The referendum as a pacifier

The news has arrived, that for the first time since the end of its military rule, the Greek government will be holding a referendum to ratify the agreement off the latest debt deal. Many are stunned: why risk a done deal, why give voice to the people, risking blowing everything up?

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2011/10/31/is-this-how-it-all-begins-greek-pm-announces-referendum-on-latest-bank-enslavement-agreement/

Power did not arrive to this decision light-heartedly. But the decision for a referendum might, by this point, have been one of its last bastions against a turmoil that was promising to turn into an uncontrollable popular revolt. The military parades-turn-parades-of-anger on October 28th. The unfolding of one political slogan after the other across football stadiums in Greece. Too many were waking up, too fast.

The referendum is a last-ditch attempt by power to take back control, to take the decisive factor away from the streets and back into the comfortably safe mechanisms of bourgeois democracy. “Do you agree, do you disagree?” “Heck, that matters little, just talk to us!”

For a political order seeing its discourse dismantled in the streets, the seething anger of so many turn against it as a whole, the image must have been a terrifying one. Its subjects have been thrown the promise of a treat, to make the howling stop. Will the trick work?

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/