Clarification and social organization

Clarification and social organization are strategic components to dismantle the unbridled process of concentration of wealth and decisional power, necessary condition for liberating captured democracies.

It should not surprise us that part of the population punished by concentrated groups supports them. That is, victims side with their victimizers. This occurs because those who dominate the functioning of society appropriate what lets them colonize minds and format subjectivities in their favor, such as hegemonic media that manipulate public opinion through misinforming and imposing biased interpretations of what happens and its causes, like-minded sectors of politics that influence on the allocation of public resources, regulations, and the establishment of policies. As well, as think tanks that provide ideological coverage to dominators and sectors of the judiciary that assure them impunity and persecute dissidents.

If this network of complicities did not exist or were defeated with clarification and social organization, if the looting carried out by dominators through the appropriation of the wealth not generated by them were unveiled, they would lose the support of those who are overwhelmed and their resources ripped off. The whole society suffers the merciless appropriation. Workers with wage inequities and poor working conditions, population segments living in poverty between suffering and harsh social oblivion, small and medium providers abused in terms of prices and commercial conditions by leading enterprises, consumers forced to accept high oligopolistic prices, and the own sovereign country pillaged by indebtedness contracted by rulers that loot their peoples.

To capture democracies, dominators implant mechanisms for concentrating wealth that never cease to function and operate outside the knowledge of public opinion. Together with wealth the decisional power is concentrated, that is, the power of making the main decisions regarding economic, political, media, judicial, sanitary, educational, and environmental functioning. A powerful minority appropriates the rudder of societies steering its course towards environmental abuses of planetary effects.

In this state of situation, social reaction assumes a double challenge, to resist domination and, at the same time, design country projects to serve as guides and reference. Indeed, there are no unique recipes and singularities of each country and moment should be respected. However, a common denominator is establishing full democracies in terms of equity and justice, social and environmental protection, a vigorous economy not subjected to the interests of dominant minorities but rather at the service of the entire society. In this context, popular clarification and social organization are of great importance.

Popular clarification

Popular clarification implies that the entire population understands what happens and why. It requires receiving unbiased information and interpretations by those who, guided by their own interests, misinform by cropping events, as it is convenient for them; they present themselves as defenders of a free expression that they monopolize. They give voice to “analysts” that justify the concentration of wealth and decisional power while those who oppose them are silenced and belittled.

Hence, this is how neoliberalism operates by imposing an informative and analytical framework destined to justify their actions. As their interests are indefensible in the open, they are forced to conceal them with deceit and manipulation. Some poorly clarified sectors fall pray of accepting “truths” that are not. Because interests of middle and popular sectors are different than and opposed to those of concentrated groups and cannot be achieved if the economic system is structured just to maximize profit of those groups without caring for the general wellbeing and the protection of the environment.

It is indispensable to break the information and interpretation blockage with anti-monopolistic decisions based on firm political coalitions. The entire population should be able to understand what harms it by unveiling the outrages concealed under economic and judicial jargon. Among many examples, the deceit of believing that it is necessary first to grow before redistributing, the famous “spillover” of the rich towards the rest that seldom or never occurs. A fair and sustainable development demands growing while redistributing wealth and expanding the support of excellence for the popular base of the productive apparatus. Or the case when neoliberalism imposes its recipe for solving fiscal deficit by arguing that social expenditure must be adjusted while concealing that there are other very different solutions for increasing genuine public incomes. Thus, for example, genuine public incomes can be obtained (1) through dismantling tax elusion and evasion mechanisms and the consequent capital flight, (2) firmly closing speculative financial activities by reorienting those funds towards investments in the real economy, (3) reforming tax system so that the wealthiest effectively pay more, less those who have little, and nothing those who have nothing. These and other measures can solve fiscal deficit without affecting medium and popular sectors.

Clarification starts with a subjective work of those who are ready to join the clarifying effort. Little can help to clarify those who have not advanced in their own clarification. It is not about development a clarifying elite but rather a clarifying movement that listens and learns from everybody, far from rejecting those who allegedly do not know when every person can contribute if listened and assisted, such is the base of a dialogue that integrates and mobilizes people. No one can claim the right to impose his/her perspective instead of persuading after having understood the needs, longings, and interests that nest in every community.

Clarification begins with the reflection on reality, a vast and extensive reality that reaches us through chains of intermediation. The close to the events we can be, the shorter and more appreciated the mediations that allow understanding what happens. One way or the other, we depend on the trust and respectability that we recognize to those who inform and interpret. A watershed is found between those who unveil the concealed interests and those who whisk away popular knowledge.

Clarification as collective process never stops because little explored dimensions appear and because social, technological, political, and environmental circumstances constantly change. In truth, popular clarification is an indispensable condition in every transforming process; however, it does not become a sufficient condition. There is no doubt that knowledge and interpretation of what happens is always fundamental but there are also other critical variables, one that weighs heavily is social organization.

Social organization

Those who submit a society want to fragment it, they induce divisionism by enlarging distrust, prejudices, and hates that could exist in the open or that were kept latent. In this way, they conceal and deviate the attention away from the appropriation they do; divide to conquer, in this case, divide to loot. They do not lack resources to set up a diversity of muddle-headed operations, from dumbing freewill with torrents of irrelevant information up to discrediting the transforming efforts. Their objective is to demobilize society by driving it away from its interests and the understanding of that which causes their suffering. They impose a harsh individualism making people believe that everyone is “saved” only by their merits, that the State bothers (them) instead of highlighting the essential services of education, health, sanitation, security, support for small enterprises and ventures of the popular economy. They devalue social organization and, if they cannot prevent it, they try to manipulate it.

A people that advances in clarification, organizes itself, understands that individual effort is very valuable but it also recognizes the limits that everybody on his/her own can accomplish. It is true that union makes us strong, but an organized and permanently enhanced union. Crowding together does not make for the union that is projected in a sustainable action. The union that makes us strong needs organizations, multiple different organizations in all spaces and levels of social action. What is important is to overcome the isolation that dominators induce, either by participating in organizations in the neighborhood, region, labor-unions, defenders of women’s rights, those of minorities, migrants, of small enterprises that join to produce, stockpile, transport, trade or process their productions, consortiums of small and medium exporters or for substituting imports, scientific, technological, university and research centers networks.

The State should support social organizations but do not interfere neither in their creation nor in their management beyond the established regulations of current legislation. Social organization is born from the social clarification, determination, or frenzy. Their assemblers are social leaders that emerge from community trajectory. As aforementioned, some organizations are oriented towards defending social, cultural, and environmental rights; others dedicate themselves to producing goods and services using a diversity of modalities, such as cooperatives, recuperated enterprises (by workers’ buyout), locomotive agro-industries, medium-size associative ventures including popular franchises, networks of family agriculture, popular tourism, health centers, software development, among many others.

Social organization is a space always under construction and renovation. They start at the base of each society and require not the residual but the excellence assistance to develop an effective management. When middle and popular sectors do not count on support, they are left at the mercy of the merciless concentrating tendencies. However, there is a diversity of organizations and assistances, which dominators obviously belittle. Among many, in the economic sphere, we can find the combination of venture developers of popular base to identify opportunities and support startups and management of existent or new units, together with trusts specialized in such ventures to assist them with investments and working capital funding.

There is no lack of ideas or proposals that come forward to dismantle concentrating processes, nor of concrete mechanisms to support new trajectories. Clarification and social organization enhance what already exists and help the new to emerge by clearing up the eternal preconceptions that deny their viability. What is possible is far from being a closed compartment; it extends permanently with effort, creativity, determination and courage.

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