On the question of professional politicians - Woe to the amateurs of direct democracy...

By Iphicratis Amyras

14-April-2012

For the last three years insults have been hurled against professional politicians, by those who equate politics with politicians, and indeed crooked politicians.  

But in their criticisms they are shooting off target. They don’t hurt the anti-Greek swindlers. They hurt the movement of revolutionary patriots.  

The image they have formed in their minds is that of the loafer Karamanlis or the tourist Papandreou. And they surmise that all professional politicians behave more or less like that. They propose, in other words, that professional politicians should be equated with party mechanisms.   

With a little direct democracy for diversion, these celebrants of holy indignation are trashing the professionalism that should be inherent in politics.  

But politics is not just an art and a science. The politician is a warlord. An officer on permanent duty in a theatre of undeclared war.  

In the fields of economics, warfare, justice, diplomacy, full-time cadres are needed, with years of training, whose task is to carry out difficult missions on behalf of the community.

According to the German philosopher Max Weber, modern political parties are like military units in a battle to impose their ideas and acquire power. Their headquarters are like those of an army. Their non-military strategic operations follow the same principles as those of actual warfare.  

The capture of the state has always meant the taking possession of the booty that is enjoyed by the victor in the political war, continues Weber.

In the more developed countries there are schools for leaders from which the personnel will graduate who staff the state, government and party machinery of each country.

In France, and specifically in Paris, there is a school of economic warfare (Ecole de Guerre Economique), from which there graduate cadres trained in the new forms of economic warfare.

The lack of a Hellenic school of economic warfare has had tragic consequences for our people. This is something we have very painfully ascertained in recent times.

Executives of the IMF, the Troika and the banks, specialized in economic imperialism and economic aggression, have had a field day in the first months of their occupation of Greece, because there has been no resistance from Greek intellectuals, with very few exceptions.

A school of economic warfare must at all costs be established in Greece, to teach new generations of Greeks how to confront IMF-style bandit gangs.  

In Greece we have two schools: the academy for young diplomats and the national school of public administration. Professional political cadres graduate from them, but they are not employed at the top levels of the state. The reason for that is that the basic mechanism for generating political leaders is the American college and the mainstream regime parties of and for the rayah.

With the passage of time the party armies refine their battle strategies. They employ specialists  in psychology, in history, in sociology, in communication, in economics, to expand their sphere of influence in the community.  

In such a bellicose environment to be a politician means to fight tooth and nail. The image of politicians of the Karamanlis/Papandreou type is not consistent with what we are describing. Its associations are with spoiled children who enjoy on the basis of inheritance what does not belong to them.  

The mistaken projection of the problem from personalities to the issue of professional training is extremely dangerous. Greece needs professional politicians dedicated to Freedom of the Nation. The revolutionary movement in particular needs professional revolutionaries with a wide-ranging education, like Rigas Ferraios.  

What is required is years-long education so that a group of intellectuals can acquire the skills necessary for overturning a tyrannical regime.  

Because of the political ignorance that characterizes certain patriots they start apologizing pre-emptively to the people with phrases of the kind “We are not professional politicians; nor do we have party machines.”

Precisely this is the problem in the Greek political scene. There are no professional patriotic politicians, backed by strongly patriotic party machinery.

We must be professionals. We are a revolutionary movement seeking power, not a protest movement. We will be confronted with provocation, murders and attempted murders, political and judicial attacks.  

Dealing with this is not a task for amateurs.  

We don’t need luxurious party offices but we do need permanent personnel and a school for political cadres. Lessons and meetings can take place in houses but revolutionary material  must be produced on a daily basis and distributed to the people.

Patriotic movements in Greece fail to take into account two basic questions: a) why patriotic parties have in the past failed to take power and b) why new patriotic movements degenerate and dissolve.  

Perhaps they have not understood that the enemy is professional and works day and night with the assistance of a staff of trained cadres on the task of destroying the Hellenic nation. It is not possible to stop this with amateur politicians gathering once a week in an office to debate for two or three hours,.

The inability, to date, of the Hellenic anti-memorandum patriotic movement to defeat the occupiers is to a large extent attributable to its failure to establish schools of cadres to staff an embryonic administrative apparatus that can work outside of, and in parallel with, the governing regime of the occupier.  

For two years we have been shouting about dual power, about a protracted mass strike, about a Constitutional Convention, and from one moment to the next this revolutionary rhetoric recedes into the background just because the occupying cabal calls elections to “defuse” popular rage.  

This situation testifies to an lack of revolutionary cadre. It reveals a deficit, an absence of a sufficient number of patriotic intellectuals to move forward the Greek Revolution.  

Let us face the truth. In Greece formally there is no institutional recognition of the lobby, the professional pressure group. But the Siemens case shows that for years an informal underground lobby has been in operation, supporting specific politicians and specific interests. The same has been demonstrated about the banking lobby in Greece. Whereas all of Greek society has been ruined economically, the banks have been rescued at the expense of society.  

