89
Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
Socio-political developments in Greece
and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
anti-austerity campaign: towards national
parliaments and local spaces
Desenvolvimentos sociopolíticos na Grécia e Espanha na
esteira da campanha popular antiausteridade: em direção
aos parlamentos nacionais e espaços locais
Acontecimientos sociopolíticos en Grecia y España
tras el movimiento popular contra la austeridad: hacia
parlamentos nacionales y espacios locales
Gabriel M. Vieira1
Recebido: 25 de Abril de 2024
Aprovado: 24 de Maio de 2024
DOI: 10.5752/P.2317-773X.2023v11n3p89-107
ABSTRACT
This article investigates the socio-political developments in Greece and Spain
following the grassroots anti-austerity campaign from 2011 on, which unfolded
towards national parliaments and local spaces. It does so by analysing the insti-
tutionalisation of the populist radical Left as compared with the local-oriented
agency of social movements in these two countries. It argues that these alterna-
tive approaches to social change and emancipation illustrate contending para-
digms of contemporary political thought reecting upon collective movements,
political action, and social transformation: the vertical politics of hegemony and
the horizontal politics of the multitude. It rstly introduces these contending
theoretical paradigms and then analyses the political trajectory of Podemos and
SYRIZA from the squares to national parliaments vis-à-vis the radical agency
of social movements transforming and generating socio-spatial entanglements
at the local level. Lastly, the article puts forward theoretical possibilities for an
alternative conceptualisation of grassroots radical agency and democratic politi-
cs in present times, seeking to reconcile the absolute democratic politics of the
multitude with the broad counter-hegemonic revolutionary project.
Keywords: anti-austerity movement. populist radical Left. social movements.
multitude. hegemony.
RESUMO
Este artigo investiga os desenvolvimentos sociopolíticos na Grécia e Espanha
seguindo a campanha popular antiausteridade a partir de 2011, que se desdo-
1. Mgr. Gabriel M. Vieira is a docto-
ral candidate at the Department of
International Relations and European
Studies, and a research assistant at the
Ibero-American Centre, at Metropo-
litan University Prague (Metropolitní
Univerzita Praha), Czech Republic. He
holds a master’s degree in International
Relations at Charles University (Univer-
zita Karlova). He is interested in social
movements, radical democratic politics,
grassroots agency vis-à-vis issues of the
world order, and critical approaches to
social transformation and emancipation.
He has lectured courses on related topi-
cs for IR bachelor programmes. Contact:
gabrielmoreiravieira@gmail.com
*
* This work was supported
by the Ministry of Education,
Youth and Sports of the Czech
Republic under Grant E77-91/ 2021.
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estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 11, n. 3, (out. 2023), p. 89-107
braram em direção aos parlamentos nacionais e espaços locais. Analisa-se a
institucionalização da Esquerda radical populista em contrapartida à agência dos
movimentos sociais voltada para arenas locais nestes dois países. Argumenta-se
que estas abordagens alternativas para mudança social e emancipação ilustram
paradigmas conitantes do pensamento político contemporâneo reetindo
sobre movimentos sociais, ação política e transformação social: as políticas
verticais de hegemonia e as políticas horizontais da multidão. Primeiro, intro-
duz-se estes paradigmas teóricos conitantes e, então, analisa-se a trajetória
política do Podemos e SYRIZA das praças aos parlamentos em contrapartida à
agência radical de movimentos sociais que transforma e cria emaranhamentos
socioespaciais no nível local. Por fim, este artigo avança possibilidades teóricas
para uma conceitualização alternativa de agência popular radical e políticas de-
mocráticas nos dias de hoje, buscando reconciliar as práticas políticas absoluta-
mente democráticas da multidão com o mais amplo projeto contra-hegemônico.
Palavras-chave: movimento antiausteridade. Esquerda radical populista. movi-
mentos sociais. multidão. hegemonia.
RESUMEN
Este artículo investiga los acontecimientos sociopolíticos en Grecia y España
tras el movimiento popular contra la austeridad a partir de 2011, que se han
extendido hacia los parlamentos nacionales y los espacios locales. Lo hace ana-
lizando la institucionalización de la izquierda radical populista en comparación
con la acción local los movimientos sociales en estos dos países. Argumenta que
estos enfoques alternativos al cambio social y emancipación ilustran paradigmas
contradictorios del pensamiento político contemporáneo sobre los movimientos
colectivos, acción política y transformación social: la política vertical de la he-
gemonía y la política horizontal de la multitud. En primer lugar, presenta estos
paradigmas teóricos contradictorios y luego analiza la trayectoria política de
Podemos y SYRIZA desde las plazas hasta los parlamentos nacionales frente a la
acción radical de los movimientos sociales que transforman y generan ámbitos
socioespaciales a nivel local. Por último, el artículo plantea posibilidades teóricas
para una conceptualización alternativa de la acción radical de base y la política
democrática en los tiempos actuales, buscando reconciliar la política democrá-
tica absoluta de la multitud con el amplio proyecto revolucionario contrahege-
mónico.
Palabras clave: antiausteridad. izquierda radical populista. movimientos socia-
les. multitud. hegemonía.
1 INTRODUCTION: FROM THE SQUARES TO NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS
AND LOCAL SPACES
The decline of the protest cycle in the grassroots campaign against
austerity that broke out across the European periphery in the early 2010s
(della Porta, 2017) was followed by two apparently complementary mo-
ves aspiring to social transformation, as the popular encampments in
public squares were demobilised. The populist radical Left committed
to elevating the new common sense and radical democratic politics cul-
tivated in the encampments into the political arena, and so movement-
-parties2 closely associated with the anti-austerity protests achieved sig-
nicant electoral results across Southern Europe over the past decade
(Katsambekis; Kioupkiolis, 2019). At the same time, social movements
turned towards local communities and neighbourhoods to translate the
2. The concept of movement-parties
employed here follows the relational,
dynamic, and constructed approach
proposed by della Porta et al. (2017).
