were frozen: the network remained essentially non-electrified, truck transport gained ground, and the metre-gauge Peloponnese system survived mainly for political reasons.<\/p>\n

Between 1991 and 1994 the railways lost 50 per cent of their freight volume (ores, fertilisers, fuels), leading to a precipitous fall in revenues.[13]<\/a> At the end of that period the European Commission in 1994 forbade further EU funding for development projects unless a competitive tender was held, citing non-transparent and overpriced contracts. Network development works were therefore transferred from OSE to a new \u201cuncorrupt\u201d organisation, ERGOSE. The anti-corruption rhetoric\u2014promoted, as noted, by neoliberals and populists alike<\/strong>\u2014became a key ideological tool for pushing competitive tendering in public works aimed at cost minimisation<\/strong>. It is no coincidence that whenever problems arise in state-supervised services, the media launch crusades against corruption and lack of \u201ctransparency\u201d. In the case of British railways, the outsourcing of maintenance work by Railtrack to subcontractors aimed at minimizing costs was the main cause of the poor state of the network and the accidents.<\/p>\n

The notorious contract 717, signed in 2014 to install signaling and remote traffic control from the Acharnes Control Centre to Thessaloniki, was supposed to be finished in two years but was never completed. Beyond the problems inherent in a cost-minimization logic, the lowest-bid system creates organizational and technical friction because of competition among the companies undertaking the projects at different points of time. In the case of contract 717, the failure to complete the project was largely due to competition between Bombardier, which had installed the earlier telemetry systems, and Aktor and Alstom who won the tender for 717.<\/p>\n

Total investment in railway development between 1995 and 2021 amounted to \u20ac12.6 billion, compared with \u20ac41.1 billion in the road network, a ratio of less than 1 to 3. This resulted in a reduction of the network by 389 kilometers and the closure of 97 stations during the same period. By contrast, the motorway network increased by 1,724 kilometers.[14]<\/a> Thus, in the period 1990 to 2022 for which data are available, the share of railways in freight transport fell from 2.5% to 2.3%, while the corresponding share for passenger transport fell from 3% to 0.9%.[15]<\/a> Predictably, railway revenues shrank, so rail operations generated heavy annual losses. At the same time, the national share of EU co-funding for network projects was not paid from the state budget; successive governments forced OSE to finance it through bank loans. Finally, the subsidies owed by the state for loss-making \u201cpublic-service obligation\u201d routes were in practice never paid. The combination of these three factors produced vast yearly losses: in 2002\u201306 they averaged \u20ac 350 million per year. The operation of the railway should have generated significant profits, instead of the losses of \u20ac25 million per year that it ultimately incurred, to cover investment costs. The non-payment of state subsidies for \u201cpublic-service obligation\u201d routes further worsened the situation, resulting in the accumulation of interest-bearing debt, which accounted for the largest part of recorded losses. In 2004, of roughly \u20ac 245 million in losses, about \u20ac 170 million were due to borrowing and infrastructure costs, \u20ac 50 million to unpaid subsidies, and only \u20ac 25 million to operating deficits.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n

The situation described above resulted in the railway debt rising to \u20ac10.7 billion in 2010, almost 3-4% of the GDP. On this basis, under Memorandum Law 3891\/2010, OSE was split into four independent companies: OSE, which retained responsibility for infrastructure management and maintenance; GAIA OSE, which manages the railways’ real estate and rolling stock, TRAINOSE, which provided transport services, and ERGOSE, which managed network expansion projects. Until then, ERGOSE, GAIA OSE, and TRAINOSE were subsidiaries of OSE.<\/p>\n

