GREECE ON FIRE…DEVELOPMENT IS COMING
“Against the fury of nature, no measure will be enough”, Prime Minister Mitsotakis regarding the fires – summer 2023
“Unfortunately, or fortunately life goes on” Th. Livanios, Deputy Minister of Interior, about the death of two pilots in the battle with the flames- summer 2023
“Capitalist production therefore only develops the techniques and degree of combination of the social process of production while undermining the original sources of all wealth – the land and the worker.” C. Marx, Capital, Volume 1
This summer comes to add great volumes of ash and coal to a long series of similar summers of destruction and despair for the Greek people. In recent years, the Greek state of the memorandum, subjugated to international creditors and to the demands of the EU/IMF and NATO, has clearly given up any effort to protect the environment and society from the “fury of nature”. Greek government has turned to what looks like a sort of peculiar “defense”, a practice of mass evacuations, supposedly aimed at preventing the loss of human lives. Indeed, the grim incidents of ‘natural’ disasters are becoming more frequent with time and, as we know, are not restricted to catastrophic fires, but, depending on the time of year and the region, include catastrophic floods and snowfalls, landslides, power and water supply disruptions, road and island blockages. The government itself was quick to include the crime at Tebi (Τέμπη) in the list of ‘natural’ disasters, presenting it as a god sent disaster. They made statements full of comparisons of natural disasters with other lethal crimes such as the deadly fire in Mati, thus highlighting the core of the problem: there is nothing natural about ‘natural’ disasters once the possibility of organizing public life exists in a way that prevents them from being that deadly again.
While the assessment of the size of this summer’s disaster continues, early figures show that a smaller initial number of fires resulted in twice as much burned area as last year. All this destruction, however, did not occur during a phase of ” apathy ” of the system; on the contrary, the state apparatus was ready for the visit of the fascist Zelensky, the government showed unparalleled enthusiasm for the signing of agreements to turn Greece into a guardian of the security of Ukrainian airspace. Also, the parliament – despite its usual summer lushness – rushed to raise the retirement age to 74, ministers were looking for ways to allow people to work 16-hour days and rushed to promise tourist packages paid from the sweat of the Greek people to the tourist clients of big hotel owners. Last but not least the police engaged in the usual hunt for those resisting evictions and evacuations. In short, the state apparatus is working just fine where it wants to work; and it doesn’t want to work to save any worker’s home, while it obviously has other plans for the natural environment (from “green development” like wind farms, to the “heavy industry” of tourist grotesque hotels which abuse public space).
This destruction of every public organized form of self-protection of society is nothing more than the maniacal strategy of neoliberalism which imposes the dismantling of public sector systems, especially public health, public education and public transport for the benefit of capital. The only exceptions to this strategy are the means of managing and repressing popular indignation: the police, the paid-off media of the conspiracy of silence and a coterie of “intellectuals” ranging from academics and various kinds of “experts” to churchmen and artists. The priorities of the executive state and the way the disaster has been managed, reveal that the upper limit of protection of human life, environment and public infrastructure is but the lower limit of ensuring social cohesion. In other words, by weighing human life and the natural environment, the system finds that police cars, hearse and lies cost less than fire trucks, ambulances and science. For what else but a lie could be the repeating motto “at least we didn’t lose human lives” when science directly links fires to cancers? When it is known that overall environmental degradation shortens human life by decades?
In trying to manage the recent disaster, the state has invoked various culprits for the extent and severity of the fires: from climate change and foreign agents, to individually “irresponsible” citizens, immigrants and bad timing. In reality, the failure or success of a national strategy to meet such challenges is judged not by the “unlikelihood” of the culprit, but by the ability to prevent the disaster. In this respect, the failure to deal with the highly predictable fires in a Mediterranean country in the summer, turns into an organized and premeditated crime, and the attempt to find scapegoats among immigrants while turning a blind eye to paramilitary gangs becomes from a stalling practice of muddying the waters into a brutal fascist crime.
The fact is that a) as long as the public infrastructures are left to its fate, the harder it is to (re)design a modern and effective national strategy for the prevention and management of “natural” disasters and epidemics, and b) the more devalued these infrastructures are, the cheaper and more easily will pass into the hands of private investors who are exploiting the land, the blood and sweat of the Greek people.
Serving private interests and not society itself is the aim of the ruling class. Man’s unconscious intervention in nature, blindly extracting resources and surplus value from the environment and mankind prescribes an unthinkable dystopia.
To avoid the destruction of humanity by peaceful means (environmental destruction, pandemic) or by warlike means (nuclear holocaust), the people themselves must take the situation into their own hands. A different type of organization is needed at local, national and international level, using the possibilities opened up by science and technology for the benefit of the people’s needs, aiming at a harmonious coexistence between man and nature.