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Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
new subjectivities and democratic praxis from the movement of the squa-
res into a local-grounded approach, developing a wide array of solidarity
initiatives for collective resilience and radical democratic spaces for foste-
ring people’s control over the commons (Hadjimichalis, 2018; Nez, 2016).
Albeit striving for social transformation and emancipation, these
two endeavours have followed divergent paths. The political trajectory of
the populist radical Left towards national parliaments in Southern Europe
pursues the hierarchical and representative dynamics of institutionalised
state politics (Kioupkiolis, 2019a), whereas the collective agency of so-
cial movements unfolds horizontally within local arenas, autonomously
from the state and market (Prentoulis; Thomassen, 2019). Arguably, the-
se two projects illustrate contending paradigms of contemporary politi-
cal thought reecting upon collective agency, political action, and social
change: the vertical politics of Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony (1971) and
the absolute democratic politics of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s
multitude (2004; 2009).
In what follows, this article investigates these two alternative
projects: the institutionalisation of the populist radical Left vis-à-vis
the local-oriented agency of social movements. It does so by analysing
the socio-political developments unfolding over the vertical and hori-
zontal dimensions in Spain and Greece in the years of austerity, which
oer particularly constructive case studies for a critical analysis of the
shortcomings and potentials of each approach. The interest in the Greek
and Spanish cases is explained not only because of the magnitude of the
Indignados and Aganaktismenoi movements – the most developed occu-
pations in Europe (Gerbaudo, 2017) – but precisely because therein the
vertical and horizontal dimensions of human agency and political action
intersect in pursuit of social change. As these cases are the most illus-
trative of the reverberations of grassroots radical agency for social and
political transformation, this strategic case selection allows to observe
the theory at play (Rua, 2020). This theoretical prominence, therefo-
re, will expand on building from a detailed analysis of complementary
case studies, opposing the political trajectory of Podemos, in Spain, and
SYRIZA, in Greece, to a selection of social solidarity initiatives and radi-
cal democratic spaces that emerged in these two countries constituting,
altogether, the grassroots response to the multiple crises of the neoliberal
hegemonic order. The very selection of the cases for analysis here coin-
cides with these aggravating and intertwining crises of the hegemonic
order, as this article will engage with dierent expressions of grassroots
radical agency entangling multiple dimensions of human life in common
(economic-productive relations, housing and co-habitation, daily needs
and everyday-life management, and socio-spatial relations). This analysis
will then lay the groundwork for putting forward theoretical possibilities
for an alternative conceptualisation of grassroots agency and radical de-
mocratic praxis, seeking to reconcile the democratic politics of the multi-
tude with the broad counter-hegemonic revolutionary project.
The rst section introduces the theoretical debate opposing the ho-
rizontal politics of Hardt and Negri’s multitude and Gramsci’s vertical
politics of hegemony, discussing the alternative ontologies, conceptual
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apparatuses and shortcomings of each theoretical paradigm. The second
section discusses the trajectory of Podemos and SYRIZA from the squa-
res to national politics, analysing their electoral eorts in the wake of the
anti-austerity campaign, and their political achievements and unfullled
promises since they entered national parliaments. The third section in-
vestigates a selection of social solidarity initiatives and radical democra-
tic spaces that ourished across these countries in parallel, resorting to
ocial data available on their websites and social networks, along with
other secondary data sources, such as the established literature and news-
paper articles. The complementarity of these cases and their reach over
multiple dimensions of human life account for the emphasis on dierent
manifestations of grassroots radical agency in Greece and Spain. The
fourth section builds from the analysis developed in the previous sections
to elaborate on the theoretical possibilities for bridging the horizontal
model for being and acting of the multitude and the vertical politics of
hegemony, accommodating key categories of each paradigm into an al-
ternative conceptualisation of grassroots agency and radical democratic
politics at present. The concluding section oers some nal remarks on
the limits and potential of the vertical and horizontal approaches to social
and political transformation and reects on the need to think anew to
conceive concrete possibilities of social change and emancipation.
2 VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL PARADIGMS OF COLLECTIVE AGENCY,
POLITICAL ACTION AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: HEGEMONY
AND THE MULTITUDE
The Great Recession in the aftermath of the 2008 global nancial
crisis, along with the austerity policies imposed by the European Union
(EU), produced an overwhelming toll on social livelihood across the
European periphery, not to mention the democratic crisis that ensued it,
eroding society’s general trust on political institutions both at the nation-
al and European levels (della Porta, 2017). Nonetheless, grassroots social
forces have responded to these successive crises through autonomous and
radical collective action, and so the popular anti-austerity campaign that
emerged afterwards brought renewed attention to the debate that has an-
imated contemporary political thought for the past decades (Kioupkiolis;
Katsambekis, 2014), expounding alternative approaches to social move-
ments, political action, and emancipation. Intellectual attempts reecting
on grassroots agency and its theoretical and practical reverberations to
social transformation, inspired rstly by the Global Justice Movement,
have lately theorised about the new subjectivities and radical democratic
politics of the movement of the squares. And the variegated interpreta-
tions have revolved around two (apparently) contending paradigms: the
absolute horizontal politics of the multitude and the vertical politics of
hegemony (Kioupkiolis; Katsambekis, 2014).
