"It is in the order of things that dismantling the economic system of postwar accompanied by a major attack against democracy, under the banner TINA (There Is No Alternative). The slogan, needless to say, is a hoax.
The socio-economic context that imposes is the result of human decisions taken within human institutions. Decisions can be changed, but institutions can be changed.
If necessary, they may be overthrown and replaced, as honest and courageous people have done throughout history. "
p.13:
Today people are considered" outside the system, ignorant and unwelcome ", whose role is that of "spectators" and not "participants", except in periodical occasions when they have the right to choose among the representatives of private power. These are the elections. During the election the public is considered essentially negligible if it conflicts with the demands of the wealthy minority who own the country.
A striking example (there are plenty) can be found in the international economic order, the trade agreements. Population, as demonstrated very clearly the polls, is strongly opposed, on the whole, during which things are going, but This objection fails to translate into reality. The elections do not end because the decision centers - the minority of rich-join to establish a particular form of socio-economic development. This prevents the problem of finding its expression. Things being discussed that will affect voters far: people's issues or reforms that they know will not be applied. That is what we are discussing, not what interests people. Case study, which reinforces our hypothesis that the role of the public outside the system, ignorant and annoying, is to be mere spectators. When the people, as he often seeks to organize and to invest the political sphere, to play a role and defend its own interests, then there is problem. This is not democracy, it is a "crisis of democracy", which must be overcome.
The last 25 years were one of these periods occur regularly, where a large-scale campaign was undertaken to end what was perceived as a crisis of democracy and bring people to its proper role of spectator apathy , passive and obedient. That's politics.
All this has its counterpart in the socio economic. What he has stirred conflict parallel, closely related to the first long time. At the dawn of the economic revolution in the United States, 150 years ago, there existed in New England a very active independent labor press run by young women on farms or in town, by craftsmen. They stigmatized the "degradation and submission" induced by the nascent industrial system which required people to rent to survive. It is also necessary that may be difficult to imagine that wage labor was not so far from being considered a true form of slavery, not only by workers in factories, but much of the common opinion, see Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party or even some editorials in the New York Times ( they might prefer to forget today). Workers were opposed to the industrial system in return for what they called the "monarchical principles," and argued that those working in factories should be the owners - the essence of republicanism. They denounced "the new spirit of the age- wealth in contempt out of his own interest unless "a vision demeaning and degrading of human life that must be implanted in the brains of people at the cost of immense effort, which was not released for centuries .
the 20th century, the public relations industry has produced an abundant literature that provides a very rich and instructive subject of recommendations on how to instill the "new spirit of the times" by creating artificial needs, or ( I quote) "enlisting the public as a regimented army soldiers", generating " philosophy of futility "and the futility of existence, or by concentrating human attention on" the more superficial things that make the bulk of the consumption of fashion "(Edward Bernays). If this succeeds, then people accept the existence meaningless and servo are their lot, and forget this subversive idea: own control of his own life.
This is a project of social engineering major. Project very old but has taken a disproportionate intensity and extent during the last century. His methods are numerous. Some belong to the genus I just indicated, and are too familiar to need illustration. Others are to undermine the security and, here again, the means are not lacking. To undermine security can, for example, involve the threat of job transfer. A major consequence and, in all rationality, one of the major goals of what is wrongly called the "Trade Agreements" (I insist on "wrong" because the agreements do not free trade - they have all kinds of things that go against the market-and it is certainly not agreements, at least if the views of people of some importance in that they are opposed to most), a consequence of these arrangements, "I said, is to strengthen the threat - which need not be put into execution, even if it sometimes is, the threat of job transfer sufficient, good way to establish the discipline while undermining security.
