Why we need solidarity

In our working life, we switch jobs at least three times, not less then a period of ten years. What all that means? We can speak about gaining or losing jobs is an academic description or the experiences families being dislocated from every day security. But economy is not just a description of supply or demand-graph numbers, but it is a reflection of values or believes. The economy is a relationship of this value, so the question why to created solidarity we need to know where we come from.
We are in some way product of the biases from our families and the society. To grow is to put in context this bias, economics are the relationship of exchanges of that bias. So what are our biases? The biases are the history, the myths and believe in the societies we are part. America is based in a selective historical amnesia, hence a peculiar amnesia.
In Washington DC Holocaust memorial at the exit after the flags of the units which liberated the concentration camps, on that exit wall, there is a letter from the Jewish community pleading to the War Department to destroy Auschwitz as concentration camp; they ask at least the rail road used to bring the victims to the killing camp. The respond by the War Department was that the Bombers could not cover the distance. In the same time the bomber hit targets six miles away in butane factories. By the end of the WWII only 100,000 Jews where are allowed to enter absorptions camp in Oswego up state New York. During the period the Soviet Union on their way to Berlin found the camps and confirmed the early pleas in 1943 by the American Jews at that time. In more personal level before the war about 900 German Jews requested refuge status to United States in the late 30’s, but the ship was denied to enter the port of New York. The refuges try to enter port in Havana Cuba, but the American state department pressured the Cuban Government to deny port. The refuges had return to Hamburg Germany; of these refuges only 40 survived the camps.
To understand these types of actions, we need to examine the question in two folds. How the USA culture had accepted the extermination and how the values of the immigrants from Europe impacted the decision.
To answer the first question we need to recognize that a huge part of the economic wealth of USA was based on cheap labor: slaves. Owning slaves is not a new issue on western culture. Rome was built with slaves, the Athenian 127 ships were build from slaves working in silver mines. The significance of having social prosperity by slave work can be seen when the council of Nicea around 325 AD prohibited the Jews to own slaves. Prohibiting the Jews to own slaves was due to the fact: the Jewish law says slaves will be converted to Judaism.
The economic impact was that, the non Jew had not cheap labor eventually the Jews were marked out from owning land. The power of owning the land was wealth. The difference in America slave can be traced to the history of Venture Smith who at the age of thirty six bought his freedom and own property. Venture Smith on early time had rebelled against his master and he did the unthinkable, he contacted a Connecticut justice of the peace and accused his holder of abusing him. The justices expressed regret about the abuse, but he told him could not do anything since he was not a man, but just property. After Venture Smith bough his freedom the Virginia Commonwealth passed a law: if you born a slave there was not a possibility to buy freedom and moreover the slave offspring was bound to the slave stigma for the generations to come.
The founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and others had at least ambivalences towards the slave trade. Slave in America was about dark skin created the base of the following years to reinforce the narrative of the South as race based society. During the revolutionary war in 1776’s the British used color card to create uprising in the southern colonies. The race issue took almost one hundred years from the revolutionary war to create a crisis, but the crisis was not about the humanity of the slaves, but had to do more with the structure of the new nation. This ambivalence of humanity of slaves was carried during the reconstruction period, and culminated 1900’s by accepting the idea separation between the races. And race insensitive is rooting on the America culture despite the civil right of 1963.
The race insensitivity is due to the fact to a selective historical amnesia is embedded in culture and how this amnesia affects the relationships economics, we need to consider our second question what are the values of America Society.
To own property in the west gives access to participate in a common destiny. Since property gives a sense of control in some kind of destinies, the owner has privilege. The owner can participate in this destiny. The idea of property was originated in the in following traditions: In Athens the citizen male could own property and this ownership entitle the right to participate in a destiny: We call that participation democracy. But the idea of exclusion was created by us versus them; the Greek versus the Barbarian, despite the existing internal conflict between the Greeks, when Persia invaded Greece, the idea of us versus them create the power to stand against Persia; the idea of separation was intuitional.
Rome political participation was built on aristocracy, females could hold property, but when Augustus limited that ownership, many of the Aristocratic females choose to become courtesans to be able to maintain property. Never the less one of most significant influence is Christianity, not only Christianity define what is female, slave and the outsider.