In 2010\u2014just before the break-up and the privatisation of transport and rolling-stock maintenance\u2014the annual wage bill was \u20ac 400 million. One main aim of the carve-up and privatisation was to cut this cost, chiefly by slashing permanent staff by two-thirds: from about 6,000 workers in 2008 to fewer than 2,000 in 2023, of whom 1,191 work for Hellenic Train (which replaced TRAINOSE after its privatization) and a mere 722 for OSE. Even in 2008 staff per kilometre of network was well below the EU average (3.9 versus 5), so the current understaffing is extreme. Reductions came via forced retirements and transfers, in line with the memoranda policies. Today OSE employs 554 permanent staff and 632 contract workers; Hellenic Train has roughly 1,100 staff. Permanent OSE workers fill only 26 per cent of established posts, while critical positions (stationmasters, points operators) are now held by contract workers.<\/p>\n

It is clear that the Greek state\u2019s strategy was to reduce the cost of rail transport for national capital by shifting it onto the workforce and passengers\u2014in short, onto the working class\u2014a strategy that has cost dozens of workers and travellers their lives. The privatization of TRAINOSE, sold to Ferrovie dello Stato for \u20ac 45 million in 2017 under SYRIZA (a move in the agenda of every government since 2007), was a key phase in this strategy. Another was the write-off of \u20ac 10.4 billion in OSE\u2019s non-performing loans on 16 January 2023, six weeks before the state\/capitalist murders at Tempi. By shrinking the network and workforce, the state aimed both to cap OSE\u2019s losses and to make the already privatized transport service \u2013now Hellenic Train\u2013 profitable.<\/p>\n

Hellenic Train\u2019s viability was propped up with a \u20ac 50 million annual subsidy for \u201cpublic service obligation\u201d lines \u2013 now actually paid, unlike before. Yet profits were recorded only in 2019 and 2021, and were barely \u20ac 1.5 million. Cumulative losses from 2017 to 2023 are about \u20ac 85 million, \u20ac 65 million of them in 2023 alone. OSE\u2019s total losses in the same span reach roughly \u20ac 2.5 billion, the largest in 2017 when \u20ac 692 million owed by TRAINOSE were written off as a condition of the sale. Added to this is a dispute between OSE and Hellenic Train (as of February 2025) over \u20ac 110.6 million in infrastructure-access charges that the latter contests.<\/p>\n

Privatization has therefore solved none of the railways\u2019 viability problems; it has deepened their devaluation and degradation through neglected infrastructure, under-functioning safety systems (remote traffic control, remote operation, signalling) and a depleted workforce. Breakdowns and malfunctions are constant, and new deadly incidents remain a real possibility<\/strong>. The financial results show that shrinking the network, payroll and staffing, and shifting some operating costs onto passengers, has not overcome the severe crisis of Greek railways. <\/strong>It is one more facet of the ongoing crisis in the reproduction of national social capital, despite the political class\u2019s assurances to the contrary. As shown earlier, the roots of the railways crisis lie in Greece\u2019s production structure, which makes rail transport loss-making. Once again the working class has been\u2014and is being\u2014asked to pay for the losses of the partially privatised railways, with money and with blood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The scandal par excellence: the withdrawal of people from the streets<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00abThe media need scandal [\u2026] Real scandal consists in the rejection and sabotage of the spectacle\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n

Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Many who took part in the demonstrations fell into the trap the government itself had set from the start as part of its communications management<\/strong> of the events\u2014a field in which it has shown a special talent for distraction and distortion. The reasons for the ebb of the mobilizations and for people\u2019s withdrawal from the streets are analyzed below.<\/p>\n

The withdrawal of people from the streets after the strike demonstration on February 28 is directly linked to the prevalence of the nationalist line. Moreover, such an ethnopopulist unification of the mass, made up of competing individuals and interest groups, is superficial and unstable. It is a stop-gap management of weak political incorporation as well as an expression of the absence of a real community of interests and goals. Competition between individuals and differences between individual groups remain unbridgeable. Any temporary unification is achieved only in the separated political sphere, where protest movements give way to parties that will represent them in parliament and, more broadly, in state institutions. The anger absorbed by a network of material and ideological mediations is projected onto the institutional sphere, preventing it from turning into real class conflict.<\/p>\n

