• 1 Αlexander Stephan (ed.), The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism af (...)

1In this paper I intend to contextualize the case of two major Greek industrialists, who both published their personal memoirs in the 1960s. Both invested in the Greek national economy and differentiated themselves from the “interlopers” of Greek wealth, such as the global maritime tycoons Onassis and Niarchos. In the mid-1960s they shared with the Greek public their personal thoughts on the “indigenous” self-made businessman; Evangelos Papastratos (1884-1973) with Work and Its Toil, and Christoforos Katsambas (1893-1984) with Putting faith in the Future. These rare examples of Greek business life-writings can be analyzed in the context of relevant texts on American businessmen, known as rugs to riches examples. In the 20th century, the model of the self-made American entrepreneur originating from the land of unbounded opportunities created an influential political and economic model around the world. In the 1960s, when Americanism and anti-Americanism was developing in Greece, new cultural and consumption habits were introduced into Greek life in the frame of the expanding American business world.1 It leads us to assume that the two case studies were an unfinished step towards writing businessmen biographies in Greece.

• 2 The didactic role of a successful life is indicated from the very first lines: “I was born and bred (...)

2The American model of the self-made man goes as far as Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century and it is interesting to discover similarities and discrepancies with other national examples.2 Autobiographies as part of life-writing have been considered to be a major source for biography, as well as forms of biography within themselves. Economic and business history has challenged the way businessmen wrote about their lives as ‘pioneers’, or ‘creators’. Businessmen’s lives as individuals or as groups have illuminated economic success in national and international context and have given food for thought about their perception in wider audiences. Yet the intention of a businessman’s biography to teach by example is closely related to other biographical examples. Quite often a biography is a laudatory text and the lives of various businessmen make no exception to that.

• 3 Robert I. Rotberg, “Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Consider (...)
• 4 The course of his life and his intellectual engagements are analyzed in his biography by Thomas K. (...)

3If we acknowledge that Biography is a form of historical writing, then the value of understanding a particular life in its social context is precisely this; it examines the process of historical change through an individual, who, similarly to others, copes simultaneously with complex forces both public and private. The challenging question for biography is not whether the subject is role model whatever this may mean, but rather what we might learn from a study of a specific life.3 The innovative biography of the self-made Austrian-American economist and political scientist Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) sheds new light on one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. The author uses character and performance analysis in interpreting Schumpeter’s diaries and other personal writings in order to thoroughly reevaluate his work and life.4

• 5 From the point of view of literary criticism, see Takis Kagialis, “Η αυτοβιογραφία ως κατασκευή [Au (...)
• 6 Apart from sociologists and Literary scholars, one of the rare occasions that Greek historians disc (...)

4Scholars sometime argue that biography is a misleading way of writing about the past.5 The biographical approach has many similarities with the case study approach, therefore both have been charged of having a narrow format of representation. To set one great life center stage can be read as promoting a particular political agenda or consolidating a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian social structure. Biography always reflects and provides a version of social politics even if there is a nationalist agenda behind the collective. The popularity of certain biographies in different countries, periods and cultures, biographies of saints, naval heroes, religious and political leaders, athletes, rock stars, businessmen provide insights into that society; the values, the visible and invisible men and women.6

• 7 Philippe Lejeune, L’autobiographie en France, Paris, Armand Colin, 1971.
• 8 Philippe Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique, Paris, Seuil, 1975.
• 9 Robert Dion, Frances Fortier, Barbara Havencroft and Hans-Jürgen Lusebrink, “Introduction”, in Vies (...)
• 10 Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, “Avant-propos”, in Danielle Boillet, Marie-Madeleine Fragonard and Hélèn (...)
• 11 On the innovative use of inventors’ biographies in order to show the evolution of ideas and project (...)

5European historiography on Biography has examined the diverse forms of personal writing that characterize western cultures, qualified as “cultures of confession” which include oral testimonies, blogs, personal web pages, television programs. All these impose a new taxonomy from the pioneering work of Philippe Lejeune L’autobiographie en France7 and Le pacte autobiographique8 to new forms de thématisation de soi.9 Three Mediterranean countries offer the national background necessary, comparing elements from the cultural life of Spain, France and Italy, and highlighting the contradictions that the craft of biography carries out; an ambiguous category included neither in history nor in narrative. Biography by choice gives value to one person by compiling different non-homogenous sources.10 The methodological approach to various subjects using biography has a long history, and here we only argue about some of the late discussions on the so-called “biographical turn”.11

• 12 For example, the main arguments in this article are sustained through a family story: Roy Hora, “Th (...)
• 13 Peter Gay, Τhe Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, New York-NY, OUP, 1984-1998 and Schnitzler’ (...)

