On the Causes and Significance of the December 2008 Social Explosion in Greece

The social explosion of December 2008 in Greece represented a postscript from the future. In a country where the consequences of the global economic crisis had already begun to make themselves felt — in conjunction with the collapse of a specific model for integration into the global division of labor — it had become evident that the younger generations were destined to experience a much worse future than preceding generations. The realization that unemployment, flexible working hours and hyper-exploitation would be the norm, in combination with other conjunctural questions (an exacerbation of repression, political scandals, sharpening of the migration question), resulted in the situation whereby the country with the richest leftist traditions in Western Europe witnessed an explosion of the greatest youth revolt of the last 30 years. It would mark a turning point for the development of new outbreaks of social upheaval that would bring to the fore the contradictions in management of the global capitalist crisis.