The vertical paradigm draws upon Gramsci’s theory of hegemony,
presupposing the elevation of a political agent that brings together and
guides subordinate social forces in the struggle against the hegemonic
order to enact political and social transformation. A counter-hegemonic
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Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
revolutionary project must target institutional power and the occupation
of the political realm, understood in terms of the Gramscian extended
state (i.e., the entanglement of the political and civil societies), which is
the terrain wherein antagonistic political subjects contend for hegemo-
ny (Gramsci, 1971). The need for taking political power to elevate social
struggles into the building of a new social order necessarily entails the
construction of a counter-hegemonic historic bloc, in which multiple sub-
jects cohere under the centralised leadership of a political body capable
of challenging the dominant forces of a given hegemonic formation (Cox,
1993; Gill, 1993). Consequently, collective mobilisation and action of the
grassroots have a decisive role at the liminal stage of the revolutionary
project: the development of constituent subaltern politics.
Gramsci assigned the development of “alternative, bottom-up
and autonomous forms of life” (Fonseca, 2016, p. 7) to the working class
and subaltern groups to give form to an embryonic workers’ democra-
cy. Within these loci of proletarian life, gestated through the association
and organisation of the working class (precisely what Gramsci meant by
constituent subaltern politics) an emancipatory consciousness is nurtured
and the revolutionary praxis instigated among the subalterns (Fonseca,
2016; Gramsci, 1919a). Gramsci (1919a) insisted on the proletarian power
and the institutions of the proletarian social life that bore the potentiality
of the socialist state, arguing that a genuine workers’ democracy could
only emerge from the self-organised association and action of workers
and peasants. Furthermore, in these autonomous and spontaneous ar-
rangements of working-class social life (e.g., the occupied factories, so-
cialist clubs, peasant communities in 1920s Italy), a counter-hegemonic
common sense eventually embeds within everyday life.
The constituent subaltern politics of the working class allow for
the formation of a national popular front, fostering the politicisation of
the masses at large and overcoming ideological divisions, cohering a di-
verse social majority around the counter-hegemonic project. The “amal-
gamation of politicised masses (…) into a national popular movement”
(Briziarelli, 2018, p. 98) provides sustained mobilisation for the revolution-
ary party (the Modern Prince of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, 1971), which
embodies the national popular collective will and, endowed with intel-
lectual and moral leadership, wages a war of position against hegemony.
Gramsci’s notion of war of position foresees the “constant rear-
rangement of relations of forces” between hegemonic and counter-hege-
monic social classes, through the “expansion of the struggle on multiple
fronts such as political, economic, cultural, and social” (Briziarelli, 2018,
p. 97-8). And just as several dimensions and social confrontations intersect
each other in pursuit of hegemony, the war of position unfolds through
the patient and laborious eort of putting together the moral and intellec-
tual resources and institutions for building up a counter-hegemonic or-
der – unlike in a war of movement, when the revolutionary party seizes
power through a direct assault against the establishment (Gramsci, 1971;
Cox, 1993). The task of the revolution is twofold therefore: it requires
the implementation of progressive politics for transforming the estab-
lished political structures and creating alternative institutions within the
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hegemonic order; and it relies upon the permeation of a shared conscious-
ness throughout the social fabric, binding together oppressed groups un-
der capitalism into a common subjectivity (Cox, 1993; Briziarelli, 2018).
Notwithstanding the logical inuence of the vertical approach
among contemporary Marxist circles reecting on emancipatory strug-
gles against capital, the politics of hegemony also resonates among
post-Marxist thinkers, inspired by E. Laclau’s (2005) populist-discursive
interpretation of Gramsci’s works. Understanding hegemony as rhetori-
cally constructed, post-Marxist scholars reinterpret key categories of this
conceptualisation to propose a transversalist vision for aggregating dif-
ferent social subjects into a common construct through empty signiers
that establish “a potential chain of equivalence between dierent social
groups, circumstances, identities, and interests” (Agustín; Briziarelli,
2018, p. 15). This populist-discursive approach insists on the transversali-
ty of the aggregative discourse for creating an inclusive popular front, by-
passing classic concepts of Marxism (e.g., class struggle, the Left x Right
dichotomy) and dovetailing with the encounter of multiple subjectivities
during the anti-austerity campaign (Kioupkiolis; 2019b). Aggregated un-
der empty signiers, this social majority challenges the politico-econom-
ic establishment, contending for hegemony once elevated into the polit-
ical arena alongside the revolutionary party. Accordingly, political con-
centration and cohesion, hierarchy and leadership, and antagonism are
key categories of the vertical paradigm, irrespective of whether taking a
cue from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony or Laclau’s populist-discursive
approach to it (Kioupkiolis; Katsambekis, 2014).
On the other hand, the horizontal paradigm rejects these catego-
ries, centring upon the process of becoming of autonomous subjectiv-
ities into a new constituent social subject and the absolute democratic
politics it brings into play in a post-hegemonic order. As Hardt and Negri
(2004; 2009) theorise, this emerging constituent subject – the multitude
– is loosely and horizontally articulated in a rhizomatic network and
thence engages in the collaborative production of social reality. The plu-
rality and freedom of the multiple singularities collaborating through
this network are nevertheless preserved in this process of collective sub-
jectivation. And from its irreducible plurality stems the constituent po-
tential of the multitude for producing new expansive forms of life: “the
full expression of autonomy and dierence of each here coincides with
the powerful articulation of all” (Hardt; Negri, 2004, p. 87). This auton-
omous and horizontal articulation of multiple social subjectivities and
their cooperative and inventive agency are constituent of the production
of social reality, rather than means for taking political power and chal-
lenging the hegemonic order, as Gramsci envisaged. These categories of
absolute democratic politics are actually an end in themselves, i.e., the
very ontology of the alternative social realities that the multitude en-
acts (Hardt; Negri, 2009). Following this horizontal conceptualisation,
radical democratic politics, spontaneous human agency, and horizontal
modes for collaborating and acting are, in eect, the sine qua non of an
emerging post-hegemonic order (Hardt; Negri, 2012). Therefore, the
multitude can only rise as the constituent collective social subject of our
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Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
times as long as it organically incorporates these fundamental principles
in its subjectivation process.
