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Moralizing Capitalism pp 251–266Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Discourse Against ‘Shameful Profiteering’ in Greece 1914–1925: Notions of Exploitation, Anticapitalist Morality and the Concept of Moral Economy

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the concept of moral economy and test its relevance to a discourse with strong elements of anticapitalist morality that developed in early twentieth century Greece. Our argument is that we should keep the concept of moral economy bounded within a specific phase of capitalist development, when the legacy of older regulations of the market still persisted and provided a kind of alternative economics. The interpretation of the discourse against profiteering we offer associates it not so much with defending a specific moral regime as with the diffusion of socialist ideas and new notions of exploitation in an age of transition from politics to economy as the dominant intellectual paradigm of conceptualizing social hierarchies. The strong presence of moral values in political discourse would be more productively incorporated in an investigation of the struggle for hegemony taking place in every society.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present 50 (1971): 76–136.

  2. 2.

    E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, in his Customs in Common (London: Merlin, 1991), 259–351.

  3. 3.

    For all the above, see Nikos Potamianos, Oi Noikokyraioi. Magazatores kai viotechnes stin Athina 1880–1925 [Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Athens 1880–1925] (Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2015), 464–493.

  4. 4.

    Richard Wall and Jay Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 197–220; Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, eds., Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, eds., The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  5. 5.

    Idrytiki praxi systasis EKA. Praktika synedriaseon 1910–1914 [Founding Act of the Labour Centre of Athens. Proceedings of the Meetings 1910–1914] (Athens, 2004), 484, 490, 506, 517, 540, 548, 554–559, 571; Patris 5 January 1916; Astir 9 February 1916; and Dimitris Livieratos, Megales ores tis ergatikis taxis [Significant Moments of the Working-Class Movement] (Athens: Proskinio, 2006), 98, 101–102.

  6. 6.

    Various resolutions can be found in the General Archives of the State, archive of the Prime Minister’s political office 1917–1928, file 354; Greek Literature and History Archive (ELIA), archive of Dimitrios Gounaris, file 1; ELIA, archive of Panergatiko Kentro Athinas [Labour Centre of all the Workers of Athens]; and Dimitris Livieratos, Koinonikoi Agones stin Ellada 1923–1927 [Social Struggles in Greece 1923–1927] (Athens: Enallaktikes Ekdoseis, 1985).

  7. 7.

    Patris 11 July 1922; Amyna 9 June 1920.

  8. 8.

    Kostas Fountanopoulos, Ergasia kai ergatiko kinima sth Thessaloniki (1908–1936) [Labour and the Labour Movement in Salonica (1908–1936)] (Athens: Nefeli, 2005); Antonis Liakos, ‘Peri laikismou’ [On Populism], Ta Istorika 10 (1989): 13–28.

  9. 9.

    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): 803–815.

  10. 10.

    Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’.

  11. 11.

    Espera 24 January and 2 March 1859; Kairoi 24 February 1873; Alitheia 26 and 31 January 1874; Efimeris ton syntechnion 26 February and 10 March 1891; Acropolis 2 September 1905; Esperini 16 July 1907; Salpinx 1 February 1909; Efimeris ton ergaton 17 January and 17 December 1910. Of course distrust of shopkeepers wasn’t peculiar to the Greeks: Alain Faure, ‘The Grocery Trade in Nineteenth-Century Paris: A Fragmented Corporation’, in Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), 155–174; Tom Ericsson, ‘Cults, Myths and the Swedish Petite Bourgeoisie 1870–1914’, European History Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1993): 237–239. For the notion of the ‘hidden transcript’, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).

  12. 12.

    For the use of the language of ‘slavery’ and ‘tyranny’ in nineteenth-century England see the comments of Robert Gray, ‘The Deconstruction of the English Working Class’, Social History 11, no. 3 (1986): 363–373, 371–373; and idem, The Factory Question and Industrial England 1830–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 37–47.

  13. 13.

    Neai Ideai 22 November 1882; Acropolis 28 September–22 December 1908; see also Acropolis 28 December 1907 and 31 January 1909, Pyrros 25 February 1909.

  14. 14.

    Acropolis 10 February 1909.

  15. 15.

    Efimeris ton ergaton 27 May 1910 (cigarette makers); 17 January, 14 and 16 May 1910; see also 21 July 1910 (resolution of Athens Labour Centre).

  16. 16.

    Nikos Potamianos, ‘Ti einai o laikismos? Aristeroi kai dexioi rizospastes sta chronia tou kinimatos sto Goudi’ [What Is Populism? Left-Wing and Right-Wing Radicals in the Years of the Goudi Coup], in idem, Evgeni pachiderma kai paschontes ergates. Epikaires istories apo tis arhes tou eikostou aiona [Noble Pachyderms and Suffering Workers. Topical Histories from the Beginnings of the Twentieth Century] (Athens: Asini, 2016), 37–58.

  17. 17.

