One of the episodes of this sluggish pre-election period was the confrontation SYRIZA – PASOK for one who (has the right) to express his heritage Andrea Papandreou. What makes two centre-left parties compete for a distant moment in our political history? Shadowboxing over a box of yellowed photographs? Postmodern nostalgia for the good old days, reflected in social media parodies of memes like “With Andrea, we got a present for Santa Claus”?

This is not out of the question. At the same time, Andreas Papandreou summarizes something more. Political history, like history in general, is not just history written by “great personalities.” However, sometimes faces condense its great turns and become the stakes of the present. “Andreas” is a metonym for one of the two founding moments of post-colonialism, that is, the political universe in which we still live. If Konstantinos Karamanlis, arriving from Paris on Giscard’s plane, personifies the transition to democracy, then Professor Berkeley, in his leather jacket, sideburns and pipe, signals its consolidation.

The explosion of expectations in the first post-colonization – with a historical and political character, since it came from the “Kakhetian democracy” excluded from the post-conflict – could only be temporarily represented by Karamanly N.D. PASOK was a new ideological and political formation that organized widespread radicalism, expectations, demands.

This was the “moment” when the entry of the masses into politics, which developed in the lost spring of the 60th before being forcibly interrupted by the dictatorship, came to an end. The masculine PASOK made available political representation that may not have been necessarily socialist (albeit leftist), but went beyond Karamanism. He based his rule on an updated version of the intersection of the pre-dictatorial right and anti-right, as well as on personality-oriented populism, which became a means of power and social ascension rather than a challenge to the petty bourgeoisie, and on an ethnocentric anti-Western rhetoric that quickly and effectively reconciled with the European belonging (see also A. Pantazopoulos, For the People and the Nation: A Moment by Andreas Papandreou, Polis, 2001).

Hence his relationship with the communist left, which was ambivalent. By 1985, there was conflict between PASOK and the KKE, especially at the local government level. In the Renewed Left, Angelos Elefantis wrote that “from the point of view of socialism, PASOK leaves us coldly indifferent”, since in place of the national pride of the nation, he puts the instrumental people; Nikos Poulantzas, influenced by the march of Mitterrand’s Socialists with the Eurocommunists of the Marche, he was looking for a plural of left a la Greek that would also include PASOK as a mass socialist movement.

Andreas Papandreou’s “moment” also had peaks of reform. He consolidated the change in the legitimizing basis of the political system: no anti-communism, no nationalism, no social conservatism. PASOK’s policy concerned historical traumas (recognition of the National Resistance), the abolition of social anachronisms (voting at 18, civil marriage, modernization of family law), the establishment of 40 hours / 5 days, the creation of the National Social. Security, modernization of higher education, democratization of the trade union movement. But it was also a trivialization of the politics of the late 80s: “Both those and those,” says the poet.

Professor Berkeley, in his leather jacket, sideburns and pipe, signals the establishment of democracy.

A fair assessment of “Andreas” is a difficult task, as is the case with great and divisive politicians. The further they move from their era, the more empty signifiers and legacies become available to many successors.

The restoration of the mythology of today is not only an atavism. Let’s not forget that amid the crisis, Greece in the 80s became controversial: on the one hand, it was demonized as a source of populist political culture, but also as a source of bankruptcy (although the fiscal collapse happened mainly in the second half of the 2000s). ); on the other hand, it was positively evaluated by those who believed that the achievements of the post-colonial period needed to be protected.

In this sense, the legend of Andreas remains attractive. Both for SYRIZA, which, although a descendant of the Andreas-hostile Renewal, replaced the PASOK electorate, and for PASOK, which, in an attempt to reorient itself towards social democracy, finds the identifying period of the heroic “Mediterranean socialism” more effective, despite the more “European” -Blerian (therefore more mundane) period of Simitis.

Perhaps in that founding moment we are looking for something that is missing today. A sense of epochal change, a horizon of expectation versus relapse; connection of the political body with the mass, popular subject; radical conflict delimiting identities, sometimes camps; a series of reforms synchronized with more advanced value trends in society; some, perhaps a strong leader in direct contact with the “people”.

The eclectic use of political mythology is not new. The question is whether the heirs will be able to incorporate elements of the legacy of a distant relative into the current project of social transformation. If not, it will be just post-date political passions.

Mr. Yannis Balapanidis is a political scientist and writer.