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ABSTRACT
On the basis of a Marxist analysis of capitalist relations of class power and the class configuration in contemporary advanced capitalist societies, the paper investigates the consequences of the recent economic crisis and of the neoliberal capitalist strategies in Greece (austerity, market liberalization and privatizations), on the one hand for the class structure of the Greek society and on the other for the potential class alliances against neoliberal agenda, focusing especially on the coalescence of practices between the working class and certain subsets of the middle classes.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on Contributors
George Economakis is Associate Professor of Political Economy in Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Business, University of Patras, Achaia, Greece. His recent publications include “The Marxian ‘Law’ and the Current Greek Economic Crisis” (co-authored with G. Androulakis and M. Markaki, 2018, in East–West: Journal of Economics and Business 21 [1–2]: 91–117), “The Class Dimension of the Greek Public Debt Crisis” (co-authored with I. Zisimopoulos, 2018, in Crisis, Movement, Strategy: The Greek Experience, edited by P. Sotiris, 67–86. Boston: Brill, Leiden), and “Surplus Value Rate and Profit Rate: A Note” (2016, in Critique 44 [4]: 495-504).
John Milios is Professor of Political Economy and the History of Economic Thought at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. He has authored more than two hundred papers published or forthcoming in refereed journals (in Greek, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese and Turkish) including the Cambridge Journal of Economics, History of Political Economy, History of Economics Review, Review of Political Economy, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Science & Society, Rethinking Marxism, Review of Radical Political Economics, and has participated as invited speaker in numerous international conferences. He has also authored or co-authored some eighteen scholarly books. His most recent books in English are A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crisis: Demystifying Finance (Routledge 2013, Paperback Edition 2014, co-authored with D. P. Sotiropoulos and S. Lapatsioras) and The Origins of Capitalism as a Social System: The Prevalence of an Aleatory Encounter (Routledge 2018). He is the director of the Quarterly Journal of Economic Theory Thesis (published since 1982 in Greek) and serves on the Editorial Boards of four scholarly journals.
Notes
1. For a critique of these approaches see Sotiropoulos, Milios, and Lapatsioras (Citation2015).
2. For what follows see Milios and Economakis (Citation2011) and the literature presented there.
3. In Feudal and Asiatic modes of production, by contrast, the ownership of the means of production by the ruling class was never “complete,” since the working/ruled classes still maintained their possession. This fact is connected to significant corresponding characteristics in the structure of the political and ideological social levels as well. Economic exploitation had as its complementary element direct political coercion (see Marx Citation1991, 927–929).
4. Excluding the top managers, which “belong to the bourgeois class even if they do not hold formal legal ownership” (Poulantzas Citation1975, 180); see also Marx (Citation1991, 568).
5. For the “‘double nature’ of the work of supervision and management” see Marx (Citation1991, 507–508, emphases in the original).
6. The new petty bourgeoisie is characterised by an internal hierarchy. However, as a whole, it is clearly differentiated from the working class, as it is the “conveyor belt” of capital's “will” in the workplace.
7. A problem exists in relation to the class identity of the lower-ranking civil servants (e.g., “workers” or cleaners employed as permanent staff in public utilities, local government, etc.). Investigation of this question is not in the purpose of the present text.
8. Here “production” is any process that entails costs offering commodities. In the case of the mode of production that we call hybrid the production process presupposes also limited hired labour paid by capital (see below).
9. Given our previous relative remark, we call the SCP a “form” of production inasmuch as its production process does not entail within it surplus-product appropriation (see below).
10. Between SCP and HMP there are mediate class situations, like the existence of seasonal temporary hired labour in SCP labour process. Our intention here is only to suggest two theoretical clear differentiated class places.
11. In certain societies non-fundamental classes may originate from transition processes, as some modes of production dissolve under the weight of the expanded reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. The typical example is the class of land-owners in some capitalist countries (e.g., Britain) which emerges from the transformation-adjustment of the class of the feudal lords: with the break-up of the feudal mode of production, feudal ownership is transformed into a capitalist type (complete ownership of land), and the serfs are evicted from the land (which is now fenced off by the land-owners), and are deprived of any of their previous rights to the (use of) land. Within this process, the feudal lords become land-owners in the contemporary (capitalist) sense: owners of the land who enjoy as a special form of income the capitalist land-rent, through the renting of their lands to the capitalist-farmers.
12. Unemployment rate has fell to 20% according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (Citation2019a, Citation2019b, Citation2019c).
13. EBITDA: Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization.
15. The following analysis is theoretically based on Milios and Economakis (Citation2011).
16. In 2014, the 518 biggest Greek corporations concentrated 26.3% of the wage labour in the private sector of the country (approximately 420,000 people) (see http://dir.icap.gr/mailimages/e-books/LEG/2014/2014_07_04_14_52_44/document.pdf).
17. The new leadership of the main opposition party in Greece (the conservative “New Democracy”), which emerged to the party’s direction during the recent economic crisis, incorporates extreme nationalist-racist slogans into neoliberal ideology and political targets.