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Title: Populism in Greece? Author: Nikos Potamianos Language: en Source: Journal for the Study of Radicalism Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 2020 Michigan State University Press
Accusing the right and the left of establishing incongruous coalitions
on the basis of a shared populism is a common topic in contemporary
antipopulist discourse. Obvious political goals can usually be detected
behind this argument: political opponents of the liberal center are
exposed as inconsistent with their principles, and political frontiers
are (re)constructed based on the contrast between modernization and its
opponents—who are defined only negatively. There is a paradox here:
usually it is populism that is associated with such sharp dichotomies,
and nonpopulism with more complex perceptions of the political and the
social.
Although the extent to which such a point of view constructs its
opponent (that is, populism) is apparent, few would deny that there have
been and continue to be convergences of the kind described above. These
convergences transcend the opposition between the right and the left,
which shaped the political geography of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and which was based on rival attitudes towards social
hierarchy and authority, emancipation movements that disputed them
wholly or in part, and democracy and the equality it proclaimed. Moments
of transcendence of this kind haven’t been so numerous as to create a
movement to change the dominant political paradigm—yet they took place
and must be interpreted. Populism may be a [End Page 127] useful concept
for defining the field in which the convergence of right and left
political forces took place. But which populism? The concept, despite
its increased use in twenty-first–century politics, remains vague. We
are still far from a consensus about a definition of populism,1 although
most empirical approaches to contemporary parties and movements
considered as populist tend to reproduce a commonly held conception of
populism as a negative picture of rational, liberal, and modernizing
politics.
Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, based on a bold theoretical
conception of the political in general and the way the struggle for
hegemony is conducted, stands out for its coherence and originality, and
permits us to move beyond mere descriptions of anti-elite discourse and
praising people in populist movements, and frees our analysis from
typologies of “common characteristics.”2
I will use Laclau’s theory of populism to conceptualize and interpret a
forgotten incident in modern Greek political history: the emergence of a
peculiar radical current during the transition to a new party system at
the beginning of the twentieth century. This example serves as a case
study of the possibility of—and the preconditions for—the development of
ideological and political currents that transcend the dominant
distinctions of nineteenth-and twentieth-century political systems.
This discussion contributes to a better understanding of radicalism and
its relationship with populism. The two concepts are sometimes confused
and used as synonyms because they both reject mainstream politics and
the elite connected with them; they are not interested in occupying the
political center; their worldview is based not on smooth and tranquil
“moderate progress” but on abrupt change brought about by confrontation
and conflict. Yet, although they often overlap, the core of the meaning
of each of the concepts is linked to different levels of the political:
if populism is defined mostly in relation to the discourse it employs
and the social subjects to which it refers (i.e., people against elite),
in radicalism there is a strong emphasis on the pursuit of major changes
in social and political institutions in combination with militant action
and opposition to the elites. In that sense, populism appears more
suitable for conceptualizing political currents that transcend the
borders between left and right, whereas radicalism is mostly defined by
the specific changes it pursues to bring about and their content, and it
remains more closely connected with the distinction between left and
right and their [End Page 128] different aims. In this article we will
explore the ways in which populism constituted a field that encompassed
several variations of the radical right and left and facilitated their
short-term convergence.
Parliamentarism in Greece
The year 1909 is a landmark in the history of the Greek political
system. The pronunciamento of the Army officers who gathered at Goudi οn
15 August 1909, in addition to inaugurating a series of Army coup
d’états in twentieth-century Greece, constituted a rupture in
parliamentary life that facilitated the radical renewal of the political
system.
Under the influence of the Young Turks’ revolution in the Ottoman Empire
in 1908, a Military League was formed by young Greek officers; their
main objective was to reform and reinforce the Army and prepare for a
war with Turkey and Bulgaria. Their political intervention became
possible thanks to a burst of popular discontent in the winter of
1908–1909 and the mobilization against the taxes that the new minister
of the economy attempted to impose. The tax burden of the urban classes
had been substantially increased since the Greek state began borrowing
money in the 1880s and the increase of indirect taxes in order to pay
back the loans.3 A discourse against the political system was developed
by the leaders of the professional associations of master artisans,
shopkeepers, and workers of Athens and Piraeus (“syntechnies”). The
support of syntechnies to the pronunciamento, expressed through a huge
demonstration on 14 September 1909, was crucial for its consolidation.
The Military League restricted the powers of the Crown by expelling the
princes from leadership roles in the Army. Although they were careful
not to seize power directly or officially abolish parliamentarism, they
exercised close control of the new government formed by a small party
(whereas the two bigger parties led by Theotokis and Rallis were more or
less forced to give a vote of tolerance). However, the new regime soon
lost a large part of its popular support when they attempted to impose
new taxes. In December 1909, Theotokis and Rallis entered into a limited
conflict with the officers, who were forced to retreat. The solution to
the stalemate was provided by Venizelos, the prime minister of the
autonomous Cretan state, who was [End Page 129] invited to Athens by the
Military League and achieved an agreement among Crown, party leaders,
and Army officers for elections, constitutional reform, and the
dissolution of the Military League.
In the elections of August 1910, parliamentary domination by the “old
parties” was shaken, because a large number of independent MPs were
elected; many of them (“Syntaktikoi”) demanded that the Assembly would
declare itself Constituent and proceed to a radical reform of the
Constitution. Venizelos managed to attract the independent deputies to a
more moderate project: to gain the trust of the king, receive a mandate
to form a government, and, as prime minister, to call new elections in
November. The “old parties” decided to abstain, but they were not
supported by the people who had voted for them previously, and Venizelos
consolidated his dominance for years to follow.4
The academic discussion about the Goudi coup and Venizelos’s ascension
to power in 1909–1910 has focused on the rise of the bourgeoisie. It is
an old interpretation that was disputed in the 1970s.5 Today there is a
broad consensus that the middle class was not impotent in
nineteenth-century Greece, and in 1909 it certainly had not been
excluded from power. At the same time, a picture of the pre-1909
political system dominated by powerful local notables (usually
associated with premodern practices and interests) still prevails in the
literature. This conception cannot easily be reconciled with the fact of
the early establishment of universal suffrage (effectively in 1843) and
parliamentary democracy in Greece. A common argument is that democracy
was established without serious conflict because in the last instance it
served the interests of the notables in their fight against the central
state.6 These interpretations, however, tend to underestimate the extent
to which democracy did not constitute a mere official discourse nor an
institutional edifice that corresponded with underlying sociopolitical
relations. The extensive reproduction of small ownership patterns, for
instance, can be attributed to the political influence that peasants,
artisans, and shopkeepers had gained thanks to universal suffrage.7
At times, liberal democracy did not seem to fit well into a
predominantly peasant—and sometimes archaic—society.8 Yet we should not
miss the modern context of the establishment and consolidation of
liberal democracy in Greece; that is, both the radical dynamics that
were triggered by the revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire,9
and the influence of a vigorous Greek merchant [End Page 130]
bourgeoisie, which was economically active all over the Eastern
Mediterranean and the Black Sea, in the political life of the small
Greek kingdom.10
Thus, I would not subscribe to a conceptualization of the Goudi coup as
a revolution of the liberal bourgeoisie against a traditional oligarchy.
Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the military intervention of 1909
constituted a significant rupture, followed by the transformation of the
political system as well as changes in the social composition of the
power bloc and its response to the demands of the lower classes. The
interpretation of the rise of the bourgeoisie has been reformulated: the
emphasis is now on the need for a new institutional framework of social
corporatism that would be capable of preventing class conflict.11
Another recent study offers an interpretation of the Goudi coup as a
bourgeois counter-revolution: antiparliamentarianism was the driving
ideological force behind the coup, supported by a fragile coalition of
the conservative faction of the bourgeoisie and popular strata who had
turned against the regime due to their tax burdens. The
counter-revolution against parliamentary democracy was eventually
defeated, and it was the reformist-liberal faction of the bourgeoisie
who ascended to power.12
In my article, I will offer a different point of view by shifting our
attention from the elites to the lower classes. What is striking about
the press of 1908–1910 is the unprecedented scale of the popular
protest, in particular in Athens and Piraeus. Radical orators were
spreading a subversive discourse throughout the neighborhoods of Athens;
political associations were founded or grew, and acquired a significant
role in the political arena of these years, together with unions and
associations of any kind; mobilizations against taxes ended with
demonstrators attacking Parliament;13 in 1910 a wave of strikes took
place, and the first important agrarian movement in Greece erupted in
Thessaly, a major area of landownership; finally, it was during these
years that the biggest demonstration in Athens, up to that point, took
place in support of the Military League.
The main element that characterized the period of the Goudi coup and
that set the pace of developments was this popular protest. What was at
stake was the direction it was going to take; various strategies were
developed by many different sides that aimed to direct and control the
popular protest. We will focus our attention on those who attempted to
express this: we will present the views and political activity of some
groups and politicians, the relationships they developed, and their
convergence. [End Page 131]
The incentive to study the radicalism of that period came from my
earlier research about the Hellenismos society, an organization of the
radical right.14 Attempting to place it within the context of its era, I
ascertained that it maintained a relatively close relationship to
socialists and other radicals.
The society’s publications presented articles and the political program
of Platon Drakoulis, a middle-class intellectual who was the first to
introduce socialist ideas into Greece in the 1880s; Neoklis Kazazis, the
president of Hellenismos, wrote an article in the socialist journal that
was published by Drakoulis.15 They maintained relations with the
social-democratic Sociological Society; in 1909 their newspaper
republished a political leaflet of the “Sociologists” as well as a
report about the First of May celebrations organized by the Workers’
Centre of Volos.16 Hellenismos also kept close relations with Georgios
Filaretos, a republican propagandist, whom we will examine in detail
later.17 In 1909 Filaretos and Kazazis participated in the negotiations
with the non-commissioned officers that prepared the coup in Goudi,18
and in 1910 they collaborated in the parliamentary group of the
“Syntaktikoi,” which we will also examine later.
These relationships constitute a paradox since they do not correspond to
the distinction between right and left that is familiar to us. But this
distinction was not consolidated in Greek politics before the 1910s.
However, the problem remains: groups and individuals with clear left or
right orientations, with very different attitudes towards social
hierarchy, authority, democracy, and emancipation movements, were not in
conflict but collaborated. The rival sides of 1909–1910 were not
constituted on the basis of the opposition between right and left, but
as an opposition between the “old regime” and its radical opponents, who
supported the Military League, and accused the existing parties of being
“gangs” that exploited the state, and were connected with (or at least
supported) popular mobilization. We will examine the views and the
actions of some of them.
Hellenismos was “a patriotic organization with great influence,”
according to the Austrian ambassador.19 The activity of Hellenismos was
mainly irredentist, focusing on the promotion of the “Great Idea”: the
liberation of [End Page 132] Greeks who were still under the rule of the
Turks. However, their activities regarding so-called “national issues”
took place in a way that opposed the political system. The basic
argument, which was continuously repeated in their publications, was
that the state had proved incapable of serving the national interest and
should change. “The orgy of corruption” weakened the power of the
state;20 therefore “the salvation of the nation lies in the defeat of
parliamentarism.”21 “What do you prefer, gentlemen?,” asked Kazazis, the
president of Hellenismos, at a speech he delivered in 1905: “A nation or
a party? To build a strong army or to go on with favoritism?”22
Hellenismos proposed the creation of a strong authoritarian state. The
lower classes would not influence it as they did in a parliamentary
regime, but the state would “protect” them. The state’s intervention in
the economy would aim at economic development as well as smoothing out
social conflicts. Hellenismos did not hesitate to address this program
to the lower classes, adopting an antiplutocratic rhetoric (even though
a lot of its members were businessmen).23 They adopted the demand for
labor legislation, they stated their preference for small property, they
denounced heavy indirect taxation, and they made vague mention of a
radical economic reformation that would limit excessive wealth.24
Hellenismos also adopted a positive attitude towards popular
mobilizations insofar as they promoted its objectives, and it developed
relationships with various professional associations.25 In fact, one of
its members, Aristomenis Theodoridis, became the legal consultant of the
Syntechnies’ League during this period.26
Regarding the specific proposals for reforming the regime that were made
by Hellenismos, these varied from conservative antiparliamentary ones
(e.g., enhancing the authority of the king) to references to a “people’s
state under the strong and illuminated leadership” of the “dictator of
the national idea.”27 In this people’s state, in contrast to the
parliamentary state, an oligarchy would not dominate.
However, in spite of all the progress made by Hellenismos regarding its
communications to the lower classes, it remained an essentially
bourgeois organization, something that is evident not only from the
social composition of its members, but also from its rather conservative
attitude after Goudi. As social antagonism escalated, Hellenismos’s
attack on plutocracy became increasingly rare. In the spring of 1910 it
treated the repression of the peasant movement [End Page 133] in
Thessaly as an issue that had to do with the imposition of public order.
In September 1909, it played a leading role in the creation of the Union
of Greek Associations, which consisted of associations of every kind
that had ambitions of becoming the political wing of the Military
League, with a program clearly more socially conservative than that of
the Syntechnies’ League. However, the Union of Greek Associations soon
escaped from its control.28
Hellenismos did not evolve its proto-fascist characteristics further in
1909–1910, but this did not mean that it had become alienated from the
lower classes. It took part in the creation of ballots with supporters
of a Constituent Assembly, and in the elections of August 1910, it
managed to elect five of its members. As a matter of fact, Kazazis came
second in Athens,29 and as a member of the Parliament he participated in
the group of “Syntaktikoi.”
