Why hasn't the situation in Greece evolved into an armed urban guerrilla insurgency?

Question

All of this street militancy appears to be so much choreography.  The police and the hooded ones seem to know their steps well and almost never improvise.  This active stalemate plays into the power of the state and preserves the status quo.  As such, why hasn't the situation evolved into an armed urban guerrilla insurgency?

Answer 1

The short answer: because that strategy has never been successful in creating a revolutionary insurgency. And anyway, creating a clandestine, professional, self-appointed representative group acting instead of The Revolutionary Subject as a whole has never been on an anarchist agenda.

Comments

This is beside the point a little but it does not look as though the Greek riot police shoot rubber bullets that much. I wonder if rioting in such a country is a more viable strategic option than in the the trigger happy US.

Answer 2

I want to challenge your assumption that revolutions follow a unilineal evolutionary pathway (from heavy streetfighting to armed urban guerrilla insurgency) and your assumption that the "active stalemate plays into the power of the state".

Urban guerrilla insurgency could refer to a specific strategy of clandestine armed groups, which do exist in Greece, and are a minor but important part of the current struggle. Where such groups have been the main protagonists, the result tends to be total pacification of the struggle, or triumph of a new authoritarian regime.

Another possibility is open civil war. The situation has not yet evolved into an open civil war because most Greeks continue to reproduce the narrative of democracy and its idea of protest and social consensus.

As for your second assumption, yes, they are currently in a stalemate in Greece, and stalemates wear down on the comrades, but on the one hand they benefit from a tradition of heavy street fighting (in other words, that's a status quo beneficial to an anarchist struggle), and their continued "choreography" as you call it undermines the democratic credibility of the regime and limits the possibilities for investment, recuperation, and intensified repression.

Various comrades in and from Greece have opined as to why things have not gone further there. After December, many blamed television.