A decisive part was played by the very limited reach of proletarian critique compared with the clash\u2014fought in purely spectacular terms\u2014that unfolded in the capitalist public sphere of traditional media and social media, an arena where \u201cexperts,\u201d influencers, political figures and celebrity journalists battled it out. In this arena, the debate is rigged from the outset and class conflict has been repressed, transformed into a confrontation without content between \u201cstars\u201d of the spectacle that breeds passivity. The terms of the dialogue are set in advance: denunciation of individuals, conspiracy theories, and penal populism obscure the reality of capitalist relations of exploitation by deploying pseudo-adversaries within the political spectacle, while those same adversaries emerge victorious as mouthpieces of \u201creason\u201d and \u201ctruth.\u201d<\/p>\n

This spectacular horizon has been systematically promoted by the left. Even as a stooge<\/em> of the current media game, all it confirms is its normality, its legitimacy as the only game \u201cin town\u201d. This is very much the case within the trade union movement. The logic of delegating action to celebrity unionists and the long-standing cultivation of wheeling and dealing<\/em> have reinforced the view that struggles are generally waged by representatives. The rest of the workers remain passive in the background of media shots, reduced to the role of extras. Thus, the prospect of autonomous class organization is undermined from the outset, as workers wait for the \u201cmilitants\u201d to solve their problems. The fighting spirit is exhausted in the so-called \u201cbig days\u201d that serve as pressure valves and remain detached from everyday experience and conflicts with superiors and their lackeys, for the benefit of a slice of denunciatory mediation.<\/p>\n

The result is that demonstrations, rather than serving as an opportunity for different parts of the class to meet and as a springboard for the formation of a proletarian community of struggle, are reduced to a performance and theatrical act that primarily demands visibility in the media to exercise \u201cpressure on the government.\u201d The struggle is limited to the expression of protest within the capitalist public sphere, and the public manifestation of mourning, anger, and solidarity stays trapped in symbolism. This is exactly the role of the agent-provocateur conspiracy theories\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 : <\/strong>the containment of the demonstrations into a harmless and predictable theatrical ritual that predetermines the marginalization of the most radical practices<\/strong> and parts of the participants; into the harmless and neutered ritualistic function of trade union institutions (with the exception of base unions and assemblies \u2013 although these also often limit themselves to forms of delegation and sectoral bargaining).<\/p>\n

This situation is the product both of the long process by which class struggles have been absorbed into institutions and of the atomization of proletarians \u2013sharpened in recent decades by the restructuring of capitalist production\u2013 and of changes in everyday life and culture, themselves outcomes of past struggles. A conviction has taken root that \u201cstruggle doesn\u2019t work.\u201d How could it, when it never moves beyond a harmless ritual? Thus the energy and anger are channeled toward electoral options such as Plefsi Eleftherias or Hellenic Solution \u2013 though that \u201cre-integration\u201d mechanism is now faltering despite the mass media\u2019s \u201cvaliant\u201d efforts. The crisis of representation, the political system\u2019s legitimacy deficit and the lack of a coherent governmental alternative can be seen in the failed attempts at reintegration of every stripe, such as initiatives (usually of the Marxist-Leninist type) by groups formed around \u201canti-Mitsotakism\u201d and the creation of popular fronts.<\/p>\n

Both poles of the spectacle surrounding the capitalist murder at Tempi are advocating the same ritual form: national mourning<\/strong> demands that the guilty be punished by justice.<\/strong> The cleansing of the institutions demanded by the anti-government pole is a sham, since it does not question the very form of the ritual, but only its content\u2014as if the two could be separated. The smoke of national mourning <\/strong>and the mirage of justice <\/strong>smothered the proletarian horizon. In place of a theoretical and practical critique of capital and the state came moralism and ethno-populist denunciation.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The deadly train collision at Tempi laid bare, in the most painful way, capital\u2019s structural devaluation of proletarian life, while the mass demonstrations of January and February showed the possibility of a social explosion able to challenge capitalist domination. Yet the retreat of those mobilizations and the absorption of anger by ethno-populist narratives reveal the absence of a critique\u2014both theoretical and practical\u2014that would break beyond the spectacular frame of protest and the moralism of \u201ccatharsis.\u201d The formation of a proletarian tendency requires the reactivation of class self-organization in workplaces and everyday life, the rejection of national and populist narratives and the critique of the capitalist relations of exploitation per se. Only through the development of a radical proletarian community of struggle can anger be transformed into a force of subversion, which will target not only the disorienting and dangerous narrative of the \u201cfight against corruption\u201d, but the very logic of profit that sacrifices lives on the altar of capitalist accumulation.<\/p>\n