Rizospastis [The Radical] was a weekly newspaper published from 1908 to
1911 by the lawyer Georgios Filaretos. Filaretos was one of the earliest
supporters of a republican regime in Greece and a prominent cadre member
of the small Radical party. He was elected five times as an independent
member of Parliament from Magnesia between 1881 and 1899, and was active
in many irredentist organizations.30 Earlier leftist historians often
treated with him as a leftist substitute for socialists in a period when
they had not yet appeared in Greece. But his contemporaries
characterized him as a conservative “keeper of the tradition,” and
indeed Filaretos attacked “materialism,” the movement that promoted the
use of vernacular Greek language (“demoticism”), as well as the
“unlimited emancipation of women.” In 1908 he protested for the
relaxation of social discipline in families, schools, places of work,
and in every social relationship.31
For Filaretos the right to property was sacred, but in 1909 he wrote
that it had become nebulous for common people. He believed that
historically the oligarchy had been closely related to the ownership of
large property, and that “the democratic institutions were introduced
only when big landownership came into the hands of the many.” However,
what he saw in Greece was that the number of people without property
continued to increase.32 Thus, he was from early on in favor of the
expropriation of the big estates in his [End Page 134] region,
Thessaly.33 As a member of the Parliament, he had also opposed the
negotiation of large public loans and increased indirect taxes to repay
them, taxes that burdened the lower classes.34
From 1908 to 1910, when he published Rizospastis, he supported social
protest and attacked “plutocrats” ferociously, juxtaposing them against
the suffering “laboring people.” He was in favor of various workers’
demands as well as strikes, provided that they did not exceed certain
levels of rebelliousness. He actively supported the expropriation of big
estates, and he denounced the massacre of peasants by soldiers at
Kileler in bitter tones that can hardly be found in the contemporary
press. He steadily attacked indirect taxes and accepted the need to
introduce income taxation.35
Rizospastis spoke in favor of “people’s power,” but without defining
what that meant exactly.36 More illuminating were the pairs of opposites
that it used: on the one hand were the liberals, on the other the
conservatives, and from this basic distinction stemmed all the others:
democrats and royalists, socialists and capitalists, patriots and
servants of the foreigners.37
Regarding the political arena, Rizospastis attacked the Crown and
politicians equally and argued for the foundation of “parties of
principle.” The king was considered the surrogate of the great powers in
Greece, and around him rallied absolutist circles that aimed for the
suspension of constitutional rights. But apart from these
“antiparliamentarianists,” the paper wrote, there were also the
“pseudoparliamentarists,” who dominated thanks to clientelism: in effect
a parliamentary oligarchy, though not, as seen by Hellenismos, an
indispensable part of the parliamentary system.38
Rizospastis referred to a liberal state model with emphasis on a strong
Parliament and the careful balance of the three powers, and opposed the
strengthening executive power.39 The petit bourgeois radicalism
expressed by Filaretos was essentially a liberal one, without traces of
authoritarianism, and as a matter of fact in 1909–1910 it assumed
leftish characteristics.
Nevertheless, just before the Goudi coup Filaretos had supported a
temporary dictatorship in case of “royal succession,”40 having evidently
been informed about the discussions between the officers opposed to the
Crown; after the coup he urged the Military League to provide “a more
genuinely revolutionary direction.” He stated that his support to the
officers was given provided that they would respect popular freedoms,41
but obviously he was aware that this was not the most suitable group to
ensure these. I believe [End Page 135] that the basic element of
convergence with the Military League was their opposition to the Crown.
I should note also that the possibility of a military dictatorship with
popular support that would result in a National Assembly had also
enchanted the leftist Sociological Society.42
The Radical Party was founded immediately after the Goudi coup and it
tried to operate as a party of the masses and not of cadres: it was the
first Greek party that created its program through assemblies.43 Five of
its members were elected to Parliament in August 1910, but the Radical
Party did not manage to attract mass membership nor did it survive. It
constituted a contradictory constellation, where socialist sympathizers
and antiparliamentarianists of the Right wing coexisted. Three
principles were declared as fundamental: the dissolution of the
“leader-centered parties,” the radical reformation of the state on the
basis of “liberal decentralizing principles,” and the adoption of a
“national foreign policy” (that is, the expansion of the Greek state).44
A special characteristic of the party was its antiroyalist criticism.45
Τhe socialistic journal Erevna placed the Radical Party on the borders
between capitalism and socialism.46
Within its program existed the main themes that we have seen in
Rizospastis: weakening of the Palace and the “leader-centered parties,”
a reduction of indirect taxes, labor legislation, and the expropriation
of big estates. In addition, they proposed limiting the right to vote
(even if in moderation) and establishing an upper chamber of the
Parliament.47 We should stress here that Rizospastis repeatedly defended
universal suffrage in 1910.48 However, a lot of important figures, aside
from Filaretos, played a significant role in the Radical Party. Among
them was Antonios Spiliotopoulos,49 the editor of the nationalistic
Panellinion Kratos [State of all the Greeks], who in 1907 complained
that “the blind mobs dominate the field of the elections” and as a
result determined the composition of the Parliament.50 Spiliotopoulos
called for the coalition of the “true patriots,” who would put an end to
the “orgy of party corruption”: “we should not expect initiatives from
the people. The people are saved by their leaders.”51 The problem,
according to him, was that during that period in Greece “the ones who
are suitable to lead and govern, merely follow and are governed by
others.”52 [End Page 136]
However, Spiliotopoulos established relations with the popular classes
in the following years. In 1910 he was president of the stokers’
association of the merchant marine, an association that organized a
dynamic strike that lasted for several days.53 In October 1909 he, like
many others, attacked the heavy indirect taxes and the plutocracy that
paid practically no taxes at all, but he clarified that he perceived the
“revolution” to be primarily political: “revolution of the people
against oligarchy and inequality.”54
Efimeris ton Ergaton [Workers’ Newspaper] was published in Athens by a
group of printers in collaboration with their union, and later with the
Labor Centre. The newspaper promoted a purely labor identity, attacking
the Syntechnies’ League, which maintained collaboration between small
employers and employees, and focused on the opposition between capital
and labor.55 It supported dynamically the wave of strikes in the spring
of 1910, and in its articles the need to introduce labor legislation was
a recurrent theme.
Although in the spring of 1910 they often spoke about the workers’
revolution and general strike, the newspaper was clearly oriented
towards reform: when it was forced to choose, it preferred the moderate
Labor Centre of Athens of Theodoropoulos rather than the League of the
Working Classes of Drakoulis, while later it supported Venizelos.56 Its
relationship with socialist ideas was initially rather muddy. From
August 1910, given the renewal of the team that published it and a
closer collaboration with the Labor Centre of Athens, clearer references
to socialism appear and news from the Greek socialistic movement was
published.57 However, socialism was not the only ideological reference:
both the newspaper and labor unions (e.g., cigarette makers’ union)
characterized all those that supported the demands of the workers as
“liberals.”58
Efimeris ton Ergaton was among the supporters of the Military League.59
In the summer of 1910 it called for the support of the Radical party and
it promoted candidates of Syntaktikoi.60 It attacked the “nation-killing
beasts of politics,” accusing them of corruption and of siding
systematically with the employers, and even considering the politicians
part of a wider oligarchy that oppressed and exploited the people.61
[End Page 137]
Political and economic domination were connected in articles published
in the newspaper. They were unified under the notion of enslavement: an
enslavement of the working people by the powerful.62 It is interesting
that beginning in autumn 1910 this synthesis of political and economic
elements in newspaper discourse almost disappeared and the emphasis was
placed on economic exploitation: the rival became not so much the
dominant power bloc in its various manifestations, but capital itself.
At the same time, there was a decline in the presence of nationalism
(which had become intense during the summer), of references to the
Military League, attacks on the king,63 seeking a leader who would
become the head of the working classes,64 and of invoking honor65 and
manliness.66
In other words, in the first six months of 1910 Efimeris ton Ergaton
emerged as the labor wing of a wider popular radicalism, but it could be
argued that it moved from a leftist populism to a kind of respectable
social democracy, oriented towards the struggle within the institutions
and not against them.
All the political currents discussed so far contributed to the success
of approximately seventy Syntaktikoi candidates in the elections of
August 1910, together with numerous independent candidates who were
elected without being on party lists.67 The main groups of Syntaktikoi,
that is, those who supported the transformation of the National Assembly
to a Constituent one with full jurisdiction to amend the constitution,
were Parliament members from Thessaly who focused on the expropriation
of big estates, and those elected with the “List of the People” in
Attica and Boeotia. They functioned as a parliamentary group, around
which most of the independent Parliament members initially rallied. They
were unified by the request for the Constituent Assembly, but also by
the opposition to the so-called “leader-centred parties,” as well as by
the fact that most of them placed their hopes in Venizelos. However,
Venizelos followed his own strategy, which he eventually imposed on
them.
