Why the Greek Summer is a Human Right
Aristotle, Lafargue, and modern psychologists would agree: Reclaiming the Greek summer today would be revolutionary.
What is the Greek summer?
Leisurely days sailing along golden beaches, basking in sunlight reflections, lustful with the mist and dazzling as they emerge from endless dives, with eyes half-closed to the sound of cicadas like shutters in a fiery Mediterranean noon, bare feet defying all rules, washing off the salt from their bodies with a hose in the yard, biting into juicy peaches. Days of “want,” not “must.” Days of eros, days to fall in love with, always flirtatious.
Days of freedom and carefreeness; which, however, belong more or less in the past. The idea of the Greek summer is now mostly accessed through our collective memory — oh, those beautiful days!
Today, we ‘shamelessly’ want to vacation in the Cyclades (we shall go elsewhere as they have become expensive, the narrative goes), in general, we want vacations but can’t save a penny (as we buy takeaway coffee, which we ‘shouldn’t,’ we are not ‘entitled’ to such a ‘luxury’) and dare not apply for a job in the galley of Greek tourism that can’t find enough hands to row at its frenetic pace.
In short, fewer and fewer Greeks can now enjoy the joys of their country for fewer and fewer days, while more and more are turned into cheap labor for the benefit of foreign visitors.
We have relinquished our right to the beauties of our country.
We have relinquished our right to our very own Greek summer.
Along with these, we have also relinquished something even more important: Our freedom.
From Homo Sapiens to Homo Laborans
Exaggeration? Only the popes of capitalism would call it as such since the right to free time, idleness, and ultimately, to the Greek summer inherently challenges the dominant dogma “I work; therefore I am.”
This dogma has permeated us so profoundly that we can no longer separate it from our very existence. Already a decade ago, a study found that many people felt uncomfortable being asked to stay alone with their thoughts for 6–15 minutes, doing nothing. Many participants, especially men, preferred to (literally) undergo a small electric shock.
We should be concerned that psychology had to create terms like “relaxation anxiety” and “relaxation sensitivity.” “Often people feel like it’s not OK to just be reading a good book or watching a good program on TV,” said Michelle Newman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in Time magazine.
The transformation of “homo sapiens” into “homo laborans” (“working man”) is probably complete, as we feel guilty when we are not producing, guilty when we have free time, and guilty when we are enjoying ourselves. In short, we have fallen into the psychology of the slave.
It is quite characteristic that in the stronghold of capitalism, the USA, it is considered normal for employees to work months or even years without a vacation. As Forbes pointed out, the USA is the only developed economy in the world where the right to paid leave is not guaranteed. If, when, and how many days of leave an employee takes depends on the employer and the type of job. As a result, the average American takes just 11 days off per year.
In Europe, things are better, as the right to paid leave for at least 20 days annually is recognized everywhere. France tops the list with 30 days, followed by the UK with 28 days, then Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain, and Sweden follow with 25. Yet, even in the Old Continent, work remains a sacred totem.
Why Didn’t We Listen to Aristotle?
If in ancient Athens they had indeed embraced the dogma “I work, therefore I am,” humanity would have been deprived of the philosophy, art, and sciences born there.
Notably, Aristotle did not consider free time to be the end of work, but rather, work was the end of free time. This time is the only time we are indeed free to define ourselves and our activities. It is the only time that truly belongs to us. During it, we should learn and educate ourselves, “for these lessons and teachings are for the sake of ourselves, while those related to work are necessary for the sake of others,” he wrote in his “Politics.”
Notably, according to the philosopher, it is only in free time that the purpose of life can be achieved: eudaimonia (happiness), pleasure, and bliss. “Free time seems to include pleasure and happiness and living in bliss. But this does not concern those working, but those with free time. For he who works does so for some unfulfilled purpose, yet happiness is a purpose, and everyone considers it not to be accompanied by sorrow, but to be intertwined with pleasure,” he wrote.
In short, free time nourishes the mind and soul of man.
Of course, the contemporary economic system is not at all interested in such a notion; on the contrary, it has reasons to oppose it: A person who has sufficient free time to elevate themselves spiritually and mentally will inevitably become a free citizen, thus claiming their right to the joy of life and refusing to work submissively to the point of collapse.