Moreover, it is upon these foundations that the multitude acts: hor-
izontally collaborating within a rhizomatic networked model of associ-
ation and therein producing social realities (Hardt; Negri, 2009). These
horizontal modes of association not only allow for the multitude to come
into being but also oer the organisational apparatus for this new col-
lective social subject to act in the production of the common in the con-
text of biopolitical reality (Hardt; Negri, 2009). Precisely because of the
biopolitical context of producing the common nowadays – “all spheres
of life,” both the natural world and the constitutive elements of human
society (Hardt; Negri, 2009, p. 171) – the multitude is “formed through
articulations on the plane of immanence without hegemony” (Hardt;
Negri, 2009, p. 169). As such, it discards hierarchical and representative
politics, for the multitude is itself “capable of making decisions and of
taking action without being directed by a hegemonic force” (Kioupkiolis;
Katsambekis, 2014, p. 9).
The main objections to Gramsci’s hegemonic politics, according to
the horizontal paradigm, refer to two complementary notions: the emer-
gence of a hierarchical power over disparate social subjects and the need
for coherence and cohesion around the programmatic unity under this
emerging political body. As Hardt and Negri (2009) have pointed out, this
vertical conception of political constitution through unied and hierar-
chical organisation, for providing the oppressed social forces with disci-
pline and education – as Gramsci (1971) attributed this role to the Modern
Prince – can only disrupt the constituent potential of the subordinated so-
cial subjects coming together in a post-hegemonic order. Accordingly, the
emergence of a counter-hegemonic party will eventually arouse vertical
and centralising tendencies, reproducing capitalist relations of power and
subordination. Moreover, coherence and cohesion essentially contradict
the radical heterogeneity of the social eld, hence undermining the au-
tonomy and the creative potential of the multiple social subjectivities
interacting and cooperating in the production of social reality (Hardt;
Negri, 2004; 2009). Bearing the alternative ontologies and conceptual
apparatuses of the vertical and horizontal paradigms in mind, the next
sections analyse the socio-political developments in Greece and Spain to-
wards national parliaments with the populist radical Left and local com-
munities and neighbourhoods with social movements, respectively.
3 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE POPULIST RADICAL LEFT IN GREECE
AND SPAIN
The rise of Podemos and SYRIZA illustrates the breakthrough of
the populist radical Left in Europe since the early 2010s (Katsambekis;
Kioupkiolis, 2019). Notwithstanding, their fall is instructive about the
perils of yet another attempt to contain grassroots agency into the ver-
tical institutions of liberal democracy (Kioupkiolis, 2019b). The electo-
ral success of movement-parties closely associated with the grassroots
campaign against austerity indicated the emergence of a new political
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cycle founded upon radical democratic politics and a new common sense
(Agustín; Briziarelli, 2018). Tellingly, the victory of SYRIZA in the 2015
Greek national elections and the expressive popularity of Podemos since
its foundation (eventually securing a place in the coalitional government
in Spain as of 2020) can be credited to a bold strategy instrumentalising
the Gramscian notion of war of position into their political agenda.
The rst pillar of these movement-parties’ electoral project is the
incorporation of the radical democratic practices developed within the
encampments, which became laboratories of grassroots politics (della
Porta, 2013). Therein protesters experimented with deliberative and par-
ticipatory decision-making within assemblies and working groups, and
enacted open, horizontal, and egalitarian processes for the collective ma-
nagement of the daily life within the occupations (Kioupkiolis, 2019b).
These democratic mechanisms were transposed into the political dy-
namics of Podemos and SYRIZA. The former established an innovative
multi-layered apparatus of direct practices for engaging its constituency
through local circles, fully open primaries, and the collective construc-
tion of its program (Rendueles; Sola, 2018), insisting on the ‘technopoliti-
cal’ dimension of grassroots democracy through online platforms, such
as Plaza Podemos, Agora Voting, and social networks (Kioupkiolis, 2019a).
In its turn, SYRIZA insisted upon the Greek people’s sovereignty, exten-
ding direct democracy through the popular referendum on a new bailout
agreement with the country’s lenders (Katsambekis, 2019).
Arguably, these movement-parties endeavoured to transpose the
radical democratic praxis from the anti-austerity movement into national
politics. Their goal was to incubate oppositional institutions for building
a new political order within the shell of the old post-democratic order that
had long been rooted in Spanish and Greek politics (Kioupkiolis, 2019a).
Meanwhile, on the strategic plane, is the instrumentalisation of the
Laclauian populist-discursive approach to hegemony for creating an in-
clusive popular front (Briziarelli, 2018). Podemos and SYRIZA articula-
ted the multifaceted identities coming together during the anti-austerity
campaign into equivalential chains, using empty signiers (e.g., ‘the peo-
ple,’ ‘the masses,’ ‘democracy’) for cohering the grassroots around their
electoral projects (Kioupkiolis, 2019a). This aggregated social majority
overcame ideological and identity idiosyncrasies for opposing the politi-
co-economic establishment: domestic elites (politicians, banks, corpora-
tions, the media) and international actors (the ‘troika’, i.e., the European
Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary
Fund).