In the beginning, Venizelos and the Syntaktikoi received support from
the same social and political environments, more or less. The difference
was that Venizelos was able to provide a solution that would be accepted
by the conservative bourgeoisie and the Crown (as well as Britain, the
dominant imperialist [End Page 138] power in the area), guaranteeing
stability and eliminating the antidynastic and ochlocratic elements from
the discourse of his followers, while preserving his appeal to the
popular classes. The latter was not easy: Venizelos’s ultimate success
should be attributed to the fact that he was the only significant
candidate for power that those who supported the popular protest could
endorse in that specific political situation, thanks to his political
experience and because in the previous months he had been presented as a
messiah by the press.
What was the content of the demand for the Constituent Assembly? On the
day after the elections, the newspaper Akropolis distinguished two
possible directions for future developments: one was signified by a
restriction of Parliament’s powers, the other by the compulsory
expropriation of large properties and the reduction in the powers of the
Crown.68 Of course, this differentiation was not something that could be
seen in absolute terms: for example, the Radical Party combined both
directions in its political program. There was a strong antimonarchy
view among the Syntaktikoi, but this did not necessarily mean a leftist
approach, in the same way that the intense nationalism of most of them
did not yet indicate their affiliation to the right.
Among them there were socialists and proto-fascists, agrarianists, and
conservative nationalists. The Syntaktikoi included Kazazis and
Filaretos; Papanastasiou, the head of the Sociological Society;
Drakoulis, the veteran socialist intellectual; radicalized members of
the Military League like Spiromilios; inflammatory preachers of
nationalistic rallies, like Kapetanakis;69 former ministers, like
Momferatos, and university students who actively supported the Goudi
coup, like Hatzigiannis; descendants of the nineteenth-century radicals
of the Ionian State, like Neophytos and Destounis; former members of the
dissolved party of Diligiannis who had turned against the political
system and were involved with the unions and popular mobilizations, like
Triantafyllidis and Gioldasis, editors respectively of Panthessaliki and
Astrapi.
Although ideologically the Syntaktikoi were characterized by a lack of
cohesion, they were defined socially through their ties with the
mobilizing lower classes. In Attica the basic constituents of the “List
of the People” were the Syntechnies’ League, the Union of Greek
Associations, and the Labor Centre—and their opponents called them
“penniless.”70 The ties of the Syntaktikoi with the lower classes were
obvious from their desire to mobilize [End Page 139] them during the
proceedings of the National Assembly—something that finally occurred
when Venizelos resigned (temporarily) as prime minister.71
One can get an idea about the character of the Syntaktikoi and the
masses that supported them in Athens from their demonstration on 10
August 1910, two days after the elections. The first to address the
thousands of people gathered outside the center of the “List of the
People” was Antonis Doufas, president of the association, “Popular
Union.” He started with an attack on the traitor politicians, with cries
from the crowd: “hang them.” He continued with an outline of the
proposed work of the Constituent Assembly: supporting agriculture and
industry, but also the “elevation of the worker”; the promotion of the
“freedom”; and “the attack against capital and the banks, the banks
which sucked the blood of the people without ever helping them.” The
exploitation was perceived in moral terms by the audience as well,
because they expressed their approval yelling “down with the thieves”
and “down with the pot-bellied.” The speakers who followed juxtaposed
the people with the tyranny of the “party oligarchy” and the “stinking
monster of the big political families,” which had not even respected
people’s “family honor.” Afterwards, the protestors went to Venizelos’s
election center, shouting against the politicians who betrayed the Great
Idea. There they cursed “all the politicians who had governed Greece so
far”: Doufas shouted from high up the curses (“may the earth open up and
swallow them,” “may they never rest in peace”), and the crowd repeated
them with raised hands. The ritual came to an end with the people taking
an oath “to enforce whatever is necessary for the salvation of his
country.”72
The ideological and cultural profile of the demonstrators and the
orators can be summarized as follows: the expression of anticapitalist
attitudes from a characteristically petty-bourgeois perspective (e.g.,
the banks that don’t help the people); demands in favor of the workers,
but also for state support of the entrepreneurs; claiming a substantial
widening of personal freedoms, but in the framework of an archaic
political culture. Fury against the big political families, the parties,
and politics dominated; this could have sprung from the wish for further
democratization as well as the rejection of parliamentarism from an
authoritarian perspective. There was ultimately an intense nationalism
and the invocation of the fatherland’s good above all. [End Page 140]
How can we conceptualize the emergence of a radical continuum consisting
of ideological-political currents with different and often opposing
goals? This continuum was short-lived, because the emergence of a new
party system brought its dissolution, yet it still has to be named and
interpreted.
In general, the radicalism in the years of the Goudi coup has been
addressed by historians with a certain awkwardness. Dertilis wrote about
the revolutionary but “ideologically vague” tendencies of the lower
classes. Hadjiiossif pointed out that the anti-status-quo atmosphere of
1909 was produced by the reactions of small owners against the deepening
of capitalist relations of production; ideological confusion and many
contradictions were the dominant characteristics peasants and petite
bourgeoisie and their representatives.73 Two other studies offer
diametrically opposing interpretations. Marketos draws a parallel
between 1909 and the 1848 revolutions in Europe, and emphasizes his
narration on the left-wing supporters of the mobilizations and their
“non-intellectual and ‘soft’ popular socialism.”74 Bochotis, in
contrast, interprets the discourse and action of the mobilized popular
classes as proto-fascism and adoption of the bourgeois
antiparliamentarianist ideology by the petty bourgeoisie.75
The intention of this article is to offer a different interpretation by
using the concept of populism, as developed by Ernesto Laclau in his
early works,76 in order to define the ideological and political field in
which the groups and persons outlined were moving, thus making their
convergence feasible. Laclau focuses on the field of political and
ideological relations of domination. At this level, the dominated
classes identify themselves not as a class but as “the underdog,” “the
counterposed to the dominant power bloc,” and are interpellated as
“people.” It is in this terrain that the struggle for hegemony is
conducted. Hegemony of the dominant class consists in its ability to
articulate into its own discourse these non-class interpellations of the
dominated classes and to neutralize them, that is, to eliminate the
antagonism to the dominant power bloc and “transform it into a simple
difference”: the people, therefore, are conceived as different from the
elite, but not as its opponent. But there are also what Laclau calls
“popular-democratic interpellations,” in which the subject that is
interpellated as “people” is [End Page 141] constituted on the basis of
an antagonistic relationship with the dominant power bloc. The
articulation of these popular-democratic interpellations into a complex
constitutes populism—usually in the context of a social and ideological
crisis.
There may be a variety of populisms, depending on the class discourses
with which popular-democratic interpellations are articulated such as
socialist populism, which is populism of a fraction of the ruling class
that appeals to the masses in order to impose its own hegemony. The form
of populism that is closer to our case study is what Laclau calls
Jacobinism, in which “the autonomy of the popular-democratic
interpellations reaches its maximum degree.”77 “People” emerges as a
political alternative to the system, and this is why, according to
Laclau, Jacobinism constitutes a radical petty-bourgeois ideology.
Because the intermediate strata do not participate in the dominant
relations of production, their contradictions with the power bloc are
posed at the level of political and ideological relations that
constitute the system of domination. Thus, their identity as the people
is much more significant than their class identity.
