An introduction
So, where to start?
My name is Anton and I am from northern Greece, born and raised in the beautiful island of Thassos in the south of Kavala city to the northernmost Aegean shores. I don't know if there's much to say about my child life, or, better, anything that you'll find useful apart from being raised in the countryside, a quite conservative environment where tradition is reduced to the bourgeois conservative ideals of "tradition".
I remember, when I was young I wanted to become a fisherman like both of my grandparents. One of them was actually building boats and then selling them to various fishermen all over Greece. He retired during the 70's and then transformed his workshop into a farm with a storage cabin (yes, that's the very same farm I'm using, but i'll get to that later on). Later in my high school years I changed multiple thoughts over my future occupation but in the end, and during the final exams, I still wasn't sure what I really wanted to do in my life. Then, I got into Uni but soon quited just to start again, quit over and then start again. Finally got my degree but to me it looks no different than a piece of toilet paper.
An short analysis on the Greek political economy
Modern day Greece looks like a heaven to the eyes of the average British, German and Romanian tourist: clean and blue waters, nice beaches, warm sun, syrtaki, souvlaki and other shit being marketized as treasure by the average Greek tourist agent. The reality is different though. Greek working-class folk that works in the service sector - particularly any job that deals with tourists - experiences heavy exploitation. Most people work from 9 to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 4 months straight. There were days that I worked as much as 15 hours with the wage being no higher than 3,5€ per hour. After the Greek civil war, the country started slowly to deindustrialize and during the 80’s it became a typical postfordist economy. Working class neighborhoods got upgraded and the rents went higher, government subsidies gave rise to the middle class with more shops, café-bars, restaurants and hotels opening everywhere around the urban centers. The Shanghai model was implemented firstly in Athens, absorbing the working-class and neutralizing its class-consciousness. Before 2008 they were even anarchists who used to argue that classes are obsolete nowadays.
2009 changed everything. That was when the debt problem first came to the country through the first meeting between Angela Merkel and Yorgos Papandreou. During the following years, the middle class started to realize that it wasn’t the millionaires they thought they were. Wages went lower, dismissals were numerous and seeing people with a phd from the Department of Chemical Engineering working as cashiers in a shitty bakery became a common phenomenon. Teenagers were sent to work in restaurants during the summer season. Imagine having to spent 9 months in a fucking prison (school) and waiting for the summer holidays just to go to another, while listening to your fucking boomer parents recalling carpe-diem stories from the 80’s.
My existential crisis
A couple of years ago I tried to convince myself that it was theory the thing that got me radicalized, but now I know it's not: It was exploitation. Never in my life had the chance to have a summer vacation. I remember myself working every summer since my 14's because my family didn't have enough money to spare for mine and my sister's expenses (including daily expenses, helping school expenses – yeah in Greece the education is so shitty that you have to take courses in a private helping school during the evening if you wanna have any success in the final exams). Theory only brought my thoughts into a rational conclusion: this is not life.
I spent a couple of years not knowing what to do. I participated in various anarchist meetings and praxis, talked with people, clashed with cops and fascists but I didn't really feel that this, itself, was bringing any change. I wanted to do something on my own, alongside a handful of trusted friends that was going to be different and hopeful.
Leftism: an infantile disorder
Lockdown got things worse. I never believed it was for our own good and my radical opinions was a reason to break-off with some "friends". None of them could predict what was going to happen: having to send a fucking sms to a gov number in order to go outdoors for any reason, cops everywhere, pogroms against refugees and romanis in a much more tactical level, worker dismissals etc. I wrote a lot of articles on that stuff and spent time making analysis over analysis but sometimes, talking to leftists is like talking to concrete walls. Although they have very good takes on capitalism, their humanistic approach makes them no different than social democrats. They see a tree but miss the forest. I soon found my efforts fruitless and quited.
A New Hope
It wasn't until I came across a fine fellow and his peculiar off-grid living that got me surprised and fascinated at the same time. This guy got locked up in Costa Rica when visiting his parents, so what he did was take care of some land they owned and transform it into an off-grid autonomous farm, with a cabin and a fruit forest. I had tried survivalism in the past, spent nights in the mountains looking at the night sky during the warmer days of May and there were times where I dreamt of living alone like Robinson Crusoe in a tropical island, with no one else except for my cats. Well, I'm not that antisocial anymore (or, at least not at that level) but the idea of living off-greed fascinated me. During late October 2020 I started working off the abandoned farm, clearing it off bushes, sambucuses and trash, fixing the storage cabin and planting trees all around the place. Later on, I got two goats and turned a small part of the farm into a garden with onions, potatoes, lettuces and garlics in it. Practicing vertical farming, I created small flower pots from empty cardboard coffee cups and other various dumped boxes and I did the same with tomato and carrot plants, although I used 5L plastic wine bottles for those ones.
What I wanted to do with this (apart from making some money which I really need) was to create a network of co-operation and trade between various collectives and squats in the urban centers that either shelter, or make food bazaars for poor refugees in Greece that experience pogroms both from cops and from racist Greeks. Alongside my dear friend in Halkidiki (and of course the forementioned lad) we traded various ideas on permaculture, DIY stuff and other that are both eco-friendly and cheaper. Did I mention that I started with a budget of 400€?
There are also plans for building a wooden cabin and a library inside the farm, as well as buying a caravan. This will serve in making the place hospitable for people who want to visit the farm, spend a few days there enjoying nature, exploring the mountain, or even wanting to participate in the cooperative. The library will have a lot of material from autonomist and anarchist authors for anyone wanting to read it. What I really hope is to give local young people alternative ideals, contrary to the conservative brainwashing they experience at school and at home.
Reflections on the present and some thoughts for the near future
I'm amazed by the fact that I've given myself to that cause. I never remember me spending so much time and energy in one thing. I always gave up one thing after another. It's been almost 9 months and it looks like it's gonna be more. So, what are my plans for the future? Right now we're talking with comrades from India that started a similar project and it looks like we're heading towards a confederation. In Greece, there are talks with various collectives (mostly from the northern part of the country) that are really interested and constantly read the stuff we upload. There are talks of expanding outside of Greece, with Hungary and Slovakia being our targeted destinations but it's too early to talk of that.
What else should I add?
Well, I'm really happy when I meet people that try their best and are innovative enough to create something on their own and get off the capitalist swamp; that is why I admire the Zapatistas, people who run squats and coops, people who take care, feed and sometimes shelter refugees in the concentration camps with the risk of being persecuted by the Greek state. I feel glad to meet and work with such people, they give me strength to go on and become even more productive than I currently am.
