By Olga and Tanya Geritsidou
The political and economic systems that were developed at every phase of human history, ranging from the most totalitarian to the most liberal, shared a common feature: not being fascist regimes, they were all viable. In other words, regardless of how bad the rules were, as long as they were binding for everyone, they afforded an equal opportunity to everyone to develop and manoeuvre in the framework set by those rules, just as the trunk of a tree eventually engulfs a mesh tightly bound around it and develops regardless.
Every system that was developed historically crumbled under a fascist-like rule (regardless of whether the term ʽfascismʼ had been invented then) and its descendant possessed additional safety valves to preclude the re-emergence of fascist-like totalitarianism amongst its elites. For this reason, the more democratic the regime was (i.e., the less conducive to corruption and fascist-like rule it became), the greater its viability and stability.
Because fascists are very well aware of this fact, actually, much better than the average citizen of a country, and because they (correctly) believe that unless they avoid contaminating a political system with their fascism, they themselves will not be able to survive, they make use of their strongest weapon, propaganda, to exorcise those systems in which they cannot possibly exist: systems of Direct Democracy; systems of decentralised administration; systems equipped with People-controlled safety features of repeal / audit and control in real time including elected officers (i.e., leaders claiming to have a blank cheque from their electorate).
Because, following the Peopleʼs bloody uprisings of the 19th and 20th century against fascism across every facet of history (national, socio-political, economic, international / bilateral and intranational), the fascists could not avoid punishment for what they stood for or committed, they masqueraded as democrats or socialists or even communists. Managing to crawl into the positions of power of every society under every variety of a political system, they fascistised them, but at the same time leaving the labels untouched, just like vermin and woodworm that works underneath the surface, leaving the outside shell of the furniture item untouched, eating away at its insides until the body of the item collapses. Afterwards, they will claim that the system collapsed by itself and not because they ate it all away, steadily cancelling it off and replacing it with their fascism, which itself eventually collapses because it is not viable by nature being nothing else but a self-destructing cancerous mass (that can under no circumstances be called a ʽsystemʼ).
Fascists and their creed is, in other words, the deadly virus or the Ebola in the social systems that scythes through like Black Death only to later claim that it was a systemic fault that brought it down, while fascism has already donned a new look that will permit it to infiltrate the next political system that will replace the dead one.
That is exactly what we are living through in Greece these days: after a thirty-year period of incubation and after eradicating the first line of defence against fascism that had threatened it before the juntaʼs takeover in 1967, we witnessed the appearance of the fascist types that self-proclaim themselves ʽdemocratsʼ or ʽthe democratic/constitutional axisʼ who lay the blame on the People and Democracy for the genocide that they have beset Greece with, adding further impetus to their own fascism.
But how can we tell, as our title puts it, that they are not capitalists but simple and pure fascists?
Capitalism in its liberal form (that is, under its dogma of non- interventionism by the state, etc) embodies precisely this rule: in a casino or jungle-like economy the state does not intervene, helps no one but undermines no one as well, under the logic that the best will survive and the market will self-regulate.
This is an extremely unjust and particularly squandering economic system at every sector. Nevertheless, as we already said in the beginning, had they been following it to the letter, everyone would have developed their own unique manner of survival and achievement.
On the contrary, under the name of ʽliberalismʼ which in reality runs opposite to all interventionism, the fascists have instead enforced a hardly indirect but yet pure statism in favour of their dynasties and cronies. To prove our point, we shall refer summarily and in general to some of those mechanisms of fascist statism, as we will develop this issue in depth in our forthcoming television shows and articles on this site.
Taxation: taxation has always been the instrument of applying state policy. If we were living under true Liberal Capitalism, taxation would have been very reduced and equal for every one without exemptions, photographic by-laws and all sorts of differentiation and unequal treatment in taxation or exemption from it. On the contrary, under the fascist regime we are forced to live under, there is a blatant exemption from taxation and waving of any responsibility against any tax law of those whose persons are historically, particularly favoured by the fascists: particularly because fascism thrives under ex sanguis (blood) ties, these persons as a rule enjoy some sort of blood relation with the fascists in power. It is for this reason that the particularly favourable taxation regime for the ship-owners (which was already by definition prejudicially-inclined in favour of them) recently made taxation officially voluntary while the compulsory taxation exacted from the average Citizen increased geometrically and threating to become ʽyour money or your lifeʼ.
Social Insurance dues: If we were living under a true Liberal Capitalist regime, the social insurance dues would have been set to the specifications of the private insurance industry standards, whether such dues pertained to the public or the private sector, with every rule of lessez faire policy of free competition active (meaning, more coverage for lower premiums and free choice of the insurance fund for the insured, even if such insurance plan was compulsory). On the contrary, the fascists impose prohibitively high premiums for minute or non-existent cover against every rule of free market economy, while they blindly impose a huge premium, without choice or subsidy on every free professional, which cunningly and unnaturally restricts their ability to compete and survive professionally, since the same premiums are either totally waved, or not demanded, or subsidised in the case of their own chosen free professionals, who in fact do not compete in the market but simply make a living as perpetual dependents on the state that will select them as contractors in the state-led bids for state contracts which are photographically announced and entered.