    Perhaps this was a common characteristic in democratic pre-socialist popular radicalism; for a classical analysis of Chartism that stresses these aspects of its discourse see Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

  18. 18.

    Kostas Baroutas, H kravgi ton Ellinon, 1821–1989 [The Shouting of the Greeks, 1821–1989] (Athens: Savvalas, 1992), 160. ‘Economic enslavement’ was an expression used as well by Minister for National Economy Andreas Mihalakopoulos in the most leftist speech he made in his political career, when discussing in parliament the law about the working hours of shop assistants: Efimeris ton syzitiseon tis voulis [Government Gazette] period 19΄, session Β΄, meeting 68, 7 May 1914, 1518.

  19. 19.

    Resolution of the presidents of labour unions of Athens in 18 June 1910 and announcement of the striking engineers of mercantile marine in April 1910: Stefanos Dragoumis archive (in Gennadeion), files 71.2 and 71.1; Efimeris ton ergaton 3 and 17 January, 16 March, 2 May and 25 August 1910. See also Astrapi 31 July and 11 August 1910 for a similar combination of economy and politics under the label of slavery in the discourse of a conservative revolutionary (A. Doufas).

  20. 20.

    Akropolis 28 October 1904 (on the strike of the shoemakers of Athens) and Neon Asty 28 October 1904 (president of their union). See also the letter of the shoemakers’ union to the employers in Neon Asty 10 January 1905, and the letter of a printer in the radical Neai Ideai 29 September 1882.

  21. 21.

    According to Laos 17 November 1908, the newspaper published by Spyros Theodoropoulos, the lawyer who founded Athens Labour Centre in 1910, ‘people lack protection’ and ‘are exploited by cunning persons’ such as selfish politicians. See also the article of the spokesman of the Military League in January 1910 about the exploitation of the people by public servants and officials: Aristeidis Kyriakos, I Nea Ellas [The New Greece] (Athens, 1910), 424–428. A version that combines both conceptions of exploitation was offered by the union of army boot makers when they attacked the middlemen who exploited their labour as well as the state: Nea Ellas 23 November 1913.

  22. 22.

    A labour newspaper under the influence of a socialist group, Efimeris ton Syntechnion 3 February 1891, assumed that printers’ and journalists’ labour was exploited by the capitalist distributors of the newspapers. In 1892, when the first socialist group of Athens discussed who would have the right to become a member, objections had been expressed to the proposal to exclude only the big landowners, the managers and those who exploited the labour of workers: ‘but the small merchant is an exploiter too’. Finally they decided that shopkeepers would be allowed to become members: Kostis Karpozilos, ‘Stavros Kallergis: “vios eleftheros viotikon frontidon”’, in Arheio Stavrou Kallergi [Archive of Stavros Kallergis], ed. idem (Athens: Library of Benaki Museum, 2013), 19–20.

  23. 23.

    Foni ton Syntechnion 7 and 28 April 1916.

  24. 24.

    Adamantiou Kazakopoulou, Skepseis 1913–1948 [Insights] (Athens: Mnemon, 1998), 62–63 (diary of a judge, 1914).

  25. 25.

    For instance, see Efimeris ton ergaton 16 May 1910 (Union of the cigarette makers); Patris 28 March 1919 (Union of barbers).

  26. 26.

    For the socialist/communist party, see Alexandros Dagas, ‘Kommounistiko Komma Ellados, Elliniko tmima tis kommounistikis diethnous’ [Communist Party of Greece, Greek Section of the Communist International], in Istoria tis Elladas tou 20ou aiona [History of Greece in the Twentieth Century], ed. Christos Hadjiiossif (Athens: Vivliorama, 2002), v.B2, 155–201.

  27. 27.

    Jean-Louis Robert, ‘The Image of the Profiteer’, in Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, ed. Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 104–132; Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Goods, Politics and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 71–75, 80–81, etc.

  28. 28.

    This growth is usually attributed exclusively to the arrival of the refugees from Asia Minor after the defeat by the Turks in 1922, but Aleka Karadimou-Gerolympou, ‘Poleis kai ypaithros’ [Cities and Countryside], in Istoria tis Elladas, ed. Hadjiiossif, v.Β1, 64–65, has shown that this is not correct.

  29. 29.

    G. B. Dertilis, Istoria tou ellinikou kratous 1830–1920 [History of the Greek State, 1830–1920] (Athens: Estia, 2005), v.2, 1048.

  30. 30.

    ‘Shamefully profiteering employers’ appear, for example, in the memorandum of GSEE (General Confederation of the Workers of Greece) 26 November 1919: Archive of the political bureau of the prime minister, file 354, in GAK (General Archives of the State, Athens).

  31. 31.

    It is on this exchange between elite and people that Johanna Siméant, ‘Three Bodies of Moral Economy: The Diffusion of a Concept’, Journal of Global Ethics 11, no. 2 (2015): 163–175, puts the emphasis on the concept of moral economy. She is correct in doing so, but I think we should insist on relating moral economy with the local interpersonal relations of deference between rulers and ruled, in contrast to more impersonal patterns mediated by the twentieth-century state.