If we analyse this from a cold-blooded and cynical viewpoint, it means that the banking lobby has done a good job of securing its own survival. It has taken care to promote its people to key positions in the state mechanism. It has seen to it that scholarships are provided for its future representatives. It has carefully channeled its funding towards specific parties and specific political personnel so as to ensure promotion of its own particular interests.  

On the other hand we see that farmers do not have their own politician who will do battle so that their products are marketed rather than rotting in landfills. Industrialists do not have politicians in top governmental positions to defend them from the flood of imported foreign products and the avalanche of taxation that is burying them.  

Ordinary working people in the private and public sectors are perennially insulted as privileged layabouts, the corrupt personification of special interest groups. All that this means is that specific sectors of society do not have pressure groups working competently on their behalf.

On the other hand journalistic windbags of the banks, big contractors and the troika, representing the special interests of the euro cabal, heap abuse on all working people to distract from their own self-oriented behaviour.  

But this is the harsh reality. This is politics. Αn arena of gladiatorial combat. Their death our life.  

Greek farmers, merchants, industrialists, toilers, employees in the private and public sector, must support schools for cadres from which there will graduate patriotic politicians who will work for the interests of the Nation and the social layers they represent. They must strengthen the training of political personnel, bring them to the attention of the public, help them prevail against the national nihilists, the Hellenophobes and rayah politicians.  

Foreign multinational corporations have demolished the productive and social fabric of our country. A large part of the responsibility for that lies with those who proclaim that they don’t want professional politicians. It is their abstention from the political struggle that has brought evil upon us, not political professionalism. Siemens and the banking cartel have worked methodically to bring their politicians to prominence. The patriotic social forces have NOT done the same.

They thought that patriotic Hellene politicians would just emerge out of somewhere. But there is no generation ex nihilo: that is what Greek cosmogony teachers. They thought that whoever occupied an official position would be a patriot. They took it for granted that Karatzaferis would defend Greek interests.  

Recent political experience has taught the People that nothing can be taken for granted. If you want a good result in politics, you have to work for it.  

We cannot take Freedom, Independence, Popular Sovereignty for granted. There are permanent enemies who have these values continually in their sights and pay generously to have them usurped.  

A patriotic Hellene cannot dispense with the arduous day-to-day tasks of the party-political endeavour. Political slackness is a disgrace. It shouldn’t be portrayed as a social virtue.  

What is the point of anyone priding himself today on not being a professional politician? What he is confessing essentially is that he does some other job entirely unrelated to politics. He is confessing that he is ashamed of being involved on an everyday basis with politics. He thinks that participation as a full-time cadre on a daily basis in the battles of politics is something demeaning. Well then, he deprives himself of the right to protest at the repeated defeats that are being suffered by the Greek people today in the politico-economic war that has been unleashed against him by the Troika.  

The Troika employs thousands of professionals to pursue this genocidal war against the Greek people. Journalists, bankers, academics, policemen, economists, etc. etc. etc.  

For our part we haven’t even managed to operate an internet station with a live 24-hour-a-day programme representing the stance of the anti-Memorandum patriotic camp.  

Every renewed political initiative is stifled by the political amateurism of the people and movements involved. Without persistence, without funding, without organization, without political and cultural education, most of the anti-memorandum leaders continue to chew the cud of “direct democracy”, so far with zero results. 

“We don’t want professional politicians” declare the dilettantes, instead of saying “we don’t want corrupt politicians”.

Only professionals can do anything about the occupying bandit gang. Politics is an art and a science. It is taught on a daily basis and decades of engagement are required for a political cadre to be adequately trained.

The enemy concerns himself day and night with power. He has thousands of specialists at his disposal. Patriots, by contrast involve themselves with politics when they have time. And the worse the economic situation gets the fewer hours they devote to the political war, ceding significant advantages to the occupying bandit gang.

If patriotic Hellenes want to win this life-and-death war against the Ethnos, they have to become professionals.  

We need schools of propaganda, schools of economic warfare, schools of political struggle and guerrilla warfare, cadres who will become engaged with problems of administration, with the freeing of political prisoners, teachers, philosophers and artists who will foster the cultural awakening of the Greek people, technicians who will take responsibility for technical support of the emancipatory struggle, military specialists who will train the People in confronting the praetorians. 

One of  the finest examples of revolutionaries was Rigas Ferraios. He drew up the map that set the borders for the new independent state. He wrote the poem Thurios to exalt the minds of the enslaved Hellenes. He wrote works with references to ancient Greece and Alexander the Great to remind Hellenes of the ancient “kleos” (renown) and their tremendous potential as a people. He translated into Greek the “Military Handbook” of the German field marshal Von Khevenhuller to teach the subjugated Hellenes the art of warfare. He wrote the Constitution of the Hellenic Republic. He was a skilled conspirator and knew how to employ deceit to elude the Austrian police spies.

The life and works of Rigas Velestinlis provide and example of the broad education and training that must be acquired by the professional revolutionary: cartographer, poet, politician,historian, conspirator, military mind, master of foreign languages. A true specialist in revolutionary emancipation.  

Woe to the amateurs of direct democracy...

Iphicratis Amyras

14-April-2012

http://iphicratisamyras.blogspot.com