Statism in the market: If we were under a true Liberal Capitalist system, every sector would be open to and share the same potential for development by however was capable of such an endeavour without any state intervention. On the contrary, the fascists use the state to block development and regulate the market. We shall present a simple and indicative list of goods and services that have been banned or kept open only to the government cronies. It is clear that each and every one of you could add additional sectors, cases and situations reflecting his or her own personal experience.
* a ban to elevate to industrial production every patent pending in Greece, from hybrid cars to power plants fuelled by recyclable materials or new sources of energy.
* a ban to freely choose crops for cultivation
* enforcement of the disposal of surplus crop yields that exceed a set quota and price regulation
* a protection of a network of intermediary organisations between the producer and the consumer that is made up of a host of distributers or cooperatives set up for this purpose.
* protection of cartels by passing favourable legislation.
* restricted access to the banking, finance or maritime industry if the applicant is not well-known in those circles and a government crony.
* restricted access to resellers or goods and services that are practically monopolised by either a single or a group of government cronies (i.e., lifts, milk, olive oil, etc).
* Blatantly unequal state support for national-scale industrial activities that maintain monopolies, that is exclusive for particular individuals, who are buddies with the fascists (for example, the Kokkalis, Latsis, Angellopoulos, Tsatsos, Rallis, Vardinogiannis, Vgenopoulos business conglomarates).
* fake attempts to ʽopenʼ closed industries only to provide the very select few fascist cronies with a monopoly-like contract on the specific economic sector (for example, taxis, supermarkets, pharmacies, etc).
* contracting under disproportionate little remuneration national wealth which is additionally subsidised with clauses quite restrictive for the state, which are given exclusively to the fascist cronies by means of photographic, so-called free, bids or by direct contracting and unorthodox concessions (for example, toll-posts, state lands for cultivation, airports, harbours, underground resources, natural energy sources, such oil and lignite fields, telecommunications, FM frequencies, prime residential areas, such as those at Hellenikon, etc.)
* Subsidising NGO owned or operated by their own fascist cronies which are simply siphoning off state capital and make a network of parasitic organisations that preclude any competitive edge under a free market economy, and which spreads into all sectors of research, continuing education, vocational training, history and civilisation.
Based on the above few cases that we indicatively made reference to, we can see that under no circumstances can we accept that we are living under a regime of Liberal Capitalism because if that was the case, the acquisition of the Thessaloniki Water Company by Citizen-based cooperatives rather than by fascist cronies would have been possible. Instead, in their own usual fascist manner, they simply banned the setup of every such cooperative, in which many Citizens could potentially freely participate to compete successfully against the fascists that have exclusive rights to everything, even when state companies were in the black as a result of the mismanagement of the same cronies, or such companies defaulted on their set contracts, resulting into huge payment of damages from the state coffers for either incomplete or faulty construction, which of course should have been paid off instead out of the croniesʼ pockets (letting aside the criminal charges and the naturally resulting blacklisting and exclusion of these companies from the market that never took place), and so on.
No fascist can survive in a truly free market economy. The Greeks however can and they have proven it.
So, what do the fascists do, as we explained in the introduction?
They claim they operate under a free market economy with the real goal of cancelling all protection from a state that operates on a conservative or statist agenda (that is, market regulation by the state to preserve Justice and an Equal Opportunity Policy) while at the same time it enforces extreme statism on those sectors of the economy where access is restricted and therefore maintain a statist market regulation.
In short, they argue that they operate under a Free Market TO FURTHER ENFORCE AN ANARCHIC – ABSOLUTE TYPE OF STATISM WITHOUT ANY OBLIGATION FOR BUTRESSING SOCIAL PROTECTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS, WHICH THEY LABEL AS ʽILLUSORYʼ OR ʽCOMMUNISTʼ OR ʽSOCIALISTʼ, HIDING THE FACT THAT A TRULY FREE MARKET ECONOMY OPERATES ON THE BASIS OF ESSENTIAL RULE OF LAW WHICH IS GUIDED BY INTERNATIONALLY-ENFORCED HUMAN RIGHTS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE PEACE AND THEREFORE OF DEVELOPMENT.
They are not capitalists. They are fascists. They will always be fascists because they have been spawned by fascists and being such, they will always try to enforce fascism that leads to violence, suppression, genocide, rage and war, whether they say they are ʽcomrades under the partyʼ or ʽrespectable entrepreneursʼ.
Translation courtesy of Michael T.