Small Business in Distress:

Aspects of Petit-Bourgeois Collective Action in Postwar Greece

Abstract

The character of postwar small business associations in Greece was indelibly stamped by the authoritarian democracy that was constructed between 1945 and 1967. The integration of Greece in the process of European economic unification in the early 1960s was the fuse that sparked the accumulated frustrations into strong collective action, leading some tradesmen and artisans to question the political status quo and identify with centrist and left wing parties. This socio-political ferment led to the renegotiation of petit-bourgeois identity and attempts to link it to a new political context.