6Biography as a means of identification, study and interpretation of the modern bourgeois world, has renewed the study of the businessman as a constituent member of the civil society in the industrial era.12 Peter Gay in his work highlights the biography or modular biographies as a tool for the identification and study of the bourgeois world. An important point in his methodological proposal is the analysis and integration of a set of experiences and virtues of the bourgeois world with the goal of understanding a large group beyond state borders, classified as “Victorian bourgeoisie”, in which he examines characteristics such as sexuality, aggression, taste and sentiments. Gay examines the Victorian view of human nature, of self-control and the importance of the agent. The emergence of self-control (self-management) in Man is manifested by channeling inner anger towards the pursuit of achievement and power. These views emerged in the nineteenth century and are interpreted by Gay as matching Christian values with a gendered social Darwinism.13

• 14 Emmanuelle Morgat-Longuet, “L’emploi du mot VIE chez Colletet: de l’éloge de l’illustre à la critiq (...)

7It is almost impossible to draw conclusions from such diverse manifestations of history on (auto)biographies, but a useful background for our discussion can be formed by assessing a number of more generalized conclusions: the first concerns biography as a process of self-definition by bringing private affairs into the public sphere; and the second involves the didactic potential of biography going back to Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or simply Plutarch’s Lives, a series of biographies of famous men, arranged to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. Parallel Lives examine a series of exemplary lives in pairs aiming at comparing Greek and Roman culture.14 From Plutarch to Francesco Petrarca (De viris illustribus, fourteenth century) and to Giorgio Vasari (Vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori scultori architetti, 1550-1568) the problem of the separation of History from Life is rarely the case in any biography. The compilation, however, of a life story may become a collection of biographies belonging to the same period, to the same profession, and grouped together in order to be compared, have a genealogy created and become a didactic example.

• 16 Anastasios Goudas, Βίοι παράλληλοι [Parallel Lives], v. 3, Πλούτος ή εμπόριον [Wealth or trade], At (...)
• 17 Article published on 31 December 1870 in L’Indépendance Hellénique, see Anastasios Goudas (ed.), Co (...)

10In Greece, correspondingly, the didactic example was established in the nineteenth century with the work of Anastasios Goudas titled Parallel Lives.16 A series of attributes can be ascribed to his biographies: a laudatory view based mainly on family and local origin, “Hellenophilia”, the uniqueness of personality, selective relationships with politicians, and, certainly, a successful economic activity accompanied by a rich social and charitable work. The ambitious Greek doctor compiled a corpus of exemplary lives of illustrious Greek men in several volumes, one of which was dedicated to merchants and bankers. The main didactic theme here is deprivation and thrift accompanied by the ethics of patriotism and a commitment to personal benefactions. There is no economic activity per se, but rather a private life committed to offering, donation, and bequeathal to the Greek nation. Goudas also published one volume with various opinions about his work, written by his contemporaries, who exemplified the didactic aspect of his work: « Par le temps où nous vivons, cet ouvrage ne manquera pas d’avoir une influence salutaire sur notre jeune génération ».17

• 18 Maria Christina Chatziioannou, “Ιστοριογραφικές προσεγγίσεις μιας διεθνοποιημένης δραστηριότητας: τ (...)

11Individual and collective biographies, as well as biographical sketches have been used as techniques to study and analyze the bourgeois world using cultural, psychological and other non-economic factors. Individual entrepreneurial paths and career patterns in Greek diaspora and the Greek state offer a vast ground to investigate the presence or absence of the biographical turn in Greek historiography. The typology of the businessman in a national and international context through a comparative and transnational prism, and its contribution to the configuration of markets in the Mediterranean can be analyzed through the identification of agency as an active intermediary of collective processes and the emergence of lived experience as a decisive parameter in our understanding of history. An interesting question to pose is why the biography of the businessman, with thriving Greek examples, such as maritime magnates, stumbles between oblivion and laudatory approaches or success stories. The didactic appeal of these works is under dispute. Diverse Greek historiographical trends in the twentieth century consistent with Marxist interpretations of social history have somewhat downplayed the role of the businessman and his biography, and have condemned merchants as the “comprador bourgeoisie” emphasizing the key role of structures in social and economic history.18

• 19 George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, a (...)