Another mechanism, pardon the technical jargon, is to strengthen the so-called "flexible working". Let me quote from the World Bank explained things very clearly. "It is vital to increase flexibility labor market even if it has acquired the bad reputation of being a euphemism is synonymous with lower wages and firing workers "(which is exactly the case)" in all regions of the world ... The reforms most important involve the lifting of constraints on labor mobility and wage flexibility, as well as the suppression in the employment contracts of all references to social services. " This means remove the benefits and rights acquired by generations of struggle.
When they talk about lifting constraints on wage flexibility, they have the flexibility to downward, not upward. Similarly, labor mobility does not mean the right for people to move where they wish, as was the theory of free trade since Adam Smith, but rather the right to terminate employees at will. And in the current version of globalization, the investors, shareholders and companies must be free to move but not people, because their rights are secondary, incidental.
The "fundamental reforms" and called the World Bank, are imposed in much of the world as a condition for ratification of the policy of that country by the World Bank and the IMF. They are introduced in industrialized countries by other means. Alan Greenspan told Congress that "greater worker insecurity" was an important factor in what is called "economic fairy tale." It keeps inflation low, not daring to ask workers to increase and benefits. They are insecure. And it reads quite clearly in the statistics. Over the past 25 years, this period of falling prices forced, crisis of democracy, wages have stagnated or declined for the majority of the workforce for basic workers and working hours have increased very strongly - they have become in our country the highest in the industrial world is not lost, of course in the business press, which described the process as "a welcome development of transcendent importance," welcoming to see workers forced to abandon their "luxurious lifestyles", while corporate profits are " dazzling "and" prodigious "(Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune).
On Debt
p.21: In
dependencies, we can make use of less sensitive measures. One of them involves the infamous "debt crisis", due in large measure to the political agendas of the World Bank and IMF in the 70s, and the fact that the richest third world are mostly devoid of social obligations. This is dramatically true in Latin America, which is one of the major problems. There is a "debt crisis", but it is necessary to look more closely to determine its nature. This is by no means a simple economic fact. It is, in large part, an ideological construct. The so-called "debt" could be overcome, and largely overcome, number of very basic ways.
One of them is to use the capitalist principle is that borrowers pay and lenders take the risk. Thus, for example, if you lend me money that I send to a bank in Zurich and bought a Mercedes and you just ask me for the money, I'm not supposed to say 'sorry, I do did not. Ask my neighbor. And if you lend me money, you are 're supposed to say "this is my neighbor will pay the consequences."
Yet it's the way things work in the international arena. That is the essence of the "debt crisis". these are not people who borrowed - military dictators and their acolytes, the rich and privileged societies which we have supported authoritarian-which are supposed to repay the debt, they do not have to pay. So, let's Indonesia, where the current debt reached almost 140% of gross domestic product. The money was appropriated by the military dictatorship and its accomplices and enjoyed probably about 2 or 300 people outside, but it is the people to pay through strict austerity measures. And lenders are mostly protected from mishap. They enjoy what amounts to a comprehensive insurance through various mechanisms of socialization of costs, which fall on Western taxpayers. That's what is used, inter alia, the IMF.
Similarly, the vast Latin American debt does not differ that much from the amount of capital flight from Latin America, suggesting a simple way to deal with the debt (or much of the debt) if by chance we had to respect the principle which capitalist is, of course, unacceptable. It places the burden on those that do not, the minority of the rich.
There are other ways to eliminate debt, well known, and reveal how it is an ideological construct. One of them, different from the capitalist principle is that international legal principle that was introduced by the United States when they "liberated" Cuba, as they say in history books, that is to say when they Cuba to conquer prevent it from releasing itself from the tutelage of Spain in 1898. After which the United States canceled a debt of Cuba to Spain, on the ground makes perfect sense that it was imposed without the consent of the people, in a coercive manner. This principle then entered international law, largely at the initiative of Americans. It's called principle of unjust debt. Unfair debt is not valid and she does not have to be paid. It was recognized, among others by the U.S. executive director of the IMF, that if this principle applies to victims, not just for the rich, debt Third World would be largely dissolved, because it is invalid. It is an unjust debt.
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