In 1816 a toddler name Lazzaro was brought to the House of Catechumens, after a prolonged fight between the family of the toddler and the Church. The toddler care taker had converted the toddler in secret and the Roman Catholic Church made a claim to the toddler. The significances are the struggle between Christianity and Judaism.
Christianity and Islam have a basic conflict with Judaism based on the delusion of God: ‘God choose me and gave an inherited and that inherence gives me certain rights.’ The tool of these rights is property.
Napoleon challenges the power of the Roman Catholic Church by giving citizen rights to the Jews, hence property. Three years before Luther dead he wrote attack against the Jews, where he called for Genocide, but he was not the first one. The Bishop of Seville 14 years before the expulsion of the Jews in 1493 from Spain expressed the same sentiment, since the Jewish refuse to accept their version of God.
Islamic response towards the Jews and Christians is to create a new class of second class citizen, where they can follow their tradition, but have not access to power. Islam limited the professions and access to the state bureaucracy if you do not belong to the right religion. Still licenses professions like doctors hand access due to the skill.
Judaism rejected Mohammad and by taking sides with his enemies, Mohammad decapitated 900 of them, but realizing the geographical distribution of Jews, made impossible to kill all of them and Christian were under the protection of the Christian nations. Islam responds was to create a second class citizen for them.
The relationship between the three religions has been at least less then cordial. Islam conquest driving religion and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople fuel an animosity between the West and Islam. As respond towards Islam conquest Urban IV ask the Christianity the conquest of the holy land. The early behaviors of the crusades in Acre, the Christian Armies took all the males, the Jew, Muslin and Orthodox Christian impales all of them. This behavior set the tone for the next centuries. Sultan Baibars al-Bundukdari in 1268 conquest Jaffa, and returned the same favor to the Christians by massacring the population as an act of justice or revenge.
The industrial revolution changes the definition of property. Property is individual own, not the land, but individual itself. Physical skill or the profession is the new definition of property. The value goes according to need. Still the value is regional meaning if cheaper someone else the job is gone. In that sense we do not control the marker. The decision of the value is defined not by practioner, but by the one who control the capital. The group who control the capital decided the value. The new definition of capital is own by the individual, but the individual does not define the value. Previous times the land belong to the lords and they define the value following the same tradition the 19 century the industrialist were new lords. In the late 20 century the physical skill become less, but the services and the professional skill is the property, the wealth is more fluid. The wealth is now in control of entities defined in a moral value ‘what is the best for me.’ The consequences are a disconnected in the society. The disconnected translated the sense of family and the codependence to religion. The religion experience gives the individual a psychology anchor to himself independent of the community, since the puritan tradition is relationship to God without middle men. To resolve the conflict we can look into our question:
Why we need solidarity? How is solidarity help all of us survive in our historical context, our economics defined from our tradition define ownership our values had a conflict when the new comers define ownership. Because the first nation definition of what is property different from the Western tradition, they define property is by the use not ownership.
Solidarity is not an institution works under the social and economic values of their society. Solidarity does not control the market, but solidarity is define by the individual as a force more them selves.
A company is either public or private tries to maximize the value for the share holders or the private ownership; moreover its considered values are defined in the context of the society.
If our objective is to changes the attitude of what property is, we need to change the values of property. Property is defined by social hierarchy and that alone defines its standing in that society (legality).
A decision made based on a consensus, means that everyone who is participating comes to an agreement or have a stake in the direction for a common goal, a base to create solidarity. To achieve that goal, we need to focus not on single individual interest but on the group, who will share the benefits and the responsibilities—that is solidarity.
The benefit is the goal, and the goal is defined by the value of the consensus, without denying the context where we are, how we behave and in what we believe. Solidarity comes out from the experience of being isolated in our society. A vast majority of technology today is the product of support by the government. The goal of the government is to produce an economic benefit based on social values defined by the government. What are the values dependent on the social definition.
Economics have profound impact, from quality life to social structure. In creating a sense of solidarity we challenge these values by defined the out put. We need to challenge by creating solidarity independent of social values. Question and challenge the values by creating alternatives, when everyone sees there is possibility to changes.
The dream conveys by our society is that anyone can have the pursuit of happiness, which means to hold property. But some issues had not been resolved, the cost of health care, cost of education and the security. Our choice is by taken a path where solidarity as alternative to just a supply or demand graph.