Blog Archives

This Q&A is an attempt to respond to questions raised by non-Greek friends on the outcome of the 2015 elections.

Why did SYRIZA go into an alliance with populist right-wing ANEL?

There was no other option. Or, better put, the other options were even worse. Given that Tsipras had dismissed a potential alliance with formerly governing New Democracy (ND) and PASOK, and given that the communist KKE had ruled out offering any sort of support to a left-wing government, the two parties left to choose from were:

– ANEL (Independent Greeks), a right-wing populist party, fiercely anti-troika but completely unreliable, apart from the fact that they are truly fucking right-wing in socio-political issues
– and POTAMI (“the River”), a post-politics, neo-liberal, pseudo-party financed by media giants, ...

AnalyzeGreece! is a brand new project, aiming to deliver top-quality analysis of the situation in Greece, for English-speaking audience. I am one of the (more than 70!) contributors. Here’s some of the articles I’ve contributed:

What would a Syriza victory mean for the movements?

StripGreece series: An analysis of the 2015 election’s visual propaganda (all articles co-authored with Myrssini Antoniou)

StripGreece 1: Shooting dice

StripGreece 2: The video director of ND has been fired!

StripGreece 3: The graphic designer is on leave. Permanently.

StripGreece 5: 2015 Campaign slogans and images

StripGreece 6: A department store poster

This post will be updated when new contributions are published.

You may find AnalyzeGreece! on Facebook and Twitter.

Lorenzo Zamponi and myself just published a piece on new forms of workers’ organizing in Italy and Greece. The article Organizing workers’ counter power in Italy and Greece is included in the annual report of the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam) State of Power 2015.

You may find the article here.

The whole book (edited by Nick Buxton and Madeleine Bélanger Dumontier) is available for download here.

Article Abstract:

During the last three decades, the gradual loss of labor struggle’s centrality in the context of social conflicts in Europe, as well as the decreasing  trade unions’ ability to represent an effective counter-power to capitalist hegemony, had been almost unanimously acknowledged in the scholarly and activist debate.

The economic crisis and the implementation of austerit...

Διάβασα μόλις το “κυβερνητικό πρόγραμμα ΣΥΡΙΖΑ για τις εργασιακές σχέσεις“.

Το κείμενο με απογοήτευσε.

Διότι εκτός από τα αυτονόητα (κατάργηση μνημονιακών νόμων, περιορισμοί στα συμβόλαια ελαστικής εργασίας) και ένα μονάχα μέτρο που θεωρώ ότι κινείται σε, πράγματι, ριζοσπαστική κατεύθυνση (κατάργηση της ενοικίασης εργαζομένων – θα αναφερθώ παρακάτω εκτενέστερα), οι όποιες ενδιαφέρουσες ιδέες μένουν στο επίπεδο του ευχολόγιου ή της εκδήλωσης προθέσεων, χωρίς να συνοδεύονται από τις συγκεκριμένες παρεμβάσεις νομοθετικού ή άλλου χαρακτήρα που θα έπειθαν τον αναγνώστη ότι οι συντάκτες και το κόμμα τους πράγματι εννοούν (και θα πράξουν) αυτά που λένε...

An article of mine just got published in the Hans-Böckler Foundation journal, “WSI-Mitteilungen”.

The title is:

Trade Unions in Greece: Protest and Social Movements in the Context of Austerity Politics.

Die griechische Gewerkschaftsbewegung: Protest- und Sozialbewegungen im Kontext der Austeritäts-politik.

I am deeply thankful to my friend and colleague Heiner Dribusch for the careful editing, useful comments and translation in German.

The full text, in German, can be found here.

And here’s the abstract:

Even before the 2008 crisis, the Greek trade union system was already characterized by low density and weak links to other societal actors...

This is the title of an article we co-authored with Alice Mattoni.

It just got published in the French journal Quaderni, issue 84 (Spring 2014).

You may find the full text HERE.

And here’s its abstract:

The article discusses the mobilizations and resistance against precarity in Italy and Greece, before and after the economic crisis, showing how protest involving precarious workers – as well as precarity as a contentious issue – changed over time in the two countries...

The piece that follows, commenting on the 2014 euro-election results, is an extended version of an article published in the “Il Manifesto” newspaper (30/05/2014) and the website of Sbilanciamoci (LINK).

Le elezioni europarlamentari in Grecia: un messagio di paura e di speranza

Markos Vogiatzoglou – Ricercatore, European University Institute

È innegabile che ogni persona di sinistra si sia rallegrata per la vittoria di Syriza—con un margine di più del 4%—alle elezioni europarlamentari greche di domenica scorsa. Tuttavia, al di là di quest’ovvia constatazione, ad un’osservazione più attenta il risultato di domenica mostra l’emergere di tendenze sociopolitiche meno evidenti.

In primo luogo, è necessario sottolineare l’aumento significativo dell’affluenza elettorale: si son...

The “Labor Relations in Context” research group of the Hans-Böckler Stiftung organized a conference in Düsseldorf on developments in European trade unions’ issues.

I presented there the following paper:

Title: “Trade Unions in Greece: Protest and Social Movements in the Context of Austerity Politics”.

Abstract: On the eve of the 2008 financial crisis, the Greek trade union system was already characterized by low density and weak links with other societal actors. The unsuccessful trade union response to the austerity policies imposed on the country in the period 2010-2013 reflected the extent of the institutional labor organizations’ weakness. This article provides some insights on the changes the workers’ movement is undergoing in this extremely challenging environment.

The focus is ...

The above is the title of my presentation at the Oslo Center for Advanced Studies’ conference “Labour and transnational action in times of crisis: from case studies to theory.”

Here is the program of the conference, which took place from 26 to 28 of February, 2014.

And here is my presentation’s “prezi”:

http://prezi.com/iyxzdfjmc9qn/workers-trans-national-networks-in-austerity-times/

The photo that accompanies this post was taken in Oslo. It portrays the ‘Match Factory Girls’ – the statue is situated next to a bridge that crosses a waterfall and guides the curious passerby to the city’s Workers’ Museum.

In the aftermath of the conference, I was invited by the anarchist group MotMakt to deliver a brief presentation on the Greek movement, followed by a Q&A session...

The above is the title of the paper I presented in Hans Böckler Stiftung’s conference “International solidarity reloaded”, which took place in Göttingen, April 2-4, 2014.

The conference was a great experience, overall. High quality presentations, interesting debates and flawless organization. Congratulations to the organizing committee from the University of Göttingen Graduate School.

In the attached link, you may find my “prezi” presentation.