This populist-discursive frame was exhaustively explored during
their electoral campaigns. Podemos boldly explored the popularity of po-
litical talk shows in Spain at that time for devising a “counter-hegemonic
television project” (Rendueles; Sola, 2018, p. 34), successfully resonating
its aggregative rhetoric with society at large and pervading the everyday
language of Spanish politics (Franzé, 2018). Likewise, the coalitional natu-
re of SYRIZA oriented the party’s electoral strategy. A “mass connective
party” (Katsambekis, 2019, p. 27), SYRIZA emphasised the development
of cross-class alliances with social movements, bringing together diverse
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struggles (environmental, labour, migrants, and so on) countrywide into
the broad anti-neoliberal camp.
The employment of this populist-discursive strategy proved decisi-
ve in laying the foundation for the ‘national popular project’ of the popu-
list radical Left in Greece and Spain (Briziarelli, 2018), raising a new social
majority behind these movement-parties as elections drew closer. Most
importantly, it allowed for the new common sense that emerged from the
occupations to eventually expand beyond the encampments, pervading
the social fabric of Greek and Spanish civil societies and preguring “po-
pular power as a real political alternative” (Agustín; Briziarelli, 2018, p. 5).
Notwithstanding the overreliance on the politics of hegemony
as the orienting theoretical-strategic framework for their emancipatory
political projects, it is rather contradictory that these movement-parties
have failed to acknowledge the risks of ending up entrapped in a pas-
sive revolution. Gramsci (1971) understood it as the dialectical relation
between revolution and restoration, or progressive objectives hindered
by regressive methods. A passive revolution, thus, produces a stalemate
opposing the revolutionary and dominant forces, as the former’s progres-
sive potential is not yet sturdy enough to dislodge the conservative fou-
ndations of the hegemonic order (Cox; 1993). In that sense, Gramsci saw
the dominant forces introducing limited changes that rather than arou-
sing from popular forces are instead interventions ‘from above,’ incorpo-
rating revolutionary subaltern groups into the politics of hegemony (Cox,
1993). Comprehensive and systemic change is consequently forestalled,
as the counter-hegemonic forces are channelled into the existing political
structures of the hegemonic order.
Against the backdrop of an organic crisis of representative demo-
cracy at the national and European realms – a critical juncture wherein
political institutions lost legitimacy alongside the capability of produ-
cing consent (Briziarelli, 2018) – the political trajectory of Podemos and
SYRIZA was hindered both within national parliaments and at the supra-
national level. As they became entangled in national politics, they gra-
dually abandoned the grassroots, becoming more vertical and centralised
and adapting their agenda to the institutional logic of parliaments, favou-
ring hierarchical and representative relations (Kioupkiolis, 2019a). These
movement-parties also found themselves powerless against the top-down
EU intervention on austerity policies (della Porta, 2017) as well as the
structural constraints of international economic governance with bailout
programmes (Katsambekis, 2019).
One of the central elements of Podemos’ innovative organisational
model, the popular circles were soon emptied by a top-down logic that
appropriated the party’s leadership (Kioupkiolis, 2019a), just like the digi-
tal platforms soon lost inuence and autonomy (Prentoulis; Thomassen,
2019). As these participatory practices eroded, “Podemos’ democratic
centralism” (Mazzolini; Borriello, 2018, p. 242) manifested in the em-
powerment of the then secretary-general Pablo Iglesias and his nucleus,
who systematically strengthened control over the party at the expense of
greater plurality, horizontal participation of the rank and le, and disso-
nant voices from within.
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Unsurprisingly, the party has undergone internal splits and recor-
ded a steady decline in election performance recently. Even more con-
cerning, Podemos has been relegated as a marginal member of the coa-
litional government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE.
Critics have pointed out that rather than advancing progressive policies as
those championed by the anti-austerity movement, Podemos has instead
taken on a more traditional Left position (Errejón, 2021). Thus, the party
contradictorily legitimises the ruling of PSOE, the centre-Left party that
for decades concurred with a neoliberal agenda, which threw the cou-
ntry into the double (economic and democratic) crisis that brought the
Indignados to the streets in 2011.
SYRIZA’s adventure in Greek national politics is also disappointing,
as the party found itself powerless against structural constraints of inter-
national economic governance, while developing a vertical and centralist
orientation. It became “a much more homogeneous party” (Mudde, 2017,
p. 31) dominated by the then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, what became
evident in his unexpected – and unilateral – decision to accept yet ano-
ther bailout agreement with the country’s lenders a week after the Greek
people have voted against it. Ignoring the Greeks’ manifest will (61% of
the voters rejected the new agreement), SYRIZA bent to the ‘troika,’ fai-
ling to uphold its promise to restore popular sovereignty over this matter
(Katsambekis, 2019). The capitulation to the third memorandum and the
ensuing internal rebellion against Tsipras eroded SYRIZA’s governmen-
tability and, all in all, the party navigated the years in government with
old-fashioned politics of ery rhetoric and pragmatic – and rather contro-
versial – policies, or by ‘talking left and walking right’ (Sheehan, 2017).
Even though Tsipras had managed to secure another win at the
snap election that followed the acceptance on the third bailout program-
me and the subsequent party defections, SYRIZA has recorded poorly
in European, local, and general elections since then, not securing a se-
cond mandate in the 2019 national elections, hence paving the way for the
reinstallation of the conservative New Democracy, ND, in government
(Mylonas, 2020). Critically, just as SYRIZA’s contradictions discredited
the radical Left, the party witnesses the resurgence of far-Right ultra-
nationalist forces across the country, which have systematically targe-
ted with xenophobia, racism, and violence, the very same people which
the Aganaktismenoi stood for – refugees, migrants, and ethnic minorities
(Smith, 2021).
