During the 19th century there reigned a social situation like the current one we are experiencing in the beginning of the 21st : There was an unleashing of the market and abstinence by the State from capitalist economy and its evolvement (that is, the State did not intervene at all to limit phenomena of exploitation, profiteering, lack of medical aid, etc), allowing the big capital holders to sap and exploit the People of every State as if the People were a de facto capital good of their big corporations/ industries.
This situation of unfettered profiteering and inhuman exploitation of Humans led, like every abuse and anarchy, to great Human Potential cost (high mortality and sub-human living conditions and work conditions), great social decay (immorality and prostitution for clearly survival purposes and avoidance of financial dead end, blackmails and subjugations, high criminality both of the criminal code as well as corporate crime), and huge losses not only on the political but also on the cultural level (nonexistent education, high levels of illiteracy, obscurantism and superstitions instead of educated critical thinking and high moral code based on religious/ ethic dogma). We can taste the huge impact of this policy of economic libertarianism which is being applied today, if we read the works of Victor Hugo, Emil Zola as well as Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw. In an area to be informed we will very soon upload in this site, we will show exactly how this dark era is being applied in our days.
The degrading misery inflicted on the People worldwide (at least in the Western States and Societies) caused during the 20th century (mainly the first half) the triggering of the political power of the People as a Political Arbitraror and the demand for a change of the social condition. It is the time of real activistic syndicalism which managed in a very little timespan compared to the years of exploitation by the big capital holders the installation of the State as a Coordinator of Economy and Economic Policy with the Citizen as the center of concern as well as the Human Rights. Until 1950 we have in all Western Societies including Greece the creation of the basic social insurance cashtills/foundations following rapidly by foundations or additional benefits for medical aid and accident coverage.
That was rightfully named Welfare State because it saw to supporting the Citizen in the moments the Citizen wouldn’t be able to be independent and productive: when he/she is ill, a victim of an accident, in his/her late years, when he/she dies and leaves behind dependent members in his/her family. In the same time limits were imposed on the big capital holders that did not allow them to profiteer neither by uncontrollably determining the price rate of goods nor by using Humans as a pack animal cheaper than horses or mules.
These protections and State arbitration changed the completely degraded social condition we described in the beginning of the article and gave the opportunity to at least two thirds of the entire population of a country (often in countries with limited concentration to the cities this percentage touched 90%) living without fear of hunger and lack of shelter, without unhinged illiteracy and without fear of being refused help / aid and therefore Society improved a lot (return of moral values, critical/ political thinking, education, development of Culture and Philosophy), leading the People to the concepts of Equality before the Law as well as independence-self reliance as a person.
A very dynamic attack and systematic undermining of all these vested rights is documented at least since 1975 world wide with the great capital holders striking back at a time during which Society was anemic on all levels after two World Wars and other intimidating/ annihilating situations in each country (e.g. Civil War and the Junta in Greece, Vietnam and McCarthyism in America, the division of Germany, etc) :
1. Direct attack to the wealth of the Social Security foundations in two ways: a) by bad management (bad investment of the foundation capital, investing and of course loss of that money in the stock exchange, giving over the foundation reserve capital without interest to big capital holders, non-demand of taxes due to the foundations by the big capital owners and by the State itself, loss of fortune through shady and flimsy legal processes), b) with inclusion in these foundations of pensioners or receivers of medical care who never had contributed monetarily and who never were part of the working force maintaining the foundations and which working force is the legal beneficiary entitled to this fortune and this money. These people who were not entitled to that flooded in and were imposed on those foundations through various ploys (e.g. humanitarian support to immigrants, people ‘returning to Greece’, etc), burdening with unpredicted funding the existing foundations intended for the working force instead of creating another agency with different demands from these other people it would be specially intended for (instead of having the state promote a parasitic life for those who ended up in a foreign country).
2. Direct attack to the State protections in the market and the economy (abolition of the 8 hour workday, 5-day week, overtime, sacking sanctions, etc) with pretense of ‘extreme necessity’ which presented the People with ‘temporary’ measures or promoted these abolitions as novelties/ progress, giving the People a promise of a better tomorrow in the very distant future or a threat of worsening of the situation if they did not agree to waiving their vested rights.
3. Direct attack to the buying force of the Citizens with the pretense of crises that they arbitrarily caused themselves and which crises could have been stopped immediately, through which they raise the prices. This causes a degradation of the Citizens into one large low working class and reaffirms after almost 100 years the fear of daily ensuring of basic needs such as the payment for electricity, water, shelter, food and clothing. This in its own turn causes despair and submission for literally a few pennies to the big capital holder and his/her demands (e.g. faithfulness to the multinational corporation to the point the worker lives only in it and for it and works even for free in it), exactly as in the industrial age of the 19th century.
4. Direct attack to the sense of power of the People and their impact/ effect on daily life and common affairs through terrorism, global (e.g. cold war, Taliban, etc) as well as inland (violence at schools like the blood bath in Columbine, violence in the streets and neighborhoods with the assorted wild murders/ robberies/ rapes/ break-ins/ drugs and prostitution, violence in the houses with monster-parents who prostitute their children like in the case of Austria and other countries, etc). This causes passiveness and lack of reaction in the People whenever someone presents him/herself to the People as powerful, regardless of the proof of that or the sources if that someone’s power.
With these steps and while there was no time margin to have the People heal of the losses of the World Wars and the strife following (not only in Human potential but also in material one) the big capital holders who had been forced to backtrack, fall back and live under the radar for fear of the People, managed to regain the upper hand intimidating the Worldwide People with the horror of war still raw.
But the big capital holders learned the following from the people: syndicalism. They united world wide, making coalition of economic (for the own allegiance and aid) policy like the EU, International Monetary Fund, international currency system and other such groups and policies which are in essence syndicalistic from the big capital holders against the Peoples, the syndicates and syndicalism of whom they destroyed.
So we come to Globalization and current mass embezzlement and stealing of all the money and fortunes left in the remains of the Welfare State by the hundreds of thousands or millions of workers per country via merging of the foundations (first across the country and then internationally), the squandering of money underhandedly released from this merging (since foundations tagged deficit are merged with healthy ones, forcing the healthy one to regress and its funds be lost with the arbitrary/ general excuse of balancing/supporting all foundations).
In the next article we will explain with the Greek reality as an example all the above steps and we are calling for whoever wishes to contribute with an account from your own country.