Of course, Laclau in his later works developed a new theory of discourse
and hegemony, and returned to the study of populism on this basis. To
use the terminology of these later elaborations, populism happens when
“floating signifiers” (demands available for articulation in a broader
set) are articulated with a hegemonic “empty signifier” in a chain of
equivalences. The antagonistic frontiers established by this chain
define a strong dichotomy, and the political struggle is simplified in a
fundamental antagonism between “us, the people” and “those” of the
elite.78 However, I will use his later elaborations only selectively,
first because of different epistemological choices (regarding, in
particular, the role of the economic and the social in the production of
collective subjects). Moreover, by using the early Laclau’s theory of
populism we can evaluate much better the importance of the focusing of
the discourse and the demands of 1908–1910 Greek radicalism on the
political level. Finally, what I found particularly intriguing in the
early Laclau’s theory is the fact that it permits us to better identify
the common field within which political and social actors of quite
different ideological origins developed their political action. [End
Page 142]
The concept of populism, as defined above, and in particular the concept
of Jacobinism, provides the key for the interpretation of the
convergence of the radicals in 1908–1910.
First, the developments in Greek society were consistent with the
requirements defined by Laclau. There was a crisis of representation.
The dissolution of the National Party after the assassination of its
leader Diligiannis in 1905, deprived the political system of a position
that facilitated the integration of popular discontent and contributed
to its delegitimization. Τhe ideological crisis after the defeat in the
Greco-Turkish war of 1897 has been pointed out,79 and we can definitely
speak of a social crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century, when
serious difficulties emerged in the reproduction of the arrangements
that had previously existed. Small ownership was hurt by the tendency of
concentration of the means of production. In the cities the ranks of
wage workers grew and strikes became more frequent.80 In the countryside
agricultural productivity had begun to decline.81 Finally, as regards
the economic conjuncture, the economic crisis of 1908–1909 created
availabilities for protest.82
Second, the petty bourgeoisie played a leading role in the radical
protest of these years. It all began in December 1908, when the
Syntechnies’ League mobilized against the new taxes. Syntechnies, the
professional associations in crafts and retailing, were controlled by
shopkeepers and small employers. The Syntechnies’ League was also the
major force that supported the Goudi coup by organizing the big rally of
14 September 1909; it contributed crucially to the destabilization of
the semi-dictatorial regime by attacking the new taxes it imposed in
November 1909. Finally, in 1910 the League vigorously supported both the
“List of the People” in the elections of August and the ascent of
Venizelos to power.83 In their interventions they attacked both
plutocracy, which effectively was not taxed, and oligarchy, which was
holding power by using immoral methods.84
Why did the petty bourgeoisie play the leading role in the movement? On
the one hand, small ownership in Greek society remained extensive and
diffused.85 On the other hand, its reproduction in both rural and urban
societies was facing severe difficulties at the turn of the century: an
obvious indication is the mass emigration to America taking place in
these years. In [End Page 143] 1908 it was common to read protests in
the style of the following resolution of the association of grocers of
Volos: “all the small traders, working under very hard conditions, are
squeezed, exhausted, deeply distressed.”86
Third, the radical criticism and the demands of popular mobilizations
referred predominantly to the state and the contradictions in the field
of the relations of representation and domination. In short, radical
discourse revolved around taxes, foreign policy, the political and party
system, and clientelism.
It may be possible to trace continuities with earlier radical
mobilizations and ideological motifs, in the manner of Gareth Stedman
Jones,87 and to integrate the protest of 1908–1910 into a tradition of
radical discourse in Greece focusing on the political level. Bochotis
has proposed something similar, by placing the discourse of the
Syntechnies’ League in the context of the development of
antiparliamentary ideas and their evolution from the mid-nineteenth
century to the early twentieth century. The problem with this approach
is that it is one-dimensional, whereas the 1908–1910 radicalism was
not.88 Of course, a more complex interpretation, taking into account the
multiple traditions from which the radicals of the Goudi years drew, is
not impossible. Yet this would not contradict our argument about the
nature of the radicalism under study.
Popular protest turned especially against indirect taxes, which
increased the price of essential goods. At this point we approach
another theory about populism, one that puts the emphasis on perceptions
of moral economy: the rejection of capitalist values and the focus on
popular action on the market and prices.89 However, although the popular
protest raised the issue of high prices, there were hardly any demands
for protection of the people from the forces of the market by a
paternalist state. On the contrary, the issue was overwhelmingly
perceived as a question of tax inequality and of a state policy that
increased the cost of goods consumed by the lower classes
disproportionately.90 In other words, there was an intensely political
dimension in the 1908–1910 discourse of popular protest and its
supporters; it can be possibly traced to the effects of sixty-five years
of universal suffrage on the language that the popular classes used to
discuss politics. This dimension of intense politicization can hardly be
dealt with by theories that stress the opposition of populism to the
free market. Certainly protests about the price of bread or the grocers’
price policy formulated in terms of “profiteering” can be detected in
these years.91 Yet the discourse against profiteering became [End Page
144] dominant only in the 1910s and 1920s, under the impact of the
hyperinflation after the First World War.92
Of course, there had been demands focusing on the relations of
production. Workers and sharecroppers mobilized with demands related to
labor relations and land ownership. In 1910 a vigorous peasant movement
developed in Thessaly, and the Labor Centre of Athens was founded. Yet,
our argument is not that the demands of the popular protest were
exclusively focused on the state, but that this was the dominant
direction, and that it was this focus that produced the unity of the
radicalism of these years, permitting the coordination of people with
very different profiles. From this aspect, the speech and the resolution
of the demonstration of 14 September 1909 are revealing. The violent
verbal attack against plutocracy did not result in demands more radical
than the establishment of income tax, whereas the measures proposed
against the political elite were much more concrete.93
Part of this pattern of focusing on issues of state policy was the
accusation against the power bloc of being indifferent to national
interests, and the call for aggressive foreign policy. Nationalist ideas
were shared by the vast majority of the 1900s radicals. Irredentism was
permanently present in the agenda of Greek politics; only twelve years
had passed since the traumatic defeat of Greece in the war with Turkey,
and now there was again a serious threat of war with the Ottomans.
However, these facts do not require that a radical continuum emerged in
1908–1910 on the basis of nationalism, or that it was Venizelos’s
response to nationalist feelings that accounts, more than anything else,
for his rise in 1910.94 If we accepted these assessments, we would
remain trapped in older views of nineteenth-century Greek politics,
according to which its agenda was limited to the realization of the
nationalist “Great Idea” and the “conquest” of the state and subsequent
distribution of offices to the members of the victorious party. On the
contrary, the political debate after the Goudi pronunciamento was
dominated by issues such as economic policy and taxes, structural
reforms in the political system, administrative reform, and social and
agrarian questions. Moreover, what played the decisive role in causing a
crisis of legitimization was not the Cretan question but the
mobilization of the Syntechnies’ League in the winter of 1908–1909
against the new taxes.
It is correct that nationalism had been a significant vehicle of mass
mobilization in the previous years, and that some radicals used the
nation as the primary “articulating principle” around which they
structured their [End Page 145] arguments. However, for most of the
radicals nationalism was an important but complementary element: it was
not the point at which their views and objectives were concentrated, but
simply a part of a broader ideological field in which their convergence
took place.
Fourth, the “people” not only constituted the main point of reference in
their discourse but also were perceived as in competition with the
“oligarchy.” The parliamentary, party, political, or court oligarchy was
defined as the basic opponent; an oligarchy that was defined primarily
on the basis of its political domination and that was considered to be
formed around the state. Indeed, one of the concept’s sources of origin
was the nineteenth century antiparliamentary criticism of the democratic
political system. However, the attack on “deputo-cracy” is not
identified with the adoption of middle-class antiparliamentarianism by
the popular classes. It was also the popular-democratic interpellation
par excellence in that period, through which the subject “people” was
constituted as antagonistic to the dominant power bloc. Between, on the
one side, the ideal operation of parliamentary democracy (as it was
outlined by principles like the equality it preached) and, on the other
side, the true relationships of inequality and domination that were
reproduced through parliamentarism, there was quite a distance. Whenever
social antagonism became more accentuated, this feeling of distance
assumed the dynamics of conflict.