This analysis of the journey of Podemos and SYRIZA from the
squares to national parliaments (and therein towards a passive revolution)
– as well as the position they currently hold, whether in power or oppo-
sition – makes a case against the preponderance of the vertical approach
to hegemony as the orienting framework for political action and social
transformation. The very few social demands attained during their years
in government should arguably be understood as marginal concessions
from the establishment that, nevertheless, serve to the reproduction of
hegemonic structures of neoliberal capitalism. Furthermore, at the time
of writing, rather than advancing progressive politics enabling a real
democratic praxis – as those gestated within the popular occupations
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Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
against austerity – both movement-parties are much more on the defen-
sive, currently engaged in containing the advances of the far-right, whi-
ch appropriates the political agenda and shapes the public conversation
(Errejón, 2021). Alternatively, this article now turns towards local-level
autonomous and horizontal social reproduction, as did the social move-
ments engaged in the anti-austerity campaign after the encampments’
demobilisation.
4 LOCAL-LEVEL COLLECTIVE AGENCY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE
YEARS OF AUSTERITY
Local-level capacity building has traditionally been a strong fea-
ture of social movements’ repertoire of action (Voss; Williams, 2012).
Understanding the protest cycle as a specic time frame within the broa-
der ght for social change, in periods of less visible mobilisation – but of
latent activity nevertheless – social movements invest in “strengthening
[…] autonomous spaces for collective decision-making and social trans-
formation” (Flesher Fominaya, 2015, p. 149). This local-oriented approach
is by no means an exclusive feature of the (Greek and Spanish) anti-auste-
rity movement since it has manifested in dierent historical and geogra-
phical contexts of grassroots collective agency. Notwithstanding, within
this framework, the radical agency of social movements reaches an im-
pressive scale both in terms of extension and diversity, constituting the
grassroots response to the multiple crises of neoliberal capitalism.
As the Indignados and Aganaktismenoi movements turned towards
local communities, the protesters were not leaving but expanding, as
they would meet back in the neighbourhoods (Nez; 2016). In the years
of austerity, a rich constellation of loci of grassroots radical agency surfa-
ced in Greek and Spanish civil societies autonomously from the state and
market (Kousis et al., 2018) and, grounded in the foundational principles
of the occupations – equality, freedom, plurality, and social justice – it
represents an important legacy of the movement of the squares (Flesher
Fominaya, 2017).
Very much important in Spain are the several existing neighbou-
rhood associations that, since Franco’s dictatorship, became symbolic spa-
ces of collective mobilisation (Flesher Fominaya, 2015). As the Indignados
main encampments were dispersed, neighbourhood associations conti-
nued decentralising general assemblies, implementing grassroots agency
within local communities and suburbs. Despite some loose coordination
among these local assemblies, they enjoy a relatively high degree of au-
tonomy and exibility for formulating concrete propositions concerning
each neighbourhood (Prentoulis; Thomassen, 2013). Notwithstanding,
given the recurrence of critical issues across dierent areas, the social poli-
cies implemented by collective movements transpose and interact beyond
geographical limits, especially in regard to labour, immigration, and hou-
sing issues (Nez, 2016). Most recently, responding to the COVID-19 health
crisis, neighbourhood associations in urban centres that were hit harder
by the pandemic (as the Community of Madrid) joined the ght against
the precarization of public healthcare services, securing the continuing
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operation of public health centres and the jobs of many temporary health
workers (Asamblea Popular de Carabanchel, 2021).
Constructive relations were soon developed between these
neighbourhood associations and other autonomous citizens’ organisa-
tions, enabling direct grassroots action to address pressing individual and
communitarian daily life issues. For instance, the grassroots association
Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform of Those Aected
by Mortgages), PAH, that since 2009 has fought home foreclosure and
eviction, campaigned for housing rights, and actively participated in the
Indignados (Mir Garcia, 2019) has expanded its reach of action across the
country while engaging with many neighbourhood assemblies, forming
a network of more than 200 territorial nodes (Plataforma de Afectados
por la Hipoteca, n.d.). PAH has impacted everyday life in Spain, stopping
thousands of evictions and rehousing hundreds of families in occupied
buildings (Mir Garcia, 2019). It has also reshaped the debate over public
housing policies towards a grassroots campaign for the right to housing
in Spain, promoting a “social and shared governance” (Quintanar, 2021,
p. 83) around the issue.
Several self-organised social centres also operate across Spain, in-
tervening in the everyday social organisation of neighbourhoods. These
social centres navigate dierent spatial dimensions, legal statuses, tem-
poralities, and funding mechanisms (Saltzman, 2019). The squatted so-
cial centre Can Batlló, in Barcelona, is a remarkable socio-spatial experi-
ment, for instance. An abandoned factory converted into a multifunctio-
nal socio-cultural facility, Can Batlló has since 2011 been collectively and
horizontally self-managed by the local community, becoming a genuine
expression of the self-conceived transformation of the neighbourhood’s
socio-spatial fabric through grassroots agency (Can Batlló, n.d.). It pro-
vides the community where the squatted centre is located with several
projects that thrive on associationism and cooperation, e.g., solidary eco-
nomy activities, a publishing house, a communitarian children’s school,
a library about libertarian thought, a housing cooperative, a restau-
rant, and multiple workshops (Can Batlló, n.d.). Consequently, the Can
Batlló became not only a transformative communitarian socio-cultural
space but also an inspiration for local urban networks in several squat-
ting actions and other bottom-up projects across the city (De Balanzó;
Rodríguez-Planas, 2018).
