From an interview with the great and late thinker Cornelius Castoriadis, we select a section relevant to our theme (Book: "By Cornelius Castoriadis, Interviews-Translations", edited by Teta Papadopoulou, Polis Editions):

Question: What accounts for this enormous inability to constitute a political society? What are the reasons?

Castoriadis: No one can answer the question of why someone, at a certain moment, did not create something. The formation of a people into a political society is not a given; it is not something bestowed, but something created. We can only observe that, when such creation is absent, the characteristics of the previous state persist or change only in form.

Question: And what are those characteristics in the Greek case?

Castoriadis: Some of them can already be found in the civil wars of the Revolution of 1821. We see, for example, that allegiance and solidarity are local or localist in character, often stronger than national allegiance. We also see that political alignments and divisions are often related to the persons of the "leaders" and not to ideas, programs, or even "class" interests. Another characteristic is the attitude toward power. In Greece, even today, the state continues to play the role of the dovleti, that is, a foreign and distant authority, in relation to which we are rayahs and not citizens. There is no state governed by law and the rule of law, nor an impersonal administration facing sovereign citizens. The result is a vice-ridden regime as a permanent characteristic. Vice-ridden rule continues the centuries-old tradition of the arbitrariness of the rulers and the "strong": Hellenistic princes, Roman proconsuls, Byzantine emperors, Turkish pashas, local notables, the Mavromichalis, Kolettis, Deligiannis...

Question: Don't you see any exceptions? Exceptions located mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries?

Castoriadis: Well, there are two or three exceptions: Trikoupis, Koumoundouros, the Venizelist movement in its early period. But whatever results they achieved were destroyed by the Metaxas dictatorship, the Occupation, the Civil War, the role of the palace, the dictatorship of April 21, and PASOK rule. Meanwhile, Stalinism intervened and managed to corrupt and destroy what was beginning to be created as a workers' and popular movement in Greece. We are still paying for the results.

You ask me to explain to you... Can you explain to me why the Greeks, who spent nine years killing each other in order to free themselves from the Turks, immediately afterward wanted a king? And why, after driving out Othon, did they bring in George? And why later did they ask for "olive, olive and King Kotso"?

Question: But your answers are especially interesting when they concern questions you yourself pose; so would you like to formulate your own views?

Castoriadis: According to the traditional "left-wing" view, all of this was imposed by the Right, the ruling classes, and the black reaction. But can we say that all this was imposed on the Greek people without the Greek people being aware of it? Can we say that the Greek people did not understand what it was doing? Did it not know what it wanted, what it voted for, what it tolerated? In such a case, this people would be an infant... If, however, it is an infant, then let us not speak of democracy. If the Greek people is not responsible for its history, then let us appoint a guardian for it... I say that the Greek people, like every people, is responsible for its history and therefore responsible for the situation in which it finds itself today.

Question: How do you mean this responsibility?

Castoriadis: We are not putting anyone on trial. We are speaking of historical and political responsibility. The Greek people has so far been unable to create even a rudimentary political society. A political society in which, at the very least, democratic rights for both individuals and collectives are instituted and guaranteed in practice...

And the responsibility I spoke of is expressed in the irresponsibility of the proverbial phrase: "Am I the one who will fix the Romeika?" Yes, sir, you are the one who will fix the Romeika, in the place and field where you are.

Question: Do you feel that you had, or have, open accounts with Greece?

Castoriadis: The accounts one has with the place where one was born, where one grew up, whose language one speaks, are never closed. I know that I owe Greece a large part of what I am. And I always feel boundless pain for both the place and the people. I am especially sensitive to them...

Paul Marantos

marantosp@gmail.com