Voting For the Greek Hard Left

By Rod Dreher • June 17, 2012, 1:09 PM

Ross Douthat has an interesting column today, exploring reasons why the Greek far left has come so far, so fast. The first reason (he says) is that Greek voters have no reason to trust anything the European elites have to say. That same elite, across nations and mainstream political parties, predicted that the euro would be a rousing success, and steamrolled anyone who said otherwise. And now look. Also:

Second, countries that vote to stay the course now may find that they lose their right to vote at all in the future. The answer to the current crisis, every eurocrat agrees, is further integration: In the words of Germany’s Angela Merkel, “not just a currency union,” but also “a so-called fiscal union, more common budget policies … [and] above all a political union.”

But as The Times’s Floyd Norris noted on Friday, a recent speech by the head of the German Bundesbank suggests that such a union would feature a central authority empowered to bypass national governments whenever they turned uncooperative on budget policy. This would effectively turn the European Union into a kind of postmodern version of the old Austro-Hungarian empire, with a Germanic elite presiding uneasily over a polyglot imperium and its restive local populations.

There are worse political arrangements, certainly, than the old Hapsburg model. But that doesn’t mean that voters in Greece (or Italy, or Spain …) should be expected to quietly acquiesce to it.

In other words, having followed their elites off the economic cliff, Eurozone voters — starting with the Greeks, today — are being told that to rescue this disastrous economic arrangement, they’ll have to surrender their national sovereignty. If big old right-wing me were a Greek voter today, I’d be sorely tempted to vote for that left-wing devil too.

Posted in Economics, UK/Europe.

17 Responses to Voting For the Greek Hard Left

MattSwartz says:

June 17, 2012 at 1:23 pm

The temptation for me would be to throw my vote to the monarchist party.

As libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe is fond of pointing out, monarchs tend to leave their countries in a better condition than elected politicians do for the same reason that people treat their own cars better than they treat rentals; they have more skin in the game. If you’re handing something off to your children, and expect that they’ll hand it to their children, you’re motivated to take the sort of long view that all economists correlate with prosperity and security. Contrast that with the glib emptiness and almost intentional short-sightedness of politicians.

Reagan’s decision to cut taxes without cutting the size or role of government in the hopes that the rising debts that didn’t bother him would scare his successors into fiscal responsibility is exhibit A.
Tyro says:

June 17, 2012 at 1:25 pm

The reason for the rise of the Greek far left is because the voters had no other option. The political parties in Greece did exactly what the “consensus”-types in the USA thought they should do: put aside their differences and come together to agree to cut the budget and follow other policies that “everyone agrees” need to be enacted.

The voters, then, could not vote for any of the mainstream parties because they didn’t offer the voters a choice for what the voters actually wanted. Thus, Syriza (and Golden Dawn on the right, since the other small right-wing parties joined the coalition) offered policies that voters actually supported, so voters chose that party over the others.

There are advantages to a parliamentary system, but these “national unity governments,” especially on issues that the public is divided on, are not one of them.
wally says:

June 17, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Exactly where on the political divide do you think that the creators of the E.U. and thus the Euro fall, Rod? The whole shebang was a creation of the European Left. Many if not the majority of technocrats that run the thing are on the Far Left. And it needs to be said that what’s deemed centrist or even center-right in Europe would be considered to be center-left here in the U.S..
J says:

June 17, 2012 at 2:37 pm

That was the cool thing to do in the previous Greek elections, Rod. That’s weeks ago and passé now. The run left then has had the virtue of ruining one major bastion of the Greek kleptocrat establishment, the then ruling PASOK party.

The present election seems to be about Greeks net abandoning the dysfunctional hard Left (the smallest, but corruption enabling, third bastion of the problem political establishment) again. The net winners will probably be the center right Nea Demokratia party, who were/are PASOK’s frenemies and covert business partners in the ongoing theft and misgovernment.

