Your Money or Your Life!

NEO-LIBERAL IDEOLOGY AND POLICIES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE/187

Never has a class been so cruelly exploited as are the weakest

sectors of the working class by their privileged brothers - a form of

exploitation made possible by the 'regulation' of competition. Few

slogans have done as much damage as the 'stabilisation' of prices

and wages. By ensuring the wages of the few, the situation of the

many is made increasingly precarious. (Hayek, 1944)

To all intents and purposes, the World Bank said the same thing 50
years later in its 1995 report entitled 'The World at Work in a
Borderless Economy'. Here are a few excerpts (emphases mine):

Through the obstacles it places to job creation, overly restrictive

job-security regulations threaten to protect those in salaried

positions at the expense of excluded sectors, the unemployed and

workers in the informal and rural sectors. (World Bank, 1995)

Down with job security! It thrives at the expense of the oppressed!

There is good reason to fear that those who most benefit from social

security - usually well-off workers - do so at the expense of other

workers. (World Bank, 1995)

Down with social security!

There can be no doubt that trade unions often behave like

monopolies to secure improvements in wages and working

conditions for their members at the expense of holders of capital,

consumers and the non-unionised workforce. (World Bank, 1995)

Down with the trade unions!
Hayek and Friedman now have imitators in the East. Former Czech
prime minister Vaclav Klaus told the British weekly The Economist:

The Western European social system is too much a prisoner of rules

and excessive controls. The Welfare State, with all its generous

transfer payments unconditioned by criteria relating to the efforts

and merits of the people concerned, destroys the work ethic and

feelings of individual responsibility. Public sector workers are too

protected. The Thatcher revolution - that is, the liberal, anti-

Keynesian revolution - is in midstream in Western Europe. It has

to be taken to the other shore, (quoted in Anderson, 1996)