In Greece likewise, solidarity networks traditionally associated with
grassroots activism entangled with the trajectory of the Aganaktismenoi,
notably from 2012 onwards, coinciding with the weakening of protests
(Malamidis, 2020). Greek solidarity providers have built resilience among
most vulnerable individuals, alleviating the toll of austerity on society,
and also engaged with social economy experiments, self-organised spa-
ces, and environment-related initiatives.3
The collective self-management of occupied factories represents an
important democratic experiment in terms of the emancipatory struggle
for combating the economic crisis and expanding social control over
production and the workspace (Kioupkiolis; Katsambekis, 2014). Under
the slogan ‘Occupy, Resist, Produce’, the workers of the Vio.Me/Bio.Me
3. Under the scope of the ‘Living with
Hard Times’ (LIVEWHAT) research
project, KOUSIS, et al. (2018) mapped
a comprehensive database of solidarity
initiatives promoting alternative forms
of resilience across Greece since the
early 2010s.
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Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
cooperative, in Thessaloniki, progressed “from a hierarchical company
to a horizontal node of resistance” (Malamidis, 2018, p. 25). In 2013, wor-
kers occupied and took control of the productive and managerial proces-
ses of the factory (that originally produced chemical products and was
about to shut down) and, instrumentalising many of the Aganaktismenoi-
inspired principles, such as horizontalism, participatory and collective
decision-making, and assembly-based practices, managed to resume the
operation of the factory, shifting the production to environmental-frien-
dly cleaning products (Malamidis, 2018). The cooperative distributes its
products exclusively through grassroots channels, participating in local
networks of sales and distribution (Vio.Me/Bio.Me, n.d.). As Vio.Me/Bio.
Me actively takes part in the markets-without-middlemen movement, it
extends the reach of its products and the values of self-management, es-
tablishing a direct and social relationship with its consumers (Malamidis,
2018). Moreover, by insisting upon the right to work, dignity at the wor-
kplace, and self-determination of the workforce, the cooperative employs
a holistic approach to production, its consumers, and the workers them-
selves (Vio.Me/Bio.Me, n.d.), enacting the self-actualisation of the wor-
kers’ emancipatory power.
The 2015 refugees crisis also catalysed social solidarity throughout
the country, as the maxim ‘nobody is alone in the crisis’ (an anti-auste-
rity slogan that soon became part of the new common sense in Greece)
reached thousands of refugees arriving in Greek shores (Hadjimichalis,
2018). Greek civil society mobilised resources and networks to extend
social support structures for addressing refugees’ urgent needs, and of-
fered a constructive response to the governmental migration policy of
camps and detention centres that remained in force during SYRIZA’s
4-year mandate (Agustín; Jørgensen, 2019). In a wave of squatting vacant
buildings for housing refugees across the country, the City Plaza Hotel,
in Athens, ran as an autonomous self-organised space for co-habitation
from 2016 till 2019, becoming an alternative socio-spatial entanglement
produced by grassroots radical agency. Besides inaugurating a space for
communal living and addressing the immediate needs of more than
2,500 refugees, the solidarity movement engaged in the occupation and
daily management of the building insisted on the autonomy and empo-
werment of refugees’ own agency, constituting collective action toge-
ther with them (Antonopoulou, 2022). The co-habitants of the City Plaza
developed new alternatives and imaginaries through the shared coexis-
tence and the self-organising processes of everyday life within the squat
(Agustín; Jørgensen, 2019). Albeit closed in 2019, the City Plaza proved
the potential of grassroots radical agency towards transformation and
emancipation, enacting autonomy and horizontality for producing al-
ternative modes of organising society at the local level and outside the
institutional realm of the state.
By conceiving the social movements engaged in these socio-spatial
entanglements at local arenas as collaborating nodes in a rhizomatic net-
work of horizontal, associational, and autonomous loci of grassroots ra-
dical agency, one realises the process of becoming of a constituent collec-
tive social subject (Saltzman, 2019), as Hardt and Negri theorised. Taking
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the form of the multitude, this emerging collective social subject raises
autonomously, out of the very associative power of the grassroots, and is
capable of producing alternative social realities and imaginaries (Agustín;
Jørgensen, 2019), which are gestated within these socio-spatial entangle-
ments in communities and neighbourhoods. In these local spaces, multi-
ple autonomous subjectivities (social movements, citizens organisations,
activists, vulnerable individuals and groups) come together horizontally
and, bound by the constituent principles of absolute democratic politics –
solidarity, equality, freedom, openness, and collective self-determination
(Hardt; Negri, 2012) – therein engage in the production of the common.
And just as this emerging collective social subject embodies and expands
grassroots radical agency through this network, it transforms every as-
pect of life within these local entanglements: social relations, spatial ar-
rangements, political acting, and productive activities.
A detailed analysis of the scope and reach of these selected social
solidarity networks and radical democratic spaces (alongside other socio-
-spatial entanglements interacting in this network of grassroots radical
agency), as well as the impact they have produced on human life (both
at the collective and individual levels), indicate, therefore, the potential
of the multitude’s horizontal politics for social transformation. Although
leadership, homogeneity, and hierarchy don’t stand in these local socio-
-spatial entanglements, key features and dynamics of the vertical politi-
cs of hegemony might still be accommodated nonetheless, leading to a
fruitful and more accurate conceptualisation of grassroots radical agen-
cy in pursuit of social transformation. The next section advances these
theoretical possibilities.
5 THEORETICAL POSSIBILITIES FOR ENGAGING THE MULTITUDE IN
COUNTER-HEGEMONIC POLITICS
While embodying the ontological realisation and conceptual appa-
ratus of the horizontal paradigm, social movements have provided a
twofold contribution to neighbourhoods and communities in Greece and
Spain in the years of austerity: they shape the terrain of struggle, enacting
collective resistance, and implement a revolutionary praxis, democrati-
sing local arenas and empowering civil society. In fact, by doing so, this
emerging collective social subject embeds and actively takes part in the
politics of hegemony. In this regard, this section proposes some theore-
tical reections for an alternative conceptualisation of grassroots radical
agency, indicating a productive common ground for bridging the hori-
zontal and vertical paradigms.