It’s rather like the U.S. going from government by the Obama team to (non-)government by an Occupy Wall Street team to government by a Romney team.
Mike says:

June 17, 2012 at 3:29 pm

Its important to remember that Syriza, the leftist coalition, is proEU and pro-Euro. They just don’t like the austerity plan forced on the Greeks by the centrists. The issue isn’t about sovereignty or being Euroskeptics, but not liking the approach the Greek government agreed to.
Mitchell Young says:

June 17, 2012 at 4:00 pm

“This would effectively turn the European Union into a kind of postmodern version of the old Austro-Hungarian empire, with a Germanic elite presiding uneasily over a polyglot imperium and its restive local populations.”

Without the creative genus the Strausses or Linzer Torte
Hector_St_Clare says:

June 17, 2012 at 4:23 pm

IIRC the Communists are anti-EU, aren’t they?

My favored outcome would be a Syriza / Communist coalition, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen
MartinR says:

June 17, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Habsburg with a “b”
Brian Kaller says:

June 17, 2012 at 5:26 pm

Living in Ireland and married into a German family, I get to hear some interesting debate here.

The German view – that they must pay for everyone else’s irresponsibility — is an understandable one, reminiscent of Tea Partiers in the USA who wonder why they should pay for less successful people to get doctors or child-minders. It’s a view that will probably get stronger as the global economy continues to struggle, and as any sense of German guilt and restitution rightly fades from living memory.

Whether the prosperous are citizens of a country or members of a coalition, though, the rebuttal remains the same: it’s in your interest to make sure your neighbours’ lives do not shatter too much — a shattered society does not honour the invisible boundaries of your property or country.

Still, I have some sympathy for the protesters and far-whatever voters, in Greece and here: they’re being punished for decisions they did not make. Shopkeepers and fishermen in Greece did not tell their government to cook the books, nor did the Irish march into the Dail demanding that their government be irresponsible. Most people in the “PIIGS” countries – of which we are one — have accepted austerity as the Germans have accepted beneficence; reluctantly, impatiently, and conditionally, knowing they, too, are paying for the irresponsibility of other people who have not been penalised.

We all face an austere future, and that’s fine – as long as “austerity” means what it means in the dictionary, and is shared by everyone. If “austerity” becomes code for a new empire, you’ll see a lot more than riots, in a lot more places than Greece.
Roger McCarthy says:

June 17, 2012 at 6:16 pm

Austria-Hungary is actually not that good an analogy as the two parliaments in Vienna and Budapest actually had far too much power vis-a-vis the Imperial government and the Hungarians in particular starved it of resources rather than the other way round.

And in a sense the Imperial government was actually more progressive than either the Austrian and Hungarian Parliaments both of which represented what were effectively minority elites while at least the better emperors were inclined to protect the oppressed minorities.

One overlooked tragedy is that the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand was by Habsburg standards a relative liberal who was keen to give the mainly Slav peoples being kept down by the Germans and Magyars equal status in a triple rather than dual monarchy.

If he’d survived Sarajevo and succeeded Franz Josef before war destroyed the dynasty then maybe there’d still be some sort of Austro-Hungarian-Czech-Croat etc federation in central Europe.
JonF says:

June 17, 2012 at 6:28 pm

Re: Exactly where on the political divide do you think that the creators of the E.U. and thus the Euro fall, Rod?

I’m not Rod of course, but referring to the European technocrats as “the far Left” is an abuse of language. Those folks are (at most) center-Left, similar to American neo-liberals. The Far Left, especially in Europe, refers to assorted Marxist types, the sort of people who despise the EU for its capitalist purposes.
Roger McCarthy says:

June 17, 2012 at 6:49 pm

Wally,

It is actually what you call liberal or even leftist which would be considered centre-right by us Europeans (who you seem to be unaware have been doing politics rather longer than you Americans and actually invented all these terms).

And the technocrats who run the EU and are imposing savage austerity policies to protect the bankers and make the people pay for their mistakes are ‘on the hard left’?

I don’t even know where to begin when confronted with such know-nothing ignorance – so I won’t.
Brian Kaller says:

June 17, 2012 at 7:01 pm

Living in Ireland and married into a German family, I get to hear some interesting debate over the Euro — especially recently, as we had another treaty referendum here.

The German view – that they must pay for everyone else’s irresponsibility — is an understandable one, reminiscent of Tea Partiers in the USA who wonder why they should pay for less successful people to get doctors or child-minders. It’s a view that will probably get stronger as the global economy continues to struggle, and as any sense of German guilt and restitution rightly fades from living memory.