12Furthermore, the failure of thorough interpretation of personal business activity by purely economic factors has highlighted the role and importance of sentiments and personal characteristics. The tone was shifted to non-economic factors that determine the effectiveness of economic behavior as well as the evaluation not only of economic motives, but other conditions also that make economic activity possible.19

• 20 See the French case in Jean-Claude Daumas, Alain Chatriot, Danièle Fraboulet, Patrick Fridenson and (...)

13The biography of the businessman, the person who stars in the conception, organization, operation and expansion of business can be ascribed to the general category of Biography. Not only independent biographies, but also biographical dictionaries and obituaries briefly narrate the life and work of the businessman. Most biographical dictionaries follow the nineteenth-century tradition that emphasizes the evolution of the nation-state and the role of individuals in it. Thus, these dictionaries and their selection of content give an image of national and social reception in each country and in different historical periods.20

• 21 Ulf Olsson, Furthering a fortune: Marcus Wallenberg. Swedish Banker and Industrialist 1899-1982, St (...)

14The biography of the Swedish banker and industrialist Marcus Wallenberg (1899-1982) is an interesting historiographical example.21 Here, the absence of personal writings is rather narrowly interpreted:

• 23 “Economics with a human face?” argues Francesco Boldizzoni, The Poverty of Clio: Resurrecting Econo (...)

16Economic and Business History studies have frequently emphasized the role of structures in the economy. At the same time, they have often examined the life and deeds of businessmen without employing the tools of Economic Sociology or biography-writing. One trend within this field of studies is to reassess these methodological issues by addressing and exploring relevant key themes, such as the typology of businessmen in a national and international context from a comparative angle, and their contribution to the configuration of the markets. Through the identification of agency as the active intermediary of collective processes and the emergence of lived experience as a decisive parameter in our understanding of history, several studies have sought to “humanize” Economic and Business History.23

• 24 On the gender issues within corporations, see Mary A. Yeager (ed.), Women in Business, v. 1-3, Chel (...)

17Both academic disciplines have confronted the issue of character and performance analysis in theoretical and empirical studies, including studies concerning biographical portraits of businessmen. For example, the founders of the Harvard-based Bulletin of the Business Historical Society (Norman S. B. Gras and Henrietta Larson) since 1927 dedicated themselves to collecting and preserving the personal data of businessmen. Now biography in the area of Economic and Business History is often related to the recent historiographical turn from structures to agents. Biography-writing as a means of identifying, studying and interpreting the urban and bourgeois world has reinstated the businessman as a constituent member of civil society in modern times. The quest for an integral interpretation of economic activities and the failure of explaining them by purely economic factors has highlighted the importance of culture and personal characteristics in identifying agency. The focus has shifted to non-economic factors that determine the effectiveness of economic behavior as well as to the reassessment of the economic environment that make economic activities possible. Quite often there is a generally accepted rule in the biography of the businessman that he formed a unique economic behavior which is gender defined (male) and constitutes an exemplary standard.24 The biographical identity of the businessmen emphasizes that they are persons who are innovative, take risks, grasp opportunities and make decisions at the highest level, so as to study the different levels of entrepreneurship and the typology of the businessman. The biographical account of their business activity and its classification has often been a separate, each time, construction of national historiography that also defined social acceptance.

• 25 Jocelyn Maynard Ghent and Frederic Cople Jaher, “The Chicago Business Elite: 1830-1930. A Collectiv (...)

19Taking the United States as the cradle of the self-made businessman, we notice that most studies on US businessmen and business elites were published between 1945 and 1958.25 The standard agenda on the biography of the businessman comprises: private life, business career, entrepreneurship, public image, the examination of two main issues concerning wealth (how much) and background (earned vs inherited fortune). An enriched agenda on the biography of the businessman opens up to gender issues (masculinity), regional studies, social mobility, social prejudices, ethnic and religious characteristics, as well as the iconic figure of the businessman.

• 26 Anita Shafer Goodstein, Biography of a Businessman, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1962.