Within these local socio-spatial entanglements transformed
and generated by social movements, the constituent subaltern politics
that Gramsci attributed to the working class are, in eect, produced.
Preguring the multiple “centres of proletarian life” (Gramsci, 1919a,
p. 80) of his time, in these autonomous and horizontal arrangements of
grassroots social life, a counter-hegemonic common sense develops and
pervades everyday life. On that account, both the communist conscious-
ness and mass constructive action that Gramsci (1919a) insisted upon are
103
Gabriel M. Vieira Socio-polical developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots
an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
put at the service of emancipation and bottom-up social transformation,
which is “generated by the associative experience” (Gramsci, 1919b, p.
87) of the multiple subjectivities oppressed under neoliberal capitalism.
By producing constituent subaltern politics at the local level through the
collective power of the grassroots, this constellation of egalitarian and
emancipated socio-spatial entanglements actually embodies a dawning
system of socialist living, corresponding to what Gramsci envisaged as
an embryonic proletarian democracy, hence building up the cornerstone
of the counter-hegemonic revolutionary project.
Moreover, as social movements enact new forms of politics within
the everyday life of communities and neighbourhoods, they actively po-
liticise the multiple social subjects coming together within these local
universes (Garcés, 2019). A national popular front eventually emerges, ex-
panding beyond each socio-spatial entanglement as these multiple nodes
converge and intertwine into a dynamic network of grassroots radical
agency. Social movements also develop alternative institutions and prac-
tices within these local arenas, on the margins of the state and market,
wherein the grassroots engage in the production and management of the
common through this self-determining model of collective association
and organisation (Voss; Williams, 2012). Furthermore, as an emancipa-
tory consciousness ourishes therein and the revolutionary praxis guides
the oppressed social subjects converging into these local arenas, social
movements actively perform a counter-hegemonic role. This emerging
collective social subject, in eect, wages a Gramscian war of position,
which thence takes place outside (and often in opposition to) the insti-
tutionalised politics of the state. Tellingly, it takes place in everyday life,
itself the prime eld of emancipatory struggle (Hadjimichalis, 2018).
Social transformation is, therefore, sparked by the very belief in an
alternative social formation that emancipates one from the hegemonic
structures underpinning the existing order, which alienate and restrict
human life. The multitude raises as a constituent collective social subject
that is organically committed to emancipation by opposing and challen-
ging the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism over human life and hence is
capable of producing new social realities. This antagonistic relation to the
hegemonic order, albeit naively discarded by Hardt and Negri (2009) due
to the immanent nature of the multitude’s subjectivation, is actually pa-
ramount for this new collective social subject to act politically against the
neoliberal capitalist order. In this conceptualisation, the multitude, emer-
ging from these local socio-spatial entanglements is bound by this com-
mitment against neoliberal capitalism, precisely so it can resist and chal-
lenge its hegemony. As discussed above, the alternative realities enacted
by social movements transform the very social, political, and economic
structures oppressing the multiplicity of social subjects entangled within
these local arenas, oering a glimpse of egalitarian and emancipated for-
ms of life.
Arguably, Greek and Spanish civil societies became a vibrant thea-
tre wherein counter-hegemonic struggles intertwine with new forms of
politics from below and are diused through the daily life within local
communities and neighbourhoods (Kanellopoulos, et al., 2021). These
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egalitarian and emancipated socio-spatial entanglements, therefore, indi-
cate the potential of alternative social formations wherein the failures of
neoliberal capitalism are tackled in collective, self-determining, and soli-
dary means, even though the harsh impacts of the years of austerity and
struggle in these countries – and these are not to be forgotten – will long
burden upon collective livelihood in these societies. Most importantly, as
the horizontal and vertical dimensions of grassroots agency and radical
democratic politics intersect within these local domains, the new cons-
tituent social subject of our times eventually emerges to produce social
transformation bottom-upwards.
6 CONCLUSION
This article has indicated the shortcomings of the vertical paradigm
as the orienting strategic framework for political action, as the analysis
of the political trajectory of Podemos and SYRIZA from the squares to
national politics (and therein into a passive revolution) produced in the se-
cond section corroborates it. Alternatively, the third section has analysed
a selection of strategic case studies embodying multiple expressions of
local-oriented grassroots radical agency in Greece and Spain, to illustrate
the potentials of the multitude’s horizontal politics for producing social
change at the local level. Most importantly, these analyses laid the grou-
ndwork for putting forward theoretical possibilities for reconciling key
categories of the horizontal and vertical paradigms, exploring productive
common grounds towards an alternative understanding of the subjecti-
vation process of the emerging collective social subject of our times and
the radical democratic practices it brings into play. Grounding these theo-
retical reections on concrete cases of generative collective action that
ourished across Greece and Spain in the years of austerity, the fourth
section attempted to bridge Gramsci’s counter-hegemonic politics and
the networked model for being and acting of Hardt and Negri’s multitu-
de. By situating local-level horizontal and autonomous grassroots radical
agency within the broad revolutionary project, it expects to unravel the
practical possibilities for the multitude to reconstruct socio-spatial arran-
gements from below, eventually succeeding in producing alternative or-
ders to neoliberal capitalism.
In view of the aggravating crises of the hegemonic order, which
recently unfolded over health, migration, and international security is-
sues, to think anew and seek new conceptual approaches to grassroots
agency and democratic politics is all the more essential. Moreover, one
must transcend the theoretical plane and imbue these alternative unders-
tandings into concrete possibilities of social change and emancipation. By
opposing traditional conceptions of political action inherent to the verti-
cal dynamics of state politics and horizontal and autonomous grassroots
radical agency, this article hopes to make a move in this direction.
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an-austerity campaign: towards naonal parliaments and local spaces
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