Opinion Sur
The process of concentrating wealth and decisions has disastrous social and environmental consequences. An important factor in dismantling it is to challenge the perspective imposed by those who dominate. This strengthens the possibility of conceiving and establishing new policies in favor of humanity and the care of the planet.
The path imposed by the concentrating process leads to destructive lock-ins, paths of no return that punish humanity and destructively affect the planet. It is imperative to understand the causes and consequences of this alienated march; in particular, to unmask the interests and other motivations camouflaged in the perspective imposed by the dominators.
They point out as if it were an indisputable truth that the productive, financial, cultural and educational systems, among others such as health, energy, communications and others, must be guided by the ordering criterion of maximizing profit. They conceal the fact that this criterion only favors minority groups and harms vast majorities.
There are other criteria for organizing systems that ensure a fair benefit for all social actors. It is an approach that does not devalue activities but regulates them in order to dismantle the unbridled concentration of wealth and decisions that predominates in the world. Societies, through the political systems they establish, have the right to influence what is done, for what purpose, and who benefits. Systems that are far from stifling individual initiative and creativity, but rather establish a course and a way of functioning oriented to the wellbeing of all, not just of the concentrated groups. It is unbearable for a few to live in outrageous opulence while entire nations only survive in poverty and subjugation.
Reversing a perspective of subjugation is neither naïve nor an unattainable utopia. The stakes are high and the risk of carrying on as if there were no consequences is immense. We know where to go and the multiple options available by taking into account the uniqueness of different cultures and situations. Solutions do not emerge in any political context but in societies focused on equity and social and environmental responsibility, new systems that require a power capable of driving and sustaining transformations.
There is a lot to change in various dimensions. In this text, we highlight certain strategic spaces: the popular base of the productive system, the appropriation of the value that society as a whole generates, the criminal drainage of resources that is not interrupted, the colonization of minds and wills to manipulate the defenseless, the outcome of democracies that are captured and the actions towards their liberation.
The popular base of the productive system
The so-called popular economy is enormous, and the undeniable potential that lies within it has been denied. The dominators and colonized free wills consider those who make up the popular economy a burden. They ignore or hide the fact that these immense populations have been cornered in situations of poverty and survival not by chance but by the rigorous causality of the concentrating process.
If these communities had the same supporting factors as concentrated groups, their quality of life and their ability to contribute to national development would be very different. With assistance of excellence in management, technology, identification of promising opportunities, contacts and financing, equal to what is available to high- and middle-income sectors, this potential could be realized. There are ways to do this, such as establishing not one but several and diverse developers of productive grassroots ventures with the complement of trusts specialized in financing and co-investing in them.
These are not small demonstration programs, but rather initiatives with the scope to cover the entire national territory. There is a lot already experienced in this regard, there is a lack of strong political support to recognize the high strategic priority of the popular economy.
The appropriation of the value that society generates
The existence of an enormous impoverished popular economy is the expected result of the process of concentrating wealth and how the rulers always impose the main economic decisions to their advantage; for others little or nothing. They appropriate the wealth that is generated by society as a whole through various mechanisms.
The process of concentration leads to markets being controlled by large oligopolistic corporations, the so-called leading companies in production chains. These companies abuse the market power they hold by imposing, on the one hand, high prices on those who buy their products from them (appropriating resources from their consumers) and, on the other hand, compensating suppliers who make up the production chain they lead with lower prices and harsh commercial conditions (appropriating resources from suppliers, strongly limiting their ability to grow by retaining what is theirs). Regulations or controls to prevent abuses of market power are ineffective, the rulers make sure that this is the case, but there are other ways to contain the extortionate appropriation. To establish them, it is essential to have a political power with the strength required to confront the oligopolies.
Another form of value appropriation is through the tax system and the composition of public spending. The rulers have managed to make the tax structure regressive, that is, proportionally those who have the least pay more and the wealthy pay less. Hence, taxes weigh heavily on consumption, everyone pays, but the consumption of popular sectors absorbs a much higher proportion of their income than what consumption represents for the high-income sectors. A more equitable tax is the one applied to profits and an even more equitable one is the one that is levied on patrimony (accumulated wealth) that very few countries manage to establish. The resistance to transforming a tax structure into a progressive one is fierce, allowing cycle after cycle to permanently reproduce this form of appropriating value.
On the public expenditure side, a significant part is dedicated to carrying out public works that favor wealthy sectors without fully applying that they pay what corresponds as established in the existing regulations on the contribution of improvements. In addition, there are unjustified subsidies to ensure profit rates for large corporations (there are other justified subsidies to support popular sectors). The two modalities, non-full implementation of the contribution of improvements and unjustified subsidies, are part of the value appropriating flow.
The criminal drain of resources that does not stop
A considerable portion of large companies and huge estates often incur in tax crimes. They have specialists who assist them in evading and eluding taxes with almost total impunity. These enormous figures are repeated cycle after cycle, swelling the largest assets while defunding the State in its capacity to provide the essential social and productive infrastructure. To make matters worse, when ill-gotten capital flees the country, what results is the sterilization of a large part of the national savings that are no longer available to finance social or productive investment.
A special chapter on tax offences refers to the evasion and elusion carried out by the largest exporters who under-invoice their sales to subsidiaries located abroad and importers who over-invoice their purchases in order to appropriate foreign currency at the official price. Not only do they hide profits, but they also take foreign currency away from countries suffering from their scarcity. In addition to the tax crime, there is also the foreign exchange crime.
This theft of resources and foreign currency from the State and society has a severe impact on the balance of public accounts. Income and expenses no longer balance, nor does the need for foreign currency with its availability. There are large fiscal deficits and serious bottlenecks in the external sector (lack of foreign exchange). In these circumstances, those responsible for tax and foreign exchange crimes do not assume any responsibility and promote, on the one hand, to close the fiscal deficit without paying in minimal contributions of their income and large assets as it should be, but rather by adjusting (that is, reducing) social programs and productive promotion. Unbearable, outrageous but true. On the other hand, they are pushing to solve the lack of foreign currency that they helped generate with a combination of devaluations that punish the majority and give way to a devastating over-indebtedness of the country, a wound that bleeds for generations.
A government with a strong popular base and a different perspective on what is happening and its causes can reverse this disaster.
The colonization of minds and free wills
To impose interests that are openly indefensible, rulers colonize the minds and wills of important segments of the population. They do so by controlling hegemonic media, important educational sectors, strategic think tanks that give them ideological cover, and other mechanisms that facilitate the manipulation of public opinion. With their actions on so many different fronts, they manage to get their victims to end up defending their victimizers.
Dominators also control strategic nodes of the judiciary system, thus guaranteeing impunity for the criminal acts they carry out.
Captured democracies and their liberation
The result of this concentrating process that corners and devalues the popular base of the productive system, appropriates the value that society as a whole generates, carries out a permanent criminal drain of resources, colonizes minds and wills to manipulate very important segments of the population, and enables them to capture the democracies in which they operate.
This approach makes it possible to identify sets of measures aimed at liberating captured democracies that were made explicit in the article Freeing Captured Democracies and, in the book, Democracias Capturadas (Captured Democracies).
Evidently, the hegemonic perspective imposed by dominators is one of the pillars of the concentrating process. Reversing it is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for emerging from subjugation. This other perspective begins by valuing the popular base of our societies and raising up what demobilizes and corners it. It was not accidental but deliberate to have prioritized it from the beginning since it is the anchor from which it is oriented and gives meaning to all the rest of the complex decisions, something fundamental that serves as a compass when it comes to acting in the various dimensions that make the construction of a better course and way of functioning.
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