20Another widespread trend is the laudatory narration of the life of various self-made tycoons transformed into mythical figures. These examples were and are quite common in European and American literature; they are the rags-to-riches well-known success stories about Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Morgan or Onassis. The common thread for writing biographies of public legends of business life is the commemorative spirit of Victorian biography. A common feature in these cases is the authenticity of narrative details that lead to a truthful representation of life. The most common goal of such biographies is to bring out the feelings of admiration the biographers hold and to highlight their desire to follow these success stories In a similar pattern, Henry W. Sage (1814-1897) was another successful businessman who traded lumber and invested in railroad and industrial securities; a self-made businessman who rose from humble but respectable origins to earn a position of wealth and power. His life was described as a man of determination and intelligence, who took advantage of the opportunities inherent in an open society with rich resources.26

• 27 Irvin G. Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches, New Brunswick-New Jersey (...)
• 28 Emily Stipes Watts, The Businessman in American Literature, Athens-Georgia, University of Georgia P (...)
• 29 Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin, Cambridge-MA, Harvard Un (...)

21In the United States, since the nineteenth century, the most tenacious and popular hero is not some type of Robin Hood or Davy Crockett, but the self-made man, the man who rose from rags to riches, becoming a person of wealth and substance. His rise came about not from a whim of fate or luck; it was always the result of the cultivation of virtues conducive to material prosperity: toil, meticulousness, saving, and sobriety, with an unyielding fear of luxury and extravagance. Hard work and religious faith offered the tools to construct one’s fortune. In a book published in 1954, Irvin Wyllie traced the development of the gospel of material success from colonial days down to the Great Crash of 1929. He argued that the notion of the self-made man was a way to inspire hope and faith in the economic system, but that as a method of ensuring the individual’s chances of acquiring material wealth, it was more of a myth than reality. Many Americans believed in this idea, and thousands of ill-paid clerks stuck to their desks throughout the nineteenth century, waiting for the reward that for the most never came. In the 1950s a number of US academics put forward a serious critique of this self-help ideology of nineteenth-century American literature on the self-made man myth.27 Other views have also been expressed on the unjustifiably critical image of the businessman in American literature, a critique mainly conditioned by protestant ethics.28 It is Pamela Walker Laird who re-examined narratives of self-made men in America. She analyzed the American self-made men down from Benjamin Franklin, “the patron saint of the self-made men”, and proposed another analysis through “role models, mentors, networks”, an examination based on different forms of life writings as well.29

• 30 Juliette Atkinson, Victorian Biography Reconsidered: A Study of Nineteenth-Century “Hidden” Lives, (...)

22Journals, memoirs, testimonies and self-portraits are often recognized as different forms of autobiography. They comprise a plurivalent source of research and debate, and a corpus for raising several questions about the construction of self and its skills, the nature of the subject, the nature of language, the relationships between the reader and the writer, and their relationship with time. Compared to the genre of life-writing, autobiography has attracted much more interest. Studies on Victorian autobiography have shown the way specific groups consolidated their power in the public sphere, providing at the same time valuable insights for the study of hidden lives and, in a general way, demonstrating how agents negotiate their ideas. In addition to its social and cultural function, Victorian autobiography raised the question of whether Victorian life-writing tended to group autobiography and biography together, since many works of nineteenth-century (auto) biographies were hybrid.30 In any case, it can be argued that every autobiography is an act of re-creation, the life details selectively arranged to represent an integrated, essential self, stripped of the disparate and sometimes conflicting particular details.

• 31 William C. Spengemann and L. R. Lundquist, “Autobiography and the American Myth”, American Quarterl (...)

23The created character in both cases represents values recognized by the reading public at large. A consideration of several American autobiographers as cultural types can provide new ways of viewing this special genre in our literature. It also suggests that autobiography in general is, according to the German philosopher Georg Misch (1878-1965), “not only a special kind of literature but also an instrument of knowledge”. By regarding the creation of the autobiographical character in America as a cultural act, one observes that one of the ways in which Americans shaped their views of themselves was by attending closely to the dominant patterns of their culture. When a person writes his autobiography he translates a unique view of himself into the language of his culture, subjecting some part of his private self to public evaluation. In doing so, he creates a fictive character that undergoes adventures drawn from the author’s memory, and a narrative persona that reports these experiences and evaluates them according to their place in a cultural pattern transformed into “the American myth”.31 As for the meaning of “the American myth” it is almost impossible to talk about the myth of any culture, since cultural values will undergo continual change as long as individuals have experiences and translate them into social belief. Even when communal assumptions take the form of a concrete story, that tale must remain sufficiently flexible and suggestive to allow for repeated interpretation. When it can no longer be reinterpreted to depict contemporary belief and explain present problems it must fall into disuse and be of interest only to the antiquarian.