It had happened before: in 1892 an article in a students’ newspaper
stated, in the context of the students’ mobilization against the tuition
fees that were imposed, that “while supposedly we enjoy a parliamentary
state, we are essentially subjected to a most horrific oligarchy.”95
Fifteen years later, this line of argument had become massively popular.
The theme of a political oligarchy appeared in nearly all the daily
newspapers; it was argued by various political associations, the
Military League, the cadres of the syntechnies, reformer politicians
like Gounaris, the Sociological Society, the leftist newspaper Ergatis
of Volos.96 In general, Venizelos made sure that he did not use
expressions that could excite social conflicts, but in his speeches in
November 1910 he promised his audiences that he would quash “the network
of unlawful interests of the oligarchy.”97
Of course, not only oligarchy but also plutocracy was indicated as one
of the main adversaries of the people. Furthermore, there were an
increasing number of discussions regarding the class structure of Greek
society, and in [End Page 146] public discourse a modern language of
class was introduced that was based on the opposition between capital
and labor. However, these two distinct ways of comprehending society are
not necessarily contrary to one another.98 In contrast, we see them
blending and in communication in various ways. Some radicals believed
that the abolition of the parliamentary oligarchy would result from the
making of the classes, because class struggle would lead to parties of
principles.99 Others treated different forms of political and economic
dominance as equivalent, criticizing “the governors and the members of
their parties, the rich that are involved in banks and companies, and
those who profited from buying and selling the labor of other
people.”100 In addition, class or class-like analyses regarding the
composition and the course of creation of the oligarchy became
common.101 For some the opposition between capital and labor was
dominant; for others this opposition was less important but nevertheless
useful for comprehending society; and others simply selectively used
some elements of the new class language.
What was mentioned above, regarding the focus of protests against the
state, holds true here as well: the definition of the opponent as an
oligarchy described in essentially political terms was not exclusive,
but it was dominant, and it is at this level that the convergence of the
various radicals was achieved. This discourse was frequently accompanied
with antiplutocratic arguments, developing in this way a more completely
subversive character. But here was where the divergences started and the
formulation of different objectives.
A broad range of different positions and strategies in the wider radical
movement coexisted, but usually there was no open rivalry among them.
Different actors attempted to turn popular protest in various directions
and articulate it with various class interests. Popular protest became
the site of a struggle for hegemony; at the same time, however, it was
this protest that imposed the dividing lines of the period, as well as
some common characteristics to all those who attempted to represent it.
This was facilitated by the fact that usually the references of the
radicals of 1908–1910 to theoretical elaborations, to utopias and
projects of transformation of the society are scarce, often vague, and
certainly not in the foreground. [End Page 147] What dominates is the
reference to supporting the people’s interests: my feeling is that this
is what Rizospastis meant when it spoke about the “people’s power,” and
Hellenismos about the “people’s state,” but also Akropolis when speaking
about “populism” as a positive trait of some politicians.102 Therefore,
the underdevelopment or the conscious limitation of the utopian elements
in their discourse was another prerequisite for right and left radicals
to move together in the field of populist discourse; a field that in
some aspects proved to be very wide but in others rather narrow.
The concept of populism, and in particular its version as Jacobinism (as
defined by Laclau), defines an ideological field in a context in which
we can comprehend a wide range of political views, and the emergence of
a “radical continuum.” It depicts the intense social antagonism that
took place, especially its focus on the political level and the
significant role played by the petty bourgeoisie on the social level. It
allows us to take seriously the dividing lines set by the subjects
themselves without abandoning a class-based analysis, and of course
without accepting these dividing lines uncritically.
Laclau developed his theory about populism by studying political
formations that were not the mere products of a specific conjuncture but
lasted through time, becoming sufficiently coherent and having
established relations of representation with various social categories.
Here this is clearly not the case: it was a tendency that led to the
Syntantikoi of the National Assembly in 1910, but it did not become
crystallized in a structured political formation. The specific
perspectives that populism would obtain, however, as well as its
relations with specific utopian elements, depended on its articulation
of class interests and strategies and on its consolidation in terms of
organizational structures. On the contrary, the various tendencies that
developed in 1908–1910 would be assimilated into a reorganized political
scene. [End Page 148]
1. Surveys and important contributions to the discussion include Geoff
Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political
Change after Bismarck (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980),
196–203; Margaret Canovan, Populism (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1981); Margaret Canovan, The People (Malden, MA: Polity,
2005); Nicos Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery: Early
Parliamentarism and Late Industrialization in the Balkans and Latin
America (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1986); Pierre-André Taguieff, “Le
populisme et la science politique: du mirage conceptuel aux vraix
problèmes,” Vingtième siècle 56 (1997): 4–33; Pierre-André Taguieff,
L’illusion populiste (Paris: Flammarion, 2002); Paul Taggart, Populism
(Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000); Jan-Werner Müller, What is
Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Cas
Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short
Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
2. Ernesto Laclau, “Towards a Theory of Populism,” in Politics and
Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: NLB, 1977), 143–99; Ernesto Laclau,
“Populism: What’s in a Name?,” in Populism and the Mirror of Democracy,
ed. Francisco Panizza (New York: Verso, 2005), 32–49; Ernesto Laclau, On
Populist Reason (New York: Verso, 2005).
3. Georgios B. Dertilis, Atelesforoi I telesforoi? Foroi kai exousia sto
elliniko kratos [Taxes and power in the Greek state] (Athens, Greece:
Alexandreia, 1993).
4. Victor Papakosmas, The Military in Greek Politics: The 1909 Coup
d’état (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1977) remains the most
complete narration of the events.
5. Georgios Dertilis, Koinonikos metaschimatismos kai stratiotiki
epemvasi 1880–1909 [Social change and military intervention, Greece
1880–1909], 4th ed. (Athens, Greece: Exantas, 1985); Niki Maroniti, To
kinima sto Goudi ekato chronia meta [The coup of Goudi a hundred years
after] (Athens, Greece: Alexandreia, 2010).
6. Nicos Mouzelis, Post-Marxist Alternatives: The Construction of Social
Orders (London: Macmillan, 1990).
7. Christos Hadjiiossif, I giraia selini. I viomichania stin elliniki
oikonomia 1830–1940 [The old moon. Industry in the Greek economy,
1830–1940] (Athens, Greece: Themelio, 1993), 371–74.
8. This issue has been raised particularly in the context of an older
discussion about the prevalence of clientelism in Greek politics. See
Christos Lyrintzis, “Politiki kai pelateiako systima stin Ellada tou
19ou aiona” [Politics and clientelism in nineteenth-century Greece],
Elliniki koinonia 1 (1987): 157–82; G. B. Dertilis, Istoria tou
ellinikou kratous (1830–1920) [History of the Greek state, 1830–1920]
(Athens, Greece: Estia, 2005), has argued that, in contrast to what is
commonly asserted, the mixture of modern and archaic elements, that is,
of clientelism with universal suffrage, proved very effective in giving
impetus to important economic and social reforms.
9. Antonis Liakos, Ergasia kai politiki stin Ellada tou mesopolemou
[Labor and politics in interwar Greece] (Athens, Greece: Idryma
Emporikis Trapezas, 1993), 558.