Whether the prosperous are citizens of a country or members of a coalition, though, the rebuttal remains the same: it’s in your interest to make sure your neighbours’ lives do not shatter too much — a shattered society does not honour the invisible boundaries of your property or country.

Still, I have some sympathy for the protesters and far-whatever voters, in Greece and here: they’re being punished for decisions they did not make. Shopkeepers and fishermen in Greece did not tell their government to cook the books, nor did the Irish march into the Dail demanding that their government be irresponsible.

Most people in the “PIIGS” countries – of which we are one — have accepted austerity as the Germans have accepted beneficence; reluctantly, impatiently, and conditionally, knowing they, too, are paying for the irresponsibility of other people who have not been penalised.

We all face an austere future, and that’s fine – as long as “austerity” means what it means in the dictionary, and is shared by everyone. If “austerity” becomes code for a new empire, you’ll see a lot more than riots, in a lot more places than Greece.
cecelia says:

June 17, 2012 at 8:25 pm

the calvinist austerity Germans will change their tune very fast when the contained depression that is Europe starts to affect their bottom line – until then – this will just keep keeping on – Italy now needs another bailout (predictably) and it seems the Irish economy isn’t behaving the way the austerity experts said it would – so they will be needing a second bailout too. One wonders when the EU runs out of real money to keep this juggernaut going – how does one finance a bail out for the next domino – France?
Fran Macadam says:

June 18, 2012 at 12:06 pm

Yes, Americans have a lot to teach Europeans about economy.

Oops – sorry. Wall Street already did that and this is the result.

Useful, though, to bemoan far-away travails while pretending the same isn’t happening here to so many, outside the Wall Street schemers.

It’s amazing how the poor, the immigrants, etc. here in the US bear the scutt of blame, while those really responsible – the elites – make out like bandits. Distraction. Divide and conquer.

Well, in Europe, at least, no medical bankruptcies.
JonF says:

June 18, 2012 at 6:48 pm

Re: monarchs tend to leave their countries in a better condition than elected politicians do for the same reason that people treat their own cars better than they treat rentals

Except those monarchs (and they are not few) who are bare-faced incompetent or brutally tyrannical– they are the equivalent of people who drive their cars drink and smash them into trees.
as Aristotle pointed out long ago, a monarchy gone bad is the worst form of government. A democracy’s sins and folly meanwhile will be the same as its virtues and wisdom: lesser and pedestrian sins and follies.
Thomas Sm says:

June 20, 2012 at 5:24 am

1. It is pointless to see a unidimensional Left-Right scale and say that the European centre-right is centre-left in the US. Leave unideminsional scales to single issues, not to ideology. This proposition thus may work on welfare or tax if we consider the Left to be the welfare state and the Right to be its relative lack. However, European politics is to the Right on cultural issues (like immigration), State support for religion, and, often in the structure of government itself.

2. Eurocrats are, on the whole, social-liberals, something like John Kerry…not the Far Left. There are self-described social democrats who have really given up on social democracy, self-described Christian Democrats who are not all that Catholic, and free-market liberals who would be New Democrats or socially liberal Republicans. From all these, it was basically the Catholic Christian Dems who started the EU, primarily with the opposition of the Communists.

3. This brings me to another point, the Communists in Greece (KKE) are the Left force defending national sovereignty. SYRIZA is pro-Euro, as someone else in the thread has noted, they just will not do anything to stay in. That said, both parties suffer from their **immigration policy**, seeking to regularise most or all illegal immigrants, which are 1-2 million (vs. 10 million citizens), amidst 25% unemployment. So you can imagine this brings a lot of pro-sovereignty people back to vote for New Democracy, if not the fascists.

4. Perhaps the best option for conservatives was “Independent Greeks” which won 11% in May. They are strongly for national sovereignty, but were pushed aside in the post-election atmosphere that encouraged idiots to vote New Democracy to “block communism”, as if communism were their problem. Their leader (Kammenos) is a brave man who opposed all the bills backing the Memorandum and austerity and refused to be blackmailed into joining the government.