2 June 2025<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> An account of the reasons for the unprecedented size of the winter protests can be found in the leaflet we published and distributed at the strike demonstration on February 28, entitled \u201cProletarian consciousness against ethno-populist resentment\u201d. The text is available online at: https:\/\/antithesi.gr\/?page_id=1368<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Antithesi, \u201cThe rise of post-fascism\u201d, available at https:\/\/antithesi.gr\/?p=1346<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments<\/em>, Cambridge University Press, 2004 (1759), p. 403.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Adam Smith, Lectures on jurisprudence<\/em>, Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 5.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie <\/em>(Berlin 1990), p. 20. <\/em>All the previous three references are drawn from W. Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy<\/em>, Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 179.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., p. 179 (our emphasis).<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Cosmin Cercel’s article, \u201cDarker Legacies Of Anti-corruption: Fascist Criticisms of the Law in Inter-war Romania,\u201d International Journal of Law in Context<\/em> vol. 20, 2024, pp. 529-548, provides a detailed and extremely interesting account of these events.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Quoted in Cosmin Cercel, op. cit.<\/em><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> K. Marx, Capital <\/em>vol. 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953, pp. 264-5.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Raffaele Sciortino and Robert Ferro, \u201cProlegomena on \u2018the system of states\u2019\u201d, available online at: https:\/\/endnotes.org.uk\/posts\/robert-ferro-raffaele-sciortino-prolegomena-on-the-system-of-states<\/a><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Sources: International Transport Forum, reports of the Greek Ministry of Public Works. European countries subsidized the development of road networks with huge amounts of money, supporting the European automotive industry.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> A similar pattern appeared in Italy, where the South\u2019s rail network lagged far behind the North\u2019s industrial heartland. In 1980 Northern Italy possessed roughly 12,000 km of track versus 4,000 km in the South, and only 15 per cent of southern lines were electrified compared with 65 per cent in the North (Source: ISTAT).<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> European Commission: Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, EU transport in figures \u2013 Statistical pocketbook 1997, Table 4.4. (Available online at https:\/\/aei.pitt.edu\/73713\/1\/1997.Pocketbook.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Greenpeace, Factsheet with key findings and demands<\/em>, 2023. (Available online at https:\/\/greenpeace.at\/uploads\/2023\/09\/factsheet_key-findings-and-country-data_transport-infrastructure-report_september-2023.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> European Commission, Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, EU Transport in Figures \u2013 Statistical Pocketbook 2009<\/em> and 2024<\/em>. Available at https:\/\/transport.ec.europa.eu\/facts-funding\/studies-data\/eu-transport-figures-statistical-pocketbook_en<\/a>. According to our calculations from the available data, rail\u2019s freight share in 1975 was roughly double 1991\u2019s figure. For a sense of rail\u2019s under-development since then, compare the EU-27 averages with Greece: passengers 8.1 per cent vs 0.9 per cent; freight 16.6 per cent vs 2.3 per cent\u2014rail transport is barely one-eighth the average European scale.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> K. Giannakos, \u201cA restructuring model applied in Hellenic Railways during the period 2002 – 2006 according to European legislation,\u201d presentation at the 2nd International Railway Symposium Trade & Exhibition<\/em>, Istanbul, Turkey, October 15-17, 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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