10. Konstantinos Tsoukalas, Exartisi kai anaparagogi. O koinonikos rolos
ton ekpaideftikon mihanismon stin Ellada 1830–1922 [Dependence and
reproduction. The social role of educational mechanisms in Greece,
1830–1922] (Athens, Greece: Themelio, 1977).
11. Hadjiiossif, I giraia selini, 386–88; Christos Hadjiiossif,
“Introduction” in Istoria tis Elladas tou eikostou aiona [History of
Greece in the twentieth century], ed. Christos Hadjiiossif (Athens,
Greece: Vivliorama, 2000), vol. A1, 32; Christina Agriantoni,
“Viomichania” [Industry], in Istoria tis Elladas tou eikostou aiona
[History of Greece in the twentieth century], ed. Christos Hadjiiossif
(Athens, Greece: Vivliorama, 2000), vol. A1, 202.
12. Thanassis Bochotis, I rizospastiki dexia. Antikoinovouleftismos,
syntiritismos kai anoloklirotos fasismos stin Ellada 1864–1911 [The
radical Right. Antiparliamentarianism, conservatism and incomplete
fascism in Greece 1864–1911] (Athens, Greece: Vivliorama, 2003). George
Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party
Strategies in Greece 1922–1936 (Berkeley, 1983), 121–27 offers an
approach that also distinguishes between opposing fractions of the
middle class, but nevertheless remains close to the classical
interpretation of the bourgeois revolution against a noncapitalist
ruling class, because he replaces the “oligarchy of the few political
families” (traditionally considered as dominant in the
nineteenth-century Greece) with the “state bourgeoisie,” and
“bourgeoisie” with “entrepreneurial bourgeoisie.” His interpretation is
not modified in George Mavrogordatos, 1915. O ethnikos dichasmos [1915.
The National Schism] (Athens, Greece: 2015).
13. Acropolis, 19 February 1909.
14. Nikos Potamianos, “Mia organosi tis rizospastikis dexias: I etaireia
‘Hellenismos’ 1898–1910” [A radical right organization: ‘Hellenismos’],
Outopia 56 (2003): 77–95.
15. Hellenismos, 26 April 1908, 3 April 1909, 26 August 1909, 24
September 1909, 24 November 1909. Neoklis Kazazis, “Anthropikos
Ellinismos” [Humanist hellenism], Erevna, October 1908, 148–51.
16. Hellenismos, 8 May 1909, 17 September 1909, 24 September 1909.
17. Georgios N. Filaretos, Simeioseis apo tou 75ou ypsomatos 1848–1923
[Notes from my 75th year] (Athens, Greece: 1924–28), vol. 1, 74, 76,
155, 157, 169; vol. 3, 481, 532; Hellenismos [review], January 1904,
54–60.
18. Filaretos, Simeioseis, vol. 3, 544–45, 568–69.
19. Papakosmas, The Military, 117.
20. “I Etaireia o Hellenismos pros ton ellinikon laon” [Hellenismos
society to the Greek people], Hellenismos [review], February 1905,
136–37.
21. Neoklis Kazazis, O Koinovouleftismos en Elladi [Parliamentarism in
Greece] (Athens, Greece: 1910), iv.
22. Neoklis Kazazis, “Peri syntaxeos ethnikou stratou” [On reinforcing
the national army], Hellenismos [review], December 1905, 893–905.
23. Neoklis Kazazis, “Peri synergatikon synetairismon” [On
cooperatives], Hellenismos, 10 June 1906.
24. Hellenismos, 4 March 1910, 26 December 1908, 17 September 1909;
“Hellenismos. Evdomadiaia ethniki efimeris” [The weekly national
newspaper Hellenismos], Hellenismos [review], June 1905, 476–78; “I
Etaireia o Ellinismos pros ton ellinikon laon,” Hellenismos, 6 May 1910;
Kazazis, O koinovouleftismos, 315, 319–20.
25. Ermis, 3 December 1900, 4; Hellenismos [review], June 1898, 244;
March 1902, 192; December 1903, 941; July–August 1906, 482.
26. Aristomenis Theodoridis, I epanastasis kai to ergon aftis [The
revolution and its work] (Athens, 1914); Acropolis, 13 August 1909;
Rizospastis, 18 September 1909, 25 September 1909.
27. Neoklis Kazazis, “O Hellenismos kata ton 19o aiona” [Hellenism
during the nineteenth century], Hellenismos [review], February 1901, 67;
Kazazis, “Peri syntaxeos,” 905.
28. Acropolis, 8–14 September 1909, 29 October 1909, 11 December 1909;
Hellenismos, 17 September 1909, 8 October 1909; Rizospastis, 27 November
1909, 28 May 1910.
29. Neon Asty, 7 July 1910; Acropolis, 13 August 1910.
30. Th. Papadopoulos, “Eisagogi” [Introduction], in Xenokratia kai
vasileia en Elladi 1821–1897 [Foreign domination and monarchy in Greece
1821–1897], ed. Georgios Filaretos (Athens, Greece: Epikairotita, 1977).
31. Pavlos Karolidis, Synchronos istoria ton Ellinon [Contemporary
history of the Greeks] (Athens, 1929), vol. 7, 306–7. On demoticism, see
articles in Rizospastis, above. On materialism, see Georgios Filaretos,
Xenokratia, 353; Rizospastis, 23 January 1909. On women, see Georgios
Filaretos, Ai gynaikes os dikigoroi [Women as lawyers] (Athens, 1901);
Rizospastis, 12 December 1908. Georgios Filaretos, “Koinoniki
peitharchia” [Social discipline], Elliniki Epitheorisis, April 1908,
161–63.
32. Rizospastis, 18 December 1909; Georgios Filaretos, “Agrotikon zitima
en Elladi” [The agrarian question in Greece], Erevna 1 (August
1903):187–90; Rizospastis, 25 March 1909.
33. Rizospastis, 20 March 1909; Theodoros Sakellaropoulos, Thesmikos
metaschimatismos kai oikonomiki anaptyxi [Institutional change and
economic development] (Athens, Greece: Exantas, 1991), 111, 126, 130–32.
34. Epitheorisis politiki kai filologiki 1 (1881): 321–26; Georgios
Filaretos, Simeioseis, vol.1, 139; Georgios Filaretos, Efthinai
[Account] (Athens, Greece: 1895).
35. Attacks on plutocrats and indirect taxes can be read in every issue
of Rizospastis. About labor demands: Rizospastis, 24 October 1908, 16
March 1909, 21 November 1909, 7 May 1910. On strikes, see 16 February
1909, 11 September 1909, 15 April 1910, but see contra 21 May 1910. On
the agrarian question, see 7 November 1908, 9 January 1909, and in
almost every issue from 6 November 1909 until 30 April 1910. On income
tax, see 9 October 1909.
36. Rizospastis, 9 October 1909, 6 November 1909.
37. Rizospastis, 2 April 1910.
38. For instance, see Rizospastis, 11 April 1908, 7 November 1908, 27
February 1909, 4 September 1909, 21 January 1910.
39. Rizospastis, 11 April 1908, 11 July 1908, 23 October 1909, 22
January 1910, 25 March 1910.
40. Rizospastis, 3 July 1909.
41. Rizospastis, 28 August 1909.
42. Spyros Marketos, “O Alexandros Papanastasiou kai I epohi tou”
[Alexandros Papanastasiou and his age], Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Athens, Greece, 1998, 195.
43. Filaretos, Simeioseis, vol. 3, 567–70; Archive of Spyros
Theodoropoulos (in ELIA), file 3: proceedings of the First branch of the
party in Athens. See also the newspaper Rizospastis which covered the
Radical party consistently between 1909 and 1910.