  32. 32.

    Paris Papamichos Chronakis, Ellines, Evraioi, Mousoulmanoi kai Donme emporoi tis Thessalonikis 1882–1919: taxikoi kai ethnotikoi metaschimatismoi se trochia exellinismou [The Greek, Jewish, Muslim and Dönme Merchants of Salonica, 1882–1919. Ethnic and Class Transformations in the Course of Hellenization] (PhD diss., University of Crete, 2011), 326, 332. See also the early attempt at a similar conceptualization by Dimitrios Kallitsounakis, ‘I aftovoitheia ton katanaloton’ [About the Self-Help of Consumers], in his Politiki Epistimi [Political Science] (Athens, 1925), 235–240.

  33. 33.

    Cormac Ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  34. 34.

    Antoon Vrints, ‘Beyond Victimization: Contentious Food Politics in Belgium During World War I’, European History Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2015): 83–107.

  35. 35.

    Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1986), 270. Cf. Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  36. 36.

    Vrints, ‘Beyond Victimization’; Roberto Bianchi, ‘Les mouvements contre la vie chère en Europe au lendemain de la Grande Guerre’, in Le XXe siècle des guerres, ed. Pietro Causarano (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier, 2004), 237–245; Roberto Bianchi, Bocci Bocci. I tumulti annonari nella Toscana del 1919 (Florence: Olschki, 2001); Barbara Alpen Engel, ‘Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia During World War I’, The Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 696–721; Lynne Taylor, ‘Food Riots Revisited’, Journal of Social History 30, no. 2 (1996): 483–496; Nicola Tranfaglia, La prima guerra mondiale e il fascismo (Milan: Utet, 1996), 90–95, 180–183; John Barzman, ‘Entre l’émeute, la manifestation et la concertation: la crise de la vie chère de l’été 1919 au Havre’, Le Mouvement Social 170 (1995): 61–84; Tyler Stovall, ‘Du vieux et du neuf: économie morale et militantisme ouvrier dans les luttes contre la vie chère à Paris en 1919’, Le Mouvement Social 170 (1995): 85–113; and Temma Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso’s Barcelona (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 118–123.

  37. 37.

    Roberto Bianchi, ‘Voies de la protestation en Italie: les transformations de la révolte entre XIXe et XXe siècle’, European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 20, no. 6 (2013): 1047–1071, has argued that all these mark the emergence of a ‘new moral economy’ during the First World War. However, I opt for a stricter definition of the concept.

  38. 38.

    Cf. Papamichos Chronakis, Ellines, Evraioi, 323.

  39. 39.

    Thanassis Kalafatis, ‘Thriskeftikotita kai koinoniki diamartyria. Oi opoadoi tou Ap. Makraki sti BD Peloponniso 1890–1900’ [Religiosity and Social Protest. The Followers of Ap. Makrakis in the NW Peloponnesus, 1890–1900], Ta Istorika 18–19 (1993): 113–142. Also telling are the ideas of the pious Orthodox novelist Alexandros Papadiamantis, exposed by his persona in his 1892 novel ‘Oi Chalasohorides’, in Apanta (Athens: Domos, 1982), 401–462: 453, about ‘plutocracy’ as ‘the persistent Antichrist of the world’ that creates injustice.

  40. 40.

    Efimeris tou Chrimatistiriou 2 June 1922 (Katsoulis); Neai Archai 7 July 1922 (Vrettos).

  41. 41.

    David Blackbourn, ‘Between Resignation and Volatility: The German Petty Bourgeoisie in the Nineteenth Century’, in his Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 84–113.

  42. 42.

    Efimeris ton Ypodimatopoion 24 February 1908; Efimeris ton epaggelmation 1 December 1927 (K. Igglesis in the first national meeting of barbers). In 1933 the foundation of a carriage factory by a big merchant was denounced as ‘unfair competition’ by the artisans who manufactured carriages: Viotechnikon Vima 15 January 1933.

  43. 43.

    Paul Turpin, The Moral Rhetoric of Political Economy (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011), provides an interesting argument about the different conceptions of morality and justice involved in the theories of liberal economists.

  44. 44.

    Ernesto Laclau, ‘Towards a Theory of Populism’, in his Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: New Left Books, 1977), 143–199.

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  1. Institute for Mediterranean Studies—Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Rethymno, Greece

    Nikos Potamianos

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  1. Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum , Bochum, Germany

    Stefan Berger

  2. Modern European History, University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany

    Alexandra Przyrembel

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Potamianos, N. (2019). The Discourse Against ‘Shameful Profiteering’ in Greece 1914–1925: Notions of Exploitation, Anticapitalist Morality and the Concept of Moral Economy. In: Berger, S., Przyrembel, A. (eds) Moralizing Capitalism. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20565-2_11

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