The Right to Be Lazy
About two millennia later, a French thinker and activist of the Paris Commune, Paul Lafargue (also Karl Marx’s son-in-law), stood firmly beside Aristotle. He launched tirades against the “strange madness” that “possesses the working classes of nations where capitalist civilisation reigns,” this “morbid passion” for work, “which drives to exhaustion the individual’s vital forces and those of their offspring.” No one, he proclaimed, should work more than three hours a day.
Lafargue considers work “the cause of every intellectual degeneration, every organic deformation.” He urges us to compare “the thoroughbred quadrupeds in Rothschild’s stables, tended by biped servants, with the heavy and rough horses of Normandy estates, which plow the land, carry manure, stack the harvest in the granary.”
Modern psychologists give some credit to Lafargue, pointing out that chronic stress significantly affects mental and physical health and increases the risk of chronic diseases and premature death. “Getting better at resting and relaxing, then, isn’t frivolous. It could actually be lifesaving,” noted Time.
Can We, Though?
“Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your misery, work, work so that by becoming even poorer, you would have even more reasons to work and be destitute. Such is the relentless law of capitalist production,” Lafargue thundered.
This law methodically orchestrates the abolition of the Right to Be Lazy. The French writer refers to an English philanthropist of the time, who described as extremely dangerous the “psychosis” of workers believing they are independent of their superiors. “The cure will not be complete,” he concluded, “until the poor of the industry are made to work six days for the same pay they now earn working four.”
“The Greeks Would Not Conceive Such Humiliation”
The voice of the “philanthropist” seems to have crossed seas and centuries to reach Greece on July 1, 2024, when the six-day working week was officially established in our country for part of the working force — at a time when advanced nations experimented with the four-day working week. In any case, we contemporary Greeks have no real education whatsoever on our ancient heritage.
Lafargue speaks of his contemporaries, descendants of the French Revolutionaries, who declared the right to work as a revolutionary principle: “Shame on the French proletariat! Only slaves would be capable of such grovelling. It would take twenty years of capitalist civilisation for a Greek of the heroic age to conceive such humiliation.”
Both Lafargue and Aristotle would be outraged today if they learned that people not only often work until they drop, but they are not allowed to slow down, to think, or to have free time — and when they are allowed, they struggle to do so.
For the latter, Aristotle had an explanation. When the Persian wars and the Peloponnesian war were over, people could live in happiness. But only those who had been properly trained for that, though. For instance, the Spartans did not know how to do it. “Responsible is their legislator who did not train them to spend their free time pleasantly,” the philosopher wrote in the “Nicomachean Ethics”.
The question is what kind of state each legislator envisions.
Greek Summer: Revolutionary as ‘Eudaemon’ (Blissful)
Of course, our country, Greece, would not escape capitalism. However, until very recently, the Greek summer was the little paper boat that saved something from Aristotle’s distant era, when the purpose of life was happiness — not work — and the highest value was free time in which this happiness could be achieved; from the era that we Greeks were producing thought, citizens, civilisation.
“It was also the era when one walked and breathed among a people of Aristotles, of Phidias, of Aristophanes — it was the era when a handful of brave men crushed the hordes of Asia at Marathon, which Alexander would soon subjugate,” noted Lafargue.
Today, one walks and breathes among a people who bow their heads and work non-stop from morning to night, often unable to secure their livelihood, let alone the good life.
Among a people who accept a book, a wine, or a trip to be labelled ‘luxuries’ by those who have secured not just “the good” but a luxurious life.
Among a people who have now relinquished even their summer, this unique ark of their ancient heritage.
In this situation, the Greek summer, as an unwavering right to free time, emerges brightly as an urgent demand for cultural reorganisation.
As an unsurpassed and eternal lover of Happiness, the Greek summer finally emerges as a revolution.
And as Lafargue wrote: “Oh Laziness, pity our great misery! Oh Laziness, mother of the arts and noble virtues, be the balm for human woes.”
The article was originally published in Greek for Popaganda online magazine: https://m.popaganda.gr/postscripts/giati-to-elliniko-kalokairi-einai-dikaioma/