44. Bulletin of the Board of the party sent to its members, 2 January
1910: in the archive of Spyros Theodoropoulos, file 3.
45. Elliniki Epitheorisis, October 1909.
46. Ch. P., “Entiposeis toy minos,” [Impressions from the month that
passed] Erevna, April 1910, 49–51.
47. Ethnosynefsis. Programma tou Rizospastikou Kommatos [Program of the
Radical Party] (Athens, Greece: 1910).
48. Rizospastis, 5 February, 2 April, 7 May 2010.
49. Ant. Ep. Spiliotopoulos, Ai ypiresiai pros tin patrida tis
oikogeneias Spiliotopoulou [Spiliotopoulos family in the service of
homeland] (Athens, Greece: 1997).
50. Kratos, 25 January 1907.
51. Antonios Spiliotopoulos, Peri sotirias tis patridos [About the
salvation of the fatherland] (Athens, Greece: 1907), 78.
52. Kratos, 10 May 1907.
53. Archive of Stefanos Dragoumis (in Gennadeion), file 71.1; Sfaira
(Piraeus), 9 April 1910.
54. Rizospastis, 9 and 23 October 1909.
55. For attacks on syntechnies, see Ergatis (Volos), 8 November 1909,
Efimeris ton Ergaton, 83 and 18 April 1910, 2 and 14 May 1910.
56. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 27 May 1910, 8 June 1910, 10 September 1910,
26 October 1910, 10 December 1910.
57. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 17 August 1910, 26 September 1910, 3 and 31
October 1910, 10 December 1910.
58. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 17 January 1910, 14, 16, and 27 May 1910, 21
July 1910.
59. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 17 January 1910.
60. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 22 June 1910, 28 July 1910, 17 August 1910.
61. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 3–25 January 1910, 16 March 1910, 3 April
1910, 2 May 1910, 28 July 1910, 18 November 1910.
62. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 3 and 7 January 1910, 16 March 1910, 2 May
1910 and 25 August 1910.
63. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 3 January 1910, 3 and 11 April 3 1910, 27 May
1910, 8 June 1910.
64. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 3–17 January 1910.
65. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 11 April 1910 and 14 May 1910.
66. Efimeris ton Ergaton, 3 January 1910, 11 April 1910, 2 May 1910, 8
June 1910.
67. The analysis that follows is based on the newspapers Acropolis,
Astrapi, Kairoi, Rizospastis, and Hellenismos from July to October 1910.
See also Ilias Nikolakopoulos and Nikos Oikonomou, “To eklogiko vaptisma
tou venizelismou. Ekloges 1910–12” [The first elections of Venizelos
1910–12], in Symposio gia ton Eleftherio Venizelo [Colloquium on
Eleftherios Venizelos] (Athens, Greece: ELIA, 1988), 45–73; Marketos, “O
Alexandros Papanastasiou,” 150–52, 205–12.
68. Acropolis, 9 and 11 August 1910.
69. Makedonikon Imerologion, 1908, 375; Acropolis, 2 August 1906.
70. Acropolis, 5 August 1910.
71. Acropolis, 8 September 1910 and 11 October 1910.
72. This description is a synthesis of the reportages of Acropolis,
Kairoi, Astrapi, Skrip, and Neon Asty of 11 August 1910.
73. Dertilis, Koinonikos metaschimatismos, 179–80, 200–5; Hadjiiossif, I
giraia selini, 68, 333–34, 383–87.
74. Marketos, “O Alexandros Papanastasiou,” 155.
75. Bochotis, I rizospastiki dexia.
76. Laclau, “Towards a Theory of Populism.”
77. Laclau, “Towards a Theory of Populism,” 175.
78. Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name?”; Laclau, On Populist Reason.
79. Gerasimos Augustinos, Consciousness and History: Nationalist Critics
of Greek Society, 1897–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
80. Kostas Fountanopoulos, “Misthoti ergasia” [Wage labor], in Istoria
tis Elladas tou eikostou aiona [History of Greece in the twentieth
century], ed. Christos Hadjiiossif (Athens, Greece: Vivliorama, 2000),
87–121.
81. Sokratis Petmezas, Prolegomena stin istoria tis ellinikis agrotikis
oikonomias tou mesopolemou [History of Greek rural economy in the
interwar years] (Athens, Greece: Alexandreia, 2012), 33–34.
82. Christos Hadjiiossif, “I belle époque tou kefalaiou” [Capital’s
belle époque], in Istoria tis Elladas tou eikostou aiona, ed. Christos
Hadjiiossif (Athens, Greece: Vivliorama, 2000), vol. A1, 323, 341.
83. Nikos Potamianos, Oi noikokyraioi. Magazatores kai viotechnes stin
Athina 1880–1925 [Shopkeepers and master artisans in Athens, 1880–1925]
(Heraklion: University of Crete Press, 2015), 375–94.
84. Theodoridis, I epanastasis, 16–24, 132–41.
85. Dertilis, Istoria tou ellinikou kratous; Hadjiiossif, I giraia
selini; Potamianos, Oi noikokyraioi.
86. Hellenismos, 26 December 1908. Cf. interviews of the presidents of
the associations of barbers and hat makers, Acropolis, 12 and 13 March
1909.
87. Gareth Stedman Jones, “Rethinking Chartism,” in Languages of Class:
Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 90–178.
88. Bochotis, I rizospastiki dexia, 495 ff; Potamianos, Oi noikokyraioi,
262–67.
89. Antonis Liakos, “Peri Laikismou” [On populism], Ta Istorika 10
(1990): 13–28.
90. I Alitheia, 7 January 1907; Acropolis, 12 November 1910; Efimeris
ton Ergaton, 11 April 1910; Kairoi, 19 February 1909 and 5 March 1909
(Syntechnies’ League).
91. Salpinx, 1 February 1909; Efimeris ton Ergaton, 17 February 1910.
92. Nikos Potamianos, “Moral Economy? Popular Demands and State
Intervention in the Struggle over Anti-Profiteering Laws in Greece
1914–1925,” Journal of Social History 48, no. 4 (2015): 803–15.
93. Acropolis, 15 September 1909.
94. As has been argued by George J. Andreopoulos, “Liberalism and the
Formation of the Nation-State,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7
(1989): 193–224, and Mark Mazower, “The Messiah and the Bourgeoisie:
Venizelos and Politics in Greece 1909–1912,” The Historical Journal 35,
no. 4 (1992): 885–904.
95. Spyros Loukatos, “I foititiki koinotita sto deftero miso tou 19ou
aiona” [The students’ community in the second half of the nineteenth
century], in the collective volume Panepistimio: Ideologia kai paideia
[University: ideology and education] (Athens, Greece: IEAN, 1989), vol.
1, 309.
96. Potamianos, “Mia organosi,” 86; Kyriakos, I Nea Ellas, 43, 69, 264;
Ergatis (Volos), 23 October 1908; Efimeris ton Ergaton, 24 February
1910; Acropolis, 29 June 1909; Patris, 24 September 1909; Astrapi, 15
August 1909; Theodoridis, I epanastasis, 132–41.
97. Takis Mihalakeas, Vivlos Eleftheriou Venizelou (Athens, Greece:
1964), vol. 1, 434, 442.
98. As believes Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England
and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
99. Georgios Skliros, Erga [Works] (Athens, Greece: Epikairotita, 1977),
125.
100. Salpinx, 1 February 1909.
101. Astrapi, 25–29 September 1909; Kazazis, O Koinovouleftismos
102. Rizospastis, 9 October 1909; Hellenismos, 5 August 1910; Acropolis,
22 March 1910 and 13 August 1910.