Spiral Path

It is not an easy thing to provoke a revolution. In any functioning society, too many people have too much to lose from an overthrow of the extant structure, since this guarantees their property rights, the monetary system, the legal protections that separate (or are seen to separate) society from chaos. It is also very dangerous to attempt to overturn the state, as it has taken onto itself the right to exercise licensed violence, and controls the legal system to regulate it. To put it bluntly, the state is well armed, can kill you and can get away with it.

Usually.

When governments undergo catastrophic failure, they do so because they cease to be able, by some combination of consent and intimidation, to persude a critical mass of their subjects that their interests are best served by remaining loyal to the existing regime. Often, this will also express itself in the disintegration of the forces which the state has been able to use in its exercise of licensed violence; so, in Romania in 1989, whilst the security police remained loyal to Ceausescu, the Army fell way from him, provoking a brief civil war prior to the leaders fall and execution.

Ceausescu supervises the lowering of a piano. They dropped it.

It helps, also, if there is some form of ideological alternative to the existing state. If opposition is too diffuse, there is no focus for revolutionary activities. We might look at the Egyptian uprising of last year as one which has not as yet succeeded in constructing a radically different state to the Mubarak kleptocracy, partly because of this lack of a unifying ideology for the opponents, and which remains in flux. In Iran in 1979, it was possible for Shi'ite religious leaders to act as the focus for dissent; in Russia in 1917, the new ideologies of socialism supplied an intellectual shape for the uprising. For the countries of the old Soviet bloc, the capitalist West presented itself as a viable "other". Such alternative systems-in-waiting can supply those who have lost faith in the current system with a destination, though arguably a revolution can find its ideology as it goes along, rather than needing it at the start, and perhaps this is the case in Egypt at present.

But, overwhelmingly, the requirement for revolt is the clear failure of the existing state to guarantee those things which keep people from risking violence and choas to supplant it. When the state can no longer guarantee life and property, its subjects flee it for alternative sources of power. Mass poverty and state bankruptcy are the hard radiation of politics, prompting the growth of mutant ideologies.

Which brings us to Europe, and Greece in particular. The Greek state, governed by a staggeringly incompetent collection of nepotistic thieves, has clearly failed. The state is paupered, and stuck with a grossly overvalued currency which they do not control, leaving them without the weapon of devaluation. To stay in the Euro, they must undergo harsh austerity measures which contrast uncomfortably with the previous situation of widespread tax evasion and spending borrowed money like water. But leaving the Euro and defaulting on their loans would leave Greece cut off from its sources of finance, with an economy utterly unable to support the lifetyle which they are used to. The most recent election produced a chaotic situation which will require a rerun, but was marked by a surge in support for exactly the "mutant ideologies" that thrve in these conditions. Golden Dawn are unabashed old-school fascists, Syriza Marxist fantasists; both have an interest in exacerbating the current situation to further undermine the currency of those parties which attempt to operate in the neo-Liberal consensus of the post-Cold War dream world, using as Hitler did the mechanisms of democratic accountability to undermine the system. (If you are sensitive about the apparent Godwinning of arguments, modern European politics is no place for you. I'd also advise reading up on what Godwin's Law actually says.)

 Choose your mutant ideology

But Greece is a microcosm. Other countries - Spain, Italy, Ireland - are under similar shadows (thought the precise details vary significantly), teetering on the edge of the death spiral towards financial collapse. Germany, the pay day loans company of the Euro crisis, was happy to lend while the rubes were buying its products, but now wants to hang on to its profits without taking any responsibility for what it has sown. Keep an eye too on Hungary, where the parliament is inhabited largely by the cronies of the autocratic bully Viktor Orban, with the only significant opposition being semi-fascist Jobbik nationalists whose main interest appears to be victimising Gypsies.

 Jobbik: Paramilitary hamburger flippers?

We might like to think ourselves insulate from this sort of thing here in stolid Britain. But consider what effect a full-blown collapse (not just the relatively gentle deflation of recent years) of the housing market would have here.

The mutants are waiting.

EDIT: Music link removed 2/1/2013