• 32 An interesting university text: Michalis Chrysanthopoulos (et al.), Αυτοβιογραφία μεταξύ ιστορίας κ (...)

24We have seen that autobiographical form is inextricably bound with cultural belief, that civilization prescribes fairly specific roles for its citizens to adopt when portraying themselves in writing. In the Western civilization, these roles share a common quality: they all express an integrated, continuing personality which transcends the limitations and irregularities of time and space and unites all of one’s apparently contradictory experiences into an identifiable whole. This notion of individual identity, in fact, may well be the central belief of our culture. With all its ramifications-personal responsibility, individual destiny, dissent, vocation and so forth, it forms the core of our being and the fabric of our history. A new interest about the life-writing genre seems to have been provoked partly by an interest in the questions of self and subjectivity, partly by the new concern for alternative forms of historiography, as, for example, race and gender, which have turned autobiography into a strong form of subaltern protest, self-assertion and identity-formation;32 in other words, a convergence of literary, philosophical and psychological interests in the study of autobiography. There are countries and historical periods by which autobiography has been granted a special authority, from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (first published in French in Paris in 1791) to the various autobiographies from the civil wars of Spain (1936-1939) and Greece (1946-1949).

• 33 Maria Christina Chatziioannou and Alkis Aggelou (ed), Andreas Syngros Απομνημονεύματα [Memoirs], v. (...)

25Autobiography holds a position of priority –many would say pre-eminence– among the narrative traditions concerning the stage actors of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the “self-justification” testimonies of the Greek Resistance and civil war of 1941-1949. Parallel to these two life-writing sources there is another group of stage actors, the Greek businessmen. This desire of the modern businessman auto-biographer to liberate the voice of the self by inscribing it into the community is a twentieth-century phenomenon in Greek historiography, since the most well-known nineteenth-century example is A. Syngros, Memoirs, published post mortem in 1908. Andreas Syngros (1830-1899), from the island of Chios, was the epitome of the successful businessman in the Levant. He told his own story of a successful self-made man throwing an intriguing light on the business culture of the author and his time. His Memoirs can be interpreted as the written evidence of the authority and business example of a businessman coming from Constantinople with the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. He introduced new business ethics and practices in a new political and social environment, the Greek state.33 This “autobiography” gives a description of selected facts and events concentrated around the author’s everyday life stressing some of them which seem to him more important, a logical construction, rationalized and composed as a rational entity. Hence the life of the author is presented as a chain of facts or events in a process more or less logically organized.

• 34 Nikos Melios and Evangelia Bafouni, 75 χρόνια 1931-2006 Παπαστράτος [75 Years, 1931-2006 Papastrato (...)
• 35 Evangelos A. Papastratos, Η δουλειά και ο κόπος της: Από τη ζωή μου [Work and Toil: Memoirs], Athen (...)
• 36 Christopher McKenna, “Writing the Ghost Writer Back: Alfred Sloan, Alfred Chandler, John McDonald a (...)

27In order to contextualize the life-writings of Evangelos Papastratos34 and Christoforos Katsambas, I will address two key questions: Why were these two texts published in the so-called long 1960s?35 Did they represent cultural models of their time? Did they create a cultural pattern? I doubt it very much, and I shall explain why. We might also raise another question in this context: did they write down their life stories by themselves or by ghost-writers?36 But what remains valid here is their intention to make public their lives and ‘teach’ by example.

• 37 Chrysafis Iordanoglou, “Η οικονομία 1949-1974: Ανάπτυξη και νομισματική σταθερότητα [Economy 1949-1 (...)

28It is a well-documented fact that following the monetary reform of 1953, and until the 1973 oil crisis, Greece underwent large-scale economic and social changes.37 A relative economic stability, high rates of growth, and increased domestic and foreign investment was accompanied by an improvement in living standards. At the same time, the share of industrial production in the country’s GDP increased from 20% to 34.5%. These changes were accelerated in the 1960s as a result of the association with the EEC and a protective state policy towards industry. Together with the increase of the impact of industry on the economy, one would also expect a radical change on how the image of industry and industrialists was perceived by the public.

• 38 Georgia Panselina and Maria Mavroidi, Σύνδεσμος ελληνικών βιομηχανιών 1907-2007: Ένας αιώνας στην υ (...)
• 39 Georgia Panselina and Maria Mavroidi, Σύνδεσμος ελληνικών βιομηχανιών 1907-2007. Ένας αιώνας στην υ (...)
• 40 In the industrial census of the same year, some 2.800 industrial units of various size are recorded (...)
• 41 In the Greek case, collective approaches to the businessmen’s worlds like Dictionaries of Business (...)

30Both men were key figures of the Greek industrial world. Katsambas served as President of the Association in 1945-1949, 1950-1952, and in 1963, before becoming its honorary president, a post also held for life later by Papastratos.38 The former was also responsible for creating a favorable public image for Greek industry by contributing to the publication of pertinent scientific and statistical studies,39 and for promoting public acceptance.40 This image was also cultivated in the first Great Greek Biographical Dictionary, which the Vovolinis brothers brought out between 1958 and 1962, and which contained biographical portraits of various businessmen and industrialists, including a ten-page text on Papastratos.41 In other words, the mid-1960s was the right time for both men to unveil their life stories and experiences as testimony of an industrial epopee –at least of Greek standards.

• 42 A. Papastratos remembered with regret how he failed in an erroneous speculation on Russian rubles.

31The standard agenda in both autobiographical texts is private life (family and town of origin); business career (from lower assistant jobs to ownership and management); entrepreneurship (sincere hard work in trade and industry and not in finance);42 public image (wealth distribution through acts of benevolence for their birthplaces and the general public) in order to demonstrate how an earned, not inherited, fortune was created alla greca.

• 43 See the preface in Evangelos A. Papastratos, Η δουλειά και ο κόπος της: Από τη ζωή μου [Work and To (...)
• 44 C. Katsambas, Πιστεύοντας εις το μέλλον: Το χρονικό μιας προσπάθειας [Putting faith in the Future: (...)
• 45 C. Katsambas, Πιστεύοντας εις το μέλλον: Το χρονικό μιας προσπάθειας [Putting faith in the Future: (...)
• 46 Evangelos A. Papastratos, Η δουλειά και ο κόπος της: Από τη ζωή μου [Work and Toil: Memoirs] Athens (...)

33Another common characteristic in their autobiographies is their open anti-communism in a period of cold war tensions. Both men narrate in some detail their experiences from the Dekemvriana, the civil war that raged in the streets of Athens for much of December 1944 and early January 1945 between the communist resistance movement of EAM/ELAS and the British-backed government of Georgios Papandreou. Papastratos, in particular, maintains that it was this unavoidable accident, this force majeure that led him to write his memories, which he published twenty years later, at the age of sixty.43 In December 1944, Katsambas was also stuck in his house some blocks away from Papastratos, cut off from his industrial premises in the Athens district of Kallithea, which was under communist control at the time.44 From such details a full-blown anti-communist, anti-Marxist public icon would be built together with their general attitude towards labor strikes. Yet, the motto of Katsambas’ close friend and business partner, Stamoulis Stratos, “be slaves of work so that you will not be slaves of people”45, together with Papastratos’ motto “the story of a poor Greek boy who thrived through his work”46 could not create a uniting cultural pattern of the self-made business man alla greca.

• 47 Meletis Meletopoulos, “Δημήτρης Μπάτσης: Η αριστερή πρόταση για την οικονομική ανάπτυξη [Dimitris B (...)

34The early post war Marxist interpretation of the Greek economy begins from Dimitris Batsis’ work on the Heavy industry of Greece first published in 1947 with a preface by Professor N. Kitsikis. This book in a way turned its back to an existing industry that in the 1960s would principally cater for the needs of a rising consuming society in Greece. The evolution –in socialist terms– of heavy industry in Greece promised welfare, development and civilization. Additionally, heavy industry would liberate the Greek economy from its dependence on foreign technology, and finance, as well as protective state legislation.47

• 48 Christina Agriantoni, “Η εικόνα της βιομηχανίας: Οι δυσκολίες της αποδοχής [The image of the indust (...)

36In the 1960s both industrialists in question, Papastratos and Katsambas, were still alive and it would be difficult for their life and deeds to become an exemplary model in an after civil strife cold war period. Were they too big businessmen, too rare as to lead role models in Greek economy and society? Greek rural society was becoming acquainted with labor migration to Germany, and middle classes were much occupied with small-scale personal economic improvements. A whole array of reasons may be scrutinized here giving prominence to politics over the economy.48 Teaching by example was the authors’ intention, but the long-lasting positive reception of that message